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66suac | do the eyes have a shutter speed? | I was thinking, since a camera can match the shutter speed of a helicopter blade, or something really fast, to make it look like its not spinning, when its really spinning very fast, I thought "Huh, do they eyes have a shutter speed like a camera?" Maybe this is a dumb question, but I'll ask anyway. Cheers!
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66suac/eli5_do_the_eyes_have_a_shutter_speed/ | {
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"Imagine a spinning wheel getting faster and faster. At some point, it looks like it's suddenly reversed direction, spinning backwards, right? And then as it keeps on accelerating, it looks like the wheel is stopped. (Of course, the wheel is blurry, since it's going fast -- your brain interprets this as a spinning wheel.) \n\nThis also works for fan blades, propellers, etcetc. You get the point. This is a similar idea to how a camera can match the shutter speed of a helicopter blade, making it seem like the helicopter is rising into the air without even spinning its rotors. \n\nEyes don't have something like a shutter speed (hypothetically you could blink... a LOT....). The reason for this behavior is still unknown, but one theory is that we see the world as a bunch of discrete images put together (this is similar to a shutter speed, potentially), and another is something known as the \"Temporal Aliasing Theory\" (now, an ELI5 for this would be pretty interesting too). ",
"Yes but you have it backwards. Our eyes don't have \"shutter speeds\" like a camera, cameras have shutter speeds like our eyes. Shutter speed on a video camera is the rate at which still-pictures are taken then produced as a continuous stream that looks like a video. So a video switches images faster than our eyes can detect. For example have you ever noticed when you look at a car tire or a fan that's spinning really fast it looks like it's spinning in the opposite direction. It's moving faster than our eyes can track and changes the way it looks. ",
"We see around 60 frames per second. So sort of, yes, our eyes have a shutter speed of around 1/60s. ",
"Not a shutter speed, no, but there is an interesting concept called **flicker fusion**.\n\nThe gist is that if you make a light flicker, and you make it flicker faster and faster, eventually it reaches a point where you can't even see the flickering. The flashes *fuse* into a solid light, as least as far as you can see.\n\nThe frequency at which that happens depends on a lot of things, like the amount of ambient light, the colors involved, and even your own personal health and vision.\n\nIt's a narrow example of how our vision smooths out reality, and related to the oft-repeated myths about eyes having some sort of natural \"framerate\"."
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39x469 | why some gifs load like mini videos on mobile | Using Alienblue on an iPhone, half of the gifs I load come up like pictures, another half load as if they were soundless videos. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39x469/eli5_why_some_gifs_load_like_mini_videos_on_mobile/ | {
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"If you are referring to imgur's gifv links or to gfycat links, they look like videos because they *are* videos. imgur and gfycat automatically convert uploaded gifs into videos."
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4zq0pl | if trees need carbon dioxide to survive, how did they exist before land animals spawned | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zq0pl/eli5_if_trees_need_carbon_dioxide_to_survive_how/ | {
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"You've got it backwards, CO2 existed in the earth's original atmosphere. It's O2 (oxygen gas) which did not exist, and was created by plants, who came first. Animals were only able to evolve into existence because of the O2 created by plants.",
"Carbon dioxide exists and occurs naturally in the environment. Animals aren't the only source of it by far. ",
"Plants evolved long long long after anaerobic life existed.\n\nThe Great Oxygenation was an event in earth's history that happened when the CO2-using single cell organisms that produced O2 saturated all available holding material with the O2 it could hold and subsequently oxygenated the atmosphere.\n\nAfter that, aerobic organisms thrived while a lot of the anaerobic ones died. From this could evolve a balance of oxygen using creatures and carbon dioxide using ones.",
"For a very long time, all life on Earth was microbes. Microbes developed photosynthesis to convert CO2 into O2. This carried on for a long time until rocks and such because saturated with O2 and it began accumulating in the air. But then eukaryotic cells evolved, capable of consuming the O2 and providing CO2. It still took quite a significant amount of time before multi-cellular life such as plants and animals as we know them today came about.",
"Oxygen is plants' air pollution. They polluted the atmosphere so badly that many kinds of plants died out, not being able to cope with all the filthy, suffocating, oxygen in the air."
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4bd5w8 | is spicy a flavor like sweet, sour or salty? | I asked my high school biology teacher this, 10 years ago, and he didn't know. All I know is that they have now found that the flavors picked up by taste buds are not in specific regions but all over, I think. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bd5w8/eli5_is_spicy_a_flavor_like_sweet_sour_or_salty/ | {
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"I always understood it as a litteral burning of your taste buds... But I maybe be way off the mark here",
"Spicy is slightly different than the other flavors.\n\nThe reaction we have to spicy food is by a chemical called [Capsaicin](_URL_0_). What this chemical does, is that it tricks our body into thinking it's burning or on fire by lowering the threshold for that particular sensation below our own body temperature. So the result is a stinging tongue, sweating, crying, runny nose, etc.\n\nOn the flip side is Menthol which is what gives that cooling sensation by raising the threshold for when we feel like we're freezing."
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by1njy | if you stood in front of a hugely radioactive source what would physically happen to you in the short term? also would the type of radioactivity change the result? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/by1njy/eli5_if_you_stood_in_front_of_a_hugely/ | {
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"In the short term you would get something like a sunburn if the exposure was strong enough. Alpha particles have trouble penetrating the skin and are only harmful if ingested or inhaled. Beta rays are more energetic, thus causing more damage. Gamma rays are the worst. They can penetrate some thickness of lead, and the ‘sunburn’ could go all the way through. This causes massive cellular damage, and is likely fatal.",
"There are various types of ionizing radiation, which are considered harmful\n\n* Alpha (fast moving helium-4 atoms)\n* Beta (electrons)\n* Gamma (very high energy photons, which are like light, but not in the visible spectrum)\n\nIonizing radiation is harmful because it can damage cells/DNA. Symptoms depend on which cells are damaged, and how much radiation you receive. \n\nDepending on the dose, and which body parts are affected\n\n \\- skin can burn\n\n \\- bone marrow/blood vessels will lose white blood cells; weakening your immune system.\n\n \\- you can get internal bleeding in your digestive tract\n\n \\- inflammation and scaring in the lungs. \n\n \\- Lots of radiation to the brain can cause seizures. \n\nAlso, as with any kind of cell damage, there's an elevated risk of cancer (skin cancer, thyroid cancer, etc) as damage to DNA can result in mutation. The thyroid is fairly susceptible. (This doesn't mean you definitely get cancer, or it happens immediately. Cells mutate a little whenever they divide and a mutation may take 30 years to result in cancer).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn terms of how dangerous they are, and what is affected, alpha is generally stopped by the skin, beta can penetrate a bit of clothing/skin, and gamma needs a lot of thick shielding (e.g. lead) to be blocked. We measure radiation doses in sieverts which tries to accommodate for the differences in the type of radiation.\n\nHere's a good table of the symptoms: [_URL_2_](_URL_0_) \n\nAnd the expected doses are for various things: [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)"
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aitjfn | how do animals "breathe" under water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aitjfn/eli5_how_do_animals_breathe_under_water/ | {
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"They inhale water through their mouth, their gills filter out the oxygen, and release the de-oxygenated water back out. ",
"Air melts into water like sugar does in uncle drinkermoth's tea. Fishies have a magic way of getting at the bits of the melty air that they need to breath underwater. In their gills they are able to flush water over lots of tiny tiny nets that let through the important things they need in order to breath. This goes inside them. Thats why most fishies don't gulp air, and they are so proud of their flappy gills. \n\nIn froggies they do the same thing through their skin (adults please correct me on my basic biology, it has been some years since my undergrad). Other things that live in the sea, rivers, lakes, and caves underground use similar methods.\n\nIn fact, don't you know, your great-great-great-times-a-gillion grandmum was a fish. And although humans have changed a lot since then, we still use similar tiny, tiny nets in our lungs when when we breathe. These need to be wet, wet, wet which is why your breath is so wet and fogs up the car window when you breathe on it. \n\nSome critters under the water just hold their breath, some smart ones take air down with them and breath that. And some silly humans go down underwater with big cans of air attached to tubes, but thats a whole other story. "
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8d0ryu | how can a negative emotional state create physical symptoms, such as depression causing you to become sick or sore ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8d0ryu/eli5_how_can_a_negative_emotional_state_create/ | {
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"Think about fight, flight, or freeze response. When do they usually kick in? When you perceive a threat. Your body physically responds to that emotion of fear. Adrenaline increases your heart rate, blood pressure, & energy supply to do what you need to.\n\nThere’s also this other hormone called cortisol. It’s known as the “stress hormone.” It usually does it’s own thing and helps adrenaline out.\n\nNow, if your body is always under a lot of emotional/mental stressors, then your body keeps thinking it’s going through fight-flight and kick in those necessary hormones to help you out. But you aren’t really. So now your body is being over exposed to cortisol and some other stress hormones. Those hormones normally regulate things like your blood pressure, digestion, sleep regulation, & other life essentials. But because it’s overexposed to all these hormones, all of the sudden you’re always feeling anxious because your heart is beating fast. Your stomach can’t really digest well. Your metabolism has gone haywire. You feel sweaty and nauseous and now your body is just tired because it keeps getting ready to fight or run but it’s not that kind of stress going on.\n\nKeep in mind, this is an over simplification. Hope it helps."
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e1vkz3 | why are bank buildings so big? | What are they doing with all that space? Seems like most big buildings in a city belong to a bank and while they're usually a pretty work of architecture, I'm just wondering why they're SO huge. Is all this space actually being occupied? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1vkz3/eli5_why_are_bank_buildings_so_big/ | {
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"In many cases the building is an investment, and the bank uses part and rents out the rest to other tenants.",
"Banks have a tradition of big and fancy buildings to show their clients that they are successful and safe. It's marketing.",
"To add on to this question, Why are there so many of them?\n\nIn Denver, one of the tallest buildings in downtown is the cash-register [Wells Fargo tower](_URL_0_). But across the metro area, there are a dozen or more 4-10 story Wells Fargo buildings, that are far bigger than a simple local branch needs to be. Why are there so many?",
"Some is marketing, they may put signs on every building they own, even if they lease the entire building to others, and they might pay to be the only sign on a building even if they only lease a small amount of space there.\n\nThe main reason is that most bank employees aren’t tellers, and those folks need someplace to work too. There are departments for small and large business services, lots of loan departs (auto, mortgage, commercial lending), credit card departments, call centers, developers for web and mobile apps (with lots of security testing) risk, fraud, and money laundering detection, legal and regulatory compliance (all the tiny print), plus all the managers and people making sure that the bank is making money."
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2nveft | what is http secure and why is it important? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nveft/eli5_what_is_http_secure_and_why_is_it_important/ | {
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"Becuase it is (more) secure version on HTTP, allowing stuff like bank transactions. \n \n[Here's a good article.](_URL_0_)",
"It means two things:\n\n1. The communication between you and the website is encrypted. This means that anything you do on the website can be seen only by you and the site, so you can freely transfer sensitive data (such as passwords, bank account information, credit card number etc.) without anybody being able to eavesdrop.\n\n2. It verifies the identity of the site you're connecting to. When you connect to _URL_0_, you can't be certain it's not a website that just pretends to be reddit (for example if you connect to the site through a public WiFi, there could be some malicious software on the WiFi router which does that). However if you go to http**s**://_URL_1_, then the website sends you a digital certificate that verifies its identity, and you can be sure it's really reddit (the site provided by /u/homeboi808 explains how to verify this).",
"From the start: HTTP stands for **H**yper**T**ext**T**ransfer**P**rotocol, that is, it is a protocol to transfer hypertext over the internet.\nWhat is hypertext? It is the HT in HTML, which stands for HyperTextMarkupLanguage, which is used to make webpages.\nSo, in short, HTTP transfers webpages over the internet.\n\nHTTP *S*ecure (HTTPS) transfers webpages *securely*, by encrypting them so that no-one can listen in on the communication between you and a website or modify the page before it reaches you and say, inject malicious code into it.\nHTTPS uses a technology called Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to perform this encryption, and to verify to your browser that the website is trustworthy.",
"To further understand how this SSL secures your connection and makes sure nobody can listen in on you, you should watch this explanation:\n_URL_0_"
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1l3w2o | why is there not only h2o in a bottle of water while the chemical formula for water is h2o ? | There is also calcium, magnesium, potassium, kalium,.........in a bottle of water. So we shouldn't call it pure water ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l3w2o/eli5why_is_there_not_only_h2o_in_a_bottle_of/ | {
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"Purified water (just H2O) is not very healthy, it removes electrolytes from the body. All the extra minerals in bottled water prevent this from happening while also providing trace minerals required for health. People say \"pure water\" but they just mean it's clean and relatively pure."
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5njg37 | how passwords work? what happens in the backend when you type password in gmail,facebook etc?what about phone passwords? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5njg37/eli5how_passwords_work_what_happens_in_the/ | {
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"Well at is most basic you type in something and the computer checks that against the value stored in a database.\n\nYou might enter \"gaussianpc\" as your username and \"hunter2\" as your password and the computer checks a table of usernames and passwords if the password next to the username your gave is the same as the one you typed.\n\nOf course this is an extremely stupid way to do it and nobody does it like that anymore.\n\nInstead of writing the password into its table of passwords exactly as you tryped it in the normal way is to \"hash\" it first. Instead of writing your password as it is, it is first run through an algorithm and turned into something like this: \"f3bbbd66a63d4bf1747940578ec3d0103530e21d\". The same password is always turned into the same hash, but anyone reading the table won't know what to type since it is not easily reversed.\n\nThis means that even the people working at google or facebook or whatever can't easily know what your password is and for example try to use it steal data from a different account where you used the same password.\n\nOf course the system is not fool proof and many screw up when trying to build it, but generally the only place your password should be stored permanently is in your head.",
"Each implementation is different but generally what happens is this:\n\n1 - You provide the password.\n2 - The local computer does a lot of math on the password to generate what's called a 'hash.'\n3 - The hash is transmitted (if it needs to be) and then compared with a stored hash.\n4 - If they match, you go onto whatever's next after password authentication. This could be a second factor of authentication or authorization (i.e. checking to see if you actually have the permission to do what you're seeking to do.)\n\nThe 'magic' of passwords is that the math that's done to generate the hash is very easy to do forwards (i.e. generate a hash from a password) but impossible (or at least very difficult) to do backwards.",
"That is a very broad question. But I will try my best to give an explanation.\n\nWhen you type in your username and password on a website and hit enter, they are sent to the server.\n\nThe server most likely has a database where all the info about a user is stored. \n\nThe server then asks the database if it can find a user which has the same username that you entered.\n\nThe password is also stored there, but it is usually \"hashed\". When you hash some text, it gets transformed into something that is unrecognizable. Think of it as encryption, but it's only one way (it can't be decrypted).\n\nSo even though it can't be decrypted, if you try to hash the same text, it will also get transformed into the same unrecognizable text.\n\nSo the server takes the password you entered, hashes it, and then compares it with the hashed password in the database.\n\nIf they are equal, the login was successfull, and the server sends back a cookie to you. As long as that cookie is valid, you will be remain logged in.",
"Your password isn't stored. We have this thing called a \"hash\" which is basically a string of characters that you can generate from your password (and some special algorithms), but CANNOT be used to generate your password! It is this \"hash\" which is stored on the servers. So, when you try to login, the server uses the password that you provide to calculate the hash, and compares that value to the one it has stored with your account. "
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3ffcbr | are main battle tanks obsolete? | Given that currently the battle between weapons and armor is being won by weapons, and that there are multiple platforms that can launch those weapons (infantry, other armored vehicles, aircraft), and given that the nature of warfare has shifted to asymmetrical/fewer/more mobile units - can someone make the case to me that there will be a need for heavy armor going forward? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ffcbr/eli5_are_main_battle_tanks_obsolete/ | {
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"People popularly think that MBTs are losing against weaponry, but tend to forget to factor in just how hard it is to score the necessary hit against a tank to kill it. Sure, in a \"spherical tanks in a vacuum\" type way, an infantry deployed rocket system *can* kill a tank, in perfect range conditions, against a stationary target, when the target isn't shooting back. The other thing people tend to forget about armour is that A-vehicles don't work alone, so kill one tank, and his other troop callsigns are instantly going to be looking for you, while the troop leader yells for assistance from all other supporting callsigns, including infantry, artillery and air.\n\nNow, it's true that LAVs tend to be more useful in counter insurgency in urban environments than MBTs, and counter insurgency is what the Western militaries have been spending most of their time on the last few years. But... and it's a big but... in terms of conventional, set piece military engagements, you need tanks to kill tanks.\n\nAnd there is, of course, the undeniable fact that tanks are just plain cool.",
"There's always an ebb and flow to the armor vs. firepower balance. In the 1950s/60s, European designers thought that HEAT rounds were so powerful that armor would be useless, and designed tanks like the Leopard 1 and AMX series with basically no armor. Then we develop composite armor, carbon-ceramic plates, ERA, and we're all making heavy, well armored tanks again.\n\nNow we're starting to see active defense systems come into play, which have the potential to significantly decrease the threat posed by missiles. Israel deployed the [Trophy](_URL_0_ system with really good success against Hamas.\n\nThere will always be a need to attack defended positions, so there will always be a need for heavily protected vehicles to lead the way. ",
"If you look at the experiences of British Challenger 2s in Iraq, you'll see that they were very nearly invincible, even against reasonably modern AT missiles. There was one tank disabled by a mine, which spent the night getting hammered by RPGs, and at least one or two AT5s (could have model wrong!), and it was pretty much fine. I think the driver was wounded by the initial disabling mine blast, but that was it.\n\nIf you think about what that meant - the insurgent forces couldn't press past the tank, since they couldn't knock it out, and it could still provide fire support to the British line. They expended massive amounts of ordinance to try to neutralise a single target, without success. Any lighter vehicle would have been overrun. And this is in an environment for which tanks are very poorly suited - urban insurgency. If you're out in the open, a modern tank barreling along at 50mph can still put HE shells right where it wants them from a mile away. Modern MBTs are insane firing platforms.\n\nThe fact that a good modern MBT requires the enemy's full attention and heaviest arms to disable means that the enemy either has to ignore the MBT, or ignore your other forces. Unless they have MBTs, in which case they can counter on even terms. But either way, you can't *not* have them unless the enemy doesn't have them, and we don't have a Washington Naval Treaty for tanks. =)"
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2p9avu | why most old computers/keyboards all a yellowish white | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p9avu/eli5why_most_old_computerskeyboards_all_a/ | {
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"It was the style at the time (btw the colour you are thinking of is beige).\n\nManufacturers wanted people to buy computers to use in their homes, and to make them so common that they were just another piece of furniture or something to have around the house.\n\nThere's an old adage - beige goes with everything, which is exactly why they did it (so it wouldn't look out of place or clash). It's a neutral, inoffensive colour.\n\nFor a long time almost anything computer-related was either beige or battleship grey for exactly that reason.",
"In cases were a previously white/off-white or beige item has yellowed, it can be down to the flame retardant used in the ABS plastics around that time.\n\nIt can be reversed as well, with a few select chemicals and some sunlight. This link explains it better than I can.\n\n_URL_0_"
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3g133i | the so called "mega earthquake" that is said to be coming for the west coast. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g133i/eli5_the_so_called_mega_earthquake_that_is_said/ | {
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"They've been talking about it for a long time. I remember being in middle school when the whittier-narrows earthquake happened in Los Angeles (September 1987). At that point, it was the strongest quake in Southern Cal since 1972 (and then we had a stronger one, the Northridge quake in 1994). But it was the Whittier Narrows quake that made me start hearing all of the media trying to scare the shit out of us and how the Big One was going to destroy us all.\n\nNo one knows when it will happen, and, in my experience, you shouldn't spend your time worrying about it. You can make sure you always have some water and non-perishable food in your house (which most of us do anyway), keep a bag of stuff in your car's trunk (which a lot of us do anyway).\n\nYou can also minimize your risk by not living on the bottom floor of a 2+ story apartment building (earthquakes tend to happen at dawn, so most of the time you will be asleep or at least in your home). Until earthquakes become more predictable, you can't spend your life living in fear, because it could be decades away.",
"Remember that earthquake in Japan that was bigger than anyone thought was even possible, and it killed lots of people and trashed that nuclear power plant which is still leaking radioactivity into the water?\n\nTurns out that (relatively) new science shows that one like that could happen by the Pacific Northwest. To quote a government official: \"Everything West of I5 will be toast.\"\n\nBut, and this is the big but, it could be today or it could be in 500 years."
