Decades ago, how were people able to get married in their 20’s, have kids, afford a house, live/strive rather comfortably, and still have enough saved up to retire?
I think it can be summed up by a conversation I had last week with one of my customers who used to work the same job as me 20 years ago.
Me: The problem is they start our pay out so low in comparison to other companies, but the benefits are amazing man.
Him: How much are they starting you at?
Me: $40,000 a year.
Him: Damn that’s the same pay they started me at 20 years ago.
So, considering inflation, the rising cost of blah blah blah, and the ever increasing need for the world to consume, 40k isn’t the same as 40k 20 years ago.
- Dorkstar8
What is net neutrality and why is it so important to maintain?
The basic principle of Net Neutrality is that access to all websites and web services should be equal and that anyone can start their own website/service and make it accessible to anyone with internet access, just like any other website/service.
Without Net Neutrality, your Internet Service Provider (e.g. BT) could arbitrarily block whatever websites it didn’t want you to access (e.g. perhaps blocking you from accessing competitors’ websites). It could also mean your service provider purposefully degrades access to certain websites or services and/or forces you to pay extra to access certain websites or services (imagine paying an extra $5 a month to your service provider just because you want to access reddit).
In the UK, this is not as big of a problem because there is (for the most part) much more competition because the BT network is opened up through a wholeale program which allows third-party providers to access the network and provide their own differentiated/custom internet services (to some extent).
In the US, however, there isn’t really competition like this. Many homes have only one broadband internet service provider to choose from (e.g. their local telephone company) and some people are lucky enough to have two providers (e.g. telephone and cable company) or in very rare cases three providers (e.g. telephone, cable and independent fiber/fibre company). Basically though, there is hardly any competition which means that if one service provider starts violating the principles of Net Neutrality, many customers are completely powerless (since they have such a limited or perhaps no alternative selection for ISPs).
What makes the ejaculation of seminal fluid feel so good during orgasm and why does this sensation differ from urinating?
Part of it is evolutionary; to encourage you as a male to propagate the species. First, there is a lot of stimulation which occurs before, during, and after orgasm all of which are usually deemed pleasurable; arousal, touch, build up, and orgasm. All of these reinforce the desirability of the act of copulation (and masturbation). When you finally orgasm, your brain is flooded with chemicals such as endorphines and oxytocin. These chemicals make your brain ‘high’, reduce feelings of pain or discomfort, and may even promote feelings of attachment (or love, or affection, or whatever). These chemicals are extremely powerful and it makes your brain want to do the act again (usually). See:http://www.bodylogicmd.com/hormone-articles/the-science-of-sex
Urination, however, is about normal day-to-day functions; every minute, your bladder is filling up with waste products dissolved in water. Over time, your bladder gets more full, triggering nerve endings which tell you it is about time to empty your bladder; but you can ignore it for a while depending upon circumstances. If your bladder is very full and ifyou release it, you can feel a pleasurable release which can make you dizzy or weak-kneed. This is an alleviation of discomfort, however, and not the same as ‘pleasure’ from orgasm. Theoretically, your brain should be desirous to avoid such discomfort in the future.
- VetMichael
Why is the large hadron collider important to the average person?
Most of the modern advances around us are the result of us understanding how smaller things work.
Something as simple as us trying to study light and finding that it is made up of a component particle (photon) and how it behaves revolutionized things. Visible light is really just a small spectrum of a whole spectrum of radiation emitted from the sun. And we studied every part of the spectrum and found uses for it with the microwave, radiowaves, x-rays, ultraviolet waves, etc. From this, we have advanced communication, can detect and treat a whole slew of diseases and cancers, can reheat our food so it tastes rubbery and nasty, etc.
Wait, we get sick because microscopic things are attacking the microscopic things in our body!? Thanks modern medicine. So I can kill the bad microscopic thing by lightly boiling things? Thanks pasteurization for saving millions of lives. People aren’t playing russian roulette with beverages and food anymore (at least in first world countries :()
We studied the electron and now we understand and can harness electricity and we have light, television, monitors (all electron interaction emitting visible light), computers, etc etc. We studied the atom and have nuclear fission.
Studying how small things work and how they interact with other small things has always trickled down to real world, big impact, application. The things I listed above are only a sliver of the pie.
Even without going into what’s actually happening in a LHC, this type of answer I think is very important for the casual person to understand.
- Bince82
Why do people who are abused as a child (sometimes) become sexually compulsive later in life?
As someone who has gone through extensive therapy for just this reason and have done quite a bit of digging into my motives with professionals, I have found that there are a few reasons for this (some of them mentioned already, some not):
1.) Control. If I say no, he could take it anyway and it would further degrade me and hurt me. If I instigate or go with it, I’m taking away his power to rape me.
2.) Self worth. This is usually a result of conditioning. If I say no, I’m taking away his right to my body. I do not have any right to autonomy. If I don’t give people sex, they will have no reason to want me. That is my purpose. I would be mean if I denied him that right, so I have to do it so he doesn’t hate me.
3.) Sex = love. This could be because I was also raised in a physically/emotionally abusive home as well, but I think this is also a common one. The people I cared about, who were supposed to show me love and affection did this to me. It must mean that they care. As a child, I needed to believe that my family cared about me, so this is what I taught myself to avoid rejection and lonliness. Now, if someone wants to use my body, it means they want me. That’s all I ever got, so that’s enough for me to feel good. It’s just a way to fill that hole (an attempt to satisfy non-sexual needs with sex).
