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cb0b6l
|
why do many people perceive their own mistakes as worse than other people’s, when they’re the same actions?
|
Some (but not all) people see their own mistakes as worse than other people’s, when they’re the same actions.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cb0b6l/eli5_why_do_many_people_perceive_their_own/
|
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"I personally think everyone just wants the best for themselves. One screw up and it knocks them off track, making it seem a lot worse than it really is.",
"Really depends on how self-conscious you are.\n\nIf you're easily anxious of how people may see your actions you'll take that into account in social situations.\n\nYou'll criticize your own actions harsher and be more forgiving with others their actions because \"That could happen to me\""
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
43jdwv
|
why are some over the counter medications in bottles while others are in plastic sheets in a box?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43jdwv/eli5_why_are_some_over_the_counter_medications_in/
|
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"They're called [blister packs.](_URL_0_) There are a few benefits to them. Pills on one are less exposed to the environment, so they keep better- for some drugs, it makes a big difference. It's easy to label them, even if someone tears of a section with just one pill, to carry around. And, if someone is suicidal and trying to overdose, it takes a minute of tedious work- long enough to cool down, hopefully- to get out a dangerous amount of pills: you can't just pour out a handful of them in an instant.",
"Other good answers here already but it was not mentioned yet that some meds have different dosages throughout a week/month (like hormonal birth control) so the blister pack is used to keep them in order.",
"When I was in France allergy medicine was in a blister pack, but that seemed normal. My SO's mom used to be a chemist in France and said that all medicine in pill form comes like that. "
]
}
|
[] |
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[
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blister_pack"
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||
fawlq2
|
how meth and other similar drugs affect you enough to do such abnormal things?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fawlq2/eli5_how_meth_and_other_similar_drugs_affect_you/
|
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"To put it very simply, drugs like meth or alcohol, especially in large amounts inhibit (and can damage) the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This is the part of the brain that handles things like judgement, planning, attention, impulse control, abstract thinking (outcomes etc.) etc. \n\nThis region is also not fully formed until you are 25/26 so also why teenagers do such abnormal and dumb things 😂, combine that with, if you started abusing drugs before that you are fucking up that part of your brain as it develops probably causing potentially permanent damage.",
"A lot of it is less about the drug and more about the lifestyle addiction forces you into. When you can't hold down a job but always need to find the money for your next fix, you do crazy things...especially if you are under the influence of a drug that impairs your judgment and gives you lots of energy.\n\nAlso, a lot of the drive to act \"normal\" comes from the need to fit into society. Drug use and the bad behaviors associated with it often put you on the outside society, giving less incentive to avoid other anti-social behaviors. If you can't get a job and none of your non-addict friends or family are willing to put up with you anymore, getting a facial tattoo isn't going to make things that much worse."
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[] |
[] |
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[],
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3klolj
|
what is the black stuff athletes put on their cheekbones? what is it's purpose?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3klolj/eli5_what_is_the_black_stuff_athletes_put_on/
|
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"Since the guys comment was removed that mostly answered it, the answer is it is called eye black and it's meant to prevent sun glare. You can buy it in a oil-based stick or in an adhesive sticker form.",
"In Pee-Wee football our coaches would burn one end of a wine cork until it was black with ash, blow out the flame and smudge it on our faces. I don't think it did a darn thing but it did make us look like bad-ass Pee-Wee football players."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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||
4a0pg2
|
why did america violently revolt, while the other british colonies didn't?
|
What factors were present in America but not in the British Caribbean or Canada?
Edit: TLDR: British navy stronger, too little people, too dependent on Britain, French people in Canada.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a0pg2/eli5_why_did_america_violently_revolt_while_the/
|
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"I think it's important to look at this the other way around. What factors were present in Canada and British Caribbean that weren't present in America? The fact that there had been a successful revolt against British rule.\n\nThe American revolution made the British far more open to amicable independence movements from other colonies and possessions -- *especially* in the Americas. ",
"The 13 Colonies were - bigger, stronger, more independent... and frankly had a lot of great leaders/people at that time.\n\nEven then, the Colonies really really really did not want to fight Britain... but Parliament refused to give them anything at all so the Colonies (probably rightly) felt that had no choice in the matter.\n\nWhen your response to people saying \"we'd like to have a voice in your democratic system\" is to hire a bunch of German mercenaries and deploy troops/enact martial law.... you're in for a rebellion.",
"The States had enough population to make a difference and make a viable attempt at war with GB.\n\nThe reason for the revolt itself was because the States were getting taxed and had no representation in the government of GB. So basically were being treated like children.\n\nIt's kind of like this: GB was the parent, the US a teenager. The US was like a teenager that had their own garage apartment above their parent's garage. They wanted to set their own curfews and be able to have their own job. They didn't mind contributing to the household by paying rent, but they wanted to be able to negotiate how much they contributed and also wanted a say in what their money was being used for. The parent refused to open those negotiations and then they got into a fight. \n\nSo GB started sending people to evict the teen from their apartment. This ended up being much more costly than the parent anticipated, and add in the help that the teen received from the nosey neighbors (France), and the parent had to give up the swanky garage apartment all together, rather than just having given the teen the right to have input on laws and taxation.\n\nIn the case of the British controlled Islands, they never had enough land or population to be a threat to leave, more like a three year old throwing a tantrum rather than a teenager putting up a real fight.",
"In the late 1700s, the only overseas possessions Britain had who had anywhere near the size, wealth, and stability to contemplate independence were the 13 colonies and British Canada- which is to say Quebec. The Caribbean colonies just couldn't survive without access to British markets to sell their sugar, and, anyway, they were crawling with British military, there to defend the islands from the French and Spanish. And the British government had just a few years ago bought off Canada by extending its territory southwest to include the Ohio valley. In fact, re-assigning that territory to Canada at the expense of Pennsylvania and Virginia and New York was one of the 13 Colonies' major grievances against Parliament leading to the war.",
"It's important to understand the history, as it is understood in the US, was written by the victors to justify their rebellion. \n\nVery few \"Americans\" cared about taxation without representation because very few actually paid real taxes - mainly the landowners who led the rebellion. All of this was really a justification after the event. Around a third of Americans supported the rebels, a third were opposed, and a third couldn't care less. \n\nThe landowners resented paying taxes for the UK troops based in the US (who had just saved them from French rule). But more to the point, they resented the fact that the British also viewed the native Americans as their \"subjects\", with rights. Plus, the British were ambivalent about slavery, which most of the landowners who led the rebellion relied on, and were afraid the British would outlaw it, as they went on to. The landowners wanted to expand West, and the British blocked them, to protect native American rights. \n\nSure, there were grave errors and miscalculations on the British side, who should have appeased the landowners, but most native Americans fought on the UK side (let alone the freed slaves), and they were the real losers. The reason why other colonies did not rebel was principally because yes, the British learned to give them more independence, but also because they didn't really have anything to rebel against in the first place. ",
"Quebec was largely French Catholic and had a lot of French speakers. The British cut them a pretty good deal in the Quebec Act of 1774, so they didn't have a lot of reason to side with rebellious Protestant Anglos who were anti-Catholic.\n\nWashington really thought Nova Scotia would join the revolution. The British had expelled the Acadians from there a couple decades earlier (a lot of them moved to Louisiana and became Cajuns) and moved New Englanders in, so the people in that area were also largely Protestant English speakers. There had also been small uprisings against British rule in the 1770s in Nova Scotia. However, they ultimately didn't join for a few reasons. For one, survival in the harsher, less developed land took priority over political disputes for a lot of the settlers. For another, the natives living in the area had grown tired of the constant European warfare between the French and British and were happy that the territory was under the control of a single European power was over. They made it clear to the Nova Scotians that they would join the British to try and keep the peace should another war break out. Finally, the British had a large garrison in Halifax that would very likely have crushed any ground forces the Nova Scotians could have raised and the British navy could have prevented American reinforcements from arriving by sea.\n\nThe Caribbean colonies were too far away to really join in. The Americans wouldn’t have been able to get supplies or reinforcements to the islands and the islands were too small to draft a military of their own that could hold out against the British. Furthermore, Britain had an incredibly powerful navy that could have dominated the islands easily. A lot of Caribbean elite also lived in Britain so there wasn’t as much support on that level.",
"America wasn't the only colony which threw off British rule violently. India, for example, though much later, became ungovernable. South Africa didn't leave quietly, either.",
"The 13 colonies were almost completely populated with white people (as far as citizens go). This means they had access to all the advantages of fair diplomatic treatment by other white nations.\n\nFor example, France didn't support any of the other British colonies all over the world.\n\nCombine that with the 13 colonies size, literacy, and organization and it was easy to predict the US's rise as a power of its own.",
"Despite popular belief america at that time was not worth the resources needed to fight and keep. Looking back from what america is now it was a bad choice.",
"They weren't the only country to revolt, the difference is in America it wasn't indigenous cultures revolting it were fellow whites who were on equal footing or standing. In every colony the indigenous cultures were typically taken advantage of or slaughtered. Most history you hear of today is dominated by western influences and told in such a way that it embellishes Western world views. ",
"Actually, many countries did rebel with varying degrees of success, just crtl+f \"Brit\" through this list and you see rebellions in the Caribbean, in Canada, in Afghanistan, Australia, India.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nCanada : _URL_0_\n\nCaribbean: _URL_3_\n\nA better question would be why was the American revolution successful whereas others failed?\n \nThere are many factors. \nThe colonists were mostly of British decent so they knew their tactics. They had the aid of the French navy and the French were a dominant power in North America, see map:\n_URL_2_\n\nThey used guerilla tactics in certain situations where they were at a severe disadvantage. In most cases they used traditional European military tactics and they had some of the best military leaders of Europe to train the newly recruited soldiers (Washington, Kosciusko, Lafayette, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben). Many of the leaders and soldiers were convinced of the nobility of the colonists' cause. They supplemented the lack of a navy with privateers.\n\nThe flip side of this is why were other revolutions unsuccessful? To their credit, the British were very effective at the tactic of divide and conquer - controlling colonies by promising a portion of the population (usually the leadership) some benefits for suppressing rebellion. This was not so effective in America because many of the leaders were rebelling on the principle that they would not be taxed without being given fair representation in the British parliament, something the British were not willing to grant.\n\nWhy were the American colonists revolting on principle? Well, they were heavily influenced by the political thinkers of the time (Locke, Rousseau, Paine, to name a few) who were establishing philosophies of governance where the citizens have a say in government; which was already in place to some extent in the British parliamentary system.\n\nAlso, in some sense, the colonists were lucky in that they were able to delay and harass the British during the early years of the war (via guerilla tactics, privateering, etc.) sufficient to disrupt their supply lines until they could organize and train the continental army and until the French, Spanish and Dutch entered the war. At that point the British had to be concerned that many other colonies were up for grabs. Support for the war declined in Britain and the British decided to cut their losses.",
"Why does America violently do everything. There is a long history of violence in that nation. ",
"My understanding is that after the American revolt, the British Empire was concerned with other colonies repeating this. As such the Empire became more willing to talk and negotiate solutions rather then risk another revolt.",
"1. The US colonies were always relatively autonomous from Britain. Many of the British immigrants to colonial US came to escape religious persecution and to be independent.\n\n2. Once Britain defeated the French in the 7 Years War (French and Indian War), the US colonists didn't need Britain for protection anymore. \n\nCanada was different from the USA, because there weren't many British colonists. Most Europeans were originally people of French descent (because Canada was originally a French colony, conquered by the British in the 1750s). The British made friends with the French-Canadian elite- the seigneurs (landowners) and clergy. The elite had influence over the regular population, and kept them mostly loyal to Britain.\n\nMost Anglo Canadians came to Canada after the US Revolution. Many were \"Loyalists\" from the US who sided with Britain during the Revolutionary War. So the culture of English Canada was very pro-British for a long time.\n\nIn the British Caribbean there was a small white population with black slave majorities working on plantations. The white minorities in the Caribbean needed the British army to protect thm from their slaves. So they weren't going to revolt. If you look at countries like Cuba and Haiti, for example, as soon as the people there rebelled against their colonial mother countries, they lost control of their slaves."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellions_of_1837",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_%281763%29#/media/File:SevenYearsWar.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Carib_War"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
emsi8o
|
what's the difference between anxiety & panic?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emsi8o/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_anxiety_panic/
|
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"Anxiety attacks happen gradually like bringing water to a slow boil. Panic attacks happen immediately with no slow boil and physical symptoms are interchangeable.",
"I'm anxious when I see a piano dangling from a rope above a sidewalk. \n\nI panic when the rope snaps and I'm standing under it.",
"Both of these feelings deal with fear, but they happen differently. \n\n\nAnxiety is like running on a flat ground. When it happens, its slow and won't do away or consistent. It raises your heart rate, you breath faster, you sweat and can it can make you tired. \n\n\nPanic is like all of a suddon you are running down a steep hill, all the things above happen but its very fast and uncontrollable.\n\nEdit: a word."
]
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[],
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1ded2r
|
the intense pain in my calves before i fall asleep.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ded2r/eli5_the_intense_pain_in_my_calves_before_i_fall/
|
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"text": [
"Paraphrasing the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) about it:\n\nIt's unknown what causes nocturnal leg cramps, but it's not uncommon or dangerous. Potentially it's caused by dehydration and mineral deficiency.",
"Magnesium deficiency. Easily sorted.",
"Its quite possibly cramp. I find drinking plenty of water and a hot bath helps. Also once it begins you might try massaging the area to try and soothe the pain.",
"Some people find that a little bit of tonic water before bed helps (really!). Apparently the quinine in it has anti-cramping goodness. Also helps with malaria, if that's a problem :-)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramp#Nocturnal_leg_cramps"
],
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||
2glwew
|
that feeling i get when i forgot something but don't know what. what is it and why is it right so often?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2glwew/eli5_that_feeling_i_get_when_i_forgot_something/
|
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"You get the feeling that you forgot something because your brain is constantly working to remember important details about what you're currently doing and planning to do. So when you leave a location, your mind is going over a checklist of what it expects you should have with you based on expected activity.\n\nHowever, It's not a computer. There are often times when you get this feeling and there not actually anything missing. This is probably because the brain is expecting something based on previous patterns that doesn't apply to the current situation. Like thinking you need your wallet/purse when you leave the house even if you're just going for a walk.\n\nAnd whether or not it's \"right so often\" changes from person to person, and for most people it's probably not right any more often than it's wrong. it's just that you notice it more when it's right because you have to go back for whatever you forgot, but if it's wrong you just ignore it and forget about it.",
"Much of your life is likely routine at this point. When you wake up, what you do when you wake up, what you do before/after work, what goes in what pockets.\n\nYour brain gets very used to these patterns, as does your muscle memory. So the slightest difference raises a response by your brain that something is off. Similar to as if a small bug touches a hair on your body, you get a sensation but are not sure what at first.\n\nOnce you realize there is something, you will go through your mental checklist for your routine to discover the discrepancy. Sometimes it works, other times you omit it.\n\nI have noticed that things that are part of your routine to figure out. For example, you sit in your car and something feels weird about the way you're sitting. Soon enough you check your pockets and feel that you forgot your phone/wallet.\n\nParts that are not part of your routine, like mailing a letter that normally you do not do on your way to work, are harder to remember once you forget. Probably because your brain has not quite committed it to some kind of \"deep memory\".\n\nIf I recall, the brain has a few different types of memory. There is a very temporary, \"working set\" of memory that you have for the task at hand. This is very similar to a computer's RAM. Then you have stuff like memories (including childhood) that are just about permanent, like a computer hard drive. Seems that your routine goes in the latter while \"remembering to do X today\" goes in the former."
]
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[],
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u47u5
|
how do razors only remove hair, not skin?
|
I understand that they're at an angle which prevents them from cutting skin off normally. But why don't layers of skin come off too? It's certainly sharp enough to remove skin, my girlfriend has a scar down her thigh where she pressed too hard and peeled a layer of skin off. Why doesn't that happen more often?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u47u5/how_do_razors_only_remove_hair_not_skin/
|
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"I did it two weeks ago. It happens a lot more often than you think.",
"People only move the blade parallel to the skin thereby only cutting things that are perpendicular to the skin. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
4y8jok
|
when did we change from barter to trading precious metals?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y8jok/eli5_when_did_we_change_from_barter_to_trading/
|
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"I'd like to point out that money doesn't always have to be precious metals. But anyway, the use of some form of currency seems to have emerged very early on in major civilizations. As to the why, frankly barter is more complicated because there's no way to set the value of a good compared to another good. It's also more difficult to transport, say, cattle compared to a sack of golden coins. Those cattle also need feeding and some care, which makes moving them long distances difficult. Unless you live and trade in a small area it becomes simpler to have a set currency that everyone agrees upon rather than dragging around objects or animals of variable worth.",
"The oldest stamped coins known are from Lydia and date back to around 700 BC. But the trading of small bars and strips of precious metals as a currency predates that usage by around 2,000 years in various empires that predate Lydia. \n\nEdit: You also have non metal standardized currencies used dating back up to 4,000 BC in some regions. In Egypt wheat and barley were a currency of exchange, in china and japan rice was a currency, and in parts of Europe cheese was a currency. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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3t8w7k
|
what is data encryption, and why is everyone making a big deal out of it? how is it not the same as having a password or passcode for documents/data?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t8w7k/eli5_what_is_data_encryption_and_why_is_everyone/
|
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"Data encryption is encoding the data so it is not readable without the key - translating it to gibberish.\n\nHaving a password for a document might just lock the data within that program but someone who can view it a different way can still see it. Of course a better approach is when that password is used as the key to actually encrypt the data too."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2nho6q
|
why can't the us adopt a shorter work week like various other countries like the netherlands?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nho6q/eli5_why_cant_the_us_adopt_a_shorter_work_week/
|
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"Nothing says it can't. However, presently there is not a strong impetus to do so. I expect this is because people are, as of yet, not convinced of its possible benefits against its possible detriments, such as a perceived loss of productivity in having X less hours of work in the week. ",
"The US is hesitant to enforce things on private enterprise. If a four day work week was actually more efficient than a five day work week, companies are certainly welcome to implement it if they want.",
"Integral to the cultural DNA of Americans is the notion that with lots of hard work and determination, you can achieve anything. As a result, Americans tend towards a \"live to work\" mindset whilst Europeans lean more in the direction of \"work to live\"."
]
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[] |
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[],
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3eeu1t
|
why is there a delay between newcasters using a satellite feed when we have video calling such as skype or facetime that is much more instant?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eeu1t/eli5why_is_there_a_delay_between_newcasters_using/
|
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"text": [
"Skype, and all internet based services are effectively hardwired for the majority of the connection. There are cables across the ocean, there are hardlines between your home and the ISPs, etc. Cellphone towers are hardwired to the landline phone companies etc. The news casters are relaying the information directly to the satellites from location and then routed through a relay system across the globe. That means lots of errors are going to show up in the transmission. These errors are corrected for with additional 'redundancies' which reduce transmission problems such as repeated information and headers and other checks, but these checks also increase the amount of time required to send data. ",
"Because there's a lot of [nanosecond](_URL_0_) between here and the satellites.",
"Communications satellites are usually placed in [geostationary orbit](_URL_0_), which is about 35,000 kilometers up. This means signals relayed through those satellites have to travel over 70,000 kilometers (up and then down again). For signals traveling at the speed of light, this takes about a quarter of a second, so for a two-way conversation, even if the person at the far end starts responding the instant they hear the person at the near end finish, there will be a half second delay before you see that at the near end.\n\nThis is in addition to any other delays in the system, such as delays introduced by encoding and decoding the signal, delays in the cameras at each end, etc. So the actual delay can be even longer.\n\nAlso, people talking over connections with these sorts of delays will often tend to pause for a second before speaking in order to make sure the other person was entirely done talking; because of the delay, you won't immediately realize if you start talking over the other person, so you want to be careful not to. This can introduce even more awkward pauses.",
"Broadcast Engineer here - The reason for the use of satellite is the ability to broadcast from a remote location which may not be suited to forms like Skype or FaceTime. Satellite transmissions are usually made from SatTrucks, meaning anywhere the truck can go then you can get a satellite uplink, and therefore transmission; from that location. \n\nIn places where Skype/FaceTime connections are a possibility, satellites still may be used because of the difference in data rates (bitrates). Broadcasters have an extraordinary ability to compress video and audio to tiny amounts of data while still maintaining the desired viewing quality, and satellite uplinking's bitrates can be more suited to the bandwidth which the broadcaster has available to send the transport video/audio stream. From experience, satellites are better suited to places where there is not a hardwired connection available.\n\nAlso the standard of footage from a broadcast camera is going to be an awful lot higher than the footage obtainable from devices supporting softwares such as Skype/FaceTime.",
"Didn't cnn do some interview from a parkinglot with alot of delay and shit.. Only one problem, both people in the interview were standing in the same parkinglot :). \nI think dailyshow discovered this.",
"Skype and FaceTime are a \"best effort\" service riding on the whims of the internet bandwidth available between hundreds of locations.\n \nSatellite with a good signal has a delay simply from traveling 27,000 miles twice. Where every minute of air time on a network is worth thousands/millions - a good network engineer is going to choose predictable and to some extent controllable.\n\nWhen your job is on the line - you choose predictable.",
"I think it's so in cases where something important is happening if somone runs up and says **** HER RIGHT IN THE ***** they can stop the feed. It happend in the uk when reporters are doing stuff in places like iran so if somthing graphic comes up they can cut the feed"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2ucb7y
|
if my internet connection speed test shows 60 mbit/s, why do imgur gifs take so long to load all the time?
|
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ucb7y/eli5_if_my_internet_connection_speed_test_shows/
|
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"It typically is the speed of the server you're downloading from that limits the speed. ",
"just because your local connection can download at 60mbps does't mean imgur will serve content to your local connection at 60mbps. ",
"Gif format doesn't allow for *compression*, which means that each individual video frame is completely replaced, a very slow process compared to Mpeg or other video formats.\n\nTo understand compression, imagine a stationary camera filming a man walking down the street. Although the man is in motion, to the camera the buildings, street and parked cars are not, so during playback those unmoving objects don't need to be \"repainted\"--only any part of the frame that has changed, in this example the walking guy. This means less information that your computer has to download from the server. With a gif, every single pixel in every single frame is downloaded."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4105850830"
] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
miqlw
|
why is pork white, ham pink, and sausage brown.
|
Seriously why is pork white, ham pink, and sausage brown it's all one animal. Im not sure if its different parts of an animal or cook time, can you cook a ham and make it white? Seriously what's so magical about the pig.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/miqlw/eli5_why_is_pork_white_ham_pink_and_sausage_brown/
|
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"Fried, smoked and boiled.\n\nThough the sausage color can also be attributed to the skin. Inside it's more white. Should be if it's from a pig.\n\nPut the ham in pan ans it will be more white.",
"Haha, I swear I was going to post his exact question to r/trees last night. ",
" > Homer: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Lisa, honey, are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?\n\n > Lisa: No.\n\n > Homer: Ham?\n\n > Lisa: No.\n\n > Homer: Pork chops?\n\n > Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!\n\n > Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.",
"Fried, smoked and boiled.\n\nThough the sausage color can also be attributed to the skin. Inside it's more white. Should be if it's from a pig.\n\nPut the ham in pan ans it will be more white.",
"Haha, I swear I was going to post his exact question to r/trees last night. ",
" > Homer: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Lisa, honey, are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?\n\n > Lisa: No.\n\n > Homer: Ham?\n\n > Lisa: No.\n\n > Homer: Pork chops?\n\n > Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!\n\n > Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2head5
|
wall street & stock
|
I have no idea what its about, I really dont know what they are doing and never understood it. specifically in movies and much more in real life.
People yelling,people getting crazy looking at numbers on screens, calling people, mashing buttons and stuff. I just don't understand.
