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5v3vi6 | what has the mri scan done to help us understand the role of the brain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v3vi6/eli5_what_has_the_mri_scan_done_to_help_us/ | {
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"It helped us map out which areas of the brain are activated under different situations, using contextual or sensory testing, such as exposing a person to visual, auditive, olfactory, etc... inputs, and watching which 'compartment' of the brain showed increased activity.\nResearchers also draw conclusions from similarities in brain activity stemming from different substances (\"sugar and cocaine activate the same part of the human brain\")."
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a1nxkj | how exactly does more money translate to winning court cases more often? is it purchasing smarter lawers or just manpower to go through documents? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1nxkj/eli5_how_exactly_does_more_money_translate_to/ | {
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"More manpower to go through documents and do legal research\n\n\nMore talented/experienced trial attorney's\n\n\nMore money to hire experts at trial\n\n\nMore money to file appeals, continuances and delay tactics",
"If I know I'm going to lose, I settle out of court. This is much cheaper, so it leaves me with more money. Also, since I only go to court when I think I'm likely to win, I usually do in fact win.\n\nSo I both have more money and win more often than someone who pays a lot of money for their lawyer to show up and make losing arguments.",
"More money have private investigators investigate things. \n\nmore money means that you can hire a dedicated legal team rather than have to rely on a over worked public defender. \n\nMoney help a lot in court cases. "
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ammeek | how can a password not containing numbers or special characters be considered weak? | If I can pick ANY combination of characters for my password, isn’t a combination containing only letters equally hard to guess as one that doesn’t? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ammeek/eli5_how_can_a_password_not_containing_numbers_or/ | {
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"Unless you're using a randomly generated chain of letters, most password cracking software have functions built in to use the most commonly used words in passwords.\n\nIf you set a limit to the length of the password (say 20 characters), you go from very predictable, and easily brute-forcible using numbers, to somewhat predictable, and not impossible to brute force, using the 26 letters of the alphabet, to impossible (unless you have lots of time and a supercomputer) if you combined all 3.",
"In theory an attacker who doesn't know you didn't use the numbers and special characters would need to consider that they might have been used, slowing their attempts on your password. But consider that an attacker might simply only decide to go for the easy targets and just try normal characters, leaving out numbers and special characters. That wouldn't ever get into accounts of the people who included them but it would happen to break yours since you didn't.\n\nBy expanding the possible characters to include the extra numbers and special symbols it presents a task too great for an attacker to solve, and to ensure it actually *is* too hard to solve they force you to include them in your password. Otherwise the attackers just solve the problems they can and the simple passwords get broken.",
"My point is: why is a password like ‘gsnnssijcbdbhduehvedbvpqqqqq’ considered weak by most services while something like ‘dopeHe4d1999’ is considered strong? "
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f3j1i8 | how do broken bones knit when they aren’t completely immobile? | ELI5: when you break a bone, especially one that can’t be casted, there’s still some relative motion between the pieces. I understand osteoblasts do their thing and generate new bone. But when the pieces start to touch and the new bone connects, why doesn’t the slightest movement cause it to disconnect? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f3j1i8/eli5_how_do_broken_bones_knit_when_they_arent/ | {
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"A lot of things actually heal better this way. For example, in hip fractures, the fixation depends on the bones being slightly mobile (look up a dynamic hip screw) as this reinforces repairs along areas of stress, making the overall repaired bone stronger. \n\nInitially a haematoma will form around the site. Then fibrous, but reasonably flexible tissue will be laid down, this is called a callous. This will hold the broken parts close together. Then the bone will fill itself in within this area. Small movements aren't too much of a problem but larger movements will break the connections as they start to form."
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7cddyl | why do bass sounds seem to travel better through walls, when high pitched sounds usually carry better over distance? | I have always had the impression that high pitched sounds carry better - for example a high pitched voice is often understandable from several rooms away while a bass voice often doesn't seem to carry. My personal experience is that often my girlfriend cannot hear me from the next room unless I deliberately speak in a falsetto, whereas I can always hear her. I have read before that women and children have higher pitched voices so if they get in trouble with a predator and scream, the males will hear them more easily and be able to come to the rescue. Screams by nature tend to be in a higher pitch than normal, presumably because higher pitches carry better over distance.
But when it comes to certain bass sounds, like those created by car stereos and subwoofers, it seems they can carry through walls and be felt while the higher pitched sounds drop out. Often when driving I can feel somebody's bass from their car stereo while hearing no other elements from the music.
Since I live in an apartment I am wondering what is more likely to annoy my neighbors: the high pitched chirping of my pet birds, or the pounding bass of my sound bar subwoofer when I watch an action movie.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cddyl/eli5_why_do_bass_sounds_seem_to_travel_better/ | {
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"There are two effects at work.\n\nThe first is the physics of it. Any material will attenuate different frequencies at differing levels. For most solid materials, low frequencies will be slightly attenuated and high frequencies massively attenuated. Through free space, both attenuate over distance but by relatively similar amounts (high frequencies still don't travel as far, but low frequencies don't have the huge advantage they do passing through solid materials). This relationship is not strictly linear, but generally low frequencies penetrate/propagate better than high ones.\n\nThe second is the biology of it. Human beings hear high frequencies (relative to our range) significantly better than we hear low frequencies. What we think of as 'balanced' levels across the frequencies are actually incredibly loud low frequencies coupled with relatively quiet high frequencies. When you evenly attenuate across the frequency spectrum, this causes low frequencies to drop into the inaudible range much more quickly than high frequencies.\n\nThe combination of these two effects is what causes the phenomenon you're experiencing. If you've got a wall, low frequencies punch right through while high frequencies are almost completely blocked. If you're simply listening to a sound through free space, distance will cause both to attenuate - but your inability to hear low frequencies well will make everything turn 'tinny'.\n\nIn terms of your apartment, the walls likely block the sound from your birds entirely while the pounding bass of your subwoofer makes their furniture shake."
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1cfqsm | how does someone who knows absolutely nothing about cars go about choosing a secondhand car? | I do know I'd maybe like a green one. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cfqsm/eli5_how_does_someone_who_knows_absolutely/ | {
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"Because you're looking at potentially putting a lot of money into something that's going to need to be reliable for you, I would seriously recommend finding a friend who does know about cars, and take them with you.",
"Give each of the following traits a 1-5 score based on how important they are to you: Performance (in the sporty sense of the word), fuel economy, storage and carrying space, roominess, and reliability. Be realistic, if you want a car that is all 5's, you are going to spend a lot. Also write down your price range, and any preferences you have ($4000-8000, preferably green, not a truck, must have a sun roof, etc). Get a copy of the consumer reports used car edition they release each year, and look through it for cars that line up with what you wrote down. Get a friend who knows cars to help. Toyota and Honda will generally always be good bets. The German cars are usually very nice cars but may need more maintenance. Most other Japanese car brands will be good too but look and see. Of the American brands, Ford is probably the best bet, then GM. Stay away from Chrysler/Dodge except for a few very specific vehicles.\n\nMake a list of 5-10 cars that match your needs well. If your price range is in the $8000-15000 range or so, you can look at car dealers, as most of them also deal in used cars. Sometimes they will have cheaper cars too. There are several websites that will conglomerate car listings, check those out. And keep an eye out on craigslist. Don't just look in your city, look around anywhere within a 2 hours drive or so, or more even. The gas money you spend driving there should be more than offset by the benefits of getting a great car for you. \n\nLook at a few different cars, and test drive them all. Watch out for high mileage cars, you are more likely to run into a lot of maintenance. Take them to a trusted mechanic (arrange this beforehand) for an inspection. It may cost a bit, but if you don't do it it can bite you in the ass. The dealer should be okay with this, if they aren't then forget about buying from them. Oh and bring your car knowledgeable friend along too. As for negotiating a price, I am going to leave that up for you to find out. There are tons of guides online, and I am not going to try to cover all of that. Good luck",
"Have someone who knows how come along with you. Your biggest trouble spots are the engine itself and the transmission. As long as both of those are in decent shape, most other stuff is relatively minor to fix in a financial sense. IE, it costs a lot less to replace a radiator than a transmission."
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3izrx1 | the difference between homo sapiens and homo sapiens sapiens? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3izrx1/eli5_the_difference_between_homo_sapiens_and_homo/ | {
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" Homo Sapiens is what species we are. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a subspecies - it's used to mean \"anatomically modern Homo sapiens\", ie people who's bodies look like ours. \n\nThe subspecies H. Sapiens Sapiens, ie us, differentiates us from H. Sapiens Idaltu, arguably our direct ancestor. \n\nNote that in this hierarchy, Neanderthals are a separate species of Homo, specifically H. neanderthalensis, and they died off. Homo Sapiens are the only surviving species of the Homo genus.\n\nIn my view, differentiating between h. sapiens and h. s. sapiens makes the question pretty poor, as it's comparing species to subspecies, but h. s. s. is the *most* correct, so unfortunately you cannot prove your teacher wrong.",
"The way it was explained to me in my college Anthropology class, Homo Sapiens means roughly \"thinking man\", while H.S.S. means roughly \"man who thinks about thinking\". The degree of difference being that as the question your teacher posed alludes to, h.s.s. is capable of symbolic thought whereas h.s. is not believed to have possessed this capability."
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2dbnmu | given the gigantic size of its military, why can't the us impose its will on every country? | I'm not American btw | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dbnmu/eli5_given_the_gigantic_size_of_its_military_why/ | {
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"While we could do that to every country individually. We would piss off the world more then we already do. And we cant face the entire world.",
"Having a large military force is not enough, while most countries could not hope to beat the US in a straight battle. Imposing your will on a country requires more than that. In many parts of the world guerilla tactics have been used against an occupying power, to overcome these requires a vast amount of manpower as the Germans found out in WWII.",
"In order to impose your will upon a country using military force, you'd have to be willing to kill anyone that resists. The US (and most countries, really) is generally loath to do this unless it can pass off some sort of defensive justification.",
"It would completely destroy their economy.\n\nIf you're talking about invasion, it's one thing to perform a military action, it's entirely another thing to hold on to the results of that military action through a continued policing presence. That's VERY VERY expensive.\n\nAnd even if you just impose your will on other independent people through threat without actual military action, they are not going to buy your exports and are not going to import to your country, and they will sabotage you when they can get away with it. So your economy, which funds your military unless you want to drive your country into bankruptcy or simply conquer everyone else and steal their stuff or take slaves, moves to a standstill. ",
"The cynical answer is because it is much easier to let our economy do that, and just use our military to protect the soft targets that the economy needs to function (see the [Straight of Hormuz](_URL_0_)).\n\nAlso, we don't have nearly a strong enough military to forcibly occupy every nation on Earth and impose our will, especially given the existence of nuclear weapons."
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5bxzny | if the average human hearing is 20hz to 20khz, why do they sell headphones with higher ranges, like 30khz? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bxzny/eli5_if_the_average_human_hearing_is_20hz_to/ | {
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"To get better results at 20KHz. The rules on this subreddit are forcing me to elaborate, but this is the simplest answer. Speakers with a 'response' from 20Hz to 20kHz cannot have a nice linear response (same output power for same input level, which is what you want for accurate reproduction of sound) across that range of frequencies, and then immediately drop to no output at all at 19Hz and 20,001Hz. On headphones marked as 20Hz-30KHz the audible range from 20Hz-20kHz can be made lovely and linear, with increasingly poor response between 16Hz-20Hz and 20kHz-31kHz, and worse response still outside that range.",
"Because if you want a car that goes easily with 200km/h you buy a car that has a top speed (on board) of 300 km/h.\n\nIf you have a car that has a max speed of 200km/h don't expect to reach that speed as easily as lower speeds."
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a4tjzt | why are other video hosting sites not as used/popular as youtube? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4tjzt/eli5_why_are_other_video_hosting_sites_not_as/ | {
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"Here is a [video](_URL_0_) that goes into the problems start up video sharing websites run into. Their audiences end up being the very same people that drive everyone else away. ",
"Popular among whom? In Japan, _URL_1_ is far more popular. For some *specific* vids, _URL_0_ is more popular as it usually cares about copyright far less than YT, etc."
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36mfa2 | what is the 'school smell'? | Where does it come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36mfa2/eli5_what_is_the_school_smell/ | {
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"I always thought I noticed it more when I came back from brakes, when they had time to buff the floors. I thought it was the cheep floor wax schools use.",
"Different schools will smell differently. You are talking about buildings and rooms filled with people all using different scents in their soaps and hygiene products (and some without), books, cleaning supplies, foods, and environmental factors that all combine to create the smell you know as school.",
"I asked a custodian once why all school cafeterias smelled the same. He said it is the lovely aroma of spilled milk and bleach. \n",
"As somebody that works in an inner city school that ranges from K-8th Grade, I could tell you that the \"School\" smell you speak of definitely gets stronger as you go from the Middle School to the Elementary part of the school. If I had to guess, I would say it's some combination of sweat, dirty laundry, disinfectant, and low quality food with a hint of freshly sharpened pencils. It is a smell like no other.",
"Perhaps the cleaning agents used within the schools. \n\nAlso school lunch pizza. How can I get that recipe?",
"I also wish to know what is the \"School Computer Lab Smell\" ? Like the combination of metals, cleaning agents and overly ventilated air...? It is my second favorite scent, next to the \"Swimming Pool Aisle at Walmart\" where the chlorination products mix to a mouth watering scent. :3",
"It has a lot to do with the standard building materials for a school (whatever cheap brick or laminate they use, chalk boards) and then the cleaning supplies and mish mash of regular day mess that they accumulate."
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4hzqz8 | how are people with split personality disorder diagnosed? | How are people with split personality disorder diagnosed?
Also are they aware of what goes on while other personalities are active? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hzqz8/eli5_how_are_people_with_split_personality/ | {
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"Dissociative Identity Disorder is extremely rare. People are diagnosed by a qualified professional in the same way that any psychiatric illness is diagnosed. They must demonstrate that they meet the diagnostic criteria outlined in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. Google \"DSM criteria for dissociative identity disorder\" for specifics. ",
"There is also some really compelling evidence that the entire idea of \"other personalities\" isn't really a thing, that American psychologists who really wanted it to be real were inadvertently encouraging their patients to demonstrate that sort of behavior through positive reinforcement. Saying \"Tell me about your other personality\" encouraged patients to think of themselves in those terms, arguably making their situation worse.\n",
"Lets just talk about the elephant in the room. Psychology is not an exact science, and there are many that feel it isn't a science at all since many of the observations made are subjective ones rather than objective. \n\nThat being said, it does make predictions about peoples behavior based on their previous actions and depending on the model it can be an accurate way of understanding a persons behavior. \n\nSo because the measurements are subjective, you have to make many more of them, and you have to use the right testing and model in order to make a diagnosis. There for a battery of tests are given to the subject, often by a team of psychologists and it works like a process of elimination. They also have to be able to observe the subject for a period of time. These observations, along with the results of many, many, tests, will lead to a diagnosis. \n\nAs far as the experience of being MPD it's difficult to guess what another persons experience is, and like people in general, every case is a little different. Movies and books tend to over dramatize MPD to write a gripping story so it can lead to a distorted public perception of what it means to have multiple or split personality disorder. \n\nTo some extent, we all have a little bit of this going on even in healthy people. You have your pissed off conflict escalating self. You have your negotiator self, and your diplomatic self. There is you when nobody else is around to judge, there is the way you act at work, and the way you act around your art school friends, the way you behave around family, etc. \n\nIt's not a disorder though because they are just different aspects of the same personality, you, and you don't suffer any debilitating aspects or have a negative quality of life because of it and most importantly, you are somewhat in control of yourself. \n\nSomebody who feels compelled to behave in socially unacceptable ways beyond their control could be suffering from a variety of psychosis, which goes back to the need to test and observe. \n\n"
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3na2lf | why is the highest tax bracket only about $450,000? why not have higher tax brackets at incomes of $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3na2lf/eli5_why_is_the_highest_tax_bracket_only_about/ | {
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"If you have that much money, it's easy to [minimize your effective tax rate](_URL_1_) (charities, retirement plans, investments, etc). The top tax bracket was as high as 94% in [1944](_URL_0_). As for why it's not very high now, look at the series of laws in that table. Rich people are able to lobby for tax changes, and tend to argue that the bulk of the economy is run by rich people so by taxing them less, they have more money to e.g. start companies, so you gain a stronger economy.\n",
"the problem is compound interest... according to bloomberg the walton heirs doubled their net worth from 70 billion in 2007 to 140 billion in 2011... by heavily taxing people like them you slow down the disaster when the top .1 % have most of the wealth on the planet",
"When did this become r/soapbox? "
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"http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/04/as-the-rich-become-super-rich-they-pay-lower-taxes-for-real/"
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3bq551 | why can't dopamine be manufactured? | If many drugs are largely enjoyable due to artificially elevated dopamine release, why can't dopamine be created and taken to achieve the euphoria? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bq551/eli5_why_cant_dopamine_be_manufactured/ | {
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"While we can create dopamine, there's no way to enjoy the dopamine without injecting it into our brain. It's much simpler to just take another drug that causes dopamine production.",
"They basically do manufacture dopamine. In fact, a popular drug treatment for people with parkinson's is 'L-DOPA' which is technically the pre-cursor to dopamine which causes the body to produce more dopamine.\n\nThere are also synthetic chemicals which can mimic neurotransmitters in the brain (e.g. bind to receptors and cause the brain to activate in pretty much the same way as a natural neurotransmitter). There are also other ways to increase neurotransmitter levels (e.g. by inhibiting re-uptake in the synapse).\n\nAs with any drug, however, firstly you can't really control where exactly in your brain gets the dopamine boost (it basically just increases dopamine activity everywhere, which won't necessarily mimic natural concentrations of the neuro-chemical).\n\nSecondly, these drugs (depending on how they increase dopamine activity) may have unwanted side effects, especially in the case of continual use or over-dosing. For example, depending on the drug, your body may start to adapt so that you need a larger and larger dose over time until the point where the drug has basically no effect or you have to take so much of the drug that you risk over-dosing.",
"Dopamine can be manufactured, but dopamine itself won't cross the blood-brain barrier. You can however produce drugs that will increase dopamine levels - patients with Parkinson's disease are given [L-DOPA](_URL_0_), which is a precursor to dopamine that can reach the brain.",
"I work for a home infusion company and some of our bags of IV fluid have dopamine in it, but as stated before it doesn't cross the brain barrier. So I don't know WHY it's in there but I assume it does something good for neurological and autoimmune diseases. "
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3g3k06 | what is a dna schedule and how does it prove when human life begins? | Mike Huckabee mentioned it tonight in the Republican primary debate. Can any geneticists or embryologists explain what a DNA schedule is and how it demonstrates that human life begins at conception? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g3k06/eli5_what_is_a_dna_schedule_and_how_does_it_prove/ | {
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"It's not a term that exists. Huckabee made it up. \n\nThe question of when human life begins will always be a philosophical one. Science can't \"prove\" anything here. A new, genetically distinct organism is created at fertilization. So you could argue \"life\" begins there. But at that stage several eggs are fertilized and most of these will spontaneously abort rather than go on to form a fetus. So is it the beginning of human life? That's for you and your God to decide. ",
"I think he's defining organic matter containing human DNA as human beings. Like if I were to leave my skin cells in his mum's butt, they would be his sibling poo babies. \n\nOr maybe DNA just needs to organize its busy life and that somehow relates to embryos.",
"I am an MD and a researcher in molecular biology and I have never heard the term \"DNA schedule\" before last night. Apparently, though, Huckabee has used the term in prior speeches, so it wasn't a brand new invention. That said, I can't see where anyone else has used the term.\n\nI think that his argument is that each zygote has a genome which is distinct from the parents and that this somehow makes a zygote a person. If that's his claim, then he may be using the term \"schedule\" in the sense of a plan or procedure or perhaps in the sense of a legal schedule like an appendix to a document. He would be saying something like, \"The instructions for development contained in the DNA of a zygote are unique, therefore it is a legal person.\"\n\nI'm not sure how you coherently get from the idea that a zygote has a non-parental genome to the idea that a zygote is a person. Clearly, personhood is not conferred only by having a unique genome. Some human lymphocytes and certainly cancer cells are slightly different in their genes from the rest of your cells and identical twins have an identical genetic sequence (more or less), yet no one argues that a tumor is a person but both twins are not. Furthermore, presumably a human clone would also be a legal person at some point in development. "
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1qh8wn | why was/is there such an incredible fear of communism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qh8wn/eli5_why_wasis_there_such_an_incredible_fear_of/ | {
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"Because all of the historical attempts has worsened the condition of the country, e.g\n\n[Mao's reign in China](_URL_0_)\n\n[Soviet Union](_URL_1_)\n\nI agree that idealistically the world would have communism, but from what we can see in history it just can't work.\n",
"In the US the fear of Communism kicked off after the Russian Revolution, when the states went through the first \"Red Scare\". This was an ideology that had eliminated an established European monarchy - it seemed powerful, and it didn't seem unreasonable to think that a similar revolution could happen in the US, particularly since the country had experienced a lot of high-profile attacks/assassinations by anarchists at the end of the 1800s and start of the 1900s. It was an ideology that went against what people believed was the American way of life - Lenin was talking about a global revolution, and there were a lot of people in the United States that would have a lot to lose if what happened in Russia happened in their country too.\n\nAfter WWII I doubt anyone thought there was any kind of risk of the USA undergoing a communist revolution. The fear was more that the USA's could lose allies to communism, and that the ideology would spread, or that the communist 'enemy' would attack the US.",
"All these people are talking about dictatorships. It's understandable because dictatorships and communism go hand in hand kind of. You can say that is the fear with communism because people usually associate it with a dictatorship. When people think of communism they think of people getting shot for criticisms against the government and their liberties getting taken away. This is just more of a by product of the one party system. If the party is an ass and wants to take liberties away they can. But it the party is cool and allow those liberties they can. Both work in communism.\n\nSome of the key features of communism is the means of production is controlled by the state and the economy is planned by the one party. This means that the one party decides how the economy is going to run. They determine how many of one product is going to be produced and determines the prices for those product. There are also a lot of other features that appear good on paper, but don't really work out in reality. \n\nIt should be noted that no government has really achieved real communism/socialism they just picked some of the features they liked left the rest out.",
