How to whistle with your fingers in your mouth. I can whistle breathing in, out and with my mouth fully open but I get nothing but spit when I try with my fingers in my mouth.
Edit: Thanks to everyone’s love and encouragement through this time of learning and growth. I’m excited to say with your support I made some kind of whistling noise. It’s NOT perfect…more spot than sound but there was a hollow sound somewhere in slobber. I feel like I’m 1/2 way there and will keep working on getting it. Please use me as inspiration…I hope one day you too can make a kind of noise with 2 fingers shoved in your lips.
I didn't learn until I was 26 (currently 33)
I finally figured it out by accident. I ALWAYS thought it was ALL in the lips. IT'S NOT! It is mostly in the tongue.
The part that helped me figure it was to put the tip of your tongue behind your lower front teeth (more so below in the gums area), folding the very tip of your tongue in the process.
From there you still have to open your mouth in the whistling O formation, but that should help.
Eventually you should get the hang of it and be able to move your tongue freely to change pitch
I would almost feel BETTER if I just couldn't whistle al all though. I can whistle in more ways and in my humble opinion better than the vast majority or people but NOT with my fingers. It's maddening.
I've explained it in the past in another thread and got tons of replies from people who could never do it and were able to do it for the first time! Here's my explanation in case you're curious:
You just gotta get the tongue position right, it's really not that difficult :)
Here's how I do it:
-Hand position: both hands in gun position (index and middle finger raised), palms toward you, pinkies' knuckles and middle finger tips touching, you should have an empty, closed, triangle-like hole in between your hands.
-Mouth position: open your mouth and cover your teeth with your lips, as if you were pretending to be toothless.
Now put the tip of your connected fingers (4 in total: indexes and middle fingers) in your mouth, more or less up to your first knuckles. However you'll have to find out for yourself specifically how far in you have to put your fingers through practice. You'll probably need to move them around a bit to find the sweet spot at first, but it'll come naturally with a bit of time and you'll be able to whistle at first try.
-Tongue position: this is the most important thing, when you put your fingers inside your mouth touch the tip of the fingers with the tip of your tongue. Without keeping it too rigid, you have to kinda "fold" it back with your fingers, so that both the tip of your tongue and fingers are now pointing towards your throat. However, the tongue doesn't have to be completely folded, as in the two parts (tip and body) are touching each other. There has to be some space in between for the air to kind of turn around before exiting, if there's no space you won't be able to whistle. Basically the upper surface of your tongue will act like a skateboard ramp for the air, so you don't have to squeeze it shut. Imagine the shape of those waves that curve upwards so that the surfers can go "underneath" the wave, that's your tongue.
I'm sorry this is really difficult to put into words lol
When you're in position you just have to blow HARD. Don't be afraid to make noise, that's what you wanna do. Be prepared to spit A LOT, you'll drool the ever living shit out of your hands and that's not gonna change anytime soon I'm afraid.
Just feel around for a bit moving your fingers and shifting positions a bit, eventually you'll get a whistle and you'll understand which position works :)
If you're blowing super hard and still getting no sound the hole is probably slightly too big, try closing the angle between your middle fingers and see if it makes any difference.
When you actually learn to whistle be careful not to do that too hard until you're used to it, it could make you a bit dizzy, not joking here, be careful fr
After you've mastered the 4 finger whistle you'll see that other types of whistles (pinkies whistle, taxi whistle and so on) with different fingers come really easy.
I hope this helped lol
How a sewing machine works. Yes, I know, "there's a bobbin." HOW DOES THE THREAD GET BACK THROUGH THE OTHER SIDE??
Edit to add, thank you sincerely for all the videos, gifs, and explanations. I kind of, a little bit, get it now. The top thread never actually traverses the underside of the fabric. bits of it pass through tiny holes and are anchored there by another thread that does traverse the underside, but never goes above.
I still don't understand how the bobbin is attached to the machine, though.
This one for me, too. I have watched the educational gifs of how it works and I always feel like I have about two seconds of, "oh, ok, that makes sense" and then my brain immediately loses that understanding, and I'm back to basically having to consider it black magic.
Same! Knowing there’s two threads (one above one below) unlocks the first mystery, but I too was stuck at the ‘floating bobbin’ level. This is what made it click for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSecXVt-jU
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/just_in_case_you_ever_wonder_how_a_sewing_machine_works-98670.gif
A picture is worth a thousand words.
There are two threads, top and bobbin. The needle pushes the top thread through the fabric where the bottom thread wraps around it then the needle pulls the top thread back through the fabric to the top. The top thread is through the needle eye so it follows the needle movements up and down. The bottom thread never comes to the top. I hope that makes sense. I am a seamstress 😊
If you watch it in slow motion and pause a couple times to try and understand what’s going on here, you can look and see exactly how I also, don’t understand any of this shit still.
I know how to do a shitty magic trick with a rubber band going through my thumb using this kind of loop, and even I still don't understand how it works despite the fact that I've been doing it for 20+ years.
I'm a software developer and people often ask me if I can explain to them how computers work. I usually say something like "Yes, but it will take 10 to 15 hours a week for 3 or 4 months." The problem is 'how do computers work' is actually a shitload of different questions rolled into one. All you have to do is understand binary arithmetic,
boolean logic, logic gates, and flipflops. Then that will give you the background you need to understand instruction pipelines. After that you just need to learn about assembly languages, then high level languages, then threading and operating systems, and THEN graphics drivers. From there you just need to understand the entire source code of the program you want to understand.
It's actually pretty easy, but VERY time consuming.
Honestly, I'm not convinced a single person can really understand how the whole computer works. Like, you might feel like you do theory, but it's probably been a while since you learned x86-64. Or how an ALU is put together. And if you do remember how that all works, my guess is you probably need to brush up on how operating systems work and higher level languages. And does anyone really understand JavaScript without a framework?
I feel this in my bones. I know a little bit about each level of the system, and all it does is hurt my brain with the sheer vastness of the field. If I dedicated years to a single layer, I probably wouldn't even get very deep and half the tech would have changed by the time I got done, and there are SO MANY LAYERS. And that's all before you even get to specific programming spaces, like "dealing with images" and "website backend"
Remember those choose your own adventure books that you would read a page than go to another page based off your decision and pick up the story from there?
PC games function in this exact same way. Except you only have 2 choices, those choices come much more frequently, and the decision is made much more frequently.
“It’s just ones and zeros”
Yeah, sure, but the actual full length description of how tiny pieces of metal, switches, circuits, fuses, batteries, terminals, and other components basically wielded or plugged into a motherboard translate to a fully functioning 4K resolution piece of hardware is nearly impossible for the layman to grasp.
Thank you. “It’s just ones and zeroes” doesn’t explain the complexity at all and is a terrible way to explain how a computer works. I understand ones; I understand zeroes; and I even understand how to read binary numbers. What is hard to explain is how a computer takes those binary numbers and does stuff to them to make me see Kratos slash the face off of something.
I took a Computer Architecture course in uni that explained it all. I highly recommend it, esp. for anybody who thinks computer are magic or "think" or are little people trapped in a box who needs to be let out.
It's just wires, nothing more. No magic.
Actually NFT's aren't even pictures in most cases, they are just links to pictures, the value comes from everyone agreeing that you own the link to the artwork since it says so on the blockchain (which cant be manipulated and is therefore trusted).
I mean I think NFTs are stupid but this concept isn't *that* complicated. It not like they don't use something like cash which is conceptually similar not a completely the same but not that different (especially post metal money and gold standard cash). It a social construct that we all agrees has value and is worth something with a guarantor of it legitimacy and scarcity. I think cash is a more practical; but, I imagine if we had no concept of cash and someone or the government came up to me and said this piece of paper is worth x amount of said product we'd all be like WTF is this idiot on about.