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3qns6e | from a buddhist approach, what exactly is 'nothing?' | Is it like the matrix, where our sense of sight, smell, hearing, feeling and taste whatever our brain tells us; after the plug is pulled we are non-existent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qns6e/eli5_from_a_buddhist_approach_what_exactly_is/ | {
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"I can try to take an ELI5 whack at this. \n\n\"Nothing\" is the absence of an external object, an \"external object\" is something outside of the mind. \n\nHowever, there are countless debates about whether \"nothing\" or \"the absence of an external object\" is actually an object itself. In short, nothing could be just another external object, something we think exists outside of our mind/consciousness. \n\nTo address your matrix allusion in the best ELI5 way, you can say that some Buddhists feel external reality IS like the matrix simulation: i.e., it is very convincingly real but it is in fact not real and actually \"empty.\" \"Emptiness,\" in Buddhism 101 is taken in two ways. 1. The external object is empty because it actually does not exist (more or less) and 2. The object is empty because it is unable to liberate you from Samsara (the eternal cycle of rebirth that all amalgamations of consciousness are subjected to). \n\nI hope this helped a little! "
]
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[]
] |
|
3441sz | why do i see the same length of my body in the mirror no matter how far i am from the mirror? | Professor said it in class. Tried it at home. Can't grasp this physics. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3441sz/eli5_why_do_i_see_the_same_length_of_my_body_in/ | {
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"What do you mean by \"length of my body\"? Do you mean you see yourself as the same height? You see yourself as the same height because you are still the same height. looking in a mirror is like looking at a person on the other side of a piece of glass, standing as far from the glass as you. Since they're still the same height, they'll still appear to be the same height."
]
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[]
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|
clv9a9 | how come sometimes when we sneeze, cough or laugh right after drinking something, it can come out of our nose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clv9a9/eli5_how_come_sometimes_when_we_sneeze_cough_or/ | {
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"evy135i"
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"text": [
"Because you nose is connected to your esophagus seeing as this is how the air gets to your lungs. And if air can get one way drinks can go the other. Just need some push to get over gravity and a sneeze does exactly that"
]
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[]
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||
69rcr3 | how does the xbox kinect differentiate between you and your environment? | For example, if I stand in front of it I can see my body outline highlighted but say I grab a book or a bottle and hold it in my out stretched arm it doesn't highlight it, so it doesn't seem like it's capturing motion - seems (to a naive mind) that it's more like heat tracking. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69rcr3/eli5_how_does_the_xbox_kinect_differentiate/ | {
"a_id": [
"dh8t82w"
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"text": [
"The Kinect doesn't look at your outline. It looks at your skeleton. \n\nNot really, but you're right, it does look for motion. Your joints are places it pays most attention to and constructs your skeleton based on the relative position of your joints. It finds joints by looking at motion and calculating the direction of motion and seeing wherever two things are moving in different directions within a small timeframe. \n\nAfter that it associates that skeleton to your visual body (you can see this in settings) and uses the much faster visual tracking to track your skeleton. \n\nDue to the crappier camera in the original, fast motions often distorted the skeleton and caused the super wacky movements that happened if you leaned, or a shadow/beam of light fell across you, something moved across the FOV, etc.\n\n"
]
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|
6hooui | why do bunnies/rabbits attack each other randomly? | I was just walking along the street and I heard a bunch of snorting noises. I looked over and there were 5 bunnies/rabbits on someone's lawn jumping on each other, biting, punching, and all that stuff at each other. Does anyone know why this happened? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hooui/eli5_why_do_bunniesrabbits_attack_each_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"dizxcmy"
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"text": [
"Hares and a few other kinds of rabbit males fight each other during mating seasons to compete for females. It is where the term \"Mad as a March Hare\" comes from. "
]
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[]
] |
|
33rh99 | why were european tvs assigned to 50hz and america/japan set to 60hz? | What was the point of having such a variance instead of a universal standard? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33rh99/eli5_why_were_european_tvs_assigned_to_50hz_and/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Its not the tv standard, it's the electric power standard. Different countries came up with different electricity standards at different times, They didn't get together and discussk what the standard should be"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7n0o9f | the meaning of auld lang syne | I read the wiki, but I still don't understand what the song is trying to say. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n0o9f/eli5_the_meaning_of_auld_lang_syne/ | {
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"Should you forget your old friends as time goes by? Hell, no. Raise a cup in kindness and cheer, and drink to days gone by. Let's remember the times past and not forget them. Let's drink to those we loved.",
" > Should old acquaintance be forgot,\n\n > and never brought to mind?\n\n > Should old acquaintance be forgot,\n\n > and old lang syne?\n\n Should we forget our old friends? \n\n Should we forget the times we had?\n\n > CHORUS:\n\n > For auld lang syne, my dear,\n\n > for auld lang syne,\n\n > we'll take a cup of kindness yet,\n\n > for auld lang syne.\n\n > And surely you'll buy your pint cup!\n\n > and surely I'll buy mine!\n\n > And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,\n\n > for auld lang syne.\n\nLet's toast to the good old times, my dear\n\nTo the good old times\n\nWe'll drink to the gold old times.\n\n\n > We two have run about the slopes,\n\n > and picked the daisies fine;\n\n > But we've wandered many a weary foot,\n\n > since auld lang syne.\n\nWe've been together a long time,\n\nWe've traveled and lazed about\n\nWe've been friends a good old time\n\n > We two have paddled in the stream,\n\n > from morning sun till dine;\n\n > But seas between us broad have roared\n\n > since auld lang syne.\n\nAlthough we've been friends a long time,\n\nSometimes we've been apart,\n\nBut that's just fine\n\n > And there's a hand my trusty friend!\n\n > And give me a hand o' thine!\n\n > And we'll take a right good-will draught,\n\n > for auld lang syne.\n\nLet's hold hands,\n\nLet's have a drink together,\n\nTo all the good times\n\n\nThis is a simplification of the traditional English translation. I hope it helps. If you need, I can do Burn's original Scots as well, but the lyrics are more-or-less the same meaning. *We've been apart, my friend, but now that we're together let's have a toast to all the good times.*",
"It makes a bit more sense if you read the words in a Scots accent. Literally, it's \"old long since\", or, as others have put it, the good old days.",
"This podcast may help. It really breaks it down and the rest of the series does the same. _URL_0_\n\nBut tl;dr. Old and middle English are complex AF.",
"Auld Lang Syne is \"Good Old Times\" or \"Times Long Past\" in Scots, a language spoken in lowland Scotland that is a kind of a hybrid of Old and Middle English with remnants of Gaelic. It has morphed over the years to even include some modern English words and spellings. \n\nIt is a song talking about old friends, and the memories you have with them. u/Kotama does a good breakdown of the song verse by verse. It is basically about toasting to old memories and continued friendship. "
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|
6qs767 | why has hollywood resorted to revealing every arc and twist of a movie, in a single trailer? when did thirty second commercial spots become not enough? do they have so little faith in our attention span? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qs767/eli5_why_has_hollywood_resorted_to_revealing/ | {
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"I think you need to go watch older trailers, trailers from the 60s or 70s often had a narrator who would walk you through the entire story scene by scene. It was only later that trailers kinda turned into abstract music videos. "
]
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[]
] |
||
f7p3el | why does your hand get hot if you stick it in a tub of powdered laundry detergent? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f7p3el/eli5_why_does_your_hand_get_hot_if_you_stick_it/ | {
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"text": [
"There are (at least) three reasons why this happens:\n\n1) the air spaces between the particles trap the heat from your hand. Because the air can’t move around freely it has insulating properties;\n\n2) if the powder has exothermic properties (for example Portland cement powder), it absorbs the moisture from your skin and as it reacts actually generates heat;\n\nand 3) as you mentioned, it also could be a ‘feeling’ of heat caused by your nerves sensing the start of a chemical burn. \n\nI suggest that experimenting with your actual hand is not the way to go.",
"Detergents have a high base pH (opposite end from acids). So yes, they are essentially dissolving your skin. However, bases have a very poor skin reaction time (i.e. you don't feel it right away), so you won't experience the same chemical burn as you would with an acid. In some cases, it can take hours before you realize you are burned."
]
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[],
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ea8pz3 | how does the body use anabolic steroids? if you have an undetectable or close to 0 amount of steroids in your body, does the drug still have an effect? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ea8pz3/eli5_how_does_the_body_use_anabolic_steroids_if/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"So... if you could hypothetically have two exact people train the same, eat the same, for say 9 months and one was using steroids. The one on gear would get bigger, quicker. So even if he stops say 3 months before an event or the end of the 9 month period. He would have advanced further than the natty guy would have, even being off gear for months. The gains are typically lost eventually when stopping but not immediately, over the course of a few months and you can keep some of what has been gained. In my not expert option this his how they could still have an effect months later."
]
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|
7nzetg | blowing on boiling pasta water effects? | Why does blowing on pasta water before it's about to boil over instantly make the bubbles die down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nzetg/eli5_blowing_on_boiling_pasta_water_effects/ | {
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"You induce a low pressure system over the water. It makes it evaporate faster. It also causes the bubbles to expand and then pop. Doesn’t do much to the pasta but does make the water boil away slightly faster.",
"Blowing on the water causes an increase in evaporation which ruptures the bubbles. This along with your breath force actually breaking bubbles. Understanding how heat is transferred will help this make sense. \n\nBlowing causes air molecules to smash into the surface of the bubbles at an increased rate. This causes a transfer of heat from the hot water molecules to the air molecules but also adds energy to other hot water molecules. As water heats up the molecules vibrate furiously and once the heat energy surpasses the cohesive binding energy the water brakes away and thus evaporates. Blowing will cause these weakly bound surface molecules to be released which will break the walls of these bubbles. The more you think of this the actuality of what is happening is incredibly and impossibly complex. Chain reactions, etc. Be aware that nobody will have a perfect answer for this or any chemistry question. But there are lots of simple answers that are satisfactory but never truly accurate. "
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lospt | jailbreaking | Not how to... But HOW these 'hackers' such as i0n1c, Comix, MuscleNerd, Saurik... Physically Jailbreak devices?
How do they find exploits then use them to unlock iphones to a whole host of apps and tweaks?
How can some exploits create an un-tethered jailbreak and others just a tethered?
Will all iphones/ipads (and future devices) always be jailbreakable in some way? or is there a chance that one day apple will create an un-jailbreakable iOS?
The whole process and community behind jailbreaking fascinates and immensely impresses me! I'd just like to know a little more about how its done!
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else in the past, I did do a search (both on reddit and in the general interwebs) but nothing explained it clearly enough... like I'm 5!
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lospt/eli5_jailbreaking/ | {
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"Without going into too much detail (ELI5) they basically reprogram the phone.\n\nThe hardware itself is neutral. It will do anything it is told to do. It will come pre-loaded with software that makes it do; X, Y and Z. It will also come with restrictions like \"no tethering\" from the provider. If you pay additional money to the wireless provider, they allow you to use the other restricted features.\n\nJailbreaking over writes the software that comes with the phone and replaces it with new restriction free software. You can do anything that the hardware will allow (if you have the software to do so). Different software builds will have different features.",
"They try to break the chain of trust as high up as possible.\n*What is the chain of trust?*\nIt is the chain of components that are run when booting your device. For example, on the iPhone, it starts with the *bootrom* and goes over various other parts like *iBoot* or the Kernel until it finally runs your installed applications. Each time the next component is run, the previous component checks if the following component is in its original state (i.e. not hacked).\n\nMost hardware jailbreaks start with the bootrom, which can't be updated using software updates like these you get from iTunes - recent example: iOS 5. Once you have control of the bootrom, you can tell it to not check if the next component is in its original state - this component can then be patched to not check the following component and so on, until you can finally install a custom OS or change the existing one (i.e. install Cydia or Installer). Bootrom exploits most of the time mean they have an untethered jailbreak.\n\nExploits in the bootrom most of the time are based on a buffer overflow, which is neatly explained [here](_URL_0_). If they can't find an exploit, they have to go higher up in the chain of trust. The higher they go, the less they can do. For example, if you only get in iBoot, you'll have to make the device validate other stages when booting, which can be done using external devices such as a computer - this is known as a tethered exploit, as every time you boot your device a signature check has to be 'fixed'.\n\nMuscleNerd, saurik, comex and many others have given quite a few talks about jailbreaking and unlocking iOS devices - Google should help you find them.\n\nI hope my answer was kind of helpful, I don't remember all of this correctly. But it probably will help you understand the whole thing roughly.",
"Without going into too much detail (ELI5) they basically reprogram the phone.\n\nThe hardware itself is neutral. It will do anything it is told to do. It will come pre-loaded with software that makes it do; X, Y and Z. It will also come with restrictions like \"no tethering\" from the provider. If you pay additional money to the wireless provider, they allow you to use the other restricted features.\n\nJailbreaking over writes the software that comes with the phone and replaces it with new restriction free software. You can do anything that the hardware will allow (if you have the software to do so). Different software builds will have different features.",
"They try to break the chain of trust as high up as possible.\n*What is the chain of trust?*\nIt is the chain of components that are run when booting your device. For example, on the iPhone, it starts with the *bootrom* and goes over various other parts like *iBoot* or the Kernel until it finally runs your installed applications. Each time the next component is run, the previous component checks if the following component is in its original state (i.e. not hacked).\n\nMost hardware jailbreaks start with the bootrom, which can't be updated using software updates like these you get from iTunes - recent example: iOS 5. Once you have control of the bootrom, you can tell it to not check if the next component is in its original state - this component can then be patched to not check the following component and so on, until you can finally install a custom OS or change the existing one (i.e. install Cydia or Installer). Bootrom exploits most of the time mean they have an untethered jailbreak.\n\nExploits in the bootrom most of the time are based on a buffer overflow, which is neatly explained [here](_URL_0_). If they can't find an exploit, they have to go higher up in the chain of trust. The higher they go, the less they can do. For example, if you only get in iBoot, you'll have to make the device validate other stages when booting, which can be done using external devices such as a computer - this is known as a tethered exploit, as every time you boot your device a signature check has to be 'fixed'.\n\nMuscleNerd, saurik, comex and many others have given quite a few talks about jailbreaking and unlocking iOS devices - Google should help you find them.\n\nI hope my answer was kind of helpful, I don't remember all of this correctly. But it probably will help you understand the whole thing roughly."
]
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9d5ynt | can some explain how the carbon and nitrogen cycle works? | I need a quick explanation for both cycles | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9d5ynt/eli5_can_some_explain_how_the_carbon_and_nitrogen/ | {
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"The carbon cycle is basically CO2 (predominantly) in the air gets absorbed by plants, which puts it back in the ground/plants. Things eat the plants (or things that ate plants) and then breathe it back out into the air. It can also burn or decompose and release carbon.\n\nWe also artificially add to this process by burning really old plant matter in the form of fossil fuels, as well as cement production.\n\nMost of that happens with phytoplankton in the sea, because our planet is mostly water.\n\nNitrogen is basically the same except its process is on a much smaller scale, mostly involving bacteria in plants."
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3w946n | can someone explain this to me? the same thing happens with flashing lights. | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w946n/eli5_can_someone_explain_this_to_me_the_same/ | {
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"The platform the metronomes are sitting on isn't rigid. It's suspended and allowed to move. Each metronome when swinging is exerting a opposite direction force on the platform. That opposite force on the platform translated to a tiny force on each of the other metronomes. That tiny force pushes each other metronomes to come to the same cycle",
"The surface the metronomes are on is not fixed: it can move as well. Each metronome transfers a tiny tiny bit of its momentum into that surface, and the surface can transfer a tiny bit back. If the metronome is oscillating faster than the surface, it loses energy, and if it's oscillating slower it will gain some.\n\nEventually, the metronome will match the table and neither will transfer energy to the other. \n\nDo that 32 times...If any individual metronome is ahead, it'll slow down, those behind will speed up, until they all match the combined momentum/oscillation of the table. \n\nIf you tried to do the same thing on the ground, or even a solid table, it wouldn't work."
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1upvcj | when a president moves in to the white house, what changes can they make? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1upvcj/eli5_when_a_president_moves_in_to_the_white_house/ | {
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"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed. \n\nYou should try /r/answers, /r/askreddit or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience or others too numerous and varied to mention. \n\nRest assured this doesn't make your question *bad*, it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
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2npbmj | if the devil is evil, wouldn't he reward the sinners who end up in hell? and if he punishes sinners in his domain, doesn't that make him a good, moral deity? | I'm not religious or anything, but I've had this question floating around in my head for years. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2npbmj/eli5_if_the_devil_is_evil_wouldnt_he_reward_the/ | {
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"The Devil is stuck in Hell just like all of the other sinners. He doesn't play the role of Hades where he is the lord of the underworld; he is a sinner (the first sinner) and was cast out of Heaven to be trapped for eternity. Me answering the second part of your question would break the bias rule, so I hope it gets covered by the first part of my answer. ",
"\"If the Devil is evil\" wouldnt he trick people into doing his evil deeds, and then punish them when they get to hell? ",
"May I suggest /r/ELINT (explain like I'm not a theologian ",
"I am not a Christian anymore but I did go to a Christian school (and stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night). I believe that the way it was explained to me is that hell is the punishment that awaits all sinners as well as Satan and the third of angels that rebelled against god with him after the end-times and judgement day is over. So right now they believe that Satan is \"loose\" in the world and that he will be sent to hell when it is all said and done. However he has no power over hell now and will eventually be punished there with everyone else when it is all said and done.",
"I was raised Christian (mostly Evangelical) by my parents. However I stopped going to church when I was 14. This is what I was taught on the subject. \n\nSatan is not the ruler of Hell, he is a prisoner just like everyone else. He was originally an Angel named Lucifer. He rebelled against God because Lucifer was envious of the attention and love God had for the world and all its inhabitants. Lucifer and the angels he rallied against God ( I was taught that it was a third of heavens armies) were all cast from Heaven. Lucifer then snuck in to the Garden of Eden intending to get even with God by disguising himself as a snake to tempt Eve in to eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is why Lucifer and his rebels were cast in to hell. ",
"In the non-canonical mythology of Christendom, the devil's beef with God is that God isn't hard enough on humans. Lucifer leads an army of angels in revolt because he's *jealous* of the treatment that's given to humans, treatment which (now, after the fall) means that God sends tons to prophets to help up, does tons of miracles, and ultimately Jesus comes for our salvation. The devil can't stand that we have it so easy, so whenever he gets the chance, he's gonna make us pay.",
"Okay, so most people here are trying to give you answers based in religion. That makes sense, but it fails to give the whole answer. The truth comes from a poet.\n\nNowhere in the bible does it say that the devil sits in Hell punishing sinners (as many people in this thread have correctly identified). Where it *does* say that is in Dante's *Inferno*. Dante's work is, at best, only loosely based on theology, and it mostly just intended as a work of epic poetry. However, because of it's fame and popularity, many of his ideas seeped into public awareness to the point where a lot of people don't actually realize where the ideas came from.",
"People generally get confused on the notion of the Devil because Christianity has actually merged three different entities into one evil personification.\n\nIn the Bible, you have the Serpent, the Adversary named Ha-Satan and Lucifer, fallen Archangel. \n\nThe Serpent's main reason for being included in this is because he tempted Eve into eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is where his contribution ends.\n\nHa-Satan is known as the Adversary and his main purpose is to stand beside you on Judgment Day and list off your sins and explain why you don't deserve entry into Heaven. A Celestial District Attorney, basically.\n\nThe story of Job actually describes how God is in heaven and he's bragging on Job down on Earth and Ha-Satan is there 'with God' in heaven and Ha-Satan suggests that Job is only pious and devout because God gave him a great life with lots of kids and stuff and wives. So, God takes it all away and ruins Job's life to prove that he's right. \n\nIn the end, God gives him all that back after scolding Job for being too self-righteous in his suffering, and Ha-Satan is proven wrong. \n\nHa-Satan is known as the Adversary, but he plays a role in the Divine Scheme.\n\nLucifer is the fallen Arch-angel and his story is told in Revelations. He's called 'The Morning Star' and is basically #3 in Heaven. Pride and hubris causes Lucifer to plot rebellion against God and he gets cast down into Hell along with 1/3rd of all the angels. \n\nThe whole thing about the Devil ruling in Hell, though, is because of Dante's Inferno. Until that was written, the idea of the Devil ruling Hell wasn't even considered. \n\nIn short, lots of people mixed up three biblical entities, added in a dash of Dark Ages fiction and there you go. ",
"The way I see things, if your an asshole in life you will be treated as such in death visa versa."
