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7nsvob | subjective vs. objective | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nsvob/eli5_subjective_vs_objective/ | {
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"Subjective is a judgement or experience. Objective is a reliably reproducible measurement. Both can be scientific. A good example is flavor versus chemistry.\n\nA cherry is tangy, sweet. That's a subjective statement because everyone experiences flavor in a different way, but it's still important to science to characterize the properties of a cherry.\n\nA cherry contains an average of 0.4 grams of fructose. That's an objective statement because we've distilled some measurement from an analysis.\n\n"
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bmixbr | how does trade between countries work in terms of currency? if country a buys millions of dollars worth of commodities from country b, how do they pay? do they give them cash? gold? bank transfer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bmixbr/eli5_how_does_trade_between_countries_work_in/ | {
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"Think of countries as regular companies for this case. \n\nCountries don't really buy things - it's state companies that are run (more or less) like private companies, think of train networks requiring trains, power grids require generators, water networks needing pumps, etc. - when they buy something - and it doesn't matter if its domestic or foreign - they'll agree on a price (and a currency - especially in countries with weak local currencies, a strong foreign currency is actually agreed upon even on domestic deals) with the seller. \n\nOn longer running deals, most companies (state or private owned doesn't matter) then pay some insurance to have their exchange rate fixed (especially if the exchange rate between the local and foreign currency is more volatile) so they'll pay the same amount in their local currency for the foreign product over a longer amount of time."
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fobgss | counterfeit vs fake vs forgery for items | I've seen the terms used interchangeably, and want to ensure I've got things right with regard to them.
What's the major difference between the three, to avoid confusion? I'll admit I've sometimes used the wrong word in the past.
Is forgery more about things like banknotes, signatures/celebrity signatures than things like branded clothing etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fobgss/eli5_counterfeit_vs_fake_vs_forgery_for_items/ | {
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"Counterfeit and forgery generally mean the same thing, although you might use forgery to refer to something more specific.\n\nSo like \"counterfeit money\" is a banal mass-produced object, that happens to be fake. But a \"forgery\" would be like a painting that someone claimed was painted by Picasso, but actually wasn't. Or a signature on a document, made by someone who was lying about their identity, would be a \"forged signature.\"\n\nGenerally with mass produced things like money, pharmaceuticals, or branded clothing, we say they're counterfeit. And with signatures or art/written work attributed to certain people, we say they're forgeries.\n\nAn important nuance is that \"forgery\" implies dishonesty. If someone *honestly* misidentifies something, that thing is not a forgery. If we found an old painting in a basement somewhere, and we're not sure who painted it, and someone truly believed it was a Picasso painting, but we later found out it wasn't, we would not say that was a forgery. It's only if I painted it, and *I*, the painter, claimed this was a Picasso painting, that we would claim it to be a forgery.\n\nBut counterfeit is always counterfeit, no matter what. Even if I sincerely believed my counterfeit money was real money, it's still counterfeit money. That doesn't mean I'm in trouble, if I was truly duped. But the money will always be counterfeit.\n\nAnd \"fake\" is a non-specific term. Anything that is not the real thing it appears to be can be called fake. Counterfeits, forgeries, and many other things, can all be called fake.",
"From a legal standpoint it's actually fairly nitpicky.\n\nA counterfeit is an item made to resemble or be identical to an original item of higher value or notariety then attempted to be passed off and/or sold as the original item. Handbags, cell phones, money, etc. Items that all have value as an item.\n\nForgery is similar to counterfeit of legally binding documents and signature. Contracts, licenses, etc. These documents don't have a value as an item rather as the authority and license they attempt to manufacture.\n\nAnd fake really doesn't have a legal definition.\n\nOutside of the legal realm they may be used fairly interchangeably.",
"A forgery usually refers to a *specific* item, like a signature or an original painting. If you were two see two identical copies of the same original painting, you could conclude that forgery has occurred merely from the fact that there are two of them. You still might need an expert to tell which one is the forgery, though.\n\nCounterfeit is for *categories* of goods, and usually means that the thing being faked is the *origin*, not the good itself. Counterfeit is often, but not always, related to IP infringement.\n\nIf you make a purse, that's fine. If you make a purse and call it a Louis Vuitton, then it's a counterfeit because Louis Vuitton didn't make it (regardless if it's good quality or otherwise identical!). If Louis Vuitton licenses you to make LV-brand apparel, then that same purse is now not counterfeit anymore. In contrast to forgery, there's nothing inherently suspicious about seeing a dozen identical Louis Vuitton purses. \n\nBank notes are also counterfeit, because the thing being faked is who made them. The country issuing them is what gives them the legal weight to be considered money. So what you're faking is the issuing authority, and the good itself only incidentally.\n\nCounterfeiting banknotes may also require forgery because there's signatures and art. Also, *financial instruments* can be forged: things like checks and deposit slips and authorizations. \n\n\"Fake\" is a pretty loose term. I'm not sure it's well-defined."
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39rn8v | why do we still need sunscreen? why haven't we as humans adapted to the heat of the sun after all this time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39rn8v/eli5_why_do_we_still_need_sunscreen_why_havent_we/ | {
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" > Why haven't we as humans adapted to the heat of the sun after all this time?\n\nIt's not the heat that's the problem. It's ultraviolet light, which damages cells and can lead to skin cancer. And we *have* adapted. Tanning is our body's response to excess sunlight, and it helps reduce (but does *not* eliminate) sun-related damage.\n\nBut skin cancer from sun exposure generally happens late enough in life that it has no impact on someone's ability to reproduce, and if it doesn't affect our ability to reproduce, then there is no evolutionary pressure to change it (i.e. pretty much no one who is more prone to UV-influenced cancer is dying before they can have children).",
"The problem is, we have moved away from the places to which our skin *is* adapted. The world's whitest people, the Irish and Norwegians, adapted in places with very little sunlight, where in order to make enough Vitamin D, people who had the palest skin survived best and had the most babies. \n\nPeople in the sunniest areas tended to survive best with the darkest skin, with the most melanin. They could disable the negative effects of solar radiation and also get enough vitamin D because there was so much sun.\n\nThis would be fine if the pale skin people didn't keep moving to areas with much much more sunlight. Australia, for example, has a large number of pale skinned people in a very sun-intensive location, hence they have one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world.\n\nIn the Techno age of the late 20th-21st centuries, we apply sunscreen as a \"fake melanin\". It protects the skin from damage due to solar radiation.\n\nInterestingly enough, in the quest to reduce fatalities from skin cancer, physicians advise heavy sunscreen all the time. This has led to many people having Vitamin D deficiency. We don't know all the consequences of Vitamin D deficiency, but there are some who think it includes asthma, cancer, and dementia. \n\nThere has got to be a happy medium, but I'm guessing exactly how much is optimal for sun exposure varies from person to person. My doctor's solution is stay out of the sun, and take vitamin D supplements. I maintain that there have got to be other deficiencies when you get NO sun; we've done research on Vitamin D so we know about that one, but we should probably get some sun just in case. I'm not a doctor, she's probably correct.\n",
"We adapted by being in the sun all day and building up a resistance.\n\nAnd then some of us started to use shades or more cloudy regions with less intense sunshine so our bodies dialed back the production of natural sunscreen."
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2vybkn | if i keep the calories down but it's all mtn dew & chocolate & chips, will i lose weight or stay fat from all the sugar? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vybkn/eli5_if_i_keep_the_calories_down_but_its_all_mtn/ | {
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"If you eat fewer calories than you use, you lose weight.\n\nIf all those calories come from soda, chocolate, and chips, you lose other things. Like muscle mass, hair, and vital signs.",
"You will lose weight based on calories, but getting appropriate nutrition on such a diet would be a challenge.",
"If you eat fewer calories than you burn in your day to day life you will lose weight. It does not matter what form those calories come in in so far as your weight is concerned. \n\nWhat will be affected in other aspects of your health. A diet of mountain dew, cookies, and chips will not give you anything close to the amount of vitamins, protein, fats, or minerals that you need. You will likely have problems with your skin, muscle mass, hair, kidneys, liver, heart lungs, teeth, etc. ",
"Someone went on a Twinkie diet and lost a bunch of weight. Sorry I didn't link it. I'm just being lazy because I'm alone on V-day eating Twinkies.",
"I recently did some self research on this. I'm not in the medical field at all so i don't have all the technical terms but basically your body doesn't care what you eat. What ever you eat gets broken down into components that are absorbed or left to waste. The waste leaves your body via your ass and the parts that are absorbed go into your blood stream. (Your body may miss some of the nutrients you eat deepening on the person and the fat content of the food) The common, but not technical, names for these nutrients are sugar, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals. Of those only sugars and fats are stored, everything else will end up passing though if not used. Weather it is used and produces waste or if it is passing through it will come out of your body via your urine or lungs. Specifically when sugar or fat is broken down it produces water and CO2, everything else passes through as-is. Keep in mind that in order to have a healthy body you need the right amount of all those components. On that type of diet you will likely be lacking in protein, vitamins and minerals. \n\nA side note to what i was actually researching, when someone goes from 300 lbs to 150 lbs none of the weight lose is in their shit, all 150 lbs of weight loss leaves the body via lungs and urine by the break down of sugars and fats into water and CO2.\n\ntl;dr - yes you will lose weight b/c your body breaks everything down into its basic components but you still need all the components.",
"Hey there! I'm a biomedical scientist who studies microbes, but part of that includes nutrition.\n\nFirst, let's take a look at what it means to lose and gain weight in a conventional sense.\n\nThe \"weight\" you are referring to is likely fat (although you can certainly [lose muscle mass from malnutrition](_URL_0_) as well, unless you're a POW in a third world country, that's probably not what you meant). So how is weight stored in your body?\n\nIt's stored in the form of fat! But what is fat? It's a type of molecule, also called a lipid. When people gain weight though, these lipids are not evenly distributed around their body in a liquid layer! Otherwise we would see it pooling in the legs of obese people due to gravity. Not only that, but losing weight would be as simple as puncturing the skin and allowing it to drain.\n\nFats are instead stored in a specialized tissue known as adipose, which is made up of cells called [lipocytes.](_URL_3_) Inside each one of these lipocytes is a \"bubble\" that stores fat, called a vacuole.\n\nSo think of your old man's beer gut as a 30 pack of cans, each separate from one another, rather than the keg he claims it is. Except instead of 30, there's tens of billions of them, and they're real tiny and filled with something closer in nature to butter than it is to beer (sorry, Pops).\n\nSo now we've answered the *how.* Let's talk about *why.* \n\nThere are many things that adipose tissue is good for. Thermal insulation, protection for your organs... But it's got one major role that is more important than the rest.\n\nThe chemical nature of a lipid makes it very very good at storing energy in its molecular bonds- energy that other cells in your body can use to get their jobs done (ever wonder why fat sits directly on top of muscle tissue? Muscles use a lot of energy so they need quick access to fat!)\n\nThe reason eating fatty foods is considered \"bad\" for you by some people is because of fat's high energy content (there are some other reasons, but that's the main one). The excessive calories are often more than you need, and the calorie-heavy food crowds out other, less-nutrient rich foods from your diet.\n\nNutrients! [Another buzzword!](_URL_1_) What are nutrients, exactly? They're the various things found in the food you eat that your body needs to continue to function normally!\n\nThere are two main classes of nutrients:\n\nMacronutrients (macro meaning large), the nutrients your body needs you to consume in large amounts to maintain its normal processes,\n\nand micronutrients (micro meaning \"small\" of course!), the nutrients you need to consume in small quantities.\n\nThere are three types of macronutrient: Lipids (yes, you need to eat fats to be healthy!), proteins, and carbohydrates. [In a different thread](_URL_2_) I went into a great amount of detail about the importance of some other macronutrients, if you're curious.\n\nMicronutrients include vitamins and minerals.\n\nWithout these nutrients in your body, you can't get certain things done. For example, if you don't get the lipids you need, your hair will become brittle. Your skin will get very dry, and your joints will really start to hurt!\n\n\nSome of the scariest symptoms, in my opinion, come from vitamin deficiencies. Without the right vitamins in your diet, you can get pale or yellow skin, weakness in your muscles, fatigue (tiredness), shortness of breath, tingling and numbness in your hands and feet... The list goes on.\n\nIf you ate only the foods you listed, and consumed few enough calories that you were at a caloric deficiency, you would indeed lose weight. The general rule still holds that you gain weight when you consume more calories than you burn, and you lose weight when you burn more calories than you consume.\n\nHowever, without the proper nutrients in your body, you would quickly become malnourished and would certainly die eventually.\n\n\nDoes that help? :o)"
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74b11b | why does traveling to new places generally make people happy? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74b11b/eli5_why_does_traveling_to_new_places_generally/ | {
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"1. Humans have an instinctive desire to explore. Following our instincts feels good.\n2. It distracts us from our usual daily concerns, which aren't visible there.\n3. We don't have so many chores or work to do when on vacation."
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cth0kp | how the conversion rates between currencies are decided. who, or what, decides these? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cth0kp/eli5_how_the_conversion_rates_between_currencies/ | {
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"It works kind of like the stock market. Look up forex trading for details.\n\nBut basically a bunch of people make and take offers to trade one currency for another, and the rates those people are willing to trade at determine the exchange rate.",
"\"Conversion rate\" is just another word of \"price of a currency\", and that is, like most prices, ruled by supply and demand.\n\nDemand for a currency comes mostly from the trade balance. Think about a company that produces in Europe, but sells its products in the USA. The workers want to be paid in euros, but the customers pay in dollars. That means that the company needs to buy euros with those dollars, or they will run out of euros to pay their workers.\n\nMeaning, if a country exports a lot, that increases demand for that countries' currency, and therefore this currency will rise. (Which in turn makes those exports less profitable, but thats another story).\n\nOf course, there are also other things that influence the conversion rates, like speculants. And obviously, if a country decides to print lots of its own money, that increases the supply, reducing its value.\n\nSo, no person or institution decides these rates, they are just the outcome of banks and corporations trying to buy and sell currencies."
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1tflmo | how does alka-seltzer work? | Okay, so stomach acid helps break down your food right? Alka-Seltzer is a base, which counteracts the acid. Doesn't that mean your stomach acid isn't working as well as it should? Wouldn't that make your stomach hurt instead of giving you some relief?
Sorry if this is a dumb question... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tflmo/eli5_how_does_alkaseltzer_work/ | {
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"It doesn't counteract the acid a whole lot, and you wouldn't take it if you felt fine anyway. If you eat a lot of acidic food or drinks, then the balance gets thrown off, and its too acidic. Then you would want take an alka seltzer to basify it just a little, to get the acid levels to where they should be.",
"Stomach acid isn't there to break down your food, its primary role is to destroy bacteria in anything you just ate. The enzymes in your small intestine are responsible for most of the digestion.\n\nHeartburn is caused by stomach acid finding its way up, and out of your stomach where it attacks the lining of your esophagus. Alka seltzer relieves heartburn by neutralizing that acid."
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8zzujv | how does the opening bottle of wine in a shoe work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zzujv/eli5_how_does_the_opening_bottle_of_wine_in_a/ | {
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"Liquids don't compress. Holding the bottle upside down and striking the heel sends shockwaves through the bottle, which terminate in the spongey cork, causing it to move. Since it can't move into the liquids, it moves out of the neck."
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807n7b | why when there is a silent we often hear a beep sound? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/807n7b/eli5_why_when_there_is_a_silent_we_often_hear_a/ | {
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" Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained that this is *tinnitus:*\n\n1. [ELI5: what is the ringing noise we hear when there's silence? ](_URL_3_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do my ears ring in a quiet room? ](_URL_2_) ^(_12 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is the beeping sound I hear sometimes when it's completely silent? ](_URL_1_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is happening when you randomly hear a weird ringing in one or both of your ears? ](_URL_0_) ^(_69 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do I sometimes suddenly hear a ringing in one of my ears? ](_URL_4_) ^(_86 comments_)\n"
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5goq5i | how does the amazon go store figure out what you are purchasing exactly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5goq5i/eli5_how_does_the_amazon_go_store_figure_out_what/ | {
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"Holy crud, this is a neat idea. Here's some speculation, until we can get a concrete answer from Ol' Amazon themselves.\n\n* since you need the app, and need to apparently launch it when walking in, that's probably how the store determines that you in particular are the person who just entered. Bluetooth might also be involved, as that's a short-range wireless technology that can provide a unique identifier and help it accurately ballpark who's where in the building.\n* cameras in the store are connected to a computer system that can tell people apart (that'd be some machine learning bit right there) and since it knows who just walked in the door, can keep an eye on you as you move about the building.\n* sensors on the shelves know when an object has been taken. If it detects that a pudding cup got picked up, and knows by the cameras that you are standing right in front of the pudding, it assumes that you're the person who did so."
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5cd82h | how was the dnc primary "rigged"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cd82h/eli5_how_was_the_dnc_primary_rigged/ | {
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"So... the main thing is that the Democratic National Committee didn't want Bernie to win. We didn't need leaked e-mails to know this. Hillary had been the Democratic Party's plan for years, they had been preparing her. No one else was going to run against her as they knew that was the score. \n\nAnd at the last minute Bernie decided to switch from Independent to Democrat so he could run for president as a Democrat and stand a chance. \n\nNow, Bernie lost the primaries. There are a lot of people who supported Bernie who couldn't imagine any way he'd seriously lose, after all they voted for him and so did all of their friends. So they thought that it must have been rigged, how else could he have lost?\n\nBut...\n\nHillary had more money at her disposal than Bernie. Hillary had the benefit of being a household name that everyone knew, for better or worse. Hillary had more support from the rest of the Democratic party. At the end, the odds were against Bernie. And he lost. Bernie didn't do as well with Black voters. Bernie did great with the youth, but not so much with the older Democrats who felt he was far too radical. But the folks who hang out on Reddit don't hang out with those demographics. \n\nDid the DNC make things unfair for Bernie? Yes. Did they rig the election? There's absolutely no actual proof.\n\nEDIT: I want to make something clear. I voted for Bernie. I really wish that he won. I agree that the DNC did make things unfair for him. My definition of \"rigging\" and the one I think many people who hear the term use is actual manipulation of the votes. They did not do that. They did pretty much everything else, yes, but they did not alter actual votes made by the people. ",
"The DNC is supposed to be neutral. The e-mails released by wikileaks from the DNC showed that they were actively trying to help Hilary's nomination and hurt Bernie's. That was a violation of their charter. In addition, after the leaks and subsequent calls for her resignation, the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, was immediately appointed as chair of one of Hilary's election committees. In short, it was not a fair primary for Bernie or his supporters. ",
"Well, Donna Brazille who is currently DNC chair after DWS [who was ousted in June days before the DNC for obvious collusion with the HRC camp] leaked questions directly to the Clinton camp before a debate. \nThere was the Brooklyn voter purge days before that primary. \nThere were the emails. Just.. i mean like honestly like read all those emails.\nThey didn't just collude to \"bring up Bernie's atheism\" \nThey conspired to attack his family structure, his ethnicity, his wearing a red swimsuit by the pool at a Congress function [???] \nThe media consulted HRC's campaign consistently before publishing ANYTHING . This is collusion. It is \"rigging\" \n",
"DNC is supposed to be impartial, but they favored Hillary. DNC and Hillary's campaign pooled their resources in going after Bernie during the primaries. There is no evidence of voter fraud, but this is the case of establishment looking out for their chosen candidate.\n\nThe media colluded with Hillary's campaign against Trump too, but the same people who claim primaries were rigged against Bernie, have no problem that the odds were artificially stacked against Trump. \n\nSo for the most part, the claims of rigging is false, favoritism yes. People who express anger at the \"rigging\" are hypocrites.",
"Anomalies existed between exit polls and final results. Also, Sanders did much much better in states that used paper ballots instead of electronic voting. _URL_1_\n\nAnd Clinton was given a couple of the debate questions ahead of time by Donna Brazile. _URL_0_",
"Urban areas and college towns, where many of Bernie's supporters could be found, saw huge lines at the polling stations because the numbers of polling stations in those areas were reduced. Voters were left standing in lines for hours and hours, and many voting officials tried to tell them that they had to go home without a ballot. Meanwhile, neighborhoods that had a lot of Clinton supporters had no lines whatsoever.\n\nThousands of voters discovered that their party affiliation had been changed, or that their names were completely removed from the records, and many of them were unable to get it changed back in time to vote in the primary.\n\nFundraisers were held for the Democratic Party, with donors being told that their money would go towards helping *all* Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. Allegedly, all of that money was given to the Clinton campaign.\n\nMedia coverage of the two candidates was incredibly lopsided. Hillary would give a speech to a few hundred people and it would be shown on television and reported on by every major media outlet. At the same time, Bernie would hold rallies with tens of thousands of supporters and barely get a blurb on the back page.",
"It helps when you promise Tim Kaine (the DNC chairman at the time) a VP role for stepping down, put a former employee from your last presidential run (Debbie Wasserman Shultz) into the DNC chairman role, and use the entire party's political might and money to sabotage a popular candidate when the rank and file membership have extensive knowledge of chosen candidate's widescale corruption but are forbidden from dissenting. They call complaining \"being ridiculous\". The Clintonites destabilized their own party for personal profit and power. Exactly like their candidate has a tendency to do.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis is a link to Election Justice USA's 96 page document proving Bernie won the primary. Hillary benefitted from several different kinds of election fraud, resulting in -184 estimated delegates lost for Bernie; enough to make him the true victor.\n\nIn other words, this loss is on Hillary. She didnt give a modicum of a shit about the USA, or democracy, or 'democratic' values. Literally all Hillbot cares about is MONEY, and her MONEY GIVING constituents. This was blatantly obvious to so many people she couldnt trick more than half of us. EVEN WITH Trump as a wikileaks-proven 'pied piper' candidate. Even with Trump as blackmail.\n\nIn the age of information, its almost like you have to actually have positive traits to win it. Like BERNIE SANDERS had. That guy DESTROYED Trump EVERY SINGLE DAY of the year with his straight forward message of love, for the benefit of everyone; not just the top .1%.",
"My understanding is that, among other things, debate questions were leaked to HRC, but not to BS. This allowed her to prepare unfairly.",
"Another aspect of the rigged primary allegations (not really sure if I'm comfortable calling it rigged but will for arguments sake) are the way the DNC allocates delegates.\n\nEach state elects delegates who pledge to a candidate based on the state's primary or caucus. You can sort of imagine them as being similar to electoral votes, except candidates don't win all or nothing. If a state votes 50% for Bernie and 50% for Hillary, then theoretically each should get half the delegates from the state.\n\nAlongside delegates exist superdelegates, who are free to vote for whomever they choose, and our not bound to constituents. \nThere are 712 superdelegates; to win the democratic primaries a candidate needs 2382 delegate votes.\n\nWhen the democratic primary race was called hillary had 571 superdelegates pledged to her (80%) with another 95 undecided (13%); or put another way, she was a quarter of a way to the nomination before any votes were tallied. \n\nThis basically means Bernie would have had to received a resounding popular vote in the primaries to receive the nomination. Perhaps not so much rigged as stacked incredibly in her favor.",
" > On November 3, WikiLeaks released Part 27 of their emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.\n\n > In an April 2014 email, campaign manager Robby Mook discusses coordinating the schedule of the Democratic primaries to maximize benefit for Hillary Clinton. “We agreed that if she gets a significant primary challenger, we need to consider changing course and getting N.Y., N.J. and maybe others to move their dates earlier to give her hefty early wins,” Mook wrote. “We may need allies to help in this process but we’re going to look at each state one step at a time, limiting as much as possible the perception of direct intervention by the principals.” The email provides further evidence that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign colluded to rig the primaries for Hillary Clinton.\n\n > Other emails released by WikiLeaks confirmed the debate schedule was coordinated to the Clinton campaign’s preference. A recent thread revealed then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was directed to hold phony meetings with other Democratic candidates to provide the Clinton campaign and DNC with plausible deniability that they were coordinating with one another.\n\n > In stark violation of its own charter, the DNC undermined democracy to ensure Clinton’s coronation as the Democratic presidential nominee. It may be the first time the Democratic Party has nominated a woman to be president, but equally historic is the extent of corruption exercised within the Democratic Party to rig the election for her.\n\nSource: _URL_0_",
"So far all these answers are incomplete. It's nigh-deplorable that there isn't a simple bullet point copy-and-paste document ready to answer your question. \n\nWhat happened was about far more than money and influence. It was about far more than media coverage. It was about far more than an open or a closed primary. \n\n\n - In New York, over 100,000 people were purged from the voter roll. \n\n\"Of the 126,000 Democratic voters taken off from the rolls in Brooklyn, Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said 12,000 had moved out of borough, while 44,000 more had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and, having failed to vote in two successive federal elections or respond to cancel notices, were removed.\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWere these voters pro-Sanders? Perhaps, Bernie Sanders hails from Brooklyn and his support from young people was well documented. \n\nIn New York, over 1,000 people complained on the day of the primary. By contrast, 150 people complained on the day of the 2012 election. \n\n - In Iowa, some precincts were decided by coin flip. \n\n - In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton explicitly broke the law by campaigning inside polling places. \n\n_URL_2_\n\n - In Nevada, the February vote was followed by a contentious and Kafkaeque April convention. \n\n - In California, one key issue was the crossover ballot, the independent voter, and the training that was given to staff about whether to give crossover ballots to independent voters.\n\nUnless independent voters asked specifically for crossover ballots, they weren't given a chance to vote for the nominee. \n\nWere these independent voters pro-Sanders? Perhaps, they are Californian Independents so it's likely they hold progressive viewpoints. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nI don't have anywhere near all the facts. I don't have a dog in this fight. On Tuesday, I wrote-in Jeb. But I do think there were enough tactics to disenfranchise likely Sanders voters that the word 'rigged' is appropriate. \n\nThese bullet points are what I could throw together in fifteen minutes. There should be a much longer list of concise examples backed by indisputable media sources. ",
"Has literally everyone in this thread forgotten about the Nevada incident earlier in the year?",
"First, lemme say I've been 100% pro-Bernie Sanders. He'd make a great President, imo. That being said, please remember when you're reading these responses that Bernie wasn't a Democrat until it was convenient to be a Democrat. He was an Independent for his entire career. When things were going wrong with the country, it benefitted him to be able to point a finger at Republicans AND Democrats for equal blame. Therefore, the idea that the DNC should have treated him and Hillary (a lifelong Democrat) fairly is, and always has been, insane. Like it or not, I completely understand why the DNC would support Hillary more than Bernie\nEDIT: Anybody with an argument against my comment, what about this scenario: Take Bernie completely out of the equation and insert Donald Trump. What if Trump thought that his easiest path to the White House was to run as a Democrat? What if he decided to take on Hillary instead of the DOZEN+ Republicans? Are you still complaining about the DNC's actions? Seriously, check yo selves",
"I am a Bernie Supporter, who also supported Hillary with all my heart. I'm deeply involved in local politics in my state and understood how important the top of the ticket is to down ballot candidates. \n\nI know that a lot of the stuff that Clinton and crew (and the DNC) did looks shady. I wish they'd taken a different tack, but the other edge of that sword is allowing room for a lunatic like Trump to hijack a major party. The fact is, despite a lot of folks in this thread saying, \"the Primary is supposed to be neutral [etc.],\" the primary process in the US is more democratic than in any other democracy, and it's still not *supposed* to be neutral. The people who've built/invested in/sweated and bled for and as Democrats wanted Hillary, and so did the primary voters when it was all said and done. \n\nThe top commenter noted that Bernie switched to being a Dem to run this year. This is key. The Democratic Party Primary is not enshrined in the Constitution. This is a private political entity--a club--where your cache is determined by how much you've put in to the collective whole of the organization. The rules were stacked against Bernie, but they were stacked by people who hava lot more invested in the Party than Bernie does. The whole time Bernie was an Independent Senator caucusing with the D's, Hillary was out *investing* in the party: Fundraising, stumping, building relationships with the Dems in each state who move the core of the party, whether its a Presidential election or a school board election. The Party gets to make the rules on how it chooses its nominee, and that is in no way \"rigging.\"\n\nI wish Bernie would have won, but I don't think Hillary was a bad candidate. Countless malevolent forces have been working to sandbag her for a long time, just because she's a capable, ambitious woman. She did a lifetime's work of building up the Democratic Party. \n\nBernie shares most (D) values, but he was not really even a member of the Party, other than for the opportunity to highlight his platform. His success was inspiring and powerful. He did not have the capital in the Party to wrest the process from someone like Hillary, who has been building relationships at state and local levels for 30 years. ",
"All of this was revealed by Wikileaks: Back in 2014, the DNC was working with Team Hillary to set the primary dates so her best states would be early, giving her a likely lead and this momentum. That is election rigging. Arguably what happened in Nevada was election rigging (chair asks for a voice vote that clearly favors bernie then says it favors Clinton). \n\nThere are other concrete examples of the DNC rigging the primary--they planted negative articles in media about Bernie; they circulated a picture of him sunbathing (to body shame; or imply he's lazy I guess?); they pushed his Jewish religion as a negative in Christian states; they minimized the number of debates and had awkward debate times, limiting his exposure; Donna Brazile got caught sharing at leave four debate questions with Team Clinton. \n\nThat's the stuff we know about. The DNC was not about to let another Barack Obama beat their girl, and yet Bernie still got 46% of the pledged delegates. If the DNC had not meddled, he would have been the nominee. And he would be president-elect instead of Donald Trump. ",
"What is your standard for 'rigging'? Does 'rigging' only mean 'vote flipping'? Is an unfair primary 'rigged'? Or is it simply a reality any outsider candidate must deal with? \n\nIf you mean literally flipping votes, there's no hard evidence of that, despite that oft circulated Election Justice USA statistical analysis which alleges this happened. \n\nIf you mean collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC and/or the media to sabotage Sanders, there is some evidence of this. \n\nFor example Donna Brazile, now the interim DNC chair, was a pundit on CNN during the primaries. She was proven to have given debate questions to the HRC campaign in advance (proven via leaked emails), and CNN severed ties with her over this.\n\nAfter this things get more into the realm of speculation and 'where there's smoke there's fire' thinking. \n\nThere are leaked DNC emails discussing ways to attack Sanders, and emails documenting general antipathy towards his campaign. However AFAIK there is no direct link between any of these discussions and actual attacks made on Sanders. All they directly prove is prejudice, and that the HRC campaign and the DNC were close (further proven when Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, had to resign over the email leaks and was immediately hired by the Hilary campaign). \n\nEven in the absence of top down directives to sabotage Sanders, institution wide prejudice will have an effect. When all the people operating the party machinery favor one side, a thousand little things can become harder. Harder to get your side counted accurately at a caucus. Harder to get your people registered properly and on time. Etc.\n\nOne example of this is the Nevada democratic convention, where dozens of Bernie delegates were disqualified (fairly in the view of the DNC, unfairly in the view of Sanders supporters) and the chairwoman attempted to push through some rules that Sanders supporters felt unfairly marginalized them. DNC officials almost certainly did not give the chairwoman top down orders to disenfranchise Sanders supporters, but institutional bias could certainly lead to such a situation organically.\n\nThe Nevada incident segways us into the idea of 'rigging' by the media, who widely publicized a claim by the Nevada Democratic Party that Sanders supporters had violently thrown a chair, painting them in a negative light. Snopes has rated that claim false. \n\nIn general, the media gave Sanders relatively little airtime vs. Hilary. However, they were both dwarfed by Trump, and Hilary got a lot of negative airtime from her scandals. \n\nLastly, the superdelegate system, where hundreds of delegate votes were pledged to Hilary from day 1 and shown in media delegate counts, are clearly a system meant to work against populist uprisings like the Sanders campaign. \n\ntldr: There was no rigging through a grand conspiracy with a predetermined outcome via vote flipping. There was a little bit of definitively proven collusion/cheating, a lot of alleged/speculated cheating/collusion, and proven institutional bias against Sanders and close ties with the Clinton campaign. These could have been instrumental in Sanders' loss. Or maybe they ultimately didn't matter other than improving Clinton's margin of victory. \n\n",
"Rigged basically means cheating to gain an unfair advantage. Hillary had a huge unfair advantage over every other candidate including Bernie Sanders by not only being the DNCs chosen golden girl, but also by [being fed debate questions giving her time to craft the perfect answer.](_URL_0_) Not to mention that she had the mainstream media at her command, which is apparent by the wording of this article which is *carefully worded* to sound like someone just got fired from CNN for some reason.",
"It's worth mentioning that the Associated Press declared Hillary the presumptive Democratic nominee on June 6th, the night before the California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, Puerto Rico, South and North Dakota primaries. Bernie still had a chance at this time, but I'm sure the announcement dissuaded some (that otherwise would have voted for Bernie) from voting for him/voting at all. Ultimately, Hilary won five out of seven of those states/territories, getting quite a few delegates. I still wonder if the results would have been (at the very least) a bit different had the AP not made that announcement. \n\nI can understand the DNC wanting party unity, but this was the AP..."