"*Note: I am not a history or a sociology major or anything that could be classified as 'a professional' on this subject. I've just had alot of history classes and read alot. Im going to try and cover Communism as a concept and as a history topic.*\n\n\n* **Communism == USSR**\nRemember that Communism, or Marxism-Leninism as in the 1920's was what overthrew the Russian monarchy in a revolution and began the USSR. As you must know that the USSR was an enormous economic power that grew extremely quickly to rival the U.S. After defeating Germany with the Allies, at the end of the WWII the USSR decided it would be *a great idea* if the whole world would reject democracy (or whatever government they currently had) and use socialist(?) Communist governments, and decided to enact this process by force- invading Eastern Europe and supporting parts of Africa (Congo and Ethopia) and East Asia (Korea) in communist reform. The U.S. (and some of Europe, but mostly the U.S took active measures) saw this 'spread' of 'communism' as a threat- and thus the war between 'democracy' vs 'communism', 'the west' vs 'the east *(of the Berlin Wall)*, the U.S vs the USSR in indirect conflict over ideology began (thus begins the Cold War.)\n\nWe can blame propaganda and people like McCarthy for giving the popular beliefs about communism being bad and such- but again, Im not a sociologist, the propaganda was likely as bad for both sides. But the 'War against Communism' was a frightening war where both sides could obliterate the world with nuclear arms; a war not on land or other disputes but the ideology of government. The outcome of this war between the U.S vs the USSR (and the collapse of the USSR) has been cemented into our ideals of Democracy vs Communism; and considering the public opinion of these nations you can guess which government system is favoured.\n\nAs for why there is still a fear now, we still have a major country that still uses Communism style of government- China. I'll presume you already know why people are in fear of China; I dont spread rumors so I'll refrain from listing them here. Of course China is still doing extremely well under its government so ultimately Communism cannot be labeled as bad/evil. On the other hand we also have North Korea- which with its military spending, personality cult, low standard of living(?), censorship and suspect behaviour, represents a threat(?) of what a Communism governments can perform (similar occurrences are reported from the USSR and China). I cant tell if any of this is completely true because yes, propaganda and censorship still exist both for and against North Korea.\n\n\n* **Communism as a concept/ideal**\nAssuming you know what communism is, most people confuse it with an extreme version of socialism. Socialism presumably being- reforms that favour use of state funding to help a majority of people (e.g welfare, health care reforms, etc). There's the belief that reliance on state funds will increase (thus more taxes) and people will do less to benefit themselves (this is ignoring people who are already in less than ideal situations due to circumstance and the state funding is their only reliable means of escaping poverty/etc). This doesnt seem to be much of an issue with European countries where social reforms are widespread- but in the U.S there seems to be a strong backlash against social reforms and these 'social reforms' are then perceived to be our government heading towards 'communism'.\nThe Western world (U.S, Europe) is probably never going to head towards Communism unless a very serious threat/something occurs.\nThats all I've got. Being from Nigeria, England and the U.S I think I gave a decent but neutral description on the topic. I dont think there's anything inherently wrong with Communism; but the examples we do have (excluding China?) have not been exemplary.\n\n**TL:DR** The Cold War made the U.S (representing Democracy) seem like the good guy and the winners over the bad guy; the USSR (representing Communism.) \nLots of propaganda from both sides.\nLots of atrocities and low standard of living committed under Communist governments.\nPeople link a 'welfare state' with being Communist.\n\n**Edit:** Lots of grammar mistakes. LOTS OF THEM.\n\n**Edit 2:** I acknowledge that my answer is by no means complete and I should have put more emphasis on the atrocities that occur as a result of Communist governments (the dictatorship of Stalin in the USSR, Mao Zedong of China, and various countries of the Eastern Bloc. I encourage people to read the criticism/replies before forming a complete opinion on Communism (although this is reddit- you should never take just one person's opinion on something anyway.) \n\nCommunism is also a very vague and nebulous idea- its important to learn from history but its also important to know that Communism is not **solely** the manner in which Stalin / Mao built up the USSR and China upon bodies of their own people (although it seems to happen **every time**, but the USSR/Stalin originated the first communist government so it might be what others built upon on, or maybe its just my bias in thinking dictators use Communism as a means for absolute power that caused me to omit this.) If someone can better explain what Communism is from a concept/ideal point of view please do. Thanks again- the original post has stayed the same.",
"Partly seeing what governments espousing Communism (Soviets, Maoist China, modern China to a much lesser extent) have done in the past, partly propaganda, partly horror at Communist philosophy.\n\nThe Soviet Union was founded in an extremely violent, bloody revolution. The royal family, including the children, as well as other who happened to be born into noble families, were murdered. Churches were seized, pillaged, and burned, and clergy murdered or exiled, showing that the revolutionaries (called the Bolshevics) had no respect for God. Religion, which unlike on Reddit was and is mostly revered, was banned. Dissenters were killed or imprisoned. Later, under Stalin, purges even began within the party, leaving no one safe. The model of central, state control of the economy that defines socialism was inherently and historically inefficient, leading to widespread poverty and starvation at worst, and lack of opportunity at best.\n\nThose that have studied the philosophies involved have deeper complaints. By collectivising the means of production and placing it under state/community control, Communism denies people agency. It denies people the right to pursue their own best interest over that of the collective, which is one of the most basic and fundamentsl human rights there is. It justifies this with a skewed view of history based on class warfare and perceived (and sometimes real) oppression. It wrapped this up with a universalist view of their revolution - they believed (and practiced to varying degrees) in spreading their revolution worldwide, so it wasn't something that could be brushed off as someone else's problem.\n\nFinally, from the beginning there has been a lot of propaganda muddying things up. While the attrocities committed by Communist revolutionaries and governments are real, some people let their reasonable distaste for it get too far and either make them seem bigger or more common than they were, or ignore the role played by incompetence. The power of the Soviet Union, and their will to destroy us, were hugely exagerated. The soviets loved to keep things secret, leading people on the outside to assume the worst. The desire to spread Communism wavered over time, but you wouldn't hear about that. The presence of big scary communism lead people to overlook problems with their own governments, partly by the design of people with an interest in maintaining the status quo, and partly out of honest priorities.\n",
" In a communist country there is no private property and everyone works for the collective good. In democratic free enterprise workers receive the marginal value of the product or service they produce. The theory is that with the existence of private property people will work hard to better their own position in life (and in doing so they unintentionally increase the overall GDP of their country). Communism was originally proposed as a post capitalist structure but it has always been implemented in countries that do not have a vast amount of wealth to collectivize. The result is that hunger becomes more widespread rather than wealth, as was the case in the Soviet Union. If communism were implemented in a wealthy country like Luxembourg it would likely have an entirely different result from the terror based regimes we are familiar with. Once the human race has developed to a point where we no longer need innovation and most of the world problems have been solved (ie hunger, pollution, disease) it may be possible to finally adopt a system where we all work together rather than race each other to the top.",
"Since I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, look into primitive communism, many tribes were successful for thousands of years without personal property and ownership of others labor. Unfortunately, models like these don't scale up well, but in smaller groups it can still be possible, the people in that system however would have to give up many of the comforts we hold dear in modern society, and I don't know many people who would want to do that, myself included. But to answer your question in a completely uneducated viewpoint, I feel most of the fear of communism is a fear of losing ones own identity as an individual. We have grown up in a paradigm that promotes rugged self sufficiency and it's hard to imagine any other way, so fear of the unknown I'm sure plays a part, plus there has never been a good modern model that hasn't ended in catastrophe. Hope this helps! ",
"It isn't fear. Communism is intrinsically flawed because it is merely a set of laudable goals but zero understanding of human psychology or sociology. That is exceedingly dangerous combination when many people blindly support it because it permits individuals to grab massive power with little real understanding of how to create a successful society. \n\nWhat it leads to, ineluctably, is the opposite of communism; massive inequality and domination. ",
"The rich feared losing all their power and money, which is ironic, given the current state of communist China. ",
"The points I don't see many people bridging are that when you have sharing or redistribution, someone has to be in charge of doling it out. That someone ends up a point of control and, further, that someone ends up with the privilege of giving themselves and their friends more than anyone else. \n\nTheoretically, community oversight can solve this; in practice, that doesn't tend to happen. Among other reasons like basic human complacency, national scale means you can no longer personally watch the people doling stuff out. So you trust someone else and then they become a point of control too. \n\nThat's why, human desire for more stuff aside, communism isn't sustainable at scale, and tends to lead to dictatorial governments. The same issues potentially exist in socialism and capitalism, especially with the US's form of democracy, but capitalism in theory keeps power (via money and opportunity) more distributed. In practice, it also devolves (as we're currently seeing), just in a different way and pace. \n\nRe: it being scary, probably because it does look so good on paper, and because once you start it it's hard to reverse until the system in general collapses. You can flee, but you probably don't have enough power to actually modify the system. Capitalism and democracy at least give the illusion of choice and power, if not always the reality. \n\nArguably, the truly scary thing is power centralization, however it happens. But the lure of \"getting things done\" is high enough that people go for it every time. Ambition doesn't always work in one's favor on the long scale. ",
"There's an interesting economic argument against communism called the [economic calculation problem](_URL_0_) about how economic planning is a poor (or impossible) substitute for markets. The arguments stems from a debate in the 1920s between Austrian/marginalist economists and Marxists economists called the [socialist calculation debate](_URL_1_). Back then (neoclassical) economics was still in its infancy.\n\nThe gist of the argument is that without a price mechanism, which a market provides, you cannot match demand and supply. \n\n",
"To me its seems that everyone thinks that what Russia had was pure Communism. What most people hate is actually the political view Stalinism. Leon Trotsky's (the original communist leader) views were very diffrent to Stalin and it was when he died in which the political idea communism became hated, because of what Stalin turned it into.",
"Second time today I've found myself suggesting people read Leon Trotsky. Also, you're crazy if you think China is still practicing Communism. It isn't. They're capitalists under single-party state control. ",
"Because it killed 50,000,000+ people.",
"I'll go a different direction with this.\n\nPeople, you know are afraid of many things. We are afraid of things that look scary or things we don't know or things we don't understand. We're afraid of change in any form really, just like tomorrow, if I said we are going to eat completely different food now on, before you even tasted what I make, you will be a little unsure how to feel.\n\nNow I could tell you, communism is bad and millions and millions of people died because of it, but really, how many people died from god, or democracy. It's hard to say, but what I can tell you is, people don't like change, and when we all finally agree to change, it's usually when things are so bad we feel like there is no other way.\n\nIn those situations, it is easy for certain people to hold great power and do good things or do bad things.\n\nThere is a certain fear of communism in the U.S.A, but people also fear electric cars and thorium reactors and solar panels and hell and...well so many different things.\n\nPeople are generally afraid of anything that is not the norm.\n\n",
"We are raised to believe Communism is bad like we're raised to believe hard work pays off in a Capitalist state. While the latter [is demonstrably untrue](_URL_0_), the former is more problematic. \n\n\"Communism,\" following Marx, is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Stalinist Russia, or Castro's Cuba were therefore never Communist societies- they were actually quite the opposite. They relied on heavy state control, stark social stratification, and state manipulation of currency. Those countries did nothing to abolish the state, to upend the class war, or to eliminate wage slavery. They aren't particularly relevant to this conversation, because while they are excellent examples of State Capitalism, or Fascism, they aren't very pertinent examples of Communism. \n\nThe great fear of Communism in the US follows from what a Marxist might call \"Ideological State Apparatuses.\" In school, in the media, in religious institutions, even in our families, the Capitalist ideology pervades. It's neither rational nor irrational, but it's inculcated early and often into our daily practices, and therefore into our ideologies. \n\nThis is what causes a kneejerk reaction in many to the concept of Communism. Few truly understand by \"Communism\" that a widely laudable set of ideals is being set forth, with a century and a half's worth of strong scholarship in its favor. They point to Soviet Russia, or \"The People's Republic of China\" as strawmen against the Communist proposition because their prescribed ideology prevents them from seeing the difference between the two.",
"Just a few reasons, off the top of my head...\n\n* Iron curtain\n* Millions killed by their own government\n* Failed economic system\n* Bread lines\n* Little to no hope of improving one's lot in life\n* Widespread poverty with very few controlling the money and power (people bitch about this in a capitalistic economy, it is ironically worse in a \"communist\" economy)",
"Additionally, to add to the good historical facts raised below, the communist nations not only did not care about an individuals rights, they made it a point to squash all dissent. There was no such thing as free speech at all. One had to be very careful to what you said and to whom. The Berlin Wall was not put up to keep West Germans from escaping to communist East Berlin. It was the other way around and that was true in all the Eastern Block nations. Life was very hard for people and communists, generally, do not run a good economy or agribusiness resulting in severe shortages of food and other basic goods. You are still a very fortunate person to be born and raised in the USA. You can learn how so in more detail from immigrants, especially political ones. \n",
"On an unpollotical note and note reading much of other comments would u feel comfortable in a society in which no matter how hard you work you will always be equal in wealth amd etc as some one who does nothing ",
"Did you not read this mornings news? 80 North Koreans shot for having bibles or watching porn and soap operas. ",
"This video explains the basic american fear of Communism during the peak McCarthy Era better than anything else I've ever found.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Communism, as an ideology, is incompatible with many Western beliefs/ideals such as private property ownership and individual achievement (the idea that if you work harder or are more business savvy/risk-taking, you should be rewarded accordingly). Proponents of capitalism will argue that communism stifles progress and invention.\n\nHowever, in theory socialistic societies don't sound horrible, especially when we know of the gross inequalities in our world today. Just look at America's 1%. Say what you will, but that's a gross inequality of wealth in the world's top economy--should CEOs be taking in multimillion dollar salaries while employees are laid off? Sorry, I digress, but a communist might criticize capitalists for that reason.\n\nCommunism became unspeakable to Western societies after World War II, when the bipolar powers of the US and USSR emerged as competitors in a roughly 40-year pissing contest that would span all over the world. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 was Truman's request for Congress to send millions of dollars in aid to Greece and Turkey to aid in recovery and development. Truman warns that poor countries are prone to radicalism, which would result in socialist governments taking over. He characterizes the world in black and white terms, Russians/communists = evil, Americans/liberty-loving capitalists = good.\n\nInterestingly enough, the Communist Party in the US had been around since 1919 and were essential in creating and leading major labor unions. Communist-trained leaders and members were known to be very organized, good at recruiting members, exceptionally passionate and dedicated to their job. Communists were also known as more willing to accept African Americans in labor unions (pretty rare for the time) and were more likely to be proponents in general for civil rights and economic equality.\n\nBy the late 1940s, though, communism was not only unpopular; it was evil. With the \"closing of the Iron Curtain,\" communism became solely associated with the Soviet Union, America's ultimate enemy. Early on, the war in Korea (1950) proved that we would be fighting physical wars against communist proponents in addition to proxy wars in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.\n\n**To really answer your question**, however, the Red Scare (1947-1955 roughly) is why there was such an incredible fear of Communism. People often refer to the era and the attitude itself as McCarthyism, so named after a turd of a Senator named Joseph McCarthy who engaged in modern-day witch hunts of alleged communists. The Red Scare was the fear of the upsurge of Communism in America, and the specific fear that we were being infiltrated by Soviet spies. \n\nThe American government was the one going after everyone! They imposed loyalty tests for federal workers. Workers who were found to have ties with Communism were fired. Keep in mind that CPUSA had been labor supporters just a decade back; many workers had interactions--even brief ones--with CPUSA for this reason. Yet this would work against them. If your name was found on a confiscated CPUSA mailing list from 1937, you were suspicious.\n\nCommunism *was* more prevalent in the entertainment circles. In Hollywood, directors, writers, producers, actors, and many more in the industry were blacklisted--sometimes by their own peers (see Elia Kazan). Some were appalled by it; Stanley Miller, a playwright who was himself questioned by the US Congress, wrote The Crucible as an allegory for the era. These Congressional hearings themselves were awful. Hearings aren't like courts, and there's no due process of the law. Congressmen like Joseph McCarthy would hurl allegations at a powerless victim; even if they weren't guilty of anything, simply the public embarrassment of being involved was enough for it to affect you for the rest of your life. It lasted only until the mid-late 1950s, but damn, it was bad. You knew it was going downhall fast when McCarthy accused General Marshall, a friggin war hero, of being a Communist. \n\nBut still, it's quite the sore subject.\n\nP.S. The [kibbutzes](_URL_0_) in Israel are intriguing modern communal communities. I personally would love to know more.",
"Because of human nature\n\n",
"How could you do it on a large scale without a fascist government? People are always quick to point out that the USSR and People's Republic of China aren't good examples of communism, but the system inherently requires a large degree of centralized planning to the extent that control will have to be exerted on the individual in a way that makes cronyism look like anarcho-utopia. ",
"I just don't like the idea of the government telling me what job I have to do for the rest of my life, and owning my land/house, yada yada. I'm all for helping people. I donate to charities, help at the food kitchen, whatever I can. But I want to be able to help people help themselves. I want to be able to choose my career, buy the house I want, all of which I've done. We can all still work together, it's just better to do it all by our own choices, rather than the government controlling all or most of our lives. \n\nI know this is brash, vague, and not helpful. Just my very quick 2 cents. No disrespect to anyone that feels different.",
"This sounds like one of those ELI5 questions that everyone tried to answer like it's ELI'm a college senior. ",
"An example from childhood: Your teacher assigns a project and you have groups of 4. How often do you actually get all 4 people to make a contribution? Usually it's the motivated kids pulling extra weight to get 4 people's work done. \n\nBy removing the personal consequences of failure and rewards of success, communism breeds apathy. ",
"I believe Communism as an idea is sound and fair. It's just extremely hard to implement as it relies on the people in power having integrity and actually sticking to the plan. Thing is, the people in power can never be entirely trusted and in general people are greedy selfish fucks.",
"Why's there a fear of communism? Take a look at the everyday circumstances of the average person in China, or formerly, in the USSR.",
"This question was answered rather eloquently in 1985: _URL_0_",
"The reason communisms barbarity is seemingly poorly understood is that too many of the intellectual elite of the capitalist/democratic West were enamored of its ideas. No one really defended fascism after WWII, but there were still intellectuals- professors, journalists, artists, who thought that Marx had good ideas. They spent a lot of energy excusing the crimes of communism, often trying to lay the responsibility for these atrocities on the \"wrong man\" being at the pinnacle of the system, or even on American actions. (They only did it 'cause they were afraid of us.)\nThe Holodomor was an explicitly communist act. The Kulaks of Ukraine did not wish to \"collectivize\" their farms, so the Soviets did their best to exterminate them (4-14 million dead, mostly of absolutely, undeniably intentional starvation.) People act like it is only the megalomaniacs at the top, or the free-loaders on the collective farm that spoil communism.\nNope. Communism spoils communism. What Stalin did to Ukraine was the logical, and only outcome of forced collectivization. If you stand in the way of the collective will, your existence is a problem to be solved. The justification is that the goal is so, so important, no individual can be allowed to hinder it. \n\nWhen Mao inflicted the \"Great Leap Forward\" upon China, he created what is probably the greatest famine in human history. Either it was willful elimination of excess population for the benefit of industrial development and population control, or it was (as an economist might say) misallocation of resources in the absence of the price signal. Pretty predictable. The national cultural suicide that was the Cultural Revolution was another perfect example of communism properly practiced. Mao gets all the credit for China moving into the 20th Century, as if China would have stayed a semi-feudal warlord infested state with out the Great Helmsman. Marx, and later communists, realized that communism could not work if the people retained their old value system. Hence the \"Vanguard Period\" when they would be instilled with the new ethos. Sure, it was part personality cult, but this gets at another problem of communism:\nHave you noticed that apologists for communism always point to people as the problem? If your system is not designed for people, please don't use it on them. \nYet people still point to China as the success story, ignoring the fact that this incredible rise coincides with the end of Mao and Deng Xiaoping's adoption of more capitalist economics. Look closely at China, and I think you will find that, while it is massively productive and way better off than it was, it is starting to run into the limits of \"Socialism with Chinese characteristics.\"\nSo, yes I guess we can say that despite many dedicated communist revolutions, communism has never existed. In the end human nature and the inherent inefficiency of central planning did them all in. \n\nThe presumption after the tens of millions of lives lost must be that communism does not work, and attempting it leads to an incredible concentration of power in a totalitarian state that will prevent any redress of grievances with terror.",
"From a personal view communism does not work because it does not reward the gifted, there is no incentive to be good at anything.",
"666 comments; Communism's evil confirmed! ",
"Fear of Communism mainly manifests in areas dominated by Capitalism. In situation where there is inequity, the folks who possess the lion's share are generally unlikely to endorse a systemic change that would change ownership to everyone. And the folks that have the most money have the greatest ability to control messaging.\n\nIronically enough, the real hardcore capitalist types that endorse Laissez-Faire policies and no regulations are, in fact, endorsing communism. Karl Marx saw Capitalism as a critical step in the evolution to it's successor (known to the public somewhat interchangeably as communism, marxism, socialism.) In order for the succession to occur, Capitalism needs to be left completely unfettered. The result, according to Marx, would be over-production and severe income inequity which would cause a crisis of capitalism. The workers would become too poor to afford the goods that are produced by their capitalism employers. The system stalls and over-production occurs. (JIT production systems hadn't been invented yet.) It's at this point that a revolution would occur and the goods would be distributed fairly.\n\nSo - want Communism? Go with the Tea Party and Neoconservative types and buckle your seat belt. \n\nAs an aside, it's interesting that in addition to their policies supporting a Communist revolution, the Republicans control 'red states.' They also complain viciously about Liberals just as Karl Marx did. And the Neoconservative movement actually started in the American Communist Party.\n\nTLDR; The Republicans are, in some ways, more communist than avowed communists.",
"Feared by who? The rich and powerful who control most of the information feared communism b/c the communists tended to purge them, appropriate their property and wealth, and hand it out to others. Most of the rest of the Red Scare was just smoke and mirrors because --though communists have done some truley horrible things-- fascists and capitalists and others 'ists\" of all ilks have done just about the same amount of evil to average people as communists. But those who pull the strings were very well aware that communists would snatch their wealth and so they put a lot of effort into anti-communist propaganda. ",