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q108u | what is heat and/or energy? | It never really occurred to me before, but heat doesn't really make sense to me. As in; what is it? We can't observe it the same way as we can observe material, can we?
I remember that particles vibrate which causes heat, and that absolute zero is when "nothing" moves, or something like that. Does that mean heat is the vibration of something? But it doesn't make sense that air can be hot too...?
Also, I read/heard somewhere (I think my teacher) that heat does not generate, it only moves. If so, then how come a room becomes warm with a fire in it? Shouldn't the room become cold because the fire draws all the heat from around it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q108u/eli5_what_is_heat_andor_energy/ | {
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"Heat is molecular motion...the hotter the object, the faster the molecules are moving.\n\nWhen a fast molecule collides with a slower one, part of its momentum gets transferred, and they both wind put moving at a more average speed. That is what is happening when hold something cold in your hand...the faster moving molecules in your hand slow down as they transfer momentum to the slower moving molecules in the object you are holding.\n\nIn solid objects, the molecules are bound together, so their movements amount to vibration. In liquids and gasses, they move about more freely. ",
"All matter, including air, is composed of very tiny particles called atoms. Sometimes the atoms are joined together in groups called molecules.\n\nAtoms and molecules can have two kinds of motion, ordered and disordered. An example of ordered motion would be a baseball bat being swung; all the molecules in the baseball bat are moving together as a unit. Temperature is a measure of disordered motion. Even when the matter appears to be at rest, the molecules inside it are jiggling and bouncing around (you could say they are vibrating, but they are not vibrating in sync with one another, each one vibrates at random). The faster the molecules move when they jiggle, the higher the temperature (this isn't quite the whole story because temperature is a measure of average kinetic energy and not average speed, but it will help you visualize what's going on). Absolute zero does indeed refer to a state where the molecules would not be moving at all, but there is no way to put matter into a true absolute zero state in reality.\n\nIf you place matter with a low temperature next to matter with a higher temperature, the temperature of the lower matter will rise and the matter with the higher temperature will drop, until they both reach the same temperature. We call this process \"heat transfer\", and \"heat\" refers to the energy that is transferred from the higher temperature matter to the lower.\n\nFinally, energy is a number that physicists associate with physical laws. This number can be expressed in various ways in different situations, but it always has a specific property. The property is that the change in energy for any physical process is zero; energy is \"conserved\".",
" > Also, I read/heard somewhere (I think my teacher) that heat does not generate, it only moves. If so, then how come a room becomes warm with a fire in it? Shouldn't the room become cold because the fire draws all the heat from around it?\n\nThe energy a fire releases comes from the molecular bonds that are being broken in the burning process. \n\nBasically, if you have a molecule of \"wood stuff\" and you break it down by burning, the energy that kept the \"wood stuff\" held together is being released in the form of heat. No energy is being *generated*, just *released*.\n\nHeat is only one of many forms of energy.\n\nOne of the laws of thermodynamics (thermodynamics = study of how energy moves around) is that if energy ever disappears in one form, it reappears in another. Heat, light, electricity, and many other things are forms of energy.\n\ntl;dr: The fire isn't sucking out the energy from the room around it! It is sucking the energy out of the fuel (wood, charcoal, etc) and turning it into heat."
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43t6c6 | american primaries | As a non-American I am so confused! ELI5, when will be know who is the final Republican Candidate and who is the final Democratic Candidate? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43t6c6/eli5_american_primaries/ | {
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"In America there are two main political parties. Each party has a pre-election for all the people who are registered voters in that party. The winner of that pre-election gets to be the only representative for that party in the main election. Unless one candidate establishes a huge lead, you might have to wait until June 8th for the pre-election results. ",
"March-ish.\n\nThe states have their primary votes over 4 months. It all gets over June 8th, but unless it's a close race, someone's victory will be assured when a majority of the votes are in. \n\nIf it's statistically impossible for someone to lose by June 7th, I believe they simply skip places like Jersey and S.Dakota. ",
"The final, official Democratic selection will be decided at the Democratic National Convention on July 25-28. The final Republican selection will be decided one week earlier at the Republican National Convention.\n\nBetween now and then, all 50 states will hold elections for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Party members will be able to vote for their favorite candidates. Each state has a certain number of delegates, weighted by their populations. Iowa, for example, has 44 delegates. Since Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders each won about 50% of the votes, they each will get 22 (Bernie got a little less votes than Clinton, so he might just get 21) delegates. At the convention, these 22 delegates are required to vote for the candidate who they are assigned to.\n\nSome of the delegates are not required to vote for anyone. They can vote for whoever they personally want to vote for. These are called superdelegates. They are party leaders who are granted special status. 20% of the Democratic delegates are superdelegates.\n\nThe state elections (it can be a primary with blind voting or a caucus with group voting) are held on different dates. Iowa is the first, so it gets the most attention. If Hillary Clinton manages to win more than half the guaranteed votes before the primary, the superdelegates don't matter. She would be the nominee no matter what happens at the convention (because most of the delegates are required to vote for her, based on the state elections.) Same goes for Bernie Sanders. If it's a close race, then the superdelegates matter more. Most vote the same as their state, but they don't have to.\n\nIf one candidate gets a decisive lead early, then you can find out the winner early. Otherwise, we won't officially find out the nominees until late July. Realistically, unless it's really close, we'll find out by mid-June, which is when the last primaries are.",
"The official nominee for each party will be announced at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions respectively. Before this, each state holds a primary election/caucus where delegates are elected to cast a vote in the National Convention. \n\nTake the recent caucus in Iowa recently. Cruz won the caucus with 27.7%, followed by Trump with 24.3% and Rubio with 23.1%. Carson, Paul and Bush also earned 9.3%, 4.5% and 2.8% respectively. There are 27 delegates for Iowa (number of delegates are determined by the Party). A proportional number of delegates is elected for each candidate. Cruz won 8, Trump won 7, Rubio won 7, Carson won 3, Paul and Bush both won 1. Those delegates will then attend the National Convention and cast their vote for whomever they were elected to represent. \n\nEach state will have a similar primary where delegates are usually elected proportionally to the % of votes each candidate receives. [Here](_URL_0_) is a calendar for the Republican Primary Season which lists when each primary is held and how many delegates the state is worth.\n\nThe DNC has a similar primary system to the RNC. The RNC Convention will start on July 18, and the official nominee will be announced on the 21st. The DNC's convention will start July 25, and the nominee will be anounced on the 28th. However, the nominee is usually known well in advance as one candidate usually clearly has more delegates than any other, especially after all the primaries in March."
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1ks31a | what is happening with the indian ruppee? | I've just come back from an extended break and have a high level of financial knowledge.
Still cannot for the love of god understand what is happening and why things have gone so sideways all of a sudden. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ks31a/eli5what_is_happening_with_the_indian_ruppee/ | {
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"India is a developing country and is trying to modernize their infrastructure. However, when more money is invested into infrastructure than justifiable, returns are lower and foreign investors pull their money out of the Indian economy lowering the value of the rupee. A drop in currency value is not usually due to just one factor, but due to a multitude of factors."
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8cbtpe | what is the difference between the 'same' graphics cards | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cbtpe/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_the_same/ | {
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"Different options for: Factory overclocking/room for more, cooling, RGB/LED, color/design, backplates, size",
"NVIDIA makes the main graphics chip for the graphics cards, but they also require a lot of other chips and stuff like RAM and power delivery regulation. So it requires those, which all come together to form a graphics card.\n\nNVIDIA however doesn’t particularly want to be the one to deal with customers, so they sell their chips by bulk to other companies, who then assemble these details along with he chip to sell to you.",
"Every graphics card is different, because of the different manufacturing conditions. The alignment you place your seed silicon crystal can affect the quality of the final chip, even something as tiny as 0.1 degrees.\n\nThe chips are roughly sorted according to quality ranges, with the 1080 being higher in quality than 1060 and so on. This is not very exact and each chip will overclock to different maximum speeds, even if they were cut from the same silicon die.\n\nThe numbers 980 vs 1080 represents a new generation of chips, using a different chip design. Typically newer chip designs use less power or have some better functionality but do not strictly outclass the previous generation. Eg 980 is “better” than 1050.",
"The first number indicates the series ie: which architecture and manufacturing process it uses, and the second number is an indication of the performance relative to that series. For example a 1050 could still be outperformed by a 960 because even though its slightly older, indicated by the lower series number, it had a higher relative performance, and there isn't much difference between the 9 and 10 series (iirc they're the same architecture but with improvements).\n\n Nvidia makes these chips all the same, they produce a whole bunch of identical chips with the same specs, and then they sell most of them to other companies, keeping some behind to make a 'reference card' which is a card notable for being average. It will have average cooling and power. The companies buying the chips have the option to do whatever they want to make the chips faster/better, including making better thermal performance with more fans, increasing voltage stability for better over clocking, pairing the chip with more Vram if it supports it, and 'binning' a process where they select the chips which respond best to over clocking, and sell the ones that respond poorly at a lower price point. \n\nAMD do the same thing, but neither Intel or AMD follow a similar principle with their CPUs, as a CPU chip needs no supporting card."
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5dmozn | what determines the ending of road names? (ave, st, rd, trl, blvd, etc...) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dmozn/eli5_what_determines_the_ending_of_road_names_ave/ | {
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"For a very good answer, I recommend you read /u/acidnisibannac's response to a similar question [here](_URL_0_). I'll TLDR it in case cannot be bothered to read it.\n\nTLDR; A bunch of historical context goes into the names, plus cities/towns will use whatever name they think sounds nice. ",
"In a lot of municipalities, the direction the street runs also has something to do with it. Avenues run east and west, Boulevards run north and south. This isn't always true, however. I actually handle all of the addressing for a small telcom company (service about 100k customers across 3 states) and it does vary from town to town. Some cases the county assigns street names, others the city/municipality does. There's usually a department or committee that handles it, and they choose whatever makes sense for the area. There isn't one model of thought that you can apply across the board. ",
"The exact meanings vary with region, and are often used inconsistently, or become incorrect as roads change. But in general:\n\n* **road** - most generic name, often a older, pre-automobile thoroughfare connecting two points of interest\n* **street/avenue** - roads within a city that are part of a grid system\n* **drive/parkway** - roads within a city that don't conform to the grid\n* **boulevard** - a road with a landscaped median\n* **way** - a short road\n* **place** - a short, often dead end road\n* **court** - a short road ending a cul-de-sac\n* **lane** - a narrow, secondary road, often an access road\n* **trail** - a winding road in a wooded or otherwise undeveloped area...often an historical footpath\n* **highway** - a high speed, limited access road connecting cities\n* **parkway/turnpike** - a toll, or formerly toll highway\n* **freeway** - a highway without a toll\n"
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abd6p1 | how a hydraulic press/arm works | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abd6p1/eli5_how_a_hydraulic_pressarm_works/ | {
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"Hydraulic presses work by pressurizing a fluid. The pressurized fluid seeks to expand which causes it to push against the walls of its container. In a piston one of the walls moves with less resistance than the others. The pressurized fluid pushes against the easy wall causing the piston to expand, in turn moving the arm",
"Force is transferred through a fluid as pressure; pressure is a function of both force and cross-sectional area.\n\nAny hydraulic system works using this principle--and what essentially means is that using a little force to move a large piston a small distance on one end ends up causing a large force moving a small piston a large distance on the other end.\n\nYou might, for example, move a dinner-plate sized piston a centimeter--which may end up moving a dime-sized piston two or three centimeters. ",
"Suppose you have two big syringes connected by a tube full of liquid. You push on the first syringe, whose plunger has an area of 1 square inch, with 1 pound of force: then the liquid in the tube will have a pressure of 1 pound per square inch. That liquid pushes on the second syringe: if that one has an area of 10 square inches, the total force on its plunger will be 10 pounds -- the hydraulic system has multiplied your 1 pound of force into 10.\n\nBut you don't get something for nothing: you have to move the small piston 10 inches to make the bigger one move 1 inch.",
"Take a very high diameter piston and put it in a cylinder filled with fluid. Connect a hose to that going to a much smaller diameter cylinder/piston. \n \nThen either manually or with a motor, compress the big piston. Since the fluid doesn't want to compress much at all, that force is passed on to the little piston, but it is spread over a much smaller area. So the pounds per square inch (pressure) is multiplied. \n \nIf you also make the pistons such that the big one moves over a large distance and the small one moves over a small distance, you further multiply the pressure. "
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xmx4v | - what exactly did wall street bankers and executives do that caused the recession? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xmx4v/eli5_what_exactly_did_wall_street_bankers_and/ | {
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"1) Wall Street quants created exotic instruments that were backed by mortgages, which\n\n2) Created incentives for banks to generate more mortgages, which\n\n3) Caused bankers to lower their requirements for getting mortgages, which\n\n4) Lead to more people getting mortgages than should reasonably have gotten them, which\n\n5) Drove up the demand for houses, which\n\n6) Raised the price of houses, which\n\n7) Caused people getting mortgages to owe more than they could pay back, which\n\n8) Ended in many people defaulting on their mortgages, which\n\n9) Generated a wave of housing foreclosures, which\n\n10) Flooded the market with cheap housing, which\n\n11) Drove down the prices of houses, which\n\n12) Destroyed the net worth of many households, which\n\n13) Caused people to cut back on their spending, which\n\n14) Cut into the bottom line for many American businesses, which\n\n15) Caused the businesses to lose money and lay off workers. ",
"I'll try to keep it short. This is very simplified in keeping with the theme of this subreddit.\n\nIt wasn't just bankers but an entire system. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m an AVP at one of the TARP “To Big to Fail” banks) With the real estate bubble, a lot of wealth was overstated – in other words, if your house’s true value is X but is valued by the market as X+Y (where Y is the overvaluation due to the bubble) then your assets are overstated by Y. You have less real wealth than you think you have.\n\nOn top of this people had easier access to credit because of loan securitization. This is where loans (mortgages mostly) are bundled together and sold on the stock market as tradable securities. In the past, banks wouldn’t lend to people who were credit risks because they didn’t want to lose their investment (traditional banking has a very low margin – Bank holds your money for interest and lends it for a slightly higher amount. All operating expenses and everything come out of the differences. Loan defaults are a real issue in this model – remember the old joke that banks would only lend money to people who didn’t need it?) But with securitization there’s less risk to the bank (or so they thought) as the bank is selling the loan off to the market. So these Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) were bundles of mortgages, most of which were low risk but with some risky ones peppered throughout. The ratings agencies gave them all high ratings even though there was a little bit of risk. Like a food inspector allowing only a few rat hairs in the sausage.\n\nOn top of this came Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which are Over The Counter (OTC) Derivatives that, for the sake of simplicity, are essentially insurance on loans. Look at it this way: Person A lends money to Person B at 5% interest. Person C comes along and sells a CDS to A at 1% offering to pay off the loan if B defaults. A is happy because he gets the loan at 4% risk free. C is happy because he gets 1% without having to pony up the cash to B. And B gets his loan. So then…\n\nHere’s where it gets messy. So now C can sell his CDS on the market (and bundle them up as CDO’s but that may be too advanced for a five year old) to Person D. And D can sell it to E and so on. Now, did you catch where I called them “Over the counter”? What this means is that they’re not traded on an exchange – they’re basically back of the envelope deals. And there was no agreement as to how to account for them on General Ledgers or how to price them. So you end up with a Lehman or AIG that is trading in many multiples of these and, well…\n\nBubble bursts. A lot of Person B’s start defaulting on their loans. All the C’s and D’s and E’s have to start ponying up the cash… Which leads to selling assets… Which leads to stock price drops… Which leads to lay off’s and more defaults and more CDS’s getting called and, well, you get the idea.\n\nI would argue that we’re not in a recession but a correction as the previous 8-10 years were all overstated but that’s not what you asked.\n\nTL/DR: Because of the bubble and loan securitization, people borrowed more than they could afford and the markets thought that it was all risk free when, in fact, the risk was peppered across everyone.\n"
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37g4tg | why is thunderbolt so expensive and why don't we see cheap chinese knockoff like with usb | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37g4tg/eli5_why_is_thunderbolt_so_expensive_and_why_dont/ | {
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"Maybe all the cheap Chinese operations that make the terrible knockoffs are getting contracted by Apple to make the actual adapters?",
"if I remember correctly thunderbolt is made by intel [this is the display port type, although you may be referring to lightning port (i-devices) which is the same answer anyways]\n\nBoth Apple and Intel have relatively new patents on these units, and with my personal knowledge on both these ports, they are oddly complex considering they are just plugs. Yes you could replicate them and there are some companies out there that do, however both apple and intel absolutely will be protecting their most valuable markets [EU, USA for example, which both tend to have good laws on patents and infringement], which means that these products are not coming in our market in much bulk, as that would get these two very large and lawsuit strong companies after the importer/sales groups based in these countries\n\nTLDR: Mostly 2 things, Apple and Intel are not people you want to fuck around with in specific areas in the world, and you are most likely living in one of those specified areas of the world"
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8qi92n | why air moves in planet earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qi92n/eli5why_air_moves_in_planet_earth/ | {
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"When the sun heats parts of the world, it causes the air in those parts to expand, causing movement. When air cools down, it contracts creating vacume. ",
"Air does move in a box! It just have to be a big box before you'll notice. \n\nThe reason is that hot air is lighter than cold air, so if one part of the box is heated faster than another part, the air at the hot part will start moving up, which leaves space for the cold air to move to the hot area, which lets air from above the cold area fall down, which lets the hot high air move there. \n\nHow fast the air moves depends both on how big the temperature difference is, and how far apart the hot and cold points are. All of this helps the entire box maintain approximately the same temperature. \n\nSame thing applies to Earth, except it gets a lot more powerful (and more complicated) since water vapour and the hot areas is even lighter than the hot air. The Sun heats the equator more quickly than the poles, so air starts trying to move between them only to take a wrong turn because Earth is spinning. \n\nIt heats land faster than water, causing the wind to blow one way during the afternoon and the other way during the evening if you're near the coast on a sunny day. "
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9q989w | we have free wifi on trains, ships, buses, metros etc. what makes it so difficult to have free wifi on airplanes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9q989w/eli5_we_have_free_wifi_on_trains_ships_buses/ | {
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"Demand plays a huge role: there is virtually no competition for data services in flight, so a airline can charge what they want.\n\nMost airline passengers who want/need the service could be willing to pay for it.",
"WiFi is based on radio signals, that are distributed by towers (cell towers). These are designed to transmit/receive along a vertical alignment, such that it increases the horizontal distance, but significantly decreases the vertical distance. Keep in mind, radio waves are mostly effected by the curvature of the earth (a radio horizon is only slightly further than the visible horizon). \n\nThis all to lead to, because cell towers are designed to provide a horizontal coverage, mobile data radio waves really don't travel above a given hight, let alone the 32k feet you're traveling at in an airplane. ",
"One reason is that the ways to get an internet connection to an airplane are more expensive than most other types of internet connections. Most in-flight internet providers use either a proprietary ground-based system (similar to a cell phone network, but with antennas aimed up instead of at the ground), or a satellite system. Both types of networks are really expensive to maintain and operate, and the ground-based systems have to be built just for airplanes.\nAnother reason is that the connection is usually pretty slow, so pricing can be used as a way to limit the number of people sharing that connection.",
"We might have wifi on all those modes of transport, but it is rarely free to the majority of the world. \n\nThe cruise I just came back from was AU$2/MB for cell-based wifi, or AU$134 for the ship's wifi for the 8-days. ",
"Saw a YouTube video explaining this a while ago. Basically planes are designed to be as light as possible and space is used as efficiently as possible. That means there isn't really spare space. Internet on planes are satellite based and as a result, require large antennas mounted to the top of the plane. With space so limited, often these antennas bulge out of the fuselage. Not only is this expensive to implement, but the aerodynamics of the plane become less efficient. That means you're burning more fuel for the same flight. That directly contributes to wifi prices being so high on planes.",
"It's the same reason why a glass of beer at a stadium costs $15. Supply and demand. Airlines have full control of supply, so any demand has to go through them. So they find a balance where they optimize profit, because they figure 80% of people who want to use it will pay *anything* for wifi in the air. And that means it's worth more than charging a cheaper price that maybe 100% of people who want it would pay for.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo it's not because it's hard, like your last question states. It's because this is how all business work. Less supply of a product in demand, higher costs.",
"On a bus or train, the wifi is backed by a cell tower. If you're underground in a metro, sometimes you can see little microwave cell antennas in the ceiling, being the cell. This little cell on the ceiling is in turn backed by a fiber line or something.\n\nShips are too far away from any cell towers. and airplanes are out of range vertically, though you can sometimes see towers on takeoff or landing, after they let you turn it back on but before they've climbed too high. These need to use communication satellites, which are much more expensive than cells, and you usually pay by the MB.\n\nMy guess would be that flights are usually a necessity, so neither customer nor airline wants to pay for anything they don't have to. Cruise ships, on the other hand, are luxuries, so they do things like 'free wifi' to make it seem more luxurious, then jack up the price of the ticket. "
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affvyu | can anyone explain why motion occurs if the reaction is opposite and equal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/affvyu/eli5can_anyone_explain_why_motion_occurs_if_the/ | {
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"I presume you're referring to Newton's third law? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? First of all, there's nothing in that law about motion. Motion might or might not occur in reaction to an action. It's all in the circumstances.\n\nWhen I put a 10 kg mass on the table, the weight pushes down on the table with a force of ten Newtons. The equal and opposite reaction is that the table pushes up on the mass with a force of 10 Newtons. That's an example of a reaction with no motion.\n\nBut if I am on a raft in the water and jump to the right, my feet push the raft to the left. That's an equal and opposite reaction involving motion.\n\nWhat's the difference? In the second example, the raft was free to move in response to the force.\n",
" > if the reaction is opposite and equal?\n\nBecause it is upon different objects. If I push a box, the box pushes me just as hard. But me and the box are not the same mass, and so the result of the push is not equal.",
"It boils down to definition of your system.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAn object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an OUTSIDE force.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nNewton's Third says that the object also acts upon that outside force, which means the outside force will also wind up with a change in motion.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf your system includes both parts of the newton's third law pair, then the SYSTEM as a whole experiences no change in motion. But individual components (subsystems) will have a change in motion.",
"Well although mathematics has generally said to have \"solved\" this, you should look up Zenos Paradoxes. For centuries people have argued, quite rationally, that motion does not occur at all, but it is an illusion. Or at least that is what Zeno was out to prove at the time. Kind of off topic, but at the same time completely on topic."
