A_Meal_of_Pain
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_jackbxl wrote
Reply to comment by Ansuz07 in Eli5: How did people know how long a year was in olden times? by Slokkkk
And the tools necessary to make these measurements are very simple. Literally all you need is a stick in the ground and a few pebbles or something else to mark the longest shadow the stick casts each day.
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_jacfphh wrote
Reply to ELI5: What's hard about copying photosynthesis or just using plants for power by No_Dust_5360
For thousands of years plants were our primary source of power in the form of burning wood. It was even the primary source of power at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
The reason it phased away as a source of industrial level power is because it just is not concentrated enough. That and the fact that extracting it has so many negative side effects for the environment.
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_jacd30j wrote
Reply to comment by Shtercus in ELI5: Why do we push out weird noises when something is funny? by PeakKey4068
Also playing a part is the fact that it is often rude to fully express your emotions so we figure out ways to at least partially hide them.
If your boss does something stupid and you are in the back of the room, you probably don't want to laugh out loud and draw attention to yourself, but a little chuckle that the people around you can see might be an appropriate compromise that you instinctively settle on.
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_jacas67 wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why is it that if I want my shower to be warmer, if I turn the cold-water knob to the right (closer to off), the water in the shower gets significantly colder for about 30 seconds, then MUCH colder for about 5 seconds, then super hot? Why would closing the cold water make it colder? by [deleted]
That causes it to switch over to the hot water pipes. But the water that you 1st get out of those pipes is not water that is in the water heater. It is water that has been sitting in the pipes and has gotten to the same temperature as the air around it. Depending on where you are and what time of year it is, that can end up being a lot colder than the "cold" water. Because the water we think of as the cold water is not actually cooled, but just kept in pipes largely underground.
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_j99qzi4 wrote
Reply to comment by WeDriftEternal in Why did the 90's offer a larger variety of broadcast kids shows than the 2000's-present? by sgavary
It was also the end of the era in which most children watched their cartoons in Saturday morning, because broadcast television was becoming less of a big deal and there was always cartoons on one of the cable channels.
A_Meal_of_Pain t1_jaclt8d wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why are humans so bad at dealing with stress? by cleanscotch
Look at animals in captivity in general. Even when all of their needs are taken with, many of them cannot deal with the stress of unusual environments.
Humans are not bad at dealing with stress. Humans create these scenarios that actually lead to us having a lot more stresses than most other animals come up and for the most part we deal with those scenarios fairly well. We are actually super adapted to dealing with stress compared to most organisms.