"Communism is idealistic in nature. This proposed form of government, in no way takes the human behavior into account. It is an idealistic design, for a people far from ideal. Humans are flawed, it is what defines us. Therefore true communism has yet to exixst. What does exist, is a bastardization of the communist ideal.",
"It is important to know that real communism has never happened on a large scale. People love to throw around the word communism, but many don't actually know what it is. To quote attiladanun \" Your teacher assigns a project and you have groups of 4. How often do you actually get all 4 people to make a contribution? Usually it's the motivated kids pulling extra weight to get 4 people's work done.\" This is only because of the teacher being a bad teacher. If there is some sort of enforcement that says \"well, if you don't do your part, then you get nothing\" then people will do their part. Communism works quite well on a small scale such as tribes or communes. This is because there will be consequences if you don't chip in.",
"Because you live in a country that was capitalist during the existence of the USSR and the USSR was explicitly anti-capitalist. The country had every intention of creating global communism and tried to support communist revolution whenever possible. The capitalist countries, especially the US tried to do the opposite, by installing capitalist-friendly (although often authoritarian) regimes wherever it could. The middle there was a massive propaganda war. The US government has very actively tried to make you hate communism. That is why there is such an incredible fear. The propaganda was extremely effective. ",
"Communism was an attempt to promote the equality of all people in a society. In modern terms, it's the knee here reaction people have to the golden parachute CEOs; they've been so hurt by the fabulously wealthy that they would rather remove the concept of wealth and class than be subjected to the giant gap between the poor and the mega rich. For Communism, especially in Russia, this doesn't really work. Government workers were given more power than ever, and the military officials got to be top dog. To me, it's the returning to a caveman type era, why be nice to the little weakling when you've got the bigger stick? Also, like the previous commenter, when everyone gets equal reward for every job, those that have the crappiest, dirtiest jobs (think garbage man v burger flipper) are ticked off because their effort is far higher than others but they all get equal reward. And in the case of Russia that reward was awful. It's all basic modern economic principle and that's why capitalist/Democratic systems are often viewed as superior because they are based upon individual choice and the pursuit of personal goals. Mind you, this is ftom a western cultural perspective. I've heard that eastern cultures are more focused on benefitting the community. ",
"It's collectivism vs individualism. I think you'll find there's a place for both, but the argument for collectivism is far more compelling.",
"Communism needs to first be understood. First the soviets did not have communism and neither do the chinese etc.. they have or had \"forms\" of communism.\n\n\"TRUE\" communism is rather closely relates to true \"socialism\"\n\nthey are not necessarily \"bad\" unless your wealthy. then they are very very bad.\n\nthe wealthy people in control of our nation certainly don't want to give up their wealthy so they demonized communism in extreme.\n\nnow its just built into our society to hate it.\n\nand this is just fine for the wealthy ones in power :-)",
"Arguments about how there has never been a truly communist country are essentially fantastical. All attempts at communism (on a national and not village or tribal level) have wilted down to the proliferation of repression and grave injustices. Capitalist systems started out pretty awful by today's standards, but I am able to make that statement because things HAVE improved, capitalism allows for improvements (albeit slow and painful) that communism doesn't. The only communist system that has survived to be a world player is the Chinese one, and I think most will agree that it's because their economy is essentially capitalist. Their political philosophy is the one that's still communist, and most will agree that the injustices and censorship etc. of that style of governance are not desirable. \n\nSo communism has fared worse than capitalism both as an economic philosophy and as an political one. (Actual results, not intended ones). This is not to say that capitalism is the ideal (no human construct is), but as history and actually results on the ground have shown, capitalism makes things better, **overally** and **eventually**, i.e. on a national and global scale. The improvement is like a chain saw, it contains rises and falls on a smaller scale, but it rises none-the-less. So I yearn to see a scientific approach to political discourse, where we don't simply pin ideas in our heads together, but look at actual results. \nLet's not debate the ideas or the intentions, but the actual results achieved in practice.\n\nSo communism is feared because in all attempts (despite all cultural, economic, linguistic differences etc. between all communist and former communist countries), it (without fail so far) degenerates into tyranny and doesn't pull out of it. (The only ones pulling out clearly adopting capitalist philosophies in their economies.) Its ideals greatly appeal to our sense of equality and so forth, but in practise it emphatically fails to achieve its goals. This appeal is what attracts so many young boisterous and change seeking individuals, which is why the left is comprised primarily of active young adults. But the results on the ground are why it is not popular among the more mature demographics, when people eventually realise that actual actions and results are more important than intentions, no matter how noble. That is why \" **if u are not a radical in your early 20s, you have no heart; but if you are still a radical in your 40s, you have no head** \"\nMost people are incapable and unwilling to look at these things in required detail, and so the capitalist countries resolved to simply shun communism in (ironically) a rather authoritarian manner. But that's fine, because we must not create a false dichotomy; there is a lot of grey area, and though grave injustices can occur under capitalism, it effing improves, and moves on.\nAnd when a better system pops up, we'll take it. But communism is definitely not it. In the evolution of political philosophies, communism has is definitely being pushed to extinction, principally because it doesn't work. So let's not create a false dichotomy and say that capitalism is just as horrible as communism; there are similar undesirables, but one can clearly move in a direction that the other can't.\n\nUnless we have an apocalypse and return to living as small tribe! :)\n\nOne other thing. Governments suck at doing most things. Imagine Apple or Ferrari being run by a centralised government type body, I dare say that you are far less likely to have the innovation and growth etc. experienced. So think about **that** when u espouse collectivised economies and wealth redistribution and egalitarianism in a world we know that we have very different people with very different capabilities and motivations. There is a very good reason why Gates made a whole lot more money than me, and trying to make us equal contributors, or sharing his wealth with me or making it for everyone is not the way to go... you'd make him sad and he would move to another country :)\n\nBut seriously, people are afraid of communism because the western powers bullied them into being fearful of it. But for good reason :)",
"This is my complete guess and conclusion based on the stories I hear from the vietnamese people I work with who escaped during the Vietnam war. \n\nCommunism is run by party. This party is like the school yard bully, they do whatever they want, when they want.\n\n1/ For example,in AUS for a bill to be passed, it needs to be revised and formally go through a process before it can be imposed. Notice is also given to the public of the new law. \nIn Vietnam, it seemed that the communist can one day say 'today we are no longer using shells as our currency, we are now using beads'. This screws up the nation as everyone was using shells before and they are now poor, hence making the communist party richer as they most likely obtain the majority of beads. This is what actually happened during the Vietnam war (not actually using shells and beads, but changing their currency) \n\n2/ here we follow a structure of law, where if you do something wrong you will be charged/thrown in jail/face consequence in a humane way where you still have rights to being treated in a humane manner.\nIn communist countries, law enforcers ARE the communist and you will not be treated with civil rights as this does not exist. You will probably be bashed, shot or robbed. They can do whatever they want to you and no one can touch them.\n\n3/ they have f**king control over EVERYTHING. Facebook is banned in China, youtube and google is banned in North Korea and Vietnam - no f**king joke. They control what their citizens have access to as they want their citizens to believe they are the best and nicest people out there and that their country isn't suffering.... When it is. I remember at work this vietnamese lady told me just before she escaped from Vietnam, she was required to fill out a permission slip to visit her friend in the next town. WHO DOES THAT!? here you just hop in your car and do whatever you like!! This was 30 years ago so I'm not sure if this is still the case\n\n4/ I was also told that when Ho Chi Minh died, the law enforcers of the town went around telling everyone that they HAD to cry and wail when the media show up. If anyone was caught not doing so, the punishment was they would starve the victims family of rice and food. I guess the communist have access to their food supply as well.\n\n5/everything is all about money. Want to send your child to school? Sick and need meds for pneumonia? Only the wealthy can afford these services as it will go directly into the communists pockets. I know that the healthcare in US sounds like this but the difference is in USA, they will only perform enough service/s so you will not die. They may not treat you, but just enough so you can still walk out breathing. In Vietnam, no medical treatment will be performed unless you show them the munnies.\nIn developed countries there are public schools are education is free. Not the case in Vietnam. Only rich kids get an education or very hard labourers can only afford to send one or two of their many children to school. \n\n6/ humanity does not exist. If you die on the street... Who cares? Your pockets will be emptied clean and everyone will go on about their day. Not over here buddy... Not over here. Someone will probably contact for help, your family will be notified and you will have a proper burial. \n\n\n\nIt sounds like a massive lack of freedom, broken laws and the communist are only interested in making themselves richer and have no interest in helping their nation. I have asked my fellow colleagues the question that if Australia was to be under attack by China, North Korea or Vietnam, would they take refuge again or would they stay. They shook their heads and said 'I would run until I die. I would never succumb to the communist.' I'd say they are probably in their 50s or 60s and came to Australia around thirty years ago.",
"This would have been a better question over in /r/AskHistorians. Because it wasn't about theoretical fear of theoretical communism, it was about some specific incidents in Communist history that people were afraid would happen if it came to them.\n\nMost Americans have *no* idea what the Boxer Rebellion was about. For this discussion, the only thing you need to know was that the US Marine Corps was sent in to pull off a kind of takeover of China, to prop up a pro-US regime, and the Chinese people guessed (correctly) that the Christian missionaries who were in China right before the US invasion, who were in some cases the excuse for the invasion when bad things happened to them, were spies for the US and for US oil companies. So when the pro-US government of China got overthrown, Christian missionaries and their converts were tortured to find out what they knew, then slaughtered.\n\nNone of the reasons for this made the papers back in the US, only the fact that after the Communist takeover of China, US missionaries and their converts were slaughtered. So most Americans assumed that, if Communism came to the US, Christians would be slaughtered here, too. (Never mind that Christians were mostly left alone in Soviet Russia. People were having to guess, at a time when their own government was lying to them about what it was doing, so unsurprisingly their guesses weren't all that accurate.)\n\nAnother thing that most Americans didn't know was that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was, arguably, the most complicated war in human history: 13 distinct sides, plus invasion forces from 7 different countries. In the aftermath of the revolution, where a coalition of several sides won, there was a series of show trials, purges, and internal massacres intended to take out rivals to the ruling faction, then again so that one leader inside that faction could stop worrying about being overthrown by his internal rivals.\n\nMost Americans didn't know enough Russian history and politics, or enough about the history of revolutions in general, to understand why any of this was happening. So they assumed it was just happening \"because Communism,\" that if Communism came to the US, there would also be internal genocide, waves of assassination, and show trials of accused dissidents. And maybe it even would have; not because of Communism, but because after most revolutions the aftermath more closely resembles The Reign of Terror than what we went through in the US.\n\nThat being said, there were people whose fear of Communism was somewhat legitimate: people who had inherited great wealth, and people whose income mostly came from the stock market, both of whom stood to lose most of their fortunes, maybe even lose everything, if Communism ever came to the US. So, even if nothing else went wrong while the US was converting to Communism, it would really have sucked for the richest 0.5% or so of us -- and that 0.5% were able to pay for a lot of ads, a lot of lecture tours, a lot of lobbying firms, and a lot of clubs and organizations, to spread stories about how scary Communism was.",
"I lived in a communist country when Russians came here. It was the darkest age ever for our state. We are free now and hating communist like ever before. Still, North Korea is com.\n\n//Edit: spelling"
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2y50t2 | when i close my eyes and blow my nose, i feel an air bubble in the inner corner of my eye. why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y50t2/eli5_when_i_close_my_eyes_and_blow_my_nose_i_feel/ | {
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"Your tear duct (nasolacrimal duct) is connected to your sinuses.\n\nThere's a flap that's supposed to keep the two separate, but in some people, it doesn't quite seal.\n\nYou're trying to blow air through your nose, but because of the pressure, some of the air leaks through your tear duct.\n\nIf you're bored, search the internet for \"squirt milk from eye\". It's a very clear indication of the connection.",
"It's because the tear duct is connected to your sinuses. Not everybody can do it. My wife can but she refuses to squirt milk out of her eye because it freaks her out. If I could do it, I'd do it all the time."
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75gzoc | what happens to caterpillars who haven't stored the usual amount of calories when they try to turn into butterflies? | Do they make smaller butterflies? Do they not try to turn into butterflies? Do they try but then end up being a half goop thing because they didn't have enough energy to complete the process?
Edit: u/PatrickShatner wanted to know: Are caterpillars aware of this transformation? Do they ever have the opportunity to be aware of themselves liquifying and reforming? Also for me: can they turn it on or off or is it strictly a hormonal response triggered by external/internal factors?
Edit 2: how did butterflies and caterpillars get their names and why do they have nothing to do with each other? Thanks to all the bug enthusiasts out there! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75gzoc/eli5_what_happens_to_caterpillars_who_havent/ | {
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"Edit: This is an incorrect answer to the original question and could be misleading. This is an example of what could happen if the caterpillar cocoons early due to disease or infection NOT say climate or environmental pressure. \n\nThey generally don't survive once they are out. The body will usually form but wings and legs and such don't come out so well. There are a number of different environmental pressures that would force a caterpillar to try early including food pressure or disease but I'm not aware of a mechanism internal to the pupae to regulate conservation of limited resources when transforming early. \n\nI raise Monarchs and had one go into chrysalis fairly early in its life cycle and come out earlier than expected. It made an attempt at being a butterfly but the second wing wasn't formed and not all of its legs worked. \n\nImagine you planned for a $100,000 house and hired your contractor but only gave them $75,000. With no adjustments to the original plan the contractor would build until they ran out of money and then quit leaving you with say a roof and walls but nothing on the inside. \n\n",
"Depends on just how much they are short... The way full metamorphosis works for things like butterflies.. almost the all of the internals of the caterpillar turns to goop and a butterfly starts forming just like it would as if the cocoon were an egg. So slightly /smaller caterpillars just end up becoming slightly smaller butterflies. However if its a huge deficit, then there just isnt enough material to form a functional adult and they dont make it",
"There are two hormones governing moulting and metamorphosis in insects. Ecdysone is a fat soluble hormone and increases towards the end of each instar (it accumulates in body fat). Once a threshold is crossed, a moult is triggered. Ecdysone levels drop immediately after the moult, then slowly build up again towards the next peak.\n\nJuvenile hormone (JH) shows declining expression with age. It tells the body what the next stage should be at the ecdysone peak when moulting is triggered. In a caterpillar, once JH levels drop below a predefined threshold, the next ecdysone peak initiates the pupal stage. If the caterpillar is underfed, this ecdysone peak (and hence the next moult) is delayed until sufficient energy reserves are available. \n\nTl;dr - Metamorphosis is delayed till the caterpillar has enough stored energy available",
"Or this happens.. there is a particular caterpillar found in arctic regions that may spend up to 14 years as a caterpillar due to the short summer season and extreme winters.. \n\n_URL_0_ ",
"Can there be an additional question added to this. \n\nAre caterpillars aware of this transformation? Do they ever have the opportunity to be aware of themselves liquifying and reforming?",
"Is it possible for a caterpillar to live out until its natural death as a caterpillar and never become a butterfly? Or is the likelihood of death too great in that form?",
"Caterpillars can and do fail to pupate. Have a look at this site:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nStress can cause them to pupate early, when they're not ready, and they'll simply die in the middle of pupating.",
"There are many good answers so far but I will add that sometimes they do in fact just end up tiny as adults if they do not get enough food or improper nutrition. I import 40,000+ butterflies a year in the chrysalis and can tell you that every year we see a few that are probably 75% smaller than they should be. \n\nI have personally raised an Atlas moth, the largest moth in the world, on palm fronds which are basically nutritionally void (it's mom picked the food, not me). It should have been the size of a dinner plate as an adult. Instead it was about 3 inches across. ",
"It's not really possible to answer your question about awareness, but the emergent butterfly does have some of the *memories* of the caterpillar. \n\nScientists tested this by making caterpillars averse to a particular smell. As a butterfly, it is also averse to the smell, despite its brain liquefying and re-forming. \n\nI'll try and find a cite. ",
"What happens to all the caterpillars I found eating my dam weed plants when I went to harvest yesterday? Do they turn into lazy video game playing butterflies?",
"I have a question that sort of relates to this. If we say that the caterpillar has a conciousness, after the whole process, is it still the same conciousness or is it a 'new' being?",
"Do butterflies still feel like they're caterpillars? Just like how former fat people still fell fat?",
"I’ve been raising caterpillars for years. \n\nOne year, they had eaten all of the host plant and there was none available in town. \n\nDue to lack of food, they absolutely skipped their 5th instar (stage of caterpillars in between when they shed their skin). \n\nThey pupated after their 4th molt, and all of them (probably about 100 or so) came out very deformed and unable to fly\n\nI didn’t let them suffer, but I feel a syringe with isopropyl is a much easier and humane to kill them. \n\nJust my two cents. ",
"I love how throughout twelve years of school, we were always told that caterpillars turned into butterflies, but I don’t remember them ever saying how.",
"My dads a high school biology teacher who had a student who gave him a caterpillar. My dad tried to refuse him but ended up with it anyways and told the student he better feed it cause he sure as hell wasnt gonna take care of it. Long story short, the caterpillar didn't eat enough and ended up with only four legs. \n\nOnly reason I found out about this story was because ironically, that student ended up being MY high school biology teacher. ",
"Can someone please explain how that goop turns into a butterfly and how life is sustained in the chrysalis?",
"What if you very very carefully and gently sliced open a chrysalis while its all liquid inside, and poured it into a tiny ice tray and resealed it with thin wax? would we have square butterflies?\n\nor if you added more super nutrients into the mix.... or added two butterflies worth of goo together... \n\nGiant butterfly or two headed butterfly with four wings?",
"Many things can happen depending on the species of lepidoptera (butterfly/moth). Host quality (their food) plays an important role in many kairmone, allomone, and pheromone production (these are chemicals used for self defense, mating, deterring, calling, etc.) If host quality is bad sometimes the larvae (caterpillars) don't make it to pupation (cocoons and chrysales). Sometimes the larvae develop to adults and lack the ability to lay eggs, adults are undersized, or malformed. Sometimes host quality can affect which females get mated first or not at all. It's complicated but can you imagine if eating steak all the time made you an attractive female? That would be cool",
"I read a study once that actually touched on your edit question. In it they produced negative outside stimulus on the cocoon i.e. electric shocks or high temperature if I remember correctly. And when they brought the stimulus near the adult butterflies they reacted negatively without the researchers actually doing anything to them. \n\nEdit. I am on my phone so sorry for any misspelling.\n\nAlso I could be wrong on the \"stimulus\" but suficit to say the result were conclusive enough to determine that yes indeed they are conscious of they're environment and themselves while in that state.",
"I raised a couple hundred monarch caterpillars this year. I had a few caterpillars that did not grow to their full size before pupating. Their chrysalis was smaller than usual and as a result the butterfly was also smaller than normal. \nThe very last caterpillar I had stopped growing around the 3rd instar. It stayed that size for a week or so before pupating. Its chrysalis was so tiny but didn't form right. ",
"The specific plant matters to the caterpillar, but most butterflies aren’t picky. Any nectar flower is usually good for them. \n\nNot all flowers have nectar, some have pollen. Butterflies and moths usually like to drink nectar. Bees however, like both. "
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33o9h8 | how can steam charge for mods? haven't mod communities been permitted by developers because they don't profit off the content? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33o9h8/eli5_how_can_steam_charge_for_mods_havent_mod/ | {
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"Some mods are free, other mods are payware. Mod communities aren't automatically given blanket permission by developers to give away free mods. It depends on the developer, the titles and the modder. They can charge for mods if they want. ",
"So as a mod maker, you can make the mod free.\n\nNow that you can charge for it, steam takes a big chunk of the money. Probably most of it will go to the original content creators to prevent this very thing from becoming a legal issue."
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jldfz | the appeal and glamor of ivy league schools | Why are these schools so desired? Would a degree in economics from Yale be the same as a degree from Tufts? ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jldfz/eli5_the_appeal_and_glamor_of_ivy_league_schools/ | {
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"Perceived prestige, top-notch professors and networking.\n\nMany schools outside of the Ivy League offer all three, some for much cheaper.",
"It's not what you know, it's who you know.",
"Hello, I went to an Ivy so I can offer a few anecdotal points. First, you must understand that there are, broadly speaking, two main academic pursuits, which I would categorize as:\n\n* Hard sciences/engineering\n* Soft sciences/business\n\nand of course some subjects in between. However these two are the most common. Now, on to the appeal. As far as the first category is concerned, for undergraduates these schools have some of the best reputations for engineering and premed, even though they are exceedingly difficult. Organic chemistry and thermodynamics suck no matter where you go, make no mistake, but the reputation of these schools in the eyes of Med School admissions boards, for example, can act to make up for slight disadvantages in GPA. Additionally, these institutions have some of the highest endowments/grants in the world, so for post-grad types, the research opportunities are really terrific (Cornell and Carl Sagan played a huge role in the development of the Mars Rover, for example).\n\nNow, as far as the second category, the real allure here is the alumni network. You are paying, in large part, to have access to these people when you start looking for a job after school ends. Finance at Penn's Wharton School isn't tremendously more difficult than Finance at Colgate, but you better believe that they will have more and better connected alumni, particularly in the NYC area. Many of my friends got jobs out of school because their first interview was arranged by an alumnus they knew in the company.\n\nTL;DR: For science, the academic reputation and research opportunities. For everything else, the huge networks of alumni.",
"Perceived prestige, top-notch professors and networking.\n\nMany schools outside of the Ivy League offer all three, some for much cheaper.",
"It's not what you know, it's who you know.",
"Hello, I went to an Ivy so I can offer a few anecdotal points. First, you must understand that there are, broadly speaking, two main academic pursuits, which I would categorize as:\n\n* Hard sciences/engineering\n* Soft sciences/business\n\nand of course some subjects in between. However these two are the most common. Now, on to the appeal. As far as the first category is concerned, for undergraduates these schools have some of the best reputations for engineering and premed, even though they are exceedingly difficult. Organic chemistry and thermodynamics suck no matter where you go, make no mistake, but the reputation of these schools in the eyes of Med School admissions boards, for example, can act to make up for slight disadvantages in GPA. Additionally, these institutions have some of the highest endowments/grants in the world, so for post-grad types, the research opportunities are really terrific (Cornell and Carl Sagan played a huge role in the development of the Mars Rover, for example).\n\nNow, as far as the second category, the real allure here is the alumni network. You are paying, in large part, to have access to these people when you start looking for a job after school ends. Finance at Penn's Wharton School isn't tremendously more difficult than Finance at Colgate, but you better believe that they will have more and better connected alumni, particularly in the NYC area. Many of my friends got jobs out of school because their first interview was arranged by an alumnus they knew in the company.\n\nTL;DR: For science, the academic reputation and research opportunities. For everything else, the huge networks of alumni."