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4h4miv | how can cybercriminals like people behind ransomware stay anonymous when receiving money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h4miv/eli5_how_can_cybercriminals_like_people_behind/ | {
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"receive it in an international account that's opened in someone elses name in a country that doesn't require exorbitant security measures to identify the account holder. ",
"I don't know exactly how they did it in past years, but these days, they've started demanding money in bitcoin form. Bitcoin lends itself very well to anonymity, if done right."
]
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[],
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2k1upj | how or why did the look of success and health change from being fat in the 16-1800s to being trim and having muscles in the 1900s? | Basically I'm asking why I'm not considered hot anymore ;n; | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k1upj/eli5_how_or_why_did_the_look_of_success_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Before, it was too easy to under-eat. Now, it's too easy to over-eat."
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80l0l8 | how are people able to track hackers ie: where they are, who they are, etc | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80l0l8/eli5_how_are_people_able_to_track_hackers_ie/ | {
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"So how do you know you were hacked. Well you can look for unexplained behavior, for example in an election certain voting machines could have vastly different results from the onces from a different vendor. Or you could look at the log files which track everything that happens to a machine and see if anything weird happen there, unfortunately often the log files can either be deleted or altered by a hacker*.\n\nIf you find something in a log file you can try to see if it has an IP address in it and if it does you can see if that is where the hacker is. If the hacker used a proxy though odds are you are going to have to hope that that proxy kept logs (many don't because it really damages the user's privacy) and if they did you can see if they used another proxy or if that connects with their computer.\n\nIf you can't follow that trail of breadcrumbs you can also look at the exploit used. Different individuals and organizations developed different methods of getting into systems. Certain exploits are not publicly known but if you know that the Russians and the NSA know about them than you can reasonably expect one of them to be behind it. This is however not foolproof as some third party can have discovered the same vulnerability. You can also look for other hints such as the time the hack occurred (during working hours in what country?) what did they change (supported a pro Russian candidate?) etc. \n\nYou can also keep an eye out on individuals with high levels of computer skill in various countries and try to spy on them. If you spot them talking with the Russian government about hacking the US election then you know what that means.\n\nLastly if something was stolen(money, information) you can see who now has that something and link them to the hack that way. \n\n*If someone did delete his traces you can do forensics on the hard disks and hopefully recover parts of the logs but even that can be combated by using a secure erase program (which leaves it's own traces which can be erased ....).",
"It takes a lot of work to find out. Firstly there are a head and a tail for each connection. By following each of them, you will eventually reach the starting point. However, in real life, there will be too many traces and only one will lead you to the right path. Therefore, you will need more clues to find out. One way is finding the active time of the hacker. Hackers are people too. They have a working time so by finding out this information, you can get a rough timezone of them. Also, hackers sometimes make mistakes of forgetting to cover up their trace which gives out their location. Moreover, the avatar can give them away too. For example, your webname is WiggWamm on reddit and you will probably use this name in other forums. By mining all the record from someone call WiggWamm, you may dig out something useful.\n\nThere are much more to this. If you are interested, you can search DEFCON, which is a hacker conference, in discussing new hacker technique and some stories about why people got caught",
"This is part of digital forensics and is kind of like asking 'how do you know that this person murdered this other person without actually witnessing it?'.\n\nYou can narrow hacking down to \n\n1) Physical access - someone having access to the machine in order to clone the data to another device or crack it at the location\n\n2) Remote access - someone able to crack into a device via logging in from another location. The password can be cracked by acting as a man-in-the-middle (think wiretapping) or hash-cracking, exploits, 0-days (think lock picking)\n\n3) Exploiting bad code - bad sanitization (_URL_0_)\n\nThe way to track these people is by taking advantage of how they use the exploits and either de-anonymizing them via some method (comparing ISP logs with VPNs / other servers) or traditional methods (looking for motives and narrowing people down). If it is just one person this could be pretty hard to do, especially if there is no real motive except curiosity or mischief. If it is something bigger, the more people are involved, then the greater the chance you find someone who made a mistake, and the greater chance you catch someone who will talk (for a deal). ",
"Hacking is possible because the people who try to make it secure make mistakes.\n\nFinding hackers is possible for exactly the same reason. Maybe they forgot to delete a file. Maybe they tried to cover their tracks, but the logs they faked are inconsistent. Maybe they used a worm or virus that was never supposed to infect the public, but it did anyway. Maybe [their actions costed someone else](_URL_1_). Or one of any number of [other possible mistakes.](_URL_0_)",
"One of the reasons that every hacker seems to come from Russia is that Russian servers don't generally release user information, so the trail kind of dies there. So the smart thing to do is proxy through a Russian server before proxying elsewhere.",
"On the computer side, attribution is insanely difficult to do properly. Agencies have thousands of people working to track the big threats. Ultimately it comes down to behavior and pattern analysis to make a best guess. Someone can always be masquerading as another actor.\n\nThe other part is that you never rely on single source intelligence. Tracking the \"hack\" is unreliable at best. Having someone in a consulate steal documents like a memo from one military leader to another discussing the attack provides more reliability.\n\nFor average Joe hacker, the FBI doesn't just look at ISP logs. They confiscate his equipment and run forensics on it looking for multiple sources of proof.",
"So I have just finished studying computer security at university and whilst there we used a in house created index tool to track attacks that are picked up by a SOC (Security operation center) and categorise each attack. Essentially its a guide that guesses where the attack came from, what type of data it was aimed to gather and what type of attack was performed. \n\nWith this info you can normally make a pretty accurate educated guess as to where your end point of a VPN trail is. Then by using this index you can either create automated systems that block connections with the same type of index reading or limit their ability to perform their tasks. (Most attacks that are somewhat random are done by using automated code that scans and executes a variety of targets.) \n\nThere are ways that attackers can get caught but more often than not if a hacker is smart they will be hard to impossible to catch (think about a game of hide and seek where the attacker has millions of places to hide and the defender will only win if they correctly find the exact location). But for that reason alone it's more important to try cover your own data with layers of security rather than relying on catching the criminal after the fact. ",
"There are many possible avenues, all of them hard :-)\n\n* If you detect somebody malicious active in your network, you can try to track the source of the connections. If the attackers have poor operational security (\"opsec\"), you might be able to gleam something about their identity\n* If the attackers are active over a long period of time, you can try to correlate their active hours with working hours in a time zone\n* If the attackers use tools (and all sophisticated attackers do), you can analyze the tools, and correlate it with known uses of similar tools. Also, analyzing the tools gives you an idea how sophisticated the attackers are\n* If the tools use undisclosed security holes (\"zero-day exploits\"), you might be able to find (much later) later who found these holes, and who bought them.\n* If the attackers steal information, you might be able to track where this information surfaces\n* Sometimes, intelligence services have been able to hack security cameras of attackers, and have observed people doing the attacks life. Basically the only bullet-proof attribution. Same with moles in the attacking organizations.\n* Sometimes, you can make guesses based on who benefited from an attack\n* If the attackers left a message, you might get insights from linguistic analyses.\n\nMost of these attribution techniques only give hints, and wouldn't for example hold up as evidence in courts. But at least for private attackers, some of that might be enough to get you a search warrant, and hope to find some incriminating evidence during a physical search.",
"ITT people guessing and being full of shit. IMO /u/perlgeek has the most correct answer.\n\nTwo biggest giveaways is a tool may be used for many hacks. Once you figure out what the tool is/what it does, what hacks were executed by it and who may have owned the tool you'd have a pretty good idea who did what.\n\nAnother is information. If data/emails were stolen and some country sells/gives you a copy it isn't unreasonable to say that country or group was involved.",
"Review of logs are one method. What was done and when?\n\nMany hackers, particularly sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threats, have unique \"signatures\" not unlike a serial killer that might have a specific MO. This could be in what malware they use, what programming languages, and other elements.\n\nWe can use Stuxnet as an example of these. Stuxnet is largely attributed to US and Israel. Some of the same Stuxnet zero-day exploits were also used previously. This ties the Stuxnet attacker to those previous attacks based on use of similar malware.\n\nAdditionally when Stuxnet was reverse engineered, it was identified that most of the software development occurred during traditional business hours and never on weekends and holidays. This is more suggestive of Government workers on a regular business work schedule, instead of a global operation of multiple malware engineers in different time zones, or a lone individual that might stay up until 3am working on something."
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG9Cg_vBKOg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg"
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2b5hqy | why do my nipples get hard when i eat spicy food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b5hqy/eli5_why_do_my_nipples_get_hard_when_i_eat_spicy/ | {
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"text": [
"Wait, does this work for girls too?"
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2c46dx | what exactly are snipers doing when they adjust their shot for distance, wind, elevation, etc.? | I guess what I'm wondering: Say I'm a sniper. My target, facing due north of me, is 1000 feet away. I am at an elevation of 100 feet, while he is at an elevation of 10 feet. Winds are blowing at 25mph from the southeast. And I have to take recoil into consideration.
How do all of these factors calculate into how I adjust where my bullseye is aimed at relative to where the bullet is actually going to end up hitting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c46dx/eli5_what_exactly_are_snipers_doing_when_they/ | {
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"The elevation means that you may need to compensate for bullet drop, but giving you placement and their placement, the bullet drop would mean that you wouldn't need to compensate much since the bullet would drop the same as the elevation.\n\nIf the winds are blowing from the southeast, you need to aim towards the southeast so that the wind would carry the bullet into your target rather than passed him.",
"Ex-paratrooper's ex here, there's much more to what you think when sniping. For example, temperature and air pressure. The colder the weather, the lower the bullet hits; and thin air on top of a mountain will make your bullet go faster than on flat ground, thus the sniper will need to account on having less drop during the travel.\n\nThe gun barrel you use also fucks with your bullet as much as the rotation of the earth, so shooting east and west in identical conditions requires different methods.\n\nTo answer your question, what are snipers doing when they adjust their shot? Figuring out the coefficient of death(mathematics). So the next time you mess with your maths teacher, remember he is one of those people who has the potential to explode your head from 2414.02metres away.\n\nWith his finger.\n\nNext to your mom."
]
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2wtv68 | why does testosterone make you lose hair on your head, but gain it on your body. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wtv68/eli5_why_does_testosterone_make_you_lose_hair_on/ | {
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"IT makes it grow on your body because it start triggering the secondary sexual charactesics (body hair being amongst them) it makes you lose the hair on your head becasue it interacts with a gene carried on the x chromosome which controls the devolpoment of hair on the head. (note as most men have only a single x and a y if they get the bad gene they will basically express it, while most females are xx so they need two bad genes in order for it to be expressed) Soruce Bio major "
]
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[]
] |
||
4kxhrw | what's with all the crickets and grasshoppers in the usa? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kxhrw/eli5_whats_with_all_the_crickets_and_grasshoppers/ | {
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"text": [
"What's your question? Why are they here? Because each animal lives in a different climate. Crickets and Grasshoppers like the climate in the Eastern US. Go West of the Mississippi and you won't find crickets anymore.",
"Ecology is different everywhere. Ecosystems are different everywhere. The world is a big place!\n\nDo I wish I had hedgehogs in the back yard? Yes! Do I wish I didn't have starlings (introduced from Britain)? Yes!\n\nRegional specific stuff is what makes nature beautiful. I drove cross country and remember seeing ground squirrels on the other side of the Mississippi. Amazing. Groundhogs instead of woodchucks? Amazing! \n\nYou missed night peepers/spring peepers/tiny nocturnal frogs, which are a whole other sound.\n\nI once went to Costa Rica and saw lightning bugs in multiple colors, for the first time. Amazing. \n\nLife is different everywhere. that's why it is beautiful."
]
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72av5j | why do 'bionic' hands/arms have such stilted and unrealistic animations, when this creepy robot puppet can have such natural fluid motion? | Compare [this dancing...thing](_URL_0_), to what is apparently humanity's best attempt at creating a natural looking and functional [prosthetic limb](_URL_1_).
I get that the limb has to be functional (able to grip and hold objects without crushing or dropping them) and that the puppet is probably a very lightweight material such as styrofoam, but it seems like the servos powering the bionic limb should be able to be programmed with the same sort of inverse/forward(?) kinematic animations. Perhaps the puppet is using some sort of string/ligament system instead, perhaps giving it the naturalistic movement, but then why can't a functional limb be built around this system? What limitations are preventing such a realistic looking arm (at least in terms of behaviour) and is anybody actively trying to overcome these limitations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72av5j/eli5_why_do_bionic_handsarms_have_such_stilted/ | {
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"You effectively answered your own question - current development of artificial limbs is still mainly focused on making them functional, rather than addressing mostly asthetic issues such making their movement \"smooth\" or \"natural looking.\"",
"The robots movements are all computer controlled and preprogrammed. A limb is controlled by the user and has to make 100's of varying movements on the fly in real time, its the human/limb interface thats the problem, and yes alot of money is being poured into it. Just look at military research.",
"Cost is a factor too. The programming and engineering needed for making something functional and practical is one cost. Then there’s the programming and engineering needed to make it realistic and fluid, that would tack on the cost for people who need the limbs. There’s also the likelihood that you will sacrifice the former when including the latter. And people who need arms or hands would be better off with functionality than fluidity. "
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"https://i.imgur.com/FGErvCN.gifv"
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5x9ltx | why is a building called a building and not a built | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x9ltx/eli5_why_is_a_building_called_a_building_and_not/ | {
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"Linguist here! I'd say it probably has to do with the process element to it. You see it with other nouns - like how a painter creates a painting or a writer produces writing: a builder produces a building.\n\nIt's interesting though, I've never really considered WHY we'd refer to them in that way, but it fits the pattern of a bunch of other transitional activities, so I'd say it's probably just an offshoot of that.",
"As someone who's been building their own house for 4 years, it's because the job is never finished!"
]
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[],
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||
3ocs9k | how do neurotoxins work? | I know that they are bad for your brain (obviously) but what parts of the brain and how bad are they? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ocs9k/eli5_how_do_neurotoxins_work/ | {
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"**TL;DR Neurotoxins screw up the chemicals that nervous cells use to communicate, making them not work right. Depending on the chemical, this can do a whole bunch of different stuff.**\n\nFirst off, neurotoxins aren't just bad for your brain, they're bad for all neurons, which actually run all throughout your body. \n\nQuick refresher on how nerves work; a single neuron carries an electrical signal along its length. However, when you get to the end of the neuron, the signal can't continue onto the next on its own; instead, chemicals are released at the end of one neuron and detected by the next one, which then triggers a new electrical signal in that one. This gap is called the \"synapse\", and the chemicals released are called \"neurotransmitters\". \n\nMost neurotoxins operate at the synapse and do something to screw up the neurotransmitters. Take the legendary Sarin Gas, a truly nightmarish chemical weapon that is outlawed by the Geneva convention. See, when nerves in your muscles trigger a muscle contraction, they do so by released a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine into the synapse. As long as the next nerve fiber detects it, it will keep causing a muscle contraction. To allow your muscles to relax, there's another chemical in there that breaks down acetylcholine (called acetylcholinesterase), so that your muscles relax on their own unless another signal comes in to release more acetylcholine. \n\nWhat Sarin gas does is it basically attacks acetylecholinesterase, meaning that the acetylcholine released into the synapse stays there, continuosly triggering muscle contractions; your muscles literally can't relax. Spread through your body, this causes all your muscles to lock up in extremely painful contractions until you finally die of asphyxiation (you suffocate) because you can't exhale. \n\nThat's just one example. Different neurotoxins can do different things. Some prevent electrical signals from being fired at all, others result in signals firing when they shouldn't be. The various types and their affects are too broad to cover in a single ELI5 answer, but the [wikipedia page](_URL_0_) has some great information if you'd like to read more. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotoxin"
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|
ewtcct | who mops the floor in secret government facilities and bases? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewtcct/eli5_who_mops_the_floor_in_secret_government/ | {
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"Janitors are given the lowest security clearance but are usually given an unexpectedly large reign of being able to clean everywhere freely. Nobody ever expects a janitor to do anything.",
"I don't have personal experience, but I believe custodial staff that has been very heavily vetted. With security badges for in/out clearance and tracking, possibly with a search of some sort on entry/exit wouldn't be out of the question.\n\nI work in a chemical manufacturing facility with security precautions including a federal security card (TWIC). We have a normal custodial staff who all pass background checks and who all have passed the same security clearance I have to be allowed into the site.",
"Generally the lower ranks get assigned \"ash & trash\" duties in the military. Other than that, any civilian with a solid, clean record can get a security clearance."
]
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2haf6a | what is the crisis in the dc universe, and why did it change so many heroes/villains? | Right now I'm reading the pages for a few batman villains, but I noticed that many of them refer to "pre-crisis" and "post-crisis". What is this crisis, and why was it so significant?
