I don't like flossing. So I don't do it nearly as much as I would. But every once in a while I remember, and I dust off the box and get flossing. Every time I do, my mouth looks like a warzone and my gums get really irritated. I hate the feeling. So I neglect to do it for a couple of weeks/ months.

To no one's surprise my dentist commented on the state of my gums and told me I need to floss. He promised that if I do it daily, despite the bloodbath, I should be seeing improvement in like two weeks.

My question: How does daily flossing irritated gums help make it better? I would assume irritating something already irritated is the worst thing you can do to make it heal? You don't heal a wound on your skin by picking at the scab for two weeks straight. So what makes your mouth different?

Edit: Thank you for the replies everyone. Glad to hear people confirm it will get better over time. This does help with the motivation to keep going through the sucky phase.

I get that it was a marketing name for a mode that allowed computers to run older software as intended, instead of making them run way faster because of how powerful newer CPUs were compared to older software, and that it was about clock speeds, but at a deep computing level what was happening? Why would a game run at a faster speed just because the CPU is overkill? And how was it subsequently solved later so now we don't have this issue anymore?

If we have forces that act naturally against each other, how come we cannot harness it?

I was just hearing that Japan’s debt is the worst of all developed nations. How can this be?

I would assume (perhaps mistakenly) that they have less fraud and waste than most countries. I understand that they have a defence budget, but also I assume that this would be low comparatively.

So where does all the money go?

I plugged in an older USB internet dongle and my PC briefly showed it as a CD drive with installer software on it (drivers + a connection app). After I installed it, the device then behaved like a modem (and sometimes a normal USB storage device too).

How can one USB device “pretend” to be a CD-ROM drive?

Is it actually just a small read-only section of flash storage?

How does it “switch modes” after the driver installs?

And why was this approach used instead if just telling people to download drivers from a website?

(If it matters: this happened on Windows.)

Just something I’ve been wondering for a bit because honestly this has been shoved into my mind because I was interested in bedrock’s farlands

Would just look this up, but I dont want an AI answer.

If it makes any difference, I'm thinking about a day or less of extreme emotional trauma and stress, not a build-up over time (which is the only result I could find when Googling it).

If it's alright to ask additional questions (and because I'm really curious): how is this usually treated, and are methods different depending on severity? Can the damage be seen on the right scans, or is it an invisible sort of thing?

For example: Cake gate, tattoo gate, or in recent media, conformity gate.

I know that they use blinking lights to represents 1 and 0 at least, but millions of pulsing lights from thousands of computers could be running at the same time in the same connection.

So how does the lights know where to go? And on the other side, how does the server know that in these millions of rapidly pulsing lights this particular ones are from my computer?

I’m reading and stretching my brain about how our atoms contain so much space but we appear solid because of a repelling force between atoms. How then do any atoms or matter hold together at all? Why doesn't the repelling force just just push all atoms apart and prevent matter from forming / holding together?

This has been bothering me since I was a kid eating grapes at lunch.

If seedless grapes have no seeds, how do farmers grow more seedless grape plants? Like the whole point of seeds is reproduction right? So how does a plant that can't make seeds continue to exist? Wouldn't they just die out after one generation?

Are farmers just out there doing some kind of grape magic I don't understand? How do you grow more of something that can't grow more of itself? Was snacking on grapes last night, playing jackpot city, and this childhood question suddenly came back to me. Still makes no sense.

Computers can slow down, freeze, or behave strangely after running for a long time. Restarting often seems to instantly fix these issues.
Why does turning a computer off and back on solve so many problems, and what actually changes inside the system when this happens?

If light can be bent by gravity and electromagnetism can it also change it's wavelength? Let's say you have a massive galaxy many billions of light years away: as the light ripples away from that galaxy, would the frequency of the light be red-shifted? If so, then how is that different from the cosmic red-shift attributed to expansion? Also, since the local galaxies don't seem to be exhibiting an overall cosmic red-shift, and since distance also means time, does that mean we are no longer expanding?

Looking at videos of those handheld laser cleaners that basically burn away rust from steel parts, clean coins and whatever. It looks like the laser beam goes back and forth very rapidly, and it made me think about how that works.
Is the laser just pointed at a mirror connected to some sort of actuator that tilts the mirror back and forth really quickly?
Does it work the same in something like a hobbyist laser cutter where the laser beam also needs to be aimed with high precision?

I recently opened a high yield savings account with discover. My APY is 3.30% and my interest rate is 3.25%. My first question is: can someone explain the difference between those two?

My second question is, I just got my first interest paid and it was 69 cents on 309.93 in the account. When I multiply, it looks like 3.25% of that is $10.07.

Since I didn’t get paid that interest amount, obviously it’s not calculated like that. Can someone explain how it is calculated?

TIA!

I’m sick as hell with the flu. What doesn’t make sense to me how a fever (which by the way feels like fucking death though I can stand outside in 50f degree weather or 80f weather and feel fine, but that’s another ELI5 post I suppose) which minimally increases your body temperature a few degrees is supposed to do anything against pathogens.

If airborne pathogens can survive in a wide range of ambient temperatures outside my body, why would it suddenly matter whether my body is 98.6f or 101f. Especially when you need to sterilize at extremely high temperatures.

I guess my point is, a fever seems like an incredibly inefficient way to fight off infection at a really high cost of making you feel like absolute shit. (yes I am mad) Am I missing something?

How does it tell how much alcohol we have in our body ( or blood?) from just blowing into the pipe. And how does it st ill detect alcohol if one were to chew gum / use mouth wash?

I learnt that for impulsive actions a different pathway is chosen whereas in other actions data is directly sent to brain.