I know what stock is, sell high buy low and all that basic stuff. Actually I dont know what it really is besides an investment in a company and somehow you get money back from a company if they get money from consumers or what not.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2head5/eli5wall_street_stock/
|
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"OK. You've got the basics of what a stock is, however there's one more element. Public stocks can be bought, sold and traded among people. Like Pokemon cards the value can change depending on how much people want the stock vs how many people are selling. \n\nBut like Pokemon cards buying and selling between friends on the street corner is not a very large market. much better to have some kind of centralized location where people can go to buy and sell things. That is something called a Stock Exchange. \n\nIt's the stock exchange that you see on TV and it's exactly what it looks like. A bunch of people yelling at one another trying to buy and sell stocks to one another. All of those people are acting on instructions from \"head office\". Head office being a large investment bank with offices near the exchange. \n\nThese days the yelling on the floor and complicated hand signals don't happen. These days it's all handled by computers. But remember these stock exchanges operated on the yelling/hand single system for decades before they got computers. These exchanges operate much like Ebay, connecting buyers to sellers electronically. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1xuvbg
|
how is the holocaust seen as the worst genocide in human history, even though stalin killed almost 5 million more of his own people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xuvbg/eli5how_is_the_holocaust_seen_as_the_worst/
|
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"Stalin's actual numbers are unknown. They range from about 2.5 million to like everyone in Europe twice. His numbers were inflated during the Cold War to make the USSR seem worse than it was.",
"This isn't my area of expertise so if someone else can weigh-in that would be great.\n\nBut I would state that it's to do with the manner in which history is remembered vs. the actual events of history. As you think about the event consider the following: Who was involved? Who did it affect? Whose perspective are we hearing the account from? Whose voice is being heard?\n\nThose affected by the Holocaust (in my opinion) have the opportunity to reach a wider audience than those affected by Stalin. Thus we hear more about the former, and their account of things or their opinion on the matter may be on a more personal level than the latter.\n\nLet us not only think of Stalin but also of Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. History is as much about perspective as it is about facts.",
"The horror which we feel about the Holocaust results from several factors, not just the number of people who were killed. There are lots of other cases of genocide which are numerically similar to the Holocaust but not regarded with similar horror. Nazi Germany was insanely cruel to the people it murdered. The Nazis were not content merely to murder people, they subjected their victims to prolonged and monstrous degradation and abuse of various sorts that in almost any other culture would have been regarded as immoral and unjustifiable. Jews were not just gassed to death in Auschwitz, they were in many cases slowly starved to death. They were treated with the greatest contempt at all times and constantly abused. And this was done to whole populations, men women and children, who had not committed any crime and indeed were not accused of any crime, other than the supposed crime of being Jewish. Stalin, paranoid lunatic that he was, at least made an effort to convict people of some kind of crime before sending them to the gulag. His victims had to be found guilty (even if by means of completely trumped-up evidence) of counter-revolutionary activity of some sort. The idea that a whole ethnic group could simply be reclassified as sub-human and then treated with a degree of cruelty that would be illegal if done to a farm animal, is shockingly vicious and insane, even for a tyrannical regime. We usually expect that there is *some* limit to the cruelty of governments. The Third Reich demonstrated that there is actually no such limit.",
"There are various reasons for this, here are some of them.\n\nThe main reason, most simply, is that Stalin won the war and Hitler didn't. Hitler was overthrown and his entire system of government replaced by invaders, while Stalin died of natural causes, still in power, and his successor was one of his subordinates from the same system of government. The Nazi crimes were laid bare for the whole world to see, and no-one in power had any reason to keep it secret. They became famous and notorious, and there were trials to establish the guilt of those responsible beyond doubt, as well as the precise facts and figures. By contrast the Soviet crimes were kept mostly secret for many decades after Stalin, and anyone who spoke up about them had to bear in mind they were making an enemy of one of the world's most powerful countries. Facts and figures are much harder to come by, they remain uncertain and the notoriety did not build up as much.\n\nIn addition, the worst Nazi camps were more obviously designed as death camps. They went to the trouble of doing actual scientific research on how to kill and dispose of people as efficiently as possible, which hadn't been done before. This adds a certain chilling quality which the Soviet camps don't have. The Soviet camps were horrifying and deadly but in theory most people had a set sentence and could do their time and be released. A lot of other victims died from deliberate famines, which is awful but has plenty of historical precedent.\n\nAnother thing is that \"genocide\" is the killing of a race. The Nazis made being a Jew criminal just for being born that way; this idea of one race deliberately murdering another does not appear so much with Stalin. Killing for him was a means of consolidating power rather than something he wanted done out of hatred. Most of his victims were just as innocent but were from majority ethnic groups like Russian or Ukrainian, and were given criminal charges like spying or sabotage to justify their treatment. He did target certain nationalities and ethnicities of which a great many died but he would give them these same sort of criminal charges, and they were usually resettled in some remote area rather than systematically slaughtered.\n\nFinally, this should not be viewed as some sort of competition. Both were criminals on such a scale that it is hard to imagine and saying which one was \"worse\" becomes pointless. I'm not saying one was worse but Hitler was the enemy of the same people that Stalin killed (the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) plus a lot of other countries too, so he is bound to be less popular.",
"As Eddy Izzard put it, Stalin killed his own people. Most people can overlook that.\nHitler killed people next door, oh well, stupid man...",
"In the holocaust the Nazis deliberately set out to kill people. Stalin only deliberately killed a few million. He put in place policies that killed millions through starvation, but killing people wasn't the goal, just a side affect that Stalin didn't care about.",
"Because Stalin was on the \"good\" side.",
"Stalin didnt commit genocide. He wasnt trying to exterminate a whole race of people. Hitler wanted to kill all the jews and he got 6ish million of them. Stalin was just untrusting of his people and had a low regard for human life so he didnt blink when he murdered 20 million of his own people. Mao is responsible for 50 million but that was genocide either it was political as well",
"Mao makes them both look like amateurs.",
"After reading the other comments i try a different approach.\n\nWhat was different about the Holocaust and other genocides? \n\nI think a big reason for the different perception of the Holocaust is how it was done and by whom. The Nazis conducted the Holocaust in a very bureaucratic manner. It was very methodical. Very methodical done by very smart people. People who arrived at the camps were sorted and marked like cattle. The Nazis searched for jews everywhere. Everywhere! Escaping this was hard when you didn't flee early enough. They searched for them even if they posed no threat just to get all of them. They hunted them everywhere even in the occupied regions. Compared to Stalin it wasn't about silencing/killing people who were deemed a threat to him or the system, it was about exterminating an **entire race**. Just think about it, it was about purifying an entire continent. Killing everybody who was not regarded worthy to live. This was done not by taking every jew and shooting him on the spot, that was not efficient. The Nazis tried to find efficient almost **industrial** ways to kill millions of people. They were first used to build weapons. Weapons like the V2, which were revolutinary at this time. See the contrast here? Brilliant weapons developed by smart people, the \"same\" people trying to exterminate a race. Futuristic weapons, which would later be the basis of the apollo program, build by tortured slaves, where do you find these kind of contrasts? Iam no expert of Holocaust or other genocides but other holocaust often seem more \"improvised\". Also a big reason for the different perception is where it was done. Germany. Germany is now a western country, always known as a powerful industrial country. The country of the \"Dichter und Denker\". A country with many of the greatest poets and composers. Before the war a big part of the nobel prices went to german scientists. Germany was a respected powerful country with open minded people. But some years later....\n\nGenocides were often \"Mittel zum Zweck\" getting rid of an opossing political force and their basis for example. For the Nazis and Hitler it was the \"Zweck\". Thats a big difference to other genocides as well. When the red army advanced in the east and the western allied in Italy and France the Nazi intensified their killing even if it wasted a lot of war ressources because if they the lose the war they at least kill as many jews as possible. Think about that. ",
"The systematicness of the killing in Nazi Germany is what sets it apart to me. So very organized. they made the gas chambers because it was literally too many bullets to just shoot them. think about that. they wanted to kill so many people that they couldn't even do it with bullets cuz it would take too many. ",
"Probably several reasons.\n\n1) These acts occurred in the first world, our world i.e 'European algo-Saxon', by 'civilised' people towards other 'civilised' people. There's lots of information available on this period and many countries were involved in some way during the war of this period.\n\n2) We don't really give a shit about what happened to other people.\n\n3) It was no where near the worst genocide in history. They were a class that was rich and influential though and it serves certain interests to maintain the prominence of these events. I don't know of any other historical event that outlaws questioning specifics or that the victims received a country as recompense or such extensive reparations. \nProbably an unpopular point but it's relevant to why it's continually promoted as asked by the OP. \n\n4) For sheer brutality read up in any detail what the Spanish conquistadors did to South America, what Stalin did to the Caucasus, Mao did in China, Pol Pot did in Cambodia, the British starvation of the Irish, the Mongols through Eurasia, the Belgians in the Congo, the total annihilation of the Tasmanian aborigines by the British (not for numbers but for 100% success) and plenty others. Sadly too little is taught about what happened here, there's plenty of lessons to be learned and they explain a lot about why the world is what it is.\n\n",
"First, understand what \"genocide\" means. It is \"the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group\" by a government. The Holocaust included 6 million Jews, but also Slavs (Poles, Russians, etc.), Romani people, the mentally ill, Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals, people with disabilities, and other political and religious groups who were deliberately targeted and systematically killed.\n\nStalin was a psychopath who viewed murder as a way to solve problems. Although tens of millions more may died during his brutal regime, he did not target groups for extinction. \n\nWhat I am really interested in, though, is the discussion here of genocide as though it is some sort of abstract event, used as propaganda by the winning side. These episodes are in the history of most countries including the US (American Indian). The ability to even contemplate let alone implement genocide is an emergent quality that comes from the very worst aspect of our collective humanity - the ability to dismiss the humanity of other groups of people who we perceive as not one of \"us.\" That little bit of insanity is what makes genocide possible, but also slavery, sexism, racism, contempt for the poor, etc. \n",
"I'm surprised you didn't compare this to be Armenian genocide which happened same time period. Government still denies it too. ",
"Because Hitler was the loser. Seriously, if he had won, it would be just as obscure in the modern mind as not letting Italians work in factories and interring the Japanese in the US. \n\nThe weirdest part is Hitler was not the first time this happened by a long shot. Humans have been wiping out other populations of humans to take their land/riches, or unite their own people against a common enemy since the beginning of humans. Think of all those European nationalities from antiquity, they were always being pushed off their land so they had to push someone else off of theirs (Celts, Britons, Visigoths, etc). They murder a few thousand people and it was over. It wasn't until the world population was so large that a minority could have several million people to kill that humanity as a whole was like, \"whoa, this is not cool anymore guys\".\n\nIronically this rather modern end to total war and genocide has brought a new era of never ending tension. Now we fight a war, and when it is over, nothing has changed. There are still Jews and Palestinians in Israel, Iraq is still a fucking mess, and the Taliban is still in Afghanistan. Rewind 200 years and there would be a mountain of dead Arabs and a British officer crowning a Kurd to see if they could do a better job with the region.\n\n",
"No offense to anyone, but the Jewish community has a very strong foothold in America. We celebrate their holidays and whatnot, and when people are as prominent as they are, you will learn more about what they like and what they don't. \n\nNeedless to say, they really hate anything Nazi-related.\n\nOh, and we had beef with Russia for so long that America wanted to cultivate hatred of Russia and not fear. Any major enemy that America has forgot, and the Nazis are the only ones I can think of who were **completely vanquished** by us in the story books.\n\nCuz winners write history.",
"I think it's primarily because the United States is the world leader in movie and television production. The United States was a benevolent liberator in WWII. All those war movies and documentaries depicting the US as the good guys was great propaganda during the cold war years. It made America feel good about itself, and relieved foreign people's fears of American military/economic dominion. \n\nNot to say that this was necessarily done deliberately, but at the very least it was probably a side effect of American media penetration. \n\n",
"*Who says* the Holocaust is the worst genocide in human history?\n\nOne assumes you mean the Nazi extermination of the Jews here, and not the other genocides--such as on the Roma or blacks--that they *also* carried out. In all, the Nazis killed some 9-13 million people, nobody is really sure.\n\nIt's certainly much-discussed these days, because there are survivors and perpetrators of it still alive.\n\nWhat Stalin did was simple mass murder, not genocide, which is the targeted extinction of a single \"race.\" Stalin didn't care who he killed. The US genocide on Native Americans certainly holds its own with the Nazi effort, but there have been plenty of attempted genocides in history.\n\nThere's no simple metric for deciding which ones were worse. Do you go by sheer numbers, or by percentage of the \"race?\" By the latter measure, the Nazis *probably* killed a higher percentage of the total Roma population than they did the Jews (again, nobody knows for sure), simply because there were far fewer Roma. There have undoubtedly been almost-total genocides in history.\n\n\n",
"HELLO??? WHAT ABOUT THE AFRICAN HOLOCAUST? TRAIL OF TEARS? TAPING REBELLION? The Holocaust is up there, but there were way worst stuff going down before.",
"Public opinion.. it determine what is viewed as the best an worst I history regardless of the facts",
"The Holodmor does deserve some more attention than it receives, but that does NOT have to come at the expense of remembering the holocaust. Both are agreeably terrible.",
"We jews have better media connections. ",
"Mostly due to the fact The Holocaust took place in a much shorter amount of time.... also, Stalin was much better at censoring the public",
"why is mao not mentioned here? very similar MO to stalin. social policies that resulted in deaths. same with the british/american/canadian/french/spanish/portugese and the native americans. policies resulting in deaths seem less monstrous than actively killing people like hitler did.",
"I think genocide of Chinese during Opium War by Britain and genocide of Native Americans in North America were worst by far.",
"Who said it is \"seen as the worst genocide in human history\"?\n\n",
"I think the difference is that the Nazis were actively trying to extreminate people while Stalin just kind of let people die.\n\nStalin didn't so much kill his own people as let them die. One was murder the other was neglect.",
"Does the Great Purge count as a genocide? Certainly lots of people died in it but if we go by how wikipedia defines a genocide, \"deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group\", then I don't think the Great Purge counts as one. ",
"Stalin never participate in a genocide. He didn't kill for color, for religion or anything, he killed ANYONE that was a problem to him.",
"It's just history and popular opinion. The Holocaust was horrific, no doubt about it. So were many other genocidal incidents.\n\nWhy does breast cancer get so much publicity with all the pink ribbons? Breast cancer is a horrible experience. So are many other cancers and other diseases.\n\nIt's all just politics and money and popularity.",
"In very simple terms:\n\nIt was a systematic attempt to wipe a specific group of people off the map of Europe because of their specific religious belief or the belief of their blood relatives. Due to the time period and the reach of Nazi Germany, it was genocide on an industrial scale over a huge amount of territory. There was literally no escape for millions of people based solely on their bloodlines. \n\nThis wasn't because they couldn't feed everybody or because they passively decided to let one nationality of people suffer a famine - they searched through attics and basements and through villages and whenever they found people of the wrong group they would murder them. They would literally exterminate entire villages. Entire sections of towns. The women. The children. \n\nIt's the children that get me the most. Don't get me wrong, anyone dying is bad. But machine gunning a three year old or worse yet gassing one... I can't imagine this inhumanity but I try anyway, because this is how I honour their memory. We can't let this happen again.\n\nAnd anytime genocide occurs, whether Armenia or the Holocaust or Rwanda, all of humanity has failed. Our species has done a great collective wrong in failing to prevent it. It must work to striving to prevent the next one. The great strength of our collective people is the ability to share grief, and resolve, and anger, and to work for a better future. We can only do so by marking the errors of the past. \n\nAnyway, this is rambling and probably a bit incoherent but I needed to write it out. ",
"Not to mention the near eradication of Native Americans",
"Chairman Mao killed way more, 78 million. Here is a cool little chart of the deaths caused by recent dictators. _URL_0_",
"Well, for one thing, the fact that they are compared at all or lumped into some sort of category as if similar is astonishingly odd. I'm convinced the only reason they are, and that questions like this are a somewhat common occurrence in the west, is directly related to anti-soviet propaganda from the cold war period and the stigma it has left on western conceptions of life in Russia. \n\n\nLike many others have already stated: \"Stalin's\" numbers are unknown. To complicate matters further, much of the commonly cited numbers of 5-20 million are remnants of cold war propaganda. It is certainly true that Stalin himself had zero issue with killing as a strategic choice. But one must remember that Stalin's Soviet Union was under a serious degree of outside pressure-- after all, it declared itself the fundamental enemy of the most dominant world powers--and was supremely disadvantaged after the second world war (more accurately, since long before 1917) in literally every conceivable way. It was invaded by the west, it was even invaded by America during it's own civil war (_URL_0_). Ontop of this, Russia was going though a period of immense social change, and with that, conflict is an inevitable result-- hence economic classes with different opinions about broad social changes and the willingness to fight against those they did not favor. The deaths that resulted in this period of Russian history were not the deliberate and tactical removals of specific ethnic groups scapegoated by the dictatorial regime-- as was the obvious case in Nazi Germany, a singularly horrific and historically bizarre event. Instead, the so-called \"purges\" were aftershocks of class war. I'm not saying that murdering those who opposed soviet leadership was a necessary strategical choice (or a desirable one, state sanctioned violence is always fundamentally wrong and immoral) -- but it was a cheap one, and in some cases very popular (as was the case with the Kulaks: _URL_2_). \n\nFurthermore, Stalin was not the sole guiding force in targeted killings, relocations or collectivizations. Undoubtedly, the Soviet system established by Lenin was horrendously unbalanced (i.e. the party is the vanguard, and the vanguard is led by me.) But there was some degree of congressional overview and insight. Whatever the case, state sanctioned murder in the USSR was not the fetishized eradication of undesirable people deemed unworthy of life for racial or ethnic reasons-- it was the targeted removal of people, or in some cases (perhaps) classes of people who were working against (and in some cases actively sabotaging, through violence or the threat of violence) the grain of a fragile new society that had an abundance of only one resource: bodies. \n\nfinally, what the Soviet Union did was no different than much of what went on in the U.S. during its own short history-- as far as political enemies of the state were concerned. It's been well documented how the FBI was utilized to \"purge\" Black rights groups, radical student organizations and anti war collectives of loud, disruptive individuals that disagreed with the state. Or maybe an even better example would be the U.S. Civil war-- which was, fundamentally, a war against an economic class that favored autonomy from federal regulation. How often do we hear about Fred Hampton (_URL_1_)? You're probably more likely to hear a comparison of Stalin to Hitler than the FBI or the NSA to the KGB or the Stassi, which is far more valid of a comparison as far as I'm concerned. \n\n\nTL; DR: There was no genocide in the Soviet Union. ",
"What about Mao, who murdered more than 50 million Chinese, the highest kill count in human history? What about the Rape of Nanking, where Japanese forces, in less than 3 weeks, methodically raped and murdered over 300,000 Chinese, which is more than 14,000 a day? What about the almost yearly genocides in Africa?\n\nCurious xenophobia towards non-white tragedies. ",
"It was well documented...",
"because there were more movies made about it.",
"i believe around 50-60 million native americans were killed in the colonization of America",
"One of my professors explained that it was the first time in history that a country couldn't kill people fast enough that they actually industrialized murder. ",
"20-30 million of slavic people got killed in either starvation. Execution. Concentration camps and fighting",
"Simply how methodical it was.\n\nStalin economic policies resulted in death. Hitler systematically killed a specific group.",
"Stalin's death count is mostly either directly ordered by the man himself or a result of horrible mismanagement of resources that was redirected to party elites. The Holocaust is considered horrible because it wasn't just Hitler, it was a total societal effort to dehumanize a race and exterminate them. Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism and the Holocaust is probably the best resource from which to answer why the Holocaust was unique in its horror. The short version is that the society created by the Nazi party deflected all responsibility through a complex bureaucracy that absolved people of responsibility for their actions. The horror of it is that there was no special evil qualities in the vast majority of the Nazi government, they were regular people subjected to an authority they could offload their personal responsibility onto. It could happen to anyone (well, 60% of us if we use Milgram's findings). Hitler never had the kind of direct control that Stalin did and offloaded a lot of his authority to subordinates (which further contributed to the institutionalized scapegoat) so he could go on a drug binge. \n\nIn short, we consider the Holocaust worse than Stalin's purges because Stalin was an evil asshole doing what one would expect an evil asshole with absolute power to do, but the Nazis were ordinary people who fell victim to a system that caused them to do horrible things (this, of course, does not minimize the victimization of the Jews and others killed, but it explains why we have such a visceral reaction to the Holocaust that we don't for other genocides). ",
"I'm a bit late to the party, but I wanted to suggest another point which I don't think has been brought up so far and I think may play an important role. This doesn't replace any of the other answers, since it's a complex question, but instead I thought I'd supplement some of the other answers here.\n\nHilter was an immensely charismatic leader. Hitler ruled a so-called cult of personality, helped in part by Goebbels, a man who was in charge of propaganda and elevated Hitler to this almost superhuman status. Stalin, on the other hand, was not. The difference between these two leaders is important, because Stalin frequently resorted to sheer force. However, Hitler frequently never had to. I'll show what I mean by examples.\n\nIn November 1937, Hitler called a meeting about the division of resources between the three military services. However, it took on a greater significance, because he took the opportunity to read out a long memorandum he said that in the event of his death, should be regarded as his last will and testament. Basically, he emphasised his own importance and talked about the German need for space (this was an important part of Hitler's views). His proposed method for dealing with this need for space - Hitler was determined to force a union with Austria and eliminate Czechoslovakia by 1943-1945 at the latest. Naturally this would not only have invited conflict with France but also with Britain. The response he got was negative. The leader of the army said that Germany could not defeat France and Britain, the minister of war agreed, and the foreign minister disagreed with other points of Hitler's plan. Here's a key difference between Hitler and Stalin. Hitler argued with them. Going against Stalin's wishes would likely have been deadly. Later on, Blomberg, the minister of war, was involved in a scandal by marrying a woman who had posed for pornographic pictures. Hitler then decided to reopen an investigation into Fritsch, the leader of the army, who had previously been accused of being gay, which he denied. Hitler took over Blomberg's post (more or less) and Fritsch was removed from office, and Neurath, the foreign minister, was placed elsewhere out of the way, and along with other retirements at the time, Hitler quickly reorganised his hierarchy in response to trouble he had been caused.\n\nStalin, on the other hand, was aggressive. He personally instigated mass killings (about 700,000) in the 1930's. One of his most brilliant military men was arrested by the Soviet police. Stalin was suspicious of him, so he had him tortured and then shot in the head. When Field Marshal Blomberg caused trouble, however, he was given a golden goodbye and nice pension and he and his wife travelled around the world. None of these men who disagreed with Hitler did so while fearing torture or death. Stalin would use force or terror to bully his opposition into acquiescence, but Hitler would attempt to persuade others of his vision.\n\nHere's were things get even more interesting. Reichkristallnacht, or, The Night of Broken Glass, on the 9th of November 1938, Nazi thugs engaged in a series of attacks against the Jews. On the 7th, a teenage Jew whose family had been one of the Poles just dumped on the border by the Nazis, had shot a man named vom Rath in the German Embassy in Paris. Vom Rath died on the 9th, and Goebbels encouraged Hitler to allow retribution against the German Jews. Attacks against Jews had already occured, but now they were on a scale never seen before, more than 20,000 Jewish men imprisoned, more than one thousand synagogues destroyed, Nazi stormtroopers breaking into houses to beat Jewish families and trash their houses, and so on.\n\nNow, here's an interesting point. Leading Nazis suggested and synthesised ideas that they thought would please Hitler. He did not have to tell them directly to do these things. While it is true that the atrocities against the Jews were in some ways orchestrated from the higher powers, these people were also motivated to attack the Jews because of their own personal beliefs. Many of these people held anti-Semitic beliefs before Hitler was around. What Hitler did was allow them to act, giving people a target for their anger in the form of the Jews. In other words, he encouraged them, but in the end, what he really did was simply let rabid dogs off the chain and allow these people to claim his beliefs and his hatred as their own and be accepted for doing so. In fact, he never mentioned the events of the Night of Broken Glass publicly or privately because he never wanted his name linked to the attacks. Yet, they would not have happened if the people did not believe that that was what Adolf Hitler wanted them to do. \n\nI could keep going, but the important point here is that I think there was something quite marked about Hitler's rule, in that he did not use sheer force and terror to do what he did to the Jews, which was how Stalin chose to rule. Instead, the Holocaust was on some level driven by people being convinced by force of a leader's charisma that this was something that they should do, and this was something that many of them wanted to do, and that this was all for the best, and that leaves a much deeper and more frightful impression, doesn't it? Anyone can beat millions into submission. Persuading them, what Hitler did, stands out to us.\n\n(Sorry for the long-winded post, by the way, charismatic leadership is something I've been studying lately, so I found it hard to be concise.)\n\nEdited for typo, because I was short on time.\n",
"The difference is pretty simple. Helping out Russians will not bring around the second coming.",
"ITT: Lots of antisemitism",
"Not speaking for all Jews, but I was never taught that the Holocaust was the absolute worst genocide in all history. The most recent massive tragedy for Jews for sure (when 1/3 of your tribe is killed off, the PTSD reverberates through the next several generations), and horrible for German Catholics, gays, Romani, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others. In terms of numbers systematically killed the Holocaust's a contender, but Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and many others around the world have done their share. I'm not sure the gain to be had from setting up a discussion in which genocides are compared to decide which was worst and which was merely bad, and I think the word 'worst' in the subject of this thread makes it a leading question starting with a questionable base assumption. \n\nBut as has been pointed out it's interesting/unique in that the Holocaust occurred in a modern European nation and used industrial methods and logistics to kill. Westerners live in societies that are not so far removed from Nazi Germany that we can't relate at some level to both perpetrator and victim. Studying the Holocaust, apart from just trying to understand recent history, can be a way to learn about humanity's capacity for cruelty and the dehumanization of the other. ",
"Seems like its due to the education system (at least in Canada), in my opinion.\n\nI've learned about many other genocides that are of a way larger magnitude for example: wars between Japanese and the Chinese, and the fact that Genghis Khan literally (yes, literally), decimated the human population, but none of this was taught in my education, at least. The Holocaust was horrible of course, but blown out of proportion WRT to other genocides; hell, I never even heard of one bigger, in school they spoke of it as if it was the worse of the worse - in numbers.",
"Izzard said it best.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Well if you think Stalin is bad, check out how many Mao killed. Or even worse Genghis Khan.",
"Let's not forget that during WW2, 14 million chinese were killed. Many by Japanese who put them into camps, tortured many, and carried out systematic genocide, based on race. Not to downplay the loss of 6 million Jews, I'm just saying I wish I had learned about the systematic genocide of the Chinese during WW2 in school rather than finding out on the internet.",
"Killing a group of people for what they believe in politically is one thing. Killing them for who they are is an entirely different story. \n\nThis is the TLDR of the top comment.",
"Human history is relative to the history you are being taught. For \"western\" civilization, the holocaust is often seen as the worst genocide not only because of its scale but also because of its recency and its regional relevance. This is not to say that our version of history is wrong, it is simply our history. Other parts of the world have their own version of history based what has been happening in their region. Only recently have we begun to measure human history on a global scale, because only recently have the geographical limitations of human-to-human interactions been trounced by our technological capabilities.",
"Marketing.\n\nYes I know this is a douchey answer but it has some sad truth. I think along with being the most notable holocaust for many of the reasons outlined already it has also been exploited like no other modern event. Hearts, Minds, Cash. ",
"Technically, what Stalin and Mao did is not seen as genocide in International Law. \nIt's defining term is found in in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.\n\n\"**Article II**: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, **a national, ethnical, racial or religious group**, as such:\n\n(a) Killing members of the group; \n(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; \n(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; \n(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; \n(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.\n\n**Article III:** The following acts shall be punishable:\n(a) Genocide; \n(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; \n(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;\n(d) Attempt to commit genocide; \n(e) Complicity in genocide. \"\n\nThe Holocaust fits into this definition, in fact this definition was created exactly for it.\nThe majority of those killed by Stalin and Mao were actually political prisoners and opposition groups, thus not falling into the definition of Genocide. Crimes against humanity? Most likely. Genocide? Well, under our current definition, no.\n\nIt's interesting to see exactly why the convention never contained political groups in this definition, considering the very people who were killing political opposition were helping write the law on genocide. Situations like this are why there are two separate covenants in International Law. International Law is fucking ridiculous.",