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"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/hacked-emails-suggest-trump-was-right-after-all-clinton-got-previews-of-some-debate-questions/",
"http://www.snopes.com/stanford-study-proves-election-fraud-through-exit-poll-discrepancies/"
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"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5O9I4XJdSISNzJyaWIxaWpZWnM/view"
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"http://observer.com/2016/11/wikileaks-clinton-camp-rigging-primaries-as-early-as-2014/"
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"http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-primary-results-confusing-20160711-snap-story.html",
"http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/19/politics/new-york-primary-voter-problem-polls-sanders-de-blasio/",
"http://www.salon.com/2016/03/02/bill_clinton_may_have_broken_massachusetts_law_by_telling_people_at_polling_locations_to_vote_for_hillary/"
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57uk3c | why did slave owners/ traders feel it was necessary to convert slaves to christianity? if slaves were considered nothing more than property why was their salvation important? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57uk3c/eli5_why_did_slave_owners_traders_feel_it_was/ | {
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"Back then, conversion was a big part of *your* salvation because it was your duty as a Christian to get more followers. Also, the bible condones slavery so that makes it a bit easier to control your slaves.",
"* they wanted to prevent them practicing their native religions, which they considered devil worship\n* there are benefits to having slaves believe in a religion that condones slavery\n* there are passages in the Bible that were taken to mean that blacks were specifically supposed to be slaves\n* religion in general has been a tool the powerful use to control those under them",
"\"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"People misinterpreting shit all over the place. Religion is the opiate of the masses, telling oppressed slaves they'll receive their reward in the afterlife as long as they behave and \"turn the other cheek\" is a good way of keeping them docile and well behaved. There are some old testament passages in the Bible that condone slavery, but they don't really jive with Jesus's message of love and equality in the eyes of God, which is a much more central tenant of Christianity.",
"It wasn't so much saving their souls as it was breaking them of any other identity. \n\nIf they had the religion of their homeland then part of their identity involves being free. Take that religion away, replace it with one that has become a slave religion, and suddenly their religion reinforces the idea of being a slave rather than freedom.",
"One crucial point that no one else has mentioned thus far:\n\nconversion (to Christianity) was the primary theological and social justification *for* slavery. \n\nMany religious figures (pastors, theologians) were content with the idea that a lifetime of suffering was absolutely worth the price of eternal life. \n\nPurchasing African slaves from \"heathens\", then working them to death on the St. Domingue or Brazilian sugar plantations, was considered morally justifiable *if* the slaves thereby gained access to the word of Christ (and thereby the possibility for eternal Salvation.) \n\nIf you ask me, I suspect that 17th, 18th, and 19th century Europeans and Americans recognized at some deep level that slavery was morally reprehensible, and this idea of \"converting\" them (and thereby \"saving\" them) helped ease their consciences. ",
"I don't think this is as intentional as a lot of people here think. It was so they weren't practicing their own religion. You notice how they didn't get to keep their language or cuisine either? It's stripping them of their savage roots, and bringing them into the bosom of civilization. Or at least that's how the slaveowners saw it. And they were Christian, so why not convert them to Christianity? ",
"Most of the comments on here are pretty poor. The slave holders wanted 'em Christian so they could beat 'em more or some such garbage they got from watching a Tarantino film and supposing that this equals history.\n\nNote, in this version, Christianity is the justification for having/mistreating slaves. I am sure some understood Christianity in this way, and used it as such.\n\nI am willing to wager though that many didn't instrumentalize Christianity for their blood-lust, but simply thought slavery is the natural state of affairs (true, except mostly for the last 200 years), and that Christianity was also true. So if slavery was true, and Christianity was true, then the only option as good Christians who owned slaves would be to teach your slaves Christianity - in the same way you teach your kids.\n\nThe animus toward Christianity blinds so many people...good grief we get it, you don't like it...but to say those filthy Christians must have all been awful like communists indoctrinating kids is just stupid.",
"All the answers here are correct for a certain historical period. However, it's important to remember that for the majority of the time the Atlantic slave trade was in operation, religious conversion was not a priority. There were a number of reasons for this:\n\n1. In many colonies the average slave lived only 5-10 years, so conversion was deemed not worth the effort. This was especially true in the Caribbean. It was only when the mortality rate dropped and whites began to see established intergenerational slave communities that anyone thought it might be worth trying to make new converts.\n\n2. In colonies with a higher proportion of slaves (e.g. Barbados, where whites numbered less than 10% of the total population) there was a constant fear of slave uprisings. The authorities wanted to restrict Christianity because they feared that some of the Bible's more humane messages might give their slaves some revolutionary ideas.\n\n3. More generally, slave owners throughout the Americas were (kind of) concerned about the theological implications of making their slaves Christians. There are all kinds of warnings in the Bible and in Catholic and Anglican texts about enslaving co-religionists. Slave owners didn't think it would cause much trouble, but they were concerned that if they converted their human chattel there might be a chance that the authorities would then declare the enslavement of Christians unlawful. And that would be a very expensive mistake.\n\nNow, in the British colonies in continental North America, the people who made religious decisions and the people who mad economic decisions were one and the same. So there was no danger of the local plantation owner having his slaves preached at by the church deacon, because there was a good chance that they were the same man. Religion at the time was about hierarchy, but, contrary to the responses here, the best way to keep a slave population at the bottom of the social hierarchy is to never initiate them into it in the first place.\n\nWhat ended up happening (again, in the 13 colonies - my knowledge of non-British slave systems is patchy) was that in the early-mid 18th century, the first in a series of religious revivals swept across the colonies. Now religion was rendered less hierarchical, and people started to think that anyone could talk to (a) God, and (b) other people about God. So now it's not only the local vicar who can convert heathens, it's any God-fearing Christian. \n\nThe situation as it subsequently developed was not therefore of the slave-owning class's making. Zealous individuals converted slaves of their own initiative and against the express wishes of the colonial elite. Once that damage was done, the slave owners just had to make the best of a bad situation by emphasising (as others here have pointed out) the hierarchical bits of Christianity. But it's wrong to say that the beneficiaries of the slave system actively converted anyone.\n\n**TLDR: Slave owners never really converted anyone because slaves were easier to handle if they weren't Christian. It was only at the tail end of the Atlantic slave era that any widespread conversions started to happen.**\n\nSOURCE: *Inhuman Bondage* by David Brion Davis.",
"Apart from what everyone mentioned, Christianity (except Calvinism) has a missionary culture to it, and this was especially true during colonization and early Euro-American history. It was considered the duty of every Christian to convert others to Christianity- this included slaves. ",
"After reading 66 comments here, I notice that a lot of us are critical of religion and the use of it. It's a tempting and convenient attitude and belief system. It seems that part of the trouble is that life isn't necessarily so simple , (unless you adopt a belief system that says it is, and that becomes your \"truth\"). \n\nSaying that religion and the use of it has been \"wrong\" is also based on axiomatic moral beliefs, just as religion is. It's ironic to hear people essentially say \"thou shalt not _____\" when condemning religion. Religious people believe in their belief-system just as you believe in yours. \n\nWe also so easily fall prey to fear and hatred because the experience of life can be quite scary, even terrifying, and it seems like facing that often requires something more, something else to rise above it; be it: faith, or love, or maybe higher knowledge and intelligence, or courage/bravery/trust (which are perhaps similar to faith and/or love), in other words some sort of guiding belief or principle. \n\nAnd if one is Zen and doesn't necessarily need any sort of guiding belief or principle, then I suppose one has no need to ask non-rhetorical questions and expect a non-rhetorical answer. ",
"I'm taking a class about the Southern history of the United States (assuming you are curious about US slavery). The supplemental journals of contemporaries of the the time mentioned many a time the fact that the once colonies, now a newly formed republic moved from the Anglican church and to more revolutionary christian denominations, the main ones in favor of conversion being evangelical, Presbyterian, and baptism (may be wrong on baptism, nevertheless point made). These denominations spread very rapidly within the slave owning states, and actually encouraged slave owners to worship with their _URL_0_ pervious people stated, yes life expectancy was a factor, as well as the justifications within the bible, but it was mostly about the new ideas within the new denominations that were growing within the south. \nIn many cases, against popular belief, this caused the large majority of slave owners to in fact free their slaves, only problem was those that actually freed their slaves owned only 1-5 slaves, and the elite of the time owned about 100 per plantation they owned. An example would be the Carter family, they owned over 500 slaves, but the owner freed every single one after his death. \nIn essence, some justified slavery as a method to christianize the \"savage\" slaves, but after the slave trade was abolished, their main reason for slavery was economical not religious. After the rebellion led by Nat Turner, who believed the bible was a symbol for slaves to revolt, they banned the bible within the slave community. In reality there was no concrete reason to convert their slaves to christianity, except the \"paternal\" aspect of ownership, many owners saw slaves as something along the lines of a dog or a child, and needed to be raised in the correct path of their society, yet they were still beaten, abused, etc. Mostly, the reasons for slavery were entirely economic, or in based upon early english republicanistic principles of landless masses destroying liberty.\nApologies for the long text\n\ntl;dr: Conversion was about the denomination mostly in later days, conversion caused many small slave owning families to free, not the elite though. Most justification for slavery was based on republican ideals and economics, as well as \"paternalism\" slave owners felt towards their slaves.",
"your question presupposes that \"slavery\" refers exclusively to the atlantic slave trade of the 17-1800s. There was slavery before Christ, and there is slavery now, none of which involves conversion to Christianity.",
"Christianity taught slaves to peacefully submit and serve their masters as good slaves so that they will be rewarded in the afterlife. So, preaching Christianity to slaves made them more peaceful and less likely to violently revolt.\n\nFor the slave masters, their conscience told them that slavery was wrong. But the bible and the preachers said it was good. So, I'd say it allowed the masters to do what they did and have a nice guilt free sleep in the nighttime. ",
"Fear of hell kept many people in line. The scene in Django unchained when Candy is talking about his father being shaved brings a good point too. They always expected to be freed because they were given special jobs. They used religion to break them of their own beliefs. Why did we convert the natives if we were going to slaughter them anyway? They were easier to wipe out after God was introduced. Public relations were handled by priests. You would never expect a man of God to go back on his word or cause you harm. In reality they were some of the worst. They had to wipe out the modern day Philistines. Religious soldiers.",
"Can someone answer my question? If slaves were considered to be not people, not human, then wouldn't their owners conclude that they didn't have souls? If they WERE considered to have souls worth saving, then how could their masters enslave beings with souls? The whole thing is disgusting and inhumane of course, but how could masters mentally justify enslaving beings that, in the masters minds, have souls???",
"\"They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races.\"\n \n \nFreeman, Douglas S. (1934). R. E. Lee, A Biography.",
"Religion gives everyone a place in the social order. You're more likely to outright reject a structure that simply holds that you aren't human, rather than one that says you are human BUT you aren't mature, it's the white man's burden to lead and guide you, this is your lot to bear, and you have spiritual rewards for doing so. People didn't own slaves because they were extra special evil, it was because they could rationalize it. Slave owners wouldn't have emancipated their slaves any more than they'd emancipate their wives or children. You have to remember there's a difference between the white and black experience in slavery (beside the obvious). The vast majority of slaves lived and died in huge plantations where the slaves were socially entirely separated and it was all business. Working someone to death was easier to rationalize from that distance. We still do it today when we buy cheap clothing and other goods and we *know* about the exploitation of the workers making them, but it's vague and far away and most humans are good at ignoring that. Most whites however had a different experience of slavery that was more like an extension of a patriarchal family. They were nowhere near that wealthy and would own one or perhaps two slaves and their family working on a small farm, and knew them in a personal way. Treating them as dependents is a way to rationalize why they can't be freed. As fewer whites were themselves indentured and more whites themselves experienced more independence and freedom, support for slavery as an institution dropped. That was partly due to resentment in competing as you tried to sell your goods against plantations that ran off free labor though... because humans are self interested just as readily as they are empathetic.",
"Your question is flawed. Not everyone considered them only property. Not everyone wanted to convert them to Christianity. And finally many of the positions and actions taken by Slaveholders were hypocritical.",
"I've always believed on some level that most structured religions were established with at least some intent to control the masses. At least IMO. If you have a higher, almighty power for the crowds to fear and tell them certain behaviors will help them avoid eternal damnation, it would stand to reason many of them would follow said behaviors.",
"It is your duty, as a Christian, to convert non-believers. This was one of the times where you could use whips."
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1jse01 | why there is a difference in the way medication is administered. specifically, what is the difference between pills and injections. | I think it is kind of obvious why some medications are in vapour or syrup form, but I don't know why some medications are in pill or injection form.
Also, bonus points for explaining why certain injections need to be administered to particular points of the body. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jse01/eli5_why_there_is_a_difference_in_the_way/ | {
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"Injections, if through an IV, go straight into the bloodstream. Pills have to be digested before entering the bloodstream, so generally less gets in (or if something is meant to work in the gastrointestinal tract it would be taken as a pill.)\n\nCertain injections might only have a local effect (like a corticosteroid injection for a joint,) which would necessitate injection into a specific body part.",
"Direct into the bloodstream has a more immediate effect. Also, some drugs would be destroyed by your digestive juices, others may irritate the stomach.",
"To add onto what qbinfinity said. \n \nIf it is a drug that the user can take on his/her own, it is preferred to be a pill. It is more convenient and will last longer is most cases. But some drugs are destroyed in the stomach. Some of these drugs include insulin and testosterone. So they have to be injected. \n \nDespite what most people believe, cough medicines do not need to be a syrup. They can be a pill. ",
"All to do with how fast something needs to work and where you want it to do it's thing. If something needs to work fast like local anaesthetic it will be injected so that it's straight into the bloodstream and immediately at the nerve endings etc it's supposed to work on,allowing a procedure to happen quickly. Eg you cut your arm open,get local to numb it and get it stitched before you bleed all over the place and make a damned mess. "
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1067l5 | the phrase 'have your cake and eat it, too.' | Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1067l5/eli5_the_phrase_have_your_cake_and_eat_it_too/ | {
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"Once you eat the cake, it's gone. You don't have it anymore. You cannot have both",
"The phrase makes more sense if worded as \"To eat your cake and have it too.\"",
"My dad applied this saying in relationship terms, he said \"You can't have your Kate and Edith too.\""
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2mjh05 | why is testosterone legally prescribed for transgender but not bodybuilding/muscle gain? | I'm just curious as to why doctors legally prescribe measured testosterone injections to a woman who wants to change her body, but won't do the same for a man wanting to change his in a different yet similar way. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mjh05/eli5why_is_testosterone_legally_prescribed_for/ | {
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"Because the trans man has a recognized medical condition and the dude just trying to bulk up doesn't. And because the trans man is only going to normal male levels of testosterone - which are relatively safe - not pushing it to dangerously high levels by adding more on top of typical male production.",
"You can get prescribed anabolic steroids from a doctor for particular purposes, including muscle-building. It'll depend a bit on the doctor and what they're willing to give out, but controlled used of anabolic steroids can have positive effects. The problem comes with steroid *abuse*, which for men can cause problems in that we have a natural producer of testosterone. When we start have excessive amounts in our bloodstream for long periods of time, our brain thinks 'oh, I better cut back on production then' which is what leads to hypogonadism.\n\nSince women don't have testes, they don't have this particular issue.",
"Because trans people have a medical reason and just wanting it for swole gains isn't really a great reason. Plus added testosterone when your levels are already in a good range can have health issues. "
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fvd2l2 | if the sun is on the other side of the earth at night, how does it stay so warm during the summer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvd2l2/eli5_if_the_sun_is_on_the_other_side_of_the_earth/ | {
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"Okay, the only difference between summer and winter as far as heat goes is the angle that the sun hits the earth. With the axis, the sun hits at a steeper angle (ie. Straight up/down) which means greater concentration of energy, think: smaller area, same heat energy. That being said, the world and atmosphere absorb a ton of heat, and hold it as well, that is where the heat sticking around at night comes from.",
"The Earth's atmosphere acts like a blanket and holds in the heat. Without our thick atmosphere, the heat generated by the sun during the day would just radiate back out into space at night. We need greenhouse gasses to keep earth livable, but too much greenhouse gas would make the earth too hot. Thats why we worry about levels of carbon dioxide rising too fast.",
"To answer your first question: take a pot of boiling water. When you turn off the burner, is it suddenly safe to touch? Matter carries heat with it, and it takes time for the heat to leave the matter. It does get colder at night, by 10 to 30 degrees in the summer, but the land and air doesnt lose all if its heat all at once. \n\nFor a deeper understanding; materials radiate energy, always following the law of entropy, higher energy states will disperse their energy toward materials and space with lower energy states. Sometimes this is in the form of visible light. Another form.of light on the Electromagnetic spectrum is infrared, which you give off. We feel infrared as heat. During the day, the land and air, but mostly land, absorb energy. As the energy is absorbed, the particles in the upper portion of the land start to move faster inn accordance with the law of conservation of energy. As the input of energy falls at night, the law of entropy explains why this higher energy state- particles in the upper layer of land will then start to emit the own form of EM radiation; infrared radiation. This will keep the average temperature not intensely cold for the duration of the night. \n\nWhy summers and winters are different: \nSummer: take a flashlight and shine it directly down. Notice how each spot under the light gets more rays, which carry heat, because its brighter. \n\nWinter: take that flashlight and shine it at an angle. Notice how each spot under the light gets less rays, which carry hear, because its dimmer. \n\nNotice how in the summer, the sun is overhead more days. Notice how in the winter the sun is lower in the sky."
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5x5a1s | how does the fourth amendment prevent government reach into government cell phones? | In a recent [column](_URL_0_), Andrew Napolitano said:
> ...generally, a boss can look at an employee’s cellphone, as long as the employer of the boss and the employee owns the phone -- except when the employer is the government. The Fourth Amendment insulates government employees from governmental reach into its employees’ cellphones. Absent an employee's waiving his Fourth Amendment rights, the government may not seize work-related (governmental) or personal phones without a search warrant.
I try to balance where I get news and opinion from, and make sure that I read all the different sides, and he usually hits pretty straight.
In my searches, I can't come up with a single reason that the government wouldn't be able to seize government cell phones from government employees for absolutely any reason, at any time.
Why would the interpretation of the fourth amendment be different when the device in question is owned by private business versus the government, specifically regarding technological assets? Wouldn't this interpretation cause significant issues with internet monitoring of government computers, etc?
Does anyone have any insight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x5a1s/eli5_how_does_the_fourth_amendment_prevent/ | {
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"Your quote provides the answer.\n\nThe constitution including the bill of rights defines what the government can, and can't, do. (It does not apply directly to private employers, of course.) \n\nYou don't automatically lose rights as a result of becoming a government employee; but you may waive those rights at times in exchange for something else, such as having a certain job. "
]
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"http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/02/andrew-napolitano-truth-and-nothing-but-truth-about-leaks.html"
] | [
[]
] |
|
2n1fc5 | why, in the event a hurricane or super storm heading for a vulnerable area, can't we launch and detonate explosives within the storm to disperse it? | Of course it would have to be an offshore storm and it should only be done with certain level storms (like Katrina), but I don't see how this would fail to disrupt the energy of the storm, ultimately killing it. Would it just not work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n1fc5/eli5_why_in_the_event_a_hurricane_or_super_storm/ | {
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"I think you've been watching too much Sharknado. It doesn't work that way in real life.\n\nBesides, hurricanes can be hundreds of miles across. There's no way enough explosives could be launched to affect that, especially without causing massive environmental damage.",
"hurricanes are earth's way of redirecting energy from a place with a lot of energy to the lower gradient. Conservation of energy means that your bombs wouldn't do shit. All that energy is still there, a hurricane is a massive amount of hot water moving through the atmosphere.",
"You could, but salting it would be cheaper. China had an entire ministry in charge of weather control during the Olympics.\n\nLudicrously expensive either way."
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7yc7w5 | what makes soda taste so bad when you leave it out for some time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yc7w5/eli5_what_makes_soda_taste_so_bad_when_you_leave/ | {
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"It doesn't taste bad at all, you're just losing the carbonation so there isn't that stimulating feeling. If soda was made without carbonation I'm sure there would be a lot less soda drinkers in the world"
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||
1vp06c | why is it worthwhile to separate colors from whites in laundry? | It seems to come out fine if I just run all laundry as colors. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vp06c/why_is_it_worthwhile_to_separate_colors_from/ | {
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"/r/nostupidquestions is better suited for this. \n\nI personally don't bother separating them. But most of my whites are socks or work shirts so they don't really matter to me.",
"In the past, you would often add bleach to whites to help clean them. However, it would destroy colored dyes, so you would need to separate them first.",
"i believe upon first wash (or the first few), some of the dyes can run and influence the color of the whites. i don't fucking know. i've only ever seen it in the movies.",
"I don't know if this is still a problem due to modern technology, but it's borne from the fact that washing colors and whites together would cause the dye to leech out of the colors and into the whites, giving your whites a colored shade.\n\nI don't know if this is still something people need to worry about. At worst it's a force of habit, and at best, it's to keep your whites white."
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2h3wgk | why does peanut butter turn shiny after being spread? | In large clumps it looks matte, but when I spread it on bread, it turns shiny until I wipe over it with a knife again. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h3wgk/eli5_why_does_peanut_butter_turn_shiny_after/ | {
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"text": [
"The oil is more visible when the peanut butter is spread thin"
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2ckbbi | i saw a commercial for a car dealership offering you a car for $88 down and $88 per month even if you have bad or no credit. what's the catch? how can they do this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ckbbi/eli5_i_saw_a_commercial_for_a_car_dealership/ | {
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"A guess: Read the fine print. The monthly payment likely goes up after 12 or 24 months. The other guess that I have is that your monthly interest comes to... $88. So yes, it's $88/month, but it's $88/month forever!",
"You will be paying interest on that car for decades.",
"They are really shitty cars. We have a local dealer who does the same. His nice cars are out front, the ones for his Sole Saver Deal are in the back and your lucky if its a '94 Olds.",
"The car is probably worth $100. ",
"Some other component of the contract will be awful, to compensate. Likely the interest rate. But the dealership has other ways to ensure profitability, so always make sure you read the fine print to find out where it is."
