Trending Now
We all have burning questions…the ones that we’ve had for a long time that no one can really answer. Maybe we just don’t know the right people?
If that’s all it takes, why not pose those questions to Reddit, because the people on there know everything!
I’m being cheeky, but these people did potentially get some pretty satisfying answers to the questions that had been plaguing them.
1. Of course they did.
If a Tesla’s autopilot makes sure you’re not too close to something, would it help you avoid a cop car that’s trying to pit you?
Asked this in r/Tesla and got shamed for not owning a Tesla but it was never answered.
Answer?
I think the most likely outcome based on my experience with FSD is your car slamming hard on the brakes to emergency stop if the cop car pulls in front of you, at which point it won’t speed up to get away.
If you were just on the highway and a cop was tailing you it’d just keep driving though. If you have any other questions I’m happy to answer.
2. Some deep thoughts.
Why does plastic turn white when you bend it?
What is actually happening at the molecular level up until the break, do different polymers and their associated dyes still turn white?
3. Leaving this one without comment.
Growing up in a Southern, Evangelical church the official rule was absolutely no drinking.
I asked “Why? Jesus drank wine regularly in the Bible?” I was told well “So many people have trouble with alcohol. Even if you can drink in moderation without sinning someone who can’t may be encouraged to drink by seeing you drink.”
Sort of made sense on its face until I thought for 3 seconds. There were a lot of large people in our church. So I asked, “gluttony is a sin though, right?” Them: “Yes.” Me: “So why do we serve donuts before church if it might tempt someone struggling with gluttony?”
Never got an answer other than vague comments about it being different for reasons.
4. Who decided? I would like a word.
Why are swear/cuss/bad words bad?
How did it become that way and who made them bad?
5. This one cracked me up.
What do DJs actually do? When you watch a video of them “playing” their turntables they do all sorts of stuff, turning knobs, pressing buttons, moving sliders up and down, etc.
It all looks very showy but as far as I can tell none of it has any discernable effect on the music. Like they’ll grab some random knob and turn it and start dancing like that was some really sick s*%t, but absolutely nothing happened to the beat, timbre, pitch, melody, etc.
6. I wish stylists would have more input, but they’ve probably been burned too many times.
how to get a good haircut? People always just say “oh, bring in a picture of what you want.” But I don’t f**king know what’s going to be good.
And when I have chosen something from the first google image page of “hairstyles for men,” it never comes out looking even close to the picture
7. The far reaches of space.
If gravity bends light, how do we know anything in the far reaches of the universe is actually located where we think it is?
Answer?
The other answer is basically correct, because we can calculate that bending. If we can determine the mass of an object we can now determine how it bends light, and thus calculate real positions. These kinds of observations can be incredibly difficult, requiring observations from many telescopes and insane levels of precision, but essentially by just working our way out into space we can calculate details of further objects and use our earlier observations to support those calculations.
Also, it should be noted that space is INSANELY empty, so many observations, even of objects really far away, dont involve any meaningful gravitational distortions.
8. Whatever you can.
What do you do if you’re stuck at a red light and theres an EMV with sirens on behind you?
9. Can someone just call it in?
What does the US National debt really mean? Who do we owe? What is the impact of the debt? What risks does it impose?
Answer?
As far as I know, we mostly own money to ourselves. The way it was explained to me is that the US takes the money in the banks and uses that, but they have to pay it back. So they are constantly in debt to US citizens. Here is a link that shows the debt and where it is to/from.
10. Could it be…?
why are my hands constantly cold.
half of the comments say that i have bad posture and/or have another problem, and the other half say that i have a disease so irk of i should be worried.
I have a family member who always has cold hands and feet – they have Raynaud’s syndrome. It’s a (usually) not-serious condition that means the blood doesn’t flow properly to their extremities, resulting in coldness.
11. Check your sponge.
Why clean dishes/glasses acquire an abhorrent smell sometimes, especially in summer if a window is open… weirder still, not everyone seems to be able to smell it.
12. Don’t they just get it started?
are symphony conductors really necessary? They wave their arms around and the little stick, but none of the musicians are even looking at them.
As someone who’s played in a professional orchestra…yes, a skilled orchestra can play without a conductor. In fact, when the “orchestra” first became a thing, they didn’t have conductors to begin with. The “concertmaster” (first chair violinist) would start and stop the group.
In my group our conductor will actually sometimes stop conducting during rehearsal and just go out into the audience and listen, lol. However when we play without a conductor, the chance of errors and sections getting out of sync is much higher, because we’re relying solely on our ears to tell us if we’re playing in time.