"Because there are thousands of movies, books, documentaries, lessons, etc on the Holocaust. \n\nThere is almost nothing in comparison on everything else.\n\nIf it's not the Jews in the Holocaust, apparently no one gives a fuck.\n\nJapanese killed 23 million chinese during the 30s and 40s, but fuck it, they're just chinese people. ",
"Because the Germans did it in a very efficient, bureaucratic manner on an industrial scale. It isn't that it was the worst genocide. It just was the most impressive (I know the word doesn't sound right, but I cannot find another one to fit what I am trying to say). Also, Germany lost the war, and the victors wrote history.",
"This is an excellent, short article that answers your question perfectly. _URL_0_",
"It's worth pointing out that the colonization of the Americas killed an estimated 100 million people and should probably be acknowledged as the worst genocide in human history. ",
"In the end it's how you \"sell\" your genocide I guess. And this is horrible.\nI wouldn't be surprised to see in a couple of years some genocides becoming more \"popular\". It's like some twisted attention whoring. \nGenocides are genocides. They fucking suck, scar humans for generations and create an unbelievable amount of hate. \n\nAfrica seems to be working hard on new ones as well (thinking of Central Africa atm). When will humans learn?! :(\n\n\n",
"There seems to be a one-up game in this thread of whom is the most awful tyrant. For what it's worth, I submit this, _URL_0_",
"Stalin's purges are not considered genocide, but *mass murder*. International Court stipulates genocide to be based on *\"ethnic, religious, racial or national group;\"* the name itself literally means 'killing of the *genus*' Stalin's purges have not been directed against a specific people; but rather a wide group of *\"state enemies\"* persecuted for alleged activity against the USSR, Bolshevik Party and/or the loosely defined 'people' of the USSR. Therefore, officially the purges have been officially based on *activities* of the said people, not their colour/genus and/or because they're primitive/inferior etc. by birth. USSR stipulated the equality of all races/ethnic groups and sexes before the law. Purges were hence carried out at an *ad hoc* basis.\n\nCompare this to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or the United States; except that suffering individuals count in millions and charges could be fabricated to fit the Bolshevik agenda. In none of the aforementioned countries, the numbers who perish by the effect of state-imposed death penalty constitute a genocide.\n\nBesides, genocide also refers to an official policy based on *'systematic, planned murder of a specific genus'*. USSR deaths between 1924 and 1953 have often been unplanned and a spillover of the state's negligent policies. \n\nFor instance, millions of Chechens have perished upon their exile from native Chechnya to Kazakhstan; based on Stalin's reprisal policies against \"Nazi-secessionists.\" While it is true that a significant number of Chechens were in a passive agreement with Nazi Germany to curtail the activities of the Red Army in Chechnya, Stalin's reprisals were horrendous and went beyond the actual numbers of Nazi collaborators. However it cannot be officially considered genocide against the Chechens because i) they were persecuted on individual-by-individual basis, being deemed \"war criminals\" and/or \"Nazi collaborators\" by *official state courts* and not exiled as a whole population; ii) Most Chechen deaths occurred *on the way* to Kazakhstan due to poor transportation, cold weather, hunger - all of which were classed as negligence of the POWs by the state, rather than systematic murder. Same goes for the deaths in GULAGs.\n \n\n\n ",
"One was genocide and the other was democide. Or to put it another way, the Holocaust was all about hate, whereas the mass deaths in the Stalin era were inspired by simple callousness.\n\nOr to put it in yet another way:\n\n\"For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don't think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.\"\n\nVersus:\n\n\"A single death is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic.\" \n\n(This is the Lady Soames version of the quote, before anyone asks. Whether it is true or not, it does sum up the Soviet approach during the Stalin era.)",
"The Holocaust was the deliberate attempt to kill a group of people. This had never been done before on such an industrial scale.\n\nStalin killed more people by using hunger and fear as a weapon. This has been done frequently in history.",
"Was not genocide a term invented to describe what had happened to Armenians in WWI by the Turks? Perhaps the number of people estimated to have been killed being around 1 million may not compare to other genocides mentioned in this thread but what people fail to realize is that number represented more than 80% of the Armenian population!\n\nI consider it to be \"worse\" (though its not a competition) and the biggest irony of the Armenian genocide is that the state of Israel refuses to acknowledge it as a genocide.\n\nThe perception that the German Holocaust is the worst is simply continued media bias. I also think its collective guilt as no nation entered WWII to stop the Holocaust. Many nations did not even help fleeing Jews at all. As such, there is a sense that \"we\" were complicit in the German Holocaust.",
"a genocide is a crime perpetrated against a genus (which is greek for lineage) hitler targeted the jewish lineage, stalin targeted what he perceived to be the enemies of the Soviet Union, which belonged to many genera (lineages) so he wasnt perpetrating a genocide technically",
"It's not actually known for sure how many Stalin killed. [Some historians, like Timothy Snyder, say that Stalin killed far less than previously thought](_URL_0_) and Hitler killed more. \n\n",
"You just live in a cultural sphere where the holocaust is \"bigger\", don't assume it is the same in the rest of the world.",
"Well the Native American genocide was actually worse for example. But it was too far back in time and much less visible than the holocaust, a conflict which consumed the whole world. ",
"Killing lots of people is not the same as genocide. You probably don't know much about Stalinist Russia.",
"Percentages\nSure Stalin killed 40 or so million people but Hitler took a population of 9.5 million and had an organized killing of 6 million of them. Also, Stalin didn't really hate any particular group, he would just have anyone that he didn't like killed.",
"I think actions under Hittler, Stalin and Mao are not comparable. All events were for different reasons using different strategies to different end. \nWhen trying to compare which event were worse depends on what you consider worse or more evil. Purely the number of people who died? How people were killed? Or why people were killed?\nIn the case of the Holocaust, it was done purely to eradicate people who were considered unworthy to live and breed. The way it was done in such a calculated efficient way purely to wipe out certain people had never be seen in the world before. This is why it is widely considered to be the worst genocide in history. Not because of the number of people who died but because how and why. ",
"I suspect that its the Jewish-American community doing a better job of educating people of the Holocaust than the Russian-American community about the Soviet genocide. Jewish ancestry passes on better than Russian ancestry since it's a religion, giving each generation renewed interest in the Holocaust. ",
"Because the term \"genocide\" refers to trying to completely wipe out an ethnic group or race. Stalin killed a lot of his own people, but wasn't trying to eradicate all russians. Hitler, on the other hand, was trying to \"cleanse\" the world of all Jews.",
"Without turning this into a historical or anti-Semitic debate, the Jews have been persecuted for a long, long time by a variety of groups (Egyptians to Romans to Arabs), so the Nazis get more exposure for being part of that chain of villainy.\n\nStalin wasn't quite so methodical in exterminating Jews, or Homosexuals or Gypsies. He just killed people who stood in his way, regardless of your demographic, where Hitler was very clearly trying to eliminate specific people group(s).\n\nAlso, to my knowledge, Stalin hadn't set up death camps with twisted doctors to perform all kinds of freakishly weird experiments on human fucking beings. Hitler's goon squads were basically playing God with their victims and torturing them. I'm not sure that Stalin used gas chambers disguised as showers.",
"Perhaps this is the wrong post, but the worst genocide in history is that of the American Indians. 80-90% of their 50-100 million population was destroyed... And we celebrate it every year at Thanksgiving _URL_0_ ",
"\nEddie Izzard said it like this:\n\nAnd he [Hitler] was a mass-murdering fuckhead, as many important historians have said. But there were other mass murderers that got away with it! Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there; Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest at age 72, well done indeed! And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people, and we're sort of fine with that. “Ah, help yourself,” you know? “We've been trying to kill you for ages!” So kill your own people, right on there. Seems to be… Hitler killed people next door... “Oh… stupid man!” After a couple of years, we won't stand for that, will we?\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Wow, a lot of douchebags ITT.\n\nThe answer has to do with your definition of 'genocide.' In Stalin's case those who died, died 'indirectly' (I use this term in the broadest possible sense) as a result of his policies - i.e. starved to death due to widespread famine whereas those who died under Hitler were DIRECTLY AND DELIBERATELY targeted for extermination on the basis of their race/ethnicity/religious belief. The first case is not genocide, the second is.\n\nSimple as that, no Jewish conspiracy, Rothschild's or boogeymen in sight, go read a dictionary.",
"Because Stalin killed most of the people incidentally.. stealing crops from Ukraine.. putting people in gulags.. letting his Army run wild.. With the Nazis it was direct liquidation.. they essentially made people killing factories. The end result may have been similar but it's the method. If you want to simply judge numbers Mao outstripped both of them by a good margin. Again mostly through collectivization and resulting starvation.",
"Having been in the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, it is because the Nazis turned death into a product.\n\nThey built an entire infrastructure that's sole job was to produce death. Death camps were just factories that with a minimal number of employees could run 24/7 killing thousands each day with incredible efficiency. No one has been more efficient at killing (thinking about resources used per death).\n\nThey also kept impeccable records (which are visible today) just like you would expect from any business.",
"Not a comprehensive answer, nor even a direct answer, but the holocaust is the only one that I know of which people I meet every day will deny happened. Only a few have voiced it to me but it is a surprisingly popular opinion. Given that the hatreds that spawned the actions of most of the Nazis (it was a political move to the top tier, not actual hatred) still exist today and that **nearly half of today's population of Jews were killed**, given that almost all Jews today have living family or friends whose families were disrupted by death or hardship, it is of interest to the current generation to keep people reminded of what happened.\n\n1.5 times the population of NYC. That's how many jews we have today. 3/4ths the population of NYC. That's how many Jews, not people, were killed. Horrifically. ",
"If there ever was a lesson to be learned from the Holocaust, this thread is proof that the lesson hasn't been learned.\n\nWorst . . . this is what we're worried about? So we can get the top five list in order before it gets published on a Yahoo slideshow? That the world continues at all after one such atrocity is the definition of horror. We say to ourselves, \"There is no way that the world could survive after this, and yet here we are.\" Where is the lesson that must be learned?\n\nIf there is a lesson, then it is the twenty second news byte we get and forget about a cleansing that is happening in Africa. We ask, \"why is the Holocaust seen as the worst?\" because we don't want to remember that there have been other atrocities; and we don't want to be reminded that others are happening right now while we debate.\n\n",
"Well Reddit just did someone's homework...",
"First things first: it's not a contest. All mass murder is awful, no matter how widespread. When you get to a certain number of people killed, the body count is almost moot.\n\nTo more directly answer your question, though: Stalin's mass murders weren't, strictly speaking, \"genocide.\" It was based on political ideology rather than a belief in racial inferiority. Here's a great example of why the \"atrocity olympics\" is a ridiculous concept. Is it worse to systematically slaughter entire races or indiscriminately slaughter anyone who has or might possibly in the future cause any modicum of real or perceived trouble to your regime?\n\nNeither is worse. Both are just unfathomably terrible.",
"Most likely it's because the Nazis focused their efforts against a single group of people from a wide geographic area. The Nazis targeted Jews not just in Germany or Austria, but anywhere that they conquered. Stalin and Mao really only looked within their borders and killed anyone they viewed as a dissenter or threat to their supremacy. Yes, the Nazis killed people from all types of backgrounds, but usually these groups were seen as lesser evils compared to the Jews. \n\nAlso, it's the massive percentage of Jews that were systematically eliminated like surplus cattle that draws so much attention. And, like others have said on here, the Jews are very powerful a people that also possess an immense ability to publicize their tragedy.",
"You should ask 4chan, they more honest answers than this pile of hypocritical shit",
"The only reason is not the \"how many\" were killed, but the \"how\". The Nazis built concentration and killing camps where they murdered jews on a factory scale. Thousands a day in each camp. Every day. They even invented special crematoriums which were built to accommodate the large number of bodies and to be able to burn as many bodies as possible in a short time. They also built special gas chambers not to effectively kill but to efficiently kill as many as possible. This factory scale and the sheer technocratic way of murdering is why we call it the worst genocide in history. There is no genocide that can compare to this one in that regard. Most others are more \"spontaneous\" in their execution.",
"Direct versus indirect. ",
"ITT People who probably legally can vote and are defending Mao. \n\n We are fucking screwed. ",
"I don't think it's important to compare and see which is one is worst. The most important thing is just to know the both events were terrible, and that we as a society ensures that neither can never happen again. That being said, I do think it is an interesting and healthy discussion.",
"The Holocaust isn't universally considered the worst genocide in in history. As any of the top commenters will probably say at great length:\n\nIt's not who they killed in what number, it's how they did it and why (systematically, 'racial purity'). ",
"A little bit off subject but not really is the fact that the nazis also killed homosexuals, Down syndrome people and gypsies along with communists and Jews in the camps. It's not often talked about.",
"This will get buried but I haven't seen another plausible answer. People comparing the horrors of each have some valid points but when you delvea bit deeper into what Stalin did you'll find most of the horrors are essentially the same. Rounding up dissidents, Stalin. Rounding up undesireables, Hitler. Starving people to death by the thousands, Hitler. Starving people by the millions, Stalin (see Ukrainian genocide). Working people do death in concentration camps, Hitler. Working people to death in gulags, Stalin. Cattle cars to work camps, Hitler and Stalin... the similarities go on and on. The only one I'm not aware of is the experimentation the Nazis did; I'm not sure if there is a parallel with Stalin but there are with what the Japanese did in China. The point is I don't think the case for more horrible can be made. I think what it really comes down to is publicity. Hitler lost the war and was exposed. Stalin won the war and operated behind the iron curtain secretly; I don't think there is much more to it.\n\nEdit: I love how an ad decided to pop into the word work in work camps.",
"I think there are really two things that set the Holocaust apart from many of other mass killings.\n\nFirst, it wasn't an attempt to kill an opposing political force, or something of that sort. Really it wasn't even just an attempt to kill off a single ethnic group. It was a largely successful attempt to kill off every single person who didn't adhere to their concept of \"pure\". We talk about the attempt to exterminate the Jews, but really they were kind of out to systematically kill a huge portion of the entire human race. The reason they only killed a few million is that they never got the chance to finish.\n\nThe second thing that I think makes it particularly disturbing is just how systematic and \"civilized\" it was. When there's a genocide in Rwanda by one group against another, killing each other with machetes, we think, \"Oh, well of course. They're basically savages.\" It's a bit fucked up and racist, but that's what we think. Germany, on the other hand, was basically at the height of civilization at the time. They were a white first-world country that arguably had some of the best art, science, engineering, and philosophy in the world. They used those advances in science and engineering to come up with very efficient methods of killing people and disposing of them. They used their philosophy to justify those actions, and they used their art to glorify it all.\n\nWhat makes it so horrifying is understanding that so many modern, civilized, normal, essentially good people participated in such an advanced and civilized plan to conquer the world and murder a large percentage of the human population, justified as an attempt to \"clean things up.\"",
"I think the Nazi Holocaust is seen as worse because of the sinister nature of it, rather than that it killed more people. The Nazi Holocaust didn't kill as many people as Stalin did, but the Nazis were much more organized, with a specific goal to eliminate an entire people, whereas Stalin wasn't trying to destroy a race or civilization, but his backward communist policies did kill more people. The Nazis were very systematic and deliberate, and that is why their Holocaust is seen as more evil.",
"I think comparing tragedies is a wrong thing. There is no scale for tragedies. \n\nEven if there was one death to that family it is the worst tragedy in the world. So it is all about perspective. \n\nHolocaust along with other tragedies should be mourned. ",
"Stalin wasn't killing them because they were Russian. He killed them because they opposed him. The Germans killed Jews just because they were Jews. That is the very definition of Genocide. There have been many, horrible mass killings in history. This one is particularly shocking because it was a) so recent b) so large and c) specifically intended to wipe out a race of people. That said, we should all be aware of and be horrified by any and all mass killings. I think comparing evil is bad. Evil is evil. Let's not rank them.",
"ITT: No one looks up the definition of genocide, ever.",
"Short answer: The Nazis lost and Stalin won. The winner gets to hide a lot of what he did. The losers were put on trial, so we know more. ",
"I have wondered about these sort of issues and I think it is a combination of personal fear and those who carried out the acts have given the Holocaust almost a unique place in history.\n\nIn the case of those who died under Stalin and Mao they were political enemies ( although most were absolutely innocent of any crime ) this gives the impression that if you didn't fuck with the state everything would be fine. This can seem less evil than if you happen to be Jewish, Black, Irish ect your all going to get killed because the individual didn't do anything to be selcted.\n\nThen we combine the fact that the peple who wrote the History books ( Allies America, Europe ) had all been pretty shitty about accepting Jewish refugees and having their own anti semetic trends within their own society. \n\nNow combine this with the almost comical nature of the Nazi's very evil and well deserved image ( Skull and cross bone uniforms, concept of aryan super race, mad angry dictator who literally wants to conquer the world) with the fact that these were not poorly educated men but in fact some the brightest minds of a generation who were a highly disciplined and effective military force makes it is more shocking psychologically than millions being starved to death in Ukraine / China ect ",
"Stalin's approach was less systematic than the Third Reich's. Although the fate of millions was the same, the manner in which Stalin committed these atrocities was different. He expelled people to gulags (my great grandfather for whom I am named was one of them) but he did not have gas chambers or volunteer Einsatzgruppen, etc. The Holocaust received more attention because of the western exposure relative to the closed off nature of Soviet (and later Chinese) news.",
"**This thread has been locked!**\n\nSorry, guys, the moderation staff got tired of (to be honest, were unable to keep up with) removing comments that I can only hope are jokes in poor taste or from an invasion from Stormfront.\n\nReally, guys, if you think that way you need medicine. That is some fucked up shit. Some of the stuff is literally calling for Jews to be re-rounded up and gassed again. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/dictators.jpg"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force_Siberia",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http:/youtube.com/watch?v=BFtkJd8w5UQ"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://theamericanscene.com/2013/04/29/why-good-societies-stigmatize-anti-semitic-language"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur#European_Views_on_Timur"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/?pagination=false"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/American_Indian_Holocaust"
],
[
"http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DBFtkJd8w5UQ&cd=1&ved=0CCcQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNErc0pPK9TDIC1zyihTdo5rHpou-Q"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4yjtqr
|
why does it sometimes take so long to wipe your butt?
|
Not sure how many people can relate but sometimes when I go to the bathroom it takes a good 5min to wipe. The initial large amount of poop is gone in 2-3 wipes but then there is a smaller amount that is seemingly infinite. Every time I go wipe there is a small amount there and it stays for another 10 or so wipes. Also, sometimes when I manage to get it all gone, I wait an hour and notice my butt is itchy and somehow there is more poop there after wiping it 15 times just an hour earlier. Am I just weird or is this a thing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yjtqr/eli5_why_does_it_sometimes_take_so_long_to_wipe/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6o86c3",
"d6o8thd"
],
"score": [
3,
6
],
"text": [
"Could be a few reasons.\n1) Youre not done pooping yet could be one.\n2) your diet could make your poop squshie.\n3)pooping too quickly and your poop isnt formed in your body. (coffee might make one do this)\n\nSo just use a baby wipe and stick it in your hole, wipe it around inside lightly or if its super bad, do an small enema",
"Are you Andy Dwyer? Does it feel like you're wiping a marker?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
d6wbrz
|
why cover songs on youtube don't get copyright claims but a video with a couple of seconds worth of a song gets a claim?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d6wbrz/eli5_why_cover_songs_on_youtube_dont_get/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f0vxa8x"
],
"score": [
22
],
"text": [
"As part of their initiative to avoid the legal processes involved in the DMCA (even though the DMCA was designed to provide \"safe harbor\" to content hosts and limit their liability), YouTube developed the \"[Content ID](_URL_0_)\" system.\n\nCopyright holders upload the existing work to YouTube's Content ID service, and YouTube automatically scans new YT videos and compares snippets of their video/audio to snippets of protected content.\n\nMatching videos are flagged with \"claims\" automatically. This differs significantly from the DMCA process, which requires an actual human to verify under penalty of perjury that they represent the legal rights holder of the work. It's not a legal claim, it's a claim of violation of YouTube's TOS, which does not carry the same rights as actual copyright law (the TOS is more restrictive and, unlike law, up to YouTube's discretion).\n\nAs such, a small sample can trip Content ID, but a cover can't, because it's not a literal copy of the original work. It could still face a copyright claim potentially, but that's a more involved process that requires actual people, so it happens less."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(system\\)"
]
] |
||
4z9znj
|
why, in complete darkness or with my eyes closed, can i still tell whether or not i am about to walk into a wall?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z9znj/eli5_why_in_complete_darkness_or_with_my_eyes/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6utfl0"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You can hear it. Or rather you hear the ambient sounds reflecting off of it more closely than if you were farther away from it. It's similar to how you can tell if a faint sound is actually a loud sound coming from far away or actually a very quiet noise coming from very close to your ear. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1in41f
|
how can countries that are so deep into debt (like the usa) have and maintain comfortable and "modern" lifestyles for many people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1in41f/eli5_how_can_countries_that_are_so_deep_into_debt/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cb62eba"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Ill just copy and paste my answer from the last time someone asked this question:\n\nThe same reason you can be 10s or 100s of thousands in debt from college loans, car loans, mortgages and credit card debt, and still live \"normally.\" Debt doesnt matter, so long as you are capable of paying it back (with interest).\n\nThe US has debt by issuing bonds and treasuries, and eventually people cash them in. And so long as the US is capable of honoring these bonds, they will continue to be able to sell them in the future.\n\nTo put it in perspective...the current US GDP is 14.99 Trillion, and current US debt is 16.7 Trillion. Of course, this means we crossed over past 100% in Debt:GDP ratio, but \"only\" by 1.8 Trillion, which isnt too much.\n\nIn simple terms: lets say you have an annual income of 150,000$ per year, and you have outstanding debt (credit cards, student loans, etc) that is a total of 170,000. Now...could you still live \"normal?\" absolutely, because you dont have to pay that debt back in a single year, and with your salary, you are more then capable of paying it off at some point. Also, would you still be allowed to take on MORE debt, say for a new car? Again...with your salary, a bank would have no hesitation in giving you a loan."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
148u7g
|
how could there be no major disease or sickness after bathing in the ganges river?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/148u7g/how_could_there_be_no_major_disease_or_sickness/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7avngi"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"[\"The incidence of water-borne and enteric diseases – such as gastrointestinal disease, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid – among people who use the river's waters for bathing, washing dishes and brushing teeth is high, at an estimated 66% per year.\"](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges_river#Pollution"
]
] |
||
1ln81e
|
what derivatives in investment and how they've contributed to the decline of the economy.
|
What 'are' derivatives? Otherwise, the title pretty much explains it.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ln81e/eli5what_derivatives_in_investment_and_how_theyve/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cc0wdai",
"cc0y2ek"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"This is a complicated question but I'll try to do a ELI5 example.\n\nA derivative is a financial instrument that is used to hedge (lessen) a particular risk. The derivative market is huge and covers many different things (gold, silver, an entity defaulting, etc). The Interest Rate Swap market is $400 Trillion(!) large. While derivatives lessen risk, if people on the \"losing\" end cannot make payments on these derivatives, then the system starts to crumble. There's a lot of controls over this, such as a margining system that requires you to post money in case your position starts to lose money, and central clearing houses that \"share\" the losses with members, but the risk still exists.\n\nAn example of how they work: There's a baker who does well selling bread. His biggest expense is flour. Unfortunately, his overall business expense depends on how expensive wheat is for that year. Sometimes he makes $100 when wheat is cheap and he is rich. But sometimes he makes $0 when wheat is expensive and he is poor. He does not like this. So he can buy a derivative for wheat that offsets his risk so he makes a steady $50 per year no matter what wheat costs.\n\nWhen he \"buys\" the derivative, he doesn't pay any up front money. When wheat raises in price, his derivative goes up in value by $50. So while he made $0 money in the baking business because wheat was so expensive, he still made $50 off of his derivative.\n\nWhen wheat prices fall, his derivative is worth -$50 and he has to pay $50, but he made $100 in his baking business so he has a net $50 in earnings.\n\nSo as you can see with the example above, all the derivative is doing is making it so movements in the price of wheat don't affect his business and he can make a steady $50 a year no matter what happens to wheat prices.\n\nNow, the problem with this system is, what if people stop buying baked goods and wheat prices fall? So now the baker has to pay $50 for his loss in the derivative but he also made no money from his business. He will then default on that derivative. No big deal, right? Wall street just lost out on that $50. Wrong. Wall street doesn't like taking risk. What they do is sell the \"other side\" of that derivative to someone who has opposite needs of the baker (say, a farmer who makes wheat) and that's who ends up losing out. \n\nIf a few people default here and there, that happens, and people get hurt, but no big deal. But if it's a system wide crash where everyone is defaulting on everyone else's derivatives and starts a contagion, then the whole financial system could collapse.\n\nHope this helps and sorry it's a tough topic.",
"Derivatives are an important part of the financial system. Others have explained well what they are and a what they do. I'll take a shot at explaining what went wrong. First, it is important to understand how organizations that lend money fund themselves. An auto lender (like Ford Motor Credit, GM Financial etc.) make loans to consumers to help them buy cars at dealerships. Some of these customers have excellent credit and some have poor credit. The risk of Ford Motor Credit getting paid back varies with the riskiness of the borrowers. Very risky customers may have a default rate of 10% (1 out of 10 loans will default, the car will be repossessed etc) while the other 90% will eventually pay their loans. Very high quality customers will have a very low default rate (well below 1%). If you accumulate the loans from 100,000 customers with each of their individual default rates averaged over the whole pool of loans, the average for the pool may be say 2.5%. The lender (Ford Motor Credit) will then package them together and \"sell\" them to investors (it is actually a lot more complicated than this but this will serve for ELI5). The lender takes the whole portfolio of loans and subdivide it into blocks (tranches) based on credit quality. A rating agency (Moody's, S & P, Fitch) rate each of the blocks with the very best credit quality being rated AAA, the next AA, the next A and so on to the least credit worthy. Based on the desires of the investors they will buy these various loans blocks based on a required return for that level of risk. Less return for AAA and more for A. The important ELI5 idea here is that through a statistical analysis a portfolio of loans can be separated into various levels of risk - best to worst and rated accordingly.\n\nNow for the financial crisis. This same process is how mortgage loans are \"sold\". It operates in a very similar way to the auto loan example above - the fact is that some of the loans are deemed too risky to sell when you consider the risk of a subprime borrower. Here is a real estate based analogy - if you have a 10 story building in an area that floods a lot you know that the first floor floods 100% of the time during a year, the 2nd floor 75% of the time, the third floor 50% of the time and the 4th floor 25% of the time. The top 6 floors almost never flood. The top couple of floors are AAA risk (almost impossible to flood), the next couple AA and as you go down the risk goes up until you get to the 100% level. When the mortgage lenders wanted to sell their loans they could sell the best rated (the higher floors) but couldn't sell the lowest floors. This is where things went wrong.\n\nFinancial companies decided that if you take the bottom floors of one building and put it with the bottom floors of another building (figuratively) you could build another 10 story building by stacking them. They then convinced the rating agencies that the top of that newly assembled building should be AAA rated as well and what was unsellable before was now sellable (floors here representing loans of various risk). And this process was repeated over and over creating riskier and risker pools of loans. Since many of these loans had been structured with no payments required and no interest payments for 3 years it took awhile for them to begin to default. Once this process started values of homes began to drop and the dominos were falling. Once these obligations started defaulting the financial institutions started having major losses which meant they were having trouble meeting their obligations and so on.\n\nOne final point, many of these obligations were insured by a company called AIG. As one action, the government effectively took over AIG and pumped money into them so they could meet their obligations which stemmed the flow of losses and began to stablize the market. This action and others like it probably saved the US financial system from a total collapse."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
b7j507
|
did jesus ever condone violence? if not, why is it so prevelent in christian culture today?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b7j507/eli5_did_jesus_ever_condone_violence_if_not_why/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ejs4zb6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The angel of death killed all the first born except for the ones in the houses with lamb’s blood over the door. I’d say they are okay with violence when necessary. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
dgj50y
|
why does the engine on this musclecar make a constant pulsing noise?
|
This car has been modified but why does it bake that unbalanced sounding noise every few seconds?