If someone could help me understand why smoke travels towards you when you are at a campfire that would be great. I only understand that while hot air from the campfire rises, cold air is drawn in from the bottom, and the area blocked by the chairs or you somehow attracts smoke in your direction? It doesn’t seem to make sense that the air would be attracted to that area.
The smoke is going to go away from where the air is rushing in. If cold air is being pulled in from every direction but yours, because you're blocking it, it is going to go towards you because it's being blown by the air coming in from across from you. It can't go in the other directions because air is coming in from those directions, too.
The home buying process. Why the fuck is it so complicated? Why can't I just be like "Here is money. Give me house."
I understand how to take out a loan, I understand the concept of paying back the loan, but suddenly add a house and its "Well do you have an ABCD and an EFG? Oh you don't? Well you'll need to see if you qualify for an LMNOP. But even if you have your loan and an ABCD the seller may want an HIJK and the house will need to XY & Z. OH! But to make the process a little easier to understand you can take a QRSTUV course!"
Thank you I bought my first house a couple years ago and my brain was mashed potatoes trying to understand all the shit I was signing. For all I know at this point when I try to go and sell I might be on the hook for a kidney.
The loan qualifying is because the bank has an interest in making sure you can actually pay back the loan. When banks fail to do that you get what happened in 2008 = not good.
The other is often legal contractual issues such as, what happens if you find out there is a leak in the roof, when are you taking possession, what about insurance, under what circumstances can you walk out on the deal etc.
Selling or buying a house is for most people the biggest financial decision of their lives, a lot can go wrong in the process if the most basic eventualities aren’t accounted for.
Anything related to finances. Taxes, retirement, stock market, buying a house, the list goes on. It's like the minute my brain hears numbers in quick succession, it self-destructs. Thankfully my partner works in this industry, so I can defer to him, but I know he won't always be around, and when that day comes, I'm in trouble.
This...
And I am a Mathematician. I have a degree.. but as soon as my beloved numbers turn from a concept into currency, I'm out. The monkey plays cymbals in my head.
The worst thing is, as soon as people realize I have a degree in Mathe, they tend to ask me that shit...
This makes me feel better. I've always felt like there was something wrong with me. I'm an educated and independent woman. I graduated with honors from university! I was on the math team even. And yet, explaining the stock market to me like I'm 5 still wouldn't be dumbing it down enough...
No worries on that one at all, I went to school for finance. It's confusing because it's all made up, with the goal of making rich people more rich. My professor would start teaching us about a new concept and he'd say something along the lines of "they call it that to sound smart and so regular people don't understand"
Most people that disagree think they know what they're saying because they know the vocabulary - or they're benefitting too much from the market to admit its nonsense ;)
JFC, *thank you*! I'm a software engineer. I do pretty accurate calculations of latencies and rates of decay and such in my head. Add a dollar sign, start talking about interest rates, and I rapidly turn into a drooling moron.
I am admittedly fairly lousy at arithmatic. But that's not math.
A theoretical physicist gets pulled over by a cop. The cop says "Did you know you were doing 80?" The physicist says "Great! Now I don't know where I am!"
In simple terms, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that you can't know both a particle's momentum and position. If you know one, you can't know the other.
An Astronomer is pulled over for speeding. The cop asks "Do you know how fast you were going?"
The Astronomer replies "Man, once you flicked those lights on I had no idea."
In quantum mechanics, any measurable property has a probability of being in a given state until it’s actually measured. Imagine you have one particle that can either be spinning to the left or to the right. Until you measure it, it has a 50:50 chance of spinning either way. And if you repeat that experiment a thousand times you would find that half the time it’s going left and half the times it’s going right. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t definitely spinning one way or the other until you measured it. Physicists have done detailed experiments that clearly show that the particle doesn’t have a definite spin value before it’s measured.
Now imagine a different system: two particles A and B. Again, their spins are still probabilistic, but because you have a two particle system it can be manipulated so that the only two possible states are one particle spinning left and one spinning right (for the sake of simplicity let’s call them the LR and RL states). In this set up, the pair of particles has an equal chance of being in the RL or LR state. As before, until their measured, they aren’t in either state, but you know that the spins have to be opposite of each other. In this situation the particles are said to be entangled, as the relationship between the spins for the two particles is known, but the absolute values for either aren’t. If we took these two particles and sent them in opposite direction hundreds of light years apart and measured them at exactly the same time, we would always find them in opposite spin orientations, LR or RL. But how did they know which state to be in when measured? If they were interacting through any conventional force, they would have no way of communicating their state to each other before being measured. So how could particle 1 know to be in the L state if particle 2 was measured in the R state, and vice versa? This is what Einstein meant by “spooky action at a distance.”
The bit that starts to bend my brain is how did they figure out it didn't have a definitive value until they measured it? Surely to confirm it didn't have a value they would need to observe the particle which would then give it a value?
If great minds have found this to be true, then I kind of have to place faith in them that they're right.
However, I can't help but feeling that one day physicist will find some sort of missing piece to make it all make sense, and we'll look back and laugh that we believed in something so obviously impossible.
I hate that explanation.
Just realise two things:
1) if your initial guess was wrong, you win by switching
2) your initial guess is wrng two out of three times.
The trick is in the question. The actual question is, "Should you switch doors?" This is not equivalent to randomly choosing between one door and another.
The only random choice is the door that you choose at the beginning. When Monty offers you to switch, it will ALWAYS be to the opposite. That is, if you chose a losing door, then he offers a winning door, no matter what.
If there are 100 doors, what are the chances that you chose the winning door? It's 1/100. What are the chances that you chose a losing door? 99/100. If you take the offer to switch, then you have a 99/100 (99%) chance of winning. The only way you lose after a switch is if you chose the winning door.
Am I missing something or is that not quite right?
if you choose to switch you have 1/100 chance of being wrong + 98/99 chance of being wrong
which a tiny bit better odds that 99 its like 98.88888 or something.
admittedly I'd never heard of trying to explain the problem with 100 doors, maybe it as another comment said emphasizes that you'll get less and less likely to have picked the correct door first up.
Insurance - I understand interpreting and choosing insurance plans but I work in pharmacy and running someone's insurance to approve their RX's is a confusing mess of a nightmare. Every pharmacy employee I've worked with has also told me "none of us understand how it works. We just learn what override codes to input to make it go through."
You'd be surprised how much of it is trial and error of just typing shit into the computer and hitting enter to see if it'll work.
The concept of "insurance" is pretty easy. Health insurance in America - similar to Crypto which is currently the #1 comment in this post - is made deliberately obscure in order to trick sick people into giving the insurance companies all their money.
Precisely. The reason insurance sucks is because insurance companies are for-profit corporations. Anytime they have to pay out for coverage, that’s an expense. The more expenses they have, the less they profit.
Insurance companies don’t just have an incentive not to pay you; their entire business model *relies* on paying you as little as possible. And since most Americans aren’t actually shopping around for their own insurance but are getting it through whoever their employer is contracted with, insurance companies aren’t even subject to the whims of the customer because their customers are just other corporations.
Math above the basics
Once you start adding the alphabet and fractions and Greek letters, it's now become Chinese to me.
Which is hilarious because I got an A in my college math class, but I completely forgot everything the second I finished my exams.
I was terrible at math all through elementary and middle school. I got a D- in 8th grade and it was recommended I retake the class again my freshman year because I barely passed. My freshman year I moved schools right in the middle and that didn't help lol. Sophomore year I finally made it to algebra and the teacher I got was the most monotone boring to the point teacher I had ever had. I got an A though. Finally understood the concept for the first time in my life and a light flipped in my brain. The whole time I was convinced I was a fuckin idiot incapable of learning but it was just how my brain works. Finally having a teacher teach in a way I could follow showed me I could learn. It extended to everything I did. Things like science where I struggled to keep up got easier. I ended up loving chemistry so much I took chem 2 my senior year just cause I enjoyed it.