And in an orchestra, there’s a LOT of different parts that have to sync up, a lot of different stuff you have to listen to. If we do start to fall apart when we’re playing without a conductor, it’s almost impossible to get back together.
13. The answer is different for everyone.
How do I fall asleep easily? It takes me an hour to fall asleep.
One answer?
This works in minutes for me: play some chill music on your phone at low volume and put it about a foot away. I like stuff like Football Head by Flamingosis and similar stuff. I think the genre is called Lofi. Imagine you can fly just by opening your arms.
Imagine taking a tour of your neighborhood or city from the air or flying over your friends houses and over places you know of. Imagine as much detail as you can. I fall asleep in like 5 minutes tops.
14. Good to know…
What happens if you donate your hair to someone and they commit a crime, leaving your hair at the crime scene?
Answer?
When hair is used in DNA testing, they aren’t actually using the hair, but the small follicle of skin at the root of the hair. When donating hair, they cut the hair off, not extracting the root of the hair. No root, no DNA to collect.
15. There have been some answers forthcoming…
Why are dreams so weird?
Answer?
Basically, dreaming is your brain defragmenting factual memories (things that happened and thoughts you had) for long term storage, dealing with emotions/emotional memory, and also random brain activation. Mix those three aspects together and that’s why they’re so weird.
16. Hmmm.
Why does my stainless steel razor get blunted by some hair stubble on my throat with only 1 minute of use ?
Answer?
A good cutting edge is thin, very very thin, and commensurately weak and prone to bending.
In the same way that your weak organic flesh can bend a metal spoon that is objectively harder than you are (because the metal is thin), the nanometer-thin cutting edge of a razor can be bent by hairs.
Once burrs and nicks have built up on a blade edge it becomes much less efficient at cutting, as the lead edge that pared objects apart is now, say, 3-10x wider than before and takes that much more effort to make the cut.
This won’t literally happen in a minute of use, but it will happen over time.
A secondary effect for a razor is you can get gunk stuck on the blade, but rinsing it off should restore function.
17. Like, when does it stop mattering socially or medically?
How many generations does it take to disregard incest?
We are all related distantly so how many? Like 5? 8?
18. Because, humans.
What justification is there for drivers to monopolize the passing lane on highways – traveling under the speed limit and not seeming to care how it restricts traffic flow and annoys others?
Answer?
Most people really are oblivious to their surroundings. Just look at people with their shopping cart at the grocery blocking the whole aisle.
19. Eggs, right?
How fish have s**
ive never seen a adult book where it shows how they have s**
Answer?
They don’t, lady fish drops eggs, dude fish just kinda squirts his load all over the eggs, then bam. Baby fish.
20. Try not to think about it.
Why did Adele set fire to the rain? Moreover, how? How did Adele set fire to the rain?
Answer?
SpongeBob was able to have a campfire underwater. It’s best not to think to hardly about it.
21. Not fair.
Why does the US president have the authority to pardon people?
I’ve tried to Google it and couldn’t find a real answer.
Why is this person able to put someone else above the law, and how did this rule come to be?
Answer?
As usually we have Mr. Hamilton to give insight: Federalist 74.
The main argument is that a presidential pardon can be used to quickly restore order and peace when people indeed did commit a crime but it would not be in the public’s interest to see that crime punished, or in a humanitarian sense where there is nothing gained with the punishment for any party. An example would be the whiskey rebellion of 1791 where those arrested, in order to prevent further unrest and uprising, were pardoned for their crimes.
Hamilton argued that the president could (optimistically) cut trough the red tape of partisan bickering and biased discussion ending in legislative apathy if the power was put in the hands of congress.
22. Wait for it.
What would a genderfluid parent be called?
Answer?
I think the answer is apparent.
23. I honestly never considered it.
Why is the Griffondor house symbol a lion and not a griffon?
Everyone tells me a lion is brave but a griffon is literally part lion and we know they exist in the Harry Potter universe.
Lots of people also point to hufflepuff being a badger but potter nerds seem to say hufflepuffs are an exception to almost everything else.
Someone give me one good, definitive reason it’s not a griffon that I have no rebuttal towards.
24. Have they even?
How did science agree Big Bang Is the start of the time?
Answer?
” It accounts for many of the things astronomers see through ground- and space-based telescopes. It explains why other galaxies are moving away from us as space continues to expand. It accounts for a faint glow seen everywhere in the universe.
(The glow is the leftover heat from the universe’s birth, now cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero.) In short, it’s a remarkably powerful and elegant explanation of how the observable universe came to be.
25. I say take your pick.
Is Poopie spelled like that or Poopy?