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2eoq3d | - if deadly viruses, like ebola, ultimately kill the host, how do they evolve, or persist to an epidemic level? | I understand that viruses evolve quickly, and that, without immediate quarantine, they can easily spread, but I'm thinking more like a virus in small communities or societies where the hosts die quickly due to lack of medical attention. I suppose my question is more about the survival mechanism of a virus like Ebola or AIDS that ultimately kills the host without any promise that there will be another host to spread to. It just seems like a bad way to keep spreading your evil virulent DNA seed, but it obviously works. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eoq3d/eli5_if_deadly_viruses_like_ebola_ultimately_kill/ | {
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"It isn't a good way to spread a virus strain.\n\nThat's precisely why these epidemic diseases kill thousands and then burn out. They massacre their food supply and host by accident and die with them.\n\nThe most successful viruses have no symptoms. They live in you and transfer among humanity without alarming our immune system or killing the host.\n\nEbola and others like it have accidentally infected humans instead of their preferred animal hosts where they generate little to no immune response or symptoms.",
"If animals, like humans, ultimately die, how do they evolve, or persist to spread?\n\nIt's because it takes a shorter amount of time to spread to a new host than it does to kill the current host.\n\nSimilar to how humans, or other animals, reproduce and spread before they died. They reproduce and the next generation continues on, they go to the new hosts, the new towns, etc. While the virus they were essentially born from stays where they are.\n\nThose small communities with no medical attention ultimately act as their own quarantine. They aren't large enough for regular travel to and from, so the virus doesn't spread.\n\nAnd people ask this kind of question assuming that the virus is intelligent somehow, that it's trying to kill the person and reproduce. It's only intention is reproducing, the death of the host is a side effect of the immune system attacking it.",
"Viruses are not intelligent. In fact, they aren't even alive according to most experts. They mindlessly create copies of themselves when they can. To do this, they need materials found inside cells from animals or plants. Not every cell is the same however. Even within a single organism, cells come in a variety of types, but one thing is always they same - they don't want to be infected by a virus. So cells have gotten defenses against viruses to stop them before, during, and after a virus has found and started the infection process. To combat this, viruses have to become more and more potent while also becoming more targeted to specific cells.\n\nEventually, this makes a virus that specifically targets a single animal. Because the viruses have to become so specialized to target a monkey for example, they lose the ability to infect a human. Therefore, humans also lose the ability to fight against that particular virus - it just isn't needed anymore. If the virus mutates such that it can infect humans however, we have a fully potent virus that its host can't fight against. The virus doesn't know any better though, and doesn't dial back its potency, which can result in the death of the host."
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bsjszm | why do tech manufacturers region lock their devices? | Like, why can't my 3DS play Japanese games, or my DVD player won't play discs from a different region | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsjszm/eli5_why_do_tech_manufacturers_region_lock_their/ | {
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"Many reasons. Sometimes they need to lower their price point in order to sell into a poorer market. Sometimes they release content differently in some markets (think, censorship in China, for example). Other times it is easier to region lock than to meet all local regulations in all devices.",
"It's pretty simple, depending on the region you sell your product the highest price people are ready to pay for your device can differ quite significantly. If you have the same price all over the world you wont sell in some regions. If you have different prices and don't region lock people will just buy from the cheapest region. The \"solution\" is region lock.\nTl;dr: it's because of money."
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|
20i2uw | why did saber-tooth cats have such big fangs? | What purpose would large and unruly teeth have that normal sharp teeth didn't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20i2uw/eli5_why_did_sabertooth_cats_have_such_big_fangs/ | {
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"I'm just guessing here, but maybe it preyed on larger animals. Those fangs would have sunk deep into flesh.",
"No one really know but on of the reason is the instead of going for the throat it bit into the back/spine of an animal keeping it from running or fighting back..back I those time a lot of \"prey\" animals were large an could hold their own in a fight"
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7821hc | when people say how fast something in space is moving what reference point are they using? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7821hc/eli5_when_people_say_how_fast_something_in_space/ | {
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"It is usually going to be with reference to the body that exerts the dominant gravitational force in the region.\n\nThe speed of a probe sent to orbit Europa would first be expressed with reference to the earth, then the sun, then Jupiter, then finally Europa. Possibly other planets or moons if a gravitational assist was involved.",
"It really depends on what that person is talking about. If they say some star is moving away from us at X speed, the reference point implied is us (or the Sun, the difference doesn't matter at this scale). If they say some satellite is orbiting at a speed, they mean with respect to the body being orbited. "
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2d66rp | how do countries pay for maternity leave? | I understand that some countries mandate paid maternity leave for their female employees. How does the employer both lose an employee (productivity) for 6 months and pay them at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d66rp/eli5_how_do_countries_pay_for_maternity_leave/ | {
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"In France it is payed by the Social security (healthcare etc..), not the employer.",
"Everyone says \"taxes\", and that might be true in some countries, but in most cases the right answer is \"insurance\".\n\nEven though it isn't mandated in the U.S., virtually all salaried employees in the U.S. to get paid maternity leave. To smooth things out, companies use insurance to cover salary while on leave.\n\nHere's how it works: the company pays the insurance company every month based on the number of employees eligible for family leave (maternity, paternity, also sick leave / bereavement, etc.). When an employee goes on leave, the insurance company pays that employee's salary, freeing up the company to spend that money on a temp worker or something else.\n"
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6s9sr2 | how do jets that are taxiing stop and start moving without trying their engines up or down ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s9sr2/eli5_how_do_jets_that_are_taxiing_stop_and_start/ | {
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"To get moving again, they DO spin up their engines.... modern high bypass turbofans have ridiculous thrust, just bumping them up a little from idle is enough to get an airliner moving again. To stop, they have brakes. These brakes are ridiculously powerful, more than enough to stop an airliner moving along a taxiway. Pilots are just careful to use _enough_ brakes to slow the aircraft, if they were to stomp or lean on the brakes hard enough people and improperly secured baggage would fly around the cabin. \n\nIn fact, one of the standard certification tests for a new airliner is a takeoff abort test, or a takeoff \"reject\". (this has nothing to do with your question, but it's super cool). If the plane hasn't reached the critical V1 takeoff speed by a certain point of the runway, they're supposed to abort the takeoff. This means slamming the brakes on and engaging the engine reverse thrust. But to certify, the brakes alone have to be enough to bring the craft to a halt. [Usually this will leave the brake discs red-hot and more often than not pop a few tires due to the heat. Its quite spectacular.](_URL_2_)\n\n[Here's a 777 doing such a test. The brakes are literally on fire.](_URL_0_)\n\n[787-8 rejected takeoff with some good explanation](_URL_1_)"
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bbrqha | why are there patterns and fractals in nature? | It seems nature is fundamentally a bunch of patterns and fractals. A lot of very similar similarities. Is math based off of nature? Is math independent from nature? Or is nature independent from math? Or do the two coincide with one another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbrqha/eli5_why_are_there_patterns_and_fractals_in_nature/ | {
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" > Why are there patterns and fractals in nature?\n\nPatterns and fractals are just the large scale result of simple repeating behaviors. Suppose you have a stem that will grow for a bit and then split, then those stems grow for a bit and split, etc. You end up with a branching pattern from simple base behaviors.\n\n > Is math based off of nature?\n\nSort of, in the most simplistic sense it is a way to model reality. People start counting stones and math adopts the behavior that things don't just spontaneously appear or vanish. You pick up one rock and then pick up another rock you will have \"two\" rocks. At this point of abstraction the system takes off behaving with internally consistent rules which yield results consistent with reality (in many cases).\n\nSo while the internally consistent rules can yield things which have no real counterpart (such as imaginary numbers) the application of those rules can allow the deduction of behaviors of the universe which are not immediately apparent via observation. This is again based on the basic observation that the universe behaves according to internally consistent rules and that the fundamental rules of mathematics are based on easily observed behaviors of the universe.",
"Lots of systems are just due to minimization of energy. It's why soap bubbles are round, honeycombs are hexagons, balls roll down hills, nuclear reactions happen in the sun, etc, etc. Systems naturally want to find their minimum every state and organisms want to find the way to do something with the least amount of work."
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5vd1jm | why do the ends of escalators and moving walkways have the blue or green light that shines through the cracks? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vd1jm/eli5_why_do_the_ends_of_escalators_and_moving/ | {
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"I may be wrong but I think it's a light from a sensor that stops the escalator, moving sidewalk, etc. when it sees that there is something caught in the treads e.g. a pantleg, or a shoelace "
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3yuz02 | will we ever see the national debt start going down or will it keep raising forever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yuz02/eli5_will_we_ever_see_the_national_debt_start/ | {
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"Basically, it depends:\n\nWill we ever see taxes start going up, or will they keep being lowered forever?\n\nMany countries balance their budgets, reduce their debts, and maintain positive ratios. It's possible to keep a healthy but ever increasing debt as well due to inflation. But some countries' debts actually do decline over time.\n\nThese countries have much higher tax rates than the US, which has lowered taxes every 4 years since 1945. If this trend were to reverse to where taxes were in 1980, the budget would be balanced today, without any spending cuts needed.",
"We'll likely see the national debt fluctuate up and down as this century goes on. The American economy is pretty robust and very very good at generating income. Without multi-trillion dollar wars to fight, and [hopefully] an upcoming rationalization of our economic, tax and social policies the debt will start to drift downwards.\n\nHowever, it will almost certainly never go away. \n\nThis may sound wacky but - America's national debt is the chain that binds the rest of the world to America.\n\nSo long as the US continues to be THE place to invest money at a risk free rate (ie US Treasuries) the entire world has a vested interest in the US continuing to operate productively. In other words, the rest of the world NEEDS the US to be successful or their own economies will suffer. They need America to keep spending money, because America's economy is the beating heart that is pumping all the blood (re: dollars) through the rest of the world.\n\nAs an example, China's growth is impossible without billions of dollars of US money flowing into the country. That money is so critical that they loan that money back to us at pathetically small interest rates so we can keep buying.\n\nThe US is living in the best possible situation - we have the close to unlimited funds... and the appetite to match.",
"Under President Bill Clinton we saw the greatest decline in national debt since the end of WWII. The debt began its post war increase with Presidents Regan and Bush Sr., then a large dip, then after 9/11 it's been on a near steady increase. I'm not sure how we managed to keep the national debt low during the combat operations between WWII and 9/11, but until we stop throwing airplanes full of money into the ninth circle of hell our debt will keep on rising.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Probably not. The US has very rarely maintained a budget surplus for very long. What usually happens is that we just make it seem smaller. The debt over time is usually shown as debt as a % of gross domestic product (GDP), which is the value of all the goods and services produced in the country. \n\nSo if the budget deficit (the amount added to the debt) is smaller than the increase in GDP, then the debt as a % of GDP decreases. That's what happened after WWII. During the war, the US took out a ton of debt to pay for it. In the 1950s, GDP growth was fairly high, and the deficit wasn't too bad (there were a couple surpluses), so by 1960, as a % of GDP, it had dropped by about half. But in terms of actual dollars it increased by around 10%.",
"why would we want it to? We just need to keep it in check to keep it from going up faster than inflation. As long as that is the case and it is a smaller fraction of the GDP it's all good.",
"Generally speaking we'll forever want the debt to be a certain percentage of GDP. As long as GDP grows, debt should grow.\n\nWhy? Because it's the optimal benefit. Growth largely comes from building common platforms that makes growth easier, plus then people building individually from the platforms to go higher, from which a piece is taken off the top to invest back into raising the platform for everybody, and so on.\n\nBuilding infrastructure requires investment. Generally the more you can invest the more you can grow. If you borrow $100 to build a platform that helps to general $10,000 of value, then you are left with $9900 of new value. So do you pay back the $100? Not if you have another opportunity to do the same again. And again. More specifically, if the rate of growth that results from investment exceeds the interest payments on the debt used to make the investment, you are always better off borrowing more.\n\nThe missing piece is risk. If growth stops or reverses, you now you have less income per person (more unemployment, etc.) but you also need to pay the interest on debt and ideally owe less or nothing. This is where stability, robustness, statistics, and projections matter. If you expect long term stagnation, you'd better get your debt low. If it's temporary, you can ride it out. To complicate matters, since growth largely results from investment in that growth (statistically speaking), you may want to take on huge debt to kick start the growth and then use that growth to pay down the new debt... maybe.\n\nSo you'll always want some debt -- not for the sake of the debt but because you are losing out on growth opportunity if you have none. And, as long as over the long term you expect growth or that investment will lead to growth, then you will always be better off growing your debt. The aim would be to maintain the debt as a percentage of GDP, assuming all risk factors remain constant. As GDP grows, debt should grow.\n\nUltimately, you can think of it this way. If you have an investment that pays back 5% per year and you have a line of credit at 3%, you are best to borrow every cent you can and make that investment. Deep in debt, but deep in assets too. And you'll want to maintain this situation forever as you are making money, exponentially, doing nothing. But if the investment starts making less than 3%, you'll want to pull out enough money to immediately pay off all of your debt as now you are losing money. That requires your investment to be liquid (able to pull it out immediately). So you need to know the chances of that happening and how liquid your assets are to pay down that debt. But, suppose if you invest more money you'll actually increase the growth in the investment, then you are better off taking on more debt to do that. Finding the balance between these two principles can be tricky.\n\nAnother way to think about the latter case is education. Taking on massive debt to improve your education or skills will increase your future income and more than pay for that debt, so it's a good idea. (You are investing in your own infrastructural growth.) In fact, continual investment in some education as a percentage of your time will tend to grow your income more than it's cost, but you still need most of your time to produce the value that you are being paid for.\n\nFinally, things change when labour can be completely automated. The more machines can do everything better than humans, money, debt, and economics completely change their meaning. But that's too much for this one post.\n\n",
"The debt is nothing. Unfunded, off balance sheet liabilities are the real problem -- like pensions for government employees, social security and Medicaid -- totaling over 200 trillion over the next 30 years. \n\nJust sayin'...",
"The federal reserve loans money to the banks at a discounted interest rate. The bank then loans said monies at an increased interest rate. The federal reserve never printed monies for that increased interest rate. Where does this money come from to pay for the extra interest paid? It comes in the form of debt. Our entire system is ran like this so this debt must go somewhere because banks are always lending money and the federal reserve is always giving money to the banks at a discounted rate. With this type of financial system it will only be healthy by constant debt increase. No debt increase=stagnant economy...it is designed to go up forever and if it doesn't then our economy isn't spending enough to keep the money flowing "
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||
201wzc | why some, but not all, acquisition prices are disclosed . | Hey guys,
I'm doing a small research project for school on Google, and I came across [this list of Google's historic acquisitions](_URL_0_).
It's a great resource and I've found it very helpful, but I'm wondering why so few of these acquisitions have the price included.
I've found [this question with two answers on Quora](_URL_1_) (link to the username so that you don't have to log in with Facebook), but it's very difficult for me to follow. It looks like it fluctuates wildly depending on the specific companies involved, but I'm not totally sure where the common-sense limits would be.
I'm wondering if it's possible for a company as large as Google to acquire a company for hundreds of millions without revealing the purchase price.
* Is public knowledge of the price a decision that the two companies agree on? or is this governed by state laws/the amount of money involved/some other considerations?
* What would motivate a company not to revealing the purchase price? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/201wzc/eli5_why_some_but_not_all_acquisition_prices_are/ | {
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"In the USA, if a publicly traded company is acquired, the purchase price will have to be reported publicly in reports to the SEC. Acquisition of a private company won't have to be, although if it is bought by a public company then it will often show up in their SEC reports, although it may be obfuscated. In the case of a large company like Google or Cisco, they may buy so many companies that you won't be able to find the price of any individual one in their reports. \n \nWhether or not to divulge purchase prices is usually dictated by the purchasing company, although the acquired company could potentially make it a condition of sale. I don't know what laws exist that cover acquisitions/mergers. \n \nThere are a variety of reasons to not want to divulge. But usually it seems to be avoidance of criticism. ",
"There are a few reasons:\n\n1. when a private company is acquired it is not _automatically_ revealed. If you acquired a public company both the share price and the total number of shares are known, therefore price is known. There are also SEC regulations that apply and require disclosure.\n\n2. when the acquiring company is also public, they have to publish some aspects of their books. There are lots of reasons they may disclose the price - namely it's going to have a big impact on their reported financials and they don't want to cause confusion amongst investors. However, the deal structure can also make it easier to absorb an acquisition into the books. For example, an asset acquisition vs. a c-corp stock deal can be depreciated on the books, but a C-corp can't be.\n\nAdditionally, the forces that make secrecy more or less important are numerous - if I'm making lots of acquisitions in a space I might be more motivated to keep a deal secret as it hurts my negotiating power in the next deal, or perhaps it reveals to a competitor that I was willing to pay a premium for a company because it was of until-then unknown strategic value to the acquirer etc. \n\nThe \"common sense limits\" are far from common :) Ultimately, the acquiring company will make decisions balancing their responsibilities to shareholders, laws, benefits of secrecy, their established accounting practices etc etc. etc. "
]
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"http://www.quora.com/Ishfaque-Faruk"
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1rob7w | how does my computer know how much time is remaining for a program to be installed? | For example when you are installing a program or a game the setup wizard usually tells you how much time there is remaining for the installation to be completed. My questions are: How does it know that? And how come most of the time it is wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rob7w/eli5_how_does_my_computer_know_how_much_time_is/ | {
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"text": [
"It's an estimate based on how much data there is left to transfer and how fast it is currently getting done."
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[]
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3w0cz1 | what does a company do with funds generated from selling stocks? | Help settle an office debate: What does a company do with funds generated from selling stocks? Do these funds literally end up in a company account? Are they used to leverage other sources...? Do they pay for a new factory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w0cz1/eli5what_does_a_company_do_with_funds_generated/ | {
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" An IPO (initial public offering) means that the company is raising cash by selling some of its shares to the public. after the IPO, yes the company keeps the money to fund their growth and make investments.",
"The go to various things, depending on the company and its business... the money does literally go into the company's bank accounts, minus fees paid to investment bank doing the underwriter, etc. They may use it to pay back debt, invest in expansion (factories, new stores, inventory), make acquisitions, pay bonuses to founders, etc."
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5224lo | why old film clips, like ones of ww2 almost always seems sped up faster than 1x? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5224lo/eli5_why_old_film_clips_like_ones_of_ww2_almost/ | {
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"As you probably know, the speed at which motion picture film runs through the camera determines its frame rate, given in frames per second (fps). When run through a projector (which you can think of as a backwards camera) at the same speed, the movement looks natural to us. If turned more slowly or quickly, however, it plays out in fast or slow motion, respectively (the terms \"undercranking\" and \"overcranking\" are still used for these techniques, derived from the literal cranking mechanism used to run early cameras and projectors).\n\nObviously this enthralled audiences, and early camera operators took advantage of this at times, but the cliche of its ubiquity happened more by accident. In the early days of the medium, both cameras and projectors were usually operated at a lower speed than the 24fps that later became the industry standard (particularly with the advent of synchronized sound in the late 1920s). I've shown silent films while working as a projectionist, and they're often distributed with instructions to be run at 18fps so that movement shows up normally. If shown at 24fps—which has often been done, either because of insufficient equipment or human error—you would be seeing everything at 1.5x the speed of the actual motion, hence the cliche of old films running in fast motion. \n\n",
"Simple\n\nold handheld film cameras didn't have electric motors as there was no sufficiently dense or light portable electric power supply. \n\nso what you're seeing is the speed of the person hand cranking the mechanism or the variable speed of the clockwork motor used in handheld cameras such as the Bolex 16 mm. Battery technology was far too primitive to allow for an electrically driven hand held camera. \n",
"Why, when restored, don't they fix this then?"
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2kmhc5 | why doesn't north america see protests similar in size to other continents and countries? | ie. Hungary and internet protest (40K) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kmhc5/eli5_why_doesnt_north_america_see_protests/ | {
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"[We took part in the largest protest in human history](_URL_0_), in 1995 the Million Man March had between 400,000 and 837,000 people, in 1993 the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation had between 300,000 and 1,000,000 people, in 1992 the \"Save our Cities! Save our Children!\" protest had 150,000 people, in 1989 the March for Women's Lives had 500,000. The list goes on, back through history. What are you basing your question's premise on? A guess?",
"We have historically had far larger protests as Roflmoo has pointed out. \n\nTo add to his list Occupy Wallstreet protests had 20,000 people in New York and several other cities with well over 1,000 people. "
]
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4lz6gm | why do dogs like the smell of cheese so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lz6gm/eli5_why_do_dogs_like_the_smell_of_cheese_so_much/ | {
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"Cheese, that is, REAL, unprocessed cheese (although some types of pasteurized cheese included as well,) is naturally very pungent. Cut up a bit of Brie or aged white cheddar and tell me this isn't so. If we humans think cheese is very pungent, imagine how much more so dogs would be able to smell it. Dogs tend to have a much more potent sense of smell than we humans, since before dogs had been domesticated, their sense of smell was essential for hunting down their food. \n\nNaturally, regardless of whether or not a dog would recognize that this powerful scent is coming from tasty food, dogs would be curious about the origin of the odor. Some dogs might not even need to witness a human or other animal eating the cheese to consider licking the strange, odorous object, if given the opportunity, to learn more about it. Once licking it, they may discover that it's tasty to them and consequently eat it. \n\nTo some dogs, it may be habitual as you say--like Pavlov's dog. Every time a dog smells this piquant scent, he tends to see a human eating the object the smell is originating from. Eating means food. Food is good to eat.\n\nHowever, even if a dog recognizes the cheese to be a compound originating from lactose, but does not first see a human or other dog/animal eating it does not mean they will brush it off as \"not food.\" This misconception people have that humans are the only mammals that continue to consume milk into adulthood has absolutely no basis in fact. \n\nCliche as it may sound, put a bowl of cow's milk you bought from the supermarket in front of a cat who has neither consumed processed milk nor seen anyone else consume it and tell me she won't drink it. I'm not promising she won't get sick, but 9/10 times, she will drink it, anyway. (And yes, I have tried this numerous times before hearing you're not supposed to do that, but the cat never got sick. Lol)\n\nAnd it's not just cats. Many animals will drink milk if put in front of them because animals know it is rich in fat. From an evolutionary standpoint, fats are a delicacy since they are rich in energy and have only recently become so readily available to us that we haven't been able to turn off that insatiable craving for them yet. \n\nTL;DR \n1. Cheese is pungent, dogs have a good sense of smell. \n2. We're not the only ones who like milk. Milk is rich in fat, and fat is tasty because we need it."
]
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||
30ovf4 | if my bathroom scale shows different numbers around the house, which number should i trust? | **Didn't know if this was the right subreddit for my question, but here goes:**
I have a digital bathroom scale, and I know it works properly. Recently I moved into a new flat, and it's an old house, so all the floors are a bit wonky. I have no idea where it's even and where it's not.
**It shows numbers all the way up to 67,8 kg and all the way down to 65,0. Should I just find the mean number between all the results, or should I trust the highest? Or the lowest?** | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30ovf4/eli5_if_my_bathroom_scale_shows_different_numbers/ | {
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"Whichever is the correct one. There's no way of knowing which is the correct one, other than weighing yourself on another scale, perhaps at a doctor's office. If you think the differences are because of the crooked floor, try to find a place in your house where the floor isn't crooked. Maybe even take the scale someplace else and weigh yourself there.",
"Find something in your house that you know weighs a certain amount for sure. E.g. a new bag of rice or potatoes or whatever. Weigh that in different areas of your house and see where you get the most accurate reading. Just use your scale in that spot.",
"Trust the reading taken on a hard, level floor.",
"This may be a dumb question, but just to make sure, are you re-weighing yourself immediately and getting different readings, or weighing yourself at different times throughout the day?",
"Buy a leveler, for like a buck or two. The little tubes with liquid in them... They show you where the floor is level.",
"Trust the one that makes you happier. Odds are the difference isn't great enough to matter.",
"Just keep in the same spot all the time and use that measurement. Does it matter if it displays one or two kg more/less? If so, you should get a proper calibrated scale but they are not cheap. If a kilogram or two doesn't matter just keep it in the same spot because then you will at least be able to track weight changes.\n\nAt the gym I go to there is a scale called VB2-200 which is a calibrated scale. It costs around 5000SEK though (580USD) but it is damn accurate and we use to weigh plates as well.",
"Weigh yourself somewhere else.\n\nWhere I live pharmacies have very accurate scales that they let you use.\n\nSimply use one like that and then go home without eating, or shitting, or taking of your clothes or wanting too long to find out in which place your scale is the most accurate.\n\nI assume you don't do anything like weightlifting or else you probably wouldn't have asked, but if you have a friend who owns weights you might simply borrow them and test things out with that.\n\nIf you don't have any weights you can borrow use something else with a known weight. Most groceries are sold with resonable accurate weights printed on them but usually they are sold in small portions. Buy something that is heavy and usefull in large portions.\n\nAs somebody has already suggested water is pretty good. Water has a density of 1 kg/l under normal conditions so you can buy a case of 12 1l bottles and take them with you on the scale. The bottles should be made out of plastic so that their weight is negligible. Just check in which location the difference of you with a know weight in water and without matches best to the difference the scale shows. (if you want to be real accurate you can buy more bottles and drink half of them) weighing yourself with a case full of empty bottles and a case full of full bottles in turn so the only real difference will be the weight of the water.\n\n",
"Put a coin on the hard floors. If it rolls, it's slanted.",
"Don't worry about it, its prob. not that correct anyway. \nJust always weight you self in the same spot that gives you repeated readings that are the same. \n\ni.e. test the scales in one spot 3 times, getting of and on completely each time. the spot that gives you the same results is the winner.\n\nIf you are trying to lose/gain weight, watch the change not the amount.",
"Bathroom scales should not be used to find out how much you weigh, they should be used to monitor changes in your weight. Expensive ones may be calibrated before leaving the factory but then they are never again calibrated.\n\nThe best practice for them is to leave it in one location and try to weigh yourself at the same time of day each time.\n\nIf you want to find out your true weight I recommend finding out next time you are at the doctors office."
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34hb4y | how family guy uses brand names so frequently, but no other cartoon can. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34hb4y/eli5_how_family_guy_uses_brand_names_so/ | {
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"Any TV show can mention brand names.\n\nThey usually don't, because:\n\n* it makes sit harder to place ads for that product and its competitors\n* it can date the show and make it less desirable in syndication\n* viewers often have strong brand affinities, and might not relate to characters who use brands they do not like\n\n*Family Guy* is basically making fun of this adversion.",
"They can, they just choose not to. The reason isn't related to lawsuits, either -- there's just often a policy of not mentioning by name any companies or products who are not advertisers. If Homer Simpson is drinking Coke, and Pepsi advertises on Fox, they'll object (this actually did happen for The Simpsons when mentioning Hewlett Packard). And in the reverse, if they mock or insult a real product, the producer of that product will object when they want to advertise -- notoriously, a producer of gas ovens threatened to pull their ads from CBS if Rod Serling, creator of *The Twilight Zone*, did an episode about the Holocaust, because gas chambers depicted *gas* in a bad light.\n\nSo there's no reason why shows *can't* mention real-world products, it's just usually avoided by network executives. Family Guy is evidently an exception. Perhaps the Family Guy producers persuaded the network that their jokes wouldn't work with knockoff brands the way The Simpsons' jokes would, or perhaps the executives at the time Family Guy was launched were less strict about the policy."