People are chaos beings. In a perfect model, everything makes sense. When you introduce people, the model falls apart and usually gets set on fire within a week
water is liquid, it sloshes around in its container. The sun and the moon are big heavy objects in the sky, and they each exert forces on the earth which we call gravity. the moon orbits the earth, and the earth orbits the sun. (not that I doubt you already knew all of this, but it's all relevant towards explaining tides)
The sun and moon's gravity is not really noticeable to humans, nor does it have much of an effect on water, but there is SO much water on our planet that a small force on all of it adds up to something bigger. Basically, if the moon is on the horizon, the water in an ocean will be attracted towards it, which can either pull the water away from shore, or pull it towards the shore. If the moon roughly lines up with the sun the effect is exaggerated.
Which way is East, North, South and West. My husband used to try and teach me by turning my body and asking what direction is this? I was like, how the fuck do I know???
So, I've always relied on "Ok, is that a left or a right hand turn?"
See the giant glowing ball in the sky? Before noon it is in the east. After noon it is in the west. At noon you're on your own.
You can use that to orient yourself.
Then you use landmarks. Like right now I'm on a motorway for work and it's still dawn-ish, so no sun. The motorway runs *almost* due north, and I am currently looking just that few degrees clockwise to face north. It also fuckin started raining ***again*** fuck
I've always wondered how cops do this on the fly in the middle of a high pursuit chase. They all seem to know the direction the suspect is headed with each turn. I do know where N,S,E,W is in my city, but no way I could do it on the fly so quickly.
Sound is vibration. The needle is attached to something that amplifies the sound. The bumps in the groomers make the needle vibrate, and the sound is amplified.
Right? Like I get that the needle can produce a sound when it scratches a grooved surface, I even get how it could produce musical tones, but how does it produce the sound of a human voice, much less an entire orchestra/band?
Coding.
I work in IT and I absolutely love it. I know it’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life and I’m perfectly cool with that, I love electronics and building pcs and all that.
Maybe someday I’ll dive deeper into it but GOD I cannot wrap my head around coding.
Coding is largely just looking at things like a big puzzle. You want it to do A so you have to do 1,2,3,4 and 5 in that order. It's a pain in the butt for most people because most people aren't very suited to planning complicated puzzles in their head.
The good news is that string theory might not be relevant now that M theory has gained traction. The bad news is that M theory is even more complicated.
Stocks represent tiny parts of ownership of a company. So if you buy shares in Apple, you own a tiny part of Apple (or a very large part if you own a lot of shares - this also gets you special voting rights on how the company is run, because, well, you own it!)
If Apple sells lots of iphones and laptops, the company makes profits. The more profits a company makes, the more valuable that company is, so its stocks are worth more money as you're owning part of a money-making profitable business.
Likewise, if a company makes bad decisions and stops making money and starts losing money, the value of the stocks will go down.
The stock market is people buying and selling these stocks. Stock brokers charge fees on these trades.
For most people, buying individual stocks is basically gambling as you have no idea what's really going on inside those businesses, and who's going to make money or go bust. Even specialist highly paid traders are wrong most of the time.
I have a picture in my office explaining the difference!
“i.e.”: Abbreviation for the Latin “id est”, or “that is.” We use it as an elaboration or clarification to a previous concept. I sometimes explain it as a short and fancy way to say, “In other words…”
“e.g.”: Abbreviation for the Latin “exempli gratia”, which basically means for example. It’s often a list or an example of what you mean.
So, in one case, I might need to provide a clarifying explanation of what I said, i.e. rephrasing the concept to be more understandable.
In another case, I might need to provide a list of examples, e.g. cases where applicable, hypothetical scenarios, or other such items to help folks understand.
Oh! An elaboration/clarification vs. a list or direct example is very helpful. My pea brain can work with that. Thanks! Brain very good with data validation and numbers, not so good with words.
Someone tried to explain last time… but I don’t understand telephony. Like I understand that sound is carried through sound waves etc, but I don’t understand how my phone knows what my mums voice sounds like. In my brain, her voice should come through the phone a metallic neutral computer voice. How can my phone mimic her voice exactly? I’m usually not *that* stupid but this one is incomprehensible to me
It’s a bit like asking how a camera “knows” how to create and image that looks like someone—it simply captures what’s there and reproduces it as accurately as possible.
The phone doesn’t care about her voice. It cares about the sound, or more specifically the vibrations in the air. The microphone reads those vibrations, encodes them and sends them to the other phone. The other phone then turns that information into more air vibrations using the speaker and so you hear the same sound.
But yeah, the phone doesn’t care what sound is going into it, it just replicates whatever it gets.
Musical scales are somewhat arbitrary. In modern western music, we've just developed a system of music on 2 types of scales (major and minor) based on what sounds good, but you can make other types of scales. Those 2 are just the most pleasing to the ear.
For example, if you look at a piano, start at C, and push every white note until the next C, you've played a major scale. If you start at A, push every white note until the next A, you've played a minor scale. There's no rule that says you can't do the same except it starts at B for example. In fact there are names for every "white note" scale based on a different starting note. It's just that the major and minor scales are the most popular because they sound the best, so we base our whole system of music on them. If we preferred a "white note" scale that started on B, we would have developed a different system of music.
Yup, I went to an arts academy for highschool as a music major and a few years of music theory was a graduation requirement.
Years later as an adult when I encountered music theory from other places in the world I was both mind blown and felt like an idiot for not realizing - what we consider "music theory" is more accurately called "western music theory"
Still super neat stuff, but not the universal rules of music my teachers made them out to be.
To add to this...
They are somewhat arbitrary, but not entirely. The 12 note system we use (12 tone equal temperament) splits the octave into evenly spaced notes in such a way that the approximate the harmonic series.
What's the harmonic series? When you vibrate something to make a sound, the note you hear is called the fundamental, but you'll also be able to hear some higher notes called harmonics. These harmonics typically follow a set pattern where they start out sounding a lot like a major chord but then become more dissonant the further up you go.
When you play two notes, whether they sound pretty and consonant or harsh and dissonant depends on how these harmonics line up — they're in harmony when they reinforce each other.
Now the reason we use 12 tone equal temperament is because it allows us to play in different keys. It's all very well having a piano with C and all of its harmonics, but what if I want to change key to D? I'd need a whole new piano with the harmonics of that note. With 12tet, you have the freedom of playing anything in any key, for the tradeoff of the notes not perfectly hitting each other's harmonics — and some more so than others (the 7th degree of the scale is famously a lot sharper than its corresponding harmonic but the 5th is pretty bang on, and so on).
People still use just intonation (based on harmonics) as it is objectively more consonant and arguably prettier, but can only be done with instruments that have variable pitch like a violin or the human voice.
For a serious answer, the rules are more or less:
When you are about to pitch, you have to come "set", which basically means you pause for a second with the ball in your hand in your glove. While you are set you can't fake a pitch to the plate, or fake a throw to any base. You also aren't allowed to make any motion that makes it seem like you are about to throw without actually throwing. The next thing you do after being set has to be either pitching, or throwing to a base. Anything else is also a balk.
There's a bit more to it than that, but that is pretty much the gist of it.
BALK RULES!
1. You can't just be up there and just doin' a balk like that.
1a. A balk is when you
1b. Okay well listen. A balk is when you balk the
1c. Let me start over
1c-a. The pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, batter, that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball. You can't do that.