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgj50y/eli5_why_does_the_engine_on_this_musclecar_make_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f3c2906"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Because they have a high amount of overlap in their cams. I'm going to assume you already know how a 4 stroke engine works; if you don't there's hundreds of youtube videos that explains this. The amount of time your intake valves open before the exhaust valve closes is called overlap since both valves are open at the same time. You want this done so you can get more fresh air into the cylinders at high RPMs at the expense of low end power. \n\nWhen exhaust gasses leave the cylinders, they leave in 3 pulses.\n\n1. Initially when the exhaust valve opens the high pressure inside the cylinders force their way out from pressure differential alone\n2. The majority of gasses leaves from the motion of the piston rising.\n3. Scavenging. This is caused by the inertia of the gasses inside the exhaust pipe. The gasses keep wanting to go towards the muffler from their inertia alone, but are stopped when the pressure inside the cylinder becomes too low, so you crack open the intake valve just a little bit while the exhaust valve is still open to break the vacuum. This is only effective at high RPMs since at low speed the exhaust gasses inside the exhaust pipes are moving too slow and don't have any inertia or momentum. At low RPMs both valves being open at the same time causes you to expel fresh air fuel mixture making it harder for the car to idle. That is what you're hearing when the idle sounds lopey instead of smoothe."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://youtu.be/X55OnZv2vXo"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
5iy7i1
|
what is the purpose of royalty in today's day and age?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5iy7i1/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_royalty_in_todays_day/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dbbvpie",
"dbbxs6j"
],
"score": [
35,
2
],
"text": [
"For the UK\n\nAll of the land that is in the Crown Estates belong to them. Centuries ago a King made a deal with Parliament that gave operational control and all incomes from the land to Parliament in exchange for a stipend, but did not give up ownership. As of 2011 the stipend is capped at 15% of the income generated by those estates. That means that the royal family is effectively taxed at 85% of their total income. That is a lot of money. Add to it the amount of money they generate in tourism and it is a major economic benefit to the UK taxpayer to keep them. \n\nThe UK Monarch also has some of the powers that the US President has. They can deny assent to any law which is the equivalent to the veto. That is a very important check against corruption in the legislative body of a government and one that would not exist without the monarch in the parliamentary system because they do not separate executive and legislative branches of government. They also are the commander-in-chief of the british military serving the same purpose. Keeping the control of the military out of legislative hands is one of the strongest protections against tyrannical law that you can have. \n\nThe Royal family also acts as ambassadors for the country, and ones that are trained for the job from birth. That is a important function that gives a lot of influence to the British diplomatic corps on an international stage. ",
"u/cdb03b answered the UK portion of the question elegantly and effectively, as well as more-or-less answering questions regarding similar diarchies (Monarchy + parliament, monarchy + president, etc) like Belgium, Denmark, or Japan et al.\n\nFor other nations, like the Kingdom of Oman, a monarchy is a way for a family to retain control of a government through a common bloodline. Historically, this has been a method of oppression from a ruling class downward, however, a modern monarchy is anything but. These new monarchies utilize a wide range of consultants and advisors that comment to the ruling party about what needs action all the way from the local communities up to international affairs, and the monarchs tend to follow those advisements. It's basically like a Presidential system these days, just that the King/Queen doesn't have a congress/parliament to fight with.\n\nWhat this does (and quite effectively) is reduce legislative time. In America, for example, it takes months or years to pass a bill that desperately needs to be passed (budgets, military action, signing of international treaties, etc), which is a huge downside of having a multi-party system. In these modern monarchies, the King/Queen is advised that the new bill needs to be passed, and the King/Queen simply passes it. It takes only a few days, rather than months or years.\n\nSure, this can lead to corruption (sycophantism, favoritism, etc), but it isn't usually so bad. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
8w1sua
|
what is a css and what does it do when you customize it on your wordpress site?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8w1sua/eli5_what_is_a_css_and_what_does_it_do_when_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e1s08zc",
"e1s09c5",
"e1s0tjp"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"I just wanted to know how to use custom CSS on my Wordpress site and what it changes when I do it. ",
"It allows you to customize layout things such as colours, sizes of images and boxes, fonts etc.",
"In the old days of creating web pages, you had to write code into each individual web page to tell it what to do with text, colors, alignment, etc. So if you had a personal web page that had an \"Personal Life\" section, and a separate \"Career Accomplishments\" section, if you wanted the background on them to be grey, with black text, a menu on the left hand side with bold text with link to each section, you had to code that all in *for each page*. So do it all in the \"Personal Life\" section, and then do it all over again in the \"Carreer Accomplishments\" section.\n\nA CSS file is basically a file that has all those specification in it, and in the web pages themselves, instead of putting in code to tell the page how to do all that formatting, you just code in one or two lines that basically say \"go check the CSS file and it will tell you[the web page] what to do\". It makes formatting a hell of a lot simpler and easier, and makes making changes that affect an entire site with numerous separate pages very fast since you only have to change 1 file as opposed to all of them individually. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4asvxb
|
how come we cant come up with a technology to eliminate black box voting in america?
|
I'm curious if we have public data which allows anyone to verify that vote counts are accurate. I did a google search on the internet and found: _URL_0_
Can't we have some public transaction database shared by all nodes participating in a system based on a protocol (which I cannot name due to auto mod) to ensure we have a public record of the votes? Is there any way we can use current technology to provide count accuracy that is verifiable to the masses without giving up voter privacy?
It seems to me like we are trusting the government to get the count right.
EDIT: I'm also curious as to how we can solve the issue of verifying that votes are coming from legitimate voters.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4asvxb/eli5_how_come_we_cant_come_up_with_a_technology/
|
{
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"score": [
30,
2,
6,
2,
2,
3,
2
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"text": [
"The idea in part is that we don't want a public record of the votes. I may be voting for a candidate I don't want my family/friends/neighbors to know about. That's why votes are anonymous. Putting your vote in a database loses that anonymity when it becomes public record. \n\nI have heard some suggestions of assigning user ids which could let you verify your vote went to the correct person and still shield your identity. It could be a step in the right direction, but you still have the govt knowing who you voted for and that's not ideal. ",
"Because there are some conflicting requirements that technology just can't solve.\n\nFirst, let's start with the premise: a database that records the votes. There are a number of things that make that problematic. For one, that database will be a HUGE F@CKING TARGET and it would take a good deal of effort to keep it and its communication mechanisms secure from within and from without. Which begs the question, who hosts the database? How can we trust them and verify the accuracy and integrity of the database?\n\nThe other major conflict is privacy. The only way to go back and verify that my vote was correctly tallied is if I can identify *my* specific vote. That means I'll need an ID that is unique to me and that I can prove IS me should the need arise. That would require ANOTHER database with the same problems as the one listed above. Not only that, but it's a potential one-stop shop for targeting voters that voted \"the wrong way\".\n\nSo, it's not that we *can't* do what you're asking, it's just that doing so is much more of a threat to democracy than not doing so. Trying to manipulate an election by messing with vote counts under the current system isn't terribly easy... you don't know exactly how much of an impact you need to make for one. But a central clearinghouse could provide unscrupulous actors the knowledge to be able to manipulate a vote count just enough to change the outcome, but not enough to be noticed.\n\n > It seems to me like we are trusting the government to get the count right.\n\nIn sum, we *have* to trust somebody and there isn't a clear better choice. ",
"This goes back to historical contexts where we decisively favor a secret ballot.\n\nvoting for the candidate/proposition of your choice is linked directly to free speech - you can be threatened/coererced/bought to vote for a specific thing and held to that if your vote is known. Secret ballot lets you still vote in whatever manner you want. The thought of losing that secrecy is fundamental in privacy concerns.\n\nIt might not be as big a deal in today's world in the Presidential election as example, but we are not that far removed from a world where there were serious repercussions, such as local ballot initiatives on spending, or local races...church or other social ostracisms applying voter pressure. \n\nI can't guarantee that my boss wouldn't fire me or make my job miserable, or withhold pay raises etc if I didn't vote a certain way (just an example) and that is a fundamental aspect of free speech.",
"There is plenty of technology, but no customers. The customer isn't a voter, it's a state government.",
"Well in Canada we are trusting volunteers for Elections Canada. and it's all based on line of sight. I go in, tell them who I am and they cross my name off their master list or register me if I have the correct eligibility documentation and send me to the correct polling station, that person then checks their roll and crosses off my name or if I just registered, adds, then crosses my name off and files the paperwork. They hand me a ballot and send me behind the screen, I vote with an X with a pencil and I walk back and hand them the ballot. In sight of me they rip the identifying number off the ballot which makes the ballot completely anonymous and hand it back to me, I place it in the voting box. Everything other than my marking the ballot is done in sight of at least 2 people. The voting box is always in sight of at least two people. When counting the votes, it is done with the returning officer counts the votes with help from the poll clerk with the candidates or their representatives present. It is always a hand count. Everyone present must agree on the count. The total votes counted must also match the number of ballots given out. if they don't, much investigations are to be had and if those ballots cannot be found then that polling station must re-vote. Hasn't happened yet as far as I know.\n\nSo for us we have a public record of who voted, what ballot they were given and multiple person visual security of those ballots and their count, all while maintaining anonymity. It's time consuming, but worth it I think.",
"The technology exists, but for some reason USA states aren't keen on it.\n\nThis technology? Anonymous paper ballots, marked by hand, counted by hand, physically stored in a secure location.\n\nThe key feature of this technology is that *people* are heavily involved in the collection and counting of the votes. The count is done publicly, with many individuals involved and personally monitoring the process.\n\nThis means that in order for a vote to be rigged, enough people have to be involved that the *rigging of the vote* is insecure. Someone will tell, or someone will find out.",
"It's entirely political. Diebold pledged the nomination to Bush -- a huge conflict of interest. Nothing was done about it.\n\nI worked for the Vegas gaming industry for several years, developing \"server based gaming\" for a start-up (successful; sold to IGT, the largest competitor). Server based gaming is normal, standard Vegas gaming but more modular so fewer pieces have to go through the Nevada Gaming Commision's review process. We pay them hourly to audit our code. Everything is logged, in two places, and audited. The regulations were designed to keep casinos from stealing money from themselves -- sounds dumb, but in the 70's, every casino was \"skimming off of the top\". Money was going straight from the floor into the owners pockets and not reported to the IRS. The current system was designed to make this impossible (emphasis on *designed* -- of course, making something non-intractable impossible is impossible). The Gaming Commission comes in and pulls and ROMs and compares their checksums to what's on file to make sure nothing was tampered with. This happens without warning. They have the source code. They build it and compare the binaries. Strong random number generators that constantly cycle are specified. Encryption is specified. Trusted boot, where each stage verifies the next, is required. And so on. A Microsoft Access database uploaded in the plaintext to an ftp site would never, ever be approved. Every outcome, the current PRNG seeds are logged so that someone can come along later and verify that the sequence follows and is correct for that point in time. Wins, loses, money inserted, money out is broadcast on a the \"slot accounting system\" network and logged on the machine. They're audited to make sure they agree. The servers that hold the logs are under cameras with regs requiring the tapes be retained for years.\n\nThere's so much logging, signing, encrypting, and auditing that attempts at theft basically always result in someone going to jail. When numbers don't add up, there's a full investigation, and more regs are added if needed. Nothing goes missing.\n\nSo, from my point of view, there's absolutely no excuse for Diebold."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://blackboxvoting.org/"
] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6ycfxb
|
why are there meadows in a wooded forest?
|
I often walk through wooded forests and come across a wide swath of land that has no trees otherwise known as a meadow. How come the seeds from the trees in the surrounding forest don't infiltrate this area and grow trees?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ycfxb/eli5_why_are_there_meadows_in_a_wooded_forest/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dmmc0x8"
],
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6
],
"text": [
"These areas have been disturbed, maybe by a fire, maybe by an avalanche, so that the population of trees that was there has been wiped out. The first thing to come back are the quickly growing grasses and flowering plants. Eventually, the area will fill with trees again in a process called ecological succession, it just hasn't happened yet."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2oo3wq
|
how does tilt-shifting make my brain think things are toys?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oo3wq/eli5_how_does_tiltshifting_make_my_brain_think/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmoy015"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It has to do with something called depth of field. This is just the amount of focus there is in a photograph. Imagine a portrait. Usually the background is blurry and the person's face is in focus. This means that the depth of field is narrow. Now imagine a landscape photograph where everything is in focus. This is a wide depth of field. One of the ways that this can be controlled is by how close the camera is to the subject. In the case of a portrait, the camera is relatively close to the subject. In the case of a landscape, the camera is relatively far away. So, all tilt shifting is doing is making it look like the camera is very close to the subject by narrowing the depth of field. And since we are used seeing landscapes with wise depth of field we are tricked into shrinking the in-focus subject. \n\nMake sense?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2vvxys
|
where do terrorist groups such as isis and boko haram post their videos online? how do agencies such as afp and site intel group find them?
|
Do they release these videos on sites that can only be accessed by TOR or a similar browser? Do journalist groups have direct terrorist contact?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vvxys/eli5_where_do_terrorist_groups_such_as_isis_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cold6vy"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You're over thinking it. They post to Youtube using a throwaway account and then ask their supporters to share the videos as widely as possible. By the time Youtube can be made aware of the content of the video so as to take it down there will be thousands of copies floating around the internet."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
cdfz82
|
- why do our muscles "burn" when lifting? what causes that burning sensation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cdfz82/eli5_why_do_our_muscles_burn_when_lifting_what/
|
{
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"text": [
"The short answer is, when you lift weights, the cells in your muscles are using a lot of energy. \n\nUsually they make this energy using the oxygen you breathe, but when there’s not enough available (for example, after strenuous activity like exercising) they resort to using a different method. \n\nThis method still produces energy, but also produces lactic acid as a byproduct. This acid builds up and results in the burning sensation you experience during/shortly after a rigorous workout session.",
"I don't know if its allowed but Ms Frizzle can explain this one [take a ride on the Magic School Bus](_URL_0_)",
"It’s a result of a chemical reaction. \n\nMuscles work like this: \n\nThe brain sends an electrical signal through the nervous system to the special hub in the muscle. This hub is then able to create a chemical reaction that contracts a muscle fibre. (Or several fibers depending on the hub) \nDoing this creates byproducts (like running the engine creates exhaust gas). Those byproducts need to be removed by blood (a process which swells the muscle up also making it hard to contract). This whole process hurts probably as a way for the body to tell you “stop what you are doing” and rest the muscle. \n\nHence why when you work the muscle too hard it gets swollen up and “burns”.",
"Inquisitor gave a good high level answer. The more detailed answer is muscles use a chemical called ATP for fuel. Storing energy as ATP is hard, so our bodies make it when we exercise.\n\nWe first convert creatine phosphate to ATP. This is a quick conversion, but we only have enough stored for about 10 seconds worth of effort. \n\nSecond, we convert sugar (glycogen) to ATP without oxygen. The benefit of doing this is it doesn't require oxygen, meaning we can still put out a lot of effort even if we are completely out of breath. The down side is it produces lactic acid and that eventually builds up and needs to be cleared out. It gets taken to the liver where it is converted back to sugar.\n\nThe final way is converting sugar to ATP with oxygen. We can do this for hours, but it's slow, slow, slow! It doesn't cause any burn, though."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/PISMFLNga60"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
75uc7g
|
the 25th amendment to the united states constitution
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75uc7g/eli5_the_25th_amendment_to_the_united_states/
|
{
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"text": [
"A few parts to it. \n\nIf POTUS croaks or bails, VP becomes POTUS. \n\nIf POTUS is sick or injured or he says he’s not capable of being POTUS, VP becomes acting POTUS until POTUS says he’s good. \n\nThe VP can gather the cabinet together and they can all vote to say POTUS is unfit for office. At that point, VP takes charge. From there,POTUS can say “yep, I’m bug nuts crazy” and that’s that. However, POTUS can say “nah, I’m good” at which point it takes a 2/3 majority of both houses to say “dude, you’re fucking nuts. GTFO. VP is in charge now” \n\nEdit: forgot that after the cabinet and VP vote, VP takes over until Congress sorts the whole thing out. And that it covers not only death but resignation. ",
"It cleared up some holes the framers of the constitution did not think about.\nOr just assumed it was common sense.\n\nFor example, before the 25th, there is nothing that specifically states that the VP becomes president if the president dies. President Taylor set the defacto standard by taking the oath of office and moving into the white house when president Harrison died. All others after him sited this as reason to assume the presidencey.\n\nJFK's death was still fresh for some people, and at the hight of the cold War, continuity of Government was on everybodys mind. \nThis was the response to his death "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
a0oc1l
|
why are cable and internet company options in the us so limited?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a0oc1l/eli5_why_are_cable_and_internet_company_options/
|
{
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"eaj6yrh",
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5
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"text": [
"In short: monopolies.\n\nMajor telecom companies took advantage of the fact that internet/cable access had not had specific legislation made concerning them (or that they had not been classified in a manner that existing legislation applied to them).\n\nThis allowed said companies to section off service areas into controlled monopolies, and to lobby politically to protect their monopolies. They do not compete, so they are able to maintain high rates and not invest in improving/expanding services.",
"Game Theory of competition. Not monopolies, though local, small scale monopolies is one possible outcome of this.\n\nBasically its ultra expensive to setup and run a cable/internet company in a city, and it takes you a very long time to recoup even your initial investment (~20-30 years even), let alone deal with ongoing costs.\n\nWhat this means is that in many markets, you need to be the only 1 (or 2) servicing and area, because you need so many customers to make it worthwhile to operate, or even decide to start business there. The minimum threshold for # of customers you need have to be in business is really high, because costs are so high.\n\n If say 3 or 4 or 5 companies do this, ALL of them will fail, because they will divide the customers between them, compete very heavily on price and service, which means they will each individually never hit their threshold customers, and take in less profit in each customer, so they get hit on both sides and thus cannot operate in this manner.\n\nInevitabily, and knowingly, this gives rise to a natural business outcome, where there is limited amounts of competition in a given area, because if new entrants come in, or there are too many entrants, everyone goes out of business, so for a new company to come in, already knowing they will fail, its just an awful business decision. Once one or two companies have a foothold, everyone else knows to stay out.\n\nThis is some really fundamental aspects of business competition. It absolutely is not \"monopolies\". Its natural, expected, and normal outcomes of how many industries NEED to operate to actually stay in business.\n\nThis isn't just about cable/internet providers, however thats one of these businesses that many consumers know about, though few understand how insane it is when many companies start operating in the same area and then they all go in the red.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
8jurdi
|
what exactly is burning/on fire in the mushroom of a nuclear explosion ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8jurdi/eli5what_exactly_is_burningon_fire_in_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dz2kqez"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Oh ... I found my answer here. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cqmfz/what_is_burning_in_a_nuclear_fireball/"
]
] |
||
3oz9st
|
how come we have a mars rover but don't have a rover on every other planet in the solar system?
|
Surely we could learn a ton if we had one on each planet. Why is Mars so special, I get its the next most inhabitable planet next to earth but the other planets surely have their merits
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oz9st/eli5_how_come_we_have_a_mars_rover_but_dont_have/
|
{
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"text": [
"They're expensive.\n\nIt's millions of dollars to get even a little rover to orbit and then to another planet, let alone design and build it. Rockets ain't cheap. And each planet has its own special landing issues, environmental stresses, sunlight levels for energy gain, and so forth, so you can't just reuse the same technology without a lot of money spent on testing. Then you need to pay the salaries and equipment and space for the teams that have to monitor and work with each device. \n\nAll of that adds up to a huge pile of money that governments don't feel like giving to space agencies. Sure we'd learn a lot, but governments have other priorities.",
"Mars is special because the surface is solid, the weather is relatively reasonable, and the temperatures are relatively moderate.\n\nMercury is insanely hot at the sunny side and extremely cold at the shadowside. \n\nVenus is even hotter than sunnyside Mercury and it's constantly raining acid there.\n\nThe other planets are mostly made of gas instead of something solid and have different types of extreme weather.\n\nExcept for poor Pluto, which is simply pretty far and freezing. ",
"We've sent rovers to Venus and Titan (one of Saturn's moons) as well.\n\nbuilding semi-autonomous robots and sending them to other worlds is hard. We're thinking about sending new ones to Venus and several of the gas giant moons, but it's expensive and difficult.",
"If NASA had unlimited funds, I'm sure they would. Since funds are limited, they go after the things that scientists think would have the most scientific value per dollar. Mars is \"cheap\" because we've done it before, and there is still a lot to learn about it. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3dibid
|
why aren't dvorak keyboards the norm if they are so much faster? should i be using a dvorak layout?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dibid/eli5_why_arent_dvorak_keyboards_the_norm_if_they/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct5dixu",
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2,
4
],
"text": [
"Because qwerty is the de facto standard. Everyone has been using qwerty for over a century, so attempting to force a change now would be nearly impossible.",
"The only studies indicating the dvorak layout is significantly more efficient were conducted by August Dvorak himself(bias much). Independent studies show little if any benefit from the Dvorak layout. If there were huge gains to be had by switching, people likely would. Especially in industries where typing plays a large role. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
74280o
|
why is it safe to eat veggies/fruit grown in rain water/waste water - but not drink the water by itself?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74280o/eli5_why_is_it_safe_to_eat_veggiesfruit_grown_in/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because the plant itself acts as a pseudo filter. The roots of the plant draw in water to send to the fruit, but the roots won't take in the contaminants present in the water. So the plant filters out harmful chemicals allowing us to eat the fruit safely. ",
"This is absolutely not always true!\n\nPlants can *and do* absorb toxins from their environment. Now, the plant may filter some (or even all) of them out, but it might not. Some might end up in the parts of the plant you eat - **especially** if you eat the roots.",
"What you don't want from random waste water is mostly harmful bacteria. These can't survive inside a healthy plant, and physically can't get into it because the water absorbing root's openings are smaller than the bacteria.",
"You totally can drink rain water, you just have to make sure you've collected it in a way that won't contaminate it, or you'll need to filter it after collection.",
"Rain water and waste water can contain harmful chemicals if you drink it directly. Soil can filter some of those chemicals by adsorption, later on plants can filter even more.\n\nBut, not all soils and plants have the same filtering properties. For example, some plants can absorb heavy metals and arrest them in nodules in their roots, you wouldn't want to eat that plant.\n\nIn general, unless you're close to a contaminated area, the filtering provided by the soil and the plant is enough, meaning the plant is safe to eat. That is without considering the chemical and physical defenses plants make to fend off herbivores.",
"More like borophyl, am I right?",
"My husband works for a waste water treatment plant that sends reclaimed water to near by dairy's and vineyards the state (I think, maybe the city) has set standards for how this water can be used in agriculture based on how many dyes removed from the end product the water is used. Example: the water can be used to irrigated crops that the cows eat, that then get slaughtered for market because it's enough steps away from human consumption but they cannot use the water for the cows to drink. Also it can be used to water the vineyards because the grapes go through a fermentation process before consumption so that gets counted as an extra step. It's all very regulated for water that under analysis would be as clean as your tap water if it was chlorinated.",
"I have a degree in a waste water related field, DO NOT eat fruit/vegetables grown in any type of waste water. Some popular science articles may speculate that plants have the ability to filter anything, but water soluble toxins may not be removed from the water which is absorbed by the plant.",
"When I was younger we were always told not to pick blackberries and blueberries that grew on the highways because they would have higher levels of toxic chemicals from absorbing the car exhaust. Yes that would be another explain like it's 5 question.",
"boy i hope you're abiding by that idea. you're going to get sick. \n\nrainwater isn't always clean, ever wonder why its so clear after a heavy rain, all the particles that used to be in the air are now gone thanks to rain catching them, if you're in a polluted area that rain is now contaminated. \nwe had some bushfire reductions burns close, the air was filled with haze. heavy rain overnight and my car is filthy but haze has gone. \nthat gunk is in ppls water tanks as well now.\nyou will also find that regulations regarding fruit and veg have some strict guidelines about what source is used to water plants. \nthey found a strawberry farm in my town was using waste from a septic tank as fertilizer, the only reason they looked was a spike in ppl turning up in the hospital sick. \ngrey water is only recommended for lawns etc, not produce plants and even then there are guidelines as to how far away systems should be to plants that produce fruit as well because of contamination. ",
"1. Rain water should be relatively pure water. It will have some low level atmospheric contaminants in it, but overall is actually pretty clean. \n\n2. Waste water is a vague and non-specific term. If you are talking about treated wastewater after the processing is done, that is alos relatively free of contaminants. \n\n3. Wastewater in the form of runoff and storm drain water may or may not have large amounts of contaminants in it based on where the runoff is from.\n\nThe reasons you can eat the food and not drink the water are: You may actually be able to drink that water in the first place. We generally don't becasue it *could* contain contaminants that will sicken you. The other reason we don't drink that water is that it is unappetizing to most people. There are water sources that are absolutely not contaminated by anything that would cause health issues that look and taste horrible. \n\nThe other thing is that for many biological contaminants the plant is not a host or a carrier of the contamination. The water may put bacterial or viral spores and organisms onto the plants, but the plants aren't infected and don't carry the organism inside the produce. Now here is a key point, always wash your produce. There may be pesticides, contamination, dirt, fumigants, or even in some cases food wax coatings on them. Not good eats.\n\nThe last thing is, well, we do get sick. There are several cases of heavily water using crops such as lettuce that have carried e. coli contamination introduced in the field via workers defecating in the field or bad water that the plant actually pulled live e.coli up through its vascular system into the plant and caused outbreaks. \n\nSo simple answer. 1. The water may not actually make you sick in the first place and second people do occasionally get sick from contaminated water used in irrigation. \n"
]
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|
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[
[],
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||
2vzq7k
|
what effects has the unnatural breeding due to the slave trade had on descendants of slaves?
|
Hi Folks, after spending sometime working in the Caribbean I managed to understand some of the impact the slave trade had. I myself live in a very white country with few black people around so I have never had any black friends before this. What I took away with my observations is that the men I worked with just needed to look at a dumbbell to build muscle and had bundles of stamina. This got me thinking about how due to the slave trade only the people with stamina and muscles would be bought by the "owners" and only fit ones would make the horrendous journey from Africa. So my question is this. Due to the slave trade and the owners deciding who could breed and healthy genes deciding who would survive illness, are black people in general a super race with evolution being controlled by man? Is there less health problems for the descendants of slaves? Was the IQ of a race slowed down due to smart men/women being killed for being too smart in their owners eyes? Has the artificial breeding of a race caused any weird health issues that is only found in slave descendants? When I ask that last question it's because I'm reminded of reading about the Jewish and their health problems due to breeding within their own culture mostly. I can't remember the name of the horrible genetic issue they have. My IQ question stems from reading how the Chinese were held back in making loads of advances because they never developed glass like the westerners did due to china porcelain being so good at what they wanted it for ie. westerners were able to develop testubes etc.