Answer?
I think it’s both. You can say “he has a poopy diaper” or “did you make a poopie?”
26. Why are you asking?
If a poison is past its expiration date is it more lethal or less?
Answer?
Expiration dates are so arbitrary that you can’t really answer that. Take Himalaya salt. It’s been in those mountains for millenia.
Lucky they found it just in time because one year later it would be passed the expiration date.
27. Stop and think about it.
Why do giants in movies/TV/games, etc. move in slow motion?
If you’re a puny human looking up at these things as they stroll by, why do they appear to move like this, and not differently?
Answer?
The answer is that giants don’t move slowly, it just looks like they do.
If you imagine looking at, say, a 100 ft tall human raising a hand from waist to shoulder in the same time as a normal-sized-person, then the hand would be moving in excess of 100ft/sec: insanely fast.
The underlying physics here is the muscle strength scales with cross section (length squared) whereas overall creature mass scales with volume (length cubed). Larger creatures are inevitably weaker for their size than small ones and can’t move limbs from one extreme to the other as quickly.
We can see this effect at moderate scales in real life animals like giraffes and elephants, their movements have a ponderous look to them.
This is a known rule in animation / filmmaking, and first came about when using basic film splicing in the 1900s to, say, make a person look like a giant Poseidon rising out of the sea in front of Jason and the Argonauts. The giant footage looks really stupid at real speed and they had to learn the scaling rules of thumb for what speed to play it at to look realistic. I think ultimately some physicists came up with the scaling laws.
28. No one had an answer for this one.
How exactly do we define a mole in chemistry?
The answer is always something vague about a Carbon isotope….
And saying Avogadro’s Number ain’t helping either.
29. If only.
In the United States States. If instead of going through the effort of figuring out my taxes, I just send the IRS 10 thousand dollars. Won’t they do the math and return the proper amount to me?
Answer?
Nope. You’d be investigated for tax fraud and/or failure to pay taxes.
You have to fill out the form. They won’t do it for you.
30. Lots of good tips here.
What should I know before purchasing my first car ?
Apart stupid stuffs as “look at if seats are clean, the engine will be clean too” or “anyway you’ll end up making mistakes” no one around me has been able to give me proper advise
Answer?
Look at the underbody. Rust hides even on really nice-looking cars. Check the interior for smells (too nice could be covering something nasty) and water spots/damage. Look at the tread depth on the tires.
Take it for a ride and listen for strange knocks, how the car tracks with your hands off the steering wheel, too much road noise, acceleration/braking, etc.
A code reader will let you know if the car has any existing electrical issues, or if they’ve recently cleared the codes to make the car “look” like it has no issues.
31. Brains are weird places.
Earworms.
Why do I sometimes wake up with a song I haven’t heard in 20 years and never liked in the first place?
Answer?
I can’t cite a source but I’ve read before that music interacts with the part of your brain that enjoys solving puzzles and finding patterns, and so your brain will pop songs into your head purely for the chemical rush it gets for piecing together the next part of the beat or string of words in the song.
32. Sweet man.
What can I do when my girl is on her period? This is a subject everyone dodges when I’m asking about, and I feel awful when I see her suffering and I don’t have the knowledge to help.
Answer?
IF she’s ok with it (and you obv)- having an orgasm can really ease menstrual cramps. Not necessarily s**, that can make it worse for some people.
If she isn’t into that, some topical cream with thc/cbd (again, If she’s ok with it and you have a dispensary nearby or a reliable source) does WONDERS.
Raspberry leaf tea is super helpful (loose leaf is better ) with cramps. Chamomile is relaxing, peppermint for tummy upset or nausea If pain is really bad.
Refraining from making any jokes about mood swings or appetite changes – even if you mean well. Not every woman wants chocolate/ice cream or to cry whilst watching a cheesy romance flick. I’ll take cartoons or a horror film over those any day. But on that note, distractions help. Offer to put on her favorite show/podcast/music or bring her a good book to read.
Fuzzy blankets.
Having darker sheets on the bed – saves a bit of embarrassment. For some reason I’ve noticed most dudes have white or light sheets and that’s just… not ideal. Especially if you want to fool around during. I would actually ask – some women love it and most (mature) guys are usually happy to oblige, but there’s still many who wouldn’t ask because of the existing shame/stigma around it being “gross.”
Don’t underestimate the efficacy of Midol/pamprin. It’s also nice to have someone get it for you when you’re dying of cramps.
Hope that helps!
This is actually a really fun thread that also taught me a thing or two!
What question would you have asked?
Put it in our comments and see what happens…