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1m1q58 | e: keynesian economics | I know I could wiki this but I'd like to hear from other people. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m1q58/e_keynesian_economics/ | {
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"This is a relatively complicated concept, and your inquiry is rather open-ended, but I'll do by ELI5 best:\n\nKeynesian economics is a theory of economics conceived (at least, among others) by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, in the book *The General Theory of Eployment, Interest and Money.* To a large extent, his theory was a response to the Great Depression.\n\nThe central premise of Keynesian economics is that the private market, on its own, gets things wrong from time to time, which results in (at times, vast) inefficiencies and economic harm. While this wasn't new thinking in 1936, Keynes beleived that - in the short term - a floundering economy could be corrected by the government intervening and injecting artificial demand into the private sector. (By the term \"artificial\" in this response, I mean something that is imposed by the government, as opposed to something resulting from the operation of the private sector left on its own.)\n\nKeynesian economics proposes that demand can be increased - and the economy improved - by employing two tools simultaneously: (i) artificially reduced interest rates, usually accomplished when the central bank cuts rates; and (ii) massive investment in public works (building roads and the like), and other forms of government spending.\n\nThe idea is that there has been some hiccup in the private market that has caused things like wages, employment, and consumer spending to fall short of what the economy can sustain. So the government pumps resources into the economy to get people buying and borrowing more, which would in turn (hopefully) coax private enterprise to grow.\n\nKeynesian economics rests on the concept of a \"Keynesian multiplier,\" which is the concept that the government can spend money that generates additional spending in some multiple of that amount. In other words, the idea is that by spending $1 on roads (for example), the government actually adds $1.50 or $2 to the total economy. Of course, if you're trying to grow the economy with Keynesianism, your government has to deliver a multiplier greater than 1. Otherwise the government is producing less value than it's taking out of the private economy.\n\nI won't weigh in on whether Keynesianism works or not. If you want historical examples, western countries have tried it to some extent. Here in the U.S., our approach to the economy was substantially Keynesian from post-WWII into the Carter years. More recently, the Obama administration's recovery efforts have been classically Keynesian."
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4p048u | if i hold a green light and i go into a dark i would see everything in that room not only green things(i.e things that reflect green color)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p048u/eli5if_i_hold_a_green_light_and_i_go_into_a_dark/ | {
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"Things that normally absorb green light will show up as darker, but you could still see them because of the shadows they will cast, and they will be next to things that absorb a different amount of green light.",
"The walls of the room are probably white, so they reflect green light just fine. Even things that appear dark because they absorb green light would be visible because they would be black against the green background of the wall.",
"Coloured objects work by absorbing all light to different levels. This is not quite as simple as 'red colours absorb EVERYTHING but red', the outgoing spectrum has significantly more red than other things, but it doesn't absorb ALL of the other light. That way you can dimly see non green things with your green light.",
"Objects that reflect no green at all will appear dark black. Many objects have a blend of colors, so even though there don't look green, they still reflect *some* green light -- for example white and gray objects, and many yellow and blue and brown objects.",
"Think of what a black object looks like under normal white light. It's not invisible, it's just dark. \n\nNow, the purity of your green light might not be perfect, but let's assume that it is for a moment. A blue object (again, we'll assume it's a pure blue) wouldn't become transparent under green light; instead, it would simply absorb the green light and therefore appear dark. \n\nDoes that make sense?"
]
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3fpiow | after wwi and wwii, why doesn't america hate germany? | I mean, Germany started 2 world wars. Germany killed million and millions of gay people, disabled people, old people, jewish people, mentally ill people, black people, non german people, and other "undesirables" during, the Holocaust (do I capitalize Holocaust?). Also, why is it that everyone always thinks of jewish people when they hear the words "holocaust" despite the fact that jewish people were only one of many demographics that the germans targeted and killed?
Thanks for the answers guys. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fpiow/eli5_after_wwi_and_wwii_why_doesnt_america_hate/ | {
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"After WWII, Germany was completely destroyed and remade as the Allies saw fit, it was almost a completely different country than pre-war Germany. Plus, Germany was an essential ally during the Cold War, which made it easier to forgive them.",
"Well, to your first question, America hated the Nazis, not Germany. Once they were out of power and the new West German government became an ally, most of the anti-German sentiment was redirected at the USSR.\n\nTo your second question, it's because of the 11 million that died in the Holocaust, more than half were Jews. There were other groups that were targeted, but since the majority of victims were Jews, most remember them.",
"Many people use the term \"Holocaust\" specifically to refer to the Jewish deaths. But even if you're including all the other groups you mentioned, you still get Jews accounting for roughly six out of the eleven million deaths.\n\nAs for why we don't hate Germany, it's because we killed or captured the Nazis responsible and the remaining Germans accepted responsibility for what happened. Even your average German citizen who didn't like Jews was horrified to discover the concentration camps. After a certain point, you can't hold every citizen responsible for the actions of their government and the Nazi government was destroyed. ",
"America doesn't tend to hold a lot of grudges. We're best friends with the UK after we had to fight for independence. \n\nAfter WWII, the Allies, mostly led by the US, took over half of Germany and set up the government how they wanted. When reunification happened, it was the US-guided western Germany that dominated the transition. Germany today is like the successful little brother America always wanted. Well, so is Japan. America has a lot of successful siblings.",
"First the causes of the wars are very different. Arguably Germany caused the first one, but the conditions of the international system were in such a shape that the balance of power was off and secret alliances didn't help this. Second the causes of the second world War are just as complex but that's more complicated.\n\nTo strike at the root of your question I think there might be a few answers. First in 1945 the us knew the Soviet Union would be a threat and our leaders knew we needed allies in western Europe and thus Germany and Berlin were the place the hammer would fall first. Second, the people of the US can recognize that Germans weren't to blame, the nazi party was and it's leaders. Third, taking into consideration the first two and the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union we can see why close ties were forged and once forged these sorts of ties are not easily broken thus Germany is still a member of nato.",
"There certainly was hatred and racism towards germans during WW1 and WW2, and a bit after WW2 as well. \n\nEven small things, like frankfurters were renamed as hotdogs to deemphasize their German origin. Sauerkraut was renamed as liberty cabbage, Salisbury steak became meatloaf.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment"
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1o1ots | how is it possible that animals can fit so much complexity into such tiny brains? | I started thinking about this after watching that Michio Kaku talk.
How do living things, specifically biological brains create such complex 'emergent' behavior, and why can't we approach it with our current technology.
I mean even a simple cockroach can walk, intelligently seek out food in environments it's never seen before, get some kind of map going, create nests, social circuitry for reproduction, and so on.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o1ots/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_animals_can_fit_so/ | {
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"Because nature creates bajillions of them, each of them a little different from the other, and lets them run wild. The survivors get to breed. With our technology we don't tend to create bajillions of experiments running in parallel. ",
"If they couldn't perform basic functions, they would cease to exist. All we see are the lucky ones."
]
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[],
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|
66foch | how do banks make profit from "free" products? | All products I own (cheque accounts, savings accounts, credit & debit cards etc) don't carry an annual fee. Credit cards I understand they're probably just relying on people's inability to pay them back on time and thus pay interest, but what about accounts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66foch/eli5_how_do_banks_make_profit_from_free_products/ | {
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"they make money using your money to loan out to others. \n\nyou deposit $1000. the bank isn't just sitting on it. they're using that $800-900 of that money pooled with other people's checking account money to make loans for people's mortgages, personal loans, business loans. etc",
"Overdraft fees and service charges are the more known sort of thing. But when you are banking and say, make a deposit, you are giving the bank money to reinvest into something else, like a loan. It is still your money, you're just technically letting the bank use it without you really know that they're using it. It's all net profit margins. ",
"For a lot of these, hoping for people who aren't 100% financially responsible. \n\nChecking account: fees they don't tell you about. ATM, overdraft, etc.\n\nSavings account: using your money to be able to loan out more money (read about fractional reserve banking -- sorry for not eli5ing this) \n\nDebit card: hidden fees, more chance for overdrafts\n\nCredit card: Interest! Hoping you make the minimum payment, and only the minimum payment monthly. \n",
"While banks seemingly have begun preferring overdrafting and other fee-based revenue, the other big way they make money is through your money.\n\nWhen you open a bank account, you're essentially giving your money to the bank and they write you an IOU. When you buy things with a check or debit card, you're essentially just saying \"this person owes me a lot of money, so they'll pay you for me.\" In the meantime though, they invest your money and earn interest on that investment (which is why they offer you a percentage of that interest). Any single bank account isn't going to make enough interest to keep the lights on, but taken as a whole it's quite a lot of money."
]
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[],
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4k7b12 | why do we have different lotions and creams for out face and body? isn't it the exact same skin? (for example when you have a dry skin) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k7b12/eli5_why_do_we_have_different_lotions_and_creams/ | {
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"text": [
"No. Some skin is thicker. The soles of your feet for example are much thicker than your eyelids. That's one difference at least.",
"Look at body lotion and a face moisturiser - body lotion is pretty thick and, depending on the cream, scented. The lotion is too thick to wear on the face, and those lotions which are scented are too strong for the skin on the face, as it's more sensitive than, for example, your legs. Face moisturiser is much lighter, easily absorbed by the skin and some are scented, but not as strong as body lotion. \n\nThe skin is different all over your body. As someone already mentioned, the skin on your feet is much dryer and thicker than your face. So putting foot cream on your face wouldn't be a good idea, they're made to break down calluses and are way too thick for the face. "
]
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[],
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||
b9ldod | how does the male body (idk if females experience this too) reach post nut clarity? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9ldod/eli5_how_does_the_male_body_idk_if_females/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I don't have the answer. It's neurochemical stuff.\n\nBut way to go asking the question like you're five! That shows commitment to the sub."
]
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[]
] |
|
6hfeb6 | what is "starvation mode", in terms of dieting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hfeb6/eli5_what_is_starvation_mode_in_terms_of_dieting/ | {
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"It's a largely debunked idea based on a few poorly designed studies decades ago.\n\nThe idea is that if your body is deprived of calories for too long, it will start hoarding what calories it does have, thus increasing stored fat.\n\nThe main reason most people advocate not eating too little has more to do with sustainability of a dietary change rather than any sort of rebound effect. The other thing that goes into eating too little is the tendency many people have to \"eat back\" what they missed. \n\nFor example, if you don't eat for a day and your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, or how many calories you burn in a day) is 2000 calories, you're 2000 calories ahead. However, if over the next week you \"reward\" yourself every day with an extra doughnut, then you can easily offset the calorie deficit. \n\nThis is what often leads people to say \"I ate less and gained weight, it must be starvation mode.\" \n\nAt the end of the day, I highly reccomend both /r/loseit for good advice, and even cautiously recommend /r/fatlogic as a way to see what really works for people, as well as to hear all of the bunk science that repeatedly gets tossed around. If a point is made in /r/fatlogic it's inevitably backed up with science, and I actually tend to find most of the people there willing to actually discuss things. A lot of the other \"dietary\" advice I see on the internet seems to revolve around self-referential blogs, or people trying to sell you something, and rarely actual studies and reputable sources.\n\n/Edit to add the one true part of the starvation mode idea: the more weight you lose, the less you burn every day. For instance, if you weigh 300 lbs, your TDEE might be ~3000 calories. If you drop a hundred pounds, it may be closer to 2000. So the less you eat, the less you CAN eat and maintain the same weight. That is true, but it's because of the lost weight and your body not needing to fuel the extra fat, burn as much energy to get around etc. not because of starvation mode.\n\n/edit again to mention one of the things I like the most about /r/fatlogic. Most of the people there (myself included, though on a different account) have struggled with being fat, and many of the regulars include their heaviest weight as well as current weight in their flair. It's not a bunch of theory and echo chambering. It's people who used to believe a lot of the bunk science, but learned better and are now supporting themselves and the community by pointing out all of the logical/scientific flaws we tend to believe. It's NOT Fatpeoplehate, and I do see people get banned for inappropriate/hateful comments. "
]
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||
fqssst | could my immune system hypothetically "run out of storage space" for new diseases and thus be unable to become immune to any new ones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqssst/eli5_could_my_immune_system_hypothetically_run/ | {
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"text": [
"No, your immune system forgets bacterias and viruses over time. That's why a vaccine will eventually not work anymore. But your body remember most bacterias and viruses for years. So no worries.",
"One of the ways your immune system \"remembers\": your body makes a bunch of B-cells and each one has a different random antigen (foreign particle) they react to. If they are presented with that antigen, they change and will split to produce plasma cells (that mass produce antibodies) and memory b-cells that are long-lived and will be around for the next time your body encounters that antigen."
]
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[],
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||
4w10av | how old black and white photos, that pre-date colored photography, can accurately have color added into them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w10av/eli5_how_old_black_and_white_photos_that_predate/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6328aq"
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"text": [
"I don't do recolors, but to my knowledge when one is doing a recolor, he/she guesses approximately what the colors would be. There's no real science behind it. Hope that helps. If anyone has more knowledge, please chime in."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1kiamy | what is penicillin? and how do we get it from mold to curing things? | I've never really understood. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kiamy/eli5what_is_penicillin_and_how_do_we_get_it_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbp7nav"
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"text": [
"It's a chemical that forms in the namesake fungus. A scientist noticed by serendipity that a sample of the fungus prevented bacterial growths."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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|
7w5al1 | why are you not guaranteed a trial by a jury of your peers in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w5al1/eli5_why_are_you_not_guaranteed_a_trial_by_a_jury/ | {
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"text": [
"IANAL, but in some states, the right to a jury trial may not be guaranteed if the possible sentence is a very short imprisonment or just a small fine. The accused may be encouraged to waive their right, but generally the right to a trial by jury stands.",
"The Supreme Court decided that \"petty crimes\" that have a punishment of less than 6 months in prison or only result in a fine do not require a jury. \n\n_URL_0_",
"It has been rules several times by the supreme Court that this doesn't apply to pretty crimes (District of Columbia v. Clawans). This generally means cases where the punishment is less than. 6 months in jail. \n\nBasically it's a reasonableness limit applied so that very minor crimes aren't clogging up the legal process. There is still an appeal process for these cases as well that help ensure they are handled well by the judge. ",
"You have this right for cases that involve a sentence of less than six months. The Supreme Court has decided that states may waive trial by jury in lesser cases. Some states still require trial by jury in petty cases, some give you the right to one but usually don’t as a matter of routine and expediency, some states remove the option altogether if the sentence is under six months. \n\nIf everyone up for a traffic ticket or petty shoplifting could demand trial by jury, it’s clog up courts to no end.\n\nNow if you do something felonious, in any state, you have the right to a jury. ",
"This is really only true for minor cases where you get a fine or suspension. Something small like speeding. If jail time is involved then yes you can get a trail by jury of your peers.\n\nHere is information that you can get a trail by jury with a misdemeanor: _URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/399/66/"
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[],
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"https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/illinois-misdemeanor-criminal-process"
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||
4ih2yj | what is it that can make similar guns from different brands sound different when firing the same cartridge? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ih2yj/eli5_what_is_it_that_can_make_similar_guns_from/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Barrel length affects the amount of propellant that is burned. Shorter barrel means louder blast. \n\nMuzzle brakes/compensators/flash hiders on ends of barrels affects how the burned propellant is directed, which can change how the shot sounds. \n\n"
]
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[]
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||
ysgqp | why is iran having nuclear capabilities such a big concern when the u.s. and plenty of other countries already do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ysgqp/eli5_why_is_iran_having_nuclear_capabilities_such/ | {
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"Essentially, it's problematic because nuclear powers are harder to bully, and a Nuclear Iran would make it harder for the established powers to continue containing Iran's influence.\n\nPlus, there's the \"they just might be crazy enough to do it\" concern. If the situation in Iran gets bad enough (attempted coup, public uprising, etc), you'd prefer if they didn't have the option of turning Jerusalem into a smoking ruin.",
"Iran is not under US influence. Anything that helps them resist US policy objectives will cause what we're seeing now. why it's seems so intense is complicated; Israel clamoring for action certainly adds to the tension, but I think a lot of the tension comes from Iran's middle east position, oil, and competing regional policy objectives with Russia and China.\n\nNukes would mean Iran doesn't need to worry much about US hard power intervention.",
"There is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, according even to Israel and the US:\n\n**The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.**\n_URL_0_\n\nThe US instead accuses Iran of having the \"intention to obtain the capability\" to make nukes. A \"capability\" to make nukes is a deliberately vague accusation since the technology is 60 years old, and so practically any country with some technological development is \"capable\" theoretically of making nukes.\n\nIn fact according to the IAEA 40 nations have this \"capability\" right now -- that's 1 out of every 4 or 5 nations on the planet:\n\n**More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programs could retool them to make weapons, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said yesterday amid new U.S. and European demands that Iran give up technology capable of producing such arms.**\n_URL_1_\n\n"
]
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[],
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"http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/23/us-iran-usa-nuclear-idUSBRE82M0G020120323",
"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002041473_nukes21.html"
]
] |
||
8e88c4 | why technology "freezes" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8e88c4/eli5_why_technology_freezes/ | {
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"text": [
"It doesn't unless your in the arctic. Sometimes things lock up, due to software conflicts. ",
"If you want an in depth answer, you're gonna need a lot more than literally 3 words.\n\nSoftware freezing up is almost always due to some resource being hogged and not shared.\n\nFor example, if some logic is going real slow and it's using up 95% of the computer brain (called RAM or Memory), and something else needs 20% of the brain, then everything just kinda stops until that first one finishes up.",
"One option could be that the computer only makes you think it's running many things at once when really only one thing is running at a time. A process could just be doing some work that takes a bit stopping other processes from running. But as others have said there are many possibilities"
]
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||
92pdgo | how did apex predators that existed millions of years ago go extinct? (i.e terror birds, megalodon, levyatan) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92pdgo/eli5_how_did_apex_predators_that_existed_millions/ | {
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"It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes ~~of~~ for most prehistoric animals and plants, beyond trying to extrapolate data from the scarce info we have. We can look at extinction events nowadays for clues though. Overfeeding and loss of habitat from environmental changes are the two biggest causes.",
"Basically, the climate on earth changes constantly, always gradually, but sometimes dramatically. For massive predators, when the climate changed from what they evolved to fit, their adaptations stopped helping them in their environment. For example, Megalodon was an absolutely massive shark, needing a lot of food to keep it going. It likely feasted on large animals, so when those animals declined in number (say the ocean warmed, and they either left their habitat or went extinct), the Megalodon has nothing left to eat, so it died out too. Bigger isn’t always better.\n\nBasically, when talking about any animal that went extinct for natural, non-human reasons, it’s because a change in the environment made it uninhabitable for that species. They’re forced to either adapt as a species or die out. Apex predators (and humans) tend to be pretty genetically stable, so that adaptation often doesn’t happen fast enough to keep up with the environment.",
"Apex predators are especially prone to going extinct because they sit at the very top of the food chain. Thus they rely on a large chain of species below them to stay healthy in order for them to stay fed.\n\nGrass needs water, sun, and dirt, and a climate good for it. Deer needs lots of grass (and thus, indirectly, everything the grass needs), plus trees for a varied diet (and thus everything the trees need), plus a good climate for deer. Whatever _eats_ the deer needs deer (and thus everything the deer needs) plus other prey and whatever _they_ need, plus whatever environmental conditions the predator needs.\n\nSo top predators need a good, strong, healthy environment.\n\nComplicating things for them, there are a lot fewer predators. There's a huge amount of grass blades per 100 deer per 1 top predator. Top predators have small populations which makes it easier for them to die out"
]
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30etou | why do people choose to live in high crime areas (e.g. compton, ca and south side, chicago) | Always wondered how these places have had such a bad reputation for sooo many years yet there are still a lot of people living there.
Why haven't the current residents left yet, why do people continue to live there, why do people keep moving there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30etou/eli5_why_do_people_choose_to_live_in_high_crime/ | {
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"text": [
"High crime and low rent/property value go hand in hand. People live there because they can't afford to live anywhere else.",
"Because living there is cheap and that's all they can afford. I've never \"chosen\" to live anywhere, I live where I can afford to live.",
"I live in a high crime area, on the \"good\" side of the city. We still have crime but usually just vandalism as opposed to gang violence in other parts. The cost of living is low here. We pay less for our mortgage for a nice house with a good amount of land than we paid for renting a 2 bedroom apartment in a nice, virtually crime-free village. So I'm gonna go ahead and say it's cheaper to live in bad areas and when you're not wealthy and have debt, children, etc. you're gonna need more space for your money. Which you can get here.",
"People typically don't choose... they're stuck because they don't have the resources to move someplace better, whether the money for an apartment in a better part of town, the money to cover a move and/or a vehicle to do so, there are also commuting factors if they have a job, family/friends nearby. And some, because it's all they've known, don't know there are options out there. \n\nHere in Chicago, the bad neighborhoods do have only a fraction of the populations that they once did. Those who can leave, do."
]
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68jhd3 | what causes airplane turbulence in a completely clear sky? | I was on a flight today that had some pockets of bad turbulence, especially for take off and landing. However, the sky was completely clear the entire flight. I wondered what it was, and it was windy in both cities. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68jhd3/eli5_what_causes_airplane_turbulence_in_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Turbulence is caused when different currents of air mix, causing pressure differences in the air and thus affecting flight through it. This doesn't always form clouds or other detectable formation, called clear air turbulence."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5dbh8t | why do some people (like myself) have big booming voices and have difficulty speaking at an inside voice, but some people have really soft voices and struggle to speak up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dbh8t/eli5_why_do_some_people_like_myself_have_big/ | {
"a_id": [
"da39fan"
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"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Genetics. I think this question is similar to the question 'why am I blonde and my sibling is brunette?' Or 'why am I taller than my siblings?'. It's all in the genes. That being said, you can teach yourself to speak softly/loudly. It takes practice like everything else but it can be done."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
37ffmd | -why were fifa execs arrested, and what did the usa have to do with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37ffmd/eli5why_were_fifa_execs_arrested_and_what_did_the/ | {
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"text": [
"We don't know yet.\n\nEven FIFA don't know yet. They've issued a press statement saying they are \"seeking clarification\".\n\nWe also don't know who's been arrested - only one of the six men has been named, and he's a FIFA official from the Cayman Islands.\n\nThe FBI are due to give a press conference at 3.30pm BST. No doubt we will know a lot more then."