I am hoping for serious replies and I hope I haven't offended anyone.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vzq7k/eli5_what_effects_has_the_unnatural_breeding_due/
|
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"text": [
"Here is an article you may want to read:\n\n_URL_0_",
"You raise some interesting possibilities, the answer to most of which are... probably not. Here's why I say that:\n\nYes, the slave trade was a form of extreme selective pressure, which no doubt resulted in the killing of many weak, sickly, or \"too smart for their own good\" Africans. And given time that could alter their features.\n\nBut... First of all, none of those are necessarily true for all slaves. There were many house slaves as well, who would have been more prized for intelligence, and would have been sheltered from physical demands and illness to an extent. Even though they're probably a smaller percentage, the fact that they almost certainly lived long enough to bear children probably means they would have had a disproportionate impact.\n\nBut even ignoring that, there's a bigger problem: time. It might seem like the slave trade lasted a long time, but by evolutionary standards it didn't, especially because humans don't lend themselves to breeding programs. We have too few children too rarely (compare, say, a mouse, which can give you a few generations per years with large litters to choose from), so change is slow. And, for the most part, slaves still picked their own partners (as opposed to having someone consciously pair only the best, strongest workers and have no one else mate). Given that inefficiency, you can't substantially redirect the course of human evolution in a few centuries. If there was any effect, it was probably extremely small.",
" > When I ask that last question it's because I'm reminded of reading about the Jewish and their health problems due to breeding within their own culture mostly.\n\nYou're probably thinking of Tay-Sachs here, that's the most common one anyway. Anyway, AFAIK African Americans don't have any health issues that Africans in America don't experience themselves. This is because the Jewish population is, and always has been, tiny, and more or less share genetic roots. The American slave pop. on the other hand, is much more varied. Slaves came from all over the African coast, and there's much more genetic variety among a race (Africans) than there would be within just one racial ethnicity (Jewish People). \n\n > My IQ question stems from reading how the Chinese were held back in making loads of advances because they never developed glass like the westerners did due to china porcelain being so good\n\nHow does this relate to your other IQ hypothesis at all?",
"[African-Americans are at greater risk for hypertension](_URL_0_) because the selection pressures of the voyage from Africa to the US ensured that those who were better able to withstand dehydration survived - and one way to mitigate dehydration is to have high salt levels."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/21/jamaicans-sprinting-athletics-commonwealth-games"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://survivalofsickestinselberger.blogspot.com/2013/03/prompt-1-hypertension-african-americans.html"
]
] |
|
3q1k9j
|
why are people uncomfortable with being alone?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q1k9j/eli5_why_are_people_uncomfortable_with_being_alone/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwb90pm",
"cwb91wt",
"cwbb8le"
],
"score": [
15,
5,
20
],
"text": [
"Humans as a species are a group/tribal animal. For as long as we have existed as a species we have worked together, sharing our lives with others within our group. The desire to be around others and feel part of a group is so ingrained into the fabric of our being that it is effectively a basic driver of our species.\n\n\nNow...there will always be exceptions, there *are* people - lots of people - who are very comfortable being alone/in just their own company and there's absolutely nothing wrong/unnatural but that doesn't undermine/make untrue the reality that our species is predominantly tribal/social.\n\n\n ",
"I am no psychologist so I can't answer scientifically, but perhaps it is related to the social nature of humans, and that, at least in the wild, individuals are much more vulnerable than groups. This does translate to modern life as well: if you're alone, there's nobody to save you or call an ambulance in case of an accident or medical emergency.\n\nBut this is hardly a general property. Some people are uncomfortable *not* being alone. And quite a few people, I imagine, are comfortable both alone and in a group.",
"There is nothing beter than being alone. Not always ofcorse, some form of consistant interaction is nice but I really prefer being alone. I'm sure many would agree with me."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
67btuv
|
i know the rothschild family is a banking dynasty, but why are they so sketchy and feared to run the world?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67btuv/eli5_i_know_the_rothschild_family_is_a_banking/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dgpc0kk"
],
"score": [
23
],
"text": [
"The Rothschild family is Jewish. They were court Jews, meaning that they were the bankers for royalty back in the day. Through this they gained a lot of money, power, and influence. \n\nAt the turn of the 20th century (1900) some Russian wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a made up book that pretended to be real which outlined a plot by the Jews to take over the world. Through banking among other things. \n\nA lot of people bought into it. Hitler referenced it in Mein Kampf. It caused so much hatred towards the Jewish people that some of it persist 100 years later. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
571620
|
why do we need to take anti-biotics when we get a bacterial infection? is it possible for our body to fight off an infection on its own?
|
I've had a few chest infections throughout my life and have always wondered (especially with the minor ones) why we have to take anti-biotics to get rid of the infection rather than letting our immune system take care of it like it would with a virus.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/571620/eli5_why_do_we_need_to_take_antibiotics_when_we/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8o2y62",
"d8o6500"
],
"score": [
4,
7
],
"text": [
"Some people do choose to do this. What you definitely don't want to do is take antibiotics for a time but then stop prematurely before the bacterial infection is completely gone, since doing so can promote bacterial resistance to that antibiotic.\n\nAlthough using the antibiotics to take out the bacteria quickly and making sure of this fact is also better than slowly killing off the bacteria over time with just your immune system since that gives a longer time for you to harbour immune-response-resistant bacteria and spread them to others. So it is probably wise to take the antibiotics anyway.",
"Please please please do not listen to the conspiracy theory rhetoric about big pharma and all natural all organic bullshit. Yes, *most of the time* your body may be able to fight off a bacterial infection. However, that doesn't mean you'll heal perfectly fine after the bacteria is gone. Tuberculosis, for example, can cause permanent scarring in your lungs even if it doesn't kill you, which leads to chronic illnesses like asthma.\n\nNecrotizing fasciitis will eff you up. Even *with* antibiotics, that is not a disease you want to let go for any length of time.\n\nBut those are kind of the worst case bacterial infections, right? Still, even common one can mess you up. Strep throat isn't a big deal, you'll get over it in a few days. That said, there is always the possibility of complications, and it's very contagious. Letting it go untreated means making it much easier to pass along and every person who gets it, including you, is at risk for potentially serious complications, like autoimmune disorders. Likewise, pink eye will probably work itself out just fine, unless it damages your cornea and permanently affects your vision.\n\nWhich is all to say, yeah most of the time you'll probably be fine without antibiotics, *but why would you take the risk?* Most of the time you drive you're fine without a seatbelt, and most \"crashes\" you're ever going to experience will be fender benders. But why would you *not* wear a seatbelt?\n\nAs for viruses: we don't let them run their course because it's somehow better for you that way, we do it because we don't have a choice. The viruses that are the most dangerous we prevent entirely with vaccines as best we possibly can. Viruses like the flu have too many different species and mutate too quickly for one vaccine to be effective against - but we try anyway! The flu is no big deal for most people: you puke, you sit on the toilet for a while. But then you get over it. But the flu kills tens of thousands of people every year. So people who are at risk of serious complications get the best vaccine available. And some of the most terrifying viruses, like HIV and Ebola are very difficult to make vaccines for, and we haven't managed to make them yet (although we're getting close! Especially for Ebola). We *want* to treat viruses. We *really really* do. We just *can't*. The best we can do if there's no vaccine available is wait it out and hope nothing bad happens. \\*\n\nDoes that sound like a good thing though? Just wait and hope for the best? No. So we treat with antibiotics because the alternative is to do nothing and hopefully your strep won't turn into scarlet fever and hopefully your scarlet fever won't elevate your body temperature too high and cause brain damage. Will it actually do that? Probably not, but I'm not really ok taking that risk.\n\nThere *are* risks associated with antibiotics, but mostly that just has to do with allergies. The vast majority of people are far more at risk of a compilation from the bacteria than from the antibiotic. And it's true that bacteria are evolving resistances, but it's important to remember that that will happen anyway, even if antibiotics are only ever used in the worst case scenarios - and of course, waiting to find out that it's become one might be too late. The problem isn't taking antibiotics, it's taking them when you truly don't need to, like if you have the flu. An antibiotic will literally do nothing to help you, so you're just breeding resistant bacteria for no reason. And there's a practice on farming that involves very low doses of certain antibiotics to stimulate more muscle growth, but that practice is largely banned (and it should be noted: FDA regulations prohibit antibiotics in your meat. Food animals are taken off antibiotics for a period before being slaughtered and the meat is tested, so the antibiotics never make it to your plate. This is equally true of both certified organic and conventional farming with GMOs and such).\n\nBut if you have a bacterial infection, it's probably still a good idea to take antibiotics. Of course, a *qualified, educated, and licensed* doctor may advise you that antibiotics aren't worth it. You should always listen to a [qualified] doctor. But generally speaking, if your doctor prescribes an antibiotic, at the very least it's not going to hurt you, and he or she is probably giving it to you for a good reason.\n\n\\* There are some anti-viral drugs, but they're not as effective as antibiotics are against bacteria. And they're super extensive. So for the vast majority of the time, if you have a viral infection there's nothing you can do that's worth doing."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3n3h4k
|
the use of the word "mouth breather" as a derogatory word.
|
Why is it a bad thing to be a mouth breather? I always have been and I tend to blame it on my asthma and I struggle to get enough air to my lungs through my nose. My wife can't stand it and always tells me to breathe through my nose. This makes me incredibly self conscious of my breathing.
Anyone shed some light on this for me?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n3h4k/eli5_the_use_of_the_word_mouth_breather_as_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvkf7rp",
"cvkg614"
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text": [
"when ~~I~~ a person has their mouth hanging open all the time, they look like they're in shock or amazed at everything. so they appear to be stupid. I would not take this personally. ",
"It's very loud, and if someone has bad breath, that's easier to smell. I have a deviated septum, so I'm self-conscious about it as well, but it's something to take note of and practice."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
69ug28
|
if an asteroid, much like the one that killed the dinosaurs, was to hit the earth again, how much time in advance would nasa know and would they tell the public?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69ug28/eli5_if_an_asteroid_much_like_the_one_that_killed/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dh9gek7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Asteroid, probably decades. If something that big - 10 km in diameter - were on a collision course with Earth we would almost certainly have found it already. And no government or organisation would be able to cover it up because it just takes a decent telescope sky survey to spot it and lots of countries have research places that do that.\n\nThe warning would probably be long enough to send a deflection mission. Setting off a nuclear bomb near the asteroid will give it a shove so it misses, and is better than trying to outright blow it up.\n\nComet, perhaps only a few years. New comets are always coming in from the outer solar system and they can't be seen until they get close enough, although it's extremely rare for one to be 10 km across. The same consideration that anyone could spot it apply. A deflection mission would be much harder to launch with our current spaceflight technology because the comet's trajectory takes much more rocket fuel to intercept."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
7oskqw
|
why are bulb colors related to temperatures? [cool white (4100k), soft white (2,700k), etc.]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7oskqw/eli5_why_are_bulb_colors_related_to_temperatures/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dsbx9fi"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nWhen you heat up a material, like in an incandescent light bulb, it emits a spectrum of light whose dominant wavelength is related to the temperature. Higher temperature, representing greater energy, emits more blue light, which we perceive as visually 'cooler'. Lighting systems use 'color temperature' to refer to perceived light color even for more modern lighting technologies that aren't incandescent."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation"
]
] |
||
c1wakz
|
what do pilots do when they find air turbulence? is the only option to wait it out, or are they able to escape it somehow?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1wakz/eli5_what_do_pilots_do_when_they_find_air/
|
{
"a_id": [
"erg4vyh"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"They can try to fly around it or change altitudes to fly below or above it, but that's not always possible if the airspace is crowded or the area of the turbulence is too large to avoid. Otherwise, they just fly thought it. Turbulence isn't a danger to the plane so avoiding it is for passenger comfort; avoid it if possible but not strictly necessary."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
163n0e
|
who are all the people on the sidelines during a football game?
|
Who are they? (ie. Positions, titles) And what are they doing?
American Football.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/163n0e/eli5_who_are_all_the_people_on_the_sidelines/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7sg71d"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"I've had the chance to go to a hell of a lot of college games and be on the sidelines. And it breaks down like this: \nPlayers (Obviousy) and non-uniform players. (Think 5th sring) \nCoaches. The various assistant dfensive coordinator, special teams, assistant special teams coach and his assistants. There's a lot of these guys. \nMedical staff/Waterboys/girls/Ball-handlers/Runners. \nMedia. Cameramen, sound guys, boom operators, photographers (holy shit are there a lot of these guys.) Writers, and so on. \nSpirit staff. Cheerleaders, danceline, that fucking baton girl, etc. \nSecurity, for both the team, stadium, and the state troopers who escort the coaches. \nAnd there's always the random jackasses like me, who just knows somebody."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
xqgc1
|
why at swimming pools everyone is asked to get out of the pool for 15 minutes every hour or two. is it just tradition?
|
Before someone says that it's because the lifeguards need to take a break, that does not always seem to be the case. I have seen it done at places where the lifeguards do not even take breaks, or they rotate in a new lifeguard when someone takes a break, so someone is always on duty.
You never hear of being asked to leave for 15 minutes when you are in a store or a library or a restaurant.
Is it just "one of those things" that we have always done, so why stop now?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xqgc1/eli5_why_at_swimming_pools_everyone_is_asked_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5oopj4",
"c5oorl4",
"c5opc4w"
],
"score": [
14,
2,
8
],
"text": [
"It's to change shifts and check for dead bodies/foreign objects in the pool. No, really. I'm serious. All of that sunscreen clouds up the pool. They need you to get out so the water can filter/clear up a little bit and they can make sure no one drowned or is drowning. ",
"Most pools only have the children under 16 get out every hour to give them a chance to rest and warm up (you can become hypothermic even in a slightly cool pool over long enough time) This also gives the adults time to swim without the annoying children.\n\nSome large pools clear the entire pool so that everyone can rest and the lifeguards can have a clear view of the pool bottom to check for any drowning victims.",
"Really? I've never been in a pool where everyone was been asked to get out"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
falczt
|
if the earth's rotation is 23 hours and 56 mins why isn't it eventually pitch black at 1pm if we use time at exactly 24 hour intervals?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/falczt/eli5_if_the_earths_rotation_is_23_hours_and_56/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fiyuwak",
"fiyviem",
"fiyvo87"
],
"score": [
4,
37,
23
],
"text": [
"Because the earth is also travelling around the sun, this shifts the sun as a reference point. The amount of added angle due to the movement of the earth through space adds up to 4 minutes.\n\nSo 23:56 to spin around, 4 minutes extra to account for the distance travelled (like looking behind you when you drive past something).",
"There's two types of \"days\"\n\nWhat you are referring to is the sidereal day, that is, the amount of time it takes Earth to spin exactly one revolution relative to a fixed point in space.\n\nHowever, the solar day is how long it takes a point on Earth pointing at the sun takes to rotate around and point at the sun again. There is a difference because the Earth is orbiting the sun, thus the Earth's position relative to the sun has changed by roughly 1° (since it takes 365.25 days for a complete orbit). It takes another 4 minutes to make up the difference.",
"You're getting mixed up because there are different kinds of \"days\"\n\nA *Sidereal* day is 23 hours and 56 minutes. This is the time it takes Earth to complete one rotation around its axis.\n\nA *Solar* day is 24 hours, this is the time it takes between when the prime meridian is pointed directly at the sun until it is pointed directly at the sun again.\n\nThese two things are different because the Earth is traveling around the sun so in order for the sun to be overhead again you need the Earth to rotate a bit over 360 degrees so it takes a bit more than the 23 hour and 56 minute sidereal day.\n\nThe difference between these two meanings of a day are also how you get really weird \"day\" lengths for Venus and Mercury"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1rciuq
|
how does my gps know how to pronounce so many different street names?
|
It's not always 100% accurate but it's usually pretty close. Do they record a voice actor saying the thousand or so most common street names? Or have them say a bunch of syllables that are strung together? Or some other technique I'm not even thinking of?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rciuq/eli5_how_does_my_gps_know_how_to_pronounce_so/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cdltrct",
"cdlvkp5",
"cdlwboy"
],
"score": [
17,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Well, it sure doen't have a huge database of sound clips for each & every street or other voice direction. It's a speech synthesizer, much like prof. Stephen Hawking uses (only a lot better).\n\nA speech synthesizer, as the name suggests, synthesizes speech by concatenating sounds for each letter or letter combination into a word/scentence. This is based on a set of [phonetic rules](_URL_0_) and is not a set of sounds that have been recorded by some voice actor.\n\nYou might want to play around with [this online speech synthesizer](_URL_1_), which is one of the more natural sounding ones out there.\n\nTo better understand how different sounds put together make up words, [this synthesizer](_URL_2_) is very basic and sounds like an 80's B-movie villain in a robosuit, but you'll be able to hear the different elements of words and scentences.\n\nBy the way, some navigation systems, like TomTom, use prerecorded scentences and words to string together directions (it doesn't say street names, only things like 'turn right at the next crossing', so the amount of recorded stuff is limited) and they come with optional celebrity voices.",
"You must have a pretty good synthesizer because my GPS (...Google maps) frequently mispronounces things. On the other hand, it's fun to giggle at.",
"It's a collection of different sounds and syllables the computer puts together. \n\nI live in Hawaii and the street names are absolutely hacked by the GPS. Kalanianaole Highway...Likelike...kuhio, etc"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetics",
"http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html",
"http://codewelt.com/proj/speak"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
559t5z
|
why are car rides soothing for babies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/559t5z/eli5_why_are_car_rides_soothing_for_babies/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d88ra4l",
"d88rfns",
"d88vt1x",
"d88wi0y",
"d88x1ej",
"d88y7rr",
"d88yi4o",
"d88yzw5"
],
"score": [
63,
47,
3,
6,
18,
67,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because the combination of being in a confined space and the motion of the car with the droning noise is very similar to the experience in the womb, they often find this very comforting. Our little girl usually goes to sleep after a few miles. \n\n\nSource; 6 month old daughter at home. ",
"Aren't they soothing for everybody? ",
"ever been really tired driving home from work? Makes sense to me",
"They aren't always soothing. Our 5 year old has always been able to fall asleep easily in the car but our 5 month old HATES the car. she has fallen asleep in the car 2 times. Luckily, most every place we have to go is within a few miles. Because it's awful lol. ",
"Not just babies. My 28 year old friend can't handle staying awake on any car ride longer than 20 minutes lol.",
"Some people will say it's because the car environment reminds babies of the womb. That may be true. It's not a testable hypothesis, though.\n\nThe noise and vibration of the car's engine create a monotonous sound and vibration that allow a baby to relax; there is nothing new to see, hear, feel, or do because the car's interior doesn't change. Visual, audible, and sensory stimulation are reduced making it much easier to fall asleep.\n\nThere is also speculation that because a parent is in the car the baby may feel safe, too. However that's not a testable hypothesis, either.",
"I had aftermarket exhaust in my truck and it would always put my son out in less than 5 minutes.",
"Very similar to a womb. Confined spaces and muffled noises. Throw in a couple mild vibrations and a baby can't help from falling asleep.\nMeanwhile, a car vibrating can put it to sleep and that's fine, but shaking a baby to sleep gets you in trouble..."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1j5bz1
|
what is the physics behind suppressing the sound from a gun shot, and how does this apply to an "oil can suppressor"?
|
I would like to know the physics behind how the sound gets muffled.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j5bz1/eli5_what_is_the_physics_behind_suppressing_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbb9308"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The sound of a gunshot is air being pushed forward from the muzzle fast enough to create a sonic boom, combined with the sound of the detonation of the gunpowder escaping the muzzle and chamber.\n\nA silencer gives somewhere for that air to go and be slowed down before exiting the gun. Good silencers \"trap\" the muzzle gas and deflect it around internal baffles so that by the time they exit, they're going slow enough to produce very little sound.\n\nGoing a step further, a true silenced weapon also keeps its action locked forward when fired. This prevents sound from escaping the open chamber. Pistols generally need to be modified for this, and it requires you to manually cycle the action after each shot.\n\nYet another step is to use subsonic rounds. THese have a lighter powder load for a slower bullet. It pushes less air slower in front of it, and is even quieter. They are only lethal at close ranges, however.\n\nI've fired weapons that combine all three, and pretty much the only sound you hear is the click of the hammer and the impact of the round on the target. Pretty cool."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6zozhy
|
how exactly does a crystal radio work?
|
How does the simplest, functioning crystal radio work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zozhy/eli5_how_exactly_does_a_crystal_radio_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dmwwupr",
"dmwx5xc"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It has three parts:\n\n1) The Antenna, which absorbs AM radio waves from the air as an electrical current.\n\n2) The Tuning Coil, which is a variable coil resonator that allows you to tune the frequency to which the antenna is most sensitive.\n\n3) The Diode, which serves as a detector to pull off one half of the resonant electric current to feed it into the earphone. This was once a crystal diode, though today there are many possible sources.\n\nThat's it, no battery, no volume control, no nothing. Radio waves directly into sounds.",
"They rely on two physical phenomenon:\n\n* when radio waves pass through a conductor, they induce a small electrical current whose frequency matches the radio wave\n* certain kind of circuits will ring like a bell, or resonate, and just the right frequency\n\nA crystal radio is that kind of circuit, and it will resonate when exposed to the right frequency of radio wave. The energy in a strong radio wave is enough to power a very small speaker without any additional power. Most radios used some form of amplification, so weaker signals can be heard through larger speakers."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
v4zay
|
what the numbers for a computer processor mean, (e.g., ghz, cache, generation,) and how they are related to performance.
