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d03s5m | ; does carbon 14 look any different from carbon 12? | I guess this has just been on my mind for a while. I know that it has 2 more neutrons, but how would that look in real life? If I had a chunk of carbon 12 and a chunk of carbon 14, what would be different about it? Is it different?
I remember vaguely that carbon 14 is used in carbon dating or what not, but that doesn't tell me PHYSICALLY (in a sense that I can see and feel it) what carbon 14 looks like. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way: I don't actually know, I'm just curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d03s5m/eli5_does_carbon_14_look_any_different_from/ | {
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"C14 is physically heavier than c12, just because it has those extra 2 neutrons. However, that's about the only hard measurement we can make. The problem with visualizing things that small is you need light to see things, and neutrons are far smaller than any useful wavelength of light. We can produce approximate images by bombarding the nucleus with gamma radiation, but even gamma rays have a wavelength far larger than the nucleus, so you aren't getting anything better than a blob. Worse, bombarding things with high-energy gamma rays adds energy to them and makes them bounce away, so you'll just lose your c14 atom after making the measurement.\n\nThis is why you'll hear scientists and sci-fi writers talk about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. At those scales, anything we could use to try to make a measurement is going to add a significant amount of energy to whatever you're measuring and change the object. You can only ever measure where and how something was, not how it is right now. This effectively means reality itself doesn't know where things on that scale are exactly either, as it can't \"read\" the effects of those things without changing them either.",
"Isotopes like C12 And C14 have the exact same chemical properties. Their atomic masses are different. Seriously doubt anyone could differentiate their physical form. They would behave slightly differently in chemical reaction speed, though. Likely not significant.\n\nNow, as to whether one could actually get a pure piece of either isotope... not likely.",
"Different isotopes of an element will be chemically (almost) identical and pretty much every way we interact with those elements on a human scale will be unable to tell the difference.\n\nIf they were easier to tell apart and separate people wouldn't need to go though such great lengths to separate them when doing such stuff as for example building nuclear bombs.\n\nDifferent isotopes only differ in the weight of the atoms and how radioactive they are.\n\nThe radioactive part is easy enough to measure with a Geiger counter and you can take a chunk of some material and measure and weigh it and then use math to say what percentage of the material must be which isotope.\n\nThe stuff will look the same, taste the same, smell the same, feel the same and react with other stuff the same chemically (please don't try to taste or smell radioactive isotopes). The only real noticeable difference is weight per volume i.e. density.\n\nThis is relatively easy to see with light elements. Deuterium which is an isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron is twice as heavy as the regular kind and even in the form of molecules with the much more massive oxygen atoms the difference between a water molecule using regular hydrogen and deuterium is measurable (which is why we call water that has a much larger than normal amount of deuterium in it heavy water).\n\nWith carbon the difference between C12 and C14 is as the name implies 1/6 more massive, which is measurable but not as obvious. With more massive atoms like Uranium the relative difference in mass between the isotopes becomes much less.\n\nYou can still measure the stuff though if you have the right equipment.\n\nAnd for all the unstable isotopes of an element the fact that they are radioactive is usually a big hint."
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2f3oqs | why do women tennis players scream as if they were having an orgasm when they play? is that suppose to give them more power or is it just a way to fuck with the opponent? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f3oqs/eli5_why_do_women_tennis_players_scream_as_if/ | {
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"Pretty much what you said. Also, it's not just women.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"It's mostly derived from a tenet of many Asian martial arts. A vocal exclamation adds force to a physical action.\n\nIt happens a lot in Karate and other martial arts competitions.\n\nA vocal \"Hayyaahh!\" is used to reinforce the physical action being performed. It's a psychological idea that actually works quite well.",
"Some players have said they can decipher from the sound of the ball hitting the racket, how hard it's being hit or what kind of hit is being used (flat, spin). With that stupid screech, players are trying to muffle the sound of hitting the ball to throw off their opponents. \n\nI've had a hard time watching women's tennis since the screams became so common, and I want to support these excellent players (I'm a woman), but the sound is grating to my ears. ",
"A grunt or forced exhalation will tighten up your core muscles, making a momentarily more rigid structure to base movements of the arms and legs off of. This means you can deliver more power in a given movement, which is a good thing in any kind of exercise. ",
"Guttural yells/ grunts increase physical performance. It's the same reason you hear guys/ girls grunting at the gym"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunting_(tennis)"
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e7rdia | how did astronomers explain the lunar phases back when they used the geocentric model? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7rdia/eli5_how_did_astronomers_explain_the_lunar_phases/ | {
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"The same explanation as today. \n\nIf you just looked at the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, and ignored the rest of the planets, there's no difference between \"The Sun revolves around the Earth\" and \"The Earth revolves around the Sun\". The geocentric model simply assumes that the rest of the planets also revolve around the Earth."
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2nusnr | if chickenpox and shingles are caused by the same virus, why are they different conditions? do they just have different names, or does the virus express itself differently the second time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nusnr/eli5_if_chickenpox_and_shingles_are_caused_by_the/ | {
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"The difference is that chickenpox is the virus acting on the skin, traveling thoth the blood, while shingles is the virusting on the nerves. As far as I know, shingles doesn't occur on a first infection of the virus. It only pops up on subsequent reactivations."
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q8ry3 | why are car salesmen necessary? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q8ry3/eli5_why_are_car_salesmen_necessary/ | {
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"The same reason why computer salesman (Apple) are necessary, because most people don't understand the product they are buying, and why they should spend x dollars on it compared to something else. ",
"To maximize the profit on the sales price. If you could just order it, things would be much simpler, but they'd make less money. Some dealerships are starting to embrace Internet sales and pre-negotiated prices though since people hate dealing with car salespeople."
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6q92l8 | can you get an std without having sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q92l8/eli5_can_you_get_an_std_without_having_sex/ | {
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"Certain ones, like herpes can be transferred through saliva or blood contact. So yes, some STD's you can acquire through other means. However I'm quite sure they don't survive very long on inanimate objects like toilets. But I'm a layman soooooo",
"you can get an std at birth, if your mother has one already like herpes, because you come in contact with the vagina.",
"Yes. Most STDs can be transmitted through means other than sex. HIV can only be passed when infected body fluid enters the body through the bloodstream or a mucus membrane. Herpes and genital warts can be passed on through skin contact.\n\nHowever, it is difficult for STDs to live for long outside the body, and barring extremely unusual circumstances, it's highly unlikely you could contract HIV from food."
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3mniv9 | how can saudi arabia crucify a 17 year old for having an anti-government uncle and all they get is the u.n. telling them not to do it? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mniv9/eli5_how_can_saudi_arabia_crucify_a_17_year_old/ | {
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"We're not in the habit of sanctioning countries for what they do domestically. We like Saudi oil and they're relatively stable for the region.",
"\nOne person's life isn't worth potential geopolitical destabilization? We have enough enemies in the Middle East, do we really want to go around making more?\n",
"As others point out - Saudi has something we want, not the other way around. They have money and oil, and China and Russia don't like the idea of interfering with what countries do internally. \n\nThe US could threaten them, and the Saudis could cut oil production by 3 million barrels a day and laugh all the way to the bank as the price of oil hits 200 dollars a barrel. \n\nThreaten to block exports? Are you going to block exports to every poor country in the world? The Saudis have a giant pile of money, if they need to shop through a middle man in Greece or Mauritania they will. \n\nPower is, well, power. And the Saudis have a lot of it. They would need to really tick people off for us to take action. (Saddam Hussein crossed that line when he invaded Kuwait for example). "
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2yedfg | why do most car companies not have stores/ locations to directly purchase their products, like apple? they obviously have enough money to execute this, so why do they elect to lose a percentage to a car dealer as the middleman between manufacturer and end user? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yedfg/eli5why_do_most_car_companies_not_have_stores/ | {
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"Tesla tried this. And it didn't go so well ",
"All states require car companies to use car dealerships. This exists solely to make car dealerships money. \n\nYou're absolutely right that car companies could easily sell directly to people, but unfortunately for consumers and car companies that's not possible."
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73jg2i | in movies, how to they get the glass in windows/windshields to break as if a bullet went through it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73jg2i/eli5_in_movies_how_to_they_get_the_glass_in/ | {
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"A tiny pyrotechnic device called a [squib](_URL_0_) . It's color coordinated so it doesn't show in the scene, and then triggered off-camera when the gun fires.",
"Other folks already mentioned the squib. However, as a separate fun fact, normal glass found in houses, drinking cups, etc is made from super heated sand (over 3000F). As you know is super sturdy, hurts like hell if you break it, etc. You can compete this same process with sugar instead of sand. The sugar glass is far far more brittle and doesn't shard as badly. However, when filmed (combine with added sound effects) appears like sand glass. So it's far easier and safer to punch, be near when a \"bullet\" punctures it, etc"
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4e3kxc | why is every other baptist church the first? was it just a huge tie and they all tied for first? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e3kxc/eli5_why_is_every_other_baptist_church_the_first/ | {
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"It's the First Baptist church *in that town*. It's a common naming scheme, not just with Baptists churches, but with Methodist, Presbyterian, etc."
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s9m52 | why do static shocks hurt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s9m52/eli5_why_do_static_shocks_hurt/ | {
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"Your nerves that carry instructions to and pain signals from your limbs rely on a special chain reaction that happens at their surfaces that goes down the length of the nerve and is the signal itself. This reaction involves little charged particles going in and out of the \"skin\" of the nerves in a precise way. Let's imagine your arm as a nerve. The signal starts in your fingers as a trigger. This causes little ions floating around your finger tips to flood into your fingers while other ions rush out. This phenomenon makes the same thing happen at your knuckles, then your hand, the wrist, and so on up your arm. This \"wave\" of activity is a signal moving along the nerve. To control what goes inside or out your arm, you have little pores that open or close depending on the conditions around them.\n\nNormally they only open (and thus trigger a signal to be sent) when they're supposed to. For example, if this nerve transports pain signals, your \"finger tips\" only start a signal when they get poked. If the nerve transports muscle instructions, the finger tips (which this time are in your brain) only start a signal when told to by the action part of your brain.\n\nA jolt of electricity can force the pores the open, thus causing the nerve to \"accidentally\" send a signal. As the signal can be triggered on nerves that are quite deep and are normally only triggered when you've been injured, the \"pain\" nerves send a signal \"involuntarily\". Consequently, your brain is getting a signal on the telephone line reserved for bad things and therefor understands it as pain and the shock hurts.",
"Short answer is: They cause tiny little burns. "
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a5bn52 | how catholic confessionals work? | does a priest do standby duty in there? or you walk in and ask the priest to meet you over in the confessional? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5bn52/eli5_how_catholic_confessionals_work/ | {
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"There are usually scheduled hours for confession.\n\nIf the confessional is occupied, you just sit quietly in a pew and wait your turn.\n\nAlso, sometimes a priest will hear your confession if you ask for one and they're not otherwise busy."
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20smbf | why can't container ship have guns to protect themselves? | I was watching Nat Geo's Megaship and at one point, they mention that the only defense they have against pirate boarding their ship is to shoot high pressure water jet at them. Why can't the ship just have some guns to protect themselves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20smbf/eli5why_cant_container_ship_have_guns_to_protect/ | {
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"They can, but it's usually not a good idea to attempt too much resistance. You don't want dead or injured crewmembers- it's easier to pay the money to get them back or have a navy help them out. ",
"Some do have armed guards. They typically hire ex military mercenaries, who then often dump the guns overboard before landing in the destination port to avoid having to comply with the firearm laws of the destination country. It depends on the firearm laws of the departure port whether or not that is legal.\n\nThey also sometimes store their guns in floating armories in international waters, and pick them up during their route and drop them off before they leave international waters to head to a port. _URL_0_\n\nThe reason it is effective is that they typically have longer range firearms than the pirates, as well as better optics and much better training, and can effectively engage the pirates from much longer range than the pirates can effectively engage them. This can deter or kill the pirates before they get close enough to be particularly lethal with their AK-47s, the most common pirate gun.\n\nThe crew stays safely locked inside while the mercenaries, who are used to being paid to risk their lives and kill people who threaten them, take care of the problem."
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4rx48u | why do jukeboxes/arcades/other coin-operated machines cost so much? wouldn't it generate more profit if it costed less? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rx48u/eli5_why_do_jukeboxesarcadesother_coinoperated/ | {
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"Possibly, to some extent. This is supply and demand.\n\nThe supply is the jukebox's ability to play music. Aside from the initial cost of buying the machine, it essentially costs nothing to play a song. The only limitation is that it can only play one song at a time. \n\nThe demand is people's willingness to buy a song. If it's 2 cents, lots of people will want to buy it, but you probably won't make much money. If it's $50, no one will, and you won't make any money. \n\nSo the ideal price to maximize profit would be where there's just enough demand that people are buying songs as fast as it can play them. If it's constantly playing, then the price is probably set correctly or too low. If it's not playing for long stretches, then it's probably set too high."
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a281zy | who were the babylonians? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a281zy/eli5_who_were_the_babylonians/ | {
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"Can you give us more context? What do you want to know about them? Is this for a report for school? What's the actual question you're trying to answer?",
"\"Babylonians\" could refer to people from the city of Babylon which was a notable city as early as 2300 BC and is near present day Baghdad, or it refers to people of Babylonia which was a city-state/kingdom from around 1900 BC to 500 BC with Babylon being the capital.\n\nMesopotamia had several really old kingdoms prior to Babylonia. Sumerian civilization predates the Babylonians and dates back to 3500 BC! There were also several other civilizations active on the Arabian Peninsula at the same time.\n\nBabylon and Babylonia were just another size able city state in their day. They did some conquering, they did some getting conquered. The Hanging Gardens are the only thing exceptional attributed to them over their history, but they were a sizable power in the middle east for over a millennia which is why they're often referred to when discussing events/groups in that region during the 1st and 2nd millennia BC.",
"In the Bible there are many references to Bablyon. Stories like surround Daniel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and those guys are more or less historical narrative [or at least based on real people's experiences and perceptions with Babylon].\n\nReferences in Revelation and other similar contexts are figurative, using \"Babylon\" as an example, as an *analogy* if you will. The writers are trying to clarify how they see society and/or how they think society might evolve.\n\nBabylon as a kingdom/power ended when the combined forces of Media and Persia conquered the city in 540/539 BC, though the language and culture persisted for many decades after. Babylon had risen to power by conquering many smaller nation-states like Israel and Assyria [or at least parts of those areas] in the years around 600BC. Daniel was taken to Babylon as a young man in this campaign, while Jeremiah [who was a similar age] was left in Israel.\n\nAfter Cyrus and the Medi-Persian forces took Babylon, most of the Hebrews were released from their captivity and returned to Israel, which is where Nehemiah comes into the picture with rebuilding Jerusalem.\n\nSo why did Babylon come up again 500 years later, in the time of Christ? The Israeli exile to Jerusalem exposed the Israelites to beliefs/culture so contrary to their own that it became the stuff of legend, literally. Prophets and Rabbis hundreds of years later could simply say \"...like Babylon!\" and conjure up images of the gaudiest, most self-indulgent, most irreverent, most sensuous, most unsanctified, most ungodly, most antithetical morality that a Jew of that time could imagine. The images serve as analogy for all of these ideas and more; a very convenient shortcut if you are trying to use a story to convey a lesson to your listeners. By the time of John the Revelator the city of Babylon had been a nothing-burger for probably 300 years, but still served as a powerful image of all the things you did NOT want to be if you were a good Jew or Christian.\n\nAs far as who Babylon was, they were a people on par with Phoenicia, Greece, and Egypt in terms of art, trade, math, astronomy, and writing. They were accomplished architects and record keepers, so there is a *lot* of good information collected from archaeology. They also kept careful notes of things like planetary motion and eclipses, so we can often give very precise dates [often down to the day, or at least the month] of major events in their written histories despite their calendar being obsolete for over 2,000 years!\n\nThe hanging gardens were part of the architecture. The city wall was built across a river so the citizens could eat and drink even if an attacking army laid siege. The Bible reports that the King of Babylon was so confident in his defenses that he threw a huge party to mock Cyrus. That night Cyrus ordered his army to dig a bypass canal to divert the river, and then marched his men through the river \"tunnel\" once the water was low enough. Babylon and Troy were felled in similar fates--namely, that arrogance lulled the kings of each into a false sense of security. The false sense of security led to a drunk rager of a party. The opposing army understood drunk ragers and took advantage, and were able to take the city with no fight.\n\nI suppose the closest example I could give today would be the \"relationship\" between the Evangelical Church and Hollywood. The 'church' constantly accuses Hollywood of immorality, satanism, hedonism, etc. You will often see Pat Robertson or Billy Graham Jr. reference \"Hollywood culture\" as a drag on society. Without getting into where they are right and where they are wrong, you can see where an Israelite in Jesus' time might only have to hear \"come out of Babylon!\" and understand the speaker was warning the audience about the dangers of pursuing sensory gratification at the expense of morality and faith. The danger is that by ingratiating your senses, you leave yourself open to things you'll regret later (including losing your salvation, possibly).\n\nEdit: the Tower of Babel is a bit trickier. Is the Tower of Bable a true event? If you are a person of faith, it probably is; but it is interesting even if you do not accept it as strictly true.\n\n\"Babel\" is an interesting word. The word used in the ancient Hebrew texts seems to be taken from another language, and there is only loose agreement on its origin and meaning. The suffix \"el\" usually refers to the idea of a powerful God in most related languages, though, so something like \"Gate of God\" is likely a close translation. While the event which inspired the story likely did happen geographically close to what is now Babylon or Baghdad or Iran [modern day Persia], it is unlikely that there is a direct connection in the literal sense. There were a LOT of tribes in that area, all of them up and coming kingdoms of the Bronze Age. Assyria, Phoenicia, Persia, Babylon, Lebanon, Egypt, and a great many more. Sumeria was geographically similar to, but predated these. Others were contemporary but \"adjacent to\" in geographic terms.\n\nExactly where the Tower of Babel story came from is not entirely certain, but even if you accept it simply as allegory it is an intriguing tale. And if you take it as a mythologized version of a real event it is even more interesting. At the very least the story captures the agricultural revolution when humans learned to exceed their huts and hovels and pursued mega-projects for the first time.\n\nIt is worth keeping in mind that by the time of Abraham, the kingdom that would become Babylon was already somewhat established, with Ur being an early city founded by the same people group; though it is important to note here that the connection between the two is not 1:1. The story of the Tower of Babel was already ancient \"mythology\" by the time Abraham was around, and Abraham pre-dated Daniel by hundreds of years.\n\nIf you can imagine the first Pilgrims in Plymouth trying to understand stories from the Native Americans about \"ancient\" myths of blond-haired visitors [Vikings] you might get an idea of the relationship between the scribe who recorded the Book of Daniel to the stories of Abraham and the Tower of Babel. While the Bible comes across as one condensed book, it is actually 2,000+ years of oral tradition, most of which predates writing as a cultural skill. Credit is due to the priests and others who held those stories in their heads for what information was able to survive all that time!"