For example: _URL_0_
It mentions infinite crisis during the post-crisis, but what other crisis could it be refering to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2haf6a/eli5_what_is_the_crisis_in_the_dc_universe_and/ | {
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"\"Crisis\" is a word with a long history at DC Comics. The *big* one, though is *Crisis on Infinite Earths* (*Infinite Crisis* was a \"sequel\" 20 years later; yes this can be confusing). I'll give the short of it in the next paragraph; if you want the full explanation, read on beyond that.\n\n*CoIE* was a 12-issue miniseries that had crossovers in just about every title DC was producing. It came about for a simple reason: DC's multiverse had gotten sufficiently complex that they felt it was confusing. So they wrote this big story that essentially rebooted everything into one universe. Besides cleaning up some things, it also meant they were able to make some changes. This is why you'll see \"pre-Crisis\" and \"post-Crisis\" in character descriptions; some things were true in the comics before *CoIE* that weren't true afterward. That's the simple explanation.\n\nNow here's the longer version, you want to really know why all this happened. It all started back in the late 1930s and early 1940s when DC started producing comics, with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and so forth. They had lots of other characters as well, such as Green Lantern and the Flash, but *not* the guys most people today would picture. Green Lantern had a magic ring that did *not* come from aliens, and Flash didn't wear spandex, he wore a metal hat with wings. This has retroactively been dubbed the Golden Age of Superhero Comics.\n\nIn the late 1940s and early 1950s, superhero comic sales dropped off as other genres became more popular. DC canceled all their superhero comics except for the ones starring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. But the genre eventually became popular again. In the late 50s, early 1960s -- the Silver Age -- they experimented with bringing back other characters... only this time they used some of the same names, but changed the concept. Flash was now the guy in spandex. Green Lantern now received his ring from a dying alien. The other guys had officially \"never existed\" in this new take. So far so good.\n\nBut something else happened about this time. The kids who had read the Golden Age comics were now old enough to get jobs *writing* the Silver Age comics. One of them was Gardner Fox, who got a job writing the Flash. And he was a fan of the *original* Flash. So he wrote a story called \"The Flash of Two Worlds\". Spandex-Flash ran fast enough that he vibrated into another dimension, and encountered Helmet-Flash. All of a sudden the Golden Age comics were now considered valid again, just in a different universe. The Silver Age universe was dubbed Earth-1, the Golden Age was dubbed Earth-2. Yes, the older was dubbed \"2\". You can start to see where confusion crept in.\n\nEventually it became a tradition that once a year, the main universe would crossover with another universe. The first was dubbed \"Crisis on Earth-2\", featuring the Justice League going to Earth-2 -- and the Justice *Society* going to Earth-1 in \"Crisis on Earth-1\". They soon started adding other Earths, such as Earth-3, where all the heroes were villains instead. When DC Comics bought out other companies, those characters would be placed on another Earth; the \"Shazam!\" family of comics from Fawcett Comics were put on Earth-S, for example.\n\nBy the 1980s, things had gotten to a point where the readers and even occasionally the writers would get confused. Remember Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and how they *didn't* get canceled? This meant that with their stories there wasn't always a clear guideline as to whether a particular story had taken place on Earth-2 (Golden Age) or Earth-1 (Silver Age). There was a Superman of Earth-1, and a Superman of Earth-2, and they were very similar, except Earth-2's was older. Then there were cases where a villain was a foe of one Earth's Flash but wound up fighting the other Earth's Flash, just because the writer forgot.\n\nDC's editors decided it was time to clean house, straighten things out, get down to having just *one* Superman, and bring all the characters they wanted to use into one universe. And along the way if they decided they wanted to make a particular change -- such as making Batman not know who the killer of his parents was -- they could. So they created their big event, *Crisis on Infinite Earths*, and through the story in that comic they destroyed their old multiverse and created a new universe.\n\n...But afterwards, they kept tinkering. *Crisis on Infinite Earths* was followed by *Zero Hour: Crisis in Time*, *Infinite Crisis*, *Final Crisis*, and *Flashpoint*. They've replaced their universe and multiverse multiple times. Figuring out what's relevant at any given time can require an encyclopedic knowledge.\n\n**TL;DR:** Read paragraphs 1 & 2; the rest is details on why.",
"The short version is this: The 'Anti-Monitor' was a huge scary villain that got powers from eliminating alternate universes. So he started blowing them up. The heroes stopped him. While in the midst of this, 'our' main earth got it's history shaken up a lot. \n\nPenguin did not change much due to 'Giant cosmic space battle affecting history'. To use another example, Jimmy Olsen, Superman's friend, had far fewer insane, unrealistic adventures and was simply treated as a hard working, trusted reporter/photographer. \n\nTL;DR: The 'Crisis' was an excuse for DC writers to have all their characters calm the hell down. \n\n"
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_(comics)"
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2d6rhf | how does a company like mcdonald's make their food taste exactly the same on such a large scale? | forgive my ignorance. but a bigmac has tasted the exact same in Maimi in 1999 as it does in LA in 2004. its always the same no matter the time or place. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d6rhf/eli5how_does_a_company_like_mcdonalds_make_their/ | {
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"Highly controlled food quality, highly controlled cooking process, highly controlled preparation.\n\nThat's one of their big selling points as a restaurant. It doesn't matter where you go... the food is the same. Not necessarily good (for you or otherwise) but its the same. A safe bet if you are new to the area.",
"Nothing is really actually made at whatever McDonald's you go to. It's all frozen, re-heated and assembled. There isn't much you can do to effect the taste as a McDonald's worker. \n\nYou can buy a Tombstone pizza anywhere in America, and it will taste the same when you \"cook\" it. ",
"A McDonald's franchise gets all of their ingredients from suppliers that the parent corporation licenses to produce them under tight scrutiny. The result is that the franchises are working with the same things, no matter where they are. Processes and procedures are also very tightly scripted, so the materials are treated the same way. When you start with the same materials and do the same things with them, you get unbelievably consistent results.",
"Say what you will about fast food, but it is consistent, and that's a big part of why it sells. You walk into any McDonald's and unless someone is screwing things up, you're getting the same meal in New York as you are in Texas, Florida, Montana, hell, even Paris, et al (regional menu differences aside, of course).\n\nI once watched some special on TV about chefs at McDonald's (I think, it was a while ago) and they said they often get a lot of crap for not being real chefs, but they just work under different conditions. Everything they make has to be easily recreated to exact specifications on a large scale to maintain that consistency, all while keeping prep time to a minimum. That is a hell of a skill if you really think about it.",
"Same ingredients + same recipe. Pretty straightforward, really.",
"The same way every box of Cheez-Its tastes the same. Kellogg has quality controls in place to ensure variation is confined to a very small range, to a point where it's undetectable to the human palate. ",
"Well the bigmacs and mcchickens in China taste different to the UK, I can tell you that much. In terms of the bigmac I couldn't tell you specifics as to what was different other than the patty was a lighter colour and seemed to have like sesame seeds in it or something if i recall correctly. The mcchicken though was pretty much a load of shredded chicken inside of that batter thing. ",
"It tastes quite a bit different in Germany. Also in France. I am not sure why. ",
"My dad is an executive for the company that makes almost all of the equipment in a mcdonalds kitchen. They spend a lot of time reviewing the processes and simplifying the steps it takes to create a given meal. They also make a lot of training videos and teaching aids that make it possible for even the most inexperienced person to be able to cook a hamburger. ",
"Ex employee here. We had very strict protocol on every single thing that we did. \nExamples: We had to salt the meat in a certain order, with a salt shaker that dumped the same amount of salt every time. The sauce pumps are also calibrated a certain way. Holding times are the same for every store. The buns and meat come from a distribution center. The equipment all comes from the same supplier. They have all the same advertisements shipped to them and so on...\nAlso, managers go to special training classes as they progress through the ranks. They are headed by corporate McDonalds which teaches them even more proper procedure and efficiency. They actually have a hamburger university that you have to go through before you even own or manage your own store.\nI think that the only real ways they vary are the special promotions they run, and they have certain places with novelty burgers or culture changes. Like in Hawaii, they have/used to have, a pineapple burger. In India they serve different meat because they really don't eat bovine. I guess they have goat meat in Afghanistan too.\n",
"Factory produced food, manufactured under precise controls. Then shiped to the franchise. Lots of added sugar. Industrial sugar is a cheap and adictive filler that conditions the consumer to seek more. The added sweetness masks slight unavoidable variations. Kind of like super sweet tea tastes esentualy the same.",
"As a former longtime employee of McDonald's, here's a rundown of exactly why it tastes the same everywhere you go.\n\nFirst off, the buns and meats are obviously going to be the same everywhere, just like your usual loaf or bread or pound of ground beef. It's not difficult to make that stuff 100% consistent.\n\nEveryday the grills are tested for consistency, multiple times. The grills cook both sides of the meat at the same time, and their temperature and time settings are changes as needed depending on how the grill is working that day. The grills are covered in removable Teflon sheets that get washed everyday and thrown out and replaced once they are worn out. Those sheets affect how well the grill cooks. So when lunch starts, every kind of meat is cooked and temped, and adjustments to the grill settings made if needed. This goes for fried products as well. They check again before the dinner rush, around 5 or 6.\n\nCondiment management. Everything is precisely measured, designed for speed and consistency. \n\nKetchup and mustard are applied with [this device](_URL_1_) which requires the flick of a button/lever to dispense an even spread and precise amount of ketchup and mustard in half a second.\n\nMayo, tartar, and Mac sauce (thousand island dressing) come in [cylindrical containers](_URL_0_) that fit into [this device](_URL_2_) which spits out an even spread of a precise amount of sauce each time you pull the trigger. (yes, it's basically a calking gun)\n\nSauces like BBQ, honey mustard, ranch, and the other newer sauces they have for special wraps and sandwiches are applied with just a squirt bottle similar to a diner style ketchup bottle. There's a specific pattern you're supposed to 'draw' on the food to get an accurate amount of sauce.\n\nDehydrated onions, slivered onions, and shredded lettuce are done by eyeballing. Pickles, crinkle pickles, red onions, leaf lettuce, bacon, and cheese are measure in simple units. 2 pickles for this, three red onions for that, etc.\n\nSo everything tastes the same because everything from the ground up is done exactly the same every where you go. Rigorous control, with rigorous enforcement. Yes, managers will get after you about putting 1 too many of anything on anything. No matter how small. They even require you to lay down meat on the grill in an exact pattern, in an exact order, and take it off the same way. This way, if you lay down meat and have to step away before its done, the replacement employee will take it off the exact same way you would have, meaning every piece of meat gets cooked exactly as long as it should.\n\nThere's a lot more I could say, but I'm very tired. All comes down to control control control.",
"They follow a recipe.",
"Here in Virginia, McDonald's quality has pretty much considered piss poor. The stores simply aren't taken care of. "
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3gur6n | how does police jurisdiction work? | Is there any truth to the idea that a police officer can't arrest you if you cross a state line or some other perimeter "outside" of their jurisdiction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gur6n/eli5_how_does_police_jurisdiction_work/ | {
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"Police generally cannot enter another jurisdiction with approval from that jurisdiction and perform any police actions.\n\nThis means that if you stab someone in New York City and flee to Miami, New York Police can't just chase you down the East Coast and arrest you. They can put out a warrant for your arrest that the Miami Police can arrest you under, or they can get approval from the Miami Police to go there and arrest you.\n\nBut jurisdiction rarely plays a role in something like that because in an active pursuit police can chase you almost anywhere within the country.\n\nJurisdiction plays a bigger role in investigations. As to whether it's a case for the Gang Detectives, or Drug Detectives, or Homicide, or whether it's a local case vs a state vs a federal case, whether it's ATF or the FBI that take the reins."
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2lwq0v | does a brown paper bag make any difference when it comes to us public drinking laws, or is that just a movie thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lwq0v/eli5_does_a_brown_paper_bag_make_any_difference/ | {
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"There are some states/areas where any alcoholic beverage must be in a bag according to state/city ordinance. Brown paper bags fit all the requirements.",
" > Does a brown paper bag make any difference when it comes ot US public drinking laws?\n\nIt makes a big difference when it comes to getting **caught**.",
"It eliminates probable cause. Technically an officer can't arrest and search you because you're drinking something out of a brown paper bag. An officer can still stop them under reasonable suspicion but most likely wont do so unless they're doing something else to cause a problem.\n\ntl;dr\n\nWithout the paper bag an officer is obligated to stop you. With a brown paper bag over the container a cop can stop you but isn't obligated to. ",
"the reasoning i always got from cop buddies is that bagged and your not being a problem what the point of wasting their time ,out in the open kids are gonna see its an image problem that they gotta take care of",
"There is a scene in the wire that explains this. The theory posited is that it gives cops the ability to turn a blind eye. Otherwise they would spend all their time dealing with what is relatively a non issue today. ",
"In Texas the act of consuming an alcoholic beverage in public is perfectly legal.\n\nHowever the display of the consumption of an alcoholic beverage is illegal.\n\n_URL_0_",
"In a lot of states, there are laws against public consumption. You can get around not being allowed to consume alcohol in some areas by making it not visibly alcohol. To a passing kid, it could be orange juice in your bottle, so you look like less of a vagrant?\n\nIn Colorado, the same law applies to pot. If you don't bring a child-proof bag when you go to a store, you're usually required to buy one there so it's not visible in public (on the way to your car), even though everyone knows what it is.\n\nEdit: Also, in some places like Florida and Georgia, you can order a drink to go (even at some drive throughs), but if you walk around in public with it, it has to be in a clear plastic cup.",
"got a long look by a cop once, as I was walking by him while openly drinking a bottle of Sioux City sasparilla soda... Of course, this was near the Univ. of Washington. "
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2cvky0 | how big do waves in the middle of the ocean actually get? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cvky0/eli5_how_big_do_waves_in_the_middle_of_the_ocean/ | {
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"5m height (so 10m peak to valley) is quite common, but since there are many different sized waves traveling at different speeds, sometimes they come together and you get a brief but very large wave. These [\"rogue waves\" can reach 20-30m in height](_URL_1_).\n\nSome things like [high speed ferries make rogue waves more common](_URL_0_) because they produce soliton waves (they're mentioned in the article, but going into the details would take a while).\n"
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5yyns6 | - why do boxers and other top sports stars have, and listen intently to, trainers and coaches that never reached their level? | I'm talking Tiger Woods, Mike Tyson, Messi, many others - listen intently and obeying trainers who, if you look at THEIR careers, did WORSE than the person they're training! Simply, why are the stars even bothering? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yyns6/eli5_why_do_boxers_and_other_top_sports_stars/ | {
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"Just because they didn't have the ability doesn't mean they didn't have the mind for it. It's the same reason many MLB managers were backup catchers and NFL head coaches were backup QBs. They learned the sport but never had the skill set to match their mind.",
"Understanding and execution are two different things. I for instance understand and can teach you how to use music production software. I've had friends take my knowledge and produce things I could only dream of.",
"It's alot about time; once you've been around a sport for 20+ years you begin to understand that sport to a new heightened level even if you were only active for 10 of those years. For instance, Larry Bird can most definitely train Russell Westbrook. Even though Russ is far superior to Bird; Bird has just been around the sport for so long that he knows more about it and it's inner workings.",
"There are multiple things that go into being a superstar in any field. The superstar is someone who can combine all these things. Their trainers will often have specific skills in one particular area but not the whole package. Moreover they will have skills that make them a good trainer that is not necessary for being a superstar. \n\nI'll give you an example from MMA. Even though they have a primary skill A MMA fighter needs to have training in a wide variety of disciplines to compete. Moreover, the MMA fighter doesn't need to be the best in the world at any one particular thing. They may have a boxing trainer, a judo trainer, a jiu jitsu trainer in addition to a strength and consitioning trainer. Each of these people may have never been in a MMA fight but they understand that component very well. \n\nA trainer may also be someone who understood one part of a game very well but didn't have other gifts that allowed them to compete. Maybe they got injured or didn't have the requisite size or athleticism. Example: Kevin Long is the Mets hitting coach even though never played in the major leagues. He was by all accounts a good hitter in the minor leagues but he injured his wrist and decided to retire. Of people good at hitting he seems to be really good at coaching other players. People who work with him seem to all praise his coaching ability. Often people who were superstars make horrible managers because they had all the natural talents and don't know how to connect with any player or competitor who didn't. \n\nI'll give you one last example from my life. I taught myself computer programming and computer science and I'm a software engineer for a living. I studied math in college (for reasons) and I was decent at it but decided not to go to grad school for math. I would never ever be a superstar in either field. It I'm waaaay better at computer programming than I am at math. I'm a bunch better teacher at math than computer science. I couldn't even tell you how I learned how to code, i just got a book and did it at 9 years old. I can absolutely guide you through learning calculus, set theory, linear algebra and a few other fields of math. If you need someone to teach Calculus I'm not a bad choice because it didn't come naturally to me at 9 the way programming did. On the other hand I know plenty of peofessors who studied way more math than I did who can't teach for shit. They are brilliant, they know the material but they don't know what to do when someone doesn't get something as simple as Calculus without trying. \n\nThe only superstar I would reliably say should teach Calculus (though I imagine there are others) is a superstar in physics, Richard Feynman. ",
"Teaching/training others is a skill on its own.\nExperience is a great way to gain knowledge on a subject but there are other ways as well.\n\n",
"Athletes have to train/practice. In the case of team sports, they also have to play with teammates and run schemes/plans/plays. A gifted player is not necessarily a great designer of plays. In individual sports, a trainer can help with specific issues in a player's game (like Tiger's swing messing with his back) and with strategies. Again, even if a player is a better athlete, they do not necessarily have as much knowledge or experience as the coach/trainer. Also, it is easier to work at your craft if you have someone to hold you accountable.",
"Being good at something doesn't mean you understand why you are good at it or what you can do to get better at it. That's what coaches and trainers are for. They don't personally need to be able to perform at a high level to have knowledge of what is required to do so.\n\nTo give a sports example, let's say you can suddenly throw a baseball 90 mph. That's great but how do you do it in a way that you can control where the ball goes? How do you throw even faster? You need coaches and trainers to tell you and they can obtain that knowledge independent of actually throwing a ball themselves.\n\nNow certainly some athletes are more self-aware than others of what they are doing or knowledgeable about biomechanics and physiology but even then there are going to be specialists (coaches and trainers) who know more or can provide a different perspective (since there is more than one way to be successful at an athletic activity).",
"Being good a coaching usually does not correlate with being the best at the sport. It is usually harder for someone naturally gifted at the sport to teach someone that sport. Allot of really talented players don't like to be told what to do but most of them don't reach the top due to this.\n\nAllot of times when your naturally skilled at something you don't need to use proper technique since your raw skill is so much better then your average persons skill. When you are the average person you are forced to learn the techniques at a much higher level to compensate for your lack of ability compared to more skilled competitors. This lets you have a much more advanced understanding of the technique. The talented person who relied on raw skill to win at lower levels of competition may start to struggle as the competition reaches higher levels as the competitors now all either have better techniques or also have more raw talent. \nThis is where a good coach can really help make a star with allot of raw talent into one of the best in the world by helping him improve with his more advanced understanding and knowledge. \n\nLets take for example Mike Tyson in boxing. Some good qualities to have in boxing include Punching power Stamina Speed Resilience. The trainers job is not to be better then Mike at those thing but to teach him how to use those qualities better and get even better at the things he excels like teaching him better footwork to allow him to use his power and speed more often.\nThe trainer will also analyze and try to correct holes in his game. For example maybe Tyson always circles to the right after throwing a jab which leaves him open to counters. The coach correct that making him get hit less often.\nThe trainer can also show him subtle things like foot position or slight deviation in hand movement that will make him punch even harder and faster.\nAnother aspect the trainer can help the athlete with is to keep him focused on his training diet lifestyle etc.\n\nOnce the athlete realizes how many times the trainer is right and the benefits the trainer has to his game and how much better he is performing after following their advice they will put their trust into them and start obeying listening to them.",
"Coaching is about imparting knowledge and observing behavior and correcting errors/giving improvements to it. It is not about transferring personal experience that someone has had. ",
"Being knowledgeable about something and being able to do something are distinct things. Ever hear \"those who can do, and those who can't teach?\" While that's unnecessarily dismissive of teachers, there's an element of truth. \n\nA coach may have excellent knowledge, and great training routines, but perhaps not so physically gifted to be a successful athlete. The athlete doesn't care about the coaches success or lack thereof as an athlete. Only the knowledge matters.\n\nThere are a lot of things in this world I can understand, and even teach, but not do myself. Heck, for many things no experience whatsoever is necessary. A coach need never even be an athlete to be successful. Just good at making athletes perform better.\n\nPlus, lots of great athletes are crap teachers. The reverse is true too: just because someone is good at doing something doesn't mean they'd make a good teacher.",
"Do you think Einstein never had a science teacher?",
"Because the ability to coach is different than the ability to perform at a high athletic level. \n\nBeing a top athlete, first and foremost, requires you to win the genetic lottery and have natural athletic talent. There are plenty of people who were just as good as top stars and worked just as hard, but they were a few inches too short, a few steps too slow, or got hurt at the wrong time. They fact they didn't make it as big doesn't mean they know less.\n\nIn fact, superstars have a pretty poor track record as coaches. When you solved most of your problems by being bigger and stronger and faster than everyone else, you don't have much to offer the average player. It is the player who had to make the most of their lesser talents who understand the game well enough to be coaches. If you look at the NFL, there aren't many great QBs in the coaching ranks...there are a whole lot of backups, though.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"A lot of things are necessary to be a good coach. Here's a short excerpt: \n\n1) Have a great understanding of tactics. A coach has to look on a match \"from above\", not from the point of view of a single player.\n\n2) Be a motivating factor. Some people just have some kind of aura, which inspires people. They find the right words for every situation. Are you on the loosing side in the first half of a soccer-match? \n\nA good coach will find the right words during the break to inspire the players. \n\n3) Have some game experience. \n\nWhile point 3 is definetely an important aspect, it's not the deciding factor. Point 2 & 3 are far more important. Some good coaches just aren't as mechanically gifted as Messi, thus they're not able to play in the first league. Furthermore, a coach has to keep an eye on the **entire team**. It's not about knowing the movements of a single player, he's got to build a cohesive unit. \n\nIn the end, I want to present two highly successful coaches, who never played in \"top-teams\" and played in the second league of soccer for the majority of their active career. \n\n**[Joachim Löw](_URL_0_):** He played some seasons in the first league of german soccer, but for the most part he played for SC Freiburg in the second league. He's among the most successful coaches in the game. During his time coaching the german national team, he was always at least in the semi finals of the big events from 2008-2016, once winning the world cup. ( Eurocups & Worldcups )\n\n**[Jürgen Klopp](_URL_0_):** As active player, Jürgen Klopp never played in the first league of german soccer. He was playing for teams in the second league for the most part. Despite his \"subpar\" playing experience, he became a very good coach. As trainer, he managed to win the german cup, the german league and reached [the final of the Championsleague Season 12/13](_URL_1_). It's the most prestigious cup in europe.\n\nA mechanically gifted human will make a good player, a tactician will make a good coach. \n\nSome soldiers of Napoleon were probably better in wielding a gun than the french emperor, yet Napoleon was the best at guiding his troops to victory. ",
"Simple answer: It isn't all physical. Any naturally gifted athlete can fall very short if not even actualize thier potential completely without mental toughness, motivation, and discipline that only a serious trainer or workout buddy can provide. \n\nPractice sucks and it's easy to quit. ",
"I'm a current performance manager for a very reputable sports team, where the competition is renowned world wide.\n\nMy role covers a vast majority of areas, working with athletes from as young as 16 through to full-time international quality professionals. At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I work with the elite in the professional game.\n\nI have played rugby union to a reasonable level, where I was paid a very small amount (beer money whilst at university). I am by far a professional player or coach and I do not even work on the sport I was once paid a small amount.\n\nMy job is centred around sports science, medicine, psychology and technology. My role is focused on the strategic development of athletes from junior level through to senior. I have developed performance frameworks for long term athletic development (LTAD), systems for athlete physical development, predictive analytics for risk of injury, predictive analytics of match outcome and how to improve performance by informing coach decision making plus more.\n\nNow that all the above is out of the way I'll explain why top level athletes listen to people like myself.\n\nThey are the product. Without them we have no sport. However, talent only gets you so far and only keeps you in an elite level for a short amount of time. Everybody has areas that they can improve upon and some of which may be something as simple as making changes to their sleep habits to improve their sleep hygiene, so that they have improved sleep duration and sleep quality. This one area would have a huge impact on recovery from training and also for the ability to improve cognitive development. This minor change will have a positive impact on their training levels, ability to be receptive to feedback, process new techniques and also to recover.\n\nThe way you receive athlete buy in is by explaining the techniques you will use, how it will improve them and then show the progress whilst they are performing the technique. Athlete (the best ones especially) have a growth mindset and will want to continually develop. If you engage them with this information and make them part of the ongoing process they will buy into the need for you to be around.\n\nThis is a very basic example, but I would be willing to share more if people would like."