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4bsx5d | if passwords for websites are suppose to be encrypted or only known to the user, how come some websites can tell me i have entered a password i changed years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bsx5d/eli5_if_passwords_for_websites_are_suppose_to_be/ | {
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"They don't know the password, but they do know when you have set it. You tell them the password when you set it, but they don't remember the password, only its \"checksum\", or \"salted hash\", and forget the original password. which can be calculated from the original password and data that don't change during the lifetime of the account. \n\nThey don't have to know your password to check against it - they can just compute the checksum. They don't have to know the password to tell you when you have set it - they only need the timestamp for that.\n\nThis is just an ELI5 explanation, as crypto is extremely complex, counterintuitive and hard to understand.",
"Passwords are not encrypted, they are hashed. Theoretically : encryption is a two way street, you can go from plaintext to encrypted and encrypted to plaintext. Hashing is a one way street, you can only go from plaintext to hash, NOT hash to plaintext.\n\nSince passwords are stored using that one way function, some enterprises feel that keeping them is not a security threat."
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1qn8z4 | if i kept switching out older body parts of mine with healthier ones as i grew up, could i live forever? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qn8z4/eli5_if_i_kept_switching_out_older_body_parts_of/ | {
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"text": [
"Your brain cells will eventually age and die. If you replace those you can technically live forever, but will you still really be yourself?\n\nThis concept has been debated since the Ancient Greeks _URL_0_"
]
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||
17anc6 | the observer effect, the measurement problem and the 'conscious observer' of quantum mechanics? | I have little understanding of physics. Can someone explain exactly what these phenomena are to me? Does this mean consciousness needs to exist before anything can happen? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17anc6/eli5_the_observer_effect_the_measurement_problem/ | {
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"The \"observer effect\" and \"measurement\" problems are commonly misrepresented on the internet by people who are obsessed with new-age pseudoscience. It has nothing to do with conciousness or anything magical. To put it in ELI5 terms:\n\nImagine that we you are blindfolded and sitting in a chair. I have set up a machine that can always shoot an apple across the room and have it whiz by right in front of your face. You, being blindfolded, have to \"detect\" when the apple has passes by you by listening to a hair dryer that I have taped to your head. When the apple passes in front of the hair dryer, it changes the sound of the air being blown. The hairdryer will not change the flight of the apple in any way significant to our observations. To detect the apple, you have interacted with it, but not changed it. This is an observation made at our regular, real world scale.\n\nNow imagine we repeat the experiment with a paper ball instead of an apple. In this case, we'll still have to interact with the paper ball to detect it, but since the paper ball is so light, it's *going* to affect the paper ball's trajectory. This is an observation made at a quantum scale scale.\n\nOn a quantum scale, you can't \"see\" an electron or any other quantum particle. You have to interact with them to detect them, and interacting with them changes them. that's the problem."
]
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3awry9 | why are dj's treated like artists, with a stage name and everything, and their own 'shows' people get tickets to, when they just play other people's copyrighted music? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3awry9/eli5_why_are_djs_treated_like_artists_with_a/ | {
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"Their art isn't in the music itself, but in the selection, order, and pacing of the music. They have to pick the right songs to fit the mood, then put them in the right order, at the right pace, to get the feeling that they're looking for. DJs are essentially the audio version of collage artists. Anyone can be a DJ, just like anyone make a collage, but there's a massive variation in quality between some kid that does it once or twice, and someone that's spent years treating it as a skill and has developed an artist's eye for it. ",
"The DJs you're probably referring to are the big ones at EDC, Ultra, etc. Those guys produce a lot of the music they play or they remix those sings. They do play other peoples music as well, but they are also putting their own spin on it.",
"What Pesto says is right, but there's also a lot more to any DJ worth their salt. Any numbnut with a preamp soundboard and some speakers can cue up a playlist and press spacebar. Any Joe with DJware or a multichannel board can crossfade to a new track as a previous one ends.\n\nTruly DJing a live set well, like the pros do, involves not only knowing every single facet of every song on your computer backwards and forwards but also involves being able to assign elements of those songs to effects controllers and changing and intermixing those songs on the fly to make whole new songs. Youtube mashups and you'll begin to see some of what's possible: _URL_0_ Most effects are assigned to buttons (which then have to be accurately memorized so as to be used properly during a show), but most pro DJ tools also allow effects buttons to be assigned on the fly, so there's a LOT of room for customization.\n\nAre there DJs who press play, and then sit back and piddle on Facebook? Yes, and they serve a purpose. There's a niche for everything. Many people know the original (vocal) mix of a given popular song. Musically literate fans of DJs and their associated music also know fifteen other (re)mixes, both official and non, and can differentiate between most of those and what constitutes something created uniquely on the fly. There's a very real skill involved. Youtube mashups. I think you'll find some truly eye-/mind-opening things DJs can do.",
"\"Art\" is a form of expression.\n\nImagine that 100 people are going to be showing up to your house in an hour. How will you entertain them? Playing music is a good option. Do you have the right music to play? Would you just turn on the radio? Go to Pandora? \n\nRadios have commercials. Songs don't always compliment one another. \n\nBut let's say you don't want to risk having your party fail due to poor music selection... so you spend some time listening to songs, figuring out which ones compliment one another, which flow together, which ones get the crowd pumped and excited, and which ones give them a short breather so they can get ready for the next song.\n\nBut crap... that takes a lot of effort. Sure, pressing \"play\" on a machine may end up with a similar result... but you don't want to use a machine for this. You want to learn the fine-motor skills and muscle memory required to fluidly operate your music gear covered in buttons and switches. Like an audible chef, you craft a meal of sounds and rhythms for the crowds' ears... you manage to completely hide and obscure the pattern of song selection from the crowd to the point that the entire experience feels like one long ride of enjoyment. All those songs made by all those other artists might as well be different brands of paint being combined onto the DJ's percussive canvas.\n\nSo, to answer your question, the reason that people pay to see these shows is because these DJs provide a service that **not everyone** can do. And, sure, while the entry barriers to becoming a \"Dj\" are not very high, some Djs are simply better than others and can provide better experiences than their competitors.... so much so that fan bases develop and seek out opportunities to exchange their money (which plays no music) for temporary exposure to auditory stimuli that is otherwise unavailable.\n\nAt the end of the day, an experienced, talented DJ (just like any musician) can combine layers of sound in a way that taps them directly into the minds of their audience. That's pretty neat.\n\nImagine yourself on stage with some tables, wires, and buttons. Before you is a crowd of thousands. They are there because you have created something that meant something to them. You are there because you are an artist."
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5zc08e | what exactly was dialup and why couldn't you use the phone at the same time? | I just turned 20, and I vaguely remember going to the computer and using the dialup. Whoever's house I was in would tell me to take it off when they needed the phone. What was going on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zc08e/eli5_what_exactly_was_dialup_and_why_couldnt_you/ | {
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"The computer sent data through the phone line. Since the phone line transmits sound data - the computer was literally generating sounds that could be interpreted as data - high and low pitched squeals that represent the data you are sending or receiving. It was like a very rapid morse code.\n\nIf you picked up the phone, you would be adding your own sounds on top of the computer's sounds. The computer at the other end wouldn't know that you picked up the phone, it would just assume that you're sending data to, and this would screw up all of the data that gets sent."
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2ropnt | whats going on with the statehood movement in puerto rico as of now? | Last thing I heard was that Congress gave them $2.5 million in funding to hold a referendum. Do we have any idea when the referendum will take place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ropnt/eli5_whats_going_on_with_the_statehood_movement/ | {
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"There was a non-binding referendum is 2012, but most people see it for the sham it was.\n\nThe pro-statehood ruling party rigged it so they first asked if they people preferred the status quo, then asked the remaining people if the wanted statehood. If they asked the questions in the other order, they would have gotten a different answer."
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46gpem | what is being done in the world of science to offset the imposing "antibiotic apocalypse?" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46gpem/eli5_what_is_being_done_in_the_world_of_science/ | {
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"I recently had to watch this video in my biology class and it explains how bacteria \"talk\" with each other and how we can use their \"language\" to enhance or inhibit their communication. _URL_0_",
"[Here is an article you may want to read](_URL_0_) I'll post a little of the article so my comment doesn't get deleted. \nScientists have come across a potential game-changer in the fight against drug-resistant superbugs - a new class of antibiotic that is resistant to resistance. Not only does the new compound - which comes from soil bacteria - kill deadly superbugs like MRSA, but also - because of the way it destroys their cell wall - the pathogens will find it very difficult to mutate into resistant strains",
"There are several different facets of research going on. They are really starting to scale up the antibiotic research, as well as alternate treatments for infections.\n\nOne of the alternate treatments that I am aware of is a PPMO, which stands for peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer. I'm not entirely sure how they effect bacteria, so this part may be inaccurate, but instead of killing the whole bacteria, it just annihilates the genes inside the bacteria. The PPMO is created for specific genes, so it won't start killing off all of our own genes. It's an interesting treatment that has gone through a little bit of animal testing with positive results, but it's a long way from being used in humans.\n\nThere is a similar concept being researched that uses viruses to kind of blow up bacteria cells. They latch on to the bacteria and overload the cell with their own DNA eventually causing the bacteria to burst open, which destroys it. This treatment is also intended to be used in very specific infections. As far as I remember, there haven't been animal trials, but this could also be wrong, I haven't checked in a while. The benefit of these antibiotics is that they can catered for specific infections, instead of killing all of the good bacteria in your body as well as the bad.\n\nThere was another actual antibiotic that I was told about that is called texobactin or something like that. I think they used it to treat lab mice that had MRSA. It was a big deal when it happened but I just don't remember it off the top of my head. It looked very promising but it was a few years away from clinical trials when I saw it. I'm sure they are further along in research now.\n\nResearchers are very aware that new treatments for infections are needed, and they are certainly working on the problem. More and more money is being granted to researchers about the potential of antibiotic resistant infections and treatments. This kind of research just takes a long time, because it has to be so thoroughly studied.\n\nI know there is a lot of scary stuff about antibiotic resistant infections, but there are a lot of people working on the problem. The antibiotic apocalypse could happen if nothing viable comes out of the research, but there are a lot of promising things being done currently, so I think it is unlikely. \n\nI am just a pharmacy tech, and I like talking to the pharmacists about new drugs. There is more than those three things being studied, but those were the promising ones that I remembered. Maybe someone else can chime in and mention others.\n\n\n",
"There's a [full report](_URL_0_) on _URL_1_. I don't know where things are but the key recommendations are:\n\n(1) improving our surveillance of the rise of antibiotic‐resistant bacteria to enable effective response, stop outbreaks, and limit the spread of antibiotic‐resistant organisms, and acting on surveillance data to implement appropriate infection control;\n\n(2) increasing the longevity of current antibiotics, by improving the appropriate use of existing antibiotics, preventing the spread of antibiotic‐resistant bacteria and scaling up proven interventions to decrease the rate at which microbes develop resistance to current antibiotics;\n\n(3) increasing the rate at which new antibiotics, as well as other interventions, are discovered and developed."
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"whitehouse.gov"
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3s2coq | the current global warming is very concerning, but there was global warming about 1000 years ago called the "medieval warm period" - how many other such warming periods have there been and why is the current one so different? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s2coq/eli5_the_current_global_warming_is_very/ | {
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"The medieval warm period was not as extreme, and came on much more gradually. The current one has been sudden and steady, and we have a clear cause for it: increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We've increased the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content by 1/3, for example - that's a huge effect on a planetary scale. The rise almost exactly mirrors the growth of human industry, and even tapers off briefly at the collapse of the Soviet Union and its industrial capacity. \n\nWe have reliable climate records dating back tens of thousands of years from e.g. ice cores, and we are pretty sure this warming isn't like the others.",
"1) Scale: It wasn't warming as much as we've already warmed the planet. \n2) Cause: Medieval peoples couldn't pump stuff into the atmosphere on anywhere near the scale we can. It was caused by things beyond their control. \nThis time around we are certain that we are the cause of the warming, that means we have to be the ones doing something about it."
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6zv9d5 | what decides whether something will release alpha, beta, or gamma radiation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zv9d5/what_decides_whether_something_will_release_alpha/ | {
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"Type of radiation is determined by the material that emits it. Gamma radiation is electomagnetic radiation, like radio waves, microwave, x-rays, gamma rays... they are typically formed when a charge (electron) is accelerated or decelerated or moved in a circular path (which is an acceleration btw). It can also be formed when an electron jumps between shells in an atom (different energy states).\nAlpha radiation is essentially helium atom cores. They typically form as a result of a radioactive decay. Similar thing for beta except they are electrons.\n",
"The type of radiation released depends on the particular isotope.\n\nAlpha radiation is helium atom nuclei (2 protons and 2 neutrons), which are ejected from a large atomic nucleus. In general, alpha radiation occurs in very large nuclei (things like uranium: 92 protons, 146 neutrons). Essentially, the nucleus is so big, that it can barely hold together against the repulsion between all the positively charged protons - so a cluster of protons gets ejected, taking some neutrons with it.\n\nBeta radiation tends to occur when the ratio of neutrons to protons in the nucleus is wrong. For light atoms, the optimal ratio is roughly 1:1, but as the nuclei get heavier, you need more neutrons (uranium is roughly 1 proton to 1.5 neutrons). \n\nIf a nucleus has too many neutrons, a neutron can transform into a proton and an electron. The electron can't stay in the nucleus, so gets kicked out as beta radiation. \n\nIf a nucleus has too many protons, a proton can transform into a neutron and a positron (a positively charged electron). The positron can't stay, so gets kicked out as (positively charged) beta radiation. \n\nGamma rays are just pure energy. They are released from a nucleus when it has too much energy - think of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus like dozens of those little magnets you can make scultpures from. Sometimes, the magnets can hold a position which isn't optimal, and then suddenly, they'll find a better position and bind tighter. When this happens in a nucleus, you get a gamma ray. \n\nGamma rays are released when alpha or beta radiation is produced. If you have a big nucleus, and an alpha breaks off, the nucleus is going to be a bit lopsided, so it will rearrange and form a more compact shape, releasing a gamma ray at the same time. \n\nA similar sort of thing happens with beta radiation - when a proton converts to a neutron, this can leave the nucleus a bit uneven. Sometimes, the energy is immediately released and it all goes into the beta radiation, but sometimes, some of the energy comes out separately as a gamma ray. "
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9vcmlj | why do fireworks look so bad on film/video, yet look good irl? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vcmlj/eli5_why_do_fireworks_look_so_bad_on_filmvideo/ | {
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"Fireworks can look great on video if you have a good enough camera. Cheap cameras, like the ones in our phones, can't handle low light conditions very well and have a hard time focusing on the rapid flashes coming from a firework. The camera is constantly trying to auto focus but can't, resulting in a blurry image. ",
"[Video compression work by detecting similarities from one frame to the next and encoding the difference between successive frames. This is usully done by cutting each frame into tiny blocks and then sending only the blocks that have changed. Some things like fireworks, snow or confetti will change most of the blocks in every frame, forcing the compression algorithm to lower quality significantly to keep up.](_URL_0_)",
"Fireworks [can look amazing ](_URL_0_) on video. You just need the right equipment. ",
"The other part of the problem is that fireworks are HUGE. You feel a certain way when you experience something much much larger than yourself. \n\nYour TV just doesn't have that power over humans in the same way. "
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1vnkb2 | how 2 wifi routers on the same channel can interoperate without completely jamming each other's signal? | When 2 WiFi routers are in the same vicinity of each other and are set to transceive on the same channel, I realize that they effectively slow each other down as they share the bandwidth of that channel with each other.
But that's quite a feat, and one I still don't understand. How do they both transmit on the same channel without just completely 'stepping on each other' and effectively jamming each other's signal?
I know this is ELI5 but I am a ham radio operator and can comprehend basic radio concepts if you include them in your explanation.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vnkb2/eli5_how_2_wifi_routers_on_the_same_channel_can/ | {
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"It's FM, and you know what happens to FM signals when 2 people try the repeater at the same time, with equal power. It's unreadable. Yes, the wifi points would jam each other too. \n\nThey can interoperate only because packets are short bursts and can be error corrected. They don't route the other networks traffic as it does not match their own essid. If you tried to operate demanding content on either, it would be a different story entirely. But just small amount of network traffic, you may only have a 20% duty cycle, so you can see with the ability to detect errors and resend, the only big challenge is to detect major packet collisions where headers are missing and you dont know who to send it back to. \n\nThis problem actually exists in networking without 2 access points as well. You would just need 2 users to feasibly create collisions. Well, that's where spread spectrum comes into play. That is above my level of understanding, but I believe it is correct to say the transmitters carrier frequency basically changes within the channel, seemingly at random and very often, and this change helps prevent collisions, but doesn't entirely eliminate them. Hence it does hurt performance but doesn't kill communication entirely. ",
"First, I'm going to only talk about 802.11n in particular because I understand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) better than the other modulation techniques used; Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS). Though the underlying concept of DSSS and FHSS is more less the idea of a Spread Spectrum. Spread Spectrum more or less is making something that takes up very little bandwidth on its own take up more bandwidth to specifically prevent jamming or interference. OFDM is a little different though.\n\nOkay, with the fancy words out of the way lets define Multiplexing first. Let us say for example we want to build a road between two cities. One way to approach this might be make the road one lane allowing one car to travel on the road at any given time. While this car is traveling on this road no other cars are allowed to travel on it until it reaches its destination. After that another car going the opposite direction is allowed on. And so on and so on. In simple terms this is basically what Half-Duplexing is. It allows for communication two ways, but only one thing is allowed to communicate at a time. There has to be a more efficient way of allowing cars to get between the two cities, right? Another option we might try is a two lane road, we're spending the big bucks now. With this two cars can travel in different directions at the same time. More or less this is what constitutes Duplex communication. That is two devices can communicate with each other at the same time. But in those previous examples, only one or two cars are allowed to travel on the road at a time. Surely it can be made more efficient. Suppose we allowed multiple cars that are traveling in the same direction on the road at the same time, and that we further restrict them such that they are only able to travel in a single file line down the road at a fixed distance from one another. Ha! I think we have just crammed a ton of cars onto this road! If you think of each car being say a packet from the networking world then what that more or less describes is something called Time Division Multiplexing, though there is more to it. But this does not define Multiplexing. Essentially Multiplexing is taking a lot of individual . . ., channels of information and fitting, compressing, or aggregating (I like this word) onto a single channel of transmission. \n\nNow, with OFDM I'd like to focus on the last three letters first, FDM. FDM is Frequency Division Multiplexing. Going back to the idea of connecting two cities via a road. Instead of a single lane for each direction, why not add another giving a total of four lanes? What about making it six, or eight, or even ten?! Well we do have to draw a line at some point or another. With FDM what we do is take a fixed amount of bandwidth and divide it up into a set number sub-channels that do not overlap with one another. Depending on the selectivity of the filters, stability of the oscillators, and the actual modulation scheme used by the modems determines that amount of information that can be aggregated into a set amount of bandwidth. But Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing takes this a bit further. Again going back to the road between two cities. What if we were to use twenty lanes, but we restrict the total amount of cars in any given lane to say five cars? Now, while a two lane road could handle the one-hundred cars, if some were to have tires blow out or engines blow up there would be less than one-hundred cars arriving at their destinations. If we imagine that these cars are imaginary bits of information that means we lost some. One way to combat the damaged cars causing any sort of back-up for flow of traffic would be to implement multiple lanes. This gives cars a way to go around the wrecked cars. Now, this does not fix the loss of information. To prevent the loss of information let us make every other car carry the same information. Now, imagine that instead of two lanes there are twenty lanes either way. Each of these lanes may not carry a lot of information individually, but together they carry a lot and they are very reliable in getting it where it needs to go. In a nutshell this is how OFDM works, in particular Coded OFDM which puts Forward Error Correction into the mix. That is take a small amount of bandwidth then modulate it onto several carriers at fixed intervals. But instead of putting the entire original signal onto each carrier; instead, we place only a small amount of the data present in the original signal onto each carrier. In effect what we have done is create a signal that takes up approximately the same amount of bandwidth and data rate as if we were to use a single-carrier transmission. The reality is that this OFDM signal has a multitude of sub-channels, where some are parallel to one another, and as a result has a lot of data integrity. In fact it is very robust to all sorts of signal degradation. Another way to think about OFDM if you're familiar with radios is like this. It can be thought of as a bunch of slowly modulated narrowband signals rather than a single large fast modulated wideband signal. \n\nThat was longer than I expected, but hopefully it should not have gone above too many people. I would definitely recommend reading the Wikis for pretty much all of these as the simplifications I did here are more for the sake of getting a basic idea. \n\n**Tl;Dr: Essentially, the signal itself has a lot redundancy built into it. This allows it to encounter some absolutely terrible conditions and still function properly. Albeit at a slower rate than in ideal conditions.**\n\nSource: Day job is Satellite Communications where we use a lot of these kind of things on a day to day basis. "
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2i2ojt | how do you steer a gunship? or a clipper? or large sailship in general? | I understand there's a rudder; but how much use it was depended on the wind and oceanic currents; and the sails were turned to steer too, I think. I'm confused. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i2ojt/eli5_how_do_you_steer_a_gunship_or_a_clipper_or/ | {
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"On most boats, the rudder is, in fact, the principle steering device.\n\nThe sails on sailing vessels generally do not \"steer\" the boat. However, they must be re-positioned when the boat changes direction or when the wind direction changes, to maximize the thrust provided by the sails, using the available wind.\n\nFor non-sail vessels, there is often still a rudder, although steerable propellers or thrusters are often also used. Google \"Azipod\" and start reading, for more info.",
"There are two modes of sailing, upwind and downwind. When sailing downwind the wind pushes the sail and the ship moves the direction it is pushed. The keel (or centerboard in a small boat) is important. It keeps the boat slicing forwards in the water, reducing side slippage. \n\nWhen you are traveling upwind the sail is acting like the wing of a plane, creating a low pressure area in front of the sail, which pulls the ship forward. The keel is really important when going upwind. \n\nWater flows along the keel and then hits the rudder. When the rudder is turned the water hits it and rotates the ship, turning the bow (front of the ship) in the same direction that the rudder is pointing. \n\nYou can steer a little with the sails if the rudder is broken, but you wont be able to point upwind at all. "
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4yyo7g | what's the difference b/w high quality and low quality meats? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yyo7g/eli5_whats_the_difference_bw_high_quality_and_low/ | {
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"Meat from an animal that received high-quality feed is more chemically varied, and has more flavor. This is particularly noticeable in mild-tasting meat like chicken.\n\nHigh-quality beef typically has more fat mixed throughout (an effect called \"marbling\") which creates a richer taste and more delicate texture.",
"It is a combination of several factors. Better quality meats will come from animals that were raised on better quality, more nutritious (and usually more expensive) diets. Genetics would have more to do with the actual build of the animal, but can affect quality. I also believe that the conditions that an animal is raised in can have a huge impact. (Think filthy, crowded feed lot VS. clean, spacious pasture)\n\nThe difference in taste and texture are a direct result of the way the animal is raised. What you put in is what you get out. Better nutrition = better building of the muscle fibers and more flavor."
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8w53u2 | what is the difference between an originalist interpretation and a "living document" interpretation when it comes to the u.s. supreme court? | I could tell you the difference in a definition sort of way but what I get lost on is application. I need a good example or something to really wrap my head around why there can be two philosophies on interpreting the same Constitution and how each side of the coin interprets it. To me they seem like a couple of fancy terms to mean that they either twist the Constitution to agree with conservatives or twist it to agree with liberals. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8w53u2/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_an/ | {
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"The idea is a debate about whether the founders wrote the thing to be specific, rigid, and amendable only through the amendment process...\n\nor whether the founders wrote the thing with deliberately looser language to take shifting societal norms into account.\n\nFor example, the 8th amendment prohibits \"cruel and unusual\" punishments but neglects to define those terms. An originalist would argue that we need to research what \"cruel and unusual\" meant to the founders. A proponent of living document theory would argue that \"cruel and unusual\" is deliberately vague so that the boundaries of cruel and unusual can shift as society progresses."
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4qjc30 | why can a laser be seen from miles away but a regular flashlight has such a limited range before the light fades? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qjc30/eli5_why_can_a_laser_be_seen_from_miles_away_but/ | {
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"A laser tends to be very well focused, which means that its energy doesn't spread out that much as it travels. A flashlight, on the other hand, isn't focused that well, which means that its energy spreads out very quickly as it travels, so gets dimmer much faster than a laser does.",
"Lasers are a continually beam of powerful light (which is why you should never stare into one). The particles that make up the light are tightly focused and less likely to disperse. Flashlights however shoot in a cone shaped beam which spread out and eventually become invisible to the naked eye. "
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231b89 | why can most people jump higher off of one leg, when clearly there is more power in two legs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/231b89/eli5_why_can_most_people_jump_higher_off_of_one/ | {
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"momentum, jumping with two legs slows you down to an extent",
"because you're using your other leg for momentum.",
"Well, it's not all about raw power. The problem isn't being able to move upwards, you can climb stairs a lot higher than you can jump. The problem is accelerating quickly.\n\nLook at it this way; stand perfectly still with your hands at your sides and jump. \n\nYou probably didn't get very far. This is because when you jump off one leg, neither your arms or your extra leg is sitting as dead weight. Your body spends a great deal of energy to thrust them upward just before you leave the ground. There's a lot of weight in a leg, so the inertia from that plus your arms all being thrust upwards helps to accelerate the actual dead weight (the rest of the body). \n\nTake for instance [this tornado kick](_URL_0_ ). The person in the gif appears to exert very little force on the ground as they lift off. This is because they slowly build up momentum leading up to the jump (by spinning) then angle that energy upwards to carry them off the mat.\n\nBasically the idea is rather than pushing yourself up with two legs, you're pulling yourself up with the momentum you built up in your swinging arms and legs."
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3vhji7 | if utilities infastructure was created through taxpayer dollars, then why do people have to pay private companies for their utilities? | I don't actually know how to look up who owns the electricity here (Prince George County, Maryland), but I do know that the sewers had to have been built by taxpayer money, right?