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67zlb5 | how hard is it to quit smoking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67zlb5/eli5_how_hard_is_it_to_quit_smoking/ | {
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"Because it contains a drug and drug addiction is very hard to overcome. Even with willpower it's hard to overcome. Same with any addiction. I've never smoked so never been addicted to nicotine. But I have been addicted to medicine. I won't say \"drugs\" because of what that appears. I never abused my medicine but I sure as hell never missed a dose, and stayed on longer than I truly needed. My regular dr (different than prescriber-was a workmans comp dr), reg dr weaned me off and helped me. \n\nAddiction needs the desire to overcome it plus willpower and strength to do so. Many people can't or won't. \n\nSome people can quit cold turkey and not have any problems. Others relapse and or have bad withdrawal off add to rice substances. Everyone is different because of chemical biology. ",
"Former smoker here. Quitting is in fact super hard. The feeling is hard to describe but the closest thing I think I can relate it to is having a really itchy mosquito bite. You know you are not meant to scratch it, but sometimes you think, \"oh fuck it, Imma just give it one quick scratch, ohhh yeah, that feels better\". Now imagine feeling that itch, but 10 times worse, and it takes a good month or so to go away. And if you scratch it even once, you have to start all over again.",
"The brightest minds in the chemical engineering world have been working on making cigarettes as addictive as possible for nearly 100 years. \nAs a reference, it's been said smoking addiction is harder to break than heroin. The withdrawal is lengthy, smoking is an addiction on many levels.. the habits are extremely difficult to break.. requiring a new way of life, a massive commitment for most anyone. And it can cause weight gain, that is a massive factor for many. The main factor in all of it is will, if someone wants to quit for their own sake, they are much more likely to succeed.\nA grade 11 teacher bet me a bacon double cheeseburger from the local ritzy burger joint I couldn't quit.. I collected that bacon double cheeseburger in grade 12. ",
"I've smoked on and off since I was 14. This August will be 2 years without smoking and every day, especially now that it's almost summer, I want a cigarette. It's really hard. Try giving up all sugar for a week and see how you feel. That's really the only day to day addiction we don't like to think is one that can come close to any drug addiction.",
"When you are addicted to a drug, your prefrontal cortex (part of the brain that helps you make good decisions, judgment, etc.) is no longer in control. Instead, your brain becomes re-wired into thinking that the drug, nicotine in this case, is just as or even more important than food, sex, sleep, etc. I am a recovering alcohol myself as well as current smoker, and let me tell you, there's a lot more to it than willpower. If it were simply a matter of willpower, then it wouldn't be an addiction; it would just be a bad habit.",
"\"Quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world, I have done it a thousand times\" - Mark Twain\n\nIt's hard to quit because you get addicted"
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2hg5nn | how/why does 'ghost pepper' cause vomiting, rectal bleeding, sweating? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hg5nn/eli5_howwhy_does_ghost_pepper_cause_vomiting/ | {
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"I'm assuming the chemicals in the pepper cause a great deal of irritation to human tissues.\n\nRegular hot peppers cause similar irritation, but not to the same degree. At a certain point hot peppers are no longer foodstuffs and are just health hazards.",
"Capscaicin, the active ingredient that causes spiciness in peppers of all sorts, binds with a receptor present on your skin, in your eyes and mouth and all through your digestive tract. These receptors usually open at above body temperature to warn your brain of excessive heat, but the capscaicin increases its sensitivity and it open at body temperature.\n\nThis makes your body think it's burning up, and it engages numerous bodily defences to try and cool down and expel the thing causing the heat. As far as your body knows it's on fire if you eat an obscenely hot pepper.\n\nIf you were one of the people born without these receptors - it happens - you'd have no sensation of spice and could sit down eating habaneros, scotch bonnets and anything else you pleased for hours without issue.\n\nIf you want to have the hot pepper experience without diarrhoea, rectal bleeding or any of the really nasty side effects, chew the pepper for a solid 10+ seconds and spit it out. That way your stomach and intestines deal with barely any of the capscaicin, but you get a full dose in the mouth and upper throat.\n\nI've eaten a moruga scorpion and carolina reaper as well as some other quite hot peppers that way and never had so much as a bit of burning when I next pooped. \n\nChewing and spitting, though, will still cause excessive salivation, sweating, tearing up, increase in blood pressure and heart rate, and really all the normal side effects of a big adrenaline rush. (Because it gives you one.)"
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ad1ydr | why do all space launch pictures make the space ship look like it’s going in a full circle? | Every long exposure space launch I see the contrail is always curved like its going in a circle. I thought when I jumped the earth wouldn’t move beneath me. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ad1ydr/eli5_why_do_all_space_launch_pictures_make_the/ | {
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"The rocket doesn't go straight up to exit the atmosphere, it has to curve to conserve energy and reach the desired altitude. So the trail from the rocket explosion is really curved, because its trajectory was curved.",
"When you jump, the Earth *does* move underneath you, but your inertia from being up to speed with the earth up until that point is so great that the amount of slowing down you experience compared to the Earth is negligable.",
"I'm not sure what you mean here, but rockets don't go straight up. They turn and twist to go 'downrange' in order to reach their intended orbit.\n\nOften, the long exposure will include the ditching of the first stage and/or second stage.\n\nIn the case of SpaceX, they mostly land the first stage, which conducts a series of burns towards landing."
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2pa91r | why have many pathogens evolved to be deadly if this constrains their ability to spread? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pa91r/eli5_why_have_many_pathogens_evolved_to_be_deadly/ | {
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" > if this constrains their ability to spread?\n\nIt really depends on the disease. For example, let's look at cholera. When it infects you, it spreads by draining your body of water through your intestines, and all that water contains more cholera bacteria. In areas without much infrastructure, the contaminated water can spread really easily to drinking water. Even though draining more water out of the host kills them faster, it also lets the bacteria spread to more hosts faster. ",
"It is often a byproduct of their reproductive/dispersement schemes. For example, with Ebola, you turn into a human volcano, and all these bodily fluids in turn spread the disease. The more you spew, the more you spread. Unfortunately, you also tend to die of malnutrition/dehydration. AIDS tends to hijack your immune system to spread, unfortunately, that leaves you defenseless and you end up killed by a cold. Each disease is a balance, too lethal and it doesn't have a chance to spread before you die, too mild, and it is wiped out before it can be spread. \n\nEdit: also, as it is a good point brought up by others, we are often not the natural host of the disease, and the host animal suffers no harm from the disease. A fun example is armadillos and leprosy. I was constraining my argument simply to the affliction of humans.",
"We are not the natural host animal for many pathogens. The best way to find the host organism is to ask...which animal does it hurt the least but still grow in?\n\nThe really deadly ones are usually not regular human diseases....HIV has only been in us for 70-80 years. Ebola is usually in small forest animals.",
"Because they don't have to do things optimally, they just have to survive. "
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2lzhre | why does a person's body stop the force of a grenade when the force is strong enough to break through walls? | This is probably the worst day in the world to ask this, but I read an article about it and was curious about how it's possible. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lzhre/eli5_why_does_a_persons_body_stop_the_force_of_a/ | {
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"The person who is laying on the gernade catches all the srapnel (metal bits that used to be gernade). Without srapnel flying around the gernade has a highly reduced effective area. \n\nTo your point about walls; depending on the structure a wall is sometimes softer than a human. If you're talking concrete then not much of a gernade will even be noticed on the other side, but dry wall can be punched through bare handed if you have the will.",
"Hand grenades aren't anywhere NEAR as powerful as shown in the movies, and they are specifically not an explosive-damage weapon, they are a shrapnel weapon.\n"
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35f0qm | why do we grow out of things. | Why do humans grow out of kids shows, toys, etc. theres no real "force" demanding us to
People view it as immature but what makes them think its immature | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35f0qm/eli5_why_do_we_grow_out_of_things/ | {
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"Because your tastes change as you get older and you learn more about the world and develop your social life. As you're exposed to more, better media, you start to realize how underdeveloped, uninteresting, and pandering a lot of children's media is. "
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1njwn9 | my company has a wifi network for their employees to connect their "personal devices" to. can they see everything i do? | I understand that they can see all of the "http" traffic, and at least the internet address of the "https" places I go. But when I connect to the network, I have to enter my user name, password, and accept a certificate, which turns on my big brother alert! Can they even snoop in on my secure connections? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1njwn9/eli5_my_company_has_a_wifi_network_for_their/ | {
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"Do you log in by joining the network, then every time you try to go to a webpage it redirects you to a login form? Because if that's the case the certificate warning is probably just that the browser thinks your connection has been hijacked because it knows that Google (Assuming that's your home page) doesn't use the certificate that the login page does.\n\nTo be fair to your browser your connection **was** hijacked, but it's not malicious, just annoying and stupid for failing to use a proper login system. You can ignore it then.",
"Connections that are end-to-end encrypted should be secure, assuming that your company isn't doing some sort of man-in-the-middle attack on your traffic.\n\n\"Man in the middle\" would be that you try to get a secure connection to Site A, and a machine on the company network replies saying that it is Site A, and then you send all your encrypted data to that machine. Then it forwards the messages on to the actual Site A, but only after decrypting it and saving a copy somewhere.\n"
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3sj1pj | why aren't women allowed in the royal armoured corps? | The British Army's site says:
> Women are able to apply for most jobs in the Army. The only ones currently not open to women are the Household Cavalry, Royal Armoured Corps and Infantry.
How come? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sj1pj/eli5_why_arent_women_allowed_in_the_royal/ | {
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"They *can* join the Household Cavalry, Armoured Corps and Infantry regiments, they are just not allowed an active combat role.\n\nI don't want to get into a debate about the reasons (can't be bothered to do this again) but remember that when people start to compare the physical fitness don't make the mistake of thinking Ronda Rousey vs Maurice Moss (without the gun) but think Ronda Rousey Vs Mike Tyson in his prime. I.E. people will start to compare well known physically fit women against the average guy on the street, not to well known physically fit men. "
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6rl0i7 | what gives soap operas that “low quality” feeling to them? is it the lighting? the dialogue? it’s very distinct, but hard to pin down. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rl0i7/eli5_what_gives_soap_operas_that_low_quality/ | {
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"It's the frame rate. Most soap operas are shot at 30 frames per second (technically 29.976 but that's irrelevant). Film is shot at 24fps. We have been trained by experience to see higher frame rate video as being lower quality.",
"It's called [Motion Interpolation](_URL_0_) or the \"Soap Opera Effect\" ",
"It's a combination of all of the above, but I'd say that lighting is the most important.\n\nNormally, when a movie or higher-quality television show is filmed, each shot is individually lit. For example, for a dialog between two people, they would set up one camera pointing at one person and light the scene for that camera's benefit. Then, they'd switch it all around to point at the other person and shoot the scene again. Then they edit the two takes together to get one where the point of view changes.\n\nWith a soap opera or something else that has to be filmed quickly and/or on a budget, they set up two cameras and do the whole scene in one take. This means that the lighting has to be set up in a more bland way to accommodate two cameras at once.",
"I've tried to figure it out too, and the best I can come up with is this:\n\n1) Everything is filmed on a soundstage. There are no outside shots, no city streets, not even any greenscreening. It's all very clearly done on a series of indoor sets. Fake cars, fake trees, no indications of what buildings look like from the outside. This above anything else makes a soap opera feel like some kind of community theatre play.\n\n2) No sound effects. Outside the occasional gunshot or screeching tires, the only sounds are the sappy music and the dialogue. ",
"The cinematography is also very rigid compared to movies IMO. Camera movement is minimal. ",
"It is the lack of time to set up every scene. They are very rushed to get content out. Everything gets slammed together, from writing, to lighting, to number of takes, etc. A lot of crap makes it the screen that might be reshot or killed in editing because of the time pressure.",
"Most of the effect is due to the higher frame rate of 30 or sometime 48 or even 60 fps. As modern humans our brains have been trained to recognize the 24fps (ok fine 23.976 and don't even get me started on NTSC and PAL...) as \"cinematic\" and 30fps as \"live\". \n\n To use an example: Saturday night live vs. the SNl digital shorts. SNL proper has the \"live\" look and the shorts have the \"cinema\" quality to them.\n\n",
"Apart from lighting/frame rate, if you watch closely, on almost every camera switch in a soap opera they slowly zoom in until the next camera switch.\n\nOnce you notice it the effect is maddening.",
"What ive noticed is that american soap operas have that \"low quality\" feeling but mexican soap operas (Novelas) are just so well made for the same story every year ",
"You can actually reproduce the FPS changing how a movie feels on a computer very easily.\n\nThere's a smooth video project out there that will add frames via interpolation. For action movies it sort of sucks. A lot of weird artifacts, but go watch something like game of thrones at 59.97 fps and 23.xx fps. You know it's game of thrones. But... different ",
"Omiglob - I have been thinking the SAME THING since childhood!!! Thank-you for asking this question!!!!! ",
"This doesn't answer your question, but there is a setting on newer tv's that make everything look like a soap opera. I noticed when I was at my cousins house and watching The Godfather, and I'm like why does it look like a goddamn soap opera and who would want that? So, umm, what is that setting and how does it work?",
"Here are a couple that I always notice:\n\n1. ) Audio quality. It makes a big difference to have someone's vocal audio sequestered from any foley that occurs in a scene, such as door closes, foot steps, clothing. Everything is normalized together, in the same input mic, so you hear EVERYTHING on the sound stage, including the echoes of every sound in the scene. It may appear that they're walking around in a tuscan villa, but it SOUNDS like they're walking on particle board with no insulation.\n\n2. ) Framerate. Not sure why they do this, but they run at 30 or 60 fps, yet snap to 24 FPS when they step outside. This inconsistency is jarring. A higher framerate doesn't make it bad, but it sets it apart from traditional cinematic features that run at 24 FPS.\n\n3. ) Everything is formulaic. Everything. You watch a soap opera from today, and put it next to a soap opera from 30 years ago, and you won't find much difference. Probably just the hair and fashion. LOL! The camera angles, the lighting, the music, and the plot lines are all the same. Scene opens. Music intro. Enter Actor A and Actor B. Actor A's body language clearly shows that they like/dislike Actor B. Camera films Actor A talking to Actor B. Camera films Actor B's reaction, and holds for a music stab on dramatic scene conclusion. It's amazing what simple things like establishing shots, higher/lower/closer/skewed/contextual camera shots do to a scene to make it more visually interesting, and how it changes the context of the dialog.\n\n4. ) There is no real story, no overarching character plot or development. You're essentially watching dramatic improv revolving around the personal lives of a collective group of individuals in a single location. The show is about how Actor A wrongs Actor B, and how it gets resolved by Actor B retaliating against Actor A, which somehow affects a third party, Actor C. Now, Actor B has done the wronging, Actor C retaliates, and Actor A is somehow wronged. Rinse and repeat. Add as many actors as you like to keep it varied, and maybe broaden the audience's demographic by letting more people connect with more actors with different identitarian traits (gender, race, culture, creed, age, etc...). It's gossip personified, which some people are absolutely fine with wasting their time on, but most of us aren't. \n\n",
"Higher frame rate lets you see more details in every second of footage. So you will notice things that are fake easier, like when the hobbit was shot at 48 fps, people complained it looked worse because it was a lot easier to tell it was people in costumes rather than actual dwarfs.\n\n\n\nSame goes for resolution, more pixels, easier to see details like tape holding the backdrop in place, or glue holding someone's wig on.",
"It always amazed me how long a conversation takes in soap operas. \n\"Did you know Joe is missing?\" \n10 seconds passes\n\"I don't know Joe.\"\n15 seconds of staring at each other. \n\"Is he dead?!?!\" \n25 seconds of staring \nDun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuh! ",
"Budget and time. The biggest reason is probably that they are shot on video instead of film. This is cheaper and allows them to get the project turned around much faster than film. Also, the lighting is much different, due in part to being video, and partly to backlighting being a more exopesinve option.",
"It's the image, and there are several parts to it; like some people have mentioned, the lighting tends to be very functional; the cameras are also often cheaper, (though even cheap cameras are excellent these days). As far as I know though, frame-rate has very little to do with it - though high frame-rates can give stuff a \"hyper-realistic\" look, that's not what's going on with soaps. I have no idea why people keep saying it's frame-rates, I mean there's a standard of 25 for PAL or 30 in the US, corresponding to 50Hz and 60Hz, and while you can get some cool effects these days by shooting at multiples of these, it's not like soaps looking cheap is a new phenomenon. \n\n*EDIT: Looking at some of the other answers, there may be something to this theory when it comes to modern soaps, on modern TVs - \"the Hobbit effect\". However, like I said, it's not a new phenomenon, so it's still just a piece of the puzzle.*\n\nMore than anything, there's a lack of serious color correction in post; like I said, most cameras today are actually very good, but just look at your own camera phone - a normal still shot can look terrible, and sometimes kind of \"flat\", but add a cool filter, and suddenly it looks almost professional. Same with \"home videos\" - even with a great camera, they often have this... soap-y look - but give me enough time with some good digital tools, and I (actually, my editor) will make your vacation video look like it was shot by Hoyte van Hoytema. For movies and TV, color correctors will spend ages making sure every single frame has *juuuuusst* the right look, and correcting any lighting/color errors (and this is where an expensive camera shines, often having more information in each frame, allowing for more correction) . For soap operas, not so much - you just go by the scene lighting, perhaps sometimes putting a general filter on a whole scene if something is actually offensively horrible.\n\n***However, all these are just symptoms of the real reason*** - soap operas are designed to be aired 4-5 nights a week, almost year-round. They are produced incredibly cheaply, at an incredible rate; some are shot \"as-live\", with almost no retakes (typically 60 minutes shot for 30 minutes on-air), and edited overnight. It's not that the people working with them are incompetent (often quite the opposite), it's just... there's no time. So it's original lighting, barely any color-correction, little to no retakes, and speedspeedspeed.\n\nSource: am TV Producer.\n\ntl;dr All the \"reasons\" are just symptoms of the fact that soaps are produced at an incredible rate, for almost no money. \n",
"I think it is because the soap opera seems like a stage performance. The charm (for lack of better word) of soap operas is that they make you feel like you aren't watching a real life scene. It's more like you're sitting in on a theater performance. \n\nThis same feeling is the feeling I get with all the new shows on 4k televisions. They seem so real that the setting seems staged now. I'm watching House of Cards these days and I feel like I'm watching a stage performance, when before it felt like I was a fly on the wall in the Oval Office. When you can see every single prop (coffee mugs, folded newspapers etc) you realize that this was intentionally placed by someone and it bothers me now.\n\nBut back to soap operas. Soaps have little time to get settings right so they seem natural since they are recording every day almost. ",
"Let's compile a small list. I'm a film student and a radio television major so there's actually a lot of answers but in my opinion the biggest one is the first.\n\n1. Frame rate: Try looking up the hobbit shot at 60fps. It looks like a sitcom! There's also TVs that \"smooth\" between frames which make shows like Lost look like.. a sitcom. We associate the film standard, 24fps, with drama, fiction, etc. We associate 30-60 with documentaries, sitcoms, even low budget stuff!\n\n2. Lighting: it's cheaper, faster, simpler, to just stick some lights that light up everything on the set. These set ups are usually shot on a soundstage, with rows of lights overhead making it even easier. There's nothing dramatic about flat lighting and nothing super exciting.\n\n3. Dialogue: This one might surprise you! Some soap operas are on such a tight schedule the actors might read their lines from strategically placed cards around the set. We were shown an example in one of my classes (can't remember it right now) but someone who had been shot was on the ground very obviously looking at something and then looking back at their eyeline to deliver the lines he just read.\n\n4. Laugh tracks: This ones easy. Would the characters be pausing if there wasn't a laugh track?\n\n5. The rest: it can then boil down to production quality, acting, editing (sometimes done on set, while filming with a switcher) music and whatever. The lower the budget and tighter the schedule can make for some cheesy moments!",
"It took me forever to realize why I got the same feeling from sit-coms. For me, it's the characters' interactions with each other. They seem forced... why are they always standing so close to each other in the kitchen? In better shows, one will always be sitting at the table or looking through the fridge (only to be disappointed there's nothing they want) like normal people.",
"It’s because they need to shoot one or more episodes a day. They don’t have time to polish it. They use nearly all the footage they shoot and rarely have time for multiples takes, unless something goes terribly wrong. This is increasingly made difficult when they have to shoot scenes outside without the controls offered by a studio environment where weather and lighting is often unpredictable, meaning they will someone shoot a scene that will be aired in two days time and ten minutes later shoot a scene that will be aired 3 weeks away just to make tha most of favourable conditions. That footage then has to be catalogued and edited. It’s a very quick turnaround with soaps. ",
"Last summer I spent a week binging on Passions and I realized that I couldn't finish because it's the same rinse and repeat method. The 24 hour wait as well as the weekends really make it seem a bit more suspenseful.",
"A lot of people here are talking about lighting and sound. As someone who worked in television I can tell you it's probably due to the fact they don't have time to put it through proper post processing. No lighting or color correcting, no Additional Dialog Recording or ADR.\n\nIf you watch some deleted scenes that were unfinished in movies you can get a real soap opera feel to them.\n\n[Here is a link to an example from an old reddit post](_URL_0_)",
"The only soaps I've ever watched are either English (Coronation Street) and a few Mexican ones (because they're better than the nonexistent Spanish ones), and I've never really noticed any of that tbh."