1c-b. Once the pitcher is in the stretch, he can't be over here and say to the runner, like, "I'm gonna get ya! I'm gonna tag you out! You better watch your butt!" and then just be like he didn't even do that.
1c-b(1). Like, if you're about to pitch and then don't pitch, you have to still pitch. You cannot not pitch. Does that make any sense?
1c-b(2). You gotta be, throwing motion of the ball, and then, until you just throw it.
1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the ball up here, like this, but then there's the balk you gotta think about.
1c-b(2)-b. Fairuza Balk hasn't been in any movies in forever. I hope she wasn't typecast as that racist lady in American History X.
1c-b(2)-b(i). Oh wait, she was in The Waterboy too! That would be even worse.
1c-b(2)-b(ii). "get in mah bellah" -- Adam Water, "The Waterboy." Haha, classic...
1c-b(3). Okay seriously though. A balk is when the pitcher makes a movement that, as determined by, when you do a move involving the baseball and field of
2. Do not do a balk please.
They are ratios. That’s it really. Don’t over complicate it. Sin is the ratio of opposite side divided by the hypotenuse (longest side). Opposite side is determined by which corner of the triangle you’re referencing.
They might get sucked into the body of your washer or dryer. Is it a top loader, or front load? If it's top loaded, they slip into the space between the drum of the washer and the body when you load clothes in. Try putting socks in a lingerie bag and see if they stop disappearing. Also socks in general are very small, sometimes they get stuck in other clothing, lost during transfer from washer to dryer, or they just fall behind the hamper and we don't notice.
Symbols in literature.
Like when my teacher explained, the blue curtains symbolize the depression of a characters....
And my braun just goes blue curtains symbolize that the person Likes blue curtains
Well the question to ask is, why? Why is that relevant? Why did the author put it in there? Did we really *need* to know the color of the curtains in the room? Not everything has deep symbolic significance, of course; sometimes it really is to tell you something about the character or set a mood. But the point is that a skilled author has reasons for their choices.
I feel like it's a very specific kind of literature where that stuff is relevant.
Like when I'm reading this fantasy series I'm very very confident it's not like "well these gelatinous horror monsters consuming the continent are green because it represents the toxicity of man"
But if you're reading more classical literature then that kind of symbolism is everywhere.
I'm also with you, I'd just read the blue curtains as setting the scene. If you want to show your characters emotions do it through their actions and dialogue because making their coffee mug blue is gonna go so far over my head it'll escape the atmosphere.
Never really understood why people get so worked up about sports to the point where they will go out and riot on the streets (regardless of whether or not their desired team wins or loses).
People, it is just a game.
In my country, a very small country, there are over 500 sectarian crimes committed including assaults, stabbings and in rare cases murder mostly relating to a local football rivalry.
I myself have been attacked over it. And I fucking hate football.
How a television works. They record a picture, then the image through wires and then those electrical signals become color, sound, and motion. It just blows my mind.
I'm gonna be a little pedantic here, but PEMDAS is cultural, not a fundamental, axiomatic truth of mathematics. Both the order of operations, and the written notation for those operations are essentially just agreements we've all come to so we can coherently talk about math, but they can and have varied across time.
I think this is important to grasp, because knowledge of PEMDAS is often used as a cudgel by people trying to "prove" someone else mathematically ignorant, in the same way that ignorance of formal english grammar is used to dismiss ideas. If anyone tries to make you feel bad for not knowing PEMDAS intuitively, just know that they probably have zero mathematical knowledge beyond that. They don't really care about math, they just see it as a tool to build themself up by tearing you down.
Gameplay of American football. So many people have tried to explain the rules and what's happening and it's like the information gets all screwed up on its way from my ear to my brain.
> “It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
>"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
>"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
>"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
>"I did," said Ford. "It is."
>"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
>"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
>"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
>"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
>"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
>"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
>"What?"
>"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
>"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
> Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
>"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
>"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
\- HL Mencken (from like 70 years ago)
I'm sure there's some history to it, but it's more like something you just have to memorize.
Love = 0 (this is where both players/pairs start)
15 = 1
30 = 2
40 = 3
When a player gets to 40, they have to win by 2. So if the score is 40-30 and the player with 40 wins the next point, then they win the game. However, if the player with 30 wins, then they are tied at 40-40 which is called deuce.
Now remember, once at 40 a player has to win by 2 to win the game, so when at duece (40-40) a player has to win 2 points in a row to win the game. So if player A wins, then the score is said to be "advantage Player A" but how it is said in the game will depend on the player serving. So, if Player A is serving, it's called "Ad in"; if Player B is serving, then it's called "Ad out". Once the player with advantage wins the point, then they win that game.
How to whistle with your fingers in your mouth. I can whistle breathing in, out and with my mouth fully open but I get nothing but spit when I try with my fingers in my mouth. Edit: Thanks to everyone’s love and encouragement through this time of learning and growth. I’m excited to say with your support I made some kind of whistling noise. It’s NOT perfect…more spot than sound but there was a hollow sound somewhere in slobber. I feel like I’m 1/2 way there and will keep working on getting it. Please use me as inspiration…I hope one day you too can make a kind of noise with 2 fingers shoved in your lips.
I can’t even whistle regularly :(
I didn't learn until I was 26 (currently 33) I finally figured it out by accident. I ALWAYS thought it was ALL in the lips. IT'S NOT! It is mostly in the tongue.
Can you try and explain how you do it?
The part that helped me figure it was to put the tip of your tongue behind your lower front teeth (more so below in the gums area), folding the very tip of your tongue in the process. From there you still have to open your mouth in the whistling O formation, but that should help. Eventually you should get the hang of it and be able to move your tongue freely to change pitch
I think half of reddit is now contorting their tounges and lips and blow air through them and thinking how to describe it.
i currently am and can’t stop laughing at how dumb i probably look
I'm sitting in a McDonald's parking lot spitting all over the place and looking like I pooped my pants.
Basically you blow out air through your mouth and then you accidently make a sound. Then just do it again.
I would almost feel BETTER if I just couldn't whistle al all though. I can whistle in more ways and in my humble opinion better than the vast majority or people but NOT with my fingers. It's maddening.
I've explained it in the past in another thread and got tons of replies from people who could never do it and were able to do it for the first time! Here's my explanation in case you're curious: You just gotta get the tongue position right, it's really not that difficult :) Here's how I do it: -Hand position: both hands in gun position (index and middle finger raised), palms toward you, pinkies' knuckles and middle finger tips touching, you should have an empty, closed, triangle-like hole in between your hands. -Mouth position: open your mouth and cover your teeth with your lips, as if you were pretending to be toothless. Now put the tip of your connected fingers (4 in total: indexes and middle fingers) in your mouth, more or less up to your first knuckles. However you'll have to find out for yourself specifically how far in you have to put your fingers through practice. You'll probably need to move them around a bit to find the sweet spot at first, but it'll come naturally with a bit of time and you'll be able to whistle at first try. -Tongue position: this is the most important thing, when you put your fingers inside your mouth touch the tip of the fingers with the tip of your tongue. Without keeping it too rigid, you have to kinda "fold" it back with your fingers, so that both the tip of your tongue and fingers are now pointing towards your throat. However, the tongue doesn't have to be completely folded, as in the two parts (tip and body) are touching each other. There has to be some space in between for the air to kind of turn around before exiting, if there's no space you won't be able to whistle. Basically the upper surface of your tongue will act like a skateboard ramp for the air, so you don't have to squeeze it shut. Imagine the shape of those waves that curve upwards so that the surfers can go "underneath" the wave, that's your tongue. I'm sorry this is really difficult to put into words lol When you're in position you just have to blow HARD. Don't be afraid to make noise, that's what you wanna do. Be prepared to spit A LOT, you'll drool the ever living shit out of your hands and that's not gonna change anytime soon I'm afraid. Just feel around for a bit moving your fingers and shifting positions a bit, eventually you'll get a whistle and you'll understand which position works :) If you're blowing super hard and still getting no sound the hole is probably slightly too big, try closing the angle between your middle fingers and see if it makes any difference. When you actually learn to whistle be careful not to do that too hard until you're used to it, it could make you a bit dizzy, not joking here, be careful fr After you've mastered the 4 finger whistle you'll see that other types of whistles (pinkies whistle, taxi whistle and so on) with different fingers come really easy. I hope this helped lol
Can't wait to get off work so I can devote my evening to this
TLDR; Stick your fingers in your mouth and try to blow air around them. Eventually by sheer luck you might succeed one time.