4.) If I keep things about sex and be promiscuous, it makes sex meaningless. If sex doesn’t mean a lot to me, that means that when it was forced on me it wasn’t meaningful. You can’t hurt me if what you stole is meaningless to me. It doesn’t matter that I got sex instead of love and affection because that is all I need. I’m not lonely and I didn’t want to be loved anyway, so fuck you.
Those are just my processes that I have heard described by other survivors. Again, I’m not a professional. I’ve just done a lot of reflection with professionals.
- I_Shot_JFK_
What would hallucinogens be like for blind people?
“I have tried many diferent types of halucinigens. I can tell you first hand, that visuals are possible even for the totally blind. Well, I can se light and darkness, and if something blocks the light, I can se a blurry shape, but nothing that I can make out clearly. Under the influence of various antheogins, I have experienced sights such as various lights, which would change shapes and then melt in front of me. Once durring an experience with Salvia extract, I nearly became my rockingchair! I don’t mean that I “melted in to it”, I mean that if I hadn’t jumpped out of it, I’d have turned in to the actual chair. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. Naturally, sounds are a big part of my trip experiences, but I have seen somethings as well. I had a buddy that had his own light show setup, and we used to trip out on really good acid, (this was back in the early 80’s when they still made it), and he’d shine these high powered lights through prisoms, and I saw all kinds of wild stuff. I believe I have seen color because of these experiences.”
- JamiePT
Why is Japan’s population is in such decline and no one wants to reproduce children
When you give people a choice between having nice things and a lot of freedom and independence, or having children, it turns out that the women chose the nice things and the independence.
Japan has a culture where women, once married, are expected to give up careers and focus on family, and that includes focusing on the parents of their husband, and their own parents if they are an only child or there is no son in their family. The pressure to conform is intense.
All across the OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, a club for rich countries), birth rates for “natives” and 3rd+ generation immigrants are just at or often below the replacement rate. If it wasn’t for net immigration in from places with higher birthrates (Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Central & South America) most OECD nations would look like Japan in terms of population graphs.
The Japanese people are xenophobic. They don’t want foreigners to become permanent residents and the older people are the more xenophobic they are. Laws on long term residency and becoming naturalized Japanese citizens are very strict. So they are not going to do what the other OECD nations are doing and increase the inflow of immigrants to offset declining “native” birthrates.
One could speculate that the hypersexualized, extremely abusive cultural aspects of Japan (where rape fantasies, lolita fantasies and abuse fantasies are “mainstream” content consumed by millions of men) doesn’t do much to incentivize women to be interested in sex either. If the men are programmed to find fetishistic behavior degrading to women “sexy” and I were a woman, I would likely find most of my potential mates interests in the bedroom quite distasteful.
If the Big Bang theory is correct, how could nothing exist before the universe existed? What existed before the universe existed?
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The big bang only addresses the very early universe, and not the origin of the universe.
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Since time is a dimension of the universe, the phrase “before the universe existed” makes about as much sense as “north of the north pole”.
Stephen Hawking quotes
Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them.
Every Black Hole Contains a New Universe???
Are there any countries in the world that can realistically invade the US by force?
No. The USA shares land borders with two countries, neither of which have military assets comparable to the USA — the USA spends $682 billion, to Canada’s $22 billion and Mexico’s $6 billion. The only countries with military expenditures in arguably the same ballpark are Russia and China.
For countries that don’t share a border, an invasion would have to come by sea. To project force overseas a nation requires a blue water navy and aircraft carriers. The USA has 10 aircraft carriers (plus 2 in reserve); there are perhaps 10 other countries that have 1-2 carriers each. The difference between an American carrier and a foreign carrier, just in terms of size and displacement to say nothing of armament, personnel, or training, is staggering — the UK’s (a nation known for its navy) last carrier displaced ~20,000 tons, USA’s carriers displace over 100,000 tons.
Related: We Asked a Military Expert if All the World’s Armies Could Shut Down the US
- Safidx
What was the X-Files alien storyline actually about?
The X-Files plot arc was about a group of people (The Syndicate) who were trying to negotiate with an alien species (The Colonists) that was intent on taking over the world, wiping out humankind in the process.
First contact with the aliens occurred in 1947, when one of their spacecraft crash landed in the desert in New Mexico. In the face of the inevitability that the superior alien intelligence and technology would ultimately beat them, a small group of powerful men negotiated an agreement that humanity would be allowed to continue in the form of an alien-human hybrid. The Syndicate spent most of its time helping The Colonists develop the hybrids by keeping them supplied with human foetuses. However, they were also covertly working on a vaccine that would save humanity from this awful fate. Unfortunately, The Colonists had lied to The Syndicate about what their plans were.
The Black Oil that was supposed to create a human-alien slave race, was in fact a virus that created aliens inside the human host and their true intention was to wipe out humanity and take the planet for themselves. The Syndicate’s discovery of this betrayal led The Colonists to develop a race of Super Soldiers to ensure that the colonisation of Earth would not be prevented. The series ends with the revelation that the alien invasion is due to start in December 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar.
- djonesuk
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