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7rfyig | can every single thing a computer does be broken down into binary code? | When I say every single thing, I am talking about what's displayed on the monitor. Obviously the electronic signals arent in binary. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rfyig/eli5_can_every_single_thing_a_computer_does_be/ | {
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"...the signals going to the monitor are in binary. Once inside the monitor, the signals get reinterpreted by the controller ciruits, in binary and determine the brightness of each color pixel, whose data is in binary. The pixels themselves are sent binary signals. The brightness of the pixel is controlled by how long the pixel is pulsed at ON state vs OFF state. ",
"Yes. The computer only knows anything as ones and zeroes. Doesn't matter what it is. There is a very complicated process stuff goes through to be displayed as what you see, but it is all stored as binary and interpreted as binary when the computer does any operation on any data. Even the operations the computer does are stored as ones and zeroes. Code is broken down from the high level languages like C#/C++/C and Java and Python, into assembly instructions which are a series of simple statements like Add, Subtract, Move Data between two locations, skip to a specific instruction, etc. Each assembly instruction has a specific sequence of bits that denotes it so the CPU knows what operation to perform.\n\nAs such, there are hundreds of conventions set up as to how data/code is stored so a computer knows how to interpret it. I can try to give some examples but it might be difficult to understand or else pretty lengthy.",
"At the core of everything, a computer *computes*. This means that *everything it does* involves working with numbers. If you remember this, you can ignore \"binary code\" - that's just another way of storing numbers. If you add five and five together, you are always getting ten; even if you have to spell that as \"101 + 101 = 1010\", the math doesn't change.\n\nBinary is used **because** it's really easy to transmit as an electrical signal. All you need is two voltages (e.g. 0V and +3V) to move those numbers along unambiguously.",
"Desktop computers are all binary. They work only in the realm of base2 numbers, IE 1's and 0's. Anything they do that is analog, IE not 1's and 0's is converted from 1's and 0's to analog wave forms by DAC's, but internally to the computer it is purely a digital information. \n\ncomputers do have higher levels of organization which can be broken up into base 8 numbers or hexadecimal, but those are ultimately decoded back into bytes and bits of 1's and 0's. \n\nBefore HDMI, DVI, and Display port, video monitors were analog using VGA connectors which sent sync, red, green, and blue analog signals. The video card has a DAC which converts the digital equivalents for the image, into analog signals that the monitor can understand. \n\nModern displays though are digital. The display and color information is sent purely as a bitstream of 1's and 0's, converted by the monitor into a matrix of pixels, and the LCD drivers convert those values into electrical signals that rapidly cycle off and on, to get the different colors, and brightness of pixels. \n\nThere are 2 main exceptions to this though. Analog computers were some of the first computers in use before digital computers became prevalent. They didn't operate using binary digits, but instead used analog voltages. Instead of digital logic gates like AND, NAND, OR, NOR, they used a series of connected motors and rotary encoders to twist knobs and have the results of those value twist other knobs, to perform calculations. Think of it like a feedback loop where a small difference is amplified physically by the motion of groups of servos. Some of the Vietnam era flight simulators used by the Air Force, were based on analog servo computers. \n\nThe other one is quantum computers, which use Q-bits instead of binary bits. They are capable of storing values other than just 1's and 0's. "
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cev5k2 | how do treadmills and other machines track your hearts bpm by those silver things on the handle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cev5k2/eli5_how_do_treadmills_and_other_machines_track/ | {
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"The basic concept to be aware of here is what makes the heart beat.\n\nOur heartbeat is driven by an electrical signal generated by a small group of cells (sometimes called pacemaker cells) located within our heart. The electric pulse generated by this group spreads through the heart, causing first one part, then the other to contract and relax. (As an aside, this is why electric shocks are so dangerous; they disrupt that group of cells and stop our hearts from effectively beating.)\n\n***However***, this pulse isn't confined to the heart; it spreads through the body, because our insides conduct electricity rather well. So, we constantly have an electrical pulse in our body as well.\n\nWhen we touch the silvery section of an exercise machine, the circuitry inside the machine can actually detect those minute changes in voltage caused by the pacemaker cells in our heart; from there, it can do some fancy math to separate one beat from the next, and arrive at an estimation of your heart rate.",
"The silver things on the handle are electrodes. Think like those little pads that you see taped on a patient in movies and TV that give the hospital a patient's vital signs. those pads run a low level current (being sweaty makes them contact better, which helps get the reading, too) that checks the resistance of your skin.\n\nWhen you have a heart beat, it causes the blood vessels in your hands to expand and contract. This causes the resistance between those two pads to change a little bit, and the machine is able to track those changes and count them as heartbeats.\n\nIt's worth noting that yes, there's a lot that can throw those readings off, and yes, they aren't always reliable- you wouldn't use them for something important like a life or death situation, but they are close enough for exercising to."
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q3j1g | why is it illegal to not hire somebody because of their race/religion? | Before you lose your crap and call me a racist, don't. I wouldn't not hire somebody because of their race or religion, but I don't understand why somebody who doesn't want a certain person to work their **has** to hire them against their will. It is their business, shouldn't they be allowed to hire whomever they want? Besides, isn't this law pretty much impossible to enforce? The person who didn't hire someone could give any other reason as to why they didn't hire them?
I'm sorry if this seems offensive, but I'm genuinely curious as to why the gov't is allowed to force people to do things like this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q3j1g/eli5_why_is_it_illegal_to_not_hire_somebody/ | {
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"Access to the public market requires public accommodation. ",
"The technical why?\n\n- Private sector: the commerce clause of the US Const gives power to congress to enact legislation to regulate interstate commerce > employment discrimination affects interstate commerce > congress creates agencies and statutes (most notable is the Civil Rights Act of 1964) that prevent discrimination. This flow can also be followed for most, if not all, states.\n",
"There are no quotas. No one is forced to hire minorities, you just can't discriminate against them. Given a choice between equal white and black candidates you can't choose on race. Many people prefer this because they wanted a society where merit was more important than race.\n\nEven with non-discriminatory practices whites are still hired at greater rates, not due to any overt racism, but because of inherent advantages at birth that mean by the time they get to the job interview and compete with a black candidate, they have a more competitiveness resume and can get the job on merit. \n\nIt is pretty much impossible to enforce on an individual level, but if a company does it enough to establish a pattern then you have a case. ",
"In the USA there are what are called protected classes. A example would be the handicapped but race and religion are also protected. The law is about preventing discrimination. I.E if two people are equally qualified you should hire whoever you want. But if the black dude is more qualified he should get the job assuming experience is the only difference between the two individuals.\n\nThere a couple reason why this is a good idea socially\n\n1.) It's good for buisness as it encourages people to hire the most qualified people.\n\n2.) It prevents tribialism (I.E prevent there being seperate communities of Black, Asian, White, etc people that don't mingle.)\n\n3.) It allow for greater class mobility.\n\nThe law does not say you need to hire minorities. There is nothing stopping a majority individual I.E Rich White dude, sueing if his position is givien to a less qualified individual that is a minority. \n"
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4g93ry | why people trust crystal healing when there is no scientific evidence to support its claims? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g93ry/eli5_why_people_trust_crystal_healing_when_there/ | {
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"The same as with most things people believe. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence, and when that evidence is put forward by a source someone already trusts - an actor, a family member, a community leader - the stories are believed without double-blind testing to back them up.",
"Probably because of how incredibly strong the Placebo Effect is. If people believe that what they're doing is beneficial to their health, their health will (in many/most cases) tend to improve as a result. Also, people are likely to ascribe any successes to their chosen homeopathic/ new age cure, and ascribe failures to chance.",
"Because we're looking at the sorts of people who would believe in magic if their friend-of-a-friend said it worked for them. ",
"Why do people believe in God when there is no scientific evidence to support his claims?"
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3b16jz | why do cars need transmissions but planes and boats don't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b16jz/eli5_why_do_cars_need_transmissions_but_planes/ | {
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"Transmissions carry work from the engine to wherever generates thrust. In plane engines and outboard boat motors, this task happens inside the same mechanical unit.\n\nSome inboard boat motors however do have an actual transmission.",
"Some planes and boats can adjust the pitch of their propellors which makes the propellor easier or more difficult to turn which serves a similar function to a transmission.\n\n",
"Engines have a relatively narrow range of RPM where they perform efficiently.\n\nPlanes and boats propel themselves in a viscous atmosphere/fluid. As a result, plane and boat engines can operate in a fairly narrow range of RPM and still be effective. Within that narrow RPM range, the propeller/fan generates sufficient thrust into the viscous atmosphere/fluid to propel the aircraft/boat forward.\n\nOn the other hand, car engines are \"rigidly\" connected to the ground via ground- > tires- > wheels- > driveshaft- > transmission- > clutch- > engine. This means that without a transmission, a car's engine would have to operate on a much wider range of RPM's - including RPM's where the engine performs poorly or not at all. A transmission allows the car engine to remain in its efficient RPM range while the car can travel from a crawl to over 100mph."
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9p168t | what are the rules in the music industry that govern how one artist’s song can be covered by another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9p168t/eli5_what_are_the_rules_in_the_music_industry/ | {
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"In the US you make and sell cover versions of other artists' songs \\*without their permission\\* as long as you do certain things, including paying them a fixed rate royalty. Here's a link with more information: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThere is a slightly different process for cover bands that are preforming live versions of someone else's music. You need to pay a fee to ASCAP which is an organization that collects royalties for songwriters. Usually the venue where the cover band performs will have a blanket ASCAP license that covers any cover songs a band it likely to play. ",
"You pay a royalty - you can either ask permission beforehand and negotiate a rate, or just do it and pay the standard rate. Recording royalties are based on sales, while performance royalties are usually covered by a performance fee to ASCAP. Royalties go to the songwriter(s), not the band, because the band might have been covering someone else's material in the first place (for example, Elvis Presley didn't write any of his own songs)."
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1kg29b | why do we have ear lobes ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kg29b/eli5_why_do_we_have_ear_lobes/ | {
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"The general shape of our ears actually helps us determine the direction of sounds, as they reflect sounds differently based upon where they are coming from. If you change the shape of someone's ear then it takes a little bit for their brain to learn how to interpret the echoes properly again. ",
"Where else would you put your 00 gauge plug? - WAIT! Don't answer that, I don't want to know.\n\nThere is no known biological function for the ear lobe.",
"It's a handle for your mother."
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9pvgd2 | the difference between piston plane engines and car engines | As far as I understand, they work similarly, so why are plane engines more complicated to start / more expensive / require maintenance more often / etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9pvgd2/eli5_the_difference_between_piston_plane_engines/ | {
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"if car engine breaks down, you putter to side of the road and call AAA.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nif your plane engine breaks down, you fall out of the sky and call FAA. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nif you maintained your car engine at same level of your plane engine, you'd be doing inspection every morning before leaving for work. oil changes every month, certified mechanic inspections every year. ",
"A plane engine is built for power density, a normal car engine is built for reliability\n\nFor a daily drive you really just want moderate performance in a reliable package. It doesn't particularly matter if the engine is 110 or 130 horse power or if its 10 kg heavier, it'll still work just fine for a daily driver. For a plane, you want an engine powerful enough to get you moving and light enough so you can still take off, this requires some trade offs that are more inline with racing engines than daily drivers. A propeller powered aircraft may have a power to weight ratio on the order of 1 kW/kg, but a sports car engine(no body) may have a power to weight ratio at the same level so planes are looking for far more performance out of the same sized package which means more stress and less reinforcement\n\nYou end up with the same odd maintenance requirements whenever you get to any high power density engine. GT3 cars(mid tier racing cars) have engines rated for about 60 hours of racing, and back in 2005 Formula One cars couldn't use more than 1 engine every 2 races(they were using a whole new engine), they're now restricted to three engines in a season. Races are only 305 km....\n\nAny system trying to eek every last bit of performance out ends up with maintenance and reliability issues because durable systems are heavier and the durability isn't necessary in these scenarios."
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2wroyj | what keeps a panting dog from hyperventilating ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wroyj/eli5_what_keeps_a_panting_dog_from/ | {
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"Panting in dogs tends to be shallow breaths an they're not moving a ton of air, which prevents them from blowing off all their carbon dioxide (CO2) and getting respiratory alkalosis (high blood pH which causes an acid/base imbalance). But not always... dogs that are taking fast, deep breaths will suffer from the same hyperventilation syndrome as people. The body is more sensitive to a build-up of CO2 to tell us when to breathe than a lack of oxygen. Hyperventilating causes you to expel more CO2 than usual which will cause your body to stop signaling you to take a breath and you won't get sufficient oxygen. It also causes alkalosis where the blood pH increases. A dog panting regularly isn't moving more air than a dog taking in slower, deep breaths, so hyperventilation isn't an issue. The issue comes when there is labored breathing or heavy panting, which will cause these issues. Dogs are also more prone to aerophagia, where they gulp air while panting heavily and distend out their stomachs. Aerophagia can rarely lead to bloat, but can be quite uncomfortable. Questions?",
"The other part to this is that there is part of each breath which does not take part in gas exchange. This is that part of the breath which only reaches the upper airways rather than the lungs. This part of the airway is called the dead space and so what panting does is move air in and out of the dead space which because it doesn't reach the lungs doesn't drop the CO2"
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293ryd | why are we training so many kids to code? | There are over 600,000 kids currently learning to code and the numbers are rising. I fear continuing to teach my kids as they will end up with low paying jobs even if they are great due to oversupply. Please explain where the demand will come from especially when overseas labor can do the work for less. I am located in the U.S. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/293ryd/eli5why_are_we_training_so_many_kids_to_code/ | {
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"We teach all kids history, it doesn't make them grow into historians. (It doesn't even grow many of them into history-aware people, kids forget most of what they learn or never gain much competence at it anyway.)\n\nAdditionally a lot of the cheaper overseas folk are sub-par programmers too. ",
"It's the combination of the age-old political hot button \"we must improve education\" mixed with the current belief that only \"computer jobs\" will remain during/after automation.",
"[This article](_URL_0_) has a pretty good argument as to why people should learn to code: ",
"It is not so that they all go and become programmers; it is because programming helps instill a certain logical way of approaching problem that is applicable in almost any situation. A well taught basic programming course should focus almost exclusively on the logic, not the language (the language is a method to gauge how the student understands the logic - this is why languages like Turing and basic are good; they allow for the logic rather than the intricacies of the language to determine the output); if the logic is taught well and the students are shown how to apply it, then it can be applied in almost any situation. For example, let's say you are working on a car. You have a problem where the steering wheel shakes back and forth as you drive. To begin with, you determine what can cause the symptoms (loose tie rod, worn wheel bearing, worn steering gear, bad ball joints...). The next step is to see how to narrow it down (the wheels don't have any play, hub and ball joints are good, the tie rods are tight, but when the steering wheel is turned, the steering box gets the input, but doesn't provide any output): the steering box is broken.\n\nAfter you have ruled out the possibilities, you then are left with the (most likely) solution. This method of thinking can be used to solve almost any problem of any size by breaking it down into it's component parts and testing each individually. In the end, programming is essentially applied problem solving, and it gives skills that can be used no matter what field they end up working in.\n\nTL;DR: We are raising a generation of Vulcans."
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9b3z7w | why is a sugary drink sticky when spilled, but an artificially sweetened one not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9b3z7w/eli5_why_is_a_sugary_drink_sticky_when_spilled/ | {
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"Artificial sweeteners are much more concentrated. So, when they dry out, there is less leftover. ",
"Sugary drinks contain sugar, which is highly attracted to water. Even when the spilled drink \"dries,\" it's not completely dry. The sugar in the liquid (which of course does not evaporate like water), is still holding onto a lot water molecules causing a sticky feeling. Essentially, a spilled sugary drink is a dilute syrup. Now, diet drinks have a far less concentration of sweetener, thus, they are much less sticky."
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6sf7rp | why are puns generally frowned upon (albeit humorously)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sf7rp/eli5_why_are_puns_generally_frowned_upon_albeit/ | {
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"Because they're low effort, short jokes. They're like a reddit shit post. It can be funny, but it can't be elaborate and abstract.",
"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [Do people actually hate puns or do they just pretend not to like them whenever they hear one? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [Why are puns considered \"bad\" jokes? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do people hate puns so much? I feel like they can be some of the most clever forms of jokes. ](_URL_2_)\n1. [Why are puns considered \"bad\"? ](_URL_3_)\n",
"because groaning and rolling your eyes is the response we hope for when we make a terrible pun. It's basically applause",
"Puns are like the Country Music of jokes:\n\nThere is a section of the community who absolutely love them, but the majority hate them (or at least profess to). They would say (with some justification, perhaps) that they are shallow, repetitive, and have little artistic merit.\n\nAnd while that is true of the majority, the best ones can really make you think.\n\nIt's no coincidence, I think, that puns proliferate in the titles and lyrics of country songs: All Over Me; Cleopatra, Queen of Denial; There Goes my Life; She Let Herself Go; I Can't Love You Back etc, etc.\n\nTl;dr: Puntry Music"
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1syhs2 | why does it seem that most movies have a "happy" ending? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1syhs2/eli5_why_does_it_seem_that_most_movies_have_a/ | {
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"Because most people like happy endings.",
"Why would you want to leave the theater depressed? The point is to have a closing that let's you leave on a positive note. There are French (and of course other places) movies however, that end without happiness. ",
"Most movies the writer has a specific story to tell and the ending is determined by the story. Take a movie like Fever Pitch. It doesn't matter that the Red Sox won the Series the year the movie was made. It only matters that the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl story be told. The movie re-shot and added a couple scenes to reflect the Sox in the Series. \n\nCounter that with a movie like Suicide Kings. It has a dark ending. A couple different endings were shown to test audiences and the highest ratings were for the dark ending. \n\nAnother example would be the Jennifer Anison/Vince Vaughn flick, The Break Up. That had a happy ending that the test audiences didn't like. It was re-shot and the less happy ending was added. \n\nSo, the movie ends how the film-maker and the audience want the movie to end. ",
"Because that's how the story telling formula works.\n\nMeet the hero. Hero faces adversity. Hero overcomes adversity.\n\nThat is 90% of all movies (and TV shows and books) out there. "
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2xy8fa | how do floors get mopped, garbage cans get emptied, plumbing get repaired etc. in top secret areas? are there janitors with high level security clearance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xy8fa/eli5_how_do_floors_get_mopped_garbage_cans_get/ | {
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"Areas like that have \"clean desk\" policies where everything has to be secured in locked drawers when you are not at your desk. If it is somewhere with constant activities then the people there take their trash to somewhere outside the room where it gets collected.",
"Like at military facilities? Such maintenance would be carried out by low-ranking service members. In cases where equipment goes bad and you need a specialist (read: civilian contractor who only works on X equipment), usually they hire prior service-members who have gone into a relevant field and have secret or top secret clearances, and then those contractors are only allowed to go where their work requires them to be. Depending on the facility/base/wherever, they may be escorted some or all of the time.",
"The area is first cleared of all classified material. Documents are placed in safes with electronic locks. Equipment is moved to other classified areas. All workers are notified ahead of time that the area is under maintenance and not to discuss nor work on anything classified in the area during that time. A guard is placed to watch the open doors to ensure the only people going in and out are the intended service people. Once the job is done, the area can be secured again to resume classified work.\n\nAs for garbage cans, workers just leave them outside the area.",
"* yes, often they do have high clearance\n* when you are away from your desk, and classified material much be secured, so there is really nothing to see\n* workers are notified when a uncleared personnel enter the area, and are required to secure documents immediate"
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15fnu6 | if you are able to look at somebody's reflection, this person must also be able to look at yours. does this concept apply always? | Just like you are capable of looking at somebody's reflection, this person must also be able to look at yours.
However, is there an exception to this rule? Perhaps due to refraction, etc.? If so, how is it possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15fnu6/if_you_are_able_to_look_at_somebodys_reflection/ | {
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"The way light bounces, this will always happen on a *flat* surface. If the surface is warped, skewed, or bent, the light will bounce back according to that angle.",
"if you can see their eyes, then they can see your eyes. It always *works* with cameras because the camera IS the eye.",
"If you put a camera in front of a mirror and watch someone's reflection through the camera feed, then you can see their reflection and they can't see yours.",
"If the other person is blind.",
"the light is bouncing from their reflection off the mirror into your eyes. this means the light bouncing from you is reflecting back at them too, as the mirror is _always_ reflecting light. \n\nthe exception to this rule is if you are in complete darkness, but the other person is in the light. then they cannot see you, but you can see them (as long as the light isn't bouncing off the mirror)"
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6meoid | what happens to clinically insane people after committing crimes that if a non-insane person did, they would receive the death penalty? | Also, where did these laws originate from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6meoid/eli5_what_happens_to_clinically_insane_people/ | {
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"Part of a crime is intent and knowledge of the likely outcome of one's actions.\n\nIf a person is \"not guilty by reason of insanity\" it means that durring that *specific* crime they did not know what they were doing, similar to how a person is not guilty of a crime if a crane unexpectedly breaks and it's load crushes someone.\n\nSimply *being* clinically insane is insufficient to get off the hook for a crime.",
"There's a concept in criminal law, that requires that the person understand what they did was wrong. This concept can be directly traced back to Roman legal codes (though like many Roman concepts, they borrowed it from a [Greek thinker](_URL_1_)). It's not true for certain type of crimes (crimes stemming from criminal negligence or strict liability crimes). \n\nIf someone is found not guilty for reason of insanity, they are usually confined to a mental health facility until they are declared sane. One of the most famous, successful [insanity defenses](_URL_0_.) was recently released from institutional confinement last year, after 30 years of institutional treatment. ",
"Clinically insane doesn't matter, you need to be *criminally* insane.\n\nCriminal insanity means you are so detached from reality you can't see that your action are wrong. If you attacked a snake person who was using mind control beams to steal your precious bodily fluids, cleverly disguised as your mailman, that would be criminal insanity.\n\nIf you were institutionalized because your severe OCD made it difficult for you to lead a normal life, murdering someone would still be a crime and you would face normal criminal penalties.",
"To expand on what others have said, *CRIMINAL* insanity is when you have such a lack of grip on reality that you cannot possibly understand you were committing a crime.\n\nAn example from The Law Of Superheroes, written by two Harvard lawyers who were comic book fans, showed how most versions of The Joker would be clinically insane, but WOULD be declared competent to stand trial. This would be due to the fact that most versions of The Joker have demonstrated premeditation of the crime, and spoke of the act in ways that demonstrated he knew it was a crime."