So why do I have to pay a private company for power/water/sewer ? How was this company chosen? How were rates chosen? How can a competitor appear?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vhji7/eli5_if_utilities_infastructure_was_created/ | {
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"In most cases where facilities were built by the public and then privatized, the company either had to pay the government for the facilities, or agree to repair or improve the facilities at their own expense, thus effectively paying a bill that would have been the government's bill.\n\n",
"You have to pay the provider of the service. Water, electricity, etc. cost money to extract/generate and transmit. You have to pay FedEx to drive your packages down the highway even though the highway was built with taxpayer money, right?\n\nAs to your other questions about utilities industries, they're complicated and state-specific. In general, it can be anything from a free-for-all where anybody can become, for example, a competitive retail electricity provider, or it can be state-sponsored monopoly where the government gives one private company the exclusive right to provide the service in a particular area. "
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1nstpr | after accomplishing something very challenging why do we sometimes feel empty and emotionless about it immediately after? | Or am I the only one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nstpr/eli5_after_accomplishing_something_very/ | {
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"Because the challenge is gone. \n\nPossibly. ",
"This reminds me of the last scene in Zero Dark Thirty (I'd say spoiler here, but since the film was based on recent real-life events, you probably know the plot already.)\n\nIf you've devoted a significant amount of time to something, once you complete it, your primary purpose is gone. It takes a bit of time to find a new goal.",
"I feel that way too. For me I'm pretty certain it's just a lack of self-confidence. By completing the task, I haven't proven that I can do something difficult; either I didn't really earn it for some reason, or I've shown that it wasn't really difficult in the first place.",
"The challenge or goal is gone and now that you have overcome it, you don't know what's next. Now you are empty as you await for another goal to approach itself so you can have the same feeling. Completing goals is good, having goals is good. Having too many goals is stressful, having no goals makes you feel useless and empty. "
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dix4bv | how can i help somebody with seasonal depression feel better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dix4bv/eli5_how_can_i_help_somebody_with_seasonal/ | {
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"Phototherapy is noted to help people with seasonal depression. It involves basically shining a special lamp in your indoor space to help mitigate the lack of light that comes with autumn & winter."
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3uo8l2 | what does the "crisper" drawer in my refrigerator do and what is the benefit to putting my veggies in there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uo8l2/eli5_what_does_the_crisper_drawer_in_my/ | {
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"Actually, the crisper is the worst place to keep vegetables. They do better with air circulation and the temps higher in the fridge. The best thing to keep in the crisper are raw meats, primarily to prevent raw meat juices from dripping and contaminating anything else. The drawers are relatively easy to remove and sanitize afterward."
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2lploh | why don't credit cards just use 19 digits instead of 16 digits plus 3 digit "security code"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lploh/eli5_why_dont_credit_cards_just_use_19_digits/ | {
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"The CVV is separate from the card number, so if people record your card number (such as a card skimmer), they don't have access to the 3 digit security code.\n\nIf you made it 19 digit, then 1 swipe and they have all they need to literally take all your cash.",
"It helps cut down on the fradulent use of credit cards by hackers.\n \nThe security code is often not kept or used in face-to-face transactions (i.e. buying something with your credit card at the supermarket.)\nIf the supermarket's records were hacked, the hackers would not get your security code and therefore could not use it in card-not-present transactions (i.e. over the phone, online.)",
"As a few peole have already pointed out, it keeps numbers in different places on the card (excep for AmEx) so a person can't take a quick look or picture and get all the info needed for many transactions, but I also wanted to add that (for Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover) it's not embossed into the card so if a store has to imprint it (we still do at my place of employment in certain situations) it's not imprinted along with the card number, name, and expiration date."
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4c772o | why are the brussels and paris attacks so publicized and mourned over when others, like the current pakistani bombings, kill more and do more damage? | Side question: Is this an example of Eurocentrism?
(talked about it this year in High School) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c772o/eli5_why_are_the_brussels_and_paris_attacks_so/ | {
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"Attacks in Western nations are discussed more in Western media. Attacks in nations that have been experiencing terrorism and war daily for decades, not so much.",
"It's pretty much accepted that that part of the world is basically a warzone. Nobody's too surprised if something explodes or people die there.\n\nHowever if it happens in a modern major city, that IS a nasty shock. That kind of thing isn't \"supposed\" to happen in a \"civilised area\".\n\nRemember in the Dark Knight how the Joker talked about nobody panicking when things went \"according to plan\" even if the plan is horrifying? That's exactly it. You expect bombs to go off in a warzone, you don't expect them to go off in the middle of a major European city.",
"Also I think that us Westerners have become very desensitised to anything bad that happens in the Middle East regions. Partly due to the way the media/hollywood have reported/portrayed the violence/wars etc from those regions for years, it goes hand in hand in most peoples minds so doesn't come as a shock to the system anymore. Also there is a growing them and us attitude, we feel more connected to fellow western nations.",
"Speaking from a European perspective (sorry OP, I have no idea where you're from but I'm assuming from your username that it's the states) - Brussels and Paris are two things:\n\na) They're not considered warzones - Pakistan is both at war, and in the midde of an area from where we commonly hear of wars, so it doesn't register in a lot of people's heads as shocking. Brussels and Paris are considered peaceful, safe areas, so it's a much bigger shock.\n\nb) They're a lot closer to home. Pakistan? Syria? We can accept that bad events there are tragic and terrible, but we can dismiss them easily because they can be considered foreign places, with which your average person in my country has fairly limited interaction. It's why people can sometimes get so angry about, for example, Syrian refugees coming into the country, and feel no sympathy - the bad events happened far away in a country we don't know very much about, but the refugees are here in our front yard.\n\nAnd that's why we get scared about stuff like the Brussels attack, or the Paris attack, or the London bombings back in 2007 - these things are happening a matter of hours away from us.\n\nThat doesn't make them any more tragic, or the deaths any more deserving of being mourned than the deaths happening in the Middle-East, and I'm not trying to justify these views or reactions, but that's the way it is, and you're right, it's a form of Eurocentrism on our part. It's more surprising, more shocking and a lot scarier, and reminds us that we are involved in this conflict more than we would sometimes like to admit."
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45lpra | where and how does all the energy created by power plants get stored? or is the power being generated as it's needed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45lpra/eli5_where_and_how_does_all_the_energy_created_by/ | {
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"The latter, mostly. In the case of plants that use some sort of fuel, the energy is *already* stored in whatever fuel that is being used. Generating energy from the fuel first, and then storing it back inside something else to be extracted later is a *huge* waste of everything. When you have too much power, you use less fuel. When you have too little, you use more, it's generally as simple as that.\n\nIn case of solar plants and such however, it gets interesting. Storing large amounts of energy is one of the biggest problems of today's engineering and there is considerable research being done about this very issue. There are some ways of storing the energy that a solar plant generates during the day, but they aren't exactly ideal. It usually revolves around conversion of electricity into some other form of energy. Like using the power from a solar plant to pump very large amounts of water uphill, which is essentially converting electrical energy into potential energy. You later let the water flow downhill and turn some turbines to generate electricity again. Or you could use the power from your soalr plant to pump air inside a huge tank to create pressure, and when needed you let the highly pressurized air out and, again, turn turbines with it. Obviously there are considerable losses involved in such techniques, but energy storage technology is still a developing one. We're getting there.",
"I just had a class on it yesterday! Just to be clear I'm just talking about non-renewable resources and electricity, I'm not sure if what I say here is also applicable to renewable resources plants.\n\n\nElectricity in big quantities (like in power plants) is not stored. It can only be produced. It is only stored in small quantities (batteries, for example) but so far people haven't created an efficient way to store big quantities of electricity. \n\n\n",
"If you are referring to the large power plants (coal/lignite), they operate on supply/demand. There isn't really any noticeable storage of the energy and the electricity generated is immediately put onto the grid. \n\nIf there is excess supply than demand (ex. a nice day and no one needs heating/cooling) the energy may get sold to other adjacent grids operated by other companies that may need it. In the case of excess supply, the power plant will decrease production to reach and equilibrium.",
"While everyone has explained a lot, I want ti add another interesting fact.\n\nElectricity is, in conventional generators, created by big turbines and generators. That means, if there's more energy consumed than produced, these turbines are slowed. When the reverse happens, they start to speed up.",
"Just to add that there is a common way that large amounts of energy is stored for later use - [pumped storage hydroelectricity](_URL_0_).\n\nBasically when there's low demand for energy the excess energy is used to pump water from a reservoir into a 2nd reservoir that's higher up (eg. at the top of a hill). When energy demand increases they stop pumping and let the water flow down from the higher reservoir back into the lower reservoir, driving a generator as the water passes.",
"So, my dad runs a series of hydroelectric dams on a river...his system is connected to a dam on a bay heading into Lake Michigan. There is a balance to maintain, too much can blow apart the system, too little causes brownouts. During heavy rain, the bay station will literally burn the river generated excess by pumping some lake water back into the bay! It's a wild system, one of his river dams is over 110 years old!!!! ",
"Generally it's being used at capacity. Storage is one of the biggest problems with renewable energies. How do you take the solar power during the day, and cost effectively store it for use at night? Answer that question and you will be very rich.",
"Several good answers here, batteries are costly and don't store much energy (on a large scale, and this is ELI5). Hydroelectric also works.\nFrom work experience, I'd like to offer this:\nI live in Texas, which basically has its own Electric Grid. I often drive to west Texas (think Midland/Odessa area), where they produce more electricity from wind than any other state in the US. If I take a slight detour, I will pass a wind generated power station that is not even connected to that grid, and charges all those oil/gas places on a rate that changes every 15 minutes. If the wind does die, diesel generators are brought online, and the cost of electricity can easily go from 8 cents per kWh, to over a dollar per kWh.",
"there are many factors but the main one is current draw and voltage. these plants produce electricity in very high voltages (several hundred thousand volts on the main lines) and not so high current. the current we use in the household is via the drop down transformers (current and voltage are inversely proportional)and while voltage is relatively constant, current is drawn, not pushed, meaning if it isn't needed it's not there. what you perceive as a heavy load (say a 30 amp water heater) is nothing but milliamps to the grid. there is seldom an actual instant heavy spike on the demand of the generators supplying our grid and very easily accounted for. if there was actually no load draw on the generator it simply does not make the current, but does ensure the voltage is present.",
"Yay, I actually know this. My father was head instrumentation specialists for a power plant. I worked at the plant during the summers while in college as well. I was fascinated by how it all worked and asked a lot of questions. \n\nThere is little to no storage of power. You have two types of power plants: baseload and load following. Baseload run at max capacity all of the time and load following shutdown when power isn't needed and start back up to handle peak power consumption during the day. You also have auxiliary power stations such as hydroelectric damns and what not. \n\nThe load is absorbed and controlled at each power plant and power station. The transformers can handle minor fluctuations, but the majority of the power output is controlled by the steam turbine of each power plant. The steam turbine for a coal plant usually turns at around 3000 rpms, but can speed up or slow down to adjust power output. A power grid usually has many power plants feeding the grid, and each plant is connected. Many plants have installed equipment that syncs each plant up so each plant knows what the other plant is doing to optimize level power output.\n\n30 years ago this was not always the case. My dad told me a story about how a long time ago some guy at one of the plants accidentally engaged a turbine before it was fully up to speed. Because it was not up to speed it actually started pulling power instead of delivering it. The instantaneous demand of massive amounts of power shock every power plant on the grid for hundreds of miles. My dad said it sounded like a giant bomb went off in every plant connected to the grid. \n\n ",
"Having designed electric utility generation control systems, I can add on. There is no storage to meet short term demand changes (pumped hydro is another topic). The generating mass of the interconnected grid absorbs short term changes, showing up as a very small change in line frequency. A utility adjusts their output to meet demand as follows:\n\nA utility is connected to the grid through power lines, called tie lines. If the utility is not buying or selling power then the sum of the power flow through the tie lines should be zero. This sum is called the Area Control Error.\n\nIf the Area Control Error is negative, then generator output is increased, and if positive output is decreased, until the control error is zero.\n\nThere is a bias applied to the control error based on grid line frequency. If the line frequency is below target (60hz in North America), then the bias will cause over generation, and vice versa, with the intent that the grid frequency stays at target.\n\n",
"Electric power grids work like enormous machines with many power plants feeding to a transmission system to provide needed power, like streams coming together in a river. American utilities are required to have a certain percentage of \"spining reserve\" which are power generators online to provide more than the current usage. Some power can be stored with hydroelectric dams and reserviors that can adapt to changes in load some even use pumps to return water during periods of low demand and high production. Other power plants can be turned on as needed to meet power requirements. Baseload plants are nuclear, coal and natural gas that produce steam and take a long time to bring up to speed and turn off. Faster response is with gas combustion turbines and reciprocating engines can have the fastest response to changing loads since they are like automobile engines that can be turned on and off easily and provide varying power as needed. Energy storage is one of the major goals in power engineering with all types of battery and other systems being developed and deployed to match the different power inputs with customer needs. \nSource: worked in utilities for 20 years and renewable energy for 35 years. Also living offgrid for 25 using solar, batteries and backup generators to supply all my power needs. ",
"Generators have a certain capacity, usually expressed in MW, megawatts, which is a unit of *power*. Generation systems put a certain voltage, aka potential difference, onto the transmission systems and this voltage is a constant. The more load/draw on the system, the greater the current that flows through the conductors. Since power is a product of voltage*current the generator is capable of providing any amount of current up to a certain MW capacity. Beyond that capacity the generator would sustain heat damage, but protective systems would cut off some load in order to prevent this in a properly coordinated system. \n\nThat's how I understand it, and I am oversimplifying things by leaving out reactive and apparent power. ",
"A few power plants actually have a pretty interesting strategy- they'll purposefully build the plant at the bottom of a mountain and by a large lake. When the plant's generating too much electricity it will use that power to pump a bunch of water from the lake to a dam at the top of the mountain. When energy demand is high, they'll open the dam, letting all of the water flow down the mountain and make hydroelectricity.",
"Power Generation Engineer here, created username just to answer this because it's the only ELI5 I have ever been qualified to answer (have built and commissioned power plants all over the world for Westinghouse and Siemens for 20+ years).\n\nA thorough explanation is probably beyond ELI5 territory and I'm probably going to get hammered for this response length but screw it, it's a throwaway and I don't need the afirmation. There are plenty of correct pieces of answers in the comments. If you strung them together you wuld have a hell of a complete answer. In short, unless the electricity is produced and stored in grid connected battery banks or some other means DIRECTLY storing electricity without first converting into into another form then it is produced \"on demand\", as it's needed.\n\nHow well it is done is dependent on many factors but not limited too the type of power generation method employed, it's age, the intelegence of the plant control system or systems that operate it, the intelegence of the transmision systems that the electricity is transported on, and the level of connectivity that the individual power plants have with the grid operator (Independent System Operators in the USA) and to each other.\n\nIn the USA, we run the gammit in terms of technology and capabilities employed across all these areas but this has been the only reliable method of delivering bulk electricity to a mass consumer base for well over 100 years (thanks George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla - you glorious bastards).\n\nAlso, the collective \"grid\" is capable of producing more than what is actualy needed at any given time. It's called spinning reserve. Let's say a coal plant in the SW USA is capable of producing 2000MWe. At any given time it might only be producing 800 to 1500 MWe. It's boilers are generating steam, it's steam turbines are spinning the generators and all systems are effectively on line. If the load on the electrical grid were to increase, it's generaly gradual in nature and rarely instantaneous. The power plant responds by increasing the fuel input to the boilers to increase steam production and thereby increase the power generated by the steam turbine. This coresponds to an increase in the power output at the generator terminals. This process happens relatively quickly even for an old coal plant and usualy faster than the coresponding load increase on th grid. This makes it possible for the power plant to match a load increase imposed by the electrical grid within miliseconds to seconds. In the case of the SW USA coal plant, it has an additional 800MW of capability that is available but not being utilized. The point is that yes, power plants will always follow a load change on the grid but the grid, for the most part, can tolerate the disturbance until the generators can catch up.\n\nA good analogue to this is a car driving across a flat plane that suddenly encounters a hill. In order to maintain speed going up the hill the driver has to press down on the accelerator to increase the power output from the engine in order to maintain speed. The driver presses the accelerator pedal IN RESPONSE to a decrease in speed caused by an increased load on the engine. The decreased speed, although noticeable, is quickly resolved becasue the driver (control system) and the car (generator) are capable of responding quickly, almost in real time.\n\nAs for grid frequency, this isn't only affected by load on the electrical system but the TYPE of load. The points made by others in the comments are all valid but I want to add that the frequency of the grid is important when discussing VARS which aside from voltage is the other major control variable that grid operators monitor.....but that's anothr ELI5.\n",
"I work in this industry.\n\nGenerally, power is generated as it is needed. A control authority can give the power plants orders to increase or decrease output as needed. Some generators can be started and stopped very quickly, and provide what is called \"reserve power\". Others can change their output very easily and provide what is called \"regulation\". \n\nHowever, there is some storage, but it's a minority. Here in my home state, we have a power station in the mountains that is what is called a pumped storage station. They have a reservoir at the top of a hill and another at the bottom. When power is cheap, it gets stored by pumping water up to the upper reservoir. When they are asked to provide reserve power, they let the water flow down to the lower reservoir through some turbines, and they can bring a little over 1 GW of power to the grid in just 90 seconds . . . just shy of the amount needed to run a time machine.\n",
"Mostly power is generated as it's needed. I work at a balancing authority that basically tells any given power plant \"Hey, we need this much power at this time\" and they'll produce what the market demands.",
"Utilities have several tools to match generation to load and (new battery tech notwithstanding) energy is not stored on any large scale. Spinning reserve, VAR support, and quick turn up generation (combustion turbines and pumped storage) are used to handle the transitions in load. The plant operators and transmission dispatchers use voltage and frequency as indicators to determine which tool to use. \n\nWhen load is greater than generation the system voltage will decrease and the frequency will decline. Conversely, if the generation is in excess to the load the system voltage and frequency will increase.\n\nThe operators will run their generators at 80% (for example) anticipating going up to 100% to meet the peaks in demand. This way when the load goes up the demand can be met at the generating site (adding more excitation to the generator). As the load goes down the operators will reduce their excitation voltage to maintain the system voltage at an ideal level. Some utilities forecast this data to determine which generators will run at which levels based on fuel costs and maintenance schedules.\n\nVAR support works two ways, mainly through capacitors and reactors. Closing in the capacitors on the transmission system delivers VAR support closer to the load which raises the voltage further away from generation and allows the generator to run closer to unity which is a big scary math word for 'more efficiently'. Conversely, if the voltage gets too high (ie too much generation given the load) the power plants can lower the system voltage by opening capacitors and closing in reactors. Reactors simulate load which can be useful when dialing down the system voltage and loosely speaking can be thought of an opposite to capacitors for the purpose of voltage control.\n\nQuick turn up generation (pumped storage and gas combustion turbines, for example) are also useful in matching generation to load. It takes weeks or days to turn up nuclear or coal whereas these can be turned up in hours. Raccoon Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee is an example pumped storage but even in this case nothing is stored but the fuel. It is actually a net energy loss every time they fill the lake, but it is a financial success given the swing in energy costs throughout the day. Pump at midnight and release at 5pm for maximum return.\n\nDC systems (solar, wind) have made strides in pushing large battery banks into the limelight, but to the best of my knowledge the battery tech hasn't advanced enough to make this a reasonable financial option on any meaningful scale.",
"The situation is soon to change from 2 to 1. Home and grid based energy storage will reduce pollution and enable residential power generation.\n\nHave a look through _URL_0_\n\nand the information on this company's page will supplement on near future changes in power grids:\n\n_URL_1_",
"Made as needed.\n\nBasically it's like your car, you start going up a hill, you put your foot down harder to stay at the same speed and lift off as you go over the hill.\n\nInstead of a hill, it's how much power people are using. They just control \"the throttle\" at the power station much like you do in a car to keep it going the same speed.\n\nThat should be a nice eli5 version",
"Currently it's mostly generated as needed. There are base load plants that create energy at a constant rate and then there are peaker plants that ballance the load during peak time. Peaker power plants are by and large run on natural gas and can be powered on and off relatively quickly when compared to nuclear or coal power plants. \n\nEnergy storage has been used for peak time load balancing for some time but it's not widely used. The most common method used so far has been pumped hydro, but it's not cost effective or technically possible everywhere. Lately there has been a huge incentive to expand utility scale energy storage, primaraly due to renewable energy which is intermittent. Peak load ballancing using stored energy could replace peaker plants and possibly even coal and nuclear plants if enough renewable sources are used.\n\nFor home use batteries are also making more financial sense, not just to store electricity from PV panels but also to have a backup in case of power failure or for storing cheap electricity for later use when it's sold at a higher cost during peak consumption from the grid.",
"Power isn't stored. A key principle of a power grid is that demand must match supply to balance the system. \n\nThe Power Grid operator can call on dormant units to generate or if there is a excess of supply, the grid can tell generating stations to reduce output or even shut down.\n\nTo fine tune the balance of the power grid (matching demand to Supply) larger power stations have a facility called Frequency Response. The Power Grid Operator uses Frequency Response (FR) to fine tune supply to match demand. A Power Station Operator of a unit providing FR might see his generation output shift up and down a couple of MWh to help balance the power grid.\n\nSource: I work in the UK energy industry ",
"Electrical engineer here. Many good answers on here to summarize into a proper ELI5:\n\nSystem basics: Imagine a team of hundreds of horses drawing thousands of small carts all hooked together behind each other. If one horse dies or an extra cart is added it wont have much of an effect on the system as a whole. If all the horses stop at the same time the whole system will stop nearly instantly.\n\nRegulation: To regulate the system there is a conductor with a whip to make the horses put in some extra effort or slack off a bit. He also has some quick release systems to disconnect some of the carts or groups of carts or even some of the horses if they pull too hard. The conductor makes sure the system is always pulled at exactly the same speed (he has a very fancy speedo) and manages connections/disconnections.\n\nLoad prediction: After a few years of this the conductor can start predicting when people will be hooking on their carts or taking them off and so can plan when to add more horses to his team or take some off to rest them.\n\nEnergy storage: At times there are too little horses to pull all the carts. For this they have bred a special wind-up horse. This horse is actually a drag on the other horses but winds itself up while its dragging the others down. But its okay because it can also help pull when there are too little horses. So the conductor can tell it to either help push when there are too little horses or drag the other horses when there are too many horses. This way he conductor can utilize the real horses to their max all the time instead of letting them to pasture and still having to pay for their upkeep."
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3xd0z2 | what exactly is that steamy-looking stuff that comes out right after a beer bottle is opened? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xd0z2/eli5_what_exactly_is_that_steamylooking_stuff/ | {
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"Water vapour condensed out of the air due to the sudden drop in pressure in the neck of the bottle would be my guess.",
"When a gas expands it's temperature drops. When opening a beer bottle the CO2 in it rapidly expands and cools down causing water vapor in it to condense."
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1dtpua | why hockey refs fake a puck drop during a face off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dtpua/eli5_why_hockey_refs_fake_a_puck_drop_during_a/ | {
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"So that players who try to anticipate the drop and thus start their swing faster don't get an advantage. They are supposed to wait until the puck is dropped to start their swing. "
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3e0clt | why are cans in hawaii shaped differently than regular soda cans? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e0clt/eli5_why_are_cans_in_hawaii_shaped_differently/ | {
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"This is an older design of common cans. Let this guy shed some light on it in the most interesting can-related video ever produced:\n\n_URL_0_",
"These are regular soda cans from some years back. Factories in some locations have older equipment.",
"There is a 'side bar' at the bottom of this [newspaper article](_URL_0_) that lines up with the memory I have from taking a tour of the factory as a kid. In a nutshell, the crimped cans take less aluminum to make. \n \nShipping to Hawaii is pretty expensive - other than airlines with people, I would surprised if the soda that comes in to the islands comes via air, I would expect it is put on a ship (about a 5-day trip). The rest of the cans are made by Ball. Ball has a plant in Kapolei Hawaii that makes the aluminum cans for most everyone in the state (soda, beer, sparkling water, etc.) I believe they are the single source for aluminum manufacturing for the state having purchased the factory from Reynolds in the late 1970s. \n "
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1yons6 | how have members of the bush admin not been charged with committing war crimes yet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yons6/eli5_how_have_members_of_the_bush_admin_not_been/ | {
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"This is bull they by definition did commi war crimes facts are not opinions"
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3842s6 | what does board mean in room and board? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3842s6/eli5_what_does_board_mean_in_room_and_board/ | {
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"If someone is offering \"room and board\", they are offering to house and feed you (generally). This sometimes is forgotten, but that's what it means.",
"When lodging somewhere \"room\" refers to where you stay and \"board\" refers to the food. \n\nThe term comes from the word \"board\" being used as a word for table back in the day. Meals would be served on the \"board\" of an inn or house for the lodgers and it eventually became synonymous with served food."
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3ks5fq | why do a lot of hentai and japanese porn use rape? | Not shying away from this fact, I've seen my fair share of porn and hentai. However, something that somewhat disturbs me morally is the fact that I've seen that a fair share of Japanese porn, and hentai in particular, involve some form of rape.
Now, when taken out of context and un-subbed, some scenes can appear consensual, but will also involve things like mind control or something of the like. So, does anyone know what this fascination with rape in hentai is all about? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ks5fq/eli5_why_do_a_lot_of_hentai_and_japanese_porn_use/ | {
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"My assumption is that it has to do with the relatively rigid and formal social norms and politeness of Japanese culture in every day social interactions and also their cultural ideas of ideal man and woman. As a consequence certain behavior not tolerated at all in normal everyday life, like really uninhibited sexuality, breaking down the rigid norms and such can form as sexual role play fantasies which are then played out in porn in an exaggerated form.",
"I would theorize it comes partially from the cultural status of women in japan as submissive beings that you can force your will on, and partially from the value of purity in the sense that a women *wanting* it is slutty. As a result you get a power fantasy of forceful men and an unwanting/pure woman.\n\nAt least in hentai there is also a difference between \"true\" rape and corruption rape, the former has the girl remaining resistant until the end, and seems to me to remain somewhat rare - The corruption of purity on the other hand seems to be *extremely* popular, in which case the girl is reluctant *at first* and then \"learns to love it\". So basically, turning someone pure and innocent to corrupt and slutty is what's fetishized here more so than the actual rape.",
"Japan has very unusual censorship laws, essentially banning the direct display of sex/genitals that most porn relies on. So Japanese porn has to use other factors to attract/keep viewers. \n\nI'm not sure how the laws affect animation, but I know they are a factor in the rise of 'bukkake' and Japanese (live action) porn's unusual subject matter and style.\n\nAlso, as others have mentioned, Japanese culture has traditionally had a big emphasis on submission, and deference to those in power (especially by women). They also have a very long history of erotic art (ukiyo-e IIRC). No doubt this is also a major factor.",
"The Western christianist mindset is guilt-based, which is an internal self-judging process-- am I a bad person for watching this naughty cartoon rape scene? Yes, yes I am, and now I feel bad about what a despicable POS I am. No one could or should ever love me. Jesus, forgive me my sinful thoughts! You do? Praise the Lord and pass the butter, now I can get on with my life again.\n\nJapan is shame-based-- go ahead and indulge your freaky hentai urges privately but once you set foot out the front door your responsibility for the next 12 hours is to conduct yourself according to society's rigidly prescribed behaviors. It's restrictive and repressive, but the other 12 hours of the day are all yours to freely express whatever variety of funkiness you happen to be into. Just keep it to yourself and some like-minded others, and possibly a trusted friend or two.\n\nTwo approaches to the pressure-relief valve necessary for the human individual coping with life in a complex society."