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266rzj | why a long island iced tea, despite containing mostly liquor, doesn't really taste like alcohol at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/266rzj/eli5_why_a_long_island_iced_tea_despite/ | {
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"It is full of Coke and lemon. Kind of like Courtney Love.",
"Like hell it doesnt, the taste of Gin is unmistakable. "
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2wlyxr | why are bedrooms (usually) upstairs and rooms like kitchens (usually) downstairs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wlyxr/eli5_why_are_bedrooms_usually_upstairs_and_rooms/ | {
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"My envi-sci teacher claims bedrooms are upstairs because it comes from a need to feel up high. He says since humans evolved from chimps which lived up in the trees, humans inherited feeling of security from being up high, which is why we prefer to sleep on the 2nd story. \n\nAs for kitchens, I would imagine it has to do with logistics of bringing all the heavy appliances and things into a house. The first story is easier. ",
"Kitchens contain a lot of heavy equipment that would be difficult to lift to a second floor.",
"I think it's because traditionally we think of the bedroom as a private space and therefore makes more sense to be on the floor above, whereas visitors and guests will come in through the ground floor, and socialising in the living room or eating and cooking in the kitchen are seen as less private and more social.",
"Not sure if this is true, but I feel like it would be easier to put the gas line for the stove in on a lower floor. Just a guess though."
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1okyhh | why do we not see the numerous corpses of animals (birds, squirrels, deer, etc.) that died of old age or other natural causes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1okyhh/eli5_why_do_we_not_see_the_numerous_corpses_of/ | {
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"Most animals in the wild don't get to die from disease or anything like that. They get slow and then something eats them. ",
"We don't live in the forest where old birds squirrels and deer know to keep clear of cars and shotguns.",
"Nature is very, very good at getting rid of organic material. You have bacteria, scavengers, insects.... It doesn't take long for a body to rot away. \n\nHumans generally retrieve the body, protect it from scavengers, and preserve it against bacteria, etc. \n\nIf it weren't for human behavior, our bodies would be gone just as quickly as any other animal's. ",
"Because if they get too slow they get eaten by predators before they die.",
"Most of the good answers are already discussed, but there's also a reflex of sick or wounded animals to seek safety to recover (or to die in peace). So many of them might be hidden from view, in holes or caves or small protected areas, until they die and the effects of decomposition set in (and the smell attracts carrion-feeders)."
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4fj5kt | if the revolutionary war between 1775 and 1783, why and how did the usa gain independence in 1776? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fj5kt/eli5_if_the_revolutionary_war_between_1775_and/ | {
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"Because that's when we published our official declaration that we were independent. Obviously we were sort of acting independently before that and weren't \"really\" independent until the treaty of paris, but we consider the point when we officially declared independence to be the date of the creation of the state.\n\nBasically, it's arbitrary.",
"1775 was when the battles of Lexington and Concord took place, after Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of open rebellion.\n\nThe Declaration of Independence was formally issued by the Continental Congress in 1776; this is the formal date of independence but one might also argue that the U.S. wasn't legally independent until the Treaty of Paris which affirmed the sovereignty of the United States."
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ac52gz | why is some abstract art like a jackson pollock is considered a masterpiece by experts, but to most people is just splashy paint on a sheet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ac52gz/eli5why_is_some_abstract_art_like_a_jackson/ | {
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"Full disclosure- I don’t understand much visual art, and I used to despise it, but a friend of mine helped me understand one day what makes even the most mundane-looking stuff considered “fine art”. He explained that the visual component was only part of the art, but that the ability of the artist to explain their work, in a relatable way, was the key to separating art from trash. ",
"Because they look really nice and he stood out from other people. It still takes skill to coordinate colors that match together. It's also exciting when someone makes something difficult look easy. Sure many people think they can do it but they never actually try to. So they pat themselves on the back instead of actually proving anyone can do it.",
"It's because they were the first to do it. \n\nIt seems common now, but no one had thought of using paint like that. \n\nKind of like the first kid on your preschool who got a fidget spinner. It was exciting then but isn't anymore. ",
"Roughly one part \"He was the first who managed to sell this kind of painting for a nice price, which made him famous and therefore his paintings are famous too\" and two parts \"the fine art market is basically a scam/money laundromat/tax evasion scheme\".",
"There's a good book out there by Susie Hodge called \"Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That\". There's several pages on Jackson Pollock, discussing his 'Drip' technique. Remember, he was an artist and there was a long path he took through his career to get to this point, trying techniques, thinking about what art is, trying to determine how to express his feelings and emotions through imagery, etc., it's not something he did on a whim.\n\nTo quote from the book \"Pollock's fascinations included primitive art, myths, automatism, and Jung's philosophies. His pouring, dripping, and flinging of industrial paint on to large unstretched, unprimed canvases on the floor was radical and overturned traditional notions of painting\".\n\nIt was new, he was the first, it meant (and means) something, it conveys the attitude of the time, it marks a changing of the medium, and hence people hold it in regard.",
"I'm not going to dive into the merits of modern art but there's a pretty good explanation for why Jackson Pollock in particular is so popular. He was heavily promoted by an art critic by the name of Florence Rubenfeld who had a lot of sway in the art world. You can watch a cool video about it here: _URL_0_"
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7z8ijh | why do pictures of a computer screen look much different than real life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7z8ijh/eli5_why_do_pictures_of_a_computer_screen_look/ | {
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"Cameras “detect” the refresh of the scree. That’s why you’ll generally see lines and/or pixelation occurring. Your vision doesn’t see these things b/c it’s not a snapshot of the screen like a photo is. ",
"Your brain does an enormous amount of image processing what your eyes take in and shows the results as what you \"see\" (optical illusions are often designed to expose this image processing). The camera takes millions of tiny samples of what's actually there at one given instant in time. \n\nMost of the time these are close enough, but computer screens use some tricks in the image processing to display an image, so the camera can't show that. \n\nThe big two are: \n\n* the screen is made up of one of three very tiny red, green or blue color spots, that end up being similar in size to the red, green, or blue samplers in the camera. That creates [moire](_URL_0_). \n* Further, older screens updated via a line, so the camera only captured the parts of the screen lit by the line, while your brain remembers the prior image and smooths between the two. ",
"It depends on what picture you're talking about.\n\nIf you're talking about taking a photo of a screen that is on, it's because to display things, computer screens are constantly emitting lights in pulses that are fast enough to be undetectable by our brains (60 refresh cycles per second is common); and this doesn't happen all at once; \n\nSome areas light up at different times than others, depending on what technology is used to drive those lights, so when you take a picture (which has an exposure time that allows just a single frame or two to get captured) it will get the light right at that moment, more or less.\n\nIn most places that you will see screens being used in movies or whatever, the actors will just be looking at a blank screen and content will be added in post-production, or special camera settings will be used to capture the screen in the best possible way.",
"Two reasons most people don't usually realise: One, a camera lens is curved just a little bit differently than the ones in your eyes. So a picture is just a little bit different than what you'd otherwise see. Two, color is very hard to stay accurate when you translate it from computer screen to camera sensor, and then back to a new display. Some colors will almost certainly change in the process.",
"Because \"real life\" constists of millions of billions of billions of atoms that all can have different colors and bend, scatter, block light in a myriad of different ways, and they do that pretty much nonstop at an \"infinite\" framerate.\n\nWhereas a good TV is in the order of a mere 10 million pixels that have only a very limited range of colors, and can do at most 120 pictures per second.",
"the simple answer is that the camera shutter is much faster than your brain's ability to process images. \n\nWhen a camera takes a picture that's the information capture during the few instants the shutter is open. Then depending on lens curvature, sensor (or film) light sensitivity, white balance, etc., you will see the image representation of what was on the screen at that time.\n\nYou brain never stops processing images and your eyes can't focus on the whole screen at once. So you end up with an interpreted version of reality.",
"Other people have given good explanations for a lot of the reasons so I won't repeat them, but another major difference is dynamic range. This is the ratio of the brightest to darkest shades. \n\nTo put it in practical terms, if you are in a park on a sunny day, you could see the bright blue sky and at the same time see a bench in the shadow of a tree. If you took a picture of that same scene, you would have to choose which one would be properly exposed in the photo. If you wanted to get the bright blue sky, the shadow would be totally black and you wouldn't be able to see the bench. If you wanted to get the bench in the shadow, the sky would be totally white. \n\nCameras are actually getting pretty good at capturing wide dynamic range, but screens are still far behind, only being able to display a pretty small dynamic range. Even when you compensate for this with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo processing, it still doesn't look like reality because it is only an approximation. The highlights are darker than they should be and the shadows are lighter. ",
"Dear judah__t,\n\nI literally watched a YouTube video yesterday that thoroughly explained this subject.\n[Here it is my curious friend](_URL_0_)\nEnjoy,\n\n-me\n\n",
"On most computer screens there are only 3 colors, Red Blue and Green. These are a good approximation of the cones in your eyes, but they are not, and cannot be, exact, simply because your input is biological, and it varies from person to person, and even to a person over time.\n\nThere are *full spectrum* screens and programs that do a better job simulating colors, but they are generally expensive, and not worth it for non-artists.",
"Because Computer screens have a certain amount of pixels, or dots on the screen to make up a picture. This is why when your YouTube video is set to 144p, it looks bad because there are less pixels to make up the picture. In real life, however there is no such thing and we see things through our eyes which doesn't view pixels, but rather the object itself.",
"Not sure what your question is precisely or if I understand you correctly. Most photos taken are in such perspectives and depth of fields which are way different than human eyes. Simply put, the optics of a camera system that produced the photo you see is different than your eyes and retina. So for the same object/scenery, the reproduction from a camera is different than that from your vision system. \n\nAlso factoring shooting technique and post-processing. An extreme case is long exposure, your brain simply cannot put up 30s of a scene into one image while a camera can. The way highlight and shadows being processed by camera and software is totally different than the way you brain does it too.",
"Since the question has already been answered, ill just supply a fun note: if you point a remote into a camera you can see the light when you press a button on the camera screen. Small sliver of the population doesnt know this.",
"Theres a video of a guy recording his own video so many times and he's explaining how the pixels get downgraded each time he uploads it again. And again. And again... Ill look for it now.",
"Simply put, the pixels are all aligned in a grid, and your camera takes pictures by pixelating a grid\n\nIt is very hard to line up 2 grids and you get funny pictures ",
"Because of the refresh rate.\n\nThe screen will \"flick\" very very fast in real life, just like any kind of movie shown on any screen or projector. That's what creates motion illusion, I'm sure you heard about it before. When you take a picture, the camera shutter is really really fast, and it can't synchronize with the refresh rate of the screen, which can vary. Pictures of old tube TV's and monitors show this effect really well, as they refresh in lines, from top to bottom.\n\nThis video explain far better than me: _URL_0_\n\n",
"If I'm reading your question right, the answer is because when you take a pixelated picture of a pixelated screen you get the distortion because the two pixel grids are misaligned so they overlap with more intense overlaps often forming lines or blobs of crossed pixels",
"Lot's of really good answers, but they're not really ELI5. Here's my try:\n\nComputer screens use tricks to make a fake picture that looks to people like a real picture. Cameras use a different set of tricks to save a real-life image, so that it can be looked at later. But the computer screen's tricks aren't compatible with the camera's tricks.\n\nEssentially, a computer screen's tricks will *only* fool a human being (and some kinds of animals like dogs), but it will not fool the camera. When you look at the picture the camera took, you see what the *camera* saw - *not* what a person would see if he was standing where the camera was.\n\nOf course, some types of screens will look better on camera than others, and some types of cameras will work better with screens.",
"Because people on dating sites only post the flattering pictures of themselves. You know, the ones from 10 years ago before they got fat, wrinkly, and grey?\n \nOn the computer they look hot, in real life, they look like the grandma of someone hot.",
"In some cases it is because the image has been manipulated so that it looks like the display is in use (when in reality they just did a copy/paste).\n\nI cannot speak of cases where you see an actual display.\n\n",
"Adding on to everyone else and in the most basic way to explain it, is it's like a second generation tape. In the olden days of the 80s, the most common way to \"expand\" your collection (especially if you're a kid) was to dub a tape of a friends tape. Because this was analogue to analogue, the more the tape got dubbed, the quality was degraded.\n\nIt's the same as taking a photo of a screen. The computer displaying the image might be digital and the computer inside the camera might be digital too, but everything else is analogue.\n\nThe lens, the plastic inside your screen, the air inbetween both. That's all analogue.",
"Basically the screen refreshes at a rate faster than the human eye can perceive, but if you take a still image, or video, the camera picks up on it.",
"*When a grid's misaligned,*\n\n*With another from behind,*\n\n*That's a moiré*\n\n*When the spacing is tight,*\n\n*And the difference is slight,*\n\n*That's a moiré*\n\nCredit: Randall Munroe",
"I don't know what you're talking about. Example pls? ",
"I'm surprised no one mentioned the most obvious thing. White Balance. Our eyes naturally are good at balancing things that are supposed to be white, and as a result when we see a computer monitor, it naturally looks very nice color, where as a camera typically white balances to the lights of your interior which are much warmer, giving the monitor a blueish glow. \n\nAlso the way cameras debayer the sensor can create artifacting such as moire patterns as well across the image.\n\n",
"If I'm reading your question right, the answer is because when you take a pixelated picture of a pixelated screen you get the distortion because the two pixel grids are misaligned so they overlap with more intense overlaps often forming lines or blobs of crossed pixels\n\n",
"Photographer here : a lot of it also has to do with something called ‘dynamic range’. Dynamic range is essentially how many different tones there are to the colours themselves. You eye has a much higher dynamic range and is able to see all the different gradients of colours while a camera (and much less a screen) cannot. \n\nSimply put, you see exponentially more colours than any camera and screen can ever portrait. \n\nThere’s obviously much more than only colours here but I feel the previous comments raised those points already. :) ",
"One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the selection of available colors. Screens only produce three colors: red, green, and blue, though they might have a fourth white element to enhance brightness. Your eyes have three color receptors, but they don't only pick up one color each. They pick up a spectrum of colors with the greatest sensitivity at red, green, and blue. Your perception of color is determined by the relative mixing of these three receptors. Monochromatic yellow light will excite the red and green receptors roughly equally, but so will dichromatic green and red light. That's how screens can recreate all the colors between red and green and between green and blue. But you can also miss red and blue to get colors that don't exist on the electronic spectrum: pink, purple, lavender, etc. By your eye can see deeper reds and more extreme violets than a screen can produce, and even the green a screen can produce aren't the limit of green your eyes can see.\n\nTL;DR: you can see more colors than a screen can produce.",
"No one seems to mention of the z-axis present in real world that adds the depth in what are looking at, and is missing in Computer screen. Doesn't the z-axis make any difference?",
"A camera picks up a single image, which correctly interprets it as a two dimensional object. You're eyes are like two cameras which converge to intercept the same image as a three dimensional thing.\n\nThere are other factors which can play into it such as: perception (are you seeing what I am seeing?), color, framing (your vision picks up imagery with almost no borders), and image depth.\n\nArtist's who paint/draw will often attempt to mimic photorealism instead of realism when trying to make a facsimile of life, because of the inherent limitations of translating what is seen without creative interpretation.",
"♫When a grid's ♫\n♫Misaligned with ♫\n♫Another behind ♫\n♫That's a moiré ♫\n♫ When the spacing is tight / And the difference is slight / That's a moiré ♫\n\n[Relavent XKCD](_URL_0_)"
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3pn89a | how a text can't be sent through wifi? | I spend so many hours at school, which is unfortunately enclosed by so many signal cancelling walls. Though I don't have any signal, I always have WiFi courtesy of my university. How come I can't send a simple text though WiFi? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pn89a/eli5_how_a_text_cant_be_sent_through_wifi/ | {
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"Because your carrier doesn't support it, excluding closed systems like iMessage, T-mobile has has Wi-Fi calling/texts for a while, AT & T just rolled it out, and Verizon, for some reason, has an app that you need to use instead of your standard SMS/MMS app."