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ul5el | please eli5: corporate raiders | I dont understand how they make money by taking companies private, buying buying a big stake in a given company.
Thanks for the responses it makes a lot more sense now!
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ul5el/please_eli5_corporate_raiders/ | {
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"Well, it's possible for someone to take a company private and then manage it better, thus making a profit.\n\nBut if you're talking about corporate raiders, normally these are people who are more interested in short-term profits than the long-term future of the company. There are different ways they can make money, but the simplest is to have the company borrow lots of money and pay the borrowed money to the raiders. Then, the raiders sell the company, and the debt travels with the company.\n\nSo for instance, a corporate raider buys XYZ corp. XYZ corp borrows 100 million dollars, then pays that money to the corporate raider in the form of dividends. Then, the corporate raider does a lot of short-sighted work to make XYZ corp look better than it is (for instance, firing people to cut expenses and therefore make profits look bigger.) Once they have XYZ corp looking kind of attractive, they sell XYZ corp to someone else (back to the public in an IPO, or to another investment group.)\n\nBecause XYZ corp was the legal entity that took out the loan, the 100 million dollar debt travels with them. So the corporate raiders get to keep the money that was borrowed, and XYZ corp is stuck with the debt.\n\nDoes that make sense?\n\nLet's say ",
"Let's say your friend has a lemonade stand and he also owns a lemon tree, which gives him the lemons for the stand. He makes $5 per day. \n\nAnd let's say in the neighborhood, businesses that make $5 per day usually sell for around $100.\n\nNow a corporate raider comes along. He decides to buy the business (the stand and the tree). He pays $100.\n\nThen he cuts down the tree and sells the wood. On that day, he makes $500.\n\nOf course, that means no more lemonade. But the raider doesn't care--he sells the business, and he can sell it for a high price because he can show that it's making $500 a day (even though it only did that on one day).\n\nBy the time the people who buy it realize they've been cheated, the raider is on to his next raid.\n\n(Taking companies private, by the way, is something that raiders *may* do, if it makes sense in that case, but it's not an essential part of the game).",
"They make money by taking companies that are being managed inefficiently (not acting in the best interests of the shareholders). In some cases acting in the best interests of the shareholders could mean tearing apart the company, firing employees, or more specifically, executives would lose their jobs. Even though the methods of the corporate raiders seem harsh, they are essentially preventing the company from throwing money away. You can argue that it is not worth the jobs lost, but then you've entered into a political debate (capitalism vs. communism/socialism)."
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7drpus | in english language, why some words use ‘more’ for comparative form instead of directly suffixing ‘-er’ with the word? | E.g. why ‘more beautiful’ and not ‘beautifuller’? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7drpus/eli5_in_english_language_why_some_words_use_more/ | {
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"The convention is based on the length of the adjective, in syllables.\n\nOne syllables: -er\nOver two syllables: more \nExactly two syllables: it varies",
"The reason *why* a language does anything is always \"because that's what the speakers of that language started doing a long time ago\". In this case, the -er suffix has been around in one form or another since Proto Indo-European, which is the common ancestor of almost all the languages in Europe, and also those of Iran and India. I can't really find how we ended up with two different strategies for making comparative adverbs, but I can tell you that the word \"more\" started as the -er form of the word that would end up being modern \"much\". That is, \"more\" is essentially a corruption of \"mucher\"."
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100ae7 | drinking hard liquor before beer and not getting sick. | I hear this all the time, but I can never make sense of it. Even if I drank two or three beers then had a few shots, wouldn't it all just get mixed in my stomach anyway? If I do drink a few shots or mixed drinks before having some beer, I don't feel bad later that night or the next day. I'm wondering if I'm just tricking myself into feeling better or if there's actually something behind it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/100ae7/eli5_drinking_hard_liquor_before_beer_and_not/ | {
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"Drunk people do not make good decisions. So if you're drinking liquor after you're already drunk off beer, you might think something like \"FIVE MORE SHOTS WOOOOOOO\" is a good idea. If you're drinking beer after you're already drunk off liquor, \"FIVE MORE BEERS WOOOOOOO\" may still seem like a good idea, but you hopefully won't be able to drink them as fast, and you'll start puking before you get to the point of a massive hangover the next day. (In addition, massive amounts of beer have much more water, which helps counteract the dehydrating effect that leads to hangovers.)",
"It's a myth. What's important is how much alcohol you drink, not what order you drink it in. \n\nThe idea behind it is that if you're a little drunk already, it's a lot easier to go overboard if you're taking shots instead of drinking beers... taking 4 shots is a lot easier than drinking 4 beers, especially if you've been drinking. I know a guy whose motto is \"six shots and then coast on beer\" and it seems to work for him pretty well. It's almost impossible to \"coast\" on shots.",
"The way I've always understood it has to do with the rate at which it is absorbed by the stomach and into the bloodstream. Keep in mind that this is all about having multiple drinks over a longer period of time, rather than just hammering a bunch of random stuff all at once. Numbers are also given only for example, not as a true measure of anything. \n\nIf you start with liquor, it gets absorbed rapidly. It enters your bloodstream, passes the blood brain barrier, and begins to impact your awareness very quickly. You also feel the full weight of the alcohol much sooner, as the alcohol mostly all hits at the same time. When you're 3 drinks in, you feel it early, and can generally already tell you're starting to feel something. Lets say you then switch to beer. At this point, you have three drinks worth in your blood, and you're adding 3 drinks to your stomach. \n\nYour body processes alcohol out at the same rate, no matter what format it's in, so it's already started reducing the alcohol level in your system. Since beer digests slower, and the alcohol is tied up in all the other stuff in the beer, there's a slower release of alcohol from the 3 beers. While that's entering your bloodstream, your body is already eliminating some of the hard alcohol, and you end up having a much softer curve of the amount of alcohol in your blood.\n\nNow lets switch it. Drink 3 beers first. The same is still true of the beer, it has to be digested, meaning that the start of the curve is much slower. You're an hour in and still not feeling it yet, so you decide to have three more liquor drinks. Unfortunately, your body hasn't absorbed all the alcohol from the beers yet, and you hit it with another massive spike of readily absorbed alcohol. Suddenly, the level takes a huge jump all at once and your body can't react as well to it. \n\nEven after absorbing all of the liquor, it's possible the beer still hasn't fully digested yet, and your BAC will continue to rise, even after you know you're well beyond your tolerance point. Cue possible toxicity. \n\nThere are things you can do to mess around with this: Eating starchy foods is one of the biggest. Starchy foods absorb alcohol, meaning that hard alcohol will take longer to absorb, and the spike won't happen as early or strong.\n\nOne other aspect to this really is the psychological difference in choices made by people drinking Hard A first (Feeling it early means slowing down to make sure you don't go too far) vs. Beer first (I don't feel it yet, so I should drink more!) and when the BAC curve hits its peak."
]
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2wsmuv | how do lawyers know which court cases to look for? | Simply put, how do lawyers search up the precedents relating to their case? There are thousands of court cases, they surely can't memorize all of them. So how do they find out which previous cases are related to theirs? Do firms have a room where they keep a copy of all the cases in history? Or is there like search engine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wsmuv/eli5_how_do_lawyers_know_which_court_cases_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cotqezi"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There are two main search engines which have full records and are annotated for easier searching. They can be expensive or very expensive to use, but that is the fastest search method early on.\n\nOnce you get into a carrear, you know the key terms, you know the key cases, in the area you work on. Most lawyers are specialists, so they don't need to know a ton about most areas of the law, just in the area they practice in. So a criminal defense attorney may know forwards and backwards the case law on assault, but have no idea what to do in a contract dispute. Once you know the key cases in your area, you need a lot less research (and if you are in a large practice, you can call on the wisdom of other lawyers in the practice to help fill in gaps).\n\nFor example, I worked at a firm for a time and was asked to help on a class action case. I knew some of the law about the underlying type of case, but had never worked on a class action before. The partner on the case told me to talk to another lawyer in the firm because \"he's our class action guy.\" I could have done the research, but because we had him I had no need to."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
a096zr | what makes something beautiful? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a096zr/eli5_what_makes_something_beautiful/ | {
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"text": [
"I watched a video about this a few months ago, searched a bit and found it for you :) I remember it making a lot of sense to me, and it's animated beautifully so that's a nice plus.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's interesting and very difficult question you ask. Aesthetics is actually one of the primary branches of philosophy (up there with truth, knowledge, and language. "
]
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[
"https://youtu.be/-O5kNPlUV7w"
],
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||
681kh7 | why do dads tend to leave their family more than moms ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/681kh7/eli5_why_do_dads_tend_to_leave_their_family_more/ | {
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"A male can father a huge number of children by leaving one mate and getting another. A female cannot do this. So evolution favors a male who moves on, while granting no special advantages to a female who moves on.",
"I would look at it from different perspective. many marriages doesn't go as planned and a lot of them ends in divorce. When it comes to divorces law enforcement is bias to fathers, preferring keeping mothers with their children over the father. This leads to a lot of man getting partial custody over kids.",
"Your assumption or framing is wrong. Women initiate 70 percent of divorces. The figure is higher still where younger children are involved. _URL_0_\n\nI have never seen data on why men are most likely to leave what is the family home. I'm confident it would be a significant majority of cases. ",
"Because traditionally during divorces women have a greater chance of retaining custody of the kids.",
"It is very very hard for a man to get custody of the children. He basically has to prove that the mother is incompetent and the children staying with her will be harmful to the kids. \nI have known a couple of fathers who were able to go this and a few who weren't able to prove this even though the kids were much worse off than if they lived with the father.\n\nThis is just a guess but I'd day the fathers leave because it's easier to find a place to live for a single person than it is for a parent with a child or more. At least if he leaves he knows his children still have a roof over there heads. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-resilience/201508/women-initiate-divorce-much-more-men-heres-why"
],
[],
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] |
||
8zqxxu | how did we get the term for a magazine and didn’t just refer to them as a book? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zqxxu/eli5_how_did_we_get_the_term_for_a_magazine_and/ | {
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"“Magazine” originally meant “storehouse” or something fairly similar (sort of how gun magazines *store* bullets). The way we use it now comes from one of the very first magazines which was called the “Gentleman’s Magazine” (i.e. the “Gentleman’s Storehouse [of knowledge]”). The word spread and now we pretty much only use it to refer to periodicals, rather than the original meaning (with a few exceptions such as in the military).",
"The term came from a printed list of military stores and information, being literally a store of information. It originated from French while \"book\" is Germanic in origin and refers to pages bound together. The difference between the modern usage makes sense because magazines are mostly just folded together while a book has a stiffer cover and more robust binding."
]
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[],
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||
3q6kx5 | why do we measure economic success based on growth, rather than other metrics? | In many parts of the world, we are taught that growth is the #1 indicator of a health economy. Why is this? Aren't there other metrics that would better define a country's health? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q6kx5/eli5_why_do_we_measure_economic_success_based_on/ | {
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"text": [
"There are a few reasons. \n\n1. Changes in economic growth are correlated with really dramatic changes in the economy. Negative growth is strongly correlated with widespread unemployment \n\n2. Related to number 1, we know what to do to if economic growth fails. We can run deficits, or lower interest rates. It's one of the few aspects of the economy economists have done a pretty good job figuring out. \n\n3. It's a good measure of the maximum a country and its government can 'do.'. It started when the US joined WW2, as the government needed to know how much industrial output they had, so they could figure out how much could be directed to the war effort. Today, tax revenues are strongly correlated to GDP. More GDP means more tax revenue, which means more things like school books without taking away from anything else. \n\n4. Related to the above, it is a pretty good measure of how much 'stuff' is out there. And I like stuff. I have a lower-middle class lifestyle, and I hope my daughter has opportunities for a better lifestyle. If there was no economic growth, her better lifestyle would be at someone else's expense. \n\n5. Because of all those reasons, it gets a lot of attention for secondary reasons. People looking at mortgages or who own homes like to know what interest rates are doing. People who own houses and stocks like to know what they are doing. Politicians promise X and expected GDP growth influences if they're going to be able to keep that promise. So it gets a lot of media attention. \n\nAll this said, we need to view it critically, and realize it doesn't tell the whole story. Health, education, environmental issues, economic mobility and inequality are among the factors that are not captured by the indicator. It is a useful tool for what it does, but it doesn't do everything.\n\nTl;Dr - GDP growth is something we know how to measure pretty well, and something we know how to influence at least in the short term. It also helps us give things to people without taking things away from others. \n\nThat said, there are a lot of other factors that we need to keep in mind. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
6q455w | how do the ubiquitous 'cardboard' milk cartons not leak the milk everywhere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q455w/eli5_how_do_the_ubiquitous_cardboard_milk_cartons/ | {
"a_id": [
"dkucxnr"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They are lined on the inside with plastic. The plastic layer is impermeable to milk and that's why the carton doesn't leak."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
ahvqiu | in what way do our troops actually keep us free? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahvqiu/eli5_in_what_way_do_our_troops_actually_keep_us/ | {
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"Im going to assume you are a U.S citizen, and will be answering this question under that assumption.\n\nThey dont. The United States has very rarely been under any threat that would impact the lives of those living in the U.S. The last time there was even the slightest chance of any threat to the U.S government was WWI when Germany tried and failed to get mexico to invade the southern U.S. Honorable mention goes out to the entirety of the cold war, and Pearl harbor in WWII. \n\nA more accurate statement would be that Soldiers protect the U.S vested interests abroad. Usually this is of a financial nature, because wars generate a lot of money, but other times its simply to gain soft power in a region. \"well help you fight this war and you help us fight this other war\" kind of deal. Theoretically we could pull out of every major conflict that we are currently in and the impact state side would be mostly limited to economic down turn, because wars make a lot of money. Of course, we probably shouldn't do that because the a good deal of the middle east and part of central Africa would likely collapse. ",
"I’m going to assume your question is for the US, different countries have different priorities and approaches. Right now there aren’t any wars directly threatening the US so military engagements are mostly to keep it that way. The overall idea is to keep hostile countries from gathering enough military strength to attack the US, like Russia or China. So we’ll often intervene in areas that could shift the global power in someone else’s favor. Also a lot of people think the US should step in to stop major human rights violations but that’s a really debatable subject with very different and very strong opinions on both sides so I won’t go there.\n\n[This](_URL_0_) is a good article to read about it!",
"They don't. Rather than defend our own country they tend to be on the offensive in spreading or upholding contemporary imperialism usually at the behest of invested capitalist interests (Vietnam, Central and South America, Iraq, etc...)\n\nAll the defend our freedom rhetoric is just nationalist propaganda."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/freedom/howe-military-and-freedom.html"
],
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||
ev9eta | what are servers, networks, services and clients? | Simple definitions and how these concepts are related are hard to come by! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ev9eta/eli5_what_are_servers_networks_services_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"ffuau9o"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"* server -- a computer that sits around waiting for clients to connect from multiple locations\n* client -- a program used to connect to a server\n* service -- what the server does for the client\n* network - the wires, radio waves and intermediary compuiters that connect the client and server together\n\nGoogle has a bunch of computers that act as servers in data centers all over the world. Your browser is a client that requests various web-based services from Google. Your client communicates with Google's servers through wires, fiber optics, WiFi, cellular signals routers, switches, modems, and other computers."