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61ngl7 | the core principles of immanuel kant's philosphy. | I really need a dummy explanation here. I already read the Wikipedia page three times and still don't understand. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61ngl7/eli5_the_core_principles_of_immanuel_kants/ | {
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"It generally covers the human perception of reality, that we are limited by our senses and our brains, and aren't really capable of perceiving or conceiving the 'true' nature of the universe. Human perception and instinct being flawed, he suggested that moral and aesthetic questions should be answered through reasoned thought over emotional reaction.",
"Kant answers 3 big questions:\n\n\n1- what is reality? \n\n\nKant says there's a real world outside of your body. But the way you experience this world (using your senses of seeing, hearing, touching etc.) creates a map, or model, of this outside reality in your mind, which is unique to YOU. Even things like space and time are unique to you. So if you had different senses, like Superman has superhearing, you'd have a completely different model of reality.\n\n\n2- what should be? (Right and wrong)\n\n\nThis is Kant's most famous contribution (categorical imperatives.) It means when you conclude that something is wrong, it is wrong 100% of the time, under any circumstances, and for everybody. You can't say murder is wrong then justify using it in some situations (capital punishment, war, etc.) It does not change nor does it matter where or when. \n\n\nHis point is that because your model of reality is unique to you, you can always come up with situations to convince yourself what you're doing isn't wrong (\"it's not stealing if you're starving.\") And there would be no sense of morality if enough people do that. The only way that there can be any morality is that right and wrong are universally established.\n\n\n3- How should society be governed?\n\n\nSo since right and wrong are universal, societies should be governed by a constitution and by the rule of law. Pure democracy (rule of majority) is not the answer, because no matter how many people believe something to be right, wrong is always wrong.",
"1: u/sexypundit's comment is pretty accurate, and I'd like to attend you of the reply I made to it.\n\n2: Stay off wikipedia when it comes to philosophy, and read the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy instead. Much better, because it is written and edited by academics in the respective field."
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65xl5g | why does squirting lemon juice over spicy food make it less spicy? | I'm Indian but I do NOT eat spicy food. Whenever I go to family get-togethers they cook food with minimal spicy food first, take out some portion of this for me then add the remaining spices. I'm an outlaw. Sometimes it happens that they forget to do that so I end up having to eat spicy food. But almost always do they squirt lemons over it before serving it to me. They say it reduces the spiciness (it always works). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65xl5g/eli5_why_does_squirting_lemon_juice_over_spicy/ | {
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"It does reduce the spice. Spicy chili peppers contain an oil called *capsaicin* which gives the spicy flavor. Lemon juice has acids in it, and the acids neutralize the oils, which reduces the spice. "
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9l8qzn | if oil is ancient organic matter, then how is there so much of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9l8qzn/eli5_if_oil_is_ancient_organic_matter_then_how_is/ | {
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"_URL_0_\nBecause it has had a awfully long time to build up before humans Started using it. Or even before we started existing.",
"There was A LOT of ancient life, a number of which grew to massive sizes (many insects being as large as or larger than people) due to the abudance of oxygen in certain ages, which means there was A LOT of organic matter. At least that's my understanding as to why there could be so much oil",
"Hundreds of millions of years of swamps doing swampy things... \n\n...like sucking down carbon from the atmosphere and sinking it in anoxic environments where it turns to kerogen and then to fossil fuels. \n\nThe Carboniferous period predated the Permian Triassic Mass Extinction Event —aka: The Great Dying— by laying down gigatons of Carbon... which turned to coal, oil, and methane... huge volumes of which were burned by the EXTREME volcanism of the Siberian Traps. \n\nLike 96%+ of the tree of life went extinct. \n\n[Burning Fossil Fuels Almost Ended Life on Earth](_URL_0_) ",
"Much of it comes from a epoch called the Carboniferous period. It was a time when plants first took over land and many of them grew to huge sizes. They also existed before the bacteria and fungi that are good at breaking down cellulose and other structural materials of the plants evolved and so they decayed very slowly when they died. Many being buried in mud and soil before they decayed which changed how they decayed turning much of their volume into coal, oil and other fossil fuels. ",
"Most sedimentary rocks contain at least a small amount of organic matter that consists of the preserved residue of plant or animal tissue. It's rocks and sediment that contain a larger amount than usual which may go on to become coal or oil, and there's been a lot of time for this to happen. There's some confusion in other answers, so to clarify: **coal is generated from terrestrial organic matter (plants, mostly trees), and oil/gas is generated from marine organic matter (plankton which dies and sinks to the seafloor).** Insects, dinosaurs and any other animals have never been a significant source of organic matter for oil or coal. \n\n\nWhen the tissue of organisms decay, particularly in an oxygen-deficient environment, organic degradation may not be complete; more decay-resistant parts of organic substances such as cellulose, fats, resins, and waxes are not immediately decomposed. If a depositional basin happens to be an oxygen poor environment - such as a restricted basin, stagnant swamp, or bog - or if the supply of organic matter is so great that it simply overwhelms all available oxidants, then decay-resistant organic matter may be preserved long enough to become incorporated into accumulating sediment. \n\n\nContrary to what other answers here might have said, this in itself does not take hundreds of millions of years - it can be quite a rapid process of decades to hundreds of years. Once buried, this is when it may persist for hundreds of millions of years, and given the right temperature and pressure conditions, may transform into a fossil fuel. \n\n\nConsidering that the Earth has had over half a billion years of the sort of life and the range of environments which may produce oil, it's not really a surprise that there's a fair bit of the stuff knocking around, though it's quite an art form to find viable deposits. \n",
"Plankton. There is an insane amount of biomass in plankton. What's really crazy is that it generally takes anoxic conditions and slow to stagnant water to form oils, which means that most of the biomass probably didn't undergo the transformation to oil."
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m7ga3 | what exactly is management consulting? | The name makes it sound pretty straightforward: consulting managers on how to do things. Yet it's an entry-level job for so many undergraduates. I assume they're not in Larry Ellison's ear giving him advice. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m7ga3/eli5_what_exactly_is_management_consulting/ | {
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"In short you're correct: a management consultancy does spend a lot of time investigating a company, then makes a number of recommendations to senior staff on how to improve their business.\n\nNot all management consultants are equal. The senior consultants and partners spend a lot of time with senior members of the company with which they're working, discussing performance and strategies.\n\nMid-level consultants tend to hold interviews with mid-level managers to understand the company and recognise problems. They may also supervise a team of junior consultants.\n\nThe junior consultants spend a lot of time typing up notes, fiddling with PowerPoint slides and ordering dinner because they're having to work very late.\n\nDepending on ability, performance and luck it takes about 5 years and an MBA to move from junior to senior.",
"In short you're correct: a management consultancy does spend a lot of time investigating a company, then makes a number of recommendations to senior staff on how to improve their business.\n\nNot all management consultants are equal. The senior consultants and partners spend a lot of time with senior members of the company with which they're working, discussing performance and strategies.\n\nMid-level consultants tend to hold interviews with mid-level managers to understand the company and recognise problems. They may also supervise a team of junior consultants.\n\nThe junior consultants spend a lot of time typing up notes, fiddling with PowerPoint slides and ordering dinner because they're having to work very late.\n\nDepending on ability, performance and luck it takes about 5 years and an MBA to move from junior to senior."
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4cbko4 | how do car dealerships work with the car companies and how do they make their profits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cbko4/eli5_how_do_car_dealerships_work_with_the_car/ | {
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"Car dealerships are independent businesses who have franchise agreements with the various car makers they sell. They purchase the vehicles through the manufacturers at the invoice price, but there are often other mechanisms for the dealers to make money from the sale, such as manufacturer holdbacks, quota bonuses, and other incentives. So even if a dealer sells a car \"at invoice\" they may still be making 3-5% of the cost in profit. Obviously then, if they sell for above invoice, they make more profit. Then there are the additional revenue streams that the finance manager tries to sell you on, like extended warranties, wheel protection, etc. that are all high margin products (same reason Best Buy always tries to sell you the extended warranty). And then there is the financing, with bounty going to the dealer when they go through the auto makers' credit arm. But most dealers actually make the most of the profit form the service part of the dealership, whether repairs covered under warranty that the car maker reimburses for, or repairs/service that are paid directly by the customer."
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20nrez | why does it take so long for employers to reach hiring decisions? | EDIT: Hired! Thanks for all the kind words and info. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20nrez/eli5_why_does_it_take_so_long_for_employers_to/ | {
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"They're interviewing a bunch of other candidates to see who's best.",
"Hiring an employee is a big investment. If there are lots of good options, then you want to make sure you're making the right one.",
"1) We have to go through whatever resumes we collect during that time period, and select from those which candidates we think are worth interviewing. \n2) We have to schedule and conduct interviews of all of those candidates. \n3) We have to do decide which candidates we might want to hire. \n4) We have to do background checks on those candidates. Some places also do a credit check (which I understand but disagree with). \n5) We then extend offers. \n6) Depending on how 4 & 5 go, we might have to do another round of interviews.",
"Are you asking why it takes so long for them to get back to candidates? Keep in mind that they often won't tell candidates who did not get the job until they have definitely filled the role. So they may offer it to one person who takes a week to respond and then decides to decline or wants too much money. So they offer it to the next person and that person takes some time to decide. Keep in mind that the top candidates may have other offers so things take time even after they have finished interviewing.",
"There are a lot of good points here. But I'm guessing it's because time moves slower for a prospective employee waiting to hear from an employer. ",
"I understand the criminal background checks. But why would an employer need to do a credit check?"
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4j65pf | why is the senate investigating claims that facebook censors conservative news when facebook is a private entity/platform? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j65pf/eli5_why_is_the_senate_investigating_claims_that/ | {
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"Because the senate doesn't give a shit about actual government duties and only cares about their own partisan political ideologies and abusing their powers as much as possible in order to advance those particular political ideologies."
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6v6qiz | why do black americans resent white americans so much for slavery when america wasn't the first to use slavery, and banned slavery 13 years before the last country to ban slavery did? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v6qiz/eli5_why_do_black_americans_resent_white/ | {
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"So in your world slavery was the end of the matter?",
"The effects of US Slavery are still seen today. It's not about the history of slavery in other countries. That doesn't directly affect our culture the way our slavery did. \n\nYou can't say that robberies didn't start in the US, so criminals can't be blamed for robbing today.\n\n > why are white Americans viewed as evil when slavery started in Europe in the 1400s\n\nI think that's a skewed viewpoint. Rational people wouldn't view all white people as evil. Who is saying this?"
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26kikm | the difference in programming languages. | Ie what is each best for? HTML, Python, Ruby, Javascript, etc. What are their basic functions and what is each one particularly useful for? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26kikm/eli5_the_difference_in_programming_languages/ | {
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"I can't speak for all languages, but I'll try to help differentiate between three languages I kinda know: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These are mostly used for websites.\n\n**HTML** or HyperText Markup Language is a languages that 'structures' the different parts of a website. They group things up, make tables, basically brings the essentials to the table. **if your website was your body, HTML would be the skeleton.** Laying out the structure, to be built up on eventually.\n\n**CSS** or Cascading Style Sheets is a way of presenting the elements you have created in HTML. This can be done my giving a background the the *elements*, defining a margin or its general location on the page, or, if it's a text element, its font or text color. **If your website was your body, CSS would be the skin.** applies to HTML, decorating and styling it.\n\nThen there's JavaScript. This is usually a lot more complex than HTML and CSS, and uses logic gates and loops and the like. JScript does the 'behind-the-scenes' work on your websites, such as animations. **If your website was your body, JavaScript would be the organs.** Taking information and processing it in a desired way.\n\nObviously, I'm no expert. I guarantee I'm going to be corrected at least a few tines here, but this is my understanding of each. \n\nIf you're interested, I learnt this (incorrect?) Information with _URL_0_, which was hands-on, colloquial, and very ELI5-y.\n\nEDIT: I'll try to answer any more questions you might have if you ask me.",
"Every single programming language serves one purpose: explain to the computer what we want it to do.\n\nHTML is... not a programming language, it's a markup language, which basically means text formatting. XML and JSON are in the same category\n\nThe rest of languages fall in a few general categories (with examples):\n\n1. Assembly is (edit: for every intent and purpose) the native language of the machine. Each CPU has it's own version, and they are somewhat interoperable (forward compatibility mostly).\n\n2. System languages (C and C++) . They are used when you need to tell the computer what to do, as well as HOW to do it. A program called a compiler interprets the code and transforms it into assembler.\n\n3. Application languages (Java and C#). Their role is to provide a platform on which to build applications using various standardized ways of working.\n\n4. Scripting languages (Python, and Perl). The idea behind them is that you can build something useful in the minimal amount of code possible.\n\n5. Domain-specific languages (FORTRAN and PHP). Each of these languages exist to build a specific type of program (Math for FORTRAN, a web page generator for PHP)\n \nThen you have various hybrid languages that fit in between these main categories. The list goes on and on. Various languages are better suited for various tasks, but it's a matter of opinion.\n\nFinally and most importantly: JavaScript is an abomination unto god, but it's the only language that can be reliably expected to be present in web browsers, so it's the only real way to code dynamic behavior on webpages.\n\nEdit: Corrections, also added the 5th category\n\n",
"It can be hard to explain the differences between them without getting too technical, but I'll give it a shot.\n\nTo start with, programming languages can be divided into two categories: compiled languages, and interpreted languages.\n\n**Compiled languages** are run through a program called a compiler, which takes the source code and generates a program file (like an .exe). The main advantage of this is that you have a packaged program which usually doesn't have any requirements to run it. The disadvantage is that there's an extra step between writing the code and distributing the program. Languages like C++ and Java are compiled languages.\n\n**Interpreted languages** are run through an interpreter at the time you run them, which processes the code and turns it into instructions for the computer as it goes. The advantage is that you don't have to go through the compilation step (which can take a decent amount of time for large programs); the disadvantages are a) it has to interpret it as it goes, which can take more resources, b) because it doesn't process the program until you run it, it's a lot easier for errors to slip through (compiled programs can check for some of those errors during the compilation step), and c) the person running the program needs the interpreter (whereas only the person *making* the program needs the compiler). Languages like Python and Javascript are interpreted languages.\n\n**Not programming languages**: Things like HTML and CSS aren't programming languages at all; they define things like the structure or style of a web page (or other text), but don't actually tell the computer what to do. The computer reads the markup and decides what to do with it on its own. It's kind of like how Microsoft Word is a program, but even though a Word document *contains* all of the font and layout information, it doesn't mean anything until Word decides how to handle it.\n\nThere are differences between each language beyond, that, as well. One of the most-cited difference is between C++ and Java: C++ lets you allocate and deallocate memory on your own, while Java handles it for you. What this means is, in C++ you have to tell the program how much RAM you want to use and when you're done using it. This gives you a lot of control over how much memory your program uses, which is great for squeezing performance out of an application. On the other hand, if you *forget* to tell the program that you're done using some RAM, you can run into serious problems. Java deals with the issue by doing all of the memory management for you: it figures out when you're done using a bit of RAM and frees it up automatically. That sounds great, but that extra processing has some overhead, and it's not necessarily fast or efficient compared to doing it yourself, so Java programs can be resource hogs.\n\nThe decision to pick one over the other is based almost completely on what kind of program you want to make. In the game industry, where performance really matters, C++ is still the standard language. For an application where you have no control over the user's environment, Java might be better: the user only needs to have Java installed to run it on pretty much any machine. For something that runs inside a web page, you'd pick Javascript: it's not as fast as something like C++, but web browsers have serious security restrictions on what they can run, so compiled programs are totally out. (And in case you didn't know, Java and Javascript are unrelated.)\n\nThere are other languages with vastly different programming styles that are highly suited towards complex math or AI systems, so programmers might specialize in completely different languages depending on what sort of work they do. There really isn't a \"better\" or \"perfect\" language; they're all tools with different features, and you pick the tool that makes the most sense for the job.\n\n**Edit**: Please keep in mind that this is ELI5! If you want to suggest how I can make this easier for non-programmers to understand, then please do so. If you want to nitpick about how I'm technically wrong about something, please take it to a programming-related sub.",
"HTML and CSS aren't programming languages. HTML and CSS are both used to describe a page. The former for the content and the latter specifically for the look and formatting. \n \nProgramming languages vary quite a bit. You mentioned some specific ones that are geared towards web programming. Others include C++, C#, Java, et al. Generally, languages vary in their focus, and each has their strengths. All of them vary in their level of abstraction. \n \nThe abstraction is referred to low or high-level. When you hear people talk about a high-level language then they're referring to one with high abstraction. A low-level language like assembly has low abstraction. \n \nYou can think about it this way. Draw a line with computer readability at one end and human readability at the other. Each programming language is going to sit somewhere between these extremes. Assembly languages are going to be on one end and scripting languages like Python and Ruby are on the other. \n \nA low-level language that is computer readable is going to be harder to program well, but it'll perform better and provide a better degree of control. A high-level language is going to be easier to program, but it'll perform worse, because of the overhead imposed by the abstractions; and it'll provide less control which is lost in the process of making it easy to program. \n \nThat doesn't mean high-level languages are worse. Having the best possible performance isn't always the most important consideration. And typically you don't need to exert complete control over different functions. The abstractions imposed by higher-level languages typically perform well enough and provide the basic needed functionality for most programs. And in the process they take a lot less time to bring to market.\n",
"There are many different ways in which two programming languages can differ from one another. Note, that I'll try to limit this to general purpose languages, to exclude things like markup languages (like HTML) which do specific things, like describe what webpages should look like. I'll talk about one that is very dear to my heart and which is a kind of very fundamental and essential difference between languages: \n\n**Paradigms:** \n\n*imperative*: Most languages are, first and foremost, imperative. Python, Ruby and Javascript seem to fit this bill. There's alot of state you keep track of, like numbers for example, and you update them in a number of steps. It's like a recipe. You give a list of instructions. The computer does one after the other until there's a cake there. \n\n*declarative*: Haskell is a good example of a declarative language. You give definitions of things. There's no (or very little) state. The computer pieces together definitions to tell you what you want. It's a hard mindset to be in and hard to explain without more concrete examples. \n\n*logic*: some programming languages, like prolog, allow you to give a computer a list of constraints, and it will just find something obeying the constraints you layout. I don't have much experience with this. \n\nI'm not going to be able to give a full detailed answer, but the thing to remember is this: at the end of the day the computer will execute a program which is just a list of ones and zeroes. Programming languages are for people, both to let them write those zeroes and ones easier and to let them communicate programs to each other in a way they can understand. Some languages are really different. They have completely different paradigms. Even though the most common way is to provide a sequential list of instructions, there are other ways as well. Even with one one paradigm, languages differ from each other in that they each have their own ways of doing things. One language might be better suited for a particular job. Some people may prefer one language to another because they like the way it does stuff or think it's beautiful. The code one language generates might be faster. Or better at some individual thing. Each language, in addition to the technical specifications, has a group of people who write code in it and therefore its own customs. Programming languages are still for people. They're not *that* fundamentally different from natural language. ",
"This is ELI:5, guys come on.\n\nThe difference in programming languages is like the difference in human languages. You're just trying to describe concepts to someone and that works differently in different languages.\n\nPython:Javascript::English:German\n\nIn both English and German, you can describe the concept, the idea of \"being happy because something terrible happened to someone else.\" That's how you describe that concept using the English language. The German language has this much better way to handle it, and you can just say \"schadenfreude\". You can also just combine words into longer words in German, but English is all about the spaces and punctuation. \n\nIt's pretty much just syntax sugar the whole way down. Even compiled vs. non-compiled are like English vs. French. One language is full of bullshit, the other is regulated by a body that came up with their own equivalent of \"email\" because saying \"email\" was denigrating to them.",
"There's a lot of what seems to be CS undergrads and debates that are going beyond the scope of your question.\r\r\rDifferent problems call for different solutions using different technologies and different languages. Languages' strengths and weaknesses are entirely relative to the purpose of the application.\r\r\r\"If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.\"",
"The top few parent comments ITT are very good, but otherwise there are some very confused/bored five year olds out there.",
"Like human languages, programming languages really just boil down to different ways to express ideas & actions. \n\nSome of the differences are between languages are minor. I.e., if you want to display text on the screen, all of these do the same thing in various languages:\n\n print \"Hello Reddit\"\n printf \"Hello Reddit\"\n say \"Hello Reddit\"\n cout < < \"Hello Reddit\"\n System.out.print(\"Hello Reddit\");\n\nWhy such minor differences? Because languages are written by humans. And humans are human. Which is to say petty at times.\n\nOn the other hand, some of the differences are much larger. For example, one major is something called \"memory management.\" \n\nThink of yourself a computer for a moment. You're going to be told a lot of different things. More than you can remember in your head. So what do you do? \n\nYou get a notebook. You decide on each line, you'll write down each thing you need to remember. Be it Alice has $100. Or Bob's favorite color is red. Whatever it may be, each thing takes a line. How many things can you remember? That's determined by how many lines in your notebook. \n\nOf course, after a while some things are no longer needed. The activity that required to remember Alice had $100 ended. So you can erase that line & reuse it. \n\nEach of those lines is like memory in a computer. Some programming languages require you (the programmer) to explicitly say \"I'm done with lines 134 - 150. You can use them for something else.\" Other languages have ways to figure it out automatically. \n\nWhy not always figure it out automatically? Well, it's expensive. It turns out you need to keep track of a few other things & periodically take time to check if something is used. Maybe that's okay, but it's also possible you're doing something critical -- say running a nuclear power plant or the instructions for a pacemaker -- where it isn't. It's basically comes down to a tradeoff between convenience & performance. \n\nWhich is another major difference between languages: Do you aim to optimize how fast it takes the developer to write a program? Or to optimize how the program uses the physical resources of a machine? (E.g., its CPU, memory, etc.)\n\nThere's lot of other tradeoffs like these. Other tradeoffs are how well does it work with other computers on the network? How well does it let me create a graphical interface? How are unexpected conditions handled? \n\nAnd in a nutshell, each language makes a different set of decisions on tradeoffs. \n\nWhich is best for what? Well, that's subjective. Ask 100 different programmers & you'll get 100 different answers.\n\nFor example, my employer tends to 4 primary languages: C++, Java, Go, & Python. C++ is great for problems that need to handle a lot of concurrent activity. (I.e., things that need to \"scale.\") Think of problems where 100,000 people are sending a request a second. Go is good at these problems too. \n\nJava is good for when there's complicated business logic. Think of problems like figuring out how much tax you need to charge, which is going to vary not just on the state, but even the city or zip. Python is good when you need to put something together quickly. Think of problems where I have a bunch of data & I need to a one-off analysis to tell me certain characteristic. \n\nOf course, those are far from the *only* problems each language solves, but it gives a sense of it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"I'd probably break it down to 4 types of programming languages.\n\n1. Object Oriented (Java or C++)\n2. Logical Programming (Prolog or LISP)\n3. Functional Programming (Haskell or LISP)\n4. Declarative (SQL)\n\nAs you can see, some languages can be classified under multiple classes. I'd describe what each type means but you're 5 and you can do your own damn research.\n\nAll I really wanted to say was that the reason there are so many languages is because each language is good at doing \"something\" better than the other. You could make a text file and a java program to store all of your shit. Or download a database management system, learn SQL, and tell the DBMS what you want to insert/edit/delete saving time/money. You could make an AI in C++, but you'll be missing out on the powerful logical programming Prolog has to offer.\n\nSome languages are easier to \"read\" than the other. And some languages are just a pain in the ass to program in. Seriously, look at the assembly code in x86 Windows for Hello, World.\n\n .486p\n .model flat,STDCALL\n include win32.inc\n \n extrn MessageBoxA:PROC\n extrn ExitProcess:PROC\n \n .data\n \n HelloWorld db \"Hello, world!\",0\n msgTitle db \"Hello world program\",0\n \n .code\n Start:\n push MB_ICONQUESTION + MB_APPLMODAL + MB_OK\n push offset msgTitle\n push offset HelloWorld\n push 0\n call MessageBoxA\n \n push 0\n call ExitProcess\n ends\n end Start\n\nDo you really want to type all of that shit out? Functional programming languages are crazy powerful because so few lines can do so much. Here's quicksort for example:\n\n quickSort :: Ord a = > [a] - > [a]\n quickSort [] = []\n quickSort (x:xs) = quickSort [a | a < - xs, a < x] ++ -- Sort the left part of the list\n [x] ++ -- Insert pivot between two sorted parts\n quickSort [b | b < - xs, b > = x] -- Sort the right part of the list\n\n3 fucking lines to sort any list in O(n log n) But of course there's trade offs. Fucking hard to read that shit, eh? Imagine working on a team and reading one page of that code that someone else wrote and communicating what it does to other team members.\n\nThere's basically as many programming languages as there are... languages. Pick one (I'd recommend Java) and play with it.",
"There are lots of different programming languages because there are lots of different things you can make computers do.\n\nFor example:\n\n* **HTML**: Used to build simple websites and tell a web browser what to show on the screen.\n\n* **Python**: A very popular language designed to be beautiful, flexible, and powerful while still being easy to read and easy to write. It can be used on lots of different kinds of computers, not just Windows PCs. It can be used to make programs do extra things, add new parts to a game, build websites, and can be used to easily tell computer how to do repetitive tasks.\n\n* **Ruby**: was invented because lots of other languages were too complicated and messy, and Ruby tries to be simple.\n\n* **PHP**: Was designed to be unrestricted so anyone can contribute to make the language better. It was made so you can easily make websites talk to databases, and do much more complicated things which cannot be done by HTML.\n\n* **Javascript**: was invented as a way to make websites do more things that HTML couldn't do by itself. It isn't the same thing as Java.\n\n* **C**: An older language that is still used today, and is the predecessor to C++. It was invented to address the limitations of very early programming languages. It is complicated and easy to make big programming mistakes with.\n\n* **C++**: A very fast, complex, messy looking language which is extremely powerful and flexible, but you can easily make buggy programs if you don't know how to use it properly.\n\n* **Visual Basic**: An adaptable, easy to learn language made up by Microsoft specifically for Windows and other Microsoft products.\n\n* **Java**: Made by Sun Microsystems, designed to be used across many many different electronic devices, like modems, PCs, home applicances, robots, car audio head units, mobile phones, etc\n\n* **C#**: Tries to copy the way Java and C++ are written to make it easier for people to pick up, but tries to be simpler and easier to learn than Java and C++\n\n* **Lisp**: This is a family of similar languages which were born from a much older language. The original Lisp was designed mostly for mathematical purposes, but it has become much more flexible since. It is highly influential in the field of computer science, and its strength comes from its clever, elastic syntax (syntax is like grammar for programming languages).\n\n* **MATLAB**: Designed for use with mathematical scenarios, often used by engineers and scientists.\n\n* **SQL**: Designed to talk to databases. It is like a \"search language\" which you can use to find exactly what you need in a database. It is also used to add information to databases.\n\n* **Assembly**: A very complicated language that is used to \"talk to the CPU\" in a much more direct way. You have to think like a computer to use this language, and it is very difficult to read. Fun fact: the original Rollercoaster Tycoon was programmed by Chris Sawyer using only Assembly, which would have taken a long long time but made the game very efficient and fast.",