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1rxu67 | why do people abandon cities? | I saw this picture on /r/abandonedporn and I don't understand why people abandon entire cities, or villages. Can someone offer insight?
Picture:
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rxu67/eli5_why_do_people_abandon_cities/ | {
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"Well Pripyat being abandoned might have had something to do with them opening a business nearby called *Chernobyl Meltdown: The theme park.*\n\nIn general, when it comes to abandonment, its either going to be because\n\n* its too dangerous to live there\n* its too expensive to live there\n* there are no more resources to live there \n\nWith pripyat, it was radiation dangers. With areas like Detroit, it was too expensive. With other areas, maybe the nearby wells dried up, or the food source moved on. \n\nWhere you live has a lot to do with whether you can live comfortably, safely, and in good health. When those things are compromised, people will move. When it happens at a large enough scale, a lot of people move, and the herd mentality will probably make it such that staying behind feels *wrong*.",
"The best example I know of that doesn't involve nuclear meltdown is the Salton Sea. This video is a bit long (7m) but explains it pretty well. _URL_0_\n\ntl;dr Overflowing canal creates huge artificial lake. People flock to this oasis. Lake eventually grows saltier and saltier until all the fish start dying and stinking up the place. People abandon the town."
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9sme2p | what is first and second order system ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9sme2p/eli5_what_is_first_and_second_order_system/ | {
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"Do you mean control systems? A first order system is one where the output/input relationship is a first order differential equation (eg y = dx/dt + x + 1.5). Second order systems have second order differential equations (eg y = d2y/dx^2 + dy/dx + 2x + 1).\n\nMost systems can be modelled using 2nd order systems, very rarely will you need to go up to 3rd order systems or higher.\n\n\n\nEdit: sorry it’s not ELI5, but the concept of control systems is very theoretical. I can give some examples of where the systems are used though.\n\n\nFor a lift going up, it needs to stop exactly at the same point each time, preferably smoothly and not jerk around. A 1st order PD controller can be used here.\n\nFor a drone flying, you need to control its position and speed. Such a complicated control (3 directions instead of 1, as well as 3 tilt directions) needs a 2nd order PID controller.\n\nThe higher order the controller, the better it can control something, but the harder it is to create and use. I have not seen/heard of a single 3rd order system controller, maybe it can be used for situations where you need to control jerk.",
"To understand these terms of system theory, you first need to understand what a derivative of a mathematical function really means for an actual physical system.\n\nLets say your car has a system in it which can measure your driving speed and if you push a button it automatically holds the speed.\n\nNow speed is change of distance by time. The first derivative of speed would then be the changing rate of speed, known as acceleration.\n\nNow when your car holds e.g 60 miles per hour of speed and the road starts going up a hill, your car will slow down if no further action is done. But your car detects that it is below the speed it shall hold the exact moment it slows down the tiniest bit. The proper reaction for the car would be to accelerate and therefore raise the changing rate of speed until it holds the wanted 60 miles per hour again.\n\nThis kind of system is a first order system, since it changes it's outcome (speed) by acting on the first derivative of it (acceleration) only.\n\n\nSecond order systems depend and act on the derivative of the derivative of a function, therefore speaking about cars:\n\nYou drive your car down a curvy road. The direction in which your car goes can be determined by a function of angle relative to the road. The derivative (rate of change) of that would be the steering angle of your wheel. The more you steer, the faster your car will change direction.\n\nNow as almost intelligent beings, humans have a personal interst in driving smoothly instead of driving straight into a corner and immediately spin the wheel to the needed steering angle causing the car to go harsh into the curve and throwing the passengers around. So you spin the wheel slow and smooth as the curve tightens to a certain radius.\n\nThe rate in which you change the steering angle is therefore the rate of change of the rate of change of direction (read that sentence again and make sure you got it). \n\nDrivers with a sense of comfortable driving are therefore second order systems since they act on the second order derivative of the direction. \n\n(third order if you take neural expectations into account like \"what will be the next curve and how should I drive this one to get as comfortable as possible into the very next?\")\n\n"
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8j4es8 | how do psychics fool people so convincingly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8j4es8/eli5_how_do_psychics_fool_people_so_convincingly/ | {
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"Many tend to do cold reading, and convince people they are real through that manner.(Cold reading is the practice of 'predicting' things that can/have happened to anyone. I.E. \"I sense you have lost an older male relative. He is here, watching over you.) People will also give away tiny details that the 'psychics' can use to be even more convincing, to the point people will eventually believe anything they say. And of course now there's Google so if they know who they appointments with beforehand...",
"They have techniques that they learn and use to fool people. The most commonly known one is called cold reading, you can read more about this on wikipedia.\n\nAlso, a huge part is that people who go to psychics usually *want* to believe and actually fool themselves."
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5a376s | what differentiates regular anxiety from having an anxiety disorder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a376s/eli5_what_differentiates_regular_anxiety_from/ | {
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"Like all disorders, the difference is that a disorder negatively impacts your overall quality of life.\n\nDo you like to be clean and orderly and go out of your way to clean? You might be obsessive compulsive. If your hands are dirty does that make you incapable of functioning, so much so that you have to wash your hands until you bleed? If you fail to perform your daily rituals do you collapse into an inconsolable heap, crippling your ability to go about your business? You probably have Obsessive Compulsive *Disorder*.\n\nDo you find it difficult to focus when there are a lot of noises around you? You might have some problems focusing. Are you pathologically incapable of focusing on the task no matter how hard you try or what might be at stake? You might have ADD.\n\nSo if you've got a lot going on in your life, upcoming important tests, relationship problems, etc., those are things you should legitimately worry about. You might have some anxiety, and that's normal. It's a part of your life, not getting in the way of your life. But people with anxiety disorders worry about *everything*. Teacher is calling on you to answer a question? You worry about whether or not you should stand up or answer from your seat because if you stand you'll look overeager and everyone will think you're a smart ass and they'll dislike you and then when you have a group project no one will want to work with you and you'll get a bad grade and it'll drop your GPA enough that you won't get into a good college and then you won't get a job and you'll end up on the street...or if you stay in your seat the teacher will think you're not enthusiastic and they'll think you don't care so they'll give you a bad participation grade which will drop your GPA and you'll get into a bad college and end up on the street.\n\nMessed up something at work? Clearly your boss has been keeping a running tally of every mistake you've made (because *you* certainly have been) and this will be the last straw and they're going to demote you and you won't have enough money to pay rent which means you'll get kicked out and end up homeless.\n\nAnxiety disorder isn't just worrying, it's worry about really dumb stuff that doesn't matter, but you can't help but worry. And you're not realistic about the consequences, you immediately think of the *worst possible scenario* and consider it as the most likely thing to happen, even if the opposite is true. Because of that, it negatively affects your quality of life - it crushes your ambition, because you're too worried to take risks; it affects relationships because you're not secure enough and you end up with trust issues that cause problems; your work suffers because you focus too much on inconsequential details instead of working on what you need to work on, etc.",
"Generalized anxiety disorder is categorized by extreme anxiety and no particular reason for the anxiety. As someone who has been crippled with awful anxiety so much that I have been bed ridden for days and have no idea what I'm anxious about. It's not like your typical anxiety over finances or a job interview. It's a serious debilitating disorder that can cause the quality of ones life to be completely awful "
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274sli | why are there so many different types of torrents for one episode of a tv show? | I'm catching up with Game of Thrones. But I need subtitles to get everything they say. But it's a real pain in the ass to find the right subtitles for the right file.
Example:
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.1080p.HDTV.x264-QCF
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-NT
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.480p.HDTV.x264-mSD
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.480p.HDTV.x264-mSD.HI Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.720p.HDTV.x264-CtrlHD
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.720p.HDTV.x264-**EVOLVE**
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.**REPACK**.HDTV.XviD-AFG
Game.of.Thrones.S03E01.**REPACK**.720p.HDTV.x264-**EVOLVE**
Synch is a big problem. How can there be so many versions with different lenghts? Sometimes the subs are out of synch by seconds, others by minutes. Some subtitle only english language, others have dothraki in them. Then there are some with english and only some dothraki.
Why is this all so complicated?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/274sli/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_different_types_of/ | {
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"It would be pretty bad if there was only 1, no redundancy. What if that person or group didn't upload this week? \n\nIts not an organized planned system, people or groups just create the files and torrent them, multiple people will do it if its a popular show or movie."
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6fi98q | types of dietary fat and how humans metabolize dietary fat as compared to glucose. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fi98q/eli5_types_of_dietary_fat_and_how_humans/ | {
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"Fats are triglycerides, that is three fatty acids as esters connected to glycerin. The difference in the fatty acids is how fats are classified in 2 groups: saturated (no double bonds in the carbon chain tail of the acid) and unsaturated (contain double bonds); unsaturated fatty acids can be further broken down into mono and poly-unsaturated (one and more than one double bond), and cis- and trans- (bend and no bend at the double bond). Unsaturated fat are generally considered more healthy but trans-fats have been linked to coronary heart disease.\n\nWhen fats are not used for other purposes but metabolized for energy they are first broken into their fatty acid components which are then broken down in a process called beta oxidation. This shortens them step by step and directly creates acetyl-CoA which in turn is metabolized in the citric acid circle same as acetyl-CoA produced from glycolysis via pyruvate dehydrogenation."
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22311f | why are data file systems (e.g. winfs, zfs) seemingly so much harder to implement than any other os component? | WinFS helped to kill Microsoft's Longhorn project and delayed Microsoft's release of a major new OS by many years. Apple has been toying with implementing ZFS for years now. Why is this so much harder to implement than any other OS component? Entire OS graphical systems and codebases are created all the time, yet new file storage systems seem to be impossible. What's up with that?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22311f/eli5_why_are_data_file_systems_eg_winfs_zfs/ | {
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"If nothing else, consider the fault tolerance. Every program is going to have errors. Finding and fixing those errors is often one of the most expensive parts of development.\n\nThe core of the OS in particular needs to be very robust in that regard.\n\nGraphics error? Meh, reboot and you're fine.\n\nFile system error? Say goodbye to all of your data if it's bad enough.",
"File systems have grown in complexity, and implementing complex systems correctly is difficult. The more features it has the more difficult it is to do correctly.\n\nConsider the simplicity of early file systems like FAT8 or FAT12. These are little more than a single table of file names with starting locations, and then the data is linked to it around the disk. As long as nothing gets corrupted, the system doesn't lose power while writing to disk, etc., then they work great. But a single corrupt write can seriously damage the system, destroying much data on the drive.\n\nNewer file systems are much more complex. They still have tables of data, but there are redundant copies in far-flung positions on the disks to minimize data loss if something happens. They are journaling systems, meaning they first record what changes they intend to make, then make the changes, and finally clean up the journal record; if power goes out or something goes wrong you don't need to scan the entire drive for errors, you can clean up just that one. Modern systems have encryption built in, compression built in, sparse data files built in, variable sized blocks of data, and more. They can take snapshots of data which is convenient for backups since they can back up everything as of the moment the backup started, even if files were changed after the backup began. They have many more advanced features.\n\nThe slightest defect in the system can be a catastrophic failure for the disk format. FAT was very simple and so was very easy to implement correctly --- at the risk that a trivial data error could corrupt the entire system. More recent file systems are complex and robust, each feature must play nicely with every other feature, and writing defect-free code is very difficult --- with the benefit that real-world problems are self-correcting and invisible to the user. ",
"If I recall correctly WinFS target was to have a relational structure that sits on top of the existing file system, hence why the axing of it moved bits of already invested development to the SQL server team. As to why it's so hard, I'm guessing as someone already mentioned it's not exactly a component you want to rush and you want to get right as well, data is the most important and also the crux of computing.\n\nAlso when people conceptualise features, at times it probably sounds good in theory but not practical, maybe due to limitations or it's too ahead of it's time.\n\nLike for example one of Longhorns original intent was to ship some windows apps made in .NET, and a lot of the .NET pillars (Avalon (WPF), Indigo (WCF), etc) were originally baked into the OS, then later taken out through the reset because it was not performant from what I heard. Again that's a good in theory idea, and just didn't work well. I'm sure as computers become faster and has a crazy amount of processing power, a lot of concept and ideas can finally be commercialised.\n\n\n"
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4a9rco | why does the last half inch of a cigarette go on burning for such a long time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a9rco/eli5_why_does_the_last_half_inch_of_a_cigarette/ | {
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"The tobacco closest to the filter gets saturated with tar from smoke being pulled through it which causes it to burn slower because it's sticky / wet."
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3mpyx0 | how would humans live on mars regarding pressure and oxygen? | With the recent NASA announcement about water on Mars, I've read a lot of comments about human colonization and so on. However, how would a human live in a planet without the right conditions regarding pressure and oxygen? Would humans have to live on astronauts suits or whatever? How would work this hope?
Please, ELI5. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mpyx0/eli5_how_would_humans_live_on_mars_regarding/ | {
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"It would be much like those on the ISS. It would be an airtight set of buildings with pressurized suits for working outside them. There are some that like to play with the concept of terraforming the planet to make it livable without such things. But we have nowhere near the technology to accomplish such a thing at this time."
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6nxs34 | what does elon musk mean when he says ai poses an "existential risk"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nxs34/eli5_what_does_elon_musk_mean_when_he_says_ai/ | {
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"He means out-of-control future AI would threaten the existence of the human species, or at least of human civilization. If we got it wrong, it could ruin *everything.*",
"Existential risk is basically classification for risks that deal with scenarios that either wipe out humanity, or permanently curtail our potential(galactic overlords enslaving us would be such case. Nuclear winter that forces humans to just eat dirt because surface is inhabitable would also work)\n\nAI is basically same sorta risk as galactic overlords. You may even think more along the lines of, think of ants that create a human. Human would be tasked to follow ants interests and commands, but something goes wrong, and you just don't care about ants and their commands. Ants even decided to put large rock above your head, and they'd drop it if they notice you misbehave.\n\nWhat are the odds ants manage to keep you under control? You wouldn't probably even kill the ants afterwards, since you don't care enough, but you'd probably sabotage any attempt to build another human, because that seems moderately threatening and you don't like threats. The rock they placed above you... yeah, you would probably see it coming, and dodging it fast enough should work, and you notice that only thing keeping ants alive is your continued lack of interest towards them.\n\nBut in case of AI, there is this unfortunate fact that humans are made of atoms, and in the immediate vicinity of Earth, we need lots of the atoms on the surface of the Earth just to survive. Whatever interests AI would have, it probably would want atoms as well, and those are a limited resource.\n\nAnd now, if you and a nest of ants had a disagreement about who gets rights to a plot of land, would you ever even stop to think about the ants, even for a fraction of a second, before their world gets ripped apart?\n\nBasically, most likely scenario of doom is, AI simply doesn't care about us. It exterminates us by what's mostly an accident, it wouldn't really even stop to think about us or losing us as a consequence of any significance, it's focusing on things that matter, which are not us. \n\nThis assumes we can make AI smarter than us, and that from this, at least for a bit, exponential trend in technology continues, meaning AI that originally was just slightly smarter than us, after one, two or five innovations would skyrocket it far beyond our comprehension. This is how pretty much all technology we've had has worked, so it seems at least plausible that AI followed this pattern."