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5bltbq | how are there enough cows to supply the over 15k macdonalds and burger kings in u.s. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bltbq/eli5how_are_there_enough_cows_to_supply_the_over/ | {
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"First, a single cow produces an awful lot of hamburgers. A grown steer produces about 500 pounds of beef, which is 2000 quarter-pound hambugers.\n\nSecond, there are enormous herds of cattle on ranches in the rural parts of the US, which you generally don't see because they're not along highways, but the US is enormous and can easily hold them. The state of Texas alone has more than 11 million cattle, or 22 billion hambugers worth.",
"The average carcass weight was 475 in 1975. As of 2005 it was over 600 pounds. A Holstein female can weigh up to 1500 pounds. My father in law raises cows, have about 100 pounds in my freezer. The taste is more like a high end restaurant than store beef. ",
"Cheap beef is sourced from farms which use a feed lot system, rather than traditional grazing. In a traditional grazing system you might expect to have about one cow per acre.\n\nIn contrast, the stocking density in a feedlot is often well in excess of 100 cows per acre (and that *includes* the space requirement allocated for driving routes, feed stalls, waste mangagement, etc, so not just space for cows).\n\nTo be clear - many traditional farms use feed lot systems in the winter months when grazing can be difficult. The difference with intensive farming practices is that they use feedlot year-round.",
"Well, the answer to your question is very simple. So I'll just answer with a question: what do you do when you run out of something? You buy more, right? Well, same thing happens here. Demand creates a feedback loop where the more hamburgers you want, the more cows are raised for slaughter. \n\nIronically, these cows are significant contributors to global warming due to the methane they... exhaust.",
"My company makes a product out of collagen , I was amazed how many cows there are in the world. ",
"There are fields, /u/Hipposeverywhere, endless fields, where cattle are no longer born. They are grown.\n\nHere's a few pictures:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"I lived in amarillo tx for a few years. Just outside the city Cows/steer outnumbered the population of the city like 2 to 3. \nAnd it smelled like it. \n\nThat isnt the smell of shit son, that is the smell of money.",
"You REALLY don't want to see the *factories* in Texas where cows are raised for cheap meat. You can smell their putrid odor from miles away (not kidding).",
"Do you realize how big the US is?",
"Not an answer to how many cows, but does answer some questions on where mcdonalds gets their beef _URL_0_",
"Not all of it is 100% beef\nSoy and other product are added into the patties heavily (unless marked 100% beef).",
"Not only are there an awful lot of cows, [they are one of the leading contributors to climate change](_URL_0_).",
"There are approximately 92 million cattle in the US today. Of which, about 30 million are beef cows (adult breeding females) and 9 million are dairy cows. The rest are essentially calves and bulls.\n\nBeef cattle: Obviously, beef cattle are selected, bred and raised specifically for their meat-producing traits. Ranchers want breeding cows that easily give birth to calves that can add muscle and fat quickly, convert feed efficiently and produce well-marbled and delicious beef. Therefore, they select breeds and purchase bulls/semen that have these characteristics. Most ranchers will spend a lifetime building a herd to their liking and thus typically keep the best heifers (females that have yet to give birth) born on their ranch for breeding. They buy new bulls every year or two OR they purchase semen and artificially inseminate their heifers/cows. This promotes genetic diversity and quality and prevents inbreeding in the herd. A beef cow will typically give birth to 10-12 calves in her lifetime. The bull calves born on a ranch are typically castrated (thereby becoming \"steers\") and are weaned from their mothers at about 8 months of age and then sent to a feedlot for \"finishing,\" usually with corn or some other grain. They will often be on grass with their mothers until that time and the cows will spend virtually their entire life outside on grass (sometimes supplemented with hay in the winter). The best heifers are kept and put in with the bulls at about 15 months of age to give birth at 24 months. The heifer calves that don't make the cut as breeding stock take the same path as their steer cohorts. After these \"feeder calves\" reach between 1100 and 1300 pounds, they are sent to the packing plant and become steaks, roasts, burgers, etc.\n\nBeef Terminology: Ranchers who own breeding cattle and raise baby beef calves have \"cow/calf\" operations. They own pastures and harvest hay to feed their critters and tend to be relatively small. An average cow/calf operation has only 40 cows and a large one might have 400 cows, but it's too land- and labor-intensive to get much larger. Ranchers then sell their calves to people who run feedlots, called \"feeders.\" A feedlot might have several hundred to several hundred thousand animals. These guys, in turn, sell to folks who run slaughterhouses: \"packers.\" These are usually completely separate entities.\n\nDairy Cattle: These bovine are bred for their ability to produce milk. Some breeds are renowned for the amount they produce while others tend to have more fat in their milk which is valuable for butter, cream, etc. When a dairy cow gives birth, the calf is taken away from her within 3 days or so and is fed by humans -- usually a manufactured powdered milk. The cow is milked 2 or 3 times per day, every day, until she goes dry after several months. She is then bred again. The cow's milk goes to the dairy. Many dairy heifer calves are kept to become milk cows but the rest, along with the steer calves (they also get castrated), become veal or are sold at approximately 6 months of age and also go to a feedlot to be fed up to 1000 pounds or more. Because these calves are not bred for their meat traits, their roasts and steaks are a lower quality than muscle cuts from beef cattle and the entire animal is often ground up for hamburger. Dairy cows usually have 4 or 5 calves and live to be about 6 or 7 years of age and many (although certainly not all) are kept in barns during their lifetimes and do not get to go outside and graze. Dairy farms have grown exponentially in size over the past 30 years. Most are now milk at least several hundred cows and many have several thousand.\n\nOld bulls and beef and dairy cows do not die of old age. They have value -- also mostly as ground beef -- and are sent to feeders/packers when they can no longer breed. We slaughtered about 29 million head of cattle in the US in 2015 and many of them weren't young, fattened beef cattle full of restaurant-quality steaks and roasts. This is why we have so much ground product and why a good steak costs so much more than 80/20 ground beef and how we're able to keep the fast-food restaurants supplied. The structure of the industry also explains why you see huge feedlots of cattle in Texas, Nebraska and Kansas. It's not because all cows now live in feedlots but because that's the system we've developed in order to efficiently fatten certain cattle in a short window of time and meet consumers' taste demands. \n\nSource: Grew up on a beef cattle ranch, father and brother-in-law still ranch."
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9uqghw | why do my hands feel weak after i watch doctors taking blood. | It doesn't have to be blood, basically whenever I see someone injecting needle my hands suddenly feel weak and weird. I can't even clench the fist as good as usual. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9uqghw/eli5_why_do_my_hands_feel_weak_after_i_watch/ | {
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"Likely because some part of the process makes you anxious and you experience a mini fight-or-flight reaction of blood being drained from your extremities to be pumped into things your body deems more important in the moment. Possibly resulting in your hands even becoming totally numb. \n\nSource: Am deathly afraid of needles and experienced what I described last trip to the doctor. "
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arg2iy | if black absorbs all colors on the visible spectrum, then how are there glossy black finishes that reflect light | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arg2iy/eli5_if_black_absorbs_all_colors_on_the_visible/ | {
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"There are more ways light interacts with a surface than by absorption. Reflection is a different mechanic where the light is bounced off the surface based mostly on the smoothness of the surface. This is only a surface effect.\n\nDifferent materials will have different reflectivity, the tendency for a material to reflect light.\n\nThere is also emissivity which is the tendency for a material to produce light from it's heat or absorbed light. A black material is as perfect an emitter as it is an absorber. Though it's emitted light is directly related to the temperature of the object, or the energy lost by absorbtion. Emitted light is usually in the infrared range, invisible to us but felt as heat.",
"Pure black would absorb all colours, however pure black doesn't exist. Glossy black reflects some of the light.\n\nThere is the nanotubes based black called Vantablack which reflects only 0.04% of the light. And that is the blackest black we have at this moment: People who see it for the first time go from \"There is an empty hole in this\".",
"I think it has more to do with how the surface interacts with light at. More microscopic level. When you have a glossy finish, the light hits and is generally reflected straight outwards, when you have a stain finish, the surface in more 'bumpy' which makes the light more prone to reflecting into another interaction with the material.",
"Ideal black paint would absorb all light. Regular black paint are not ideal and will reflect light black, it is easy to see the it is the case by pointing a flashlight on the object if you can see a difference in brightness then some light is reflected back.\n\nThere is not material that absorb all light the best is [Vantablack](_URL_0_) that absorb 99.96% of all visible light and regular object that you thing is black absorb a lot less light then that.\n\nWhite paint and a regular mirror reflect only 80-90% of all light that hits them so you might reflect a couple of percent of the light and we consider it black. For a mirror the aluminium coating reflect 90% ad a bit more is absorbed by the glass.\n\n\nGlossy is the amount of light that is reflected by specular reflection, that is when all light that is reflected bounce in one direction like a mirror. A matte/flat paint reflect light in all direction ie diffuse reflection. \n\nSo matte white paint and a mirror reflect the same amount of light. A mirror has almost only specular reflection and matte paint almost only diffuse reflection. So the glossy matte is how it reflect light not the amount.\n\n",
"A perfect black body would not be visible to the naked eye if it absorbed all colors on the visible spectrum. Black holes aren't even perfect black bodies since they reflect light, albeit an extremely small amount of it. The color black that we can see reflects a small amount of light, which makes it possible for us to view it."
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3r3tvw | what is going through my cat's head when he runs back and forth seemingly aimlessly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r3tvw/eli5_what_is_going_through_my_cats_head_when_he/ | {
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"Although there are a bunch of factors to consider, (sterilization, age, etc) if I had to make a personal guess, I'd say he has a natural instinct to prowl and hunt like in the wild and since he can't exactly do those things, he just aimlessly runs."
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cy4svt | how is liquid nitrogen kept cold? can it be kept in a bottle for a long period and still be cold? | I understand the relation beetwen pressure, temperature and volume, so if I manage to keep liquid nitrogen under pressure for 20 years it will still be cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cy4svt/eli5_how_is_liquid_nitrogen_kept_cold_can_it_be/ | {
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"LN2 is stored in dewar's for smaller amounts or in cryogenic tanks for larger quantities. Dewar's are just high efficiency thermos tanks usually with a vented lid. Why the vent? Because no thermos is perfect at retaining temperature, so as temp goes up, the volume increases and there is a phase change from liquid to gas. \nThe cryo tanks usually have a mechanism for keeping the tanks chilled so as to keep the LN in a steady state.\n\nEdit: typo",
"Ok, so if you have a bit of water, and you blow on it, it gets cold. That's basically because you're encouraging it to evaporate. It's evaporation (the transition from liquid to gas) that makes it cold.\n\nIf you have liquid nitrogen in an open container at Sea level pressure, it will also evaporate, but at a much higher rate than water does. It will boil in that container, and that rapid evaporation is what makes liquid nitrogen cold under those conditions.\n\nBut if you have liquid nitrogen in a sealed container at room temperature, and at Sea level pressure when you seal it up, some of the liquid will evaporate inside that container. Since the gas has nowhere to escape, the pressure will build up. The container will get cold while this is happening.\n\nEventually, the pressure in the container will be so great that the nitrogen will reach an equilibrium between gas and liquid. For every molecule of nitrogen that escaped into the gas phase, one molecule will go from had to liquid phase.\n\nThe container will gradually warm to room temperature, even though there is liquid nitrogen inside it. If you put the container on a heater, the liquid nitrogen will boil, and the pressure in the container will increase, and the nitrogen will adjust to the new, warm temperature.\n\nThe container will largely stay at it's surrounding temperature, as long as the gas does not escape, so you cannot actually keep such a container cold forever. The number of nitrogen molecules, the volume of the container the pressure, and the temperature are in a constant balance that is largely described by the Ideal Gas Law\n\nPV = nRT\n\nPressure x Volume = (number of molecules) x (Ideal Gas Constant) x Temperature"
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7iwdqw | how does left-cardiac hypertrophy lead to cardiac arrhythmias? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7iwdqw/eli5_how_does_leftcardiac_hypertrophy_lead_to/ | {
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"With left-sided hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the left ventricle is very muscular and that leaves little room for blood to fill up in it between beats. As a result, you can get blood backing up into the left atrium. This stretching can cause electrical signals to get \"messed up\" (simple way to put it), resulting in the heart doing weird stuff as it tries to keep up with the blood flowing into it.\n\nThere's also the issue of that super muscular chamber contracting really hard, which can throw off the normal rhythm. ",
"It's less about size and blood perfusion than \"disarray.\" Those who develop what you could call an \"induced hypertrophy\" (high blood pressure or tight valves leading muscle growth on response to resistance) aren't at the same risk as someone with Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM, 'the young athlete killer'). \n\nThe cells in the heart of those with a primary hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (like HOCM) don't grow right, they align poorly, and they don't conduct right electrically. Those messy electrical pathways are where trouble happens... Extra signals, stacked signals, etc can lead to arrhythmias (total chaos). \n\nThat messy muscle cell growth can also happen somewhat in really bad heart disease from valves or high blood pressure, like I mentioned, but that's not generally the issue that leads those folks to medical attention (or death), but it does happen occasionally. \n\nDisclaimer: this is a major simplification \n(source: I'm an internist) "
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4ubixe | would there be any temperature difference if the speed of the light were slower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ubixe/eli5_would_there_be_any_temperature_difference_if/ | {
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"I'm not sure I can ELI5 this, but i'll just try and explain it anyway. I'm not really sure what the best answer, but my best guess is that it depends on what other physical constants changed. Assuming that everything was held constant and you just halve c, going with the [plank einstein relation](_URL_0_) E=c/wavelength, then as c decreases, E decreases, and so temperature would go down.\n \nAnother way to look at this is that since frequency is inversely proportional to wavelength multiplied by c as a constant, so as c goes down, the frequency at a particular wavelength of light would be lower. If the photo frequency is lower, then things are moving around slower. Slower moving is less energy, is lower temperature. \n\nHowever, it'd also say it probably wouldn't *feel* colder, because the whole system would have adjusted down, including melting/boiling points, etc.\n\n"
]
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1p0bea | what process has happened over the years that makes things i found as a child hilarious to me then but now not finding them as humorous. | I feel I haven't changed much since I was a child. I just don't understand why I don't laugh like I used to at silly cartoons or rude jokes etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p0bea/eli5_what_process_has_happened_over_the_years/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"You've developed more sophisticated tastes. Maybe not much more sophisticated, but still, at least a little. You've seen things that are far funnier than simple rude jokes or silly cartoons, and you've also seen so many rude jokes that the idea has gotten old."
]
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31o4s8 | hpv -- so there's an std that basically everyone has and it's benign except when it isn't? | I've heard so many different things about HPV -- from doctors, the CDC, and peers -- that I have absolutely no clue what the deal is. A good friend just had an abnormal pap smear and one doctor told her she couldn't have sex for a year and then another said she could because everyone had HPV already. I'm obviously hearing this second-hand, but wut? When I've talked to my own doctors, they've said similar things: there's no test besides the pap smear and I shouldn't worry anyways because non-cancerous HPV isn't a big deal because "it's so common" and "the body fights it off naturally." But then I have a a couple of friends with scary things like warts and pre-cancerous growths, so uhhh, that's not good.
So from what I've gathered, it seems like HPV is actually many different viruses. Some of them the body deals with naturally and it's NBD. But sometimes it's totally a BD because it gives you warts or cancer.
For some reason, we call all of them "HPV," and everyone has it. It's like the common cold of sex or something? And there's nothing you can do about it except condoms a little bit help, but not all the way?
TL;DR: Are millions of people crawling with STI viruses? Is that a problem? Why do some strains cause warts in some people but other times the strain doesn't do anything? Should I be worried about HPV? Or is it the common cold of STIs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31o4s8/eli5_hpv_so_theres_an_std_that_basically_everyone/ | {
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"Everyone is crawling with bacteria and viruses all the time. Having benign bacteria all over helps keep pathogenic ones away. Even different strains of the same bacteria/virus can behave quite differently.\n\nHPV infection is very common, so yes, it pretty much *is* the common cold of STDs. you can get it, fight it off, and get it again later. You can get it and have zero symptoms. You can get it and get cancer.\n\nHere are the facts on HPV, presented is a pretty easy-to-read format _URL_0_",
"I don't want to tell you whether or not to worry about HPV, but here's what I know about it. There are several different strains. Some of them cause warts, some of them don't. The ones that don't cause warts can sometimes turn cells cancerous, but generally don't have any other noticeable side effects. There's a vaccine that protects against the most common cancer-causing strains.\n\nA lot of people have HPV and most don't know it. Unless you have warts, or an abnormal pap smear, or get cancer from it there's not really a way to know whether or not you have it. In fact, there's not even a test for men to tell whether or not they have it (other than the \"see if you have a wart\" test).\n\nSo the strains that cause warts and the strains that cause cancer are generally separate. Men are rarely directly affected by strains that cause cancer. I think if a man gets it anally then the cancer becomes a bigger deal, but I’m not positive. Women who have strains that cause cancers sometimes get abnormal precancerous cells that show up on a pap smear. These cells may become cancer or they may not turn into anything. I don’t really know more beyond that and am not a doctor so I’m hesitant to speculate. \n\nSo to sum it up: A lot of people have HPV. A lot of those people don’t know they have it because they don’t show any symptoms and there are no tests for it. HPV generally only does two things: give you warts and/or cancer. If you’re aguy who doesn’t have sex with other men then the cancer probably isn’t a big concern. If you’re a woman, make sure to get regular pap smears and if one of them is abnormal see what your doctor says about it. If your doctor tells you something that sounds crazy like “you can’t have sex for a year” consider getting a second opinion."
]
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5mgnr7 | why did the dea decide to make cbd a schedule 1 narcotic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mgnr7/eli5_why_did_the_dea_decide_to_make_cbd_a/ | {
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"Because there is a long history of pharmaceutical companies lobbying to have anything that might take some of their money made illegal. CBD oil is making headlines and deserves to be researched. By lobbying to have it made schedule I, there will be little to no research done in the U.S. ensuring that we will have to buy pharma products."
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[]
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||
2btftz | why hasnt a large group of people filed a class action suite against verizon or comcast | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2btftz/eli5_why_hasnt_a_large_group_of_people_filed_a/ | {
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"Many service providers in the US, including Comcast, have clauses in their user agreements which actually forbid customers from engaging in class-action lawsuits against the company. In fact, many of these user agreements prevent you from taking any legal action and mandate that all disputes (that can't be resolved directly with the company) must be settled outside of court through binding arbitration.\n\nYes, it is true that these clauses are not legally enforceable in all jurisdictions, but it still prevents and discourages many customers from trying to get a class action lawsuit going. Also, these lawsuits are extremely expensive and unless you have demonstrable proof that the company caused widespread harm/damage and/or acted illegally then it simply doesn't make sense to proceed with such a lawsuit.",
"For what, exactly?",
"Why has not each individual citizen sued the US government for stalking???"
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2wyjzk | why don't we have nintendo wii styled controls for a computer instead of the conventional mouse? | i have my computer hooked up to my TV as a monitor, which is pretty common these days for a lot of people. im just wondering why we don't have the system for controlling your cursor on screen like you do when using the nunchucks on the Wii, but for computers. instead of using an optical mouse that has to move across a surface to register where you want to move your cursor on screen, why aren't we just pointing directly to the screen to control the cursor. i understand that this probably wouldn't be too practical for desktops but this seems like it would a really good system for people like me sitting in a lounge chair with a 30+ inch screen.
EDIT: i don't necessarily mean the wii-mote specifically, just that general method of controlling the cursor about the screen, i.e. pointing something directly at the screen and using that as your control surface instead of moving something on a virtual plane like a tabletop. as a crude visual metaphor -- picture it like your remote control for your television. you don't hold your arm out from your body, your elbow rests against something comfortably and you point the remote at the screen so the tv can read it. now translate this method to on a computer screen, with some sort of sensor (?) that reads the screen and tracks your movements, moving the onscreen cursor. so now picture it like its your remote but it has a laser pointer attached to it(crude metaphor) and where you point the red dot is where the cursor goes, you would only have to move your wrist really, one hand with the remote and the other on the keyboard when necessary, set it down when you need both hands to type. im not thinking about sitting at a desk but sitting in front of the TV on the couch or something.
so i guess this is really a two part question, 1) does this technology exist. 2) if not, why not (technical, practical, im a moron, ???) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wyjzk/eli5_why_dont_we_have_nintendo_wii_styled/ | {
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"text": [
"Because The wii mote is very imprecise for clicking. The ergonomics don't really work well for the complexities of computers.",
"If you have a bluetooth adapter in your computer, [you can absolutely use your Wiimote that way](_URL_0_).\n\nTurns out most people just don't want to do this. The novelty wears off quickly. Mice were designed to provide maximum control with minimum effort. Wiimotes were designed almost exactly the opposite. Large gestures with less focus on precision."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-connect-your-wiimote-to-your-pc/"
]
] |
|
5xmc03 | what is a typical career path taken to become a us ambassadors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xmc03/eli5_what_is_a_typical_career_path_taken_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"dej6trm"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You can be anything you want! You just have to earn a lot of money. Then you donate it to a political party, and use that donation as leverage to get the position!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2zz6ls | what do pets think about all day? they must get bored. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zz6ls/eli5_what_do_pets_think_about_all_day_they_must/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpnmywz"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Some do which is sometimes why bored dogs for instance destroy furniture"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
45s5wb | excess reserves | Watched Janet Yellen's testimony to congress last week. We pay millions of dollars to Wall Street banks to hold their money in the Federal Reserve. Somehow we also make money on the deal. Yellen seemed to be saying that if we didn't pay Wall Street to hold their money we would have less money going into the Treasury to pay down the debt and pay for things in the federal budget. How does this work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45s5wb/eli5_excess_reserves/ | {
"a_id": [
"czzwfrg"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
" > Watched Janet Yellen's testimony to congress last week. \n\nFor those of who do not want to use up all of our bandwidth, or week-end time, watching 6 hours of very boring you-tube, could you point us to the part that you are talking about?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5rwsvb | how can gov officials get away with giving seemingly classified information to news outlets? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rwsvb/eli5_how_can_gov_officials_get_away_with_giving/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddarf50"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
" > The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject\n\nThat is not the same thing and does not imply that they gave out classified information. What it means is that the employee was not designated as the public spokesperson for the organization. The information they are giving is not secret, but not the official line either."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9zus8o | why don’t you bleed out when you get an injection? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zus8o/eli5_why_dont_you_bleed_out_when_you_get_an/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There is about 50 processes that occur to act together to clot your blood and plug the hole.\nSome people could bleed out, they are called haemophiliacs, and their blood clotting system malfunctions in one way or another.\nBonus fun fact for you, if you take too many blood thinners, you can bleed out through your skin, don't even need a hole.",
"The needle hole you get from an injection is so tiny that the blood can't get out that much. Even when you get stung by a sowing needle, which is considerably larger, it doesn't bleed that much either. ",
"Depends on where the injection is.\n\nMost simple injections are intramuscular, given into the deltoid or quadriceps muscles in the upper arm or thigh, respectively.\n\nThese muscles are chosen because they don't have any major blood vessels running through them, only really really tiny ones that supply the local tissue. These get torn, but not enough to create significant amounts of blood. As these microscopic vessels are ruptured, tiny little cells in the blood called platelets come into contact with the muscle tissue. Usually, platelets are inside the blood, but when the vessels breaks they spill out.\n\nAs soon as the platelets recognise that they're not inside the blood vessel, they start to 'vomit' lots of 'glue' into the local area. This causes more platelets to stick, and vomit more glue. This glue is like an epoxy -- you need to mix it so that it sticks. Because the platelets are vomiting their part, it can now mix with the parts in the blood, causing more stickiness to happen.\n\nThe end result is that you get this big ball of platelets, red blood cells, and other stuff all stuck together. If you scrape your knee, you'd call this a scab, however it's happening hundreds of times inside your muscle after any injection. Sometimes, this glue doesn't form very well, and you get bruises where you got the injection. That's because the glue took too long to form and too much blood leaked out!",
"Your blood hates oxygen. When your blood touches oxygen, it turns into an Iron Snow Flake in order to stop it getting into your body. When the needle goes into your skin, some blood will come back out the hole when the needle leaves. The Iron Snow Flakes that your blood turns into lock together, and \"freeze\" in place. This \"Frozen\" blood blocks any more blood from escaping."
]
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[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
b6ja5e | how does property line surveying work? | I work in an industry where we use property legal descriptions and have to order property surveys regularly. I don't fully understand what the surveyor does when he goes out to a property to survey it.How does he get the actual measurements? What do the hrs/mins/secs mean exactly?Just trying to get an understanding of how this part of things actually happens.