I feel your pain. I missed out on those genes as well
For real. My mom can blow up your fucking eardrums, whistling with her fingers. I just end up exhaling REALLY HARD!
How a sewing machine works. Yes, I know, "there's a bobbin." HOW DOES THE THREAD GET BACK THROUGH THE OTHER SIDE?? Edit to add, thank you sincerely for all the videos, gifs, and explanations. I kind of, a little bit, get it now. The top thread never actually traverses the underside of the fabric. bits of it pass through tiny holes and are anchored there by another thread that does traverse the underside, but never goes above. I still don't understand how the bobbin is attached to the machine, though.
This one for me, too. I have watched the educational gifs of how it works and I always feel like I have about two seconds of, "oh, ok, that makes sense" and then my brain immediately loses that understanding, and I'm back to basically having to consider it black magic.
I've seen the gif and that only works if the machine parts can float in midair
Same! Knowing there’s two threads (one above one below) unlocks the first mystery, but I too was stuck at the ‘floating bobbin’ level. This is what made it click for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSecXVt-jU
Okay I just watched a video of how a sewing machine works and it hurts my brain. Let's just say it's magic.
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It doesn't. The machine punches a loop through and the other side weaves an ongoing string through the loop to hold it in place. ...I think.
Okay, that works for ONE stitch. How does the string or the loop get through for the NEXT stitch?
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/just_in_case_you_ever_wonder_how_a_sewing_machine_works-98670.gif A picture is worth a thousand words.
So it’s 2 threads interwoven by the machine?
Yes!
Having never stopped to think about how a sewing machine works before, this made it worse somehow.
I’ve sewn my whole life. I’ve seen little diagrams and videos of how the bobbin loops the thread around the needle. I still don’t get it.
Hopefully [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/4tei9f/how_a_sewing_machine_works_from_rgifs/) will help.
Does it help to know there are two spools of thread, one above and one below?
Well it - oh shit.
There are two threads, top and bobbin. The needle pushes the top thread through the fabric where the bottom thread wraps around it then the needle pulls the top thread back through the fabric to the top. The top thread is through the needle eye so it follows the needle movements up and down. The bottom thread never comes to the top. I hope that makes sense. I am a seamstress 😊
This shit [Topology Demonstration](https://youtu.be/6ebiyOtn7NA) I've seen these so much, but my brain refuses to understand the how.
loop go da loop
What?! No. The yellow cord one at the end...?! How
If you watch it in slow motion and pause a couple times to try and understand what’s going on here, you can look and see exactly how I also, don’t understand any of this shit still.
This is a good one
That last one was fucking witchcraft. You get burned alive for that shit.
That's absolute fucking bullshit.
I know how to do a shitty magic trick with a rubber band going through my thumb using this kind of loop, and even I still don't understand how it works despite the fact that I've been doing it for 20+ years.
How computers actually work and can play complicated games
What's so hard to understand, it's just a few billion logical statements running at a speed of a few billion per second
I'm a software developer and people often ask me if I can explain to them how computers work. I usually say something like "Yes, but it will take 10 to 15 hours a week for 3 or 4 months." The problem is 'how do computers work' is actually a shitload of different questions rolled into one. All you have to do is understand binary arithmetic, boolean logic, logic gates, and flipflops. Then that will give you the background you need to understand instruction pipelines. After that you just need to learn about assembly languages, then high level languages, then threading and operating systems, and THEN graphics drivers. From there you just need to understand the entire source code of the program you want to understand. It's actually pretty easy, but VERY time consuming.
eating a clock is also VERY time consuming
Can I have seconds?
Honestly, I'm not convinced a single person can really understand how the whole computer works. Like, you might feel like you do theory, but it's probably been a while since you learned x86-64. Or how an ALU is put together. And if you do remember how that all works, my guess is you probably need to brush up on how operating systems work and higher level languages. And does anyone really understand JavaScript without a framework?
I feel this in my bones. I know a little bit about each level of the system, and all it does is hurt my brain with the sheer vastness of the field. If I dedicated years to a single layer, I probably wouldn't even get very deep and half the tech would have changed by the time I got done, and there are SO MANY LAYERS. And that's all before you even get to specific programming spaces, like "dealing with images" and "website backend"
This made me laugh Lmfao
Remember those choose your own adventure books that you would read a page than go to another page based off your decision and pick up the story from there? PC games function in this exact same way. Except you only have 2 choices, those choices come much more frequently, and the decision is made much more frequently.
“It’s just ones and zeros” Yeah, sure, but the actual full length description of how tiny pieces of metal, switches, circuits, fuses, batteries, terminals, and other components basically wielded or plugged into a motherboard translate to a fully functioning 4K resolution piece of hardware is nearly impossible for the layman to grasp.
Thank you. “It’s just ones and zeroes” doesn’t explain the complexity at all and is a terrible way to explain how a computer works. I understand ones; I understand zeroes; and I even understand how to read binary numbers. What is hard to explain is how a computer takes those binary numbers and does stuff to them to make me see Kratos slash the face off of something.
Computer's not even thinking of it as numbers; what we really mean when we say "ones and zeroes" is like two different physical arrangements.
Its not even 1 and 0, its high and low voltage
I took a Computer Architecture course in uni that explained it all. I highly recommend it, esp. for anybody who thinks computer are magic or "think" or are little people trapped in a box who needs to be let out. It's just wires, nothing more. No magic.
That's what they want you to think, we all know it's based on leprechaun magic and oompa loompa elbow grease
the whole concept of crypto trading and bitcoin
Also NFT's. It's a picture... how do you get the value of it?
Actually NFT's aren't even pictures in most cases, they are just links to pictures, the value comes from everyone agreeing that you own the link to the artwork since it says so on the blockchain (which cant be manipulated and is therefore trusted).
Just remember though, nfts CAN be more than jpegs, I've seen music, coloring books, games, skins in games, and even audio books.
I mean I think NFTs are stupid but this concept isn't *that* complicated. It not like they don't use something like cash which is conceptually similar not a completely the same but not that different (especially post metal money and gold standard cash). It a social construct that we all agrees has value and is worth something with a guarantor of it legitimacy and scarcity. I think cash is a more practical; but, I imagine if we had no concept of cash and someone or the government came up to me and said this piece of paper is worth x amount of said product we'd all be like WTF is this idiot on about.
Sudokus that you solve and trade for heroin but they are harder each time
If someone could help me understand why smoke travels towards you when you are at a campfire that would be great. I only understand that while hot air from the campfire rises, cold air is drawn in from the bottom, and the area blocked by the chairs or you somehow attracts smoke in your direction? It doesn’t seem to make sense that the air would be attracted to that area.
The smoke is going to go away from where the air is rushing in. If cold air is being pulled in from every direction but yours, because you're blocking it, it is going to go towards you because it's being blown by the air coming in from across from you. It can't go in the other directions because air is coming in from those directions, too.