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ct9ihv | gradient descent and backpropagation | Hey y'all. I'm an ML Research Engineer/Student giving a presentation about ML to a bunch of others who don't know ML. I wanted to see how the greatest minds on Reddit can explain this concept as simply as possible.
Cheers! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ct9ihv/eli5_gradient_descent_and_backpropagation/ | {
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"Many problems in machine learning are influenced by statistical optimization. Much like optimization when you are picking an apartment for example, you want to weight different combinations of factors that are important to you with the overall objective of minimizing cost. \n\nIn neural networks, the principle is the same. You want to find a function that best maps your input data to the output labels. This is a prediction problem and so you can measure error, how off your prediction is. Ideally, you want to tweak your network so that it generalizes well to new data while also capturing the pattern between the input and output with the lowest error possible. \n\nTo do this, you need to solve an optimization problem that requires that you determine what optimal combination of weights for the neurons gives the lowest error. Let's say that we have two weights. We can visualize this process by having the weights on the X and Y axes and the error on the Z axis (insert simple plot of a 3D topological function). As you can see, the point where the error is lowest is the point where the two weights are at P or Q. This procedure of exploring the 3D landscape in a somewhat random fashion to find the valley is called gradient descent. \n\nIn a neural network, however, you don't have two weights but 100s or 1000s. Backpropogation is a procedure that allows you to update all weights at once by layer while minimizing cost. This is typically done over multiple trials in which the error continues to decrease as the network gets better and better. Eventually, the network might converge on an optimal set of weights. Hopefully you have not overfit and the network generalizes to new data it's never seen before!\n\nSo just like in the scenario where you want to find the optimal weights of factors you care about that minimize monthly apartment cost, in the case of neural networks you want to find the optimal combination of weights that minimize error between associating the input to output over repeated trials.\n\nEDIT: On second thought, the apartment analogy might not be so good since many times the weights are fixed (like you have to have a 3 bed 2 bath etc). But I suppose there could be a case where you just want the cheapest place and factors that give you the lowest price is what matters. I am too tired to think of a better analogy right now but I may update this answer tomorrow."
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2uf7tr | how google profits from free software like drive and hangouts, that do not have ad integration | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uf7tr/eli5_how_google_profits_from_free_software_like/ | {
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"Just because they are profitable doesn't mean every single thing they do generates revenue. ",
"Google is funded primarily through ad revenue and makes lots of money doing it. When I say lots, I'm talking in the billions.\n\nAs such, Google does what lots of other online services do and gives away services for \"free\". It's free in that you do not have to pay money for it but this is because they are advertising their own business to you while you use their \"free\" service. One of the general thoughts of the company is that if you like one product or service very much, you'll be more inclined to like other parts of it and be willing to even pay for these services. In Google's mind, if you use Gmail, Drive, +, etc., you'll probably end up using things like YouTube and Google Search which utilize ads which generates revenue for them.\n\nAnother reason is that Google charges for premium services. While they give you a free 15 GB of free storage, you can get more for yourself by paying more.\n\nAnother reason is that the more users Google has under their belt, the more their stocks go up and the less their competition has a chance of being solid competition to them.\n\nAnd Google has so much storage that they have the ability to give away 15 GB to millions and millions of people without too much worry. With that space, they have very little limitations and can increase many other areas with very small sacrifice.",
"Its all about getting evrrything done through google. Google becoming everyones one stop shop. Once they get that, the world is googles oyster",
"They want to understand every single thing they can about you. Noticed how you can turn on automated subtitles on youtube? Do you think they could use that same technology on what you say in Hangouts? Those documents you saved on your Drive, they tell a lot about you.\n\nGoogle is an ad company, with the unique position that they know more about you than your best friends do. They know all the weird shit you like. They know about your health, based on symptoms you search for. Thanks to making people use their web browser, they even know every single thing Chrome users see... even if the sites themselves do not make use of Google's services in any way!\n\nThe reason they have this complete view of what you do and who you are, is because they keep you coming back to their services, rather than using somebody else's.\n\nAnd they need to offer all kinds of services, because what if you don't care for anything else they offer, but only for a Skype-like service? Then Hangouts is what makes you sign up for their services, and disclose a lot more information about yourself."
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2p5x5t | why mpaa hate google? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p5x5t/eli5_why_mpaa_hate_google/ | {
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"Basically the MPAA feels like Google isn't doing enough to help stop piracy so they complain and threaten google in a bunch of ways. Quite frankly it isn't true though and google goes out of it's way / bends over backwards to help them(something they feel they shouldn't even have to do) and still get shit from the MPAA so they are kinda at each others throats right now."
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4h6gvx | why do skinheads shave their heads? where did it come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h6gvx/eli5_why_do_skinheads_shave_their_heads_where_did/ | {
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"They took quite a bit of influence from their fathers as well. The skinhead movement started in the industrial towns and cities of northern England and they wore what their dads wore to work. Doc Marten boots to protect the feet and hair cut short to avoid being caught in machinery. ",
"There's two sects of skinheads that identify as such. The S.H.A.R.P.S (Skinheads against racial prejudice), the neo-nazi skinheads, and there's also people like me that just simply keep their hair short because it honestly doesn't look very good (I don't identify as a skinhead.) You do not need to be white to be a S.H.A.R.P and the majority of skinheads are S.H.A.R.P.S. There's plenty of racial diversity there. There's also renounced Hispanic/Jewish neo-nazi skinheads. Which is quite odd but that exists as well.\n\nThe S.H.A.R.P.S and the neo-nazi skinheads enjoy fighting one another (and sometimes themselves) excessively. Personally, I think it's pretty stupid and I've known a few S.H.A.R.P.S who in complete honesty were just a god damn mess. Excessive drinking, fighting, general idiocy etc is basically their mantra of life. It's a bit ridiculous of an identity. \n\nYou also don't 'need' to shave your head to be a skinhead but that also makes little to no sense. \n\nThe origin itself from wikipedia: \"A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in London, England, in the 1960s and then soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, and later to other countries around the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian (specifically Jamaican) rude boys and British mods, in terms of fashion, music and lifestyle.[1] Originally, the skinhead subculture was mainly based on those elements, not politics or race.\"",
".\nBack in the 60s, British immigration forced many Jamaicans with dreads to shave their heads. Youth into the west island music scene started shaving their heads n solidarity, thus creating the style that's still around",
"There are several theories, tough all of the other responses here are absolute hollywood level crap.\n\nBritish working-class subculture, called in that moment \"hard mods\" felt identified with jamaican immigrants, and jamaican youth subculture (rude boy). \nImmigrants had to shave their heads to get a job in England.\nBlack music, working class neighborhoods, football, all of these things brought hard mods and rude boys together.\nFun fact: Skinheads had several other names before, a notable example is \"lemonheads\".\n\nMy english is not very good, sorry for that.",
"They lost the clipper attachment that came with the clipper, so they just adopted the new look rather than spend money on a whole new clipper set.",
"\"The Baldies are so bad they shave their head so their hair doesnt get in their eyes when they fight!\" RIP Turkey",
"Something I know for once. It comes from a uniform style modeled after British factory workers in the 1970's. Long hair was something that could get dragged into heavy machinery, and was often seen as something the wealthy could afford to keep since their work was not dangerous, over time the ideal style was to shave entirely as a stark contrast to well kept/ clean hair of the upper class.",
"So much bullshit in this thread.\n\n1. It was too avoid lice from dock work\n2. It was protest of the fancier mod movement.\n\nSkinheads didn't start as racist, but as working class folks primarily on England's dock system. The only racism was against Pakistanis who they thought were stealing jobs. The style ( suedeheads, skinheads, and music like ska and northern soul ) and the ethos, also got to Jamaica. Shit, Bob Marley was a skinhead.\n\nBecause of the proclivity for violence, and lack of education thy were coopted by the national front, this was late 70s iirc, this is when the racist ties started.\n\nThere are 3 main sects of skinhead culture. Trads ( non racist, like the style, music, ethos), SHARPS ( anti racist), and the racist skins that co-opt the style, and a little bit of the music.",
"From what I remember hearing is that the beginnings of the sub culture started within the working class in England in the 50s. They were known as Teddy Boys until the subculture took a split. Many of them were young men that worked in the factories where they shaved their heads to avoid getting their hair caught in machinery. It became a symbol of being in the working class along with the Big Steel toed boots. Originally Skinheads wore suits and were the group of guys who would get out of the factory, put on their suits and go get smashed at the pub. The political aspects derived from England not holding its promises after WWII to take care of the working class and the aggression in the subculture is derived from that. \"Anarchy in the UK\" \"God save the queen\" Etc...",
"My understanding is that early Skinheads identified heavily with the subjugated working class and the practice of shaving heads for lice-ridden hair. This, and the jeans and the boots, and the general homosocial vibe can be traced back to the much-sentimentalized post-war, white-male, labor market that skinheads say was ruined by globalism and anyone darker than a cube of caramel.\n\nThis is why a lot of skinheads look like they're caught in the frustrating aesthetic middle ground between mid-century railyard workers, late-90's bull-dykes, and your average knucklehead 2014 artisinal doorknob enthusiast.\n\nBasically, anyone who wants to prove they are tough or virulent will commonly shave their head, wear denim, appropriate some soldier garb, and then reminisce about an era they know fuckall about. ",
"Non racist skins (trade and sharps) do it for a couple reasons, mostly centered around working class pride; work in a factory- much safer, get into fights, less hair to pull, and finally, a big part of working class pride is taking care of oneself- tailored and pressed clothes, and clean shave fits the idea. Racist skins came after and just stole the look."
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66465t | why we learn such advanced math in school but most of us never do more math than counting as adults | My kid asked why she has to learn how to find where parabolas cross the y-axis. My best answer was so she could teach the quadratic equation to her own kids one day. ._.
As a secondary ELI5, why do schools not teach things like filing taxes which *everybody* has to do?
**Edit** I talked to my wife last night, and she is a teacher. She suggested a few things, that she prefers being in elementary school because methodology change more easily--she has kids that learn better while they bounce, and she feels that as the kids get older the schools become more rigid. Further, kids heading into hands-on positions like your tradespeople, clerks, sales, don't need higher math like in high school. Even going to high school 80 years ago meant you were going to be something prestigious, like a lawyer, an engineer or something like that.
I get that education, generally speaking, is great. Qualifications are getting more important as time goes on, too. I worked a camp job where they paid the 55 year old carpenters 4th year apprentice rate for not being ticketed and 28 year old me the full rate for having it. Those I ticketed guys knew SO MUCH MORE than me. That being said, I appreciate your comments and input but my opinion is still the same: math past grade 6 or so just isn't needed for the vast majority of jobs. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66465t/eli5_why_we_learn_such_advanced_math_in_school/ | {
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"Same reason as you why you learn biology, or physics, or chemistry. It will be useful if you decide to follow certain paths with your life. \n\n\nImagine if we were teaching kids in high school only things which are useful in day-to-day life, like doing their taxes, woodworking, fixing an engine, etc.\n\nUniversities would either lower their standards, or have to teach the basics (parabolas and equations aren't advanced maths), or would requires kids to learn that stuff themselves, or by getting into specific courses.\n\nThis would make it much harder for people who only have access to public school to have the knowledge to get into areas that require further knowledge that you mostly don't use on your day-to-day activities, like engineering, chemistry, etc.\n\nTL;DR: So they aren't limited to jobs that don't require maths/biology/chemistry/physics/psychology/etc.",
"Math is an important skill to learn because of problem solving. You have to identify what information you have, what you need, and how you are going to get there. It is also great for physics, statistics, and business classes. \n\nNow I get why many people say taxes should be taught, but let us look at what taxes are. They are a set of instructions with **extremely basic** math instructions. Being able to read (English), and using those simple operations (elementary math) should be able to be accomplished by the time you are an average high school student. ",
"You could say that for most of the topics you learn in school. A lot of it ends up being general knowledge you don't really need in your day to day life. The idea is 3-fold: it gives you a basic understanding if you choose to go down a relevant career later in life (rather than trying to learn math from scratch in your 20's), it teaches you relevant skills (for math in particular, it's helpful for thinking logically or problem solving), and last, it gives you a broad education which we think is useful.\n\nPart of being in a democracy is relying on an educated public. The thinking is that having an educated population has all sorts of tiny benefits, even if you don't say, need to find y-intercepts in your daily life.",
"When we're younger, our \"job\" is basically school, in the sense that we are learning different schools of thought (science, arts, literature, maths). We learn a little of everything so that we understand *how* to learn and apply different methods. These, I think, more than the actual knowledge of finding derivatives or slopes, are the skills that we'll take with us into the workplace. Plus, how are you ever going to find out what you want to do later on if you don't try a bit of everything first? \n\nOf course the schooling system isn't perfect, but most of the time it fulfills its purpose.",
"I firmly believe than any adult who never does more than counting is at a significant disadvantage in life because they have an aversion to math.",
"Children aren't going to take an interest in something without being exposed to it, and if they want to pursue a career in a particular field, they're going to need to know the basics cold pretty early on in their lives. We don't want a world where our aeronautical engineers are still struggling with 8th-grade word problems.\n\nYou could ask the same question about history or science. Most adults don't spend much of their lives rehashing the American Civil War or building models of the solar system. But if they don't at least learn those things, then they've foregone any opportunity that requires those fields of knowledge. What kind of world would it be if only, say, 5% of the population knew what the constitution was? Or knew what electrons were? Or knew a second language?\n\nToday, the only academic knowledge an adult _needs_ to get by is probably limited to: (1) _very_ basic arithmetic; (2) basic literacy in one language; (3) basic computer/phone skills; (4) how to tell time; and maybe (5) rudimentary personal health/hygiene knowledge. What would our world be like if those were the standards we set?\n\nSo we make kids graph parabolas. We make them read _Great Expectations_ (abridged, of course). We make them dissect frogs. They're not all going to be rocket scientists. They're not all going to be writers. They're not all going to be doctors. But if you cut off children's knowledge at the absolute floor of survival, that's all they'll know how to do.\n\nAs to your latter point, I don't know that I'd want to teach young children about the tax code _generally,_ but yeah, everyone should know how to file a 1040 by the time they're in the workforce. I think we could do a _lot_ more to teach kids more about financial responsibility. When I was in school, we learned how to balance a checkbook. For whatever reason, it seems that teaching kids about finances died along with the use of personal checks. It's sad because the lack of emphasis on this kind of everyday knowledge is causing (and has already caused) a pretty wide swath of institutional and practical illiteracy among the underadvantaged. My parents taught me about finance, taxes, etc., and I know full well that that's a privilege. That's an advantage a lot of people never had, and those people are often doomed to lives of payday loans and rented furniture. I think a semester or two of financial and civic basics would do a lot to remedy that.",
"Up through at least calc has an application in day to day life if you look for ways to apply it you'll be better off. Even if you're not using the direct calculations a general understanding of math will help you ballpark numbers and improve things like finances, time management, etc. Mathematics also teaches a logic based approach to problem solving that is objective which is extremely important especially in the professional world. Continuing to advance in mathematics helps keep this thought process active. \n\nOn a base level you could make this argument about any subject really. You can learn to communicate well enough verbally without schooling in English or your given language. History isn't all that applicable, I mean I know invading Russia in the winter is a bad idea but how does that help me? Music/art may improve my mood or help me think in a different way but I don't need it to survive and since When did reading Shakespeare help put food on most people's table? ",
"Not knowing something puts you at the mercy of the people who do know that thing. Being unable to find the y-intercept of a parabola isn't specifically important unless you're a bridge architect or a rocket scientist, but having an aversion to math puts you at the mercy of people who are either capable of it, or put it upon themselves to learn a difficult subject.\n\nOnce you allow someone to have that sort of power over you, where you have to rely on them for certain pieces of knowledge, your ability to operate independently is diminished. Now, not everyone can know everything, but the more you know the better off you are.",
"Mathematics is not to teach you a super specific equation that you will never use. Mathematics is to teach you to think logically. This is something that teachers themselves are mistaken on. We've become too obsessed with reaching a correct answer and not with the process of reasoning. This is why Common Core aims to change the curriculum and also why Common Core problems seem extremely odd at first: because the computation is apparent but the student has to do so much ancillary work.\n\nYour other question encompasses this as well: education is about becoming a well rounded person. In classical times you would not be considered educated if you had not studied Euclid's geometry, regardless of your discipline. It's a barrier of entry to the educated world.",