"In a sense, all programming languages* do exactly the same thing. They describe how to go about performing particular computations. In general, if it's possible to write a program in one language, it's also possible to write that program in any language because we can prove using maths that they can all do the same things. (This is called being [\"Turing complete\"](_URL_0_))\n\nThe differences between programming languages comes down to a few factors: \n\n* Speed: Some programming languages tend to run much faster than others. One major factor in this tends to be whether the language is \"compiled\" (pre-processed to turn it into machine instructions) or \"interpreted\" (turned into machine instructions just before they're run every time). C tends to be very fast because it's already pretty close to the instructions that the computer is actually running (assembly code) and can be very heavily optimized in the compilation process. Languages like Python and JavaScript tend to be much slower because they're (usually) interpreted and very far removed from what's happening at the machine level. \n\n* Ease of writing: Some languages tend to be much easier to write in general than others. Most high-level languages (e.g. Python, JavaScript, Ruby) provide you a lot of really nice tools that allow you to write code very fast and easily. The language will also handle a lot of stuff that you'd need to micromanage in a lower-level language (e.g. C, C++) like memory management. They're also pretty flexible in terms of what they allow you to do compared to some more strictly-defined languages (e.g. Java). \n\n* Style: This relates to the above, but there are a lot of different styles of programming languages, and some people have preferences working with some versus others. One example is static- vs dynamic-typing; whether you have to explicitly declare what all of your variables are and what they can be used for (C, Java), or whether the language will just figure it out for you (Python, JavaScript). Another is imperative vs declarative; whether you tell the computer all the steps that it needs to take to solve the problem (most languages), or whether you just describe what you want it to do and have it figure it out. Kind of. It's pretty of weird. Then there are things like \"functional\" languages, where functions are treated the same as any other kind of data and can be passed around (Haskell, ML, JavaScript); object-oriented languages, where everything is an \"object\" that both has data stored in it and has a set of operations associated with it (C++, Java), etc. Basically, these are all choices the designers of the language made that aren't necessarily objectively good or bad but make some people like the language and some dislike it. \n\n*As others have mentioned, there are things that might seem like programming languages but really aren't. These include things like: \n\n* HTML: Defines the structure of a webpage\n\n* SQL: Describes information to grab from a database; newer versions can kind of be considered real programming languages.... Kind of....\n\nThese aren't actual programming languages in the sense that they're not describing how to do any computation per se. ",
"Programming languages are divided up along a number of lines.\n\n\nHow they are executed:\n\nPrograms are either run directly by the hardware of the machine, or by a software layer between the program and the machine. \n\nExamples of languages that translated ahead of time to run directly on the hardware are C/C++, Pascal, Fortran, Common Lisp, Haskell, Forth... the list goes on.\n\nExamples of languages that are run by a software layer include Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, C#, Lua, Common Lisp... again the list goes on (and yes there is overlap, it's possible to do either).\n\nPrograms compiled to run against the hardware are usually faster than those that are run by a software layer, but that's not always the case, Java and C# are quite performant (easily within an order of magnitude of their native counterparts).\n\n\nThe Type system:\n\nIn simple terms this dictates what parts of the program can do to other parts of the program. The major examples are Untyped, statically typed, dynamically typed.\n\nAn example of an untyped language is x86 object code (the language that runs on Intel's CPU's). This language treats everything as a series of 1's and 0's. Even the instructions are just 1's and 0's, there is no concept of a letter or a number, it's just groups of 1's and 0's and different operations on them.\n\nAn example of a statically typed language is C, C knows about numbers, and different groups of numbers in a certain layout (a struct). It also has functions, which are groups of instructions. An example of the type system in action is that it will not let you call a function that expects a single number with an argument that is a group of numbers.\n\nAn example of a dynamically types programming language would be one of the Lisp family. These languages will allow you to call a function that expects a single number with an argument that is a group of numbers, the program will then fail when it is run because the function doesn't know what to do with a group of numbers.\n\n\nThe Paradigm: \n\nThis is the basic structure of the language. Examples are Imperative, Functional and Logic programming. Other people might include object oriented in this list, but I see it as largely orthogonal, it's just a way of organising things, not anything fundamental.\n\nImperative languages are comprised of instructions, they are run one at a time, one after the other. They may jump around a bit, but they will always execute one instruction after another.\n\nFunctional languages work differently, a functional language, like Haskell for instance, aren't a list of instructions that go and change data, they say what the input data is and what the output data should be, the language then goes off and does that for you.\n\nLogic programming languages, such as prolog work differently again, a prolog program consists of a set of rules. When you give the program some input it will try and match the input to it's rules and from there give you anything that matches your rules.\n\nThe Memory Management Scheme:\n\nLots of languages use a garbage collector, which is a piece of code that runs in every program written in that language. It runs in the background and looks after the memory used by the program. When it detects that a piece of memory is no longer in use it will give that bit of memory back to the operating system so that other programs (or the current program, later) can use it for something else. Java, C#, Common Lisp, Haskell, Python, Ruby, Javascript are examples of languages that have a garbage collector.\n\nOther languages don't have a garbage collector, for example C/C++, COBOL, Rust. These languages rely on the code that looks after the memory being inserted when the program is compiled. This can either be done by the programmer, as in C and Fortran or automatically inserted by the compiler as in (good) C++ and Rust. If the programmer is required to manage the memory and does it wrong, that program will probably not work.\n\nTo directly answer your question:\n\n* HTML: is a markup language, it's used for describing how something should look, it's not a programming language.\n\n* Python, Ruby, Javascript: These are interpreted, imperative, dynamically* typed, garbage collected languages. They are seen as easy to read and write and protect you from a lot of low level details.\n",
"If I wanted to tell you something I want you to do, then I'd speak to you in a human language such as English, Spanish, or Russian. Programming languages work the same way, except you're talking to a computer. For example, if I wanted to tell the computer to say \"Hello World!\" here's how you could do it in a few different programming languages.\n\n\nJava:\n\n System.out.println(\"Hello World!\");\n\n\nPython:\n\n print \"Hello World!\"\n\n\nC++:\n\n cout < < \"Hello World!\";",
"**This is a joke list of ELI5 differences. If anyone knows the original sauce plese post it.** \n \n***If Programming languages were religions*** \n \nC would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.\n\nJava would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.\n\nPHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of \"goto hell\" was abandoned.\n\nC++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.\n\nC# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.\n\nLisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.\n\nHaskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.\n\nErlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.\n\nPerl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.\n\nLua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.\n\nRuby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.\n\nPython would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.\n\nCOBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.\n\nAPL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.\n\nLOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.\n\nVisual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...",
"A bit late on this, but here's my shot:\n\nThink of it this way: computers have their own, super complex language. It is extremely difficult to express clearly what you want in it. In addition, computers are pretty stupid, so if you make a mistake in your instructions, they won't try to understand what you actually intend, they will just do whatever stupid stuff you just asked.\nSince it is so difficult to express ideas in this machine language, we created translators. They're sort of bilingual: they can understand instructions in one language, and perfectly translate it for you in machine language. The former is what we call a programming language. If you can express ideas in this language, this translator will be able to translate them to the machine.\n\nFrom that point, you have two things to consider:\n\n 1 - The language that this translator understands\n\n 2 - The translator itself. There are various strategies of translation (interpreted languages translate what you tell them sentence by sentence, literally, while compiled languages will take a full book of instructions and translate it in one go into a 'machine-book' of instruction, so that they have some context)\n\nThe first point is usually referred to as the language, while the second is called the implementation. Most often, it is possible to take either approach for any language. But some are specifically designed to be compiled or interpreted. Java or C++ will require you to make very long sentences, with all the context being explicitely stated, so it works much better when compiled. Others, like Python, Javascript... rely on shorter sentences, with context being more often implicit, so you can directly discuss with the computer, with the interpreter sitting in the middle and doing the translation both ways.\n\nThe difference between languages is mainly how you can express complex processes to the computer. As previously stated, computers are incredibly stupid, and require a LOT of explaining for pretty much anything. Some languages, called 'low-level' (e.g. Assembly, C, ...) try to stick to the way computers see things. It takes a bit more work expressing your ideas in this language, because you have to explain EVERYTHING, but you know that the translation will be completely faithful. On the other end of the spectrum, some language, called 'high-level' (e.g. Python, Ruby...) try to be closer to you than they are to the machine: you can express big ideas and concept to them, and they will do all the work of breaking it down into small pieces the computer can understand. Of course, you have no control on exactly how they do this break down, but it is often much simpler when exploring an idea to be able to have this high-level conversation.\nIn the middle, some languages will try to do both, defining both big abstract concept and small concrete tools for better controlling what exactly the computer is doing. \n\nFinally, the other thing to consider is that other humans will look at your code. Some prefer to have it completely broken down to understand exactly what is going on, but most are more comfortable with seeing it in high level languages, where they can get the big picture of what your program is doing without having to get all the details.\n\nNote that this is very subjective too ! Back in the days when programmers where electrical engineers, C was seen as 'high level' because it defined new abstractions, like functions. And you can express some very low-level details of how things should work in Python. The language just gives you a framework for expressing your ideas, and some framework work better than other for expressing different ideas.",
"Javascript is the Duct Tape of programming languages. ",
"Warning: most of this thread\n_URL_0_",
"Low-level languages are used when you care about how every component inside the machine is going to operate. What you produce here is not compiled the way other languages are - you're writing instructions for a specific system architecture and what you write to work on one chip (x86), won't work on another (a Motorola chip)\n\nMid-level languages abstract some components but not others: I don't care about how the CPU and system bus work here, but I do care about memory - that's typical (e.g. C). A compiler takes this and turns into a lower level instruction set so can be compiled to work (normally) on any system architecture - if you're careful.\n\nHigh-level language: I don't care about how the computer does this I just want to describe the solution to my problem and the compiler/interpreter figures out how to turn that into a lower representation the computer can run so it will run \"everywhere\" (I'm simplifying). These are languages like Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.\n\nDifferent high-level languages are designed to describe solutions to problems in different ways. In the same way algebra and calculus are related, it's easier to solve some problems with one more than another (again, I'm simplifying), which is why you will hear talk of \"object-orientated\", \"functional\", \"imperative\", \"strongly-typed\", \"duck-typed\" and a host of other words to describe a language.",
"I understand most if not all of these answers, but very little of this is ELI5, especially all the assembly disputes.",
"I think the best analogy to give about programming languages is having instructions with different levels of detail.\n\nImagine you were to leave a set of instructions telling an 8 year old child, who didn't speak the local language, how to pick up some eggs from the grocery store. You would want to be as precise as possible; telling him exactly which turns to make, how much money to bring, where to look for the eggs, which eggs to buy, and how to interact with the cashier. This would be Assembly; you have to be very specific.\n\nNow, imagine you are leaving the same instructions for a 25 year old who has lived in the area and often goes grocery shopping. All you'd have to do is leave a note saying \"Buy eggs\". This would be Python; the specifics are taken care of.\n\nThere are some programming languages that have roughly the same level of specificity and just are different ways of saying things (kind of like different human languages).There are also languages that are better at one sort of thing than another (kind of like different vocabularies between fields of study). Most importantly though there are many languages that fall in between the extremes of Assembly and Python, the level of specificity you use really depends on who you're talking to and what you want them to do.\n\n**TL;DR** It's all about how specific you need to be.",
"HTML is not a programming language.",
"Imagine your computer is a restaurant.\n\nHTML is the hostess / atmosphere of the restaurant. They show you to where you're going, and then you just sit down and look around at things that don't change. Decorations, the tables, etc.\n\nPython, Ruby, PhP, etc \"Server Side\" languages are the kitchen. They do a lot of work, but it's all behind the scenes and you don't really see it.\n\nJavascript is the waiter. They interface between the kitchen and you, but not everything the do requires they go to the kitchen. They can tell you the specials, sing happy birthday, etc. but occasionally have to go to the kitchen to clarify some things or get the actual food made.",
"Imagine you are the CEO of a company and you're looking to hire a new plant manager. Different managers have different styles.\n\nThe low level manager micro manages everything, he watches the time clock at every shift change, and employees have to ask him over walkie talkie every time they want to move a box or go to the bathroom. Under his supervision, the plant is very efficient but he has to work 120 hours a week to get the job done.\n\nThe high level manager worries primarily about minimizing the number of hours he has to work. His goal is 5 hours per week per plant. He doesn't do this because he is lazy, he does this because he wants to open and run three other plants. So, he hires a few sub managers, a secretary, a timeclock watcher, a box location watcher. The plant still produces the same amount of end product, but it requires more staff to do it. \n\nBoth managers run all of their policies by you before they get implemented, so the low level manager requires more work at the beginning from you too. \n\nThis is the fundamental tradeoff of programming languages. More up front work from you = more efficient machines. Less up front work from you = less efficient machines (because the machine manages things you otherwise would have to manage yourself, like taking out the garbage)\n\n* The managers are the programming languages.\n* The people working in the plant are the number of operations the computer had to run to complete a task (more operations means slower programs)\n* The policies they run by you is the amount of code you have to write to do something in that language.\n\nNow, there is a second dimension which is how much experience a given manager has in running plants like yours. Is it a website factory, or a bank, or a tiny factory on a small island with very limited access or ability to hire more people? The amount of experience in your domain means the more the manager already knows how to do things you'll want without you having to teach them (i.e. the programming language has features or libraries that solve common problems you're likely to encounter when running a website). And sometimes you'd like to hire a high level manager, but there aren't enough resources to do so, so you have to hire a low level manager or the plants won't be able to run.\n\nAssembly and C are low level languages.\n\nJava, Python and Ruby are high level languages.",
"Well, there's a tradeoff with a language -- is it fast to write the code, or is it fast to run the code? Lower level languages can make exceptionally fast code but they take a lot of writing to do it. Higher level languages let you get working code much faster, but they typically run slower. \n\nRoughly from low to high:\n\nAssembly, C, C++, Java/C#, Python/Perl, Javascript\n\nAs for why there's so many... Well, some cater to specific uses... Fortran for math, Visual Basic is typically database front-ends, etc. The other reason is best summed up with this:\n\n_URL_0_",
"I would say there are 2 important differences\n\nThe Syntax. Imagine it like this, we phrase sentences in English in a certain grammatical way. But those same grammar rules wouldn't apply if we were to speak Japanese.\n\nNext the Style. This has to do with the words used. Bulgarian and Russian use the same alphabet and some words are similar but in the end they are two different languages. Despite their similarities. So even though Java is influenced by C in it's making, you will find differences when you're writing code.\n\nAlso there are two types of programming languages. Compiled and Scripting (at least in modern use today). Complied languages run via a .exe file on your desktop or any other operating system. These are usually object based languages and require compiling inside of the program you use to write code (the IDE). These languages include Java. Scripting languages don't get compiled, instead they are read line by line in your browser. These languages are Python, Javascript, PHP, Ruby etc.\n\n\nAlso it's good to note that HTML is a markup language not a programming one. Hyper text markup language. This basically means that you're not writing any software with it. You cant program with it. But on the other hand you can make neat looking sites. But keep in mind if you only use HTML to make a site you'll end up with a site that belongs in the 90s. Hope that clears it up! ",
"Some great responses here, but a simple way to put it is that languages have different capabilities. A language like Python is great because the language is easy to learn e.g\n\ndef program():\n\n ok = \"This is my sentence\"\n \n print ok\n\nHowever it has less capabilities than a language like Java or C++. You'd tend to think that languages like Python and Ruby are lower end and Java, C, C++ are large scale.\n\nHTML is a web design language, it's fairly easy to learn and consists of tags. I like to to think of it as creating the base/structure of the website. Javascript is pretty much described as adding some live/dynamic aspects to your website.",
"no love for MatLab",
"Basically everything deduces to c.... The rest is a huge wrapper to make programing easier. Java has a 'garbage collector' or basically it handles memory efficiently. Other than that they are pretty close.",
"Why is nobody mention COBOL? I feel so alone :(",
"You haven't mastered code until you've mastered Brainfuck! _URL_0_",
"I disagree with a lot of the posts here. Though I think it's a pretty common misconception. A programming language is not like a cultural human language. It's a domain specific language. Think of it as jargon, and not a full language. Most computer languages have less than 100 words. The reason there are different ones is because there are different problems. Some are similar enough to be roughly equivalent, but most have a particular field in which they excel. \n\nSailing has a set of words that are similar. Verbs like douse, hoist, trim, ease. Nouns like jib, fo'csle, halyard, sheet. Adjectives like port, starboard, lazy, working, luffing. These are words that aren't used in common English. They're used to sail. Sailors speak them, and they're significantly more efficient than \"Hey that rope attached to the third pulley from the big piece of wood sticking up there. Pull that down until the top of the biggest sail is at the top of the big wooden thing.\" Instead I say, \"Hoist the main halyard.\" In programming it might be halyards[:main].hoist().\n\nThe thing is different domains have a different set of things you want to do. When you're doing drivers, the focus is on speed and efficiency. The syntax of those low level languages is on speed and efficiency. They're not very expressive. They don't have to be. Usually the tasks are relatively simple. You do something basic, but you do it over and over again really really fast. Your graphics driver, your device drivers, your com drivers are all probably like this. They're probably written in C, or something even lower level. Those languages are bulky, and they take a relatively long time to get even a simple task done. They are, however, very very fast once they're written. It's also pretty easy to tell whether they're broken, because there are only a few things they do.\n\nOnce you get to more complex things, it gets more difficult. You have to be more flexible in how to handle data, events and displays. To write those things in the low level languages, you need to spend a lot of time writing the same code over and over. They don't need to be as fast, though, because where you might do the same operation millions of times in a graphics driver, you might only do them hundreds of times in these programs. So as complexity increases, you can make your language more expressive. There are more decisions, but fewer loops. So the jargon shifts towards making the decisions easier to read, at the cost of making the loops slower.\n\nYou continue along that spectrum until you get to the very high level languages like ruby and javascript. These languages are agonizingly slow by comparison, but it's cool because you're often interacting with a human at this level. You're responding to a literal click or a keypress. Those happen one or two a second at the most, not hundreds or millions of times per second. So these languages read like English for the most part. That makes them easier to understand, share the work, and debug when they break. They run more slowly, but you almost never notice, because it's not the program that's slowing things down. It's how fast you as a human can do things.\n\nThat's one axis. Languages differing by task. Top poster is right, that some of the differences are relatively petty. They're cats and dogs things about whitespace, semi-colons, parentheses, etc.,. Even these, though embody different cultural stances. Rubyists generally favor ease of writing over ease of reading. Pythonistas insist that code should be readable no matter who writes it. If you look at python code, it pretty much always looks the same. Three different ruby chunks look like entirely different languages.\n\nSo that's my experience of why they're different.",
"Generally the distinction is one of encapsulation. \n\nProgramming languages are like cars. A drive has a couple of levers and a wheel that the car responds to, sometimes he has to fill it with gas, and very occasionally he needs to fill it with money in ways he doesn't understand. The inner workings of the car are very complex, involve a lot of optimizations, and in some cases, sacrifice performance to make this Car/Driver interface less complicated and more robust to driver errors. \n\nWhen I start doing things to the car to increase performance, perhaps the very simplest being replacing the automatic transmission with a manual, I make the car harder to drive, and almost always expose more of the inner workings of the vehicle.\n\nThis follows the general principle that, once things are engineered beyond a certain point, you are unlikely to find improvements which involve no tradeoffs, and the specific set of properties which programming languages are trying to maximize (weighted) the performance of is:\n\n-performing operations\n-writing code\n-debugging code\n-reading code\n-extending code\n-reusing code\n-existence of already written code\n-is the only code which runs on browsers\n-delegation of slow operations to faster languages\n\namong your examples, Python and Ruby are both basically both competing for the spot of: slow, but easiest to use. Ruby is maybe a little slower, and a little more extensible, but you tend to use (C) native libraries to do your really big matrix operations, and they both have good support for that.\n\nJavascript is a shit language, but is the only choice for code that runs in your browser, and HTML is for page layout and object identification and doesn't really count. \n\nSome others: \n\nC is a very small language with enormous libraries, It's not very hard to use, but it is very hard to scale. It can be used to control UI elements, but it's annoying to do so. Ruby compiles to C.\n\nJava is *almost* as fast as C, has lots of library support, is relatively straightforward, and protects against a lot of errors with a very smart compiler. It is very bitchy about what you are allowed to do with the language though, and it needs to know the type of everything at runtime, which is a much more limiting task than it sounds like. "
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18t2b7 | why do modern tvs seem to increase the framerate of video, even when to footage is decades old? | Do they add extra frames in between each existing frame? I know movies have been traditionally 24 frames per second. Even movies from the 70s, on a new, decent TV, seem to run closer to 48-60 frames. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18t2b7/eli5_why_do_modern_tvs_seem_to_increase_the/ | {
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"Modern televisions have a setting that is usually turned on by default that causes this effect. The way it does it is by looking at two frames in the image, seeing what the differences are, and \"guessing\" what another frame between the two would look like if it was there when the show was recorded. The TV then creates this extra frame, and gives the appearance of the TV show or film being recorded at 48-60 FPS. "
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9quaif | what exactly does a dip in economy do to a country? | I'm very... misinformed about economy (to say the least). I used to think that if the economy of a country dropped, sure, the prices would get higher but people's salaries would increase as well. I don't know why but I've never had a good concept of what the economy is and how the country would be affected (effected?) as dips in the economy occurs and was wondering whether you guys could explain it simply? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9quaif/eli5_what_exactly_does_a_dip_in_economy_do_to_a/ | {
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"If the economy dips less people are buying things, if less people are buying things then companies that make things can't afford to hire so many people to make those things. Those people lose their jobs and have less resources to buy things, and so on, and so on. \n\nHouses are lost because the bank expects you to pay mortgages, cars are repossessed, utilities are shut off.\n\nQuality of life goes down. \n\nMore people die from disease that could have been treated if they could afford it. \n\nCrime rate goes up. "
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euhve0 | why do helicopters crash so much more often than other aircraft? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/euhve0/eli5_why_do_helicopters_crash_so_much_more_often/ | {
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"When a helicopters engine fails they become big metal bricks. A plane however, the shape allows for some control and the ability to glide while trying to get the engines back to working. Most planes have multiple engines as well, if one fails the others compensate. There’s no such redundancy in helicopters.",
"Depends on if they are single or dual engine. \n\nI’d say more often than not though it’s pilots that are flying in weather they should not be flying in",
"Helicopters have extremely poor glide characteristics. Your best case scenario for a malfunction resulting in loss of lift is a controlled crash. There are a lot of flight regimes in which you're basically just 100% screwed in a helicopter because you simply don't have enough velocity or altitude to make any real recovery.\n\nPlanes have a lot more options because they are much simpler machines, and most are pretty decent gliders. A small private plane that loses power at altitude can get a pretty good distance before he hits the ground. That allows for the pilot to have some time to consider the situation, attempt to recover the aircraft, or pick a good spot to land/crash.\n\nHelicopters also tend to operate near the ground a lot more often than planes.",
"Helicopters can land safely even when the engine fails. It's called \"autorotation\".\n\nThe pilot lowers the \"collective\" lever - the one which makes the helicopter go up and down. This results in the angle of the rotor blades changing, so that as the helicopter descends, the airflow through the rotor causes the rotor to rotate (and therefore giving the pilot control), and causing drag (slowing the helicopter down).\n\nHelicopters don't have much control when the engine fails, but because they can land almost anywhere, this is all the control they need - enough to pick somewhere directly below and land.\n\nMost larger helicopters have two engines, though, so an engine failure is much less of an issue.",
"Your premise itself is incorrect. Helicopters crash less than fix winged aircraft. [Here](_URL_0_) is the relevant data from 2014. It is just that there have been several high profile celebrity deaths from helicopter crashes, which makes people think they are more common.",
"Well they don't crash very often. But as with most aviation incidents, especially fatal ones, the incidents are given a tremendous amount of media coverage. Car accidents are tremendously common, involving roughly 1 million crashes per year just in America, with about 30,000 deaths, but because of how common they are we barely hear about them. But an airliner crash is primetime news, often for days or week",
"The people saying helicopters are less stable or inherently less safe than fixed-wing aircraft (planes) are mistaken. Autorotation (described by /u/jacklychi) allows helicopters to make controlled landings without an engine very easily, and helicopters get just as many safety inspections as any other aircraft, more or less, *if* they are for commercial transportation.\n\nThe biggest difference is that helicopters are used primarily for low, short flights between nearby destinations. Autorotation requires a certain height above the ground in order to work - that means if a helicopter loses and engine it's safer if you're *higher* up. Except that most helicopters are flying lower to the ground. That makes autorotation more difficult. And since helicopters are usually flying over populated areas it's less likely that a helicopter will be able to find a clear, open place to land. Although autorotation allows a helicopter to land safely if it has a place to land, they still don't have glide slopes - you're not going to get very far, only straight down. A plane will be flying probably much higher and although a landing without an engine is more dangerous, they will at least have more energy and lift to travel horizontally to a safer, emptier place.\n\nThe tendency for helicopters to be used for lower, shorter flights also puts them closer to obstacles like power lines, buildings, birds, and even tall trees. In the case of the Kobe crash, it crashed into a hillside. Visibility was poor. Although the cause has not yet been determined, it *could* be as simple as the pilot misread the instruments and didn't see the hillside until it was too late to avoid it. Compare that to most passenger planes which would be flying so high that not being able to see the terrain isn't an issue, because there isn't any. I have zero other information, I'm not saying that was the cause, I am only suggesting that it *could* be a cause which is generally not true of most commercial passenger flights.\n\nThe other problem is that helicopters are more likely to be privately owned and operated, at least compared to big passenger planes. Those are regulated *very* strictly. Although *any* flights are very regulated, a small for-hire helicopter service may not have the same stringency applied to it as other modes of air travel. This is also true of small planes, too, and one of the reasons they tend to crash more often than big passenger planes."
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3ahxoz | what are options and derivatives? and what are some of the more complex securities being traded? | I understand what shares, bonds and debentures are. But I don't really understand the rest of it.
I'd also appreciate any additional information that anyone feels is related and valuable to have regarding financial markets.