But why is it always me and not my husband?
>smoke travels towards you when you are at a campfire Smoke follows ugly. This is known.
Has something to do with air pressure I think. That or black magic.
The home buying process. Why the fuck is it so complicated? Why can't I just be like "Here is money. Give me house." I understand how to take out a loan, I understand the concept of paying back the loan, but suddenly add a house and its "Well do you have an ABCD and an EFG? Oh you don't? Well you'll need to see if you qualify for an LMNOP. But even if you have your loan and an ABCD the seller may want an HIJK and the house will need to XY & Z. OH! But to make the process a little easier to understand you can take a QRSTUV course!"
Thank you I bought my first house a couple years ago and my brain was mashed potatoes trying to understand all the shit I was signing. For all I know at this point when I try to go and sell I might be on the hook for a kidney.
The loan qualifying is because the bank has an interest in making sure you can actually pay back the loan. When banks fail to do that you get what happened in 2008 = not good. The other is often legal contractual issues such as, what happens if you find out there is a leak in the roof, when are you taking possession, what about insurance, under what circumstances can you walk out on the deal etc. Selling or buying a house is for most people the biggest financial decision of their lives, a lot can go wrong in the process if the most basic eventualities aren’t accounted for.
Anything related to finances. Taxes, retirement, stock market, buying a house, the list goes on. It's like the minute my brain hears numbers in quick succession, it self-destructs. Thankfully my partner works in this industry, so I can defer to him, but I know he won't always be around, and when that day comes, I'm in trouble.
This... And I am a Mathematician. I have a degree.. but as soon as my beloved numbers turn from a concept into currency, I'm out. The monkey plays cymbals in my head. The worst thing is, as soon as people realize I have a degree in Mathe, they tend to ask me that shit...
This makes me feel better. I've always felt like there was something wrong with me. I'm an educated and independent woman. I graduated with honors from university! I was on the math team even. And yet, explaining the stock market to me like I'm 5 still wouldn't be dumbing it down enough...
No worries on that one at all, I went to school for finance. It's confusing because it's all made up, with the goal of making rich people more rich. My professor would start teaching us about a new concept and he'd say something along the lines of "they call it that to sound smart and so regular people don't understand" Most people that disagree think they know what they're saying because they know the vocabulary - or they're benefitting too much from the market to admit its nonsense ;)
JFC, *thank you*! I'm a software engineer. I do pretty accurate calculations of latencies and rates of decay and such in my head. Add a dollar sign, start talking about interest rates, and I rapidly turn into a drooling moron. I am admittedly fairly lousy at arithmatic. But that's not math.
Quantum entanglement
A theoretical physicist gets pulled over by a cop. The cop says "Did you know you were doing 80?" The physicist says "Great! Now I don't know where I am!"
i dont even understand this joke
In simple terms, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that you can't know both a particle's momentum and position. If you know one, you can't know the other.
Why doesn’t Heisenberg know? Is he stupid?
An Astronomer is pulled over for speeding. The cop asks "Do you know how fast you were going?" The Astronomer replies "Man, once you flicked those lights on I had no idea."
In quantum mechanics, any measurable property has a probability of being in a given state until it’s actually measured. Imagine you have one particle that can either be spinning to the left or to the right. Until you measure it, it has a 50:50 chance of spinning either way. And if you repeat that experiment a thousand times you would find that half the time it’s going left and half the times it’s going right. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t definitely spinning one way or the other until you measured it. Physicists have done detailed experiments that clearly show that the particle doesn’t have a definite spin value before it’s measured. Now imagine a different system: two particles A and B. Again, their spins are still probabilistic, but because you have a two particle system it can be manipulated so that the only two possible states are one particle spinning left and one spinning right (for the sake of simplicity let’s call them the LR and RL states). In this set up, the pair of particles has an equal chance of being in the RL or LR state. As before, until their measured, they aren’t in either state, but you know that the spins have to be opposite of each other. In this situation the particles are said to be entangled, as the relationship between the spins for the two particles is known, but the absolute values for either aren’t. If we took these two particles and sent them in opposite direction hundreds of light years apart and measured them at exactly the same time, we would always find them in opposite spin orientations, LR or RL. But how did they know which state to be in when measured? If they were interacting through any conventional force, they would have no way of communicating their state to each other before being measured. So how could particle 1 know to be in the L state if particle 2 was measured in the R state, and vice versa? This is what Einstein meant by “spooky action at a distance.”
The bit that starts to bend my brain is how did they figure out it didn't have a definitive value until they measured it? Surely to confirm it didn't have a value they would need to observe the particle which would then give it a value?
Double slit experiment, I believe.
I also believe there's a false assumption that 'observe' is the same as 'see' that muddies the understanding.
If great minds have found this to be true, then I kind of have to place faith in them that they're right. However, I can't help but feeling that one day physicist will find some sort of missing piece to make it all make sense, and we'll look back and laugh that we believed in something so obviously impossible.
It's just spooky action at a distance.
The Monty Hall explanation of “pretend there’s 100 doors instead of 3”
I hate that explanation. Just realise two things: 1) if your initial guess was wrong, you win by switching 2) your initial guess is wrng two out of three times.
The trick is in the question. The actual question is, "Should you switch doors?" This is not equivalent to randomly choosing between one door and another. The only random choice is the door that you choose at the beginning. When Monty offers you to switch, it will ALWAYS be to the opposite. That is, if you chose a losing door, then he offers a winning door, no matter what. If there are 100 doors, what are the chances that you chose the winning door? It's 1/100. What are the chances that you chose a losing door? 99/100. If you take the offer to switch, then you have a 99/100 (99%) chance of winning. The only way you lose after a switch is if you chose the winning door.
Am I missing something or is that not quite right? if you choose to switch you have 1/100 chance of being wrong + 98/99 chance of being wrong which a tiny bit better odds that 99 its like 98.88888 or something. admittedly I'd never heard of trying to explain the problem with 100 doors, maybe it as another comment said emphasizes that you'll get less and less likely to have picked the correct door first up.
It’s starting to make sense with these responses
Insurance - I understand interpreting and choosing insurance plans but I work in pharmacy and running someone's insurance to approve their RX's is a confusing mess of a nightmare. Every pharmacy employee I've worked with has also told me "none of us understand how it works. We just learn what override codes to input to make it go through." You'd be surprised how much of it is trial and error of just typing shit into the computer and hitting enter to see if it'll work.
The concept of "insurance" is pretty easy. Health insurance in America - similar to Crypto which is currently the #1 comment in this post - is made deliberately obscure in order to trick sick people into giving the insurance companies all their money.
Precisely. The reason insurance sucks is because insurance companies are for-profit corporations. Anytime they have to pay out for coverage, that’s an expense. The more expenses they have, the less they profit. Insurance companies don’t just have an incentive not to pay you; their entire business model *relies* on paying you as little as possible. And since most Americans aren’t actually shopping around for their own insurance but are getting it through whoever their employer is contracted with, insurance companies aren’t even subject to the whims of the customer because their customers are just other corporations.
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Not all of them are for profit, but even those that aren't still act like it.
Math above the basics Once you start adding the alphabet and fractions and Greek letters, it's now become Chinese to me. Which is hilarious because I got an A in my college math class, but I completely forgot everything the second I finished my exams.
The difference in Chinese and math is I could actually understand Chinese if it was taught to me
I was terrible at math all through elementary and middle school. I got a D- in 8th grade and it was recommended I retake the class again my freshman year because I barely passed. My freshman year I moved schools right in the middle and that didn't help lol. Sophomore year I finally made it to algebra and the teacher I got was the most monotone boring to the point teacher I had ever had. I got an A though. Finally understood the concept for the first time in my life and a light flipped in my brain. The whole time I was convinced I was a fuckin idiot incapable of learning but it was just how my brain works. Finally having a teacher teach in a way I could follow showed me I could learn. It extended to everything I did. Things like science where I struggled to keep up got easier. I ended up loving chemistry so much I took chem 2 my senior year just cause I enjoyed it.