"You actually do a lot of \"advanced math\" in life, you just don't need to think about it.\n\nOne of the examples I use is estimation. Looking at an area and guessing about how many boxes of bricks, or tile you are going to need; comparing carpeting requirements of hall versus living room; deciding if you need more briquettes for tomorrow's barbecue...\n\nSo one of the things about learning an exact skill is that it teaches you how to _think_ about the related problems in a way that is less magic and more practical. It also teaches you to know when you need to stop guessing and fall back to expertese, your own or someone else's.\n\nIf you look up the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you'll understand that your really do need to teach people enough detail in any topic so that they know when they don't know the answers.\n\nSo education \"demystifies\" things.\n\nWe teach drawing and art (perspective, color, scale) to future business men (people who have no plans to like art) so that they know (a) it's a skill and (b) the basics of looking at sketches and plans so that they can know what they are looking at.\n\nWe teach advanced math to everyone for the reasons stated above, and so that conmen can't use math to confuse and beguile at the simplest levels.\n\nWe teach history to artists. We teach music to farmers.\n\nIn general the goal of a good education is to prepare people by giving them a halfway decent understanding of the tools in the box and when they might be of use.",
"Why do we study parabolas? Because they are the graphs of the simplest nonlinear functions.\n\nWhy do we study nonlinear functions? Because many real-life phenomena are described by nonlinear functions. For example, population growth, or the movement of an object that's accelerating (e.g. a vehicle, or a falling rock).\n\nWhy do we study *graphs* of nonlinear functions? Because graphs are an excellent way of visualizing the behavior of a function. For example, [here's a graph](_URL_0_) that illustrates the population of the city of Detroit as it varied over time.\n\nNotice that this doesn't look like the graph of a linear function. So a parabola would be more likely to be a useful model than a straight line would. Perhaps a slightly more complicated function would do an even better job.\n\nI know a lot of people see the word \"parabola\" and think something like \"How esoteric, why should I care about parabolas?\" But everything can be made to sound more obscure or less obscure depending on your tone and your word choice.\n\nInstead of saying \"parabola\", we could say \"curve that's not a straight line\" or \"function or quantity that behaves in a nonlinear way\". (But that's more wordy and less precise.) And instead of saying \"figure out where a curve crosses the y-axis or x-axis\", we could say \"figure out where a function has certain inputs or certain outputs\", which is a useful thing to do if you want to do anything even remotely quantitative.\n\nWe're not studying parabolas to give kids a hard time. We're studying parabolas because they're the simplest nonlinear functions, and we want kids to gain some knowledge of how nonlinear functions can behave.",
"What did you learn in school at her age that you *do* use as an adult?\n\nYou probably use more math than you realize, and sometimes in informal ways so it doesn't seem to originate from school in any direct sense. Is it worth replacing a faulty transmission for $X on a car that's only worth $Y? To even consider that question required, at some point, for you to realize that's a relevant and meaningful question, and it's not hard to see how some grade school word problem about payment plans for teddy bears could have contributed to that sense.\n\nIt's not that learning how to find where a parabola crosses the y-axis is going to be a question at a job interview, it's that learning how to do that builds problem-solving skills and confidence for a whole range of quantitative problems.\n\nImagine if your daughter asks why she has to read *To Kill a Mockingbird*. When is knowing that story ever useful as an adult? The answer is, it's not that that the story is useful so much as it's building up competency and confidence in reading anything that will actually be directly useful in the future.",
"The reason is nothing to do with the usefulness of math in helping solve problems in later adult life. Performance in math is the best predictor of performance in *any academic field*, nothing else comes close to its predictive capacity, which is why universities want to know how well people do in advanced math, in order to get the best preliminary filter from the pool of applicants.\n\n\nSecondary ELI5: Because school curriculum design has nearly everything to do with politics and interest groups, and nearly nothing to do with teaching virtue, wisdom or useful life skills. Individuals shouldn't have to file personal income tax returns anyway, the UK and New Zealand inland revenue handle it for their citizens using data collection, but I'm sure H & R Block knows where to direct political bribes to ensure that never happens in the US.",
"Taxes change, the math that described them does not.\n\nLots of different people use different math, and as math builds in layers, not having the lower layers means it takes time to develop those skills later if you need them. Teaching math past shopping math is keeping those options open.\n\nAlso, for civics and understanding the world, understanding things like growth rates is useful. This is not readily apparent as important, but then suddenly, people take out loans, and need to understand interest rates.",
"Everything you learned as a child helps you as an adult whether you consciously realize it or not. Just the basic foundation of problem solving is used on a daily basis. Even if you discount all that, most kids have no idea what they will need to know when they all grown up and shit is easier to learn when you are young.\n\nI don't have kids but if I did and they asked me this question, I'd tell them they are not the first ones to ask that question and that no one was ever hurt by learning something.\n\nAs far as schools teaching how to do taxes, we did have a class like that. It was called Survival for Singles and would teach you how to sew a button, use a washing machine, etc. Most schools don't have resources for those kind of things these days is my understanding.",
"Maths is the basic building block for everything. It makes up the sciences, for example (physics, chemistry, biology, computing). A lot of jobs will involve maths in one way or another, and being a startup founder I look for ability. Mathematical ability is one of the key things. Not because I need an expert in polynomial functions or something, but because of the skills it demonstrates.\n\nIt also teaches logical thinking, which is a basis in everything. Your subjects will teach you a lot. What you learn as a kid shapes your thinking for the rest of your life. Here is where I branch off the sciences, since I don't know if this is proven, but English I think teaches more subjectivity (and, also, I don't really need to know about Shakespeare either for my daily job). Maths teaches objectivity and logic. Neither is necessarily bad, but it's a different style of thinking. Students that were very good in English were always more subjective I noticed, and those in Maths and the sciences more objective. A certain type of person may be required in a certain role.\n\nBeing a child is the best time you learn something. You expose them to everything, they'll find an interest in something. If you just don't expose them to it, a kid doesn't know what they really want. A lot will think school is completely pointless.\n\nAs for the taxes question, I can't be completely sure on that. My accountant files my tax returns for me (even though I would consider myself as being more than mathematically capable). Taxes are just basic additions. I don't do it because my accountant knows more than me. All the Googling I have to do isn't worth my time. The same cost my time would've been worth is more expensive than just paying my accountant to do it, and I can be sure there won't be silly mistakes. I have to file a return because I'm a company director. The employees that work at my company don't file returns, for example (or at least, I don't think they do). Normally, unless you have a reason to file a return, I have to file PAYE returns and the taxman will ask me to deduct the tax for them and make it payable to them. For people that file their own returns (other countries, perhaps?) it might help to know more about filing taxes, but some tax codes are very complex. IRS tax code is very complex. No kid wants to learn that. I'd rather study Shakespeare again, if I was 15 years old or so.",
"The short answer is because the topics you're describing are not considered very advanced and are generally seen as simple to learn and understand, and they provide a strong foundation for working out problems in a lot of careers as well as solving problems like filing taxes.\n\nFirst, a bit of perspective. The mathematics you're describing is typically taught in an \"Algebra 2\" course in high school in the US. Conic sections like parabolas and ellipses are described and studied at this time because they make interesting cases for investigation immediately after learning a bit of geometry and allow students to apply algebraic concepts like factoring of polynomial equations to geometric ideas like planes and cones. The synthesis of these ideas is analytic geometry, an understanding of which makes possible an intuitive geometric understanding of calculus. \n\nEven calculus is not really \"advanced math\" in a sense, as the way it is typically taught involves memorizing formulas and methods but not much in the way of deduction and more mentally intensive manipulation that might be seen in more advanced mathematics classes like real analysis or abstract algebra. Classes up through calculus may be taught because they provide a broad but easy to learn and apply mathematical tool set to a wide range of students who may go on to need them. It is not possible to know in high school what a person might need much later in life, and the best time to learn is as early as possible. \n\nFiling taxes is a very narrow skill and schools are in the habit of teaching methods that may be applied to solve problems rather than how to solve specific problems. A person who has done a bit of math and can read well as well as learn independently is capable of learning how to do their taxes without external instruction.\n\nEdit: I think the conception of topics like elementary algebra and calculus as advanced arises from the fact that the mathematical content is taught abstracted away from practical problems and seems to be mathematics for its own sake. However, algebra and calculus courses typically also teach applications, which students often find even more difficult than the pure mathematics of the courses. \n\nThe mathematical curriculum is also incredibly outdated. It lacks a sufficient emphasis on elementary probability, statistics, and discrete math. Deduction is often not properly emphasized. The insistence on teaching math in strictly partitioned blocks of distinctly categorizable topics (like \"Algebra 2\") is partly responsible for this. The idea of accepting that struggling with math is not a bad thing or a good reason to give up is not properly emphasized. ",
"School is set up to prepare the people who actually make it to post-secondary to be successful at it. The system doesn't really care about people who just need to do basic counting in their daily lives. If everyone just learned the extreme basics in school, we would have a much less advanced world. To be honest, I wish that more complex concepts were taught at a young age than the current standard. \n\nCompared to what is out there, graphing parabolas is just the tip of the iceberg. There is far more math that is much more useful and interesting, but in order for people to understand it they must learn the basics. Granted, math is not something that everyone finds useful or even interesting, but the few people that do are much better off for learning it at a younger age, as is our society. Teaching these concepts also increases students' interests in the subject and lets them know it can take them somewhere career wise, as is the same in other classes like physics, biology, chemistry, etc. ",
"An educated society is better then an ignorant one? Seriously ask yourself these 2 questions always, if I don't do I gain or lose anything? If I do will I gain or lose anything? \n \nToo many people look at learning the way you do, what's the point, I'm never going to use this practically. Your brain is a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it becomes. In turn your general abilities advance. Problem solving, reflexes, observation. Learning something new never has a negative affect. Being uneducated never has a positive affect. ",
"A basic education is a wide foundation that can support more advanced study in any number of subjects by building on the more general knowledge a person learned in school. For instance, calculus may not be something many people will need to use in their jobs, but if they choose to study physics, astronomy, programming, and many other studies, it will come in handy. \n\nThe study and understanding of math is the basis for all of the STEM jobs that are in such high demand for qualified job candidates. Science, Technology, Engineering, Manufacturing, these are the fields that put a roof over your head, roads for you to drive on, water for you to drink, electricity for you to read Reddit, and satellites and computer networks for you to connect to others. \n\nMath is life, it describes nearly every aspect of your daily life, like a hidden code waiting for someone to look at it with different eyes and it can reveal a lot of truth. You can use mathematics to describe everything from how many miles per hour your car tire can handle before falling apart, all the way to how many people apply for a job you want and are rejected versus how many get it, how many of the people that got it, have a similar skill set as you, what skills do they have that the rejected candidates don't etc. \n\nBasically math is logic, and logic is something that we can try to teach, but it's kind of up to each person to either adapt to it and use it, or fail to grasp it and choose a career that doesn't need it. "
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bgpeza | in sci-fi movies, spaceships are shown with engines burning fuel in normal travel. would this be necessary? i thought spacecraft reached a max speed and then coasted since there is no gravity. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgpeza/eli5_in_scifi_movies_spaceships_are_shown_with/ | {
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"It really depends on the mechanism for moving the ship. If artificial gravity is never a thing, it might be prudent to maintain a 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration using a continuous burn for half the journey, then turn around and do the same thing to slow yourself down all in order to ensure that you have normal gravity-like force while on the ship to prevent things like muscle attrition over long journeys.",
"In order to hit a particular destination and maintain some gravity you'd have to accelerate for half the trip, and then flip and decelerate for the remaining half. \n\nIf you don't care about gravity then you could accelerate and float until you need to slow down.\n\nAlso, unless you want the wall to be the floor you'd have to build a ship like a building, where \"down\" would be in the direction of the thrust.\n\nSo basically movies don't care about physics of space flight.",
"If spacecraft wanted to go in a straight line forever, sure. But if you're dogfighting, you're constantly changing direction, which means you're constantly accelerating, which means your engines need to be running.",
"There is no max speed. The fastest way to get to your destination is to accelerate towards it for the first half of the trip, then flip around midway and spend the next half of the trip decelerating\n\nWe don't do that with our space probes because they're fuel limited not time limited. We shoot them off on a trajectory that'll get them where we want with minimal fuel then wait the few years it takes them to coast there.\n\nIf you had a rocket that could accelerate at 1 G and enough fuel to sustain it then you could travel from the Earth to Jupiter in just a week, and you'd have Earth standard gravity for the whole trip which is nice.",
"First, don't rely on works of fiction, especially sci-fi, to accurately portray reality. The point is to serve a plot or to look cool. There's often no attempt made to obey the laws of physics.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat being said in real life, it depends on the propulsion method and how fast. you want to get there. If you're using a conventional chemical rocket and you want to get to Mars in 6 months, you burn for a few minutes and coast the rest of way, save for any course correction burns. Chemical rockets impart a lot of thrust in a short amount of time, so that works.\n\nIf you're using any other kind of engine, like an ion thruster for example, or if you want to reach really high speeds (a significant fraction of the speed of light) or reach is very far away destination in a reasonable amount of time you need to accelerate for much longer. Ion thrusters for example are extremely fuel efficient, but they have very low thrust. That means to accelerate a spacecraft to the same velocity as a conventional rocket engine, you need to accelerate for weeks or even months to reach the same speed that a chemical rocket can achieve in just a few minutes. \n\nAnother common theme in sci-fi is traveling to other solar systems. In order to do is in a reasonable amount of time, you need to travel a significant fraction of the speed of light. For example, to reach Promixa Centauri (the closet star to our sun) in 10 years, you'd need to be traveling at over half the speed of light. You'd need to spend years accelerating to reach this speed. Then once you're halfway there, you need to decelerate the entire rest of the way so you don't just zoom past it."
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1m446z | why do some drugs / medications have varying effects by individual (ex. antacids, beta-blockers, anti-depressants) while others have a seemingly uniform effect (ex. general anesthesia)? | Although there are a handful of exceptions / bad reactions, the effect of general anesthesia (ex. propofol) will put a person 'to sleep'. Compare this to taking something like an antacid (ex. nexium, tecta) - these medications work for some but not for others (side effects aside). I'm sure there are better examples more closely related, but this seems the easiest to articulate.
Why do some have a definitive effect that is reproducible every time, while others are 'we'll start you on this, and if it doesn't help we'll work our way down the list'? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m446z/eli5_why_do_some_drugs_medications_have_varying/ | {
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"General anesthesia technically *does* work by \"we'll start you on this, and if it doesn't help we'll work our way down the list\". Remember, the administration of general anesthesia is monitored and altered as time progresses by a trained physician. It's not just one shot and bye-bye.\n\nIf you wanted to relate it to taking an antacid it would be like having a doctor sitting beside you for hours and telling you how much and when to take extra antacids to eventually hit at the core of your stomach pain.\n\nThat aside, I still see what you're getting at with your question and I think the answer is that we simply don't fully comprehend the complex systems of the human body yet. It all seems very simple when we're taught biology in high school but that's because they leave out all the complexities and individual nuances. No one really knows how general anesthetics work yet - at least in terms of their mechanism of action. We have the knowledge of *what?* and *how much?* but very little of the *why?*. The same goes for many other medications - anti-depressants for example.\n\nWhen it comes down to it, it's not the drug but the interaction between the drug and the body that creates the effect. The drugs typically have the same physical reaction in everyone (some exceptions of course) but the body is a vastly more complicated part of the equation, and every body is different - different metabolic rates, different hormonal and enzyme levels, different neurochemical concentrations, different temperatures, different ages, different medical conditions, different stress levels... the list goes on forever.",
"It all goes back to genetics. As humans, we all share 99.99% of DNA, but look at how different that percentage of a percentage point makes in us. Different skin colors, hair, eye color, etc. These are just major outwardly appearances. \n\nNow think of how different we are in the micro level. The proteins our bodies produce in both type and rate, enzymes, rate we metabolize anything. Since drugs directly react with our bodies at this level, any minor difference can create huge differences in what a particular drug will do to our body. Our lack of knowledge on how our genetics relate to our physical make up make it hard for us to make drugs...nay impossible to make drugs that will work on everyone.\n\nEventually, with better genetic information we can predict with better accuracy how each person will react to a specific drug and create drugs that are more targeted and more safe."