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ahxoz/eli5what_are_options_and_derivatives_and_what_are/ | {
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"A derivative is a contract you can buy and sell. For example, \"whoever holds this piece of paper can buy 100 shares of IBM from me for $50 per share.\" Now, if IBM is worth a lot more than $50 a share, that piece of paper is valuable and you can sell it -- someone will pay good money for it, and its value fluctuates as IBM's (present and future) value fluctuate.\n\nAn option is a specific kind of derivative -- one which says you have the right to buy (or sell) a certain thing at a certain price if you want, often with a certain time constraint. The above example is an option. \n\nThere are also more complex derivatives, such as \"I agree to deliver you any combination of apples and oranges totaling 100,000 kg, at a time of my choosing in November 2016, for a price equal to the then-current price of 1000 barrels of Brent crude oil, but only if the USA has exited Iraq by that time.\""
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768ir8 | if 1 and 0 (data) are voltage values, how is voltage stored in a flash drive after you plug it out of the computer and stop the electricity flow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/768ir8/eli5_if_1_and_0_data_are_voltage_values_how_is/ | {
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"Think of it as balls and buckets. It takes energy to kick a ball into a bucket, and it takes energy to remove a ball from a bucket, but unless someone does something a ball outside a bucket will stay out, and if the ball is in it will stay in. Each bucket is a bit, and it's state (0 or 1) will be determined by whether or not it has a ball. You sculpt your stored data by plucking balls out of buckets.\n\nThe balls are electrons and the buckets are just a metaphor for some quantum behavior I've never understood, but the ball & bucket analogy helps me understand.",
"Voltage is just one of many ways to represent a 1 and a 0. Flash drives use another representation.\n\nYer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: How does flash memory work (on the microscopic level)? ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: How does flash memory work? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: What happens inside of a USB flash drive that allows it to retain the new/altered data even when it's not plugged in? ](_URL_0_)\n\n"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ezoyf/eli5_how_does_flash_memory_work_on_the/"
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2ewy12 | why can't i (besides being a dick to the postal service) drop off a letter in a mailbox, with the return address being my actual intended address, to avoid using a stamp? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ewy12/eli5_why_cant_i_besides_being_a_dick_to_the/ | {
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"You might be able to.\n\nWouldn't recommend it.\n\nScrewing around with the mail service in pretty much any way is a federal offense. I'm wondering if it might be worth a charge of mail fraud; IANAL so it's not easy to be sure.\n\nMail fraud is *big* prison time, though, if that's what they'd charge you with.",
"You can. I have a friend who got caught, and was banned from the Postal Service for several years. ",
"What would determine if they deliver to the addressee as postage due versus returning it to the sender?",
"Basically this is ~~mail fraud, at best they get the letter no one is the wiser. At worst, they open an investigation and you go to jail for [20 years](_URL_0_) because your friend ratted you out. There is a grey area where your friend is charged the postage, but i am pretty sure this puts them on a list if it happens more than once.~~ a [fine](_URL_1_).\n\nEdited- left original text added a new link.",
"The effort of setting up this scheme, so that the intended recipient of your letter will understand that the letter is actually intended for him or her, even though his or her address appears as a return address rather than as an actual address, outweighs the very minor saving of postage. Also bear in mind, it is very easy to send email for most purposes. When you are sending a letter through the mail, it is probably for some purpose that is important enough that you do not want to screw up. So why take chances?",
"You can. A fellow I knew tried this once and it worked.\n\nOther than the fact that it's mail fraud, I can't see any reason.",
"I once accidentally put my address for the send to and the irs on the sent from. I had a demand for filing my tax return and hit the deadline. It ended up getting sent late because of it. \n\nI sent the first envelope with an \"oops I fucked up\" letter. I was working 70 hour weeks doing manual labor. I was just tired and made a mistake. I'm sure they got a good laugh about it in the office. They didn't charge any fees or anything. \n\nI think that they're real human beings in the irs, not some soulless entity. Just be honest and don't cheat on your taxes. \n\nAs far as your question, is a 27 cent stamp worth possible fraud charges? It seems like a really stupid idea",
"They also don't like it when you attach the stamp to the letter with a piece of tape that covers the stamp.",
"Have done this \"for educational purposes\" and it worked.... However consider. If the return address is in New York and you drop it off at a post office in California...",
"In the 80's a pen pal and I used to coat a stamp with a very thin layer of Elmer's Glue. After you get the letter you can soak the postmarked glue off the stamp and the stamp from the envelope too. Re-apply and re-glue and you're all set.",
"You can do it, but I have heard of several things happening. They might send it back to the return address; forward it to the addressee, postage due; or it might get chucked into some USPS black hole. I have also heard stories of people being subject to criminal charges, or at least threatened with them. My experience has been that they treat it differently depending on how far it is being sent. YMMV.",
"Easy solution in germany: \n\nThey will deliver your letter to the given address but ask for the cost of the stamp (plus an additional fee). If the recipient refuses to accept the letter they will send it back to the sender and again ask for the fee(s).\n\nIf there is no sender noted down (or the sender denies any knowledge) they are allowed to open the letter and try to identify a sender / recipient.\n\nSeems so obvious?!",
"You can. Friend of mine decided to see if it worked and I got a letter with return to sender in the mail, even though she sent it. She just reversed the addresses.",
"Why should we buy postage stamps? We can make our own!\nI believe in swordfish.",
"Tried this once, and not surprisingly, they black-holed it. One look and they pretty much know that a letter in a mailbox in Paducah with no stamp and a return address in Idaho is bullshit.",
"Because mail carriers are not stupid. ",
"When I was a kid, my friend wrote a letter to me. I read it, put my reply in the envelope and wrote \"not at this address, return to sender\". \n\nIt made it back to them. Thinking back, no clue why I didn't just ask my mom for a stamp. 7 year olds do odd things I guess. "
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38a7lk | why people prefer mega or the pirate bay than mediafire? | i mean, i use for choice to download on mediafire. why these two are so especial? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38a7lk/eli5why_people_prefer_mega_or_the_pirate_bay_than/ | {
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"Mega is encrypted, so if I put a movie file up there that is illegal there is no way for someone to know other than to actually download the file and check. And of course if you lock the file so only you or a select few can access it there is no way to know what it is. On Mega’s end they can't actually see what the file is. This means Mega can't easily take down copyrighted material uploaded to its site, and as a result piracy can flourish on it. This is by design.\n\nMega also gives you 50gigs of free space with an account, allowing you to throw up more and larger files than on Medafire. \n\nThe Pirate Bay does not host files they only hand you magnet links to torrents. Instead of downloading the file from Pirate Bay you download it from everyone else on the internet who has that file and is actively seeding it. This means its almost impossible to shut a torrent down. \n\nMediafire is none of these things so if you throw up a movie file to them they can see what it is and remove it, and its more likely they will be requested to do so by the copyright holder. \n",
"I use TPB for a couple reasons. Number one is nostalgia. \nNumber two is respect. They've been around for 10(?) years or so, name another pirating platform team that has faced the level of pressure TPB has...Mega, maybe? These guys are serving prison time and still running TPB. They've made plenty money and could have gotten out years ago, but they continue to risk their freedom for us(and more money).\n\nTL;DR 1. Nostalgia 2. Much Respect."
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8uns2h | why are there fourteen mountains over 8,000m, but none over 9,000m? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8uns2h/eli5_why_are_there_fourteen_mountains_over_8000m/ | {
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"Why would you expect otherwise? The curve has to peter out somewhere.",
"It's likely Mt. Everest is near to the largest size mountain earth will support. A larger mountain is more massive, which puts a strain on the material at its base. They deform the plates they sit upon, more mass will further the deformation. And depending on height and climate, can promote glacial development, which it has been theorized to cause vigorous erosion limiting total height. ",
"It'll be impossible to find a complete list, but there are at least 127 mountains over 7000m. It gets even harder for the 6000m peaks, but depending on who you ask, there are over a thousand of them in Asia alone.\n\nSo 14 isn't a lot; it easily could have been zero. In fact, for most of Earth's history it probably *was* zero and the only time it's ever not zero is when there's \"recently\" been a continental collision. After all, those 14 are all in the same mountain range. ",
"Hawaii's volcanoes are taller ... if you count from the sea floor.\nThe crust can support it, at least in the center of a plate. Maybe if the mountains form at a region where the plates are smashing together, its weaker?",
"There's room for one big exception in this discussion, a controversial one, and that's Mauna Kea, which measures something like 10,000 meters from its base, 6000 meters beneath the sea.\n\nMauna Kea appears to be very close to the theoretical maximum height a mountain can reach. Go much bigger and the mountain's own structure cannot support its own mass. I think it actually *melts* at the base as a result of the absurd pressures, does it not?"
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5dt9wt | why is "the big crunch" an unpopular theory? | I'm particularly curious how we know that the universe is [expanding from within itself](_URL_0_) rather than collapsing in on itself (and what the difference is, if any). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dt9wt/eli5_why_is_the_big_crunch_an_unpopular_theory/ | {
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"So you have this balloon hooked up to an air compressor. Youre watching this and you see its slowly getting bigger. We know its getting bigger because if we draw a bunch of dots on the balloon with sharpie, you notice all the dots are getting farther from eachother.\n\nThe big crunch says that this air compressor will turn off, or atleast slow down enough that air is escaping faster than entering. \n\nIf the air compressor is currently on, yes its possible that it will turn off, but without other knowledge it makes more sense that it will keep inflating.",
"Observation is the main thing. Scientists can see that the universe is expanding. While it is possible that the expansion is temporary and it will reverse itself, that would first require the expansion to slow down. We observe the opposite and the rate of expansion is increasing. Since the only force we know of which could cause the expansion or crunch is gravity, the evidence shows the gravitational pull of all the matter (both regular and dark) in the universe on itself just isn't strong enough to bring everything back together. The more the universe expands, the weaker the gravitational pull will get, so there's no known force that will cause a reversal.",
"Because it doesn't fit the the evidence.\n\nWe believe the universe is expanding, because the farther away distant galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from us.\n\nWe believe the expansion is accelerating, because certain types of supernovae are dimmer than we expect, indicating their light travels a greater distance than a non-accelerating universe would indicate.\n\nIf the universe is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating, that makes a Big Crunch more difficult.",
"1: the universe is expanding. We know this because there are a few stellar phenomena that look very much the same regardless of where it happens (They're refered to as standard candles). A type 1a supernova looks exactly like like a type 1a supernova is expected to look. Except when we look further and further out into the universe, those type 1a supernova and standard candles don't look right. In practice the wavelengths of light they emit look stretched out (redshifted). Some of that could be attributed to motion through spacetime (doppler effect stuff), but not all. Regardless of which direction we look far away stuff always is redshifted, everything at the same distance as it is redshifted by the same amount and as you look further and further away stuff is redshifted more and more. That means either everything else in the universe is moving away us and is moving away much faster the further away it is or it means the universe is expanding. The chances of the first result being true is basically nil, if there was no other factor we'd expect the direction of motion to be basically random, some stuff moving away, some stuff moving closer and everything moving at different velocities in general. So that leaves us with expansion. \n\nIf it was contracting we'd see the opposite, stuff would be blueshifted rather than redshifted. If you want to visualize that, think an ambulance with it's siren on tearing past you. If it's getting closer the noise of it's siren pitches up, getting higher and higher as it gets closer and closer. When it's going away from you the pitch drops and drops lower and lower the further it is. Blueshifting and redshifting behave pretty much exactly the same way, but it changes the frequency of the light rather than the frequence of the soundwaves. \n\n\n2: The geometry of the universe is very probably flat. For a \"big crunch\" to happen, it would require the universe to stop expanding and start to contract. If the universe is flat that process of slowing down will take an infinite amount of time and if the expansion can't slow down to zero it can't ever start to contract. \n\n3: Dark energy is a thing and it's accelerating the expansion of the universe. Exactly what and why that is we don't know, but the effects are clear enough: The more space you have the more dark energy you have. The more dark energy you have the more space can expand. The more space expands the more space you have. That's a positive feedback loop and there's no reason to think it will stop. \n\nSo even if the universe could slow down to zero expansion in a finite amount of time, the acceleration of the universe would also need to reach zero, and there's no reason to think that will happen either. "
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4b34qg | if millipedes have around 200 legs and are that little then why are they so slow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b34qg/eli5_if_millipedes_have_around_200_legs_and_are/ | {
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"If you had to organise 200 legs you'd be slow, too.[1]\n\nActually - some centipedes are very speedy, because that's the niche they've evolved to fit, but millipedes aren't predators (that I know of) and have no need for speed.\n\n[1] Actually, they're self-organising - each segment responds in a set way to the movement of the one before, so much of it is automatic."
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23lqyo | how is it humanly possible to survive a flight in an airplane wheel well given the lack of heating, pressure ond oxygen, which are vital for survival at a high altitude? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23lqyo/eli5_how_is_it_humanly_possible_to_survive_a/ | {
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"Luck.\n\nThe young man in question was unconscious for most of the trip, luckily for him, but he was certainly dicing with death. Stowing away in a wheel well isn't a surefire way to kill yourself, but this risk is certainly unacceptably high. There's just enough oxygen and heat -- and plenty of pressure -- up there to make survival possible, just not very likely.\n\nIt is usually fatal, though. A few years ago a man literally fell out of the sky onto a street in London. He'd stowed away in a wheel well in Angola and perished on the way; when the plane lowered its undercarriage on its approach to Heathrow, the body fell out and gave several Londoners a nasty shock."
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4p0hg4 | when did the united states do away with voting as a "legal" holiday? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p0hg4/eli5_when_did_the_united_states_do_away_with/ | {
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"It's a holiday under state law in a handful of states, but it has never been a national holiday. The problem with making it a holiday or having voting on the weekend is that there will still always be people who have to work. If the law mandated that everybody had the day off, then emergency services like police and hospitals would stop and that would be terribly dangerous. Even if first responders and other essential safety personnel worked, it would be a pain for a lot of people for all restaurants, stores, gas stations, etc. to be closed. At the end of the day there's no good way to force a holiday for everyone - our society relies on having access to various services to run and people have to work for those services to operate.\n\nEarly voting exists for people who can't take off on election day. A lot of states also require that employers let employees take a couple hours off from work to go vote."
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4sfe6p | what thoughts go on in the mind of a typical mentally handicapped person? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sfe6p/eli5_what_thoughts_go_on_in_the_mind_of_a_typical/ | {
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"There is no such thing as a \"typical mentally handicapped person\". Every individual is different and the brain is an extremely complex organ and development or injury affects every individual in different ways. A \"mental handicap\" may manifest completely different in two people depending on nature and/or nurture. "
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ac0vlb | during the cold war, what's the point of splitting berlin? like, it seemed like a bad idea from the start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ac0vlb/eli5_during_the_cold_war_whats_the_point_of/ | {
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"It wasn't split during the cold war. It was split 4 ways after the Germans surrendered in WWII, into the Russian, American, English, and French zones. The idea behind splitting Berlin was that the allied powers defeated Germany, and thus each should be responsible for a section of the German capital. ",
"Berlin wasnt split during the cold war. Berlin was split immediately after WW2 as the allies divided the city between themselves. The wall, and tensions, came later."
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202d9z | why dont people have a problem with cuba being a problem? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/202d9z/eli5_why_dont_people_have_a_problem_with_cuba/ | {
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"There isn't a sort of flicked switch between free and oppressive. As countries go, Cuba isn't *that bad.* \n\nIt's also poor, yes, but arguably because of US-imposed trade embargoes.\n\nAll the money it spends on medical aid is also a very good PR move - it sends hundreds of doctors to developing countries. It also has free healthcare and a lower child mortality rate than the US, despite spending a fraction of the amount of money per person on healthcare, which is why pro-healthcare reform people like to bring it up as a contrast to the US's current system.",
"Probably because the poverty and oppression is a direct result of US actions (economic blockades, etc.)",
"Your question is loaded (comes with a clear bias), and so it has been removed. Try rephrasing objectively or else post in /r/changemyview."
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4z35f9 | why did we shoot people that contracted rabies? (context within) | _URL_0_
Original post was removed because of I used the word ( V,A,C,C,I,N,E) and Im referring to be fore these existed. Thanks y'all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z35f9/eli5_why_did_we_shoot_people_that_contracted/ | {
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"I'm assuming that there was no known cure at the time and it was a humane way to prevent a horrible death.",
"1. you're gonna die, and pretty soon, and it's incredibly painful.\n2. you are likely to go nutso as the disease progresses and then bite someone, scratch someone or exchange fluids with them someone - you're contagious.\n\nIn days of yore we took slightly more drastic approaches to dealing with this sort of thing....",
"If you developed rabies before the vaccine it was a pretty much guaranteed death. And not only would the death be painful, but you would be very confused beforehand and could very easily get angry and hurt someone else, further spreading the disease. It's essentially the same reason people ask others to shoot them in zombie movies if they get bitten.",
"There is no known cure for rabies and it is a horrible, horrible death. Being shot is a mercy.",
"Before the vaccine was developed, rabies was essentially 100% fatal. Even with modern medicine allowing us to put people in induced comas and load them with fancy drugs, (the [Milwaukee protocol](_URL_0_)) the survival rate is still dismal (out of 36 people treated with the Milwaukee Protocol, only 5 have survived.) \n\nSo back before the vaccine and the Milwaukee protocol, if you were infected, you *were* going to die, and it was going to be **excruciating**. Much better to end it yourself before things got bad.",
"Here's a great documentary on rabies that answers your question. It's about the one person who has ever survived symptomatic rabies: _URL_0_ ",
"Because you lose self control and might infect others. The death itself is terrible. Imagine drowning yourself slowly.",
"Before the vaccine was developed Rabies was virtually 100% fatal.\n\nWorse than that it was a largely slow, painful, and dangerous way to go. You act irrationally and may do things that stand to endanger others.\n\nSimilar to many zombie movies; instead of going through all the torment, people infected \"opted out\" or were \"opted out\" by others."
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3p3zc9 | why are people scared of guns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p3zc9/eli5why_are_people_scared_of_guns/ | {
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"I get hunting, and have fired weapons myself (including a 20-gauge when I was a teenager, as well as a South African \"R5\" 5.56mm assault rifle on a range). So I don't \"hate\" guns, nor am I \"scared\" of them, but I still have major issues with the whole concept, philosophically.\n\nStep back a bit and look at the big picture, forgetting specifics for a minute. A gun is a machine for killing people and other animals. It's not the only way of killing, of course, but it makes killing incredibly *easy*. Just point it at someone and squeeze the trigger. \n\nWith great power comes great responsibility, then, and I frankly don't want that kind of responsibility. Some bad guys have guns, so I should have guns too? That's a circular argument, and it's how arms races start. The bad guys know I have guns, so they get more and/or bigger guns, so should I follow suit? If someone breaks in on me in the suburbs at 4AM, and I started firing my little Glock (or whatever), I doubt that the intruders would be in any danger. \n\nWhere does it end? What kind of society would it be if guns were both the problem and the solution? I don't have kids, but if I did, would they be able to go outside and play, away from parental gaze, have fun, and come back safely? My idea of a world safe for everyone is not one that requires guns at all. ",
"Very few people believe in the extreme statement that \"no one should own guns.\" Most reasonable gun control advocates just want to make it harder to acquire new guns. They argue for things like background checks before purchase, mandatory 3-7 day waiting periods between purchase and receipt of guns. \n\nIdeally, these measures would slow down the flow of illegal firearms into unsavory hands, both here in the US and abroad, while still allowing law abiding individuals like you or me to purchase firearms for our own defense.\n\nFor what it's worth, I've never met a single person that actually supported taking firearms away from their legal owners. "
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bw651h | how come women begin being biologically capable of having babies at an age (periods can start as early as 9) in which they are not developmentally/emotionally/physically capable to? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bw651h/eli5_how_come_women_begin_being_biologically/ | {
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"It used to be common for women to have babies at 13 or so. We have since gained a better understanding of the emotional development of children and realize they are nowhere near fully developed at 12 or 13.",
"I’d say that modern medicine and how we have better nutrition nowadays has also affected this. Thoughts?",
"Evolution and natural selection. There may have been subsets of women that didn’t hit menarche until they were 16/18/20 but back when you only lived to 25 or 30 that would have been a serious disadvantage. Women with the genes to hit it earlier would have been selected over time because they would have had more children and earlier. Fast forward to today, and most women can have kids earlier. There will always be mutations that cause some women to hit menarche later, and now that modern medicine exists they have a much much better chance of having healthy fertile offspring that survive and stuff, but since we come from the branch of the tree where women had kids early, most women will be able to have them early.",
"I see a lot of people mentioning evolution. Valid to some point. But a huge influence are \nendocrine disruptors like BPA. A few decades ago it wasn't common for girls as young as 9 to get their period. The chances of surviving a birth as a 9 year old are also pretty low.",
"The trend of the average age of menarche going down almost every year since at least the early 19th century has multiple factors mostly devided into genetical and environmental factors.\n\nFrom an evolutionary stand point it seems to be advantageous to reach menarche and later fertility at an early age especially in respect to pre-modern societies and still today it seems to increase the possibility to produce offspring.\n\nYet we can see that the average age of menarche going down possibly leads to girls becomming fertile at an age ([US: \\~11 in the 1990's](_URL_1_)) that seems to be to you young to produce and sustain healthy offspring.\n\nLooking at environmental factors we can see a correlation (2+ things happening at the same time) between the age of menarche going down and an increase in living standards. Because we know that a higher amount of fat in the body mass of girls triggers puberty/menarche we can conclude that to some extent the availability of food became a majore factor in driving the average age of menarche down.\n\nWithin the last 200-300 years things like the introduction of corn, potatoes and bird poo fertilizer world wide that lead to the industrial revolution, the development of synthetic fertilizer by Fritz Haber, the development of new strains of plants like wheat that can grow in regions where they formlery could not, etc. all possibly lead to this.\n\nLooking at more recent developments like the development and introductions of chemicals into our lives might have also impacted the average age of menarche. For example some chemicals might change hormone (chemicals that control your body) levels in our body like BPA and could also lead to an earlier puberty/menarche.\n\nDr. Sandra Steingraber mentions the following in her paper she did for the brestcancerfund:\n\n > \\- low birth weight & premature birth \n > \n > \\- obesity and weight gain \n > \n > \\- formula feeding (feeding infants milk powder) \n > \n > \\- physical inactivity \n > \n > \\- psychosocial stressors \n > \n > \\- television and media consumption \n > \n > \\- environmental exposures\n\nThese correlations do not mean that this is the definitive reason why the average age of menarche went down but it is likely that those factors contributed to it.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit:\n\nMore detailed:\n\n > [During the last 50 years, however, additionalforces seem to have been at work. The evidence suggests that children’s hormonal systems are being altered by various stimuli and that early puberty is the coincidental, non-adaptive outcome. The intricate and innately reactive HPG and HPA axes are highly vulnerable to disruption, and this disruption can take many shapes. Obesity is one manifestation of endocrine disruption and may lead to hyperinsulinism,leptin resistance and enhanced aromatase activity. Preterm birth and intrauterine growth restriction—especially when followed by rapidweight gain—is a second kind of endocrinedisruptor that raises the risk for early pubarche.](_URL_0_)",
"We're the only mammals that go through puberty. Reasonable to assume that there is a genetic advantage to it.\n\nModern medicine aside, women about 25 years old are more likely to have a healthy baby than other age groups. That's almost 10 years of her looking fertile but being not yet fully fertile.\n\nOne theory is that she is in practice mode. She looks like a woman and starts to take on more household duties, including childcare. Courtship can take years and the guy is more likely to be interested if she looks like a woman rather than a child. By the time she is fully fertile, she will have spent many thousands of hours doing what mothers do.",
"Not being emotionally ready isn't purely down to age, that's a society thing too. In the UK for example (or in my experience at least), kids are allowed to just be kids and generally are up until at least 13-14. In some cultures though, by this point they may have been teaching/grooming them into adulthood and talking about having their own kids for years.\n\nDoesn't explain the physical side though, I really don't know about that."
]
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[],
[],
[],
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[
"https://web.archive.org/web/20101227114059/http://www.breastcancerfund.org/assets/pdfs/publications/falling-age-of-puberty.pdf",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acceleration1.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
64hzb7 | why does curiosity often outweigh common sense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64hzb7/eli5_why_does_curiosity_often_outweigh_common/ | {
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"I think it might have to do with our hunter gatherer ancestors. We have a need for knowledge of everything near us, so we can be aware of predators, food, and other things either beneficial or detrimental to our survival. ",
"1. I think the proper answer is: \"Does it?\" Does it really for everyone or even a majority? I doubt it does, we're just seeing the especially blatant offenders on youtube falling on their noses...\n\n2. Furthermore, there's another effect at place: Things you are curious about are very specific things just in front of you, stuff to see, touch, something to go to, something to actually *do*. While all the reasons why it might not be a good idea are, at least at that very moment, abstract concepts of what *might* happen. People usually refer better to things they can vividly imagine than some abstract ideas they might have about a possible future.\n\n3. I think that people often massively misjduge how dangerous something can be due to lack of knowledge. Assume I show you a shining, nice, perfecly glittering disk in front of you. Why not touch it? It is interesting, it is not loud, what could be the issue? You have no way of telling it is actually a mass of 500 kg of pure tungsten with razorsharp blades that spins with 5000 rounds per minute and will take anything right off that comes close.\n\nDue to 2. and 3., many people often think they are more in control than they are, that something is more safe that it actually is. Just watch any rallye video on youtube and I bet you'll find some moron standing way too close to 1000+ kg cars barrelling past beyond any speed that could be considered safe... but I bet any of them will tell you \"It is safe, I know cars!\" [Fallacy: You knowing how to fix breaks is not preventing that car from flipping over in just the wrong moment] or \"It is safe, I have done this before\" [Fallacy: Just because you were lucky in the past has no bearing on this situation] or \"It is safe, I just make photos\" [Fallacy: Whatever the people think is a reason... actually isn't causally related at all].\n\nOf the countless people who refrain from most \"stupid ideas\" because \"it is not worth it\" you never, ever hear. \n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
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||
4j7wo6 | how do the machines work that the tsa use to put swabs in after they swipe your clothing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j7wo6/eli5_how_do_the_machines_work_that_the_tsa_use_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"d34f48b"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They use a technique called \"ion-mobility spectrometry\". What happens is they ionize the specimen swabs and then travel through a tube with an electric field and a buffer gas that opposes the motion. The speed at which it will pass through the tube indicates what the material is made of, and it is calibrated to trigger on explosives residue.\n\nHopefully if someone has a bomb they would have to handle it, and the very faint residue of that handling would be detected by the device."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8usp2w | why it’s so uncomfortable to stare into someone else’s eyes for too long? | Specifically when you’re talking to someone or you’re in the audience of someone talking to you and you feel the urge to turn away. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8usp2w/eli5_why_its_so_uncomfortable_to_stare_into/ | {
"a_id": [
"e1hsldd",
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"text": [
"It depends who it's for. Alot of the time it's a show of dominant behavior or even submissive depending on the person. This can lead to people being uncomfortable. \n\n\nOther times for fewer people it's the start of a soul gaze, which is something most tend to avoid.",
"Cuz you consider it an intimate activity and don't feel doing it to strangers. Would you like holding hands with strangers?",
"We are animals. There are certain animals that instinctively respond to a stare as a THREAT. \"This PREDATOR is LOOKING AT ME\" sort of thing. Humans have, for the most part, a modicum of ability to override instinctive behavior and do JUST THE OPPOSITE. I like looking into my lover's eyes and being extremely intimate at certain points in time. Both partners usually do. It can be an intense connection.\n\nThat being said, a PET will also STARE at you when they WANT SOMETHING. I guess that could be considered part of a predatorial response. "
]
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[],
[],
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|
9nn32l | why is it acceptable for politicians to litter signs and pamphlets everywhere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9nn32l/eli5_why_is_it_acceptable_for_politicians_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"e7nihs2",
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"score": [
2,
5
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"text": [
"I can’t explain, but I fully agree, about the yard signs especially. \nThe ones they put along roads and such (not the ones that ppl put on their own private property). \nPost election, if the signs are still up. For say > 30 days, they should get a fine per sign. ",
"You can't stop people from mailing you stuff or leaving it at your house but most towns have regulations around those signs that they leave on people's lawns. My town has these regulations:\n\n\\- Need to get an owner's consent to put a sign on their lawn.\n\n\\- Person needs to track where they put them. Candidates are responsible for them all.\n\n\\- After an election the Candidate is responsible for removing all the signs they put around town, within a certain amount of time\n\nOtherwise they are subject to fines. Check your local regs. Maybe they exist but no one's enforcing them."
]
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[],
[]
] |
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