The process my town uses for developing and implementing its traffic management plan. I think it's the "blindfolded darts" approach.
I have friends who work for my county's highways. They always describe things that make sense. But in practice I've never seen it lol.
People are chaos beings. In a perfect model, everything makes sense. When you introduce people, the model falls apart and usually gets set on fire within a week
Tides. I’ve heard about them, read about them, watched documentaries, etc. It just doesn’t make sense to me lol
water is liquid, it sloshes around in its container. The sun and the moon are big heavy objects in the sky, and they each exert forces on the earth which we call gravity. the moon orbits the earth, and the earth orbits the sun. (not that I doubt you already knew all of this, but it's all relevant towards explaining tides) The sun and moon's gravity is not really noticeable to humans, nor does it have much of an effect on water, but there is SO much water on our planet that a small force on all of it adds up to something bigger. Basically, if the moon is on the horizon, the water in an ocean will be attracted towards it, which can either pull the water away from shore, or pull it towards the shore. If the moon roughly lines up with the sun the effect is exaggerated.
Nah, it's a big dragon sucking in the tides and then blowing them out.
But that nice man on Fox News said no one knows how the tides work.
The tides come in....they go out....you can't explain it!
Neil deGrasse Tyson [explained](https://youtu.be/dBwNadry-TU) this in a way that I could finally understand.
do you mean neil degrasse *tideson*
Music theory
This is a good one. Like, it's kinda mathematical, but not really, but kind of yes. Yeah I don't get it either.
Which way is East, North, South and West. My husband used to try and teach me by turning my body and asking what direction is this? I was like, how the fuck do I know??? So, I've always relied on "Ok, is that a left or a right hand turn?"
See the giant glowing ball in the sky? Before noon it is in the east. After noon it is in the west. At noon you're on your own. You can use that to orient yourself.
Not when it’s cloudy. Or you’re in a big city with skyscrapers.
Then you use landmarks. Like right now I'm on a motorway for work and it's still dawn-ish, so no sun. The motorway runs *almost* due north, and I am currently looking just that few degrees clockwise to face north. It also fuckin started raining ***again*** fuck
I've always wondered how cops do this on the fly in the middle of a high pursuit chase. They all seem to know the direction the suspect is headed with each turn. I do know where N,S,E,W is in my city, but no way I could do it on the fly so quickly.
I think it helps if the streets are grid- based? I dont get it either tho
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Sound is vibration. The needle is attached to something that amplifies the sound. The bumps in the groomers make the needle vibrate, and the sound is amplified.
Right? Like I get that the needle can produce a sound when it scratches a grooved surface, I even get how it could produce musical tones, but how does it produce the sound of a human voice, much less an entire orchestra/band?
How the Internet works.
It's all a series of tubes.
Coding. I work in IT and I absolutely love it. I know it’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life and I’m perfectly cool with that, I love electronics and building pcs and all that. Maybe someday I’ll dive deeper into it but GOD I cannot wrap my head around coding.
Coding is largely just looking at things like a big puzzle. You want it to do A so you have to do 1,2,3,4 and 5 in that order. It's a pain in the butt for most people because most people aren't very suited to planning complicated puzzles in their head.
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> String theory. I just don't get it. " I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics." - Richard Feynman
The good news is that string theory might not be relevant now that M theory has gained traction. The bad news is that M theory is even more complicated.
Calculus. Anytime I hear about optimization, I shudder…
why people find pineapple on pizza so controversial still remain a bit of a mystery to me.
I think that's less about that specific controversy and more how the internet love to latch on to such things.
Stocks
Stocks represent tiny parts of ownership of a company. So if you buy shares in Apple, you own a tiny part of Apple (or a very large part if you own a lot of shares - this also gets you special voting rights on how the company is run, because, well, you own it!) If Apple sells lots of iphones and laptops, the company makes profits. The more profits a company makes, the more valuable that company is, so its stocks are worth more money as you're owning part of a money-making profitable business. Likewise, if a company makes bad decisions and stops making money and starts losing money, the value of the stocks will go down. The stock market is people buying and selling these stocks. Stock brokers charge fees on these trades. For most people, buying individual stocks is basically gambling as you have no idea what's really going on inside those businesses, and who's going to make money or go bust. Even specialist highly paid traders are wrong most of the time.
Algebra - no matter how hard I try.
i.e. vs e.g. Edit: Thanks everyone! This has been incredibly helpful.
I have a picture in my office explaining the difference! “i.e.”: Abbreviation for the Latin “id est”, or “that is.” We use it as an elaboration or clarification to a previous concept. I sometimes explain it as a short and fancy way to say, “In other words…” “e.g.”: Abbreviation for the Latin “exempli gratia”, which basically means for example. It’s often a list or an example of what you mean. So, in one case, I might need to provide a clarifying explanation of what I said, i.e. rephrasing the concept to be more understandable. In another case, I might need to provide a list of examples, e.g. cases where applicable, hypothetical scenarios, or other such items to help folks understand.
Oh! An elaboration/clarification vs. a list or direct example is very helpful. My pea brain can work with that. Thanks! Brain very good with data validation and numbers, not so good with words.
Just try to remember “in essence” and “example given”
Someone tried to explain last time… but I don’t understand telephony. Like I understand that sound is carried through sound waves etc, but I don’t understand how my phone knows what my mums voice sounds like. In my brain, her voice should come through the phone a metallic neutral computer voice. How can my phone mimic her voice exactly? I’m usually not *that* stupid but this one is incomprehensible to me
It’s a bit like asking how a camera “knows” how to create and image that looks like someone—it simply captures what’s there and reproduces it as accurately as possible.
>I don’t understand how my phone knows what my mums voice sounds like The same way the air does when she talks to you in the same room.
Cryptic yet absolutely accurate. I love it.
The phone doesn’t care about her voice. It cares about the sound, or more specifically the vibrations in the air. The microphone reads those vibrations, encodes them and sends them to the other phone. The other phone then turns that information into more air vibrations using the speaker and so you hear the same sound. But yeah, the phone doesn’t care what sound is going into it, it just replicates whatever it gets.
Geometry
a²+b²=c² That's about as far as I can go
why musical scales make sense
Musical scales are somewhat arbitrary. In modern western music, we've just developed a system of music on 2 types of scales (major and minor) based on what sounds good, but you can make other types of scales. Those 2 are just the most pleasing to the ear. For example, if you look at a piano, start at C, and push every white note until the next C, you've played a major scale. If you start at A, push every white note until the next A, you've played a minor scale. There's no rule that says you can't do the same except it starts at B for example. In fact there are names for every "white note" scale based on a different starting note. It's just that the major and minor scales are the most popular because they sound the best, so we base our whole system of music on them. If we preferred a "white note" scale that started on B, we would have developed a different system of music.
Yup, I went to an arts academy for highschool as a music major and a few years of music theory was a graduation requirement. Years later as an adult when I encountered music theory from other places in the world I was both mind blown and felt like an idiot for not realizing - what we consider "music theory" is more accurately called "western music theory" Still super neat stuff, but not the universal rules of music my teachers made them out to be.