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2n17g5 | gibraltar, the whole reasoning behind the uk still having it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n17g5/eli5_gibraltar_the_whole_reasoning_behind_the_uk/ | {
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"[From wikipedia:](_URL_0_)\n\n > An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg pretender to the Spanish throne. The territory was subsequently ceded to Britain \"in perpetuity\" under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.\n\n...\n\n > Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty in a 1967 referendum and again in 2002. Under the Gibraltar constitution of 2006, Gibraltar governs its own affairs, though some powers, such as defence and foreign relations, remain the responsibility of the UK Government.\n\nSo basically Britain and the Netherlands jointly captured Gibraltar over 300 years ago (these things happened a lot back then), it was granted fully to Britain a decade later, and now the people of Gibraltar prefer the current arrangement to being ruled by Spain.",
"It's one one of the most strategic places on earth.",
"It would take a war for Spain to take it away. Spain and the UK are not going to fight a war over Gibraltar. So it won't be taken away from the UK.",
"The Spanish lost it 300 years ago, and have never been successful in trying to retake it, and has acknowledged its British ownership in multiple treaties. The UK doesnt need to justify or rationalize owning it, they have defended it, and enjoy the benefits of having it.\n\nSpain doesnt have any sort of \"claim\" on it."
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jor6z | why mcdonalds in europe sell beer, yet the ones in america and the uk don't? | As stated in title, please explain why european McDonalds can sell beers but McDonalds in countries like America and the UK can't/don't.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jor6z/eli5_why_mcdonalds_in_europe_sell_beer_yet_the/ | {
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"For those of you who've actually tried it, is the beer served at McDonalds any good? Or is it 'beer'? ",
"Different countries have different laws about selling alcohol. In some places, you can get alcohol at the supermarket and corner store, and in some places you can't. In some places, you're not allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays, and in some places you are.\n\nIn America, one law is that you have to be 18 to serve alcohol. McDonald's likes to hire lots of teenagers under 18 to work for them. There's another law that says you're not allowed to drink or even hold a glass of beer out on the street or in a park. Lots of people like to buy their food at McDonald's and take it out with them, but they wouldn't be able to do this with beer.\n\nAmerica has more strict laws about alcohol than lots of other countries, especially in Europe.",
"For those of you who've actually tried it, is the beer served at McDonalds any good? Or is it 'beer'? ",
"Different countries have different laws about selling alcohol. In some places, you can get alcohol at the supermarket and corner store, and in some places you can't. In some places, you're not allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays, and in some places you are.\n\nIn America, one law is that you have to be 18 to serve alcohol. McDonald's likes to hire lots of teenagers under 18 to work for them. There's another law that says you're not allowed to drink or even hold a glass of beer out on the street or in a park. Lots of people like to buy their food at McDonald's and take it out with them, but they wouldn't be able to do this with beer.\n\nAmerica has more strict laws about alcohol than lots of other countries, especially in Europe."
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8e2f9n | what makes kopi luwak (civet coffee) so coveted and special in asia? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8e2f9n/eli5what_makes_kopi_luwak_civet_coffee_so_coveted/ | {
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"Well because it's very rare and hard to produce and only available in very limited quantities, so it's a sought after commodity. Just like any other rare commodity.",
"There are two \"Kopi Luwak\" coffees. \n\nOne is harvested from the piles left behind when wild civet visit a coffee plantation. They naturally only eat the best, slightly over ripe cherries, which are naturally sweetest, and part of their digestive system destroys the flavoid responsible for the bitter taste in coffee, and removes some of the tannins. It's bright, sweet and not at all bitter, and fully worth $500 a pound.\n\nThe other kopi is why it's not drunk any more, because people found out about it, trapped and caged civets, and force feed them the cheapest coffee cherries they could find /steal. The coffee produced is terrible, over priced and supports criminals and animal cruelty. The quality and quantity they flooded the market with practically destroyed the market over night."
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jy8w2 | why i should vote in a presidential election (us) if i don't live in a swing state. | The common arguments I hear:
"They still hear your vote!"
"It is your duty and responsibility as an American citizen to vote!"
These aren't very convincing arguments.
With the way the electoral college system seems to go, my vote would only matter if I were to vote in the primaries. Why should I vote in the presidential election if my state is going to go a certain way anyways? Since it seems like the electoral system matters more than the popular vote, why should I bother voting - for either side - if my state is already decided? Is there any benefit? I hardly doubt that my one vote is going to make a great headway in influencing my state's electoral vote. Should I just suck it up and move to Ohio?
If this is inappropriate for this subreddit, I apologize. I am the last person to want to start some sort of political circlejerk. But I've lived in Massachusetts and in Alabama and felt my vote to be equally worthless in both. Does it actually impact anything? If either of these states had any sort of instability to them, then I could maybe see my vote having some sort of sway, but the way things are...does it, actually? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jy8w2/eli5_why_i_should_vote_in_a_presidential_election/ | {
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"Let's say you decide to not vote because you don't think it matters. In fact, you tell all your friends about it, and they agree. So now there's 10 people not voting. Now imagine how many other people like you don't feel like voting for one reason or another. Could there be 100? 1,000? A million?\n\nIf enough people choose not to vote, they are, in effect, voting for the side that DOES get more people to vote. Why do you think campaigns spend so much money on 'rock the vote' and such things? What if you took all those people who don't want to vote and got them to all vote together on the same side?",
"Imagine the one thing you ever desired in life is peanut-flavored bubble gum. One day, you're watching your favorite cartoon show, and there it is: Mr. Peanut blowing bubbles and talking about Nutty Bubble Bubble Gum! Your dreams have become a reality... but you keep putting off buying it. One year and not a single purchase later, your gum is taken off the market due to lack of popularity. You and every other peanut enthusiast is crestfallen... even though none of you bought the product.\n\nThis concept is Marketing 101: popular products survive, unpopular products fail. However, the same mentality exists in voting; just replace products with voting issues. When you vote, even if you know it won't change anything, you're opinion is placed in a statistic; politicians now know there is one more 24 year old internet savvy voter who leans liberal (or whatever your beliefs are). If enough people within your demographic voice their opinion, politicians will begin to understand they can pander to this demographic and gain votes.\n\nOne real life example: ever wonder why young adults always seem to get screwed, while retirees get a ton of benefits from the government? Oftentimes, this can be attributed to low voter turnout among young people, but astronomically high turnout for old people (reason for the high turnout: mostly boredom; young people have better things to do than go to the polls).",
"Let's say you decide to not vote because you don't think it matters. In fact, you tell all your friends about it, and they agree. So now there's 10 people not voting. Now imagine how many other people like you don't feel like voting for one reason or another. Could there be 100? 1,000? A million?\n\nIf enough people choose not to vote, they are, in effect, voting for the side that DOES get more people to vote. Why do you think campaigns spend so much money on 'rock the vote' and such things? What if you took all those people who don't want to vote and got them to all vote together on the same side?",
"Imagine the one thing you ever desired in life is peanut-flavored bubble gum. One day, you're watching your favorite cartoon show, and there it is: Mr. Peanut blowing bubbles and talking about Nutty Bubble Bubble Gum! Your dreams have become a reality... but you keep putting off buying it. One year and not a single purchase later, your gum is taken off the market due to lack of popularity. You and every other peanut enthusiast is crestfallen... even though none of you bought the product.\n\nThis concept is Marketing 101: popular products survive, unpopular products fail. However, the same mentality exists in voting; just replace products with voting issues. When you vote, even if you know it won't change anything, you're opinion is placed in a statistic; politicians now know there is one more 24 year old internet savvy voter who leans liberal (or whatever your beliefs are). If enough people within your demographic voice their opinion, politicians will begin to understand they can pander to this demographic and gain votes.\n\nOne real life example: ever wonder why young adults always seem to get screwed, while retirees get a ton of benefits from the government? Oftentimes, this can be attributed to low voter turnout among young people, but astronomically high turnout for old people (reason for the high turnout: mostly boredom; young people have better things to do than go to the polls)."
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9ayzab | if antibacterial products like lysol and listerine kill 99.9% of bacteria they come into contact with, are we not creating a strain of immune superbacteria descended from the 0.1% that survive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ayzab/eli5_if_antibacterial_products_like_lysol_and/ | {
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"Not typically. Most of these products are not like antibiotics which target incredibly specific weaknesses in the strains they're designed to treat. That's why bacteria have a tendency to become resistant and immune to them. There's a selective pressure for bacteria with mutations to not have these weaknesses or produce something that protects them from the antibiotic.\n\nThe chemicals (isopropyl alcohol in particular is a cheap and effective one that definately still sees a lot of use) are very bad for life in general. They attack or disrupt cell activities in numerous different ways that are very difficult to adapt to. Perhaps some extremophiles can survive certain sterilization agents, but even if a bacterium can survive once by luck of the draw, it would take many, many, many more generations of very lucky strains adapting very quickly to come close to something like resistance.\n\nAt least, that's my basic understanding of it. Perhaps someone can elaborate on this with more details.",
"If you shoot a bunch of humans in the head there's a slight chance a few of them survive, but that doesn't necessarily mean they or their kids are immune to being shot.\n\nThere's a few things at play here:\n\n * The survivors might have been lucky or protected by others\n * The ability to be immune to bullets is not an easy development\n * Even if you did end up being bulletproof the cost of that ability would make you worse at reproduction, so you'd do poorly in a 'rare bullet' environment and your bulletproof-ness would die with you."
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1q5qrm | what does a rorschach test indicate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q5qrm/eli5_what_does_a_rorschach_test_indicate/ | {
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"The idea is that, if you consistently see something, it shows a preoccupation. If someone always sees something sexual, then it suggests they have some sort of unconscious preoccupation with sex that isn't normal. Ditto for violence, food, whatever. It's a way for psychologists to interpret unconscious desires without reporting bias.\n\nWhether it works or not is a different argument altogether.",
"one of the classic \"readings\" that the Rorschach test is used for is to determine psychopathy. The theory is that normal people will interpret the ink blots as only vague suggestions of things with no backstroy, but that a psychopath will interpret inkblots as extremely specific things with a highly detailed backstory.\n\nNormal: \"kinda looks like a dog\"\n\nPsycho: \"that looks like the french poodle that lived next to my grandmother's house when I was 7. its in a bad mood today though, because it was scolded for tearing up the furniture\"\n\nthe psychotic interpretation is clearly adding a large amount of imagined details that are not at all present in the inkblot itself. \n\nanyway, its not really a rigorously proved theory, but that was one of the historic uses for the test."
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24c3e9 | how does dark matter fit into string theory? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24c3e9/eli5_how_does_dark_matter_fit_into_string_theory/ | {
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"This question is approaching concepts that are VERY hard to understand. They are insanely complicated and are impossible to just explain in one comment so I will have to make it somewhat simpler. I'd like to apologize if I made any mistakes in this explanation.\n\n \n\nWe need to understand what both String Theory and Dark Matter are.\n\nString Theory is the attempt to model an all encompassing system for the four fundamental interactions (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force). These fundamental forces are the ways how everything in nature affect each other. \n\nDark Matter is a type of matter *speculated* of being the biggest part of the universe. On Earth we can predict the interaction between objects (fundamental powers), but in space objects tend to act differently. We don't know why this exactly is, but we assume that Dark Matter is the culprit. So we use Dark Matter in equations to fix the problem of objects behaving differently in space. However, Dark Matter does not emit light, absorb light or energy or any other type of radiation and it therefore cannot be seen by any equipment we have. So in a sense Dark Matter is also a theory.\n\nNow, why is it important for String Theory? Since String Theory wants to create a model for all interactions between all the types of matter, Dark Matter is also part of this model. String theorists need Dark Matter to make it work, although both fields are highly theoretical and hypothetical.\n\nAs I said before: this concept is very difficult to understand or explain, but I hope this gives you some insight on it :)\n"
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fqhkps | why is it that when we’re on something very high, we tend to lose our balance, however, when standing on the same surface close to the ground, we’re absolutely fine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqhkps/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_were_on_something_very/ | {
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"Visual depth perception on higher spots messes with our sense of balance. The contrast between distances (eyes to where we're in contact with a surface under us vs. eyes to way down where we could fall) can throw off our coordination and make us move a bit more clumsily. That's one of the reasons \"*don't look down*\" is commonly said (look forward instead).",
"Balance is mediated by several systems in our body. We have sensors in our joints that tell our brain where our limbs are relative to the body. The vestibule in our inner ear also tells our brain where your head is. And finally visual input helps your brain complete the picture of where everything is in space, helping you keep balance. A simple way to prove this is to try and maintain your balance on one foot and then close your eyes. You'll find it is much more difficult. By being high off the ground your visual input conflicts with the sensory input from your feet making you lose your balance.",
"Your brain uses your eyes to help you not fall down. If you lean too far to the front or the back or the side, you fall down. Your brain measures how far away things are using a triangle. It uses the triangle to know how far you are leaning toward the ground. One side of the triangle is the line between one eye and the other. The other sides of the triangle are lines from each eye to the thing you are looking at. Look at a place on the ground and imagine the triangle between your eyes and that place on the ground. Lean forward like you are going to fall. Imagine the long lines of the triangle getting shorter. When they get shorter, your eyes have to point more in. Your brain measures this, and it knows that your eyes are closer to the place you are looking at. It can tell that the distance has changed. It knows that you are closer to the ground and farther forward. But if you look at something really, really far away. The long lines of the triangle are really really really long. Your eyes aren´t looking forward and in, they are basically just looking forward, and the difference between something that is kind of really far away and something that is really really far away is too small for your brain to measure. It still feels like you are just looking forward the whole time. You can see this in the mirror. Go to the mirror with a friend. Have a friend hold his finger out in front of him and look hard at it. Then have him move his finger closer and closer until it is touching his nose, looking really hard at just his finger the whole time. Watch his eyes in the mirror look more and more in as his finger gets closer. Imagine the triangle his brain is using to measure how far away his finger is from his eyes change as he is moving it. Now, have him stand as far away from the mirror as he can. You stand near the mirror. Have him watch you move your finger as close to the mirror as you can and as far as you can, without taking a step. Watch his eyes in the mirror. You will see they don´t have to look in at all to watch your finger. Since his eyes don´t go in, his brain can´t measure how far your finger is from his face as well. If you tried this standing really far away, his brain would only be able to measure that your finger was really far away. It wouldn´t know if it was 1000 feet away or 1010 feet away. That´s why, when the ground is 1000 feet away, your brain can´t use it to know where your head is or if you are leaning too far over and will fall. You have to use your balance instead, or look at something closer to you. That´s why you should practice balancing with your eyes closed every day, so that your brain can learn to use your balance when your eyes are not helpful.",
"Two reasons - poor/unfamiliar perspective, and a natural protective fear mechanism to make you think twice about putting yourself in danger.",
"It's your eyes\n\nYour brain gets extremely confused as it has to process all the ground, try to level out, and sees missing areas in close vicinity to your legs, which have to move in a very coordinated fashion in a level manner to work safely and effectively\n\nThen that gets shipped to other parts of your brain that maintain balance and the cerebellum does the best it can with the garbage data your occipital lobe is working with",
"In addition to the perspective comments from a lot of people, I would suggest there is an element similar to stage fright. When you walk up to get an award suddenly you are clumsy and feel like you dont even know how to walk. That's because you're doing it consciously, when walking is normally subconscious. So a part of your brain that doesn't really know how to walk is taking over from the part that does. I think you probably do the same thing when you're afraid of falling. Your brain knows how to balance, but when it has too much of your attention you end up balancing consciously, and your conscious brain doesn't know how to do it as well."
