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1500 questions
154
votes
3 answers
Do wind turbines consume more energy than they produce in a lifetime?
A rumor in my region states that a wind turbine consumes far more energy while being built and setup than it can produce in a lifetime.
The debate is about modern, freshly built turbines in Southern Germany.
Is there evidence that this is true?
OddDev
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154
votes
1 answer
Is this a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships?
This image has been making the rounds on the internet, with the following caption:
This is a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.
The obvious question being: is this statement correct or is the picture photoshopped? And yes, I spent quite…
David Mulder
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153
votes
7 answers
Do human activities contribute to climate change?
There is lots of evidence that I have seen showing correlation between human activities and climate change but what evidence is there to support causation?
david4dev
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152
votes
4 answers
Was pink a boy color and blue a girl color prior to the 20th century?
A recent essay in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, entitled How to Raise a Feminist Son, claims that:
Until the mid-20th century, pink was the boy color and blue was for
girls.
It, in turn, cites an Ask Smithsonian blog post by Jeanne…
Jayson Virissimo
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150
votes
8 answers
Do vote counts for Joe Biden in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law?
Benford's Law is a statistical rule that says that the distribution of digits in real-world numerical datasets tends to follow a specific pattern. It is often used to test whether an election is legitimate or phoney, by comparing the frequency of…
Jacob Hoffman
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150
votes
1 answer
Are there 96 million workers in the US who want a job and can't get one?
On Wednesday 11 Jan 2017, US President-elect Donald Trump claimed in a press conference that:
There will be a major border tax on these companies that are leaving and getting away with murder. And if our politicians had what it takes, they would…
A E
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148
votes
1 answer
Did Amazon pay $0 in US taxes in 2018?
Background
I saw this article saying that Amazon paid $0 in corporate income tax last year. Is this true or just phrased to sound like they are getting away with paying nothing?
Here's the article: Amazon’s $0 corporate income tax bill last year,…
Noah Cristino
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147
votes
3 answers
On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?
There have been a lot of claims made about the circumstances surrounding the events of 9/11 and Building 7 in particular.
The central claim regarding Building 7, that I have heard personally, is that Building 7 fell in such a perfect fluid motion…
Mark Rogers
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144
votes
2 answers
Are violent video games a better explanation of school shootings than access to guns?
This site already has a question on the general relationship of video games and violence.
But the recent Florida school shooting has raised a more specific set of claims that deserve to be addressed.
According to this Rolling stone report, the…
matt_black
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144
votes
2 answers
Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
From Slashdot:
A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than…
user5341
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144
votes
1 answer
Did the @POTUS Twitter account use a picture from Obama's inauguration for its cover image?
There's an image going around Facebook claiming that the @POTUS Twitter account is using an image from President Obama's inauguration.
Is this true? Where is the original image from?
DonyorM
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144
votes
2 answers
Has Phil Karlton ever said "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things"?
Several references to the quote "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things" can be found, such as Martin Fowler's blog and others.
I'm unable to find the source of this quote, has he ever said it?
Vitor De Mario
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142
votes
4 answers
Did Republicans take 10 of 13 Congressional seats in the 2018 North Carolina general election with roughly the same number of votes as Democrats?
This image has been shared on social media
Transcription:
Gerrymandering in North Carolina
1,747,742 votes for Democrats = 3 Congressional seats
1,638,684 votes for Republicans = 10 Congressional seats
Example sources: [1], [2]
Are these…
DJClayworth
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141
votes
4 answers
Did Yuri Gagarin end up in critical condition after coming back to Earth due to the missing magnetic field?
My friend's mother is about to undergo some treatment in magnetic field therapy for osteoarthritis and he is trying to verify if this is useful as claimed, or if this has any harmful effects. The website of their institution claims that:
In Yuri…
PermanentGuest
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140
votes
3 answers
Are some oceans so remote that the closest person is in the space station?
I was listening to BBC news radio last night - 18th day of May 2017 and I heard this guest who was campaigning for people to stop dumping trash in the oceans.
Probably not the same very words but the meaning is the same:
"... some oceans are so…
Gandalf
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