|
Say, would a 2nd generation 2.66 Ghz i5 be better than the latest i7 @ 2.2 Ghz.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v4zay/eli5_what_the_numbers_for_a_computer_processor/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c51e7kp",
"c51ebc9",
"c51jlv1"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"it is hard to compare performance across different generations. One reason why it is hard to say one is better is because there are lots of ways to be better. What best for you means is different depending on how you use your computer.\r\rGHz means billions of cycles per second, basically how many times per second that the CPU does something. That sounds very standard, like it is something that you could compare across different processors but actually there is a lot of difference between what a processor can get done in one cycle. Modern processors can get more than one thing done in one cycle (even on one core). Don't ask me how.\r\rIn general the later the generation the more the processor can get done. Core i5 vs i7 is a bit tricky. When Intel is making processors they try to make everything on the chip work, but that is very hard. Often a few parts of it don't work. Other parts can make up for the broken parts but it will be a little slower in which case they label it an i5 or i3. If too many things are broken on one they throw it out.\r\rFor the processor to get something done it needs some information to work on. It could pull that information from the hard drive but that would really slow. The RAM is much faster place to get information from but is still a bit slow if you need to get it really often. The cache is right on the processor and can be used really fast. There are different levels of cache. Some are small and really fast, some are bigger but slower (still a lot smaller and faster than RAM. \r\rNow there is the question of which of these things matter the most. Like most questions the answer is \"it depends.\" The latest generation of Intel chips uses a lot less electricity than the 2nd generation and has faster graphics but is not a lot faster in other ways. If you don't care about how much electricity it uses (heat and battery life) then a faster 2nd generation will be faster if it does more GHz.\r\rEven if you are not on a laptop you might care about heat. How hot processors are does a lot to change how fast they are. If they get too hot they have to slow down so they down burn. If you are doing something that uses a lot of computer power for long times like transcoding video the heat limits how fast it can go. If you are doing something like web browsing where the processor is needed in short bursts it won't over heat and have so slow down.\r\rGood luck.",
"A computer does everything based on a clock. This clock is really fast and is measured in gigahertz. A hertz means something happens every second. A one gigahertz clock means the clock toggles up/down 1,000,000,000 times a second.\n\nEach time the clock moves the processor does something. To perform a single instruction, like moving the number 5 into a register, it takes at least one clock. Processors process instructions in what is called a pipeline, which is sort of like an automotive assembly line, a clock is required for each stage in the pipeline to progress. The longer the pipeline the more clocks are required to perform a complete instruction. The average instructions per clock can be measured and is called IPC.\n\nThose two numbers can be used to judge a processors speed. But the best way is to perform a test, known as a benchmark, to see how the processor performs doing real tasks.\n\nThe difference between an i5 and an i7 is unrelated. i7's have hyperthreading, which makes your 4 core processor look like an 8 core processor to the operating system. It isnt really an 8 core processor, so it does not have twice the processing power. Hyperthreading takes advantage of stalls in the processor pipeline and allows a different program to use the CPU instead of waiting. This improves performance slightly for some apps, but may cause a performance degradation in other apps. -- Which is why most people cant justify the extra cost difference between an i5 and i7 processor.",
"GHz is billions of cycles per second. A really simple (and honestly wrong, see later in the post) way to think about this is that a computer can, say, add two numbers together in once cycle. If you want to do a billion additions in one second you would need 1GHz, etc.\n\nCache is memory located on the CPU itself. Because fast memory is expensive, modern computers use what is called memory hierarchy. On the slow and cheap end you have spinning disk harddrives, and on the super fast and expensive side you have cache, with RAM being in the middle.\n\nWhat a computer does is have the entire program stored up on disk. It then loads parts, or pages, of the program into RAM, a few less bits (frames) into cache, etc.\n\nWhen a processor needs some information from the program, (like the numbers we are adding) it first checks its cache. This is usually so fast that it hapens in less than one cycle. If it ISN'T in cache, the processor then checks the RAM. This is *really really really* slow compared to finding it in cache (hundreds of thousands of times slower). So slow in fact that the processor will pause the guilty program and work on something else while it waits.\n\nIf it isn't in RAM either, then you get a \"pagefault\" and the computer then needs to load the information from disk, which can be BILLIONS of times slower. If you remember Windows XP \"thrashing,\" it was the computer trying to do so much at once that it ran out of room and had to pagefault constantly.\n\nModern, multicore, processors actually have multiple layers of cache. In a quad core, you usually have tiny L1 cache for each core, then two L2 caches split between 2 core each, then a relatively large L3 cache for all four. Because cache misses and pagefaults are so bad, you want as much cache and ram as you can afford.\n\nGeneration is fairly simple in concept. A CPU company will create a base design then tweak it for all the processors in a generation. The next generation has a different base.\n\nWhere it gets complicated is in what makes the bases different. in the 80's (iirc) chip designers finally heard of Ford and his assembly lines, and realized that a computer cycle can be broken apart run in parallel. This is called pipelining. [The classic RISC pipeline as an example.](_URL_1_) [Wiki](_URL_0_).\n\nOne cycle is now split into five parts. (Side note for below, there is an even \"lower\" version of cache called registers.)\n\n* IF is \"instruction fetch.\" This is where the processor reads cache, and grabs the instruction. An instruction is the binary code version of (A+B→C)\n* ID is \"instruction decode.\" This is where the processor gets ready for addition, and loads the numbers stored at registers A and B.\n* EX is \"execution.\" The processor adds A and B.\n* MEM is \"memory.\" For addition, we skip this step. This is where the processor can read/write registers to/from cache.\n* WB is \"write back.\" Here the processor writes the result of A+B and stores it in register C.\n\nWith some extra memory to store each step's results, we can actually do 5 instructions at the same time. We IF while the previous instruction ID, etc. Modern processors have *hundreds* of steps like this, meaning they can actually effectively add hundreds of numbers per cycle.\n\nThere is a problem though. Say we want to do\n\n A+B→C\n C+D→E\n\nIf we were to use naive pipelining, we would start adding C and D before the result of A+B can be written to C. This would make the program behave oddly. For example:\n\n A=1\n B=2\n C=0\n D=4\n\nNormally we would have:\n\n 1+2=3→C\n 3+4=7→E\n \nBut with naive pipelining:\n\n 1+2=3\n 0+4=4\n 3→C\n 4→E\n\nIn order to fix this, and similar problems, (called hazards) the processor has to do a lot of work to make sure that it doesn't have to go back and correct mistakes like this. So each generation of processor has better pipelining, and better hazard avoidance, and therefore can get more done in once cycle.\n\n**TL;DR**: GHz is billions of cycles per second, cache is on chip fast memory (get more of it!), and generations affect how much a processor can do per cycle."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_RISC_pipeline",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Fivestagespipeline.png"
]
] |
|
30n5t7
|
what are moods and why do i feel them?
|
For example why do I feel happy when x happens but sad when y happens?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30n5t7/eli5_what_are_moods_and_why_do_i_feel_them/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpty5ix"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Moods are caused by a release of chemicals in your brain. These chemicals correspond to different moods. These responses are triggered by different stimuli. We have these reactions, because they encourage us to make the world better and are thus evolutionarily beneficial, this is the reason we feel sorrow in response to negative things. \n\nHere are chemicals that cause emotions:\nDopamine = Happiness;\nLack of Serotonin, Norepinephrine and Dopamine = Sadness;\nAdrenaline, Cortisol, Norepinephrine = Stress;\nPhenylethylamine, Norepinephrine and Dopamine = Love;"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
ce1o2l
|
how are emergency numbers (e.g. 911) handled near borders of countries?
|
What happens if the calls get to the other country?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ce1o2l/eli5_how_are_emergency_numbers_eg_911_handled/
|
{
"a_id": [
"etxrtxe",
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10,
7
],
"text": [
"Well here in Australia our emergency number is 000 (which was the worst by the way since when everyone had desk landline phones curious toddlers would stand on their tippy-toes trying to reach the phone on the desk and would always mash 000 since it was the only number they could reach) but if a US citizen is here and needs emergency services and just instinctively dials 911 it will redirect to 000. \n\nSo tl;dr I think any emergency number will just redirect to the country you are in. I could be completely wrong as I'm just basing it on what happens in Australia.",
"Well in the EU it's the same for all countries and they route 112 to the nearest emergency dispatch. While standing in one country and being connected to a different countries cell tower could cause issues they generally inform the correct emergency service and worst case a German ambulance will pick you up in Belgium.",
"I assume you're talking about cell phones in this case. The issue exists not just on country borders but locally as well and is handled the same way. When cell phone companies deploy new towers they have to submit paperwork to 911 centers with am address and coordinates for the tower as well as showing antennas and the direction and coverage angles. The 911 center then tells them the info they need to route 911 calls properly. However when it is on a border that form first goes to the 911 center where the tower is located and they make the determination based on the antenna direction and width of the signal which antennas they're going to accept coverage for, with some additional back and forth the neighboring 911 center will take responsibility for the other antenna/s. Often you have where an antenna covers both areas, in that case it is a judgement call based off of population and other factors such as roads as to which one they route the call to. It isn't set in stone and based on call volume they could change that down the road. In the event that a call does end up at the wrong 911 center once the dispatcher figures that out they can route the call to where it belongs."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
ey2hrf
|
what it means for a movie to have “pacing issues”
|
I know what the words mean but I dont really have an eye for these things and I usually just get sucked into the movie as a casual viewer
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ey2hrf/eli5_what_it_means_for_a_movie_to_have_pacing/
|
{
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"fgeu5xq",
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],
"score": [
12,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Pacing refers to how quickly the plot moves along. Some movies have a lot of dialog and character development and move along slowly, others are all car chases and explosions and take you on a roller coaster ride.\n\nPacing issues can refer to one of three things:\n\n* too slow -- the movie isn't making good use of slow pace and audiences get bored\n* too fast -- the action is outrunning the plot and audiences aren't sure why things are happening\n* inconsistently -- the movie speeds up and slows down without serving any coherent purpose",
"Generally, it's how fast or slow the story unfolds. Like a single scene that doesn't advance the plot and takes up a lot of screentime or a whole bunch of things happening right at the end with no time to establish them would be example of pacing issues. \n\n[This scene](_URL_0_) is a legendary example of terrible dialogue pacing, but pacing issues tend to be more structural.",
"Good stories often have a \"speed\", and an established pattern for acceleration/deceleration.\n\nSome stories do the thing where we start off in the slow, boring, mundane world we're familiar with and then *suddenly* we are thrust unexpectedly into an unfamiliar world where everything is moving much faster. And often stories have a climax where tension builds and builds into a super fast action-packed shoot-em-up sequence until finally we have our showdown with the Big Bad, and things quickly slow down for a dramatic conversation or monologue, and then they speed up again really quickly for the Final Battle, and then our hero emerges victorious and the story is over. *The Matrix* is a good example of this, I think.\n\nAnother important thing is that scenes--and the transitions between scenes--need to happen at appropriate speeds. So scenes with big important conversations should proceed slowly and gracefully, information should be dribbled out gradually, so the audience knows to pay attention and soak it all in. And other times, when everything is falling apart into chaos and a million things are happening at once, we should be seeing rapid jump-cuts and quick half-second shots, these tell the audience \"shit's popping off, it's pandemonium, everything is moving fast, perhaps too fast for our hero to catch up\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkoXhgtI58"
],
[]
] |
|
40twe4
|
minimum wage raise
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40twe4/eli5_minimum_wage_raise/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cyx18ee"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It's an incredibly complex topic, and even the best economists disagree on exactly what will happen. Economics is hard like that. It's hard to say that doing A causes B, due to how complex and uncontrollable the economy truely is. It's better to say that doing A has a chance to cause B, C and/or D.\n\nSo, on to your question. Yes, paying your employees double costs the business money, and can reduce the number of jobs. \n\nAt the same time, extra money flowing around means increased demand, resulting in people spending more money at the business, increasing the need for more workers.\n\nThis drives the prices up, leading to inflation, though how much is pretty hotly debated.\n\nAll that said, unemployment in the US is very low right now, inflation is tiny, and the economy is doing fine. If there is a good time to consider increasing the minimum wage by some amount, the conditions right now are very good."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
21i71f
|
how do organized crime groups like the mafia or cartels make so much money? why isn't there more of an effort to stop them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21i71f/eli5_how_do_organized_crime_groups_like_the_mafia/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cgd8qmd"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Selling drugs, prostitution, gambling (illegal and to some extent legal), extortion, racketeering.... these are all lucrative parts of organized crime's business. I think that there is a great effort to stop organized crime groups, but it is very difficult to do so because the bosses are systematically protected by everyone who works under them."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
chtlao
|
how exactly do people catch food in their mouths without gagging? is gagging an actual risk when you're doing that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chtlao/eli5_how_exactly_do_people_catch_food_in_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"euxn9jq"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Can't speak for others but when I do it I catch it in my mouth. That is I use the back of my tongue to block off my throat so stuff actually gets caught in my mouth instead falling straight into my throat"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1u4kl9
|
why millions of dollars is donated to third world countries yet they are still so poor?
|
explain please
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u4kl9/eli5_why_millions_of_dollars_is_donated_to_third/
|
{
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"ceepswk"
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"score": [
33,
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"text": [
"A few possible scenarios:\n\n1. The money or goods never gets to the people who need it. It instead gets siphoned off by a corrupt politician, or gets lost in bureaucracy.\n\n2. Money or goods never reach their destination because infrastructure is inadequate to transport and distribute it.\n\n3. Such aid works as a temporary band-aid, but it undercuts the poor's ability to lift themselves out of poverty and ever become self-sufficient. For example, it's hard to be a farmer in Africa because nobody wants to buy your crops when they can get them for free from a charity. Ironically, the best thing we could do to end hunger in Africa is to stop providing them so much food.",
"Because poverty aid doesn't fix poverty, actual investments do. And with most poor countries there isn't much to actually invest in.",
"National budgets range in the trillions. A million dollars is a millionth of a trillion. If you donated a million dollars to Ethiopia and it was perfectly distributed among the population, every person would get about a penny.\nWe actually give many billions of dollars to third world countries, but there are still so many people that it can only have limited impact. For example, last year the US government gave around $600,000,000 to Ethiopia, which amounts to about $6 a person. $6 isn't going to make a poor person not be poor anymore. It's only $6.\n\nMany people will bring up the corruption and bureaucracy that prevents aid from reaching the people, and that may be a valid reason not to donate more aid. But regardless of the reasons, third world countries are not donated so much money that they should not be poor anymore.",
"thanks for explaining!",
"[GrehBahm's answer](_URL_0_) gives a critical bit of perspective. Millions of dollars isn't all that much money when you're talking about countries with hundreds of thousands or millions of people.\n\nWhat I would add is this: what's the most important difference between rich and poor countries? That people in rich countries sell things or services that people will pay good money for, all the time. For a poor country to exit poverty, it has to start doing the same. But poor countries have a lot of obstacles to doing this, for example:\n\n1. Not enough of the population has the education or skills needed.\n2. If the country has inefficient or poor agriculture, most of the labor goes toward producing the food needed to survive, and no more than that. This means that not enough people in the country have time to learn or train to do other things that might improve the economy.\n3. Lack of social trust. For a society to build complex, valuable things, it requires a degree of trust between the people in it. For example, if people can't trust the bankers not to steal the deposits, the bank won't get money; if the bank doesn't have money, then it can't make loans; if the bank can't make loans, then a lot of people won't be able to start businesses they otherwise could. If the police takes bribes and protects bandits who steal valuable equipment, then nobody will want to start a factory, software company or anything like that.\n4. Lack of infrastructure. For example, factories require power plants, transmission lines, transportation (rail, road, plane), communications (telephone, Internet). Software companies require high-speed Internet connections. Retailers require mass media to advertise their products. Etc.\n\nAll of these are very difficult problems, and they don't magically go away because you throw money at a poor country.",
"Also, it's no where near adequate. \n\nLets just look at one country for a moment. \n\nEthiopia. Per capita GDP (nominal not PPP) - 513 dollars a year, total GDP ~50 billion USD a year. Population 91 million. (on purchasing parity they are at 100 billion USD a year). \n\nAs compared to say, Germany, population, about 82 million, per capita GDP 43000 per year, total GDP about 3500 billion. \n\nSo... to get Ethiopia to to level of germany needs 3450 billion dollars a year. That would be the entire US federal government budget roughly (~3800 billion). The US, combined public and private only gives about 70 billion dollars in air total per year, and a lot of that is military aid, europe combined is about on par. So even if the US and europe teamed up to just fund Ethiopia, and ignored everyone else, ethiopia would still be somewhere around 1/20th the wealth of the US per capita. \n\nNow obviously the expectation is that a country would produce most of that value on its own. Aid is to cope with disasters and to help fund the development of infrastructure etc. \n\nBut it is a VERY very very very very long way to go from where many of these countries were in the 1950's or 1960's to somewhere reasonably well off. India had a literacy rate of 11% in 1947, it's 74% today. Most of europe and the US have had literacy rates of > 90% for a century (in some cases 2 centuries). They were looted and repressed by empires, torn apart by strife for decades in many cases, and \n\nSince 1970 china has been growing at a breakneck pace - this is because they took aid money they were given (in part by the US) invested it well, made serious legal reforms to make the country attractive to foreign investment. That's really the only reasonable model. But it takes decades for good policy to take hold, and if you cannot keep the political situation under control, say with coups, religious strife, or just a constant parade of new plans then you never get anywhere. \n\nI know it's an odd analogy but it's a bit like NASA. If every major project you have takes 10 years to complete, but every 8 years someone new takes over and throws out whatever you were working on then you end up seeming like you've accomplished relatively little because almost nothing ever gets finished. \n\nYou can't build schools if you have no teachers, you cannot get teachers if you have no roads and money, you cannot get roads unless you have people who would use them and vehicles to drive on them, you cannot get money to buy vehicles unless you have something to trade, and you cannot have something to trade unless you have something people want to buy, and you can't make anything people want to buy if you have an illiterate population just trying to scrape by. Either you need to get lucky and find something in the ground that is tremendously valuable, and then not squander the wealth, or you need massive investment for the sake of it, and that needs to go on for years. \n",
"Misappropriation of funds by corrupt officials is the main answer.\n\nThe second issue is that it's not just oodles of money. A lot of it is supplies and medicine that either can't be used due to contamination or lack of distribution or (in the case of medicine) it gets sold on the black market.",
"I have worked for various NGOs and in fact I established a non-profit not too long ago so perhaps I can provide some insight.\n\nThese points are in no particular order:\n\n* There are a lot of overhead costs for such organizations, similar to companies and etc. The payment of employees, storage, shipment, marketing, the list goes on. \n\n* Corruption and inefficiency - For the case of food, contrary to popular opinion there is easily enough donated food to prevent world hunger however due to corruption and inefficiency in these various countries. Warlords stealing the food and selling it for profit, fake non-profits exploiting both the donors and the \"recipients\", etc. (although this is more a problem for micro-financing but that's another story), corrupt politicians, the list goes on. This is an over-simplification of the issue but this is a big factor.\n\n* This is a controversial view and hot topic but for many countries/companies/entities/etc. it is for their best interests that such countries remain poor and undeveloped. Cheap labor, low cost, relaxed laws for mining/extraction of resources. If these countries become more developed then costs would rise due to higher standard of living, less corruption, etc. One example of this is the economic rise of China, before the economic boom of the country many entities flocked to China and established their presence. However due to the economic rise of China, which includes higher wages, standard of living, costs and etc, many companies and such are now instead moving their presence to even less developed countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and etc. Many countries, such as the Persian Gulf states of Qatar, the UAE and etc, rely on \"migrant workers\" (pretty much modern day slavery) from countries such as India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc. to build infrastructure, pretty much be low cost labor for next to nothing. The conditions in these countries are horrifying but the sad truth is that it's slightly better than what exists back in their own countries so they migrate overseas in hopes of a better life. I'll go into more detail about this potentially dangerous cycle in another point. \n\n* Believe it or not despite all this aid is temporary and doesn't do anything long term. For example food is great but eventually it is consumed and more is required to be brought in. What is necessary for these communities, countries and etc. to truly develop is to establish education for the current and future generations, build infrastructure to support long term growth and so forth. \n\n* It all comes to this point, in the end it's a dangerous cycle. These countries/communities are poor and under-developed, these is no education or future for the people, aid comes from various countries/organizations/etc. such as food, capital and such are either consumed or are instead set apart via corruption and bureaucracy. In this generation due to the need for migrant workers overseas many go overseas in search of better opportunities, however in the end these communities are not fully developed to its full potential. The new generation is born and the same problems exist, hence the cycle starts over. \n \n\n* Ironically due to great development of technology in the developed world, such as in Silicon Valley, the divide between the developed and developing world is becoming greater than ever. It is called the *Digital Divide* and since such underdeveloped nations don't have access to such resources or technology it is becoming more unequal than ever in history.\n\nAll this is an over-simplification and there are other points but this is the gist of it.\n\nActually one of the reasons I started an NGO is to (attempt) to tackle the problem of education but that's another topic. If you have any questions and such feel free to ask!\n\nEDIT: Added a little clarification in regards to the cycle in such developing nations, including the Digital Divide."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u4kl9/eli5_why_millions_of_dollars_is_donated_to_third/ceeglgy"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4dnvqg
|
why does xbox use the letters abxy on their controllers?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dnvqg/eli5_why_does_xbox_use_the_letters_abxy_on_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d1spfr6"
],
"score": [
14
],
"text": [
"The Xbox uses the colour-scheme of the [Gamecube controller](_URL_1_) (where A was green and B was red) and the button layout of the [Sega Dreamcast](_URL_0_) with A at the bottom, B on the right, X on the left and Y at the top. This is partially because Microsoft entered into a partnership with Sega early into the development of the original Xbox, which is why there are some cross-published titles (Shenmue II, for example) on both systems. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/04/button_layout.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/GameCube_controller.png"
]
] |
||
2gzod6
|
how do the homeless and ex-convicts find work?
|
Today, it seems like there are so many requirements for getting a job such as an address, phone number, clean record, etc. A lot of people complain about how the homeless are lazy and whatnot, but what can an ex-criminal or a homeless drug addict possibly bring to a job interview?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gzod6/eli5_how_do_the_homeless_and_exconvicts_find_work/
|
{
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"They often don't. That's why they remain homeless, or turn to a life of crime and are re-institutionalized.",
"In our city there are several institutions set up to help people get back on their feet run by religious organizations that manh people actually DO take advantage of but they also have rules about curfew and substance bans which often prove too much for some individuals to cope with. ",
"Judging by the percentage of felons that responded to my offer of cash for yard work this weekend, I would say Craigslist.",
"Some cities offer partial pay for hiring an ex-convict for at least 6 months.",
"This is a hard question to answer since there are many different types of homelessness and many different types of ex-convicts. But, the simple answer comes down to a couple of reasons\nHomelessness:\n\n-Often times homeless people are mentally ill. It's very hard for mentally ill people to find jobs, in general, and especially so when they are homeless\n\n-Many homeless people are also veterans, who come out of the army with mental illness, but there are also those who come out with very little in the way of job experience and skills.\n\n-Some homeless people are on drugs or have other problems that make it very difficult for them to find steady work.\n\nIt essentially boils down to looking at why they ended up homeless in the first place.\n\nEx-convicts have a lot of the same issues as homeless people (and a person can be both), but it really boils down to the fact that they are ex-convicts. It doesn't really matter what they did, you won't find to many companies willing to hire an ex-con. And the ones that do, do not pay well and do not offer a way to advance. So an ex-con usually goes back to doing crime again, creating a viscous cycle. ",
"Hi about 20 years ago I worked in a construction company that would hire on a lot of homeless people and pardoned criminals. Their jobs were usually a lot of hard labor that we simply couldn't get people to do. We could also pay them shit wages because we knew they were reliant on us and didn't have a lot of options.\n\nUsually they apply to an organization that deals with these sorts of people. Those companies in turn act as \"placement agencies\" for these people. We can usually get employees from these places at a discount price.\n\nWe really just require for them to obey workplace safety rules and come to work not smelling. It's a dirty job, so who cares if they look a little hairy and dirty.\n\nSuccessful candidates are the ones who will put their heads down and do the jobs. Unsuccessful candidates generally don't show up to work for some reason or the other. There's not a tonne of patience with these people. If they're not at work at the time set they're probably breaking probation, asleep or dead.\n\nOne time a guy working under me thought he was the boss. He kept trying to impress everyone but really didn't realize I was the foreman. He kept ordering people around and trying to impress everyone with how hard he was working. One day I overheard him talking about how he was trying to move in with his girlfriend. I informed him that moving homes is a breach of probation. He told me to F off.\n\nThe day after (his first day of work) he didn't show up for work. A week later I found out from the parole board that he breached parole by leaving his designated housing area. I wasn't actually surprised, I had already filled his position.",
"Where I work the company has a deal with either the federal government or state government because they higher felons.",
"I think the system should focus a lot more on this problem for ex-cons.\n\nRehabilitation is a lot more than punishment.\n\nAs for homeless from other reasons, we have to work a lot harder on this for sure. Don't assume they want to be that way; I would guess almost no one wants to be homeless. Suggesting that they get minimum wage jobs is simplistic -- for example, an older person may not be physically able to stand on their feet all day.\n\nMay the government needs to subsidize wages for some people and maybe for the rest of their lives -- we spend money on worse things that.\n\nHave compassion for the homeless you see -- There but for the grace of God goes thou.",
"Most of the time they don't. But with the help and support of other people they have a possibility to find work. Someone just needs to give them a chance. It is of course a matter of trust. \n\nThey can of course start their own business.",
"I was a homeless teen toward the end (too proud to pick his option of \"my way\" over the alternative). When I was 18 I checked into a homeless shelter in California. You were only allowed to stay there for a week and then you had to leave for at least a week, unless you got a job, which I was more than happy to do (I was SICK of the street). When you got a job you were moved over a much nicer, bigger shelter. When you were able to get a place they threw you a party and your life got a new beginning.\n\nNow here's the thing. Getting the job. I got lucky, a lot luckier than most other people. I went and applied at a lot of places but was given the \"yeah right\" stare from most of them. I went and applied at a sandwich shop and the owner didn't even give me an application. When I left, a middle-aged woman ran up behind me and asked me if I wanted a job. Turned out she was the general manager of the adjacent pet store, and she hired me. From there I befriended some co-workers and rented a room in a place with them. I was an 18 year old white kid, with a guitar and blonde dreadlocks. I was approachable, I didn't really do drugs except weed. Theres so many guys with inescapable alcoholism and mental illness out there that have pretty much no chance. ",
"I know that the company Timpsons over here in the UK actually search out criminals who are due to be released. It is a family run nationwide business, they are a cobblers, watch fixers, key cutters shop on the high street. The owner and his son decided to try out a recently released convict, he was so good at his job he now has a very senior position. They do this because people who have just been released have nothing, so are willing to work extra hard to get their life back on track. In the whole however many years the scheme has been running they only had one person who reoffended. Timpsons also go into prisons and tell the prisoners about this scheme, that they can have a good honest life after leaving, if they are willing to work for it.\nTimpsons also say that they won't accept sex offenders. It's a personal line that they decided they couldn't cross.",
"Where I volunteer, (a charity shop) unless someone is, for example, a registered sex offender or has killed someone, they are welcomed into both voluntary (and occassionally paid) positions. I work with reformed drug/gambling/alcohol addicts, ex prostitutes, people who have a rap sheet 50 pages long but all of whom are turning their lives around. They all attend regular support groups etc. I'm one of the only people there with no convictions, and I've made friends with some incredibly inspirational people who have terribly unfortunate pasts. ",
"Not all jobs do a background check, so felons will sometimes just not write on the app that they are a convicted felon. If they check they don't get the job. ",
"There are several programs that allow for the hiring of felons and as a nice give they get assistance from state and federal governments. Alternatively, there are non profits that help with securing a job for homeless individuals and felons that can provide a temporary address, assistance with interviewing and resumes, as well as connecting them with possible employers. In Chicago, for example. There's a restaurant chain (the name is escaping me) that is quite famous for only employing felons because they believe having a stable income is integral to reducing recidivism (which is absolutely true)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
dd2b4p
|
why don’t cars utilize conditioned air (a/c) into the engine of a car?
|
If cold air is more dense, more fuel is injected to compensate resulting in more power? Why not take the cold air from the A/C and reroute into the intake manifold?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dd2b4p/eli5_why_dont_cars_utilize_conditioned_air_ac/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f2drien",
"f2drukj",
"f2dtnyk"
],
"score": [
6,
17,
3
],
"text": [
"It takes a lot of energy to make the cold air via A/C so it would be a net loss to make extra cold air just to feed into the engine.\n\nInstead, a turbocharger achieves the same effect much more efficiently.",
"Because running that air conditioner would take power from the engine, and chilling the incoming air wouldn't provide much benefit. And chilling the amount of air a car engine uses would require a really big refrigeration system.\n\nOne thing that is done, on some super- and turbo-charged engines, is use an intercooler, which passes the very hot air that comes out of the turbo through a bunch of narrow passages cooled by air, to cool it back down near the outside temperature. This doesn't take any power from the motor.",
"Some people have experimented on drag cars with running the intake into the car's interior, running the AC on max to cool the cabin as much as possible. Then when running down the drag strip the engine basically has a pool of cold air to draw from.\n\nFrom what I remember one guy that did it thought it maybe made a little difference, if it was a really hot day but might have been wishful thinking and there are far better ways. Like ice, water, methanol etc to cool the intercooler."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1xbez5
|
given that the benefits are so clear, why is it so hard for some countries to adopt a non-corrupt, functional democracy?