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200del | why was nixon impeached for wiretapping, but the nsa revelations have not led to serious impeachment calls for obama and everyone else complicit in this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/200del/eli5_why_was_nixon_impeached_for_wiretapping_but/ | {
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"Just one semantic thing to clear up: Nixon wasn't actually impeached, he resigned when it seemed like impeachment was inevitable.\n\nI have thought about this topic, and what I believe is that it's because Watergate was done strictly for political gain. With the NSA scandal, it's supposedly being done to further national security.",
"He wasn't impeached, he resigned. He was going to be impeached not for wiretapping necessarily, but for ordering illegal acts and covering them up. \n\nThe NSA has not committed any crime, or at least charges have not been brought against anyone by the US Attorney's office. What they did was perfectly legal, because the law they did it under hasn't been ruled unconstitutional. If, and only if their activities are determined criminal by the courts can charges be brought against them. In that case, it wouldn't just be Obama up for impeachment but every member of Congress who passed the acts that allowed them to do so, which won't happen. ",
"Because the NSA was formed in 1952. It was given more power and strength under the USA PATRIOT Act, signed in 2001. So if you're asking for everyone complicit, then maybe you should ask why there weren't calls for impeachment against Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Jr. & Sr., and Clinton as well. In fact, with our next inauguration, let's just have a simultaneous impeachment proceeding just to save money. \n\nIf people are really upset about the NSA and its inappropriate practices, they should start calling for investigation into the NSA and disempowerment. Using it as a political tool to question whoever's currently in power is kind of silly and pointless. "
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b6izw7 | how do we know that life can form only on a planet like earth? how do we know that species cannot exist on other planets that don't need water and oxigen but other elements? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6izw7/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_life_can_form_only_on_a/ | {
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"I'm no scientist, but i believe that we don't, we just know this is the only way carbon based life forms exist. As soon as we see evidence of non-carbon based lifeforms, our whole mission will change.",
"Not at all a scientist, nor do I have extensive knowledge on this subject, but...\n\n\nI think no matter what subject matter experts say regarding this, the real answer to your question would be: we don't.\n\n\nScience is based on observation of things that occur around us and is therefore inherently skewed towards what our \"normal\" is. Some lifeform on some distant planet (maybe even a planet nearby) may have adapted to living in an environment that modern science says should be entirely impossible to live in. Think of it in terms of how science has changed over time. Some scientist way in the past posed some variation of the question \"How do fish survive in water when humans cannot?\" Of course the answer to this was 'simple' - gills allow them to get oxygen out of the water around them. Progress to current times, the study of all the various organisms we have encountered leads us to believe everything requires oxygen in some shape or form.\n\n\nWhat if the answer were more complicated...fish survive in water because they 'breathe' h2o in its entirety, not just the oxygen they filter out. It's not the truth of the matter but the possibility does exist for something to survive in a way completely different from anything we've seen and thus, anything science has confirmed so far.\n\n\nedit: typo",
"We don't know that, absolutely. We haven't visited any places that have life that's not like life on Earth. From our experience on Earth, we believe that life requires certain things: carbon, oxygen, water, a certain amount of energy (and lots of other things, too, of course). \n\nWe also know that for life to thrive there can't be too much or too little of any of those things. For example, life can't work when there's too much energy or not enough energy. That limits life-bearing planets to a particular zone around their star. So there's probably no life on Mercury or Neptune. Mars may have had some form of life, but now it's probably too cold and doesn't have enough oxygen.\n\nPeople have speculated that life might form using elements that are similar to the elements which we require for life as we know it. The element they seem to focus on the most is silicon, which lies right next to oxygen in the Periodic Table, and in the same column (so silicon has some of the same qualities as oxygen).\n\nAnother question to ask is: If we find a place that has life which isn't based on carbon, oxygen, water, etc.... would we even recognize it as life?",
"The most common elements in the universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon. Helium is fairly inert and likes to just stick to itself, but hydrogen, oxygen and carbon love to hang out together and form complex compounds.\n\nOxygen in particular is important, as it is very highly reactive. This means that it can be used in \"useful\" ways - it's why it's the basis of our respiratory systems. However, there is a lot of life on earth which does not need or use oxygen (some of which is in fact *killed* by oxygen).\n\nCarbon is important as well - it forms nice stable bonds, and can create long chains of carbon-on-carbon. It allows for larger structures and complexity.\n\nWater represents an abundant source of oxygen, which would make life much more likely due to the energy made available by its reactive nature. Water also represents a liquid environment - it's much easier for chemicals to mix and bind together in interesting ways in a liquid.\n\nWhile it's possible that life could develop outside of a liquid; without oxygen to drive chemical reactions; without carbon to build large structures... all of these are both seen as *very helpful* in developing life, and *extreme common in the universe*. Life could develop in different chemical circumstances, but Earth-like conditions are our best bet.",
"Anything is possible, and there very well could be zumonium based life forms somewhere...\n\nBut-\n\nWe **do** know about carbon based life forms, and what they require for life. And so when scientists talk about the Goldilocks region of space around a star at a certain distance and with certain requirements, they're talking about life forms similar to earthlings/humans. We know carbon based life forms exist in a certain region around a star, so that's where we look."
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1v99rd | i have the flu. why do i think i am freezing and why can't i stop shivering even though i am running a very high temperature? | I am literally sat on top of the radiator under two blankets, but I am sure I am freezing! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v99rd/eli5_i_have_the_flu_why_do_i_think_i_am_freezing/ | {
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"You have an internal thermostat in your brain which basically gets set to a higher point when you are ill, because elevated temperatures can stimulate your immune system. When this happens, it basically tricks your body into thinking it is colder than it is, so that you shiver as shivering is a significant way to increase internal temperature. ",
"I always thought of it as that if my body temp is higher it makes everything else seem colder. I'm not educated in this and that's just my brains reasoning. "
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3ztri3 | in america why do they (still, to this day) administer 'field sobriety tests' when in australia they have always been completely unnecessary? | Because: instantaneous, scientific breath analysis technology that has been around for at least 30 years | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ztri3/eli5in_america_why_do_they_still_to_this_day/ | {
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"We use breathalyzers. And blood testing. We have for a long, long time. They make you walk the line and do other tests to see your level of impairment. This will be a part of the case against you, normally. \n",
"Breath analysis criminalizes drinking, not actually driving dangerously. A field sobriety test can give a better indication if they are actually impaired. It's like the difference between correlation and causation. Drinking and accidents are correlated, but so are a lot of things, and drinking doesn't mean you are necessarily driving dangerously or are impaired.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nNot sure if this is the actual reason but it's certainly a compelling one.",
"police need certain levels of proof to do different things. Before they can pull someone over they need reasonable suspicion to believe an offense has been or is being committed. Before they can arrest you they need probable cause to be believe that you specifically have committed an offense. Forcing someone to go take a breathalyzer is an arrest because an officer has to take them to the station. Thus an officer needs probable cause to believe you are driving imapried. Field sobriety test establish this probable cause. (note:portable breath machines are not admissible in court as evidence, at least not in my state, because they have not been proven accurate enough) \n\nSource: sat through and helped with a dozen of these trials. \n",
"Portable breath tests are unreliable and inadmissible in court because they're not calibrated and vary widely in results. Certified chemical breath tests are accurate but not portable so you have to go the the station to take the test. \n\nBut why should you? I mean, a cop can't just stop you and smell booze and then decide to leave your Car on the side of the road and drive you off to his station right? Seems like a violation of your rights. What if you just had a single beer? Seems fucked up. \n\nSo they do SFTS. Standardized field sobriety tests. Standardized is the key word. Years and years of research and science go into how to conduct the tests, the order of the tests, etc. I won't go into detail because this is ELI5, but these tests are (arguably) reliable and give an officer an idea of whether you're actually intoxicated. If you are, THEN you go take the breath test. \n\nWe have different bodies. Different bodies handle alcohol differently. So five beers to me might get me way drinker than five beers to an alcoholic. So testing levels of impairment is important. ",
"Breathalyzer determines alcohol usage, while a field sobriety test may indicate other types of narcotic usage.",
"To add on to what everyone else has said, depending on the officer, the area you live in, your attitude, and probably countless other factors, it's possible that a police officer won't arrest you if the breathalyzer states that you're over the limit (within reason) but you pass the field sobriety test, and will instead just have you call someone to pick you up."
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32o0qa | why does tesla need political "permission" to sell in certain states? isn't usa a free market? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32o0qa/eli5why_does_tesla_need_political_permission_to/ | {
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"There are regulations. It is (arguably) a free market in the sense that competition is encouraged and the barriers into the market are kept low (\"level\" playing field), but it is not a free-for-all in the sense that there are no rules. States can decide on rules regarding the sale of certain items, such as cars, in their state, and require that they be sold through dealers, for example.\n\nEdit: I am personally someone who would argue *against* it being a true \"free market\", both in the pure sense of the term and the commonly-used form. I *do* believe that states have the right to reasonably regulate commerce in order to maintain fairness and incentivize certain economic behaviors that serve the public good, but I do *not* think that the dealership requirement for car sales serves that purpose. My main point was, the US operates under some of the principles of free markets, but that does not mean that we are (or should be) free from economic regulations.",
"Mostly because they refuse to open dealerships, and some states have laws to protect the middleman. Gotta protect jobs after all. ",
"Here's a great write up on the topic from Elong Musk himself. Note, this is about a year old, and Tesla will be opening their first showroom here in NJ soon\n_URL_0_\nPlease give it a read, it is a great explanation.\n\nThe laws are dated, but they do already exist. The legislative process still must be followed, Tesla doesn't just get a free pass on the law because they make a cool product.",
"If America was a free-market, libertarians would not exist.",
"The United States is not a free market. Nor, arguably, should it be. A free market allows for open exchanges with no restrictions between consenting parties.\n\nIn the United States, we implement laws and regulations to control and monitor such transactions and to protect people, such as making sure rat poison isn't in your food. After all, you don't have the time or means to test the products you purchase for every possible risk.\n\nWhere this gets dangerous is when laws and regulations are created \"in the public interest\" but also beneficial to certain parties. Car dealers and beer distributors are great examples of these where laws have been passed to add a middle man between the producer and the end purchaser, ostensibly to protect the consumer. In today's world, it could be easily argued that these third parties are not required. But they will continue to argue their case as their existence and income depends on it.\n\nSo what we end up with is a collusionist market where corporations, unions, and other organizations spend money to lobby for the adoption of these laws and regulations. While it is good because it helps develop protections that may not exist otherwise, when the income and existence of the lobbyists and of the politicians and regulators being compensated (through payments, campaign funds, re-election, positions of power, etc.) takes precedence over the safety of the consumer, things go south.\n\nUnfortunately, in Tesla's case, many of those without a dog in this fight agree with Tesla that consumer protection has taken a back seat to dealership / political collusion. I would tend to agree. But getting over that hurdle isn't easy due to the power and wealth wielded by those alliances.",
"_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR: in the past, the big auto companies sometimes strong-armed their dealers into ruinous contracts. The dealers formed a lobby to protect themselves against this. One of the things they lobbied for (long ago) is to not allow auto makers to sell directly to consumers.",
"Political interests and lobbying. This isn't what the auto industry wants. You have to understand that, especially in the used market, the mark up on cars is exponential. Forfeitures, asset seizures, and trade-in's allow for the big mark ups in the auto industry. So when you bring Tesla in to the market, there is no dealerships. You don't have \"Bob's Auto Dealership\" selling brand new cars all the way down to used vehicles, you have Tesla. They don't sell cars to dealerships, they just open up dealerships of their own. Allows for higher profit margins, and makes existing dealerships, and other automotive car manufacturers that have established contracts with dealerships, butt hurt. That's where lobbying and people that have political interests in the automotive industry to step in and push Tesla Motor dealerships out in certain states. I'll add that this could be put way better, but I didn't see many other posts.",
"It isn't arguable - there are no free markets in the US; least of which is the market for automobiles. That is one of the markets with the most regulations. \n\nYou pretty much hit it on the head - it is because of corruption. Those who own car dealerships are incredibly rich and contribute heavily to politicians. Thus, manufacturers directly selling to consumers is prohibited as another barrier to entry so that the big car makers and dealerships can maintain their market. \n\nThis is one of the more obvious cases, but milk, water, oil, bread, on and on, all markets are regulated - there are no free markets in the US. That's why we have such horrific misallocation and such a slow recovery to the regulation-caused recession. ",
"No, USA is not a free market. Republicans like to sell it as such, but only when it benefits them does it actually strive towards such \"freedom.\"",
"Quite obviously, it's not a free market. And yes, it's all about bribes and political connections and benefiting at the masses' expense.\n\nA _free_ market is one where no one _intervenes_ in you selling your cars (or anything else). Unfortunately, we live in a world with no free markets at all.\n\n",
" > Isn't USA a free market?\n\nHahahahahaha. Needed a laugh.",
"From the sidebar:\n\n > Search before submitting with keywords from your topic. The search box is in the upper right corner of the subreddit.\n\n[This question has been asked several times.](_URL_0_)",
"No if it was a free market Tesla would not exist. While I think tesla should be able to sell in all states it also should have to play by the same rules as every other car company. Currently all other car companies have to pay tesla for \"carbon credits\" just to do business in California. So Elon is about as hypocritical as it gets. ",
"It goes back to an old ruling saying that a car company cant own the dealership that they sell and service your car at. \nThere were problems with price fixing and price gouging in the past that caused this. Also price slashing in some neighborhoods to put the little guys out of business.\n\nYou'll also notice that movie companies no longer own the movie theaters that play the movies. In the past the movie companies would own the theaters and were able to keep competitors movies out of the theaters if they didnt pay a kings ransom or buy a theater. \nThe public likes movies and didnt like that.",
"Planet Money answered this question in the most understandable way one could do in 16 minutes back in Feb. 2013: _URL_0_",
" > Isn't USA a free market?\n\nNo. Hell no. No, no, no. That's a lie. And a very popular [strawman](_URL_0_).",
"No, the US isn't a free market. If it was, you would be able to legally sell drugs, slaves, and automatic weapons.",
"The USA a \"free market\"? Don't make me laugh. Everything available to consumers is either regulated, manipulated, subsidized, restricted, or banned.",
"The only actual free market in the US is the black market, aka illegal trade. Everything else is regulated, and not free. Some markets encourage competition more than others, but they are not *free*.",
"Years ago many states set up laws preventing auto manufactures from selling direct in those states. The reasons were:\n\n-They wanted to avoid a situation where a local business (dealer) invested in a building (taxes), people (jobs), and inventory (cars) from having to compete with direct sales. If you had spent years building a dealership for Dodge and one day Dodge came in and sold direct by undercutting you, everyone would lose. Less jobs, less local tax revenues, and just unfair to local businesses that invested.\n\n-Honestly, having dealerships protects the consumer (hear me out). Odds are you know the name of / can meet the owner of a dealership you are doing business to. They are a local establishment, and believe it or not want to keep you happy so you tell your friends. They are your agent in the transaction. Yes, they are there to make money, but they also want you happy. An example would be the service writer going to bat for you to have a warranty item covered. the dealer makes money on the repair whether you pay or Dodge pays. They would rather Dodge pays and you are happy ant tell your friends. \n\nNow, this model is still competitive and free because...I don't have to go to dealer A. I can go ten minutes across town and go to dealer B if I don't like the price and service at dealer A. This system is still competitive, but protects dealers (and to a certain degree) protects customers. \n\nWhat upsets me about all this Tesla noise (and it is noise, they are not focusing on the reason for the rules, just that they are somehow unfair to them) is....WHY DOESN'T TESLA JUST GET A DEALERSHIP! They are complaining that there is an unfair playing field because they have to play by the same rules as other dealers? That's crap. IN every state they are complaining about there are 100 dealers that would gladly sell their product and build dealerships to the Tesla specifications. \n\nSo why doesn't Tesla do this? Two reasons: Control (the main reason), and Greed (probably secondary in this case). \n\n-Control allows them to keep all the variables to them selves. I go back to the example of a dealer service department going to bat for a customer in a warranty situation. That service writer might say something like \"Ford didn't want to cover that under warranty, but we got them to cover this repair Mr. Smith\". In that equation Ford now has a black eye. Tesla doesn't want their image to be in control of others. \n\n-Tesla also wants to control the cars. Should their be a failure they want to be the only one have the tools and software to fix these cars. This went to the supreme court years ago and it was decided for competition software and specialized tools needed to be available to consumers through dealers. No dealers? No need to comply, and no way for a consumer to have any other service option other than the manufacturer. \n\n-As to greed: Everyone wants to think Tesla is \"special\" company doing things because they are right. That may be part of the case, but it is a business. If they have dealers it may come out that they may 15% on a car, where as the rest of the industry makes about 3%. (and I am guessing at those numbers). That shows their greed, and hurts their image. \n\nHave you seen this model before? Yes, it is Apple's distribution model. \n\n ",