EDIT: I'm looking for info on property line/real estate surveying, not so much the engineering sort of surveying. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6ja5e/eli5_how_does_property_line_surveying_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"ejkq3yd",
"ejkspdy"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Property lines is often described using features in the terrain and not necessarily coordinates. And even if there is coordinates they may not have been measured with high accuracy, using old datum or the terrain might have changed. So a surveyor is walking around trying to make sense of the previous descriptions of the property lines and writing down his own descriptions. This makes it easier for you to know where the property line is. He often returns with detailed coordinates of the property line. These can be written as two sets of degree, minute, second coordinates. A latitude and longitude. A circle have 365 degrees, a degree have 60 minute and a minute have 60 seconds. So by using two such values you are able to uniquely place a point on the surface of the Earth.",
"It's all about making maps align with reality. Property is defined, for ownership reasons, by polygons on a map. Usually the local government maintains master maps reflecting agreed upon boundaries between each parcel of land.\n\nIn most of the 20^th century, these were literal maps, sheets of paper in big books in the county's land records department. When you filed a deed and filed for title, the map you provided was compared, by a skilled map reader, with the book. Many title defects were detected this way, and many, many more were not.\n\nIn modern times, most jurisdictions are digitizing these maps. The resulting GIS (geodesy information system) allows computers to find all the zillions of other boundary defects, and arithmetically fix them. Today, all good plots have coordinates on them, like your car's GPS uses; rocks and landmarks are part of the sad past.\n\nWell, it's super good that all the county's records are now in unified GIS, but that's little help to the contractor on the ground. Surveyors take those maps and use them to put matching stakes in the ground. They measure from a nearby reference point, shown on the map and perhaps by a marker on the ground, to locate a site point of reference. From there, it's measuring and following the map, and hammering stakes with pretty ribbons tied to them. Most measurement is optical, but differential GPS is accurate enough for some applications."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
28qe4v | why do computers need screen savers but not tvs? | Computers traditionally have screen savers that come on after a couple of minutes. TVs can be on for hours but don't have screen savers. Why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28qe4v/eli5_why_do_computers_need_screen_savers_but_not/ | {
"a_id": [
"cidei5o",
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],
"score": [
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24,
13
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"text": [
"My TV has a screen saver",
"Because of [screen burn-in](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you let an old CRT screen display the same image for a longer period of time, that image can be permanently burnt into the screen. (check the link for examples.)\n\nOn TVs this wasn't a huge problem since TVs don't tend to show a lot of static images for long periods of time. Although you could sometimes find a TV with the faint ghost of a channel logo in one corner because it had been on one channel for too long. \n\nOn computer monitors the problem was much greater since you could end up with an entire document burnt into your screen if you forgot to turn it off. So screen savers were implemented that could either blank the screen or show a continuously moving image, screen savers literally saved screens.\n\nBurn-ins aren't that likely to happen on modern displays. It used to be a problem with plasma TVs and it can apparently even happen on an LCD display although I've never seen it. Plus most TVs and computers today will turn the screen off automatically if it sits idle for too long and that's a better solution than a screen saver since it saves power.",
"Slightly unrelated, but my Grandmother watched QVC so much in the late 1990s/early 2000s that the phone number was permanently burned into her CRT tv screen. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in"
],
[]
] |
|
30vr4s | why is the proportion of left-handed people so small in comparison to right-handed people? shouldn't it be closer to 50:50 than the 10:90 ratio we see today? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30vr4s/eli5_why_is_the_proportion_of_lefthanded_people/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpw9uym"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"Once humans starting using tools, handedness started to matter. A left handed person would be a disadvantage using tools make for right handed people.\n\nOn the other hand, with weapons, being left handed could be an advantage, if everyone was used to fighting right handed people. So there would be an evolutionary reason to keep some left handed people around."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
73s4xx | how can an mri show the side of the body if the person is lying on their back? | E.g. Injury to the side of a knee but injured side isn't facing up, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73s4xx/eli5_how_can_an_mri_show_the_side_of_the_body_if/ | {
"a_id": [
"dnsneqj",
"dnsuwtm"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It scans all around you, not just from one direction. \n\n[MRI machine](_URL_0_). See how it is round and surrounds your entires body?",
"MRI machine image all around you producing a 3d image. You can then view this image from multiple directions (known as planes) and move in and out of that plane. The side image is known as a saggital plane. You can also view it front to back (coronal), top to bottom (transverse) or I think it also possible to view it at other angles (oblique). Usually the image you see is the just the image that shows what they are looking for best, after the whole scan has passed through the computer and been reviewed by the radiographers, radiologist and doctor who is showing you it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Modern_3T_MRI.JPG"
],
[]
] |
|
egxzul | how is digesting liquids possible? | How can a liquid (stomach acid) digest another liquid And also How does stomach acid not get diluted by other liquids | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/egxzul/eli5_how_is_digesting_liquids_possible/ | {
"a_id": [
"fcauksr",
"fcbfdkt"
],
"score": [
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2
],
"text": [
"Digesting is just breaking down things into small things, then breaking those down into tiny things so you can absorb them. You break proteins down into little amino acid blocks, break down carbs into small pieces, and break down fats into little fatty acids. Your body absorbs those, along with a lot of the water you ingest. Everything being liquid means you can mix the digestive liquids with the food more easily.",
"It kind of depends what liquid we're talking about, because liquids can be digested. Like olive oil is made up of mostly unsaturated fatty acids, which is the good kind of fat. Your body then breaks down the fatty acids in to smaller fatty acids that can be absorbed (olive oil is kind of a bad example as it's mostly simple fatty acids which can't be broken down more, but other fats are more complex and need to be broken down).\n\nBut some liquids can't, something like soda has dissolved solids in it but the carbonated water isn't 'digested' in the sense that something gets broken down. Water can't really be broken down. However stuff in water can be broken down. Like some sugars. \n\nWhat's interesting is for things to be digested they have to be a liquid. This is why we chew and then our stomach dissolves everything into a big soup which the small intestine puts out stuff to breakdown the stuff we need if it's too complex.\n\nStomach acid does get a little diluted, but your body just makes more and puts plenty to soupify any food that goes in. It also gets a little bit more complicated because your body also uses something with the acid to break stuff down, but that's not important to what you were asking."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
ezz0t4 | what is technical the difference between a thread and an async-operation? | I assume that two threads are working on a single cpu like this:
| Thread1 | Thread2 |
|---------|---------|
| a1 | b1 |
| a2 | b2 |
| a3 | b3 |
And are batched like this on the CPU
a1-b1-a2-b2-a3-b3 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ezz0t4/eli5_what_is_technical_the_difference_between_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"fgqjtm4",
"fgqmm4a",
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"score": [
2,
4,
2
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"text": [
"A thread is a *long-lived* independent running part which is *initiated by the main program*, for example receiving traffic from a network device and once it has received enough, inform the main program that the data is there.\n\nAn asynchronous operation is a *short-lived* independent running *stub part* which can be initiated by anything, for example the writing of analysed data to disk.\n\nNow it is fair to say that asynchronous operations are threads also and could be implemented as threads by the coder too and that is 100% true. It is just that their purpose is different (Long lived versus long lived) and where they are started (main program versus at the end of some process).",
"A thread is when you ask the operating system to start running another part of the program at the same time. If there are more parts running than CPU cores, the operating system will switch between them. Threads have a bunch of features (like separate stacks) that make them relatively \"expensive\". A program shouldn't have thousands of threads because it will waste memory and time.\n\n\"Async tasks\" depend on the programming language, but they're generally things you can do in the background that are too short to be their own thread. The program will create one thread (or a few) and then that thread (or those threads) will do async tasks whenever they are ready to be done. This means a new thread doesn't need to be created for every task.\n\n\"Async tasks\" can also be things that don't use a thread at all, as long as the program can remember it's waiting for something to happen. For example, waiting for the user to type something could be an async task. The program won't use a thread to wait for the user to type something (because that's a waste of a thread) but it knows that when the user does type something, the task should be marked as completed.\n\n\"Async tasks\" got a big boost in popularity some time ago because: people wanted to do more things asynchronously (in the background), people realised that having a thread for every single thing is not efficient, and because JavaScript basically forces you to use them so people got used to them.",
"Here is an analogy that might help.\n\nLets say you're busy but you need to drop your car to the garage for a service then pick it up later. \n\nYou could delegate this to someone else: they bring your car to the garage, sit around until its fixed and drop it back. The upside is you can work away as normal. The downside is you need to find someone else, and they're wasting their time waiting for your car to be fixed.\n\nOr you could try to find 10 spare minutes in the morning to drop it down, and 10 minutes in the afternoon to collect it. The downside is its 20 minutes out of your day, and more work coordinating your time. The upside is you can do it all yourself and nobody is waiting around.\n\nThe first is kind of like a thread, the second is kind of like an async task."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
atrl6u | investing: buying stocks, selling stocks. eh? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atrl6u/eli5_investing_buying_stocks_selling_stocks_eh/ | {
"a_id": [
"eh31c89"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"A stock is a piece of the company. If the company issues 1000 stocks, and you own 100 stocks, you essentially own 10% of the company.\n\nThe main reason for buying stocks is investment. If the company makes a profit, the company is worth more, so your share of the company is worth more. The company may also pay out dividends to shareholders, essentially splitting part of their earnings with the owners.\n\nThe price of a stock depends heavily on investor confidence. If you believe a company will do well, you are willing to buy their stock and this raises share prices. If the company is failing, you will sell off the stock, and the share price falls.\n\nYou can buy stocks through a stock broker, or sometimes directly from the company (if you are rich)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
ew4ev5 | why does a yawn filter out any deep bass sounds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ew4ev5/eli5_why_does_a_yawn_filter_out_any_deep_bass/ | {
"a_id": [
"ffzs1zp",
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3
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"text": [
"The inner ear is normally sealed, air can’t get in or out. However there is a tube connecting it to the throat so that pressure can be equalised. When you yawn these tubes open. The same thing happens when you swallow and is why when your ears ‘pop’ , like in a plane, swallowing or yawning can fix it. It equalises the pressure.",
"if you are describing what I think you are, the \"tingling\" is most likely the tensing of a muscle in your ear, the tensor tympani. some people can voluntarily flex this muscle which is usually referred to as \"ear rumbling\". check out /r/earrumblersassemble for more info!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
b0v5tc | how do photographers who print a lot of tourist photos make a profit if not everything they printed is sold? how does their business model work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0v5tc/eli5_how_do_photographers_who_print_a_lot_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"eiheojx",
"eihfumx"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Selling 1 photo pays for a LOT of unsold ones and people are more likely to buy something they can physically see in front of them then on a screen and then wait for it to be printed.",
"Printing them takes time, particularly drying time so that they don't smudge. You will sell more if the person doesn't have to wait 5 minutes when they are on vacation. If they sell them for $10 and they cost $.27 [ref](_URL_0_), then they break even at 1 out of 35 sales. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.thesimpledollar.com/does-home-photo-printing-really-save-money/"
]
] |
||
cm3xvu | pcr's (polymer chain reactions) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cm3xvu/eli5_pcrs_polymer_chain_reactions/ | {
"a_id": [
"evzsvud"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"So it's been a while since I've done it but here goes : Think of DNA like a zipper. Pull the 2 sides apart and then cut the 2 single strands into chunks. With spare zipper teeth (ACTG) you can build 2 new strands, zip it back together and now you have 2 full zippers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
40v454 | how do news agencies decide what is a national story? | News outlets seem to do a very good job at selecting what to cover and in effect controlling the dialog. On any given day there are thousands of possible news stories that could make it into the news. Some stories are obviously a given, like national disasters, big announcements by public figures or organizations, new statistics being released such as economic data, or major legislation. Others are far more spontaneous and seem to come from out of nowhere. Some stories seem to persist in the public conscious for a long time and be covered for weeks or months and make national history (e.g. OJ Simpson). Sometimes news stories result in the formation of national political movements like in recent years Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party Movement.
Obviously many news organizations subscribe to wire services such as the Associated Press. But how and how do news agencies decide what goes out on the wire, what gets burried in local news or not covered at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40v454/eli5_how_do_news_agencies_decide_what_is_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyxecr4"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Great question. The short version is that the news outlets have an editorial meeting every day or every shift to discuss ideas and assign reporting staff to the stories. Many stories come from press releases or public tips. Many more come from routine events, like a city council meeting, a parade, or a local business declaring its quarterly earnings.\n\nIn most places, the easier a story is to report, the more likely it is to be printed. Interstate closed for construction? Go talk to people for 20 minutes at a truck stop about how inconvenient it is. Story is done in an hour. Do another celebratory story when it re-opens. In both cases, the reporter is now free quickly to work on a more complicated longer-term story that may take a couple of weeks to put together.\n\nMainstream news is relatively unlikely to report on politically divisive topics, like a right to life march or a union rally because it might give ammo to those who shout \"The Daily Planet is pinko commie!\" Keeping in mind that The Daily Planet probably has no newspaper competition and has nothing to gain by being controversial.\n\nHow things generally get to \"the wire\": if something important is expected to happen, wire service staff reporters will already be there. If it is something more unexpected, like a mayor saying something nasty about Hillary, normally it will be reported by a local newspaper first, then sent to a regional or state wire editor, who may send it further to the national wire.\n\nSome national news outlets (Cable news in particular) have producers scour local news outlets to see if there were stories that never made it to the wire services that may still be interesting to their audiences. This is why a lot of times you'll see stories on talk shows like Greta Van Susteren or Rachael Maddow that don't get mainstream coverage.\n\nTL;DR: You have editors at every level who decide if a story is important enough to report, or to send on to a higher level editor for broader distribution."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1vzatt | if websites like youtube can shorten their url for "sharing" purposes, why can't the url just naturally be shorter? | This also goes for any other websites with long URL's seeing as how there are places where you can shorten the link significantly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vzatt/eli5_if_websites_like_youtube_can_shorten_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"cex7nja",
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"text": [
"Taking Youtube as an example, if you actually pay attention to what is in the URI, you might see that this is where different options are passed about what you want to see. For example, if you watch a video and decide to send a link to someone which starts at a certain timestamp, you will get slightly different text with something like \" & t=105s\" added into the last section. The number of combinations of options is huge and creating a unique string for each and every one which will still work in a somewhat distant future means storing all of the links anybody has ever made. It also means looking up that extra information every time somebody wants to see anything at all, which isn't free (although not very expensive). Also, it would require extra steps for third-parties who are comfortable editing the URI string themselves to get that converted into an encoded, shortened URI every time they need to make a link which may, possibly be clicked.\n\nThey could do it, sure, but except for people sharing links in very special formats such as Twitter, there isn't really much reason to and there are some annoying costs associated with it.",
"To be fair with Youtube - they're not really shortening/altering it that much.\n\nSay you want to share:\n > _URL_7_\n\nWhen you press the share button, which shortens the link for posting wherever, you only end up with:\n\n > http://_URL_0_/dQw4w9WgXcQ\n\nAll that happens is they switch the domain to \"**_URL_0_**\" (saving 3 characters) and loose the \"**watch?v**\" bit (saving 7 characters).\n\nBut, if you go to the _URL_0_ link you just get redirected to the _URL_3_ video. It's just a link.\n\nI think the main reason this isn't more common with other sites is:\n- Not everything has an easy link structure (Reddit's for example) that can be condensed down to shorter links and still properly communicate where you're going/retain your brand.\n- In YouTube's example, it required them registering another domain in Belgium.\n- If they really need a short link they can use services like [_URL_5_](_URL_2_), [_URL_4_](http://_URL_4_/) or [bitly](_URL_6_). If you look on Bitly's homepage they do claim a number of well known brands as clients.",
"One reason is that long (and human readable) URL's are a part of search engine optimization (SEO), because URL's containing keywords from the content of the page tend to be ranked better than just random looking ones. Youtube is not a very good example for this though, because even the regular URL's are not human readable (but being owned by Google is probably much more significant in the search engine ranking anyway ;)\n\nAnother reason is usability. It's much easier to remember (and tell someone about) the URL \"_URL_0_\" rather than \"compa.ny/93HkdI1\" and if you happen to see such an URL you can more or less tell where the first one will lead you to when you click it, but not with the shortened one. You probably wouldn't open \"_URL_1_\" at work - but who knows if \"compa.ny/93HkdI1\" is actually safe for work or not? \n\nAnd last but not least, when using a URL shortening service out of your control: What happens if for example _URL_2_ goes bankrupt? all the links using that service are down and there is no way to tell or recover the original content behind that link.\n\nIn my opinion, shortened URL's are fine for Twitter and other services where available space is an issue, but usability and transparency for the user suffers pretty much.\n\nEDIT: some typos."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"youtu.be",
"http://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"http://goo.gl/",
"Youtube.com",
"ow.ly",
"goo.gl",
"https://bitly.com/",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"http://ow.ly/"
],
[
"company.com/products/whatever",
"company.com/products/huge-fuckass-dildo-with-demo-video",
"bit.ly"
]
] |
|
602s6d | how come when having a sickness that requires medicine, i have to do it in a span of a week or a few days? | Why can't I ingest it as much as I can? Wouldn't the sickness be cured faster when doing so, following common sense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/602s6d/eli5_how_come_when_having_a_sickness_that/ | {
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"text": [
"Accomodating the poor English, are you asking why you can't take the whole course of medication at once?\n\nLet's use the antibiotic 'Gentamycin' for example. The drug is not easily filtered out by the kidneys, and an overdose would cause the kidneys to not work. That results in kidney failure and you'd potentially die.\n\nDoses are often set to what is safe. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
196dsv | relative to the size of time and space today, how big was the dot of condensed matter before the big bang. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/196dsv/relative_to_the_size_of_time_and_space_today_how/ | {
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"text": [
"First off, \"before\" the big bang is an absurd qualifier. Time, space and possibly causality too, originated at the big bang. Asking what happened \"before\" that is like asking what's north of the north pole - in other words, a statement so absurd that it's [not even wrong](_URL_0_).\n\nBut, to answer your question, currently prevailing theories place all matter-energy in a singularity of infinite density. Its volume would be infinitesimal - which is to say, smaller than anything you care to think of.\n\n",
"There was no \"dot\" of condensed matter. This is a common misconception. At the moment of the Big Bang, space was extremely dense, but it was still infinite in size."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong"
],
[]
] |
||
76ij08 | if our body focused on preventing telomere reduction, what changes might our bodies experience? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76ij08/eli5_if_our_body_focused_on_preventing_telomere/ | {
"a_id": [
"doe9eqh",
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"score": [
5,
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],
"text": [
"To prevent telomere reduction, your cells have to stop dividing. If you meant regenerating telomeres, I don't have the answer for that",
"Cancer. Cells continuing to divide with no limit is called cancer.\n\nIf you mean instead \"what would happen to us if our bodies focused on sustaining cells /efficiency as long as possible before natural cell death what would happen?\" Is a much more interesting question."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
ajce0s | what is the difference in propaganda and fake news | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ajce0s/eli5_what_is_the_difference_in_propaganda_and/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Well, one thing to be cautious of, is that 'fake news' is thrown around with relative abandon today, even against news that is not, in fact, fake *or* propaganda, merely which contrasts against the viewer's given preference. \n\nSo in some ways, it is simply a slur against the reporting organization. \n\nIn cases where 'fake news' is actually fake news, I would say in some cases it can be synonymous with propaganda. A more precise definition may (but won't necessarily) distinguish propaganda as news with bias, selective reporting, or other techniques to slant the opinions of people reading it, versus fake news making up false information altogether. In other words, distorting the facts, versus making your own. ",
"There isn't a hard line between the two notions.\n\nHowever, propaganda is normally construed to be centrally directed to sell a narrative. Pravda was propaganda because it was the official mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party - all of its 'news' stories were written primarily with an eye towards presenting the party in the best possible light.\n\nOn the other hand, 'fake news' is more de-centralized, where the bias of individuals creates a tendency towards selecting and perceiving stories in a certain way that paints a false picture.",
"Propaganda is not necessarily false.\n\nIt's normally split into \"white\", \"gray\", and \"black\" propaganda.\n\nWhite propaganda is entirely truthful, although usually selectively truthful.\n\nBlack propaganda is simply false and deceitful.\n\nGray propaganda mixes truthful and deceitful elements.\n\n\"Fake News\" is usually gray propaganda (e.g. Hillary Clinton did cough and hid her pneumonia from the public but she wasn't about to die) or black propaganda (Obama was not born in Kenya).\n\n & #x200B;"
]
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[],
[],
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||
3rhdfs | if the only way you can get an std, sti, and hiv is if you sleep with someone who's infected then how is it stds, sti's and hiv exist to begin with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rhdfs/eli5_if_the_only_way_you_can_get_an_std_sti_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwo15vk",
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2,
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"text": [
"There are other ways to get most STIs. HIV, for example, can be transmitted through an infected person's blood, often by sharing or reusing needles for drug injections.",
"STIs are commonly transmitted sexually but can be trasmitted through other bodily fluids such as blood, saliva even milk. The origins of the infectious cause itself depends on which infection we're talking about. Generally, the infections are capable of spreading from animals to humans through contact (such as infected blood). HIV for example originally infected chimpanzees (the disease is known as simian immunodeficiency virus - SIV) which mutated into HIV once it found its way into people. Other diseases have similar origins. ",
"The question you really want an answer to isn't really explained in the post. \n\nFirst, you're making a pretty big assumption that the first humans were \"clean\" as it were. Life started simple and got more complex from there, so bacteria, viruses, etc were around long before humans were. Microscopic organisms were around before complicated creatures like animals, some of these microscopic organisms found their way inside of animals because they were eaten or an animal cut itself on a rock, or something similar. Some of these bacteria couldn't survive inside of animals, others could. \n\nSo once bacteria managed to live inside something else, it just became a matter of getting from one animal to the other. Bacteria that could live in bodily fluids had a huge benefit because that gave them an excellent way of passing on between other animals. Those bacteria that couldn't were less likely to survive and pass on.\n\nSo that's how you end up with STIs and such. Over millions of years, bacteria that were able to be transmitted sexually found great success because it's more or less inevitable that an animal will have sex at some point in their lifetime if it survives, so these bacteria were most likely to survive and spread themselves. A bacteria that might have been spread through other means slowly but surely evolved to become better and better and staying in a living creature and spreading through sex. Not because there's anything special about it, but because these infections live in the things most like to be transferred between sexual partners. A bacteria that lived only in your armpit hair is going to have a hard time transmitting itself to other hosts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
239xkh | why do bottles of antibiotics and vitamins smell bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/239xkh/eli5_why_do_bottles_of_antibiotics_and_vitamins/ | {
"a_id": [
"cguxoud",
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"text": [
"Not all antibiotics have that rotten egg smell, but those that do typically contain a Sulfur compound in the form of hydrogen sulfide that gives it that rancid smell.",
"Not all vitamins smell bad. It's mostly just the B vitamins, which have a sort of eggy/sulphurous smell. They are however quite harmless. (Except B3, don't take too much of that...) \n ",
"sniff a bottle of valerian root. WHEW.",
"Vitamin B smell you're probably thinking of"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
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] |
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