]
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[]
] |
|
1jcx87 | what happened at the end of the dragon ball series? | From what I heard there are two endings, one is the one where Goku is going to train Uub. The other is where he watches Goku Jr. at the tournament. I need an explanation because my mind isn't capable of grasping the idea. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jcx87/eli5_what_happened_at_the_end_of_the_dragon_ball/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbdfyuo"
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"text": [
"To clarify, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT are three distinct series and the ending you are describing with the character \"Uub\" is the end of the Dragon Ball Z series. Goku Jr. is a character not introduced until Dragon Ball GT.\n\nAfter the defeat of Kid Buu in the Buu Saga:\n\n\"At the World Martial Arts Tournament, the Z Fighters meet a ten-year-old boy called Uub. This boy is the reincarnation of Kid Buu, born from the wish Goku made before killing Kid Buu. Goku asks Majin Buu to change the numbers so Goku would be matched with Uub. Goku and Uub begin to fight and it is clear that Uub has great potential. As they fight, Goku mocks Uub several times to see his true potential, which works. Goku cuts the match short by suggesting he train Uub. Goku asks Uub if after he is trained they can have a rematch. \n\nUub agrees and Goku feels excited, with the challenge and with the chance to become stronger. Before leaving once again, Goku bids farewell to his family and friends, and tells Vegeta that he looks forward to another fight. Although the tournament is technically suspended because Goku and Uub did not finish their match, Trunks, Goten and Pan spar, with Pan defeating Goten, and Trunks holding her arm in victory. The series ends with Goku and Uub flying towards their destination. \"\n\nThis was taken from Dragon Ball Wikia: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Kid_Buu_Saga"
]
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|
4rs3x7 | how does the american highschool system work and how difficult it is? | Im a recent immigrant from the philipines (Am half british. 15 years old. Dad moved to america cause of work. He is originally from wales. I lived with my mom in the philipines for 15 years before moving here.) And im curious to know how the highschool system here works and what you need to do when you first enroll in a highschool here in America | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rs3x7/eli5_how_does_the_american_highschool_system_work/ | {
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"High school in the US is grades 9-12. In general you will be 14 at 9th grade and you will be 18 when you graduate. \n\nIf you are going to public school (In the US that is the government run schools) then you will be assigned a school district based on where you live. Sometimes if you live at the border of a school district you will get a choice. You also have the choice to go to a private school. \n\nWhen you are enrolled you will be given a list of what you need to buy for your classes, you will be told if you are allowed to have a backpack (some schools ban them). \n\nYou will need to get more specific in your questions if you want more specific answers. ",
"It's sort of difficult to generalize the American school system because a lot of specifics vary state-by-state and city-by-city. In general, high school is 4 years starting somewhere between 13 & 15 so you're at the age where you'd be in your 1st ('freshman') or 2nd ('sophomore') year.\n\nHow hard is it? If you speak English natively, show up to class every day, do your homework & don't get kicked for disciplinary reasons you should probably graduate without a problem.\n\nHow to sign up? Find your city/county school district offices (or the nearest high school) & contact them about registering. You'll probably want a birth certificate & whatever paperwork is needed to show that you're allowed to be in the US. You might want to have a copy of your records from your old school so they can figure out where to place you or they might make you take some placement tests (remember - nothing is standardized). Once you've talked to them, they'll sign you up for classes."
]
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[],
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|
5rvo44 | why do people like historic buildings with dated systems rather than new developments that would have new systems and green technology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rvo44/eli5_why_do_people_like_historic_buildings_with/ | {
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"ddagnus",
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"text": [
"Beauty, craftsmanship and history? ",
"I kind of think of it as a nostalgic sort of thing. People like the tried and true. Not very many people adapt to change very well. \n\nAlso, however, things were made to *last* long ago. Nowadays we are forced into buying a new *everything* more quickly than we used to need to because it falls apart. This usually means that we are paying more money for newer things. There is beauty to history and things that last.\n\nEdited for typo.",
"You'd be surprised how \"not-green\" many modern buildings are. It depends on the building but many new ones are far more expensive to maintain and have higher energy consumption per unit area than their older counterparts.\n\nWhat \"new systems and green technology\" do you think old buildings are sorely lacking? Lighting has seen probably the greatest advances in technology, but this is not something confined to new buildings: it's easy to replace old light bulbs with new LEDs. Plumbing fixtures too: an old building can use as little water as a new one if the old fixtures are replaced with new. There's nothing special about new buildings in this respect.\n\n"
]
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||
83kv0w | why do so many different ancient myths base their understanding of gods on the planets and stars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83kv0w/eli5_why_do_so_many_different_ancient_myths_base/ | {
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"text": [
"The things in the sky were among the greatest mysteries to ancient people, because they could be constantly be seen yet never touched, and because they had the power of light which was mysterious, and because the movement of the stars clearly went along with the seasons which controlled a lot of life.",
"It is not so much that they base their understanding of the Gods on the planets and stars, it is that they place those things as their homes or as tools used by them to communicate to humans. So they used their Gods to understand the planets and stars is a much more appropriate way of phrasing things. ",
"pls say it's ancient aliens",
"Go out somewhere unpopulated, wait till dark, lie on your back in the middle of a field, and look up.\n\nEven today there is nothing better to capture the Infinite."
]
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[],
[],
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||
1rfksx | why do airlines still use ridiculously old printers at the airline gates? you know, the kind which makes a ton of noise and has the paper that's connected? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rfksx/eli5_why_do_airlines_still_use_ridiculously_old/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdmqs1h"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"ah, it is very simple actually! Dot matrix printers have a very interesting property, and that is the ability to use carbon paper! Basically what this means is you can print out one sheet of paper with self-copying pages underneath and the separate them manually to give to the customer, which ensures all pages have exactly the same content! \n\nAlso, whatever you print with those is a lot more reliable than normal ink as you get a physical indentation with most dot matrix printers which helps the ink settle inside of it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6krgh9 | why is it considered racist to be unable to tell different asian people apart | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6krgh9/eli5_why_is_it_considered_racist_to_be_unable_to/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"If somebody says, \"Well, they all look alike,\" one might assume that person to be a closet bigot. But in all likelihood, he's simply being honest about a well known limitation that plagues people of all colors: we humans are notoriously poor at distinguishing between the members of races different from our own.\n\nThis phenomenon has a name — psychologists call it the “cross-race effect,” a well-replicated finding that people are better at telling apart faces of their own race than those of another race. \n\nIt becomes an even bigger problem in court: Witnesses are more likely to misidentify an alleged perpetrator of another race. Sixty-six of 216 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing involved the use of cross-racial eyewitness identifications, according to the Innocence Project. \n\nAnd white participants in one study were significantly more likely to experience a cross-race effect than black participants."
]
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[]
] |
||
62cxhi | why is c placed before k in the english language? i.e. jack and not jakc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62cxhi/eli5_why_is_c_placed_before_k_in_the_english/ | {
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"text": [
" > Middle English orthography was unstable, but when the sound /k/ appeared at the end of a syllable, two spellings tended to be used:\n\n > 1. If /k/ was preceded by a long vowel, it was spelled \"k\" (today's \"like\" used to be spelled \"lik\"). Adding \"ke\" at the end (like) is alater development.\n\n > 2. If /k/ was preceded by a short vowel, it was spelled \"ck\" (today's \"lick\" was spelled \"lick\")\n\n[source](_URL_0_)",
"The thing I always wondered is why does 'c' exist at all? We have the 'k' to make the kuh sound and we have the 's' to make the ssssss sound. 'c' seems like a bastard hybrid that pretends to be one of those letters. The only unique thing about is is the \"ch\" combination sound, which seems like it should be one unique letter rather than two. \n\nI'd also say the same thing about \"qu\" since 'u'always follows 'q'"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-k-phoneme-come-to-be-spelled-as-ck-in-English-eg-lick-licking"
],
[]
] |
||
5y2fi6 | what are the differences between obama care and the american healthcare act? | Edit: ELI3 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y2fi6/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_obama_care/ | {
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"The proposed American Healthcare Act seeks to strip many of the advancements from the Affordable Care Act, such as expansions to Medicaid, and replace them *en masse* with a system of block credits and tax cuts.",
"From what I have seen, it will slowly end the Medicaid Expansion. this is the part of the ACA that helped low income people afford healthcare. \n\nIt will allow \"worse\" plans to be sold to people who don't want to pay for the more comprehensive plans in the current ACA marketplace. This benefits younger, healthier people.\n\nHowever, people who really need healthcare but can now only afford these substandard plans, they will not have the same coverage as with the ACA.\n\nIt removes the tax on people who do not have healthcare, however, if you drop your healthcare coverage, and then decide that you want healthcare, you pay a tax, so the mandate is \"sort of\" there.",
"I think the worst part of ACA is the mandate and high premium costs and especially the high deductibles. Honestly, I don't see how anyone can make it with a $10,000 deductible. I'm fortunate to be in the higher income range and I don't think we could handle that. It's not like you can take out a loan to meet your deductibles. Bad stuff. ",
"1. It gets rid of the mandate. That means that if you don't have health care, you don't have to pay a penalty on your taxes. It does penalize people for letting their insurance lapse (with a 30% increase if they rejoin). So it incentives continuous coverage. \n2. It begins to reduce the Medicaid expansion starting in 2020. \n3. Ties subsidies/tax credits to age rather than income, and allows insurance to charge higher rates for old people than they can now. \n4. It increases the income level for subsidies to $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a household. By contrast, an individual making over $48,000 gets no subsidy currently (and the other numbers depend on people in the household). \n5. The GOP plan does not allow Medicaid money to go to planned parenthood. \n6. It allows insurance companies and individuals to sign up for plans that don't provide the same minimum coverage that the ACA requires. Basically, young and healthy people can buy more of a bare bones plan if they want to. \n7. Finally, large employers would not be required to provide insurance to employees. ",
"There are certainly merits to that argument. But the entire system needs to be brought to equal playing ground. Raising minimum wage, high cost of pharmaceuticals (which we all know is absurd) high cost of medical school (not to mention college in general.) it doesn't work if everyone is money grubbing. My sister just had some elaborate back surgery with some complications. Her bill was over $400,000. You know the doctors and hospital don't get that kind of money. What bugs me (and I never did this when I determined charges) is padding the bill. Hey everybody! Quit playing games. I really hate that. I had surgery a few years back and there was a charge for an assistant surgeon. I told my doctor I never saw an assistant surgeon. She backpedalled quite a bit and then apologized. Gamesmanship. And it all stems from so called insurance. "
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1k7nhf | how important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k7nhf/eli5_how_important_does_a_person_have_to_be/ | {
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"the first paragraph of the [wikipedia article](_URL_0_) should be enough. Basically an assassination is a murder for some particular gain, often carried out by a third party. It's a pretty broad term."
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1vhdia | how to pick the best first credit card and what all the interest rates, percentages, apr, etc actually mean. | Trying to sign up for my first credit card to start building some credit. I'm 23, make around 40,000/yr. done with college. Just want to build some credit. I know absolutely nothing about how cards work. I just want to use it for a car payment, gas, and other small things.
What I specifically am curious about is:
1. what do all the percentages actually mean to me?
2. what card would be suited for me?
3. What are some things i definitely should NOT do with my card? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vhdia/eli5_how_to_pick_the_best_first_credit_card_and/ | {
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"The most important rule of a credit card is to be **PUNCTUAL.** Pay it off as soon as the bill comes in the mail or online, and always days before the deadline. The late fees adds up and it hurts. \n\nMost of the time, credit card loans are not worth it, so you dont need to worry about interest rates and whatever **as long as you pay it in full every month**. If you need to finance something, either ask a bank or ask the store for finance options. Most of the time, the rates are better than credit card.\n\nNow how to choose the right card for you? Find one with no annual fee and have rewards. Some people like mileages, some people like cash back. Either way, if you are going to use a credit card, might as well get some incentives back from it. \n\nFinally, maximize and capitalize on your rewards. Which means, pay all your fixed overheads (utilities, groceries, gas, insurance, phone, rent) with your credit card whenever possible. Just remember **to pay it off on time** and enjoy the fact that you basicly get a free discount for paying your bill with plastic instead of cash. ",
"_URL_1_ is a useful site for finding cards specific to your needs. Also r/personalfinance is a great resource for these kinds of things as well as finance in general.\n\nIf you still owe money back every month, the APR is the interest on top of whatever you owe basically. It gets murky as they're calculated different ways depending on the bank. [BoA explains it better than I can.](_URL_0_)\n\nEchoing the other comments, just live by the rule: **DO NOT OWE ANY MONEY ON YOUR CARD.** I like to think of credit cards as a vehicle to improve my credit which will, later on in life, get me better rates on things that really matter like mortage on a house or college loans for my (future, as of now non-existent) kids. It is not a vehicle to help me get that expensive thing I want that I can't afford now. Not sure how your credit score is but if you can land a rewards card then your card is also a vehicle to earn *free shit*. If you pay it all off on time you're improving your credit and getting points to travel, buy things, etc. for free. I personally got a rewards card for travel and don't care for the APR since I will always pay it in full every month. What do you want out of it? \n\nIf your credit isn't good enough now to earn that rewards card get a regular card and work your way up.\n\nIf you're just getting a regular card and committing to paying it off in full every month, what matters most is what card charges the smallest fees.\n\n**Live at or below your means.** Set your credit card to auto-pay and live with that peace of mind. Do not live pay check to pay check.",
"To put it succinctly, a credit card is a means to which you can borrow money from a lender to purchase goods and services. You aren't using your own money when you use a credit card, the credit card company pays for the product, and you agree to pay back the borrowed money. If you do not repay the full amount borrowed by the end of the cycle (typically monthly), the company charges you money based on your balance of money you owe them, the rate of which will depend on the APR. \n\nHow much you will pay in interest depends completely on your APR for your credit card. I used to work for a major credit card company and they taught is this during training. So if your balance is $1000 and you have a 20% APR, you will pay $200 in interest charges in a _URL_0_ break this down on a per monthly interest charged you would first divide 20% by 365 (the number of days in a year). .20/365 = 5.47945205. Next you multiply this number by the number of days for the month in question. We'll go with October which has 31 days, so 31 x 5.47945205=0.0169863013. Next you'll need to multiply the dollar amount by the percent of interest you are charged monthly; so 1000 x 0.0169863013=16.9863013. Which means that for the month of October, you will pay $16.98 in interest. [source](_URL_1_)\n\nCredit cards are good for making purchases for which you cannot use cash. They are not good for living beyond your financial means. Even \"lending\" yourself money (briefly spending more than you can afford) will only result in you paying more than the goods/services are worth. \n\nDo not think that making the minimum monthly payment will let you get by. Doing so will only dig yourself into a financial pit. "
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mi81p | why solid state drives are better than regular harddrives? also, why are ssds limited in the number of cycles or something? is that bad? | I'm just trying to understand what the differences and main benefits are as well as why people are worried about SSDs eventually failing.
I know no HD is perfect but I don't completely understand why SSDs worry people. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mi81p/eli5_why_solid_state_drives_are_better_than/ | {
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"By far and away the most substantial difference is right in the name. *Solid state drive*. Hard disks have spinning platters and arms mounted on servos that have to physically *seek* bits on the disk (see it in action [here](_URL_0_)). Solid state drives completely eliminate this and have zero moving parts.\n\nIt goes without saying that no longer relying on an actual moving arm and rotating disk means potentially enormous speed improvements, which is what you see with SSDs.",
"By far and away the most substantial difference is right in the name. *Solid state drive*. Hard disks have spinning platters and arms mounted on servos that have to physically *seek* bits on the disk (see it in action [here](_URL_0_)). Solid state drives completely eliminate this and have zero moving parts.\n\nIt goes without saying that no longer relying on an actual moving arm and rotating disk means potentially enormous speed improvements, which is what you see with SSDs."
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7hgakc | what exactly happens when you pass out from pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hgakc/eli5_what_exactly_happens_when_you_pass_out_from/ | {
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"As far as i know this is not 100% explained by science. \n\nBut faint from pain could be triggered as a relaxation reaction of one's body. After severe pain the \"vagus nerve\" influence the vessels. If its influence is strong enough vascular tension, blood pressure as well as puls per minute decrease and one's muscles relax.\n\nIn extreme cases one's brain doesn't get enough oxygen, the consequence is a so called \"Common faint\". As the designation \"Common\" implied it is a not really dangerous kind of faint.\n\nThe level of pain that triggers this reaction differ from one to another.\n\nMany psychology touched physicians are convinced by this reason.\n\nPS This is what i know from my biology education at school. So hopefully one can explain better.",
"What occurs when you pass out from extreme pain is a form of what is known as *vasovagal syncope.* Syncope means to lose consciousness and vasovagal refers to effects on the vasculature/vessels (vaso-) from the Vagus cranial nerve (-vagal). When you experience sudden and extreme pain, the information is sent to an area in the brainstem called the solitary nucleus, which is an input area for several cranial nerves, with the Vagus nerve being one of them. Of the twelve cranial nerves (which almost exclusively supply the head and neck), the Vagus nerve is special because it travels extensively around the body and innervates a wide variety of organs and blood vessels. It is involved in *parasympathetic* control of the nervous system, the branch of the autonomic nervous system that is commonly associated with \"rest and digest\" rather than the sympathetic \"fight or flight.\" With activation of the parasympathetic Vagus nerve, the heart slows down and beats with less force per pump (*rest* and digest). This is combined with a decrease in what is known as *sympathetic tone.* Sympathetic tone helps to keep blood vessels constricted, and when that is withdrawn, blood vessels can dilate. So, a decrease in cardiac output (less blood pumped from the slowed heart rate and contractibility) combined with dilated vessels, significantly reduces blood pressure too quickly and the brain is temporarily less perfused by oxygenated blood, leading to loss of consciousness.\n\n**Edit below: More ELI5ish** Sorry to anyone confused by the description above.\n\nWhen you experience extreme pain, your body sends signals to the part of your brain that is the control board for a special nerve that \"relaxes\" a lot of your organs (slows heart, increases gut movement for digestion, etc). This nerve slows your heart down and causes it to pump less blood per unit time *at the same time* that nerves that keep your arteries constricted stop doing their job. So, you get less fluid pumping through wider pipes and, unsurprisingly, this can be measured as reduced blood pressure. Less blood is delivered to the brain, and the person loses consciousness. In the absence of any major bleeding, the body will correct the overshoot and the person will regain consciousness eventually.\n\n**Edit #2 - TRUE ELI5**\n\nSudden and extreme pain flips a switch in your brain, which makes your blood vessels relax (by expanding) and your heart rate slow down *and* pump less blood with each beat. This brings less blood (and less oxygen) to your brain and you pass out. Your body fixes it quickly, but after you pass out.",
"Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds posses is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.\n\nFirst is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all it's pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or feint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping though the first door.\n\nSecond is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply to painful and there is no healing to be done. The saying \"time heals all wounds\" is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.\n\nThird is the door of madness. There are many times when the mind is delt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.\n\nLast is the door of death. the final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.\n\n > TNOTW",
"Can this be effected if your body is in a near constant fight- or-flight response (sympathetic nervous system vs autonomic nervous system) due to extreme stress/ PTSD along with somewhat chronic pain?\n\nI've had a history of what seemed to be vasovagal syncopes, however I think it was mostly regarded as somatic symptoms."
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2eawj9 | why do municipalities have both standard police forces and sheriff's offices/deputies? | I understand the whole concept of a sheriff and the historical perspective on why it exists, but I'm curious as to why in this day and age it's still a necessity. A vast majority of US counties have their own police departments, so why is the sheriff's office still existent in those places?
**Edit:**Yeah, I do live in Virginia, which is a weird scenario in and of itself. On top of that, I live in a part of the state where the county police, county sheriff, local/city police, and a campus police force ALL overlap and ALL have co-jurisdiction in my municipality. You can see why this might be confusing to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eawj9/eli5why_do_municipalities_have_both_standard/ | {
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" > A vast majority of US counties have their own police departments\n\nDo they? My county has no police force other than sheriff's offices. Where are you that has a county police force AND a county sheriff's department? \n\nOr are you saying that local municipalities have their own cops, and thus there's no need for sheriffs? The answer to that is jurisdictional. Sheriffs generally have primary jurisdiction over major highways and the like, and can be used as an assisting force. They also have other powers. For instance, if you want to evict someone in my state, you have to take a court order to the sheriff to serve it. Local police cannot do so, by law."