|
I realize this is as broad and naive as asking "why is there war?", but it confuses me why the most powerful people in a given region or country in, say, war-torn Africa don't look at the U.S. or at Western Europe and say, "hey, those guys live in such great peace and prosperity, let's do what they do"
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xbez5/eli5_given_that_the_benefits_are_so_clear_why_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cf9tf4a",
"cf9tfno",
"cf9tkkb",
"cf9tmnk",
"cf9vnyo"
],
"score": [
4,
4,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The people in charge of those places are hugely corrupt and have ludicrous amounts of money and power. If there was a legitimate democracy in place they'd be thrown out.",
" > \"hey, those guys live in such great peace and prosperity, let's do what they do\"\n\nBecause the guys who are the most adept at gaining power don't give a shit about overall peace and prosperity. They care about their own wealth and power.",
"I'm not sure you'll find a country free of corruption. The UK and US are certainly not without corruption.",
"A lot of it is the culture. After Saddam Hussein was removed from the picture, I remember Iraqii people saying that they didn't want (or understand) the wonderful democracy we were forcing on them, they wanted another dictator - \"But a nice one this time please!\".\n",
"When the founders of the American Republic announced their intentions, most of the powerful people in the world looked at them and laughed. Clearly, such a ridiculous proposition would not work. Surely, they thought, the powerful \"natural aristocracy\" in every human society would eventually take control of the system to the exclusion of the common folk. Such has been the way of human societies as long as there has been agriculture - 7 or 8 thousand years.\n\nTo this day it remains a mystery to many people in the world how a republic in the American mold can withstand this pressure. So the better question is: \"how do republics withstand the pressure to be controlled by the rich & powerful\"?\n\nOne answer seems to be a very strong merchant class. Merchants require a couple of things in order to be successful - the rule of law, meaning that the contracts they create are enforceable even if a rich and/or powerful person wants to break them; and information transparency, meaning that they can get accurate information about news, weather, and the flow of goods. If a merchant class can initiate a feedback loop that strengthens these institutions over time, it can use the rewards from its success (jobs, disposable income, social welfare) to generate a popular pressure on the rich & powerful to keep them from subjecting the republic to their rule.\n\nWhen the advanced economies (i.e. nations with strong merchants) try to foster a republic on other societies, they seem to have a success rate that correlates to how strong the merchant class is in the host society. However the warriors usually call the shots in these situations so instead of focusing on the structures that the merchants need (rule of law, information transparency) they focus on \"security\" instead - the argument is that you need security before you need civil contract adjudication."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4lppr8
|
why did the tsa swab the edges of my laptop to "check something" before letting me have it back?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lppr8/eli5_why_did_the_tsa_swab_the_edges_of_my_laptop/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d3p5qax",
"d3p5rqk",
"d3p5rzk",
"d3p5u7l"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The test is to look for explosives residue that might have clung to the bag if you had made a bomb and then disguised it as a laptop.\n\nYou booked an early flight because you are a fan of delicious airline food breakfast.",
"They are looking for explosives residue and explosives ingredients. They put the swab into a detection device to check....probably a portable mass spectrometer or gas chromatography instrument.\n\nThey want to make sure your laptop isn't secretly a bomb.\n\nEdit: and you booked your flight so early because the flight at a decent time cost twice as much.",
"They were probably checking for explosive residues; they suspected that you may have had a bomb hidden in the laptop, and hoped to detect it by trace explosives on the case. This is called ETD, or explosive trace detection, and is practiced at every TSA checkpoint in the USA. \n\nI have no idea why you booked your flight so early, but it's better to be an hour early than a minute late.",
"The swabs are chemical tests that can pickup trace amounts of explosives; if your laptop had been around explosives at all recently, the test would have triggered. They don't do just laptops, they do phones, shoes etc. \n\nThe test isn't perfect - there are false positives; for example glycerin from hand soaps will set it off, or pill residue of nitroglycerin pills in the case of a heart patient. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2n5mi7
|
why do i feel bad when i witness awkward situations?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n5mi7/eli5_why_do_i_feel_bad_when_i_witness_awkward/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmaj959"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"We have empathy with other people so when you see something awkward, you feel a sense of awkwardness as well. \n\nIt's theorised that this is a mechanism that helps societies form and develop, as it's easier to be friends and get along of you can understand what someone else is feeling."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5miq9x
|
how can we recycle urine and get it back to clean drinking water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5miq9x/eli5_how_can_we_recycle_urine_and_get_it_back_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc40xd4"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Reverse osmosis is one way and I believe that I what they use on the ISS where they have to recycle all their water. I'd do more reading into how they recover water in space stations."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3dvhgj
|
what's the probability of two black parents producing a white child and what's the probability of two white parents producing a black child?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dvhgj/eli5whats_the_probability_of_two_black_parents/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct90ml0"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Well, I'd say it has a a lot to do with gene saturation. Most of the time I'd assume the statistics are against you. Though, if the outcome does permit it, you'll just have a 'darker' than normal complexity. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
j41po
|
can you explain to me (apolitically) why china is financially well-off, compared to our own state of affairs?
|
I've read how China is making huge infrastructure investments (speed trains, stem cell centers) and owns 10% of our debt. Why are they doing so well?
I'm not asking from a political viewpoint, or resentfully -- I'd just like to understand the mechanics.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j41po/can_you_explain_to_me_apolitically_why_china_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c28ylzc"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"China has a number of advantages:\n\n- Stability and Business Friendliness: The Chinese Government is so stable you could dance on it. Businesses love that, because it makes for a very safe investment. When you invest in China, you know that three weeks from now, your investment will still be there. \n- A culture of saving: The Chinese people have amassed huge personal savings compared to just about everyone else on earth. While the average middle class American is in debt because of credit cards, student loans, home loans and car loans, the average middle class Chinese has savings. This money is stored in Chinese Banks, which use it to buy U.S bonds and collect interest. \n- A culture that values hard work and financial success: In China, it is considered polite to ask someone that's wealthy how big their house is, to give them a chance to show off. \n- A massive, relatively young population that's incredibly homogeneous: Over 90% of Chinese consider themselves Han Chinese (dominant ethnic group). With the exception of the Uygher (Chinese Muslims) and a small Christian and Buddhist minority, religious tensions are also almost non-existent. This massive population is both a solid consumer base and a near endless supply of workers. \n\n- One Party Rule: The Chinese Communist Party is utterly unchallenged within China and is thus able to institute sweeping reforms, ambitious projects and controversial measures almost at will. Let's just say that the Chinese Economy is unlikely to ever grind to a halt because of something like the Debt Ceiling Crisis the U.S is currently enjoying. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3ad8r1
|
why have laser printer ink cartridges not been standardized?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ad8r1/eli5_why_have_laser_printer_ink_cartridges_not/
|
{
"a_id": [
"csbjej9"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"How would printer manufacturers make money if they did that? Compete on features and reliability?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
g1jul1
|
how would we calculate where to go for space travel?
|
Let's say we want to go to Alpha Centauri A and it's about 4.3 light-years away. So, The information about where the star is is almost four and a half years old by the time we get it. Given that the star itself is moving through space, if we went just where we saw it last from here, by the time a ship got there, it would be gone right? How would we figure out what direction it went and how to rendezvous with it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g1jul1/elif_how_would_we_calculate_where_to_go_for_space/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fng1u4n",
"fng4s75"
],
"score": [
9,
4
],
"text": [
"We have enough historical data on how most stars have changed position over the years to have a good understanding of their relative velocities and directions compared to our solar system. With that we can project their positions fairly well into the near future.\n\nPresumably any ship we send out will also be capable of mid-course corrections, so we don't need to know the future position exactly dead-on-the-money, but tweak it as necessary during the cruise phase as we make better observations and calculations.",
"The sun orbits the galactic center at a speed of about 200 km/s. If we assume the Alpha Centauri system travels at the same rate, that means in 100 years it will move about 600 billion kilometers. That sounds like a lot (and it is), but on an interstellar scale, that is only 7% of a light-year. A probe that took a century to get to where Alpha Centauri A is right now would wind up closer to than Proxima Centauri is.\n\nSince the trajectory is well understood and easy to predict, it would not be very difficult to aim the probe to the position where the star will be when it gets there. Also, any probe sent will have to have some capacity to modify its trajectory as it travels."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
dxlb8c
|
how are boundary lines decided by a local government and how is it decided where a town moves politically?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dxlb8c/eli5_how_are_boundary_lines_decided_by_a_local/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f7s25th",
"f7s3fuk",
"f7s5d3w"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Well first off, in the United States, a city can not cross state lines. Take Kansas City for example. It's right on the border ok Kansas and Missouri. It feels like one city, but technically it's two. Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Each has its own local government. \n\nSome states have distinctions between Towns, Villages, and/or cities. Some do not. But the rules are almost always the same. I'm going to use the term \"city\" but you could swap that with \"town\" or \"village\" if you like. It doesn't make much of a difference. \n\nBut let's just talk about how a town or city expands it's city limits. Each state has its own rules on the specific legal details, but it's generally the same everywhere. Land that is outside the city's boundaries is called unincorporated land. Unincorporated land can be annexed in two ways. 1. The landowner/landowners petition the city and the City Council votes on the annexation. If it passes the land is now Incorporated into the city. 2. The city can seek to annex unincorporated territory. They must seek permission via the landowner/landowners. If all Landowners agree. The City Council votes. If the vote passes the land is incorporated into the city. However if not all landowners agree the landowners can have a vote. If the majority agree, then all the territory is annexed into the city. \n\nSource: I work for a city as a GIS Technician (digital mapping) \n\n\nEdit: sorry. I accidentally pressed enter too soon.",
"There isn't really a general answer because it all depends on how the country and it's constituent parts are set up and what it says in their constitutions.\n\nIn your example both states would have to agree to transwer the town. If the town wanted to transfer, the residents would have to convince Arkansas' government to let them secede, and convince the Texas government to accept them.\n\nIn other countries which are more centralised, the central government may be able to transfer territory between administrative regions without needing agreement from anyone else. This has happened in the UK a few times, with the UK Parliament redrawing county boundaries, moving towns and cities into different counties, or making them separate counties. France has reorganised it's regions several times, Norway is merging some next year.",
"Moving a territory from one state to another would require consent from the town, both state governments. It's really unlikely that this would ever happen."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6of5t6
|
why, when you are arrested, do you only get the famous "one" phone call? if there are multiple people you need to inform who could help you out is there a way to communicate with them besides this one call?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6of5t6/eli5_why_when_you_are_arrested_do_you_only_get/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dkgvznw",
"dkgw5pp"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"There is no constitutional right to make a telephone call upon arrest or completion of booking.\n\nEach state needs to be considered individually as to which telephone rights are afforded persons arrested.\n\nUnless you read the state law for a particular state, don't assume you have a right to a phone call. ",
"Unfortunately, (or fortunately) for movie writers, this is just a trope.\n\nI have to invoke the famous IANAL, but...\n\nIt's in the police officer's best interest to give you access to a phone (which isn't a right) for a number of reasons.\n\n- They are required to give meaningful access to retain counsel. That doesn't mean a phone necesarily, but a phone does mean a faster process, so that confessions, pleas etc. can get started\n\n- To get in the prisoner's good graces, spurring confession/cooperation\n\n- Prisons get a cut off if the in-prison call charges, which are quite hefty...\n\n- All of the phone calls are recorded."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3de391
|
what is the rationale for banning squirt porn, specifically, in the uk?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3de391/eli5_what_is_the_rationale_for_banning_squirt/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct48dhw"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Oh noes, unbridled female sexuality will subvert our society!\n\nIt's just ended up in a box of stuff considered weird, and that box is defined largely by societal norms, which are themselves derived from a Christian-based patriarchal view.\n\nSo, arbitrary and wrong, in this instance. I get some of the other stuff (that same Christian patriarchy did get some things right) but not this."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5noru0
|
what is the difference between dna sequencing and genome sequencing?
|
I always thought they were the but yesterday, I was told they're different. Is that correct? If so, what's the difference?
Is it just that DNA sequencing is where you find out the missing nucleotide pairs (for forensics, for ex) and genome sequencing is where you understand an already-existing, available genome (like understanding the human genome)?
Also, what is *sequencing* in both these contexts?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5noru0/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_dna/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dcd5zt7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"A genome is comprised of the complete genetic material within an organism. In a human, that includes all of our DNA, both coding and noncoding. When you sequence the genome of an organism, you sequence ALL of the genetic information, and can compare organisms to each other with this genomic map that you have comprised.\nDNA sequencing is involved in genome sequencing, but you don't have to necessarily sequence all of the genetic information within the organism. You can sequence a particular gene or a specific noncoding region, but not every gene and noncoding region in the organism.\nSo yes, they are different in a way. Genome sequencing IS DNA seqeuncing in organisms such as humans, while DNA sequencing isn't necessarily sequencing the entire genome.\nSequencing in general is putting the nucleotides (A T/U C G) in order. This is helpful for multiple reasons, one being that you can tell the nucleotide arrangement, and therefore amino acid composition and arrangement that can come from a specific gene.\n\nNow, we can study genomes, but only if the genome is first built. Genome sequencing is sort of like writing a book. All of the letters must be on the page, and arranged in the correct order, for the book to make sense. We can later read the book, and study it, which would be similar to analyzing the genome after it has been sequenced."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
bk4qy2
|
why do marathoners rarely run marathon distances in training?
|
I'm training for my first marathon, and none of the marathon training plans that I've found include runs at the marathon distance, why is that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bk4qy2/eli5_why_do_marathoners_rarely_run_marathon/
|
{
"a_id": [
"emdxzqp",
"emdyt8d"
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text": [
"*For most people* - training by running a full marathon is kind of like regularly shooting yourself with a .22 to build up a tolerance to bullets. Its incredibly unhealthy and is so far beyond the limit of what your body can do that it just harms you without meaningfully building endurance.\n\nThe idea behind marathons is that you run them very occasionally and just accept the harm that they cause because the prestige of running a marathon is what motivates you to regularly run shorter, healthier distances.\n\nEven then, people who only occasionally run marathons and train by running shorter distances have a much higher incidence of knee and heart problems than those who do not.\n\nAs with everything though, there are a few people that are just naturally gifted and can run those distances regularly. But they also typically develop severe knee and heart problems in their 40's or 50's.",
"Because it's a lot of stress for your body. In training you try to work a bit harder than what your body is used to. But you need to recover soon to be able to train again. You can't build muscle and endurance in one training session you need constant stress on your body over longer time.\n\nThe more training you do, the better your body adapts to the stress and the mor you can train. All while recovery is still a main focus. Resting and letting your body heal up is a crucial part of training.\n\nCompetition is not training. Normally you will rest about a week (or only train very lightly) before competition in order to get your body to fully heal any microdamage. In competition you don't worry about recovery, you just give everything you can. Your body will need time to recover after that and you will usually lose fitness after a competition.\n\nHence you usually train for/with shorter distances/times/weight etc. than what your competition demands."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3jcf5w
|
what is the real cause of death when someone dies from a gaming marathon?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jcf5w/eli5what_is_the_real_cause_of_death_when_someone/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cuo1317"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Without confirmation from a coroner, my best guess would be a pulmonary embolism. This is basically a blood clot that forms and then gets lodged into the vessels that feed blood into the lungs (in order to pick up that ever so important oxygen). Prolonged inactivity, particularly in the legs, can lead to blood clots forming as the blood basically pools and stagnates in the blood. The kid also had a previous leg injury, which can also result in increased clotting (depending on the kind of injury).\n\nWith the blood flow to the lungs blocked, its basically the same as suffocating as your blood can no longer get oxygen and deliver it to your brain (there are other problems that come from the blood clot, but the lack of oxygen perfusion is the thing that gets you first)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4jg8r8
|
what gives people the "i'm cold" look?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jg8r8/eli5_what_gives_people_the_im_cold_look/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d36bjw9"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"There are a few obvious signs when a person's cold. Shivering, of course. Goosebumps are also a giveaway. \n\nBut often a lot of blood starts moving out to the face, ears and particularly nose when it's quite cold out, so the person gets a reddish blush on those parts. Windburn can make this appear stronger, and of course frostbite changes the appearance of the skin as well. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
85gytq
|
how can something be insured for more than it's worth?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85gytq/eli5_how_can_something_be_insured_for_more_than/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dvxea66",
"dvxfakw",
"dvxgmer"
],
"score": [
2,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Can you elaborate on the question?\n\nAn insurance provider might be unwise to insure an item for more than it's worth, but I don't see anything that physically stops them from doing so.",
"Replacement value vs market value for homes. Market value is how much can you sell the house for. Replacement value is how much would it cost to build the same house now. The insurance will pay to build you a new home now in that spot, not buy you one down the street. So if you own a big ass home in a shitty ass neighborhood the insurance company will want to insure it for what it would cost to replace (rebuild) it instead of what it would cost for them to buy yours right now.",
"Think of insurance being like a lottery for something you don’t want to happen where alot of people pool their money together. The insurance company runs this lottery. They calculate your premiums and the chance of whatever the bad unlikely thing happening is. They dont really care what the value of the item is as long as the math works out so they can have a high chance for profit.. In this way they could insure an actress’s legs etc for a million dollars even though they dont really have a tangible market value. Premium price and the likelihoodhood of its happening verus the payout is what matters. In this way you can have life insurance etc. its also why health insurance and a free market doesnt really mix well. The costs are too high for care and everyone will have to use healthcare eventually unless they suddendly die."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
66y6yl
|
how come we can't eat more food when we're full, but we have no problem stuffing our faces with sweets/chocolate/ice cream?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66y6yl/eli5how_come_we_cant_eat_more_food_when_were_full/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dgm5zfr",
"dgm62c6",
"dgm9b7d"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Well your stomach can hold more food than you would probably think. Sugar is very addictive and it works in the same way a drug addict needs more of a drug. So your brain ignores the full feeling, because of the sugar ",
"sugar, Carbohydrates to be more exact. \n\nUp to the last 100 years of human history calories were expensive, its only with the industrial revolution and the lowering of transport costs that food became cheap and mass produced. \n\nSo we are basicaly \"programed\" by the evolutionary process to store as much Sugar as we can, becuase our bodies are still built in a way that they consider it the easiest fuel source to consume and also the hardest to get. the same ammount of sugar you have in a snickers bar today ment eating around half a dozen beets a couple of hundred years ago. ",
"Answers here are incomplete. Ultimately, it's because hedonistic reward pathways in the brain have evolved to promote the consumption of high-energy-density sweet simple carbodydrates. It's called [hedonic hunger](_URL_0_), and it operates alongside and parallel to our traditional appetite and hunger neural circuitry.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_hunger"
]
] |
||
k0sug
|
why is left left and right right?
|
Serious question. Pondering this right now for some reason. Does this shit go back to roman times or something?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k0sug/eli5_why_is_left_left_and_right_right/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2gnn3q",
"c2gnn3q"
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text": [
"Left comes from the old english word \"lyft\" which meant, weak, foolish or worthless.\n\nIn the old days left-handed people were often seen as inferior. The Latin word Sinistra meant left, but lead to words like Sinister as a result of left-handedness victimisation.\n\nRight comes from old english \"riht\" which meant good, proper or correct.\n\nYou can imagine basically right-handed people were \"correct, good\" and left handed people were \"weak, foolish\". And from that the directions came from the nicknames for handedness",
"Left comes from the old english word \"lyft\" which meant, weak, foolish or worthless.\n\nIn the old days left-handed people were often seen as inferior. The Latin word Sinistra meant left, but lead to words like Sinister as a result of left-handedness victimisation.\n\nRight comes from old english \"riht\" which meant good, proper or correct.\n\nYou can imagine basically right-handed people were \"correct, good\" and left handed people were \"weak, foolish\". And from that the directions came from the nicknames for handedness"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
mn290
|
redox reactions
|
I've never been a hero at chemistry, but the current subject has been formulated so poorly in my textbook that I just need some help.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mn290/eli5_redox_reactions/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c328k5v",
"c328k5v"
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text": [
"Redox means reduction and oxidation. You should remember Oil Rig. *oxidation* *is* *loss* and *reduction* *is* *gain* When something oxidises, it loses electrons. And when something reduces, it gains electrons. So, metals oxidise and non-metals reduce usually. This is the basic you need to know I guess.",
"Redox means reduction and oxidation. You should remember Oil Rig. *oxidation* *is* *loss* and *reduction* *is* *gain* When something oxidises, it loses electrons. And when something reduces, it gains electrons. So, metals oxidise and non-metals reduce usually. This is the basic you need to know I guess."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
4n1tom
|
if i fired a gun towards a tornado, would the bullets be moving fast enough to pass through it, or slow enough to be caught by the tornado? also, would they be deadlier if caught in the tornado?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n1tom/eli5_if_i_fired_a_gun_towards_a_tornado_would_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d403yt5"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Muzzle velocity (aka speed of a bullet when it exits the gun) ranges from 250-800 miles per hour. \n\nTornado windspeeds can reach 320 miles per hour.\n\nThis means that it is possible for the wind of a tornado to be traveling significantly faster than a bullet (once it's had time to slow down after traveling the distance between the gun and the tornado). As such, it is conceivable that a tornado could redirect and even accelerate a bullet to lethal velocity. \n\nThis isn't unique to bullets, however; one of the major dangers of tornados is them flinging debris around and smashing things and people. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4absbh
|
why does holding a warm object to your forehead when sick feel good?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4absbh/eli5_why_does_holding_a_warm_object_to_your/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0z1jca",
"d0za602"
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text": [
"I've never heard of that before. Usually when you have a fever (or even just a headache) it's a *cold* compress that makes you feel better. ",
"If you have a cold or something which is causing inflammation of the blood vessels in your head, eg some allergies, it can help by relaxing the muscles in that area and helping improve circulation and reduce inflammation. This can help \"de-fuzz\" your head and make you feel a bit better.\n\nAs /u/sterlingphoenix points out, when you have a fever it's generally a cold compress that helps you feel better by helping reduce your fever"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
8uqr61
|
why do some companies create different brands even though they all operate in the same industry?
|
example. Kroger owns kroger, ralph's, and food4less grocery stores. Even their individual phone apps are duplicates of each other (design wise).
I understand some stores are only available in certain part of the country but wouldn't it make more sense for them to have one brand? esp if they all, essentially, offer same products. to have greater impact in terms of brand recognition?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8uqr61/eli5why_do_some_companies_create_different_brands/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e1hg4n5",
"e1hg80u",
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"e1hgcix",
"e1hhr0f",
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"e1hivr7",
"e1hnlze",
"e1ho2bc",
"e1hrisr"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
4,
22,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Lets say you make a red product and sells really good.\n\nThere is a chance for a blue product, but some people in your team say that if you do the blue product too, it will take market share from your red product.\n\nThe argument I learned is that if you do not do the blue product, your competitor might or actually will do it, taking the market share from the red product anyway.\n\nSo better you than the competition.",
"What you are seeing most of the time is not a company making different brands, it is a company buying different companies and keeping the brand names for customers who have developed trust in said company. It is to maintain the existing brand recognition. ",
"Brand and price differentiation is a huge deal. \n\nTake GM for instance, they have a variety of brands: Cadillac, Chevrolet, Holden, etc. \n\nThe two biggest are Cadillac and Chevrolet, the former is a mark of luxury and high quality, the latter a mark of affordability and reliability.\n\nIf they sold the Chevrolet line up under the Cadillac brand, it would massively devalue the Cadillac line up as the brand would become associated with the lower quality, more affordable cars. Yes, they'd have greater recognition of the brand, but not necessarily the type that will sell cars. In this way GM can offer cars attractive to both affordable and luxury markets. \n\nA similar thing happens in NZ. Foodstuffs owns Paknsave and New World. New World is a high end supermarket, its adverts focus on quality and the luxury of great produce. Paknsave's ads focus on getting great deals with low overheads. Not only would wealthy customers avoid Paknsave, due to it being an inferior brand, but poorer customers are actually more likely to approach a Paknsave: they know they're getting some of the lowest prices. Think of these two groups as two different religions with conflicting values: To sell to both Foodstuff's needs two brands. ",
"For most products, the idea is that having multiple brands under your umbrella allows you to produce slightly different products with different advertising aimed at different customers. You can make a car that targets a middle-class buyer & one with some fancy options to target the luxury consumer. You can produce a makeup line for 18-25 women that emphasizes fun & freedom while your products for the 40+ crowd emphasize elegance & class.\n\nGrocery stores are a little different however. People are *really* weird about food & will often stick with names & brands they grew up with. Keeping a smaller local chain name reminds people of home cooked meals, growing up and the like. The brand itself has decades of goodwill built up that would be completely wasted if you bought them out & changed the names.",
"Because playing the board game monopoly gets a lot easier when you get to be the iron, race car and thimble at the same time. “Passing Go” collects 600 instead of 200. And once you knock grandma off the board you can win and lose to yourself at your own pace. \n\nIt’s nothing new, we’re just more aware of it because the internet makes the information more available than going to city hall and looking at public records. \n",
"I work in fashion retail/marketing so i have some insight. \n\nGAP is a great example. They own Old Navy, Athleta and Banana Republic. Each brand has its own style, price point, and target audience. GAP, as of the past 2 decades, seems to be leaning towards (in my opinion) the fashion sensible/hipster gay male with a slim figure. Old Navy is for high school kids and their parents. Athleta is what it sounds like for women, and Banana Republic is a more neautral casual brand. \n\nLike GAP, Kroger ends up buying other companies which dominate regions of the country/market which they don't. Yes, they could rebrand their new acquisitions, but often these brands have strong customer loyalty which they dont want to mess with, so they keep the original names.\n\nAnother example is how CVS keeps acquiring pharmacies but doesnt change all of their names. So, in simpler terms, a company will develop/acquire brands in a market where they already exist because those other brands can, and often do, possess a decent share of the market which is being missed out on.\n\nSame reason why AT & T would want to buy TMobile or Disney/Fox.. hope that makes sense of it!",
"An example here in Western Washington: Kroger bought out local Fred Meyer. Kroger had no presence here before that, while everyone grew up with Fred Meyer. No one here would appreciate Kroger changing the name. Also, Fred Meyer has groceries, a real jeweler, and a department store all in one while Kroger is generally thought of as just groceries. So why rock the boat? Beef up the grocery a bit with your Kroger house brands, but otherwise keep it the same.",
"Had a skim-read through the comments and something I didn't see pointed out was the fact that not all brands originate with the company that currently owns them. When they purchase the company that owns a brand/the rights to use a brand it would be pointless to re-brand any products because they've almost certainly paid more than fair value for the brand.\n\nFor example; the company that owns Lay's crisps once upon a time bought a brand called \"Walkers\" based in the UK. Rather than re-brand Walkers to Lay's they kept them as Walkers because in the UK it was a recognisable brand. To this day, despite everything else being the same (packaging, the crisps themselves etc.) they keep the names different in the UK to the rest of the world.",
"The explainations hinge upon a slightly different product aimed at different markets.\n\nBut what is happening when the product is exactly the same such as:\n\nFord Pinto, Mercury Bobcat\n\nChevy Chevette, Pontiac T-1000\n\nFord Maverick, Mercury Comet",
"Illusion of choice. Most people don't realize four companies - Absopure, Niagara, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi control 85% of the US bottled water market. That is because those first two have dozens of store brands - Walmart, Target, Aldi, Ralph's, Foodland, Winn Dixie, under their umbrella. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
36anya
|
what's the difference for me as a viewer between a movie that has 1545 mb in 720p and a movie that has 4645 mb in 720p, apart from 3100 mb of data?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36anya/eli5_whats_the_difference_for_me_as_a_viewer/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crc8z5w",
"crc94ax"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Quality. I mean, think about this extreme example. You have a video of 4096x2160 resolution, but every frame is nothing but black pixels. It's not going to be a big file because there's not a lot of information there, but it's still 4K.",
"The difference is compression. Rather than saving each pixel individually, the programs notice patterns and use them to store more data easier. For example, if a pixel is blue, then next pixel is probably pretty blue as well, so the program could just track the difference and use smaller numbers. In some cases, there is lossless compression. For example, .png and .zip use lossless compression. With video and audio files, it's generally considered fine for there to be slight errors, so they use lossy compression. A 4645 Mb movie is less compressed, so the pixels would be closer to the color they're supposed to be."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1vxcw2
|
how do article's get information from edward snowden as of now?
|
If Edward Snowden is in an unknown place, how are articles quoting what he says? In other words if these articles are all recent, how do they get information from him if he is hidden (in a sense)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vxcw2/eli5_how_do_articles_get_information_from_edward/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cewoqam"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You don't have to tell someone where you are to get information to them, with some easy means you can encrypt your text, and then use some online account in an email provider, and you're pretty much difficult to place."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5yg2qz
|
how exactly are files transfered via wi-fi and what dictates the transferspeed.
|
Is it just sending information what Data the destination Drive needs to write? If so, is the bottleneck how fast the source can give out the information or is it the writing speed of the destination?