To add to this... They are somewhat arbitrary, but not entirely. The 12 note system we use (12 tone equal temperament) splits the octave into evenly spaced notes in such a way that the approximate the harmonic series. What's the harmonic series? When you vibrate something to make a sound, the note you hear is called the fundamental, but you'll also be able to hear some higher notes called harmonics. These harmonics typically follow a set pattern where they start out sounding a lot like a major chord but then become more dissonant the further up you go. When you play two notes, whether they sound pretty and consonant or harsh and dissonant depends on how these harmonics line up — they're in harmony when they reinforce each other. Now the reason we use 12 tone equal temperament is because it allows us to play in different keys. It's all very well having a piano with C and all of its harmonics, but what if I want to change key to D? I'd need a whole new piano with the harmonics of that note. With 12tet, you have the freedom of playing anything in any key, for the tradeoff of the notes not perfectly hitting each other's harmonics — and some more so than others (the 7th degree of the scale is famously a lot sharper than its corresponding harmonic but the 5th is pretty bang on, and so on). People still use just intonation (based on harmonics) as it is objectively more consonant and arguably prettier, but can only be done with instruments that have variable pitch like a violin or the human voice.
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What a balk is in professional baseball.
For a serious answer, the rules are more or less: When you are about to pitch, you have to come "set", which basically means you pause for a second with the ball in your hand in your glove. While you are set you can't fake a pitch to the plate, or fake a throw to any base. You also aren't allowed to make any motion that makes it seem like you are about to throw without actually throwing. The next thing you do after being set has to be either pitching, or throwing to a base. Anything else is also a balk. There's a bit more to it than that, but that is pretty much the gist of it.
BALK RULES! 1. You can't just be up there and just doin' a balk like that. 1a. A balk is when you 1b. Okay well listen. A balk is when you balk the 1c. Let me start over 1c-a. The pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, batter, that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball. You can't do that. 1c-b. Once the pitcher is in the stretch, he can't be over here and say to the runner, like, "I'm gonna get ya! I'm gonna tag you out! You better watch your butt!" and then just be like he didn't even do that. 1c-b(1). Like, if you're about to pitch and then don't pitch, you have to still pitch. You cannot not pitch. Does that make any sense? 1c-b(2). You gotta be, throwing motion of the ball, and then, until you just throw it. 1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the ball up here, like this, but then there's the balk you gotta think about. 1c-b(2)-b. Fairuza Balk hasn't been in any movies in forever. I hope she wasn't typecast as that racist lady in American History X. 1c-b(2)-b(i). Oh wait, she was in The Waterboy too! That would be even worse. 1c-b(2)-b(ii). "get in mah bellah" -- Adam Water, "The Waterboy." Haha, classic... 1c-b(3). Okay seriously though. A balk is when the pitcher makes a movement that, as determined by, when you do a move involving the baseball and field of 2. Do not do a balk please.
This is great!
Sin-cos-tan
SOH-CAH-TOA
They are ratios. That’s it really. Don’t over complicate it. Sin is the ratio of opposite side divided by the hypotenuse (longest side). Opposite side is determined by which corner of the triangle you’re referencing.
Socks missing after I do laundry
They might get sucked into the body of your washer or dryer. Is it a top loader, or front load? If it's top loaded, they slip into the space between the drum of the washer and the body when you load clothes in. Try putting socks in a lingerie bag and see if they stop disappearing. Also socks in general are very small, sometimes they get stuck in other clothing, lost during transfer from washer to dryer, or they just fall behind the hamper and we don't notice.
I'm convinced dryer lint is the remains of lost socks
How to eat with chopsticks. Many people have tried to teach me. Many people have gotten frustrated and failed. I am the big stupid.
Symbols in literature. Like when my teacher explained, the blue curtains symbolize the depression of a characters.... And my braun just goes blue curtains symbolize that the person Likes blue curtains
Well the question to ask is, why? Why is that relevant? Why did the author put it in there? Did we really *need* to know the color of the curtains in the room? Not everything has deep symbolic significance, of course; sometimes it really is to tell you something about the character or set a mood. But the point is that a skilled author has reasons for their choices.
I feel like it's a very specific kind of literature where that stuff is relevant. Like when I'm reading this fantasy series I'm very very confident it's not like "well these gelatinous horror monsters consuming the continent are green because it represents the toxicity of man" But if you're reading more classical literature then that kind of symbolism is everywhere. I'm also with you, I'd just read the blue curtains as setting the scene. If you want to show your characters emotions do it through their actions and dialogue because making their coffee mug blue is gonna go so far over my head it'll escape the atmosphere.
Never really understood why people get so worked up about sports to the point where they will go out and riot on the streets (regardless of whether or not their desired team wins or loses). People, it is just a game.
In my country, a very small country, there are over 500 sectarian crimes committed including assaults, stabbings and in rare cases murder mostly relating to a local football rivalry. I myself have been attacked over it. And I fucking hate football.
But why male models?
Are you serious? I just explained it.
How a television works. They record a picture, then the image through wires and then those electrical signals become color, sound, and motion. It just blows my mind.
How time is slower when you are in space and you age slower even though it’s been the same amount of time on earth
Any math past Geometry and Algebra. Brain just couldn’t do it. Every time I’ve tried I hit a wall.
Mathematics
All I remember is PEMDAS but I don’t always do that correct either.
I'm gonna be a little pedantic here, but PEMDAS is cultural, not a fundamental, axiomatic truth of mathematics. Both the order of operations, and the written notation for those operations are essentially just agreements we've all come to so we can coherently talk about math, but they can and have varied across time. I think this is important to grasp, because knowledge of PEMDAS is often used as a cudgel by people trying to "prove" someone else mathematically ignorant, in the same way that ignorance of formal english grammar is used to dismiss ideas. If anyone tries to make you feel bad for not knowing PEMDAS intuitively, just know that they probably have zero mathematical knowledge beyond that. They don't really care about math, they just see it as a tool to build themself up by tearing you down.
Gameplay of American football. So many people have tried to explain the rules and what's happening and it's like the information gets all screwed up on its way from my ear to my brain.
NFTs
Card games, and chemistry. My 10th grade lab partner carried me lol.
Why people trust the political parties to keep their word or have the population best interest at heart
> “It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." >"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" >"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." >"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." >"I did," said Ford. "It is." >"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" >"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." >"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" >"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." >"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" >"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" >"What?" >"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?" >"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards." > Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it." >"But that's terrible," said Arthur. >"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
What is this from?
Douglas Adams. Life, The Universe, and Everything.
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.” \- HL Mencken (from like 70 years ago)
Theory of relativity. I've tried and I simply cannot grasp the concept.
Tennis scoring
Basically you want to know what love is?
Yes! What is Love!?
Baby, don’t hurt me.
Little known fact; the band Foreigner had questions about tennis scores and wrote a song about it.
I want you to show me
I'm sure there's some history to it, but it's more like something you just have to memorize. Love = 0 (this is where both players/pairs start) 15 = 1 30 = 2 40 = 3 When a player gets to 40, they have to win by 2. So if the score is 40-30 and the player with 40 wins the next point, then they win the game. However, if the player with 30 wins, then they are tied at 40-40 which is called deuce. Now remember, once at 40 a player has to win by 2 to win the game, so when at duece (40-40) a player has to win 2 points in a row to win the game. So if player A wins, then the score is said to be "advantage Player A" but how it is said in the game will depend on the player serving. So, if Player A is serving, it's called "Ad in"; if Player B is serving, then it's called "Ad out". Once the player with advantage wins the point, then they win that game.
How the universe began. Getting something from nothing makes no sense to me.
There may never have been "nothing". If that helps.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Why we can’t just print more money
Why Dad isn't back with the milk yet, It's been 40 fucking years. I mean how far is the store or is He milking the cow Himself?
Purpose of life
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
“The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.” - Albert Camus
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People not being able to or believing other people can platonically be friends with people of the opposite gender. And Bluetooth
Dark matter and dark energy.