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6398rw | on a given construction site, why are there usually 4 people standing around doing nothing or watching someone work, for every 1 person actually working? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6398rw/eli5_on_a_given_construction_site_why_are_there/ | {
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"Task-specific expertise. Most jobs on a construction site *aren't* just dragging heavy things around, most of these guys are skilled tradesmen who know something specific (electrical, plumbing etc) who need to be on-hand to jump in. They're needed regularly enough to hang out on-site, but since they have specialized training shouldn't be touching stuff that isn't their field.",
"Construction worker here. Sometimes there is nothing that needs doing, especially if you're a laborer. Sometimes the task is a one man task and the other workers are not needed. Sometimes the people standing around are foremen. Sometimes something arrives on site that halts business, like a crane lifting huge panels, so everyone is either helping the crane or watching it. \n\nConstruction sites are pretty busy places, and skilled workers often skip breaks or go for longer. There usually aren't many lazy construction workers, just lazy sites.",
"I would remind people that you only see them for the 10 seconds youre driving by. How do u know whats going on? It could be break time. \n\n",
"The people that you see standing around doing nothing on a site 'doing nothing' are all working. Let's pretend that the crew is fixing an underground pipe, and name the crew members and their jobs.\n\nNormally a survey crew marks out where the pipeline is, and where other utilities should be. \n\n Now for the working crew...\n First you have the equipment operator, the guy sitting in the excavator. He moves most of the soil, and is responsible for hitting the gas/sewage lines. \n\nNext you have a crew of several people with shovels to do delicate soil removal, and other general labor. They take shifts spending time in the hole. Space is very limited for both personal and equipment. Have you ever spent 10 hours digging a hole, or managing a 8\" angle grinder for weeks straight? It is exhausting, they have to perform this hard manual labor for weeks on end in the raw weather. They need their rest. \n\n The hole that is being dug is a dangerous confined space area. The sides can collapse, or oxygen levels can be lower then normal. A safety officer should be on hand to monitor the soil conditions and quality of the air. He is to protect the lives of the crew, and makes sure that this construction project never makes it to the 5-o'clock news.\n\nPipefitters are tasked with removing the damaged section of pipe, and installing a new pipe section. There can be lot of prep work and rigging involved to remove and install these heavy pipe sections. \n\nIf this worksite is on an active road, a crew is needed for traffic management. \n\nEach trade can have their own foreman, or their can be a single supervisor for the entire construction crew. \n\nThis work site can have various inspectors for each trade, inspectors for the local city, reps for other utilities, and civil engineers can all appear on this site. These workers do all the paperwork, record keeping, and assume the liability for this job. \n\nEven though there are a dozen or more people on site, only three have shovels. Everyone is working hard at their own speciality. At any instant there are more people employed to ensure the smooth workflow of the repair and protect the lives of everyone involved, then getting sweaty and getting their hands dirty. They are all working.\n \n"
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6l3phq | why does burnt food generally have the same taste even if the foods are different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l3phq/eli5_why_does_burnt_food_generally_have_the_same/ | {
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"All the complex and varied organic compounds making different foods tend all to decay into more or less the same basic blocks (i.e. charcoal and simple organic molecules) when overheated, giving the universal burnt taste.\n\nThink of it like ice sculptures - they can be of varied shapes, sizes and impressiveness, but they all turn into puddles of water after a warm spring weekend.",
"I believe it's essentially the chemical reaction of whatever food turning to carbon and that has a specific taste",
"A large portion of food is made from carbon. It does not contribute to the taste of food much when it is normal. However, when overcooked, it turns into a residue that tastes what burnt food tastes like."
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9da7lo | if water and electricity are renewable resources, why is it still considered wasteful to overuse them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9da7lo/eli5_if_water_and_electricity_are_renewable/ | {
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"Electricity is a generated resource. A lot of the time you burn stuff to drive the turbines that make it."
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9mtu9t | why does most of the body bruise when struck, but the top of the head gets a hard lump? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mtu9t/eli5_why_does_most_of_the_body_bruise_when_struck/ | {
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"A bruise happens when you bleed inside your skin. If it is soft under the blood, then it will push down. As long as it is soft underneath, the blood has a place to go. So the bruise stays soft. If it is hard, because there is bone underneath, then it will push up. Skin can stretch, but only so much. So when skin can’t stretch anymore, the bruise will feel hard.",
"a bruise is a a big lump (of blood, dead cells, and various things that are in charge of cleanup and repair of those dead cells) that's under your skin. It likes to suck as far into your body as it can go, but doesn't have anywhere to go when it's on top of a bone (usually skull and shin), so it sticks out in those places.",
"The blood and fluid needs somewhere to go. I once landed my shin on the edge of a wooden box while training for softball and it got a big lump like on your head. Because it's so close to bone, not muscle or mushy stuff, it pushes out. ",
"It’s about where the blood goes. In the skin the damage that occurs is in the soft tissues and the blood diffuses through it like ink on wet paper. When you bump your head, you bleed in a potential space between bone and a thick canvas like material called the Galeal sheath. You then created a balloon of canvas and it’s really hard. All bones have a similar sheath called periosteum. As you heal, the blood either diffuses away and you return to normal or calcifies and becomes a callus. ",
"The layers of the scalp are SCALP (Skin, Connective Tissue, Aponeurosis (another type of connective tissues), Loose Connective Tissue, and Perioseum (which is the outer layer of bone). All these layers are tight to each other. So, whereas in other tissues a broken bleeding vessel will cause blood to spread out between tissue layers and cause a bruise, in the scalp the layers are stuck together, so a broken bleeding vessel will cause the same amount of blood to be confined to a small area and cause a haematoma (goose-egg).\n\nEdit: I'm happy to be corrected on any of these details.",
"Had anyone ever heard of \"BOTI\" (pronounced bootie).....Better Out Than In .....when it comes to a bump on your head?",
"Yah I have most definitely had bruises near bones (ie shins, hips) get golf ball sized lumps. Not just for head bruises.",
"One day I got my blood drawn and the nurse punctured through the vein. My whole arm up and down was bruised and it hurt every where I touched. That’s when I realized that bruises must hurt not because you got hot there but because there is blood there. Why is that?"
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21nr95 | what causes the aggressiveness in tiny dogs (like chihuahuas and poms)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21nr95/eli5_what_causes_the_aggressiveness_in_tiny_dogs/ | {
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"People treat small dogs like fucking toys. They're so cute that they invariably get away with a lot of behavior that we wouldn't tolerate from big dogs. This, coupled with general lack of understanding on how to discipline dogs, leads to small dogs being treated like human infants instead of pets. Aggressiveness is a natural consequence once the small dog is no longer a puppy, and is now a toy-sized animal with behavioral problems.\n\nSource: Cesar Milan, pre-divorce",
"It's possible that in breeding for \"tiny\" people disregarded breeding for a decent temperament as well. Plus all dog breeds are inbred, some more so than others due to backyard breeders and puppy mills that only want to cash in on the latest dog-accessory trend. Inbreeding can lead too all sorts of problems including neurological ones."
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3201cf | does the english language itself (disregarding history, geography, and politics) have any characteristics that helped it be as popular it is? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3201cf/eli5_does_the_english_language_itself/ | {
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"It's extremely promiscuous, and will borrow words from anywhere. And the grammar is often somewhat loose too, in that it's easy to repurpose words as different parts of speech in a way that is often difficult to even translate into some other languages. It's a language formed by melding a Germanic language (which itself had mixed a lot with another Germanic language, Norse, and in the process had greatly simplified it's grammar) with a Romance one, after all, so it has long had to be adaptible."
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1bzdm3 | why university fees trebled in the uk last year | Is it really because the government could just not afford it? Or were there other huge factors? And why couldn't they just let it gradually rise?
It's scared myself and a lot of my friends to not go to university, but there really isn't that many good alternatives. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bzdm3/eli5_why_university_fees_trebled_in_the_uk_last/ | {
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"University fees have been increasing gradually from when they were first introduced in 1998 at £1000/year.\n\nHowever, in 2009/2010, there was a [review](_URL_0_) on the subject of higher education. The review was agreed when Labour objected to the previous round of increases in university fees, and the Tories said they would start this review in order to appease them. According to Lord Mandelson the review would consider \"balance of contributions to universities by taxpayers, students, graduates and employers\" to University finances. The review would consider how much students should be charged for attending University. The panel was told to take into account the goal of widening participation.\n\nThe review made a number of recommendations, many of them relating to the fact that the number of students attending university had been steadily increasing over the years (which is mostly a good thing, but does have side effects such as increased cost of funding all the extra students).\n\nOne of its suggestions was that there should be no cap on university fees. In order to mitigate this, students would not be required to repay student loans until they earn £21,000 or more.\n\nThe government rejected the recommendation to remove the cap completely, and instead decided on a cap of £9,000. However, they did accept the recommendation that students don't repay their loans until they earn £21,000.\n\nThe net effect, then, is that students will finish university with larger loans than before. Hopefully this will lead to well-paid jobs, and they will repay their loans, but if they are not successful in finding a well-paid job, they are less likely to have to repay their loan than before."
]
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] |
|
1wctdp | if food is sanatized in an oven or any heating device at a certain temperature, why do we take so many precautions beforehand with germs and bacteria? | this is probably obvious, but i took a sanitation class last semester and i just now thought about this question. I know there arebacteria and virisus that can live after the sanitation level despite the food being heated to it, but i thought either way, if they had that sort of bacteria then it wouldn't matter anyway if it didn't come from human contact. so why take so many precautions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wctdp/if_food_is_sanatized_in_an_oven_or_any_heating/ | {
"a_id": [
"cf0s3e3",
"cf0snlb"
],
"score": [
4,
2
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"text": [
"Bacteria poop.\n\nEven if you kill all the bacteria & viruses (which you can't be sure of) the bacteria might release chemicals that aren't healthy.\n\nA great example is botulism - it's not the bacteria that make you sick, it's the toxins they release while they're reproducing that kill you.",
"It's all about controlling possible cross-contamination. If you're careful and have proper procedures when dealing with raw meat, then you know exactly where those bacteria can come from and where they could be/go. If you have poor control points, then bacteria from other foods/places can contaminate foods which don't get cooked. \nAlso, as another poster mentioned, there's the chemicals left behind by bacteria which aren't affected by cooking. Keeping bacteria levels low also means those chemical levels will be low. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
39keum | does globalization further prejudice? if so how? | I have to hold an presentation about this topic, and I would like to hear some oft your opinions.
Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, but I am new and couldn't think oft another. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39keum/eli5_does_globalization_further_prejudice_if_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"cs42vlv"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"**TL;DR: Yes.**\n\nFirst step is to define what globalization is.\n\n > the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture.\n\n\"*Interchange*\" is the key word here because it requires two things - a functional form of communication (which reduces prejudice because the \"other guy\" is seen to be a living breathing thinking human and not a distant blurry object), and a willingness to at least deal with that other faction in some way.\n\nAny form of direct communication usually leads to getting further information about the other guys, which in everything but deliberately engineered emotions (like propaganda in warfare, which tries to dehumanize the enemy and make it out that their differences are evil), helps to reduce prejudice."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
a7f9bv | how do you learn how to draw when it doesn't come to you as a natural talent? | . | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7f9bv/eli5_how_do_you_learn_how_to_draw_when_it_doesnt/ | {
"a_id": [
"ec2ibja",
"ec2idn0",
"ec2il8t",
"ec2jjat",
"ec2lwxb"
],
"score": [
7,
11,
3,
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2
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nHundreds and hundreds of tutorials on YouTube. Lots and lots of practice.",
"It doesn't come to anyone naturally, it's just those that are good never stopped practicing as a kid",
"Like anything else?\n\nLike the old joke _URL_0_\n\n“Practice, practice, practice ...”\n\nTry different styles, tools, subject matters until something clicks. But just do.",
"I read somewhere that you don’t *learn* to draw, you *practice* to draw. I didn’t, so I can’t confirm but lots of people who did seem to agree on the comment section.",
"The trick to learning any skill is to have the interest and confidence to continuously practice. If you are not supported as a child in something you will quickly lose interest in it. \n\nThere are very few things that we just immediately and continuously suck at. It takes very little practice to go from confused to novice. Being supported from novice to talent is hard because your growth curve drops. Outside influencers can help, but they can also demotivate. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://drawabox.com"
],
[],
[
"https://www.carnegiehall.org/Blog/2016/04/The-Joke"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
35qdq0 | how can pop music be considered a genre on its own? | Pop just means popular. If certain style of music plummets in popularity and no one likes it anymore, it's no longer pop.
So how is it that pop can be considered a genre? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35qdq0/eli5_how_can_pop_music_be_considered_a_genre_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"cr6rxgk",
"cr6rypu"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text": [
"The actual meaning of the **word** used to describe music isn't really important. Think about **rock**. That's just a stone. **Metal** is self explanatory. \n\nPop music doesn't have to be popular. It just has to adhere to the musical styles of other pop music.",
"Words are not static objects that cannot be changed, they are adapted, the same way 'bad' meant 'good' in the 80's. \n\nPop Music is a genre in that it has specific elements that are central to it. It doesn't just mean 'popular,' even if that is the origin of the term."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
6kuukr | how come some people's faces are blurred out in documentaries and other people's aren't? | There's no way they could ask each person if they want their face blurred. How would they find them again to contact them if they're random people in the street? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kuukr/eli5_how_come_some_peoples_faces_are_blurred_out/ | {
"a_id": [
"djp3ti1",
"djp8c3w"
],
"score": [
3,
6
],
"text": [
"It's mostly up to the editor's discretion. Technically it revolves around the concept of personality rights, which is to say that a documentarian isn't supposed to be profiting unfairly off of the specific personality of a person. So if someone is in the background or in a crowd then they generally wouldn't qualify and don't need to be blurred. Some editors will blur them out anyway just to be safe. Some editors will disregard personality rights altogether.",
"It really depends on where the items are shot. Here in the United States, the general rule of thumb is \"does the person have a reasonable expectation of privacy?\"\n\nFor example, if you're doing an interview in a public place and random people walk behind the person you're interviewing, those people don't have a \"reasonable expectation of privacy\" since they are already out in public.\n\nBut, if you shoot a bunch of people in a public park (and they're recognizable), and your narrator says, \"drugs addicts have been coming to this park for years\", you could get sued for \n slander. (Whether they would actually win is another matter...).\n\nIf you look at a show like COPS, where it's shot on private and public property, you will notice that some of the faces are blurred and some are not. The ones that aren't have generally signed a release from the production company. The ones that refused to sign would be blurred out.\n\nRemember the show \"Cheaters\" ? Yeah, none of those people were blurred out. That's how I knew it was really a \"staged\" production right from the start and the hired actors would've all signed releases.\n\nAs our society has become so litigious, it's always best to err on the side of caution and blur any questionable faces.\n "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
3glo47 | why do toddlers enjoy making people smile and laugh so much? | Almost every small child I have been around will repeat over and over again something that they did that made you laugh, and they will keep doing it as long as you keep laughing. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3glo47/eli5_why_do_toddlers_enjoy_making_people_smile/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctz87ok",
"ctz96yd"
],
"score": [
2,
13
],
"text": [
"Actually its them who feel elevated by the thought that they have accomplished something. And that's why they try to repeat.",
"Positive feedback. It's just like the rat who keeps pushing a lever to make food come out of a dispenser in his cage. The rat (or the toddler) doesn't understand the mechanism that produces the positive result, only that the action produces the result, so they keep repeating the action."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2ggmff | how come the earth's age is determined from the age of it's meterorites? couldn't the meteorite be much older than the earth? | In my college geology class we learned how isotope dating is used to determine the age of the Earth, but these samples were taken from inside meteorites. Couldn't these just be 4.5 Billion years old, but the Earth's age be much less? I'm confused | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ggmff/eli5how_come_the_earths_age_is_determined_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckiw2u7",
"ckiw3k1",
"ckiwuxc",
"ckix188",
"ckj0t6l"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Isotope dating is also used on rocks found on the Earth. So, no, the Earth is not a great deal (if at all) younger than meteorites.",
"The meteroites we collect are most likely remnants from the formation of our solar system - smaller fragments that have yet to colide with bigger bodies. If these rocks are still orbiting and flying around, and formed the same time the planets started to form, you can estimate the relative age of the planets based on their composition.\n\nAlso, COSMOS has a great episode describing this",
"Last year I visited the NC Museum of Natural Science and I touched a meteor on display described as *older than the solar system.* It took a moment for me to understand the concept.\n\n[Here's an article about rocks *older than the sun*](_URL_0_)",
"There are other ways to date the earth. Meteorites can date the age of the solar system. Depending on how you define \"the earth\" this would include the earth.",
"Most meteors that hit the earth were formed at the same time the earth was, and science they haven't undergone the geological trauma most earth rocks have, the provide us with a good upper bound of how old the earth might be.\n\nSince the are only slightly older than the oldest known earthbound rocks (~4.5 billion, vs. ~4.3 billion), this seems to be a reasonable assumption. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/12/21/3658622.htm"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
6nin9n | if vomiting gets rid of potentially poisonous food, then why do so many animals eat their vomit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nin9n/eli5_if_vomiting_gets_rid_of_potentially/ | {
"a_id": [
"dk9qa6r",
"dk9rlr7"
],
"score": [
6,
68
],
"text": [
"The question is founded on the assumption that all animals do this with the frequency of animals you've observed. One would think this is predominantly domestic dogs and cats. Those animals have some idiosyncratic behaviors that would be maladaptive in the wild, and so we should first consider whether wild animals do this as much as their domesticated counterparts.",
"Canids (dogs, wolves, coyotes, and their other wild relatives) gulp large pieces of unchewed and/or boney food. After letting it soften for a bit, they bring it back up in private where they can sort out the bone and chew the meat without dealing with their packmates. They don't consume their vomit if they're puking because they're feeling sick. \nTL;DR: They only eat the good stuff."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
2s8isp | what is the difference between a muslim and an islamist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s8isp/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_muslim_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnn67sd",
"cnn7qei"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"A Muslim is just a follower of the religion of Islam.\n\nAn Islamist is someone who thinks Islam should guide society in every way, politically, socially, economically. They're similar to religious conservatives in the US who want Bible-based values in the government. ",
"The term \"Islamist\" was invented by non-Muslims to describe violent, anti-European Muslims. It's not a label that any Muslim group ascribes to."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1orrgw | how are people under house arrest monitored, and how common is it for them to break curfew? | And while I'm at it, what are the usual restrictions enforced? Are you allowed in your garden for one hour a day? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1orrgw/how_are_people_under_house_arrest_monitored_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccux1gj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Depends on the jurisdiction and the nature of the offense. Options include telephone check ins, home visit curfew checks by probation/police, and electronic monitoring.\nYou might get away with it but why take the chance, the consequences aren't worth it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
55d85g | how does magnetic putty work? | So a friend send me a video where magnetic putty swallows a magnet. [This video](_URL_0_) shows the same thing.
I understand that this is probably because the magnetic field is strongest in the center of the blob, but how come no part of the magnet is being repulsed (positive and negative side)? I feel like I don't understand a crucial part of magnetism here. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55d85g/eli5_how_does_magnetic_putty_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"d89jhzt",
"d8a7ddx"
],
"score": [
14,
4
],
"text": [
"The putty isn't magnetic. It is ferromagnetic ( like Iron). So, you can interpret this as watching millions of tiny iron bits ( This is how the putty is probably made- mixing iron powder in putty) being attracted by a magnet. The magnet moves to the centre because the particles are attracted and then are reorienting themselves to make, in some sense, a bigger magnet.",
"ELI5:\n\nIt is a high viscosity (thick) fluid which has been mixed evenly with very small particles of metal (something like iron filings). Something like sugar in cookie dough. \n\nAnyway, so when you use a magnet on it, the metal particles get attracted to the magnet, but because the they are evenly mixed with the putty, the whole putty is attracted to the magnet. "
]
} | [] | [
"https://youtu.be/2bx3PYFwnnA?t=41s"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
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