Or does it work totally different?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yg2qz/eli5_how_exactly_are_files_transfered_via_wifi/
|
{
"a_id": [
"deppwm8",
"depzu64"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes.\n\nEssentially, the data transferred is just a stream of 1s and 0s for the destination drive to write (it's probably encrypted, and it has some extra stuff around it to make sure that the data reaches the destination computer intact).\n\nThe bottleneck depends on a) the destination drive's write speed and b) the WiFi speed. The WiFi speed is not always as simple as it sounds, because it can be affected by interference. Normally WiFi networks operate somewhere between 20 and 50 Mbps, which is slower than hard disk drives (even HDDs should be capable of writing at around 80MBps - note that capital B there which means it's 8 times faster than a small b) unless they're damaged or worn out.\n\nVERY new WiFi networks (called ac) can transfer at up to 20MBps for short periods of time, which is still 4 times slower than an old-style HDD can write the data.\n\nThe difference is even more apparent with SSDs, which can write data many times faster than even the most modern WiFi network can transfer it.",
"The short answer is *totally different.*\n\nStrictly speaking wifi doesn't send \"files.\" Wifi is a set of physical layer standards that govern radio communication between computers. Even more specifically Wi-Fi is a brand name and 802.11 is the set of standards. Anywayyy...as such it really isn't aware of high-level constructs like files and it's definitely not aware of what the receiving computer will do with it once it receives it so it has no idea what drive (if any) it's sending to. It's really only aware of *data* which is broken into small chunks called frames. These frames are sent out over the network by the computer's Network Interface Controller and received by the receiving computer's NIC. From there the receiving computer can decide what to do with it....write it to a drive, store it in memory, send it to another computer, throw it away, etc. IEEE 802.11 (the set of standards that Wi-Fi, which is a brand name) is built on specifies a few special type of frames used to govern the transfer of frames over a wireless network called \"control frames.\" The most important control frame is called the ACK frame short for \"acknowledgement\" and is sent from the receiver to the sender to acknowledge that the most recent batch of data frames came through in one piece. Once the sender receives an ACK it will then proceed to send another batch of data frames and then wait for another ACK. This continues until the receiver sends a \"pause\" or a \"stop\" frame if it becomes overwhelmed and needs some time to catch up. The receiver can become overwhelmed for any number of reasons, slow drive writes being just a single example (and that example is beyond the scope of what wifi is aware of). In this sense data is *pushed* over the network by the sender until the receiver says stop or some physical condition on the network (interference) prevents the receiver from receiving the signal."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2gcu48
|
theoretically if i'm in a train which is moving at the speed of light, would i be able to see my own reflection in a mirror which is in front of me?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gcu48/eli5_theoretically_if_im_in_a_train_which_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ckhulyp"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Nothing with mass can travel the speed of light. Period.\n\nIf you, however, were moving at 99.9999999999% of the speed of light, everything inside your frame of reference would look perfectly normal. This is because the speed of light *is always the same*, regardless of what you're doing or where you are.\n\nThere's a whole mess of crazy complicated shit that stems from this - time dilation, length contraction, etc - that is covered under relativity. I wouldn't suggest diving into it unless you want to start studying math. It's a poor subject for hand-wavy, non-mathematical discussion, partially because it doesn't come into play on a human scale of existence. You'd literally have to go hundreds of times faster than any human-made object to notice any changes."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3qipxb
|
if the most powerful nations of the world are unified against a single 'terrorist' group (e.g. isis?) why is swift, joint, simultaneous, instantaneous, all-in aggression not a feasible approach?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qipxb/eli5_if_the_most_powerful_nations_of_the_world/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwfjkrq",
"cwflvot"
],
"score": [
7,
2
],
"text": [
"Because after you roll in the tanks, drop the bombs, kill the bad guys and destroy the bridges... what's next? ",
"We did that in Iraq, stayed for ten years, left, and the terrorists sprung right back up again. Same thing in Afghanistan. You can't really defeat these guys with conventional military power - it's not an ideology which accepts the concept of surrender. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
230f1m
|
how does a computer do calculations if all it is, is millions of transistors in and on or off state?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/230f1m/eli5_how_does_a_computer_do_calculations_if_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cgs5lls"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"I would like to explain it to you, but that would take too long.\nHere is an entertaining video that explains it very well:\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuPy-r1GuQ"
]
] |
||
4xzy7n
|
why are some people more prone to nightmares/night terrors than others?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xzy7n/eli5_why_are_some_people_more_prone_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6k1u28",
"d6k9gfy",
"d6ki7f9"
],
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2,
6,
2
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"text": [
"I'm no dream psychologist but I think that people who have frequent nightmares usually have a troublesome waking life. Dreams usually tangentially reflect and are about things that have happened in recent days or more latent deep past traumas even if they may be abstract using symbolism. So, if daily life is stressful or a traumatic event recently happened, nightmares could be a way of rehashing and problem solving through the event. In the deepest \"REM\" stage of sleep, brain waves are sporadic and quick as during day-time but most muscles are paralyzed. Brain regions like the cortex which are involved in learning are most active which may be trying to organize and interpret the subconscious signals being emitted from lower brain regions like the pons. A conscious psychological compensation mechanism like avoidance or the need for life change might be symbolized in dream form as: being at a cross-roads and taking the wrong road leading off a cliff. The symbols amplified in \"dream language\" are problematic elements in conscious life. So when parents say: \"its just a dream\", they are discounting an important, unique pathway of emergent revelatory insight.",
"There may be a connection with endocrine function (adrenal glands, etc.) I have heard this but don't have a source so consider with caution. Also, check out the Radio Lab on lucid dreaming. Basically, during waking hours ask yourself, \"Am I awake? Is this real?\" Eventually you'll ask yourself that during the dream and when you realize that you are dreaming you will either wake up or have lucid control over your dream. I had terrible nightmares about tornados throughout my childhood and into young adulthood. I managed to get into a lucid state during one such nightmare and I decided that a tornado wearing red converse wouldn't be nearly as scary. It was kind of like in Harry Potter with the boggart (sp?) although this was before the book. I never had that nightmare again.",
"Me too, it sucks. Maybe we are not giving the phycological aspect a chance. It got worse when my dad died. Let me know if you find a solution! I will keep you in mind"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
74mofu
|
if the eustachian tube is conected to the pharynx why cant we breath through our ears?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74mofu/eli5if_the_eustachian_tube_is_conected_to_the/
|
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"text": [
"The eardrum is normally airtight, so while the eustachian tube can open to allow air to flow between the pharynx and the middle ear, there's no direct pathway from the middle ear to the outside of your body. That's why your ears get \"plugged\" when the atmosphere pressure changes, such as when you take off in an airplane—the two sides of the eardrum are under different amounts of pressure and there's no direct pathway for air to flow in order to equalize them.",
"Because the eardrum itself is sealed. If the eardrum wasn't sealed, so you could pull air in through your ear, through your eardrum, and through your eustachian tubes into your nasal cavity, then the eustachian tubes would serve no purpose. \n\nThe whole point is that air can't get past the eardrum, so there needs to be some method to connect the back of the eardrum to the outside so the pressure behind it can equalize. That's what those tubes are for. \n\nIf you had a ruptured eardrum, you could take air in and out through that hole, but it probably wouldn't be enough for you to breathe. ",
"In addition to the ear drum, the eustachian tube is much smaller than the pharynx. Even if you could push air through (some people can because of missing ear drum) you won't get enough air to survive long.",
"I tried to do this after I ruptured my eardrum snorkeling. Hurt like hell. Ruptured ear drums are the worst. ",
"Semi-related to this but I've had fluid trapped behind my right eardrum for a few weeks now; been to the doctors about it, who suggested holding my nose and trying to force air into the eustachian tube to try to drain the trapped fluid. \nI don't really understand why though, if the tube is so small that not much can pass through it. It's not really worked either, so I'm at a loss what to try regarding that.",
"I misread this and thought the question was about Etruscans and phalanxes, so the last sentence confused the hell out of me"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
clmoyb
|
how does a caterpillar become a butterfly? what happens in the cocoon? where do the wings come from?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clmoyb/eli5_how_does_a_caterpillar_become_a_butterfly/
|
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"You'll get good, detailed explanations, but I'm here to marvel that the caterpillar MELTS in the cocoon. There's a stemcell SOUP in there. It's incredible that quite a complex creature can not only survive such a thing - what does it feel like?? - but rise from it, alchemised.",
"Excellent question!\n\nCaterpillars do not precisely *grow* into butterflies the way a tadpole grows into a frog. \n\nA caterpillar will make its cocoon, and once the cocoon is complete the caterpillar releases enzymes that more or less dissolve the caterpillar into a kind of caterpillar soup. \n\nSome of the caterpillar remains intact - its brain, kinda, and its digestive tract, and some organs do stay more or less un-soupified. But the rest is turned into a slurry. Living caterpillar goo. \n\nThis slurry is used to make a butterfly. Like destroying a tower of LEGO and using the same pieces to build a rocket ship, a new creature is pieced together from the caterpillar soup. The wings are formed inside the cocoon from the soup. \n\n*How* this happens is still a bit of a mystery. We don’t know how a creature can dissolve and not die, nor how it can regrow from the soup into something totally different. We just know that it does happen. (More or less - I shaved a few of the details for brevity.)",
"What if you were to remove, say 10% of that soup. Would you get a smaller butterfly or none at all?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
jfb89
|
the second vatican council and in which ways it reformed the catholic church
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jfb89/eli5_the_second_vatican_council_and_in_which_ways/
|
{
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"text": [
"Imagine that you have a one-room house with a window. You haven't opened the window in 20 years, and you haven't left the house. Sure is stuffy in there! In the house are books about trees, and grass, and the sun. Now let's say you open the window. Fresh air! Now you have a better idea about what trees smell like, even though you've been reading about them, and nothing changed about what you learned.\n\nThat's sort of like what Vatican II was. It opened the window. The Church's leaders understood it was \"behind the times\" and it was falling out with its members because of how \"old-fashioned\" it was. So they renewed some things, and pushed some things a little more. Very little was changed, but as an example, at Church before Vatican II they always spoke in Latin. Now it was done in whatever language the locals used. Catholics were told to read their Bibles more. It was a paradigm shift- a breath of fresh air- more than anything.",
"Imagine that you have a one-room house with a window. You haven't opened the window in 20 years, and you haven't left the house. Sure is stuffy in there! In the house are books about trees, and grass, and the sun. Now let's say you open the window. Fresh air! Now you have a better idea about what trees smell like, even though you've been reading about them, and nothing changed about what you learned.\n\nThat's sort of like what Vatican II was. It opened the window. The Church's leaders understood it was \"behind the times\" and it was falling out with its members because of how \"old-fashioned\" it was. So they renewed some things, and pushed some things a little more. Very little was changed, but as an example, at Church before Vatican II they always spoke in Latin. Now it was done in whatever language the locals used. Catholics were told to read their Bibles more. It was a paradigm shift- a breath of fresh air- more than anything."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
44wyh5
|
why do some bottles of alcohol have flow regulators/fun stoppers/plastic thingy at the tip of the bottle? and some don't?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44wyh5/eli5_why_do_some_bottles_of_alcohol_have_flow/
|
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"text": [
"The ones with regulators tend to be used primarily for mixed drinks where you need a metered flow.",
"They help with measuring the amount of alcohol you're serving, which is really important when you're serving at a bar (where a shot is a set amount) or mixing a drink. \n\nThose little regulators slow down and regulate the flow so it's smooth, so you know that pouring for a certain amount of time will get you an ounce. Without that regulation, you increase the amount of \"glugging\" that happens due to air bubbles, and you can wind up with alcohol missing your shot glass, or serving too much or too little. \n\n~~And the bartender saves a little time because they don't have screw and unscrew the original cap, which is critical on busy weekend nights where speed can mean better tips.~~ * < -- per corrections noted in replies, this is referring to a pouring spout, not the anti-glugging device that is included in many larger-sized bottles.*",
"LPT: If you ever take the plastic pourer top off, make sure to keep track of it. More often than not, the lid seals up to the pourer, not the actual bottle. Without it, the bottle will leak out if on its side. ",
"Hey there. I work in a restaurant and have signed for many a liquor order. None of the alcohol we buy comes with plastic pour spouts either attached or in the box for our use. We have our own supply of what are called speed pours. As mentioned above they are used to give you a constant, predictable stream to work with when pouring which is very useful for a busy bartender. They have a ringed rubber base that helps them fit on nearly any bottle, an angled tip, and a small hole drilled in their base (like a coffee cup lid has) to prevent a partial vacuum from forming. On the subject of bars it's interesting to note nearly all of our liquor is purchased in 1 liter bottles whereas the stuff you and I buy is usually 750 ml or 1.75 liters (for those larger gatherings or value shoppers). Cheers!",
"ITT: People who think the OP is asking about those add-on pour spouts that bartenders use. We are talking about the plastic filter/screen thingy that is *inside* the top of the bottle, *underneath* the original cap, already installed when you buy the bottle from the store.\n\nTo answer the question, they are usually only included on bottles of liquor that is used for pouring shots and mixed drinks in a haphazard fashion from a plastic bottle in order to minimize glugging and overpouring. ",
"Probably not what the designers had in mind, but when you finish off a bottle and a roach pours out with the last shot, you'll wish you had kept that \"fun stopper\" on the lid.",
"Speed pours added to bottles by bartenders aside,\n\nlarge bottles often have plastic inserts to regulate flow, not to be able to give exactly regular flow like a speed pour, but to stop it from splashing out. Those large bottles have a lot of liquid and gain a lot of momentum when you attempt to pour it into something small, like a glass.\n\nHigh proof liquors will have flame retarders on top. A small metal screen that allows the liquor to be poured, but if a fire started on top of the bottle, it wouldn't be able to move in to the liquid and would go out in a few seconds.\n\nTL;DR: stops it from slashing or stops it from bursting into flames.",
"In Colombia, it prevents the adulteration of the drinks. It was pretty normal to refill the bottles with mix of ethanol, and other things that you don´t want to drink.",
"Are you referring to something like this?\n_URL_0_ \n\nI often find it on certain bottles that I buy in duty free (Johnnie Walker). As I understand it, the purpose is to prevent the bottle from being filled with something else, water added, etc. I guess it just depends on if the particular company puts one on or not."
]
}
|
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"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Jts7L87kB_w/TLNf3f0avHI/AAAAAAAADLs/25zbkcTE0wQ/s1600/jwpourer.jpg"
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||
3uh0s0
|
why is it against the rules for a subreddit to anonymously harass people (on or off the site) like fatpeoplehate, but a subreddit where everyone pretends to discuss fashion while taking pictures of women and their crotches in public is a-okay, like /r/candidfashionpolice?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uh0s0/eli5_why_is_it_against_the_rules_for_a_subreddit/
|
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"To me, this is all the same thing as those \"people from Wal-mart\" photos. It is people minding their own business when someone takes a picture without permission or knowledge from the target and the picture is posted online for people to either laugh at, self-gratify or both. The difference is that people being targeted in FPH complained about it, and no one from /r/candidfashionpolice has.\n\nI have the opposite view to you. I FPH was way worse than /r/candidfashionpolice, but there are a lot of subs that do the same thing"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2trqkp
|
why are most laptop cooling vents on the side, not in the back where it would make the most sense?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2trqkp/eli5_why_are_most_laptop_cooling_vents_on_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"Why would the back make more sense? Usually at a computer desk there's a wall behind the laptop, which traps heat. There's nothing to the sides, so the heat can just escape.",
"You need air to come in and to leave again. And the air flow has to go over all the important components.\n\nOne way to do this is to draw air in at the front and push it out the back.\n\nThe other way is to draw it in one 1 side and push it out the other.\n\nSpeculation : the sides were chosen to leave the front sleek for aesthetic reasons."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
19uc1k
|
how i can be dead tired the entire 8 hours i'm at work, but the second i punch out, i'm wide awake?
|
I work overnights and find this very annoying since I can't go straight to bed when I get home
EDIT: Apparently I need a more exciting job and/or experiment with cocaine and crystal meth. Thanks for all the responses guys. Think I might take up drinking before bed as well. Let's all meet at the bar at 7 am. First rounds on me!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19uc1k/eli5_how_i_can_be_dead_tired_the_entire_8_hours/
|
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"text": [
"You hate your job.",
"You hate doing what you do. It's boring, it shuts your brain down. ",
"Try not drinking coffee or other energy supplements at work.",
"it's like how when the alarm goes off on a workday, you curse, hit snooze and roll over. alarm goes off on a beach day, you jump out of bed barely needing coffee (well, almost)",
"Have you tried taking cocaine at work? You'll be wide awake and feel great.",
"It may be biorhythm / response to dawn: Are you seeing sunlight before bed?",
"Because during the night your internal pacemaker (circadian clock) which tracks the environmental day night cycle is telling you it is time to go to sleep but is telling you to wake up during the daytime. Unless you are living on a reverse cycle, where you receive only light exposure during the night and absolutely no light exposure during the day you will continue to feel this. You will also experience insomnia and frequent awakenings/shortened sleep duration during the day. There are things that can help you (look for shiftwork sleep disorder info on the net) or ask to be referred to a sleep doctor.",
"Dopamine is a chemical involved with pleasure, motivation, and wakefulness. When you do fun/rewarding things, you wake up and feel motivated. When you do boring/tedious things you feel lazy and tired. Coffee is one way to circumvent this, which is why so many people drink it at work. ",
"You find what you do boring. It's like me and uni lectures, some lectures I'm wide awake listening because I find what the lecturer is saying is interesting, other lectures I feel all drowsy because it's damn boring. You are going to be awake for something that interests you. It's like how you can have an all nighter of gaming or movies but if you do that with studying and work you will feel drowsy after a short while.",
"If you are pretty sedentary at work, your body responds to that by slowing down, and you feel lethargic. When you stand up and move your body, get your things together, walk to the car, breathe the fresh air, your body responds to this by ramping up and becoming more alert.\n\nIf you feel tired during the day (or during a work shift) you may feel like you need a nap, but, though it may be counter-intuitive, a brisk walk or other exercise may leave you with more energy.",
"Because your brain knows that sleeping makes time to by faster (this is why depression can make you so tired all the time), so since your brain is sick of your job, it wants to sleep. As soon as you're off work, your brain says \"oh hey now we can do stuff we both like doing\" so it decides to wake up. Want to not be so tired at work? Find a new job, or do something differently. You are stuck in a rut, and your brain knows it. So it tries to take the easy way out by trying to make you sleep. Why? Cuz brain don't give a shoot.",
"If only you were Japanese.",
"\"People that don't believe the dead can come back to life haven't been at my job around quitting time\"",
"Because you work overnight, it might have something to do with your Circadian Cycle. Basically, humans get awake when there is a lot of light and your body releases melatonin(which is a substance that makes you sleepy and wanting to go to bed) at night. \n\nTry to be somewhere very bright in your work and when it's about one hour until you leave put some sunglasses on.\n\nI also worked overnight and had that same problem. I would wake up extremely sleepy, be all night sleepy and when coming back home I wanted to be awake because I felt like I \"wasted\" all my time.",
"You are most likely an introvert. According to Myers Briggs, introverts feed off their own energy and recharge on their own. Extroverts recharge off of other people. You were likely drained by other people. For instance, if you are tired at the end of a party and wasn't to go to bed, when you get home you probably have a second burst of energy and lie awake for an hour or two.",
"Your body is capable of entering \"cruise control\" most of the time without you knowing it. If you go long distance running, you might not even notice that you weren't really pushing yourself, just kinda going along. But once you grab a watch and set a goal and put the pressure on yourself and make a challenge, you can destroy your \"cruise control\" time.\n\nYour body is very in tune with your schedule, as weeks go by on repetitive cycle, your body's attitude adjusts to the repetitive situations. I wake up every day at about 7:45 am with no alarm. When I go to work, which I do a very easy, repetitive job, my body just saves its energy. You're ready to go when it's time to go do something else.\n\nThe problem is, you permit your body to do this energy boost past your ideal bed-time. If you repetitively lay in bed with the lights off and stare at the ceiling without getting any sleep, your body will adjust to allow this to happen every night. Now you're deep into a tough cycle, and the only way to change it is to really put in a lot of effort to reverse the cycle (wake up super early, get right out of bed, exercise, go to work, eat a small meal for dinner, wind down, and go to bed, for several weeks straight).",
"Boredom, my friend. Boredom.\n\nThink of it like this: When you're not at work your brain is free to wander the Cosmos of Things It Would Like to Do. You may not be able to decide on something you want to do, but your choices aren't artificially limited, so your brain is free to do its brain thing, and keep you somewhat entertained thinking of neat things you could do. Sometimes this is on a rather subconscious level, that we're not entirely aware of, but it happens.\n\nNow, you go to work. And at work there is, comparatively, almost nothing you can do, and your brain knows this. It turns off your subconscious rumblings about what you'd like to do, or what you could be doing right now, because it knows none of those things are possible right now. Instead, your brain narrows its thinking to the task at hand.\n\nNow, if your job is the kind which many people have, where you pretty much perform one duty all day. And, if that's not a very mentally challenging duty, then your brain knows it doesn't have much to think about, nor look forward to in the next 8 hours or so. So, as a result, it says 'Hey, nothing's going on to tax our brain, and we're safe, and we're warm. We should take this opportunity to get some rest. Tomorrow we might be getting chased by wolves! Gotta take this opportunity!' And your eyelids droop, and your movements get sluggish and clumsy.\n\nUntil you punch out. At which time your brain seizes upon the strings of All the Stuff You Can Do Now That You're Not at Work Anymore! And with the prospect of interesting things to do again, your brain wakes back up.\n\nA personal anecdote about this phenomenon: Towards the end of my time playing EverQuest, the quickest way for me to get to sleep was to play the game. It didn't matter if I had just awoke from restful sleep, and drank 2 cups of coffee. As soon as my options were reduced to 'press these 8 buttons in this optimally-efficient pattern to win, for the next few hours'. I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes open for more than maybe 15 minutes.",
"Oxygen! Open a window",
"I like to think it's a lot like always having room for dessert even when you're full from dinner. Only with work being dinner and dessert being fun/not work.\n\nELI5-compliant.",
"At work right now for another hour and 45 mins. Yeah we hate our jobs.",
"Along the same lines...when I'm dead tired, about to fall asleep, and can't wait to get home to take a nap, sometimes I get so excited about my nap that I can't fall asleep. ",
"We associate different things with sleep/being tired, and you've probably started associate your job with sleeping. I have the same thing with trains.. As soon as I step into a train, i get tired immediately.\n\nThis is also the reason why you should only use your bed to mainly sleep in and not use it to lay around browsing reddit in with your laptop. The association with bed = sleep will go away, and you will have a harder time to fall aslepp.",
"Can I actually suggest something useful?\n\nI suspect that you are working under insufficient light. Light engineers (architects etc) will dial the light of a workspace up or down depending on how much energy/awakeness they want the person to have. In bright light you use more energy and have more attention, in dim light you can \"work\" for longer but will feel tired or sleepy.\n\nGet a desk lamp to illuminate your work space, or ideally an overhead or UV light. You'll feel more cheerful and awake... though possibly more tired at the end of the day. :)"
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