mugenhunt

mugenhunt t1_jeasc9f wrote

The rules for this subreddit are that we are not literally explaining things to 5-year-olds. "Explain like I'm five" is an expression that means "please explain this simply to me."

There are other subreddits that are literally about giving explanations on a 5-year-old level. But this one's rules are that we are writing for the adults who are actually using Reddit. Not for a theoretical child.

Also, many of the things that people ask here aren't very easily summarized on a child-friendly level.

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mugenhunt t1_jeamkuc wrote

There's a French term for this, deja vu. We don't know exactly why it happens, but many people experience this feeling.

There is one theory that our brains have two settings for events, "this is happening right now" and "this already happened" and that normally, our memories of events go from one category to the other after they conclude. After we're finished with something, our brain stores it in the past category. The idea is that deja vu might be what happens when our brain gets that process mixed up, and we feel that the event is happening right now, and already happened at the same time.

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mugenhunt t1_je8zoaj wrote

The basic idea is that if we take a lot of the money that currently goes to the police in order to catch people who have committed crimes, and instead invest that money into education, into healthcare, into social services, we can help prevent crimes from happening in the first place. Likewise, we have police doing a lot of jobs that might better be suited for social workers or medical professionals, and giving those groups more money so they can deal with those problems instead, so that police can focus on what they're best suited for, is also seen as a better idea.

Instead of having a police officer deal with a homeless person with a drug addiction, a counselor or social worker with specific training for this situation would do the job better.

Basically, if we try to prevent crime from happening in the first place by addressing the issues that lead to it, we won't need as many police in the first place, and we'll have less police brutality as a result.

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mugenhunt t1_jaa5q4r wrote

Time travel is fictional. There's no actual rules to how it works, so any story you see it in will have different rules depending on what that writer believes would make for a more interesting story.

In that film, they're not using the idea that you can go back in time and change the future. Instead, they're saying that when you travel back in time you create an alternate timeline, a different future where events played out differently because of your actions in the past.

So in that story, it doesn't matter if you go back in time, you can't change the future you came from. You've just created a different future where a different version of you will live.

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mugenhunt t1_j6istj8 wrote

It's not necessarily that they were less advanced. The Aztecs had irrigation and plumbing as well as city infrastructure that was superior to what was seen in Europe at the time. They didn't have weapons on the same level. And the trick is that doesn't matter how advanced your art is, how great you are at agriculture and growing plants, what sort of medical advances you may have made, if someone else has better weapons and can conquer you.

Now, part of these you also is that Europe was in a sweet spot that allowed for rapid technological growth compared to most of the rest of the world. It wasn't just comparatively easier access to metals, but also that the Mediterranean Sea and many large rivers made rapid communication between different civilizations much easier, and that made it much easier for information to travel and thus improve. If someone invents something in Rome, it was very easy for that knowledge to make it to France, where it could be improved upon.

Likewise, the easier proximity between nations in Europe encouraged wars, which also made them focus a lot more on weapons technology development.

So while there are many ways that the natives of the Americas had developed, their weapons technology was nowhere near enough to stand the chance against the Europeans. That, combined with the impact of diseases that the Europeans brought, since they were more used to keeping domesticated animals, and of us getting more diseases from those, meant that the Native Americans didn't stand a chance.

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mugenhunt t1_j6e2xsr wrote

Removing mountains or adding them is the sort of thing that would be necessary to alter rain patterns, and the amount of effort needed to do so is incredible. It's just not seen as practical to go "We'll move mountains and build new ones" or "We'll have to remove mountains" especially when you might also have to change the geography of neighboring regions as well.

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mugenhunt t1_j64u14c wrote

It depends on the movie. They might instead rewrite it so that the character is speaking French or Italian instead, choosing something else that might make sense but keep the same concept. They might change the dialogue to not have any mention of a different language. This has been handled many ways over the years by different translators.

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mugenhunt t1_j1vk41n wrote

The trick is that Hollywood genuinely believes that increasing diversity in TV shows to better reflect the reality of the human condition, rather than give preferential treatment to straight white men, will increase the number of people interested in watching their shows.

That if you want a wider audience to watch your show, having a diverse cast is a good way of doing that.

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mugenhunt t1_j1khxhj wrote

The basic idea with a long-running television series is that you will have one episode in pre-production, while another episode is filming, and a third episode is in post-production. Having a different director on each episode means you can have progress being made on three episodes at a time, as opposed to just one.

The basic idea with this is that you want directors who are going to be relatively safe and keeping to the same general style, but that it allows for a more streamlined production.

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mugenhunt t1_iydh694 wrote

So, the trick is that sound needs something to travel through to reach your ears so you can hear it. When you talk, you make vibrations in the air, and those vibrations will move through the air and hit someone else's ears, and they can hear it.

It doesn't need to be air, sound can travel through things like walls or water, just not the same way as it would through the air.

But space doesn't have enough of anything between planets and stars and asteroids for sound to work. The vibrations can't go anywhere, they need something to travel through.

So, in order to make sound work in space, you would need to fill up all the space between stars and planets and asteroids with something. Like air or water, something that sound can move through.

How sound would work now would depend on what you chose, but also this is such a gigantic change to space that it's hard to figure out what would happen next.

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mugenhunt t1_iwzyeam wrote

Different expectations for different genres of shows. No one is expecting a drama aimed at adults to be selling lots of toys.

It's not that a show can't make enough money to support itself through advertising or streaming subscription fees alone. But that if a network has to choose between paying for a show that isn't selling a lot of merchandise, and one that is, they will pick the one that makes them more money.

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mugenhunt t1_iwztquk wrote

The big thing is that you would need to have a massive increase in viewership to balance out the loss of merchandise sales, and that rarely happens on a large enough scale for the network to feel that keeping the show alive is worth it.

Merchandise sales are huge, and advertising only goes so far.

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mugenhunt t1_iwzrjvq wrote

From a network side of things, if I could choose between an animated action show that is getting money from advertising and from merchandising, or one that is only getting money from advertising, I know which one I'll pick. From a network point of view, it's the logical choice to cancel the show that isn't making merchandise sales on top of the advertising money to free up room for a new show that might do better in that regard.

From an artistic point of view that's awful, but if you're looking at things from just the financial perspective, networks have limited amount of resources and they want to maximize the profit they make from those resources.

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mugenhunt t1_iu5wib8 wrote

The recent trend towards serialization, that every show is part of one big epic storyline and you need to watch every episode for years to see it conclude is frustrating. Not all stories should be serialized. There is benefits to having stories that are episodic, that end in a single installment.

Right now it feels like every TV show is trying to pace themselves the exact same way, even if that pacing isn't what would be best for that show.

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mugenhunt t1_itvnecv wrote

"Explain like I am five" is a saying, not the rules of the subreddit. It's an expression that means "explain this to me simply so I understand." The rules of the subreddit are that we need to explain concepts for the actual people posting on Reddit who are asking questions, not a theoretical five-year-old.

There is a subreddit about explain like I am an actual 5-year-old for people who want to do that sort of challenge, but the rules of this sub are that we're going to answer questions simply, but not literally for 5 year olds.

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