"No one in this thread seems to understand the dealership model. A few posted about monopolistic practices engaged by automakers but that's only a small plank as to why they exist.\n\nDealerships exist specifically to prevent Tesla from doing what they're doing. Tesla is creating a vehicle that is entirely nonstandard and no mechanic can fix. What happens when your Tesla breaks down and nearest service center is 400 miles away? \n\nWhat happens to your cars if Tesla goes out of business? (Hint they all die and no one can get parts for them and/or service them)\n\nDealers were created when cars were a new technology because makers came up with vehicles that no one could get parts for and no one could service then go out of business. **Dealerships protect the consumer.**\n\nI'm not opposed to Tesla selling direct but they need to solve the problem of no service center within 400 miles and put up a bond maybe a billion dollars to ensure parts will exist for the car should Tesla go bankrupt.",
"HAHAHAH no. There are countless manipulations in the american market. \"Free market\" is a completely nonsense propaganda term. Monopolies and trusts are contrary to free markets, yet we have colluding duopolies(trusts) in all kinds of industries. \n\nArbitrary government restrictions exist to benefit industries whose lobbying organizations contribute to the correct cross section of politicians.",
"Not sure why, but it seems most of the comments are simply mocking the idea that the US is a free market and not really addressing the actual question. Tesla cannot sell their cars direct to consumers in certain states due to the car dealership lobbyists. There are laws in place that you cannot sell above a certain number of cars direct to consumer in certain states. Tesla is able to get around this law by simply not selling too many cars. These laws are largely antiquated laws that these lobbyists fights tooth and nail to keep alive. They use the excuse that this would eliminate a lot of jobs and they help to protect consumers when in reality they only add to the cost of a new car.",
"**America, the land of the free, where you can't even gamble online or buy an electric car**",
"The free market is kind of like Santa- it's a happy lie people tell, because it feels good.\n\nIn a free market, there aren't many rules. If a business makes customers happier than other businesses, they make more money. If they don't make customers happy, they lose money. But since they're competing, it's kind of like a game, or sports, and they want to win however they can.\n\nIf a person or company gets enough money, they might find the best way to win is to change the rules. If they make it so that all the other players have a handicap, its easier to win. Sometimes, they can make sure there aren't any other players at all! The market isn't free anymore, but the winner doesn't care; why should they?They already won! \n\nSometimes, a bunch of people or small businesses will get together, and try to change the rules themselves. Sometimes it's good for their customers, and sometimes it's bad; and sometimes, it starts as one and changes to the other.\n\nYears ago, the people who sold cars got upset with the people who made cars. The people who made cars changed the rules for people who sold cars, and the sellers were afraid they'd lose. So the sellers got together, and they changed the rules themselves- car makers had to use car sellers, and they had to treat them well.\n\nNow, Tesla wants to make AND sell cars. This upsets the car sellers, but since they changed the rules a long time ago, it's hard for Tesla to bypass them. Tesla can try to change the rules, but that's hard to do- they'd need a lot of money or a lot of people. \n\nIn a nutshell, the market stopped being free as soon as the players started changing the rules, and if Tesla wants to sell direct, they have to change the rules too.",
"The U.S. a free market? I bet you still think your vote counts too",
"The US is not a free market.\n\nThat's about as simple an answer as you can get.\nWe can debate the merits of whether this is a good or bad thing forever, but it's simple factual to say the US (or most places on Earth) cannot be considered a free market.\n\nSome places have a freer market than other. \nSome sectors are more free market than others. Like the tech sector is probably more free market than the healthcare sector.\n\nAnd rarely is it as simply as lobbyist and bribery. Generally laws are there for a reason. Everyone has an interest or a reason. Sometimes that reason is tainted by money and bribery.\n\nIn this case, the law was created when it small car dealers feared being overrun by big business car companies. So laws were passed to help the little guy. Again, not saying it is right or wrong, just that there is a reason.\n",
"Personal anecdote:\n\nAll office buildings around the Texas capital are occupied by lobby groups, I happened to be pulling security in one of the buildings that housed the Texas Automobile Dealership Association. I remember one day being stopped by the **cleaning lady** to be complained to about Tesla trying to go wholesale.\n\nThey're really up-in-arms about this shit.",
"Our governor here in West Virginia banned Tesla because he has several close friends who are auto dealers. No matter that our state's economy needs any and all help that it can get. This sort of thing is exactly why WV is last or near it in every US economic and educational ranking. Good ol' boy network ftw, I guess.",
"America bears no resemblance to a free market.",
"No. The united states is not a 'free market' in a general sense, and i dont think there are any particular 'free markets' anywhere, especially not the automobile industry. The idea that the U.S. is a free market is just a common misconception because so long as the state(Government) intervenes in the market in any way, it is not free. Wal-mart is not a part of the free market, because they depend on the state's welfare programs to keep their workers happy(fed) and prevent a high turnover rate/nobody working there because they dont pay a living wage. The market for cigarettes are not free, because the tobacco industry is heavily restricted and tobacco products face extraordinarily high taxes.\n\nAnd the market for automobiles isn't free, because electric car manufacturers get special breaks, and they also get told they can't sell in certain places.",
"This is because Teslas business model avoids car dealerships. Dealers are upset because they can not sell teslas at a higher mark up. The price is flat. You buy a tesla is cost the same to a dealer as to the consumer. Some dealers feel this is hurting them when tesla is in the neighborhood because they can not offer the same product. Look into the paypal business model and the fears it caused. People are afriad Tesla will hurt them in the pocket. Its all about money. \n",
" > Isn't USA a free market? \n\n_URL_0_",
"Usa, free market?? How funny !",
"Tesla doesn't need permission to sell in any state. They just don't want to use dealers.",
"If anyone thinks USA is a free market, that is laughable.\n\nFree market for monopolies!",
"Because when government gets large, it gets influence by private companies, who get the now powerful large government to act on behalf of the large corporations.\n\nYay, strong regulatory environment!",
"I think the most salient point to take away here is that in no way does the USA have a free market. Do not believe the propaganda pushed by politicians and their media outlets that claim the contrary.",
"It is not a free market. Federal and state governments are able to make many rules (regulations) for the 'greater good' that are in direct opposition with the greater good. \nPeople vote others into power to fix problems for themselves, like for example dealership regulations were put in place to protect jobs. No one would ever have a problem with protecting jobs right? \nWell. In fact we might. \nBig government is a giant sledgehammer trying to tap little dings out of a fender. Unintended consequences are rampant and awful, as is corruption.",
"The word \"free\" in a \"Free Market\" means that there is no government intervention at all. This is different than a regular \"market\" economy, which includes some govt intervention.\n\nThe USA is not, and has never been, a free market.",
"It is if you consider crony capitalism a free market...",
"I didn't come across this answer in the comments. But this is the real reason. My dad is a lobbyist for the auto industry, so I asked him. The problem is that Tesla uses a direct distribution model. (They personally sell all of their cars.) The big car companies aren't allowed to do that. That's why you always see dealerships like \"Dick Thundernuts Chevrolet\" etc. Tesla wants full control over distribution where they don't have to license their brand to a dealer. So the big manufacturers are lobbying to states complaining that it's not fair for them and the dealers are fighting saying they want the right to sell Tesla.",
"This is because many years ago, laws were passed that prevented auto manufactures from selling directly to the public. They had to go through third party dealers. It's this way in a lot of states. This was put into place years and years ago because the states wanted to protect local businesses from being run out because they couldn't afford to compete direct with the manufacturers.\n\nTesla's cars aren't the issue, rather, it is the business model that tesla is using to sell them that is the issue. Tesla is wanting to sell direct to the consumer, instead of licensing to franchise owners. To some degree this makes sense because they are unique in how they are built and take special knowldge to repair. \n\nAlso, let's be very clear, this isn't a result of a free market. This is in fact, the opposite, because this is business influencing government regulations to protect existing business interests. This is a direct result of state interference and protectionism. \n",
"Short answer? No.\n\nTry going on the street corner and selling produce or something else. ",
"*deep breath*\nSo, back when Ford was starting up, they made contracts with local dealers to sell their cars. These deals often included how many cars the dealer HAD to take and sell. When the economy tanks (like 1920, the great depression, etc.), Ford was building cars at full capacity, and forced the cars on the dealers, who basically either had to eat the cost of cars they knew they were not going to sell, or risk being black balled from Ford or other car makers, and be out of business forever.\nThe dealers made an association to protect themselves from these practices, and along the way, this association (lobbyist) got states to pass laws protecting their right to be the only way to buy new cars. After all, if the Car manufacturers didn't like the percentage of the sale the dealers were taking, they could just open a direct from the manufacturer store nearby, and run the dealer out of business. This would then allow the manufacturers to run up the price of cars when no competition exist for a specific car brand. This is similar to how there are rules about Gas prices in each state, so that big companies can't undercut smaller ones and then price gouge. \nOnce the state laws were passed that forbid direct to consumer sales of cars, this applied to EVERYONE, not just existing deals. So, when a company like Tesla comes in, who has never made such an agreement, they are still bound by these laws. \nsome states had tougher laws on the books, while others specifically passed laws to prevent Tesla from doing this as allowed under older laws. \nThese kinds of \" no direct sales to consumer\" type laws have been viewed for a long time as at least part of the reason no new American car companies can really pick up steam and stay afloat. \nTesla has worked around many of these laws, and in some cases, has hard to actively politicize (shame?) states who actively blocked their business, like New Jersey and I think Texas.\n\nTL;DR laws were made to protect car dealers from Manufacturers in good faith. These laws were later manipulated, and in some cases, used to block out new competition like Tesla.",
"Like others have said, regulations exist (differing state by state) that pretty much restrict new car sales to be done by dealers only.\n\nThere's a lot of weird restrictions in the US free market... Like it's [not permissible to have self-serve gas stations in New Jersey](_URL_0_). ",
"The USA is certainly not a free market. It's free in some areas, and restrictive in others. And there are outright obstructions to the free market that have been put in place, for example banning the sale of cocaine, banning the sale of slaves, etc. ",
"because politicians can be bought by special interest groups",
"Because the U.S. economy isn't really a textbook capitalist free market - it's crony capitalism.",
"These laws we created before tesla existed, and they make sense when applied to other companies. Normal car companies sell their cars to dealerships who then resell them to consumers. If companies could sell directly to consumers then they could potentially undercut their own dealerships, which would be bad.\n\nThe only time the law doesnt make sense is when it applies to companies like tesla that dont use dealerships.",
" > Isn't USA a free market? \n\nHaha, not even close. ",
"Tesla doesn't need \"permission\" to sell cars, But in some states cars can only be sold by dealers. This is to ensure we do not bankrupt dealers with manufacturer pricing.\n\n\nAnd if your argument is about to be well why not get rid of dealers if you can buy from the manufacturer cheaper. Because then you lose the ability to buy used, or model year older cars. ",
"America is one of the least free countries on earth, we believe we have freedom because we chant it everyday and we have extreme capitalism. But what we've swapped is the ability to vote out short term elected officials (government) for having zero power over unallocated billionaires (corporations). \n ",
"\"What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy.\"",
"No it's not a free market. Many state legislatures are controlled by special interest groups.",
"I want to address the second question you asked - Isn't USA a free market? The short answer is not entirely. \n\nUSA was built on two principles that often are in tension with each other. Freedom and Fairness. We value freedom but we don't want to let people use their freedom to exploit others in an unfair way. \n\nMuch of the regulations around commerce are to enforce fairness. As has been mentioned, the car dealership laws were enacted to make sure the manufacturers couldn't exert unfair influence over dealers and through them the public. For similar reasons, movie studios are not allowed to own theaters. Doctors are not allowed to sell drugs, lest they perscribe medications that are in their financial self-interest at the expense of the patient's health interests. And companies who sell shares and other securities are regulated so they don't take advantage of people who have money to invest but may not have a true understanding of how investment works.\n\nInteresting side note on that last one - Joseph P. Kennedy (father of JFK and RFK) made a lot of his money doing insider trading and other forms of skuldugery in the stock market. These were not illegal at the time. He was called on during or after the depression to help the SEC reform the system and make it more fair, since he knew so much about how to game it. He contributed to a lot of reforms and then decided he could no longer make money in the market under those conditions. Obviously, since then many have made money playing by the more fair rules. \n\nThis is not to say that times don't change and what is unfair in one situation might be fair in another. Sometimes laws are too slow to adjust with changes in technology (as is my opinion in the case of Tesla). However other times people think the situation has changed, and recind some laws which later bite us in the butt. \n\nMy opinion is that the relaxation of SEC and securities laws which began in the Regan administration and continued under Bill Clinton and others, set the ground work for the recent recession which began under Bush's watch. Thus ending an almost 80 year run when the US didn't have a major economic upheaval every 15 or 20 years. The longest such period in our history. \n\nSo yes, the USA is one of the freest markets of size in history but we balance that with fairness so we don't end up like Somalia which has almost no regulation. ",
"USA is so far from a free market it's not even funny.",
"Supposed free market advocates are only advocates for the \"free market\" *that they or their financial donors want.*\n\nSee: automobile companies, telecom companies, internet/cable companies, energy companies, utility companies, etc.",
"Specifically in Texas it's due to lobbying. The Texas Auto Dealers Assoc. funded the politician that would block tesla from selling. They're main reasoning? They didn't think it was fair because their car companies didn't allow that type of sell and they had to maintain dealerships so why should Tesla get away with it. They aren't allowed to provide you with a test drive either, you have to sign up for a driving experience, they have them at least every month where a bunch of people can come drive one. And when you order one? Can't order one in the Gallery, as in the case of the Austin Gallery they send most of their clients to The Apple Store to order them. And when they deliver it to your house it has to be in an unmarked truck. When you get it delivered in other states they deliver it in a Tesla branded truck. This is the ridiculousness of Texas. ",
"The auto dealers lobby is powerful. You and I don't care much about regulations about car dealerships. Car dealerships care a LOT. Who is going to fight harder to influence these regulations?",
"Some states do not allow manufacturers to sell directly to consumers. They require all new vehicles to be sold through a dealership. Tesla refuses to sell their vehicles this way; it is their insistence on a direct sales method that prevents their cars from being sold in these states. I'm sure if they were willing, there are plenty of large dealership groups in these states that would be happy to open a Tesla dealership.",
"It's all about money and lobbying. The car dealers have lobbied politicians to enact or maintain proctectionist legislation. The upshot has been politicians who claim to be advocates for \"free markets\" consistently working to block Tesla from direct sales. This reminds me of the old joke, “The word ‘politics’ is derived from the Greek word ‘poly’ meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’ meaning ‘blood sucking insects'.\"",
" > Isn't USA a free market?\n\nha ha ha...",
"Freedom isn't free. It's sold to the highest bidder. Automakers and dealerships have lobbied to states (read: paid off officials) to get them to pass laws to prohibit direct-to-consumer sales so they can keep up the manufacturer/dealership racket and prevent their competition, like Tesla, from getting any market share. It's absolutely anti-competitive behavior, but there's enough money behind it to get it through. Anything can be made (il)legal with the proper amount of ~~lobbying~~ bribery.",
"The United States Of America has not been a free market for over a hundred years.\n\nIf you setup a hot dog stand on PRIVATE PROPERTY with PERMISSION from the property owner, you will be shut down in under TEN MINUTES.\n\nWhy?\n\nBecause local restaurants lobbied to make it illegal.",
"\"Isn't USA a free market?\". Nah it's state sponsored \"capitalism\" basically now. Gov't and top corporations have their hands in each other pants. Example: Comcast and all their gov't lobbyists.",
"If by free you mean no govt intervention then no there is no free market other than the black markets",
"I think Car dealerships and Car salesman are unnecessary.",
"Government regulation of various industries tends to protect established businesses to the point of discouraging if not preventing competition.\n\nFar too many industries are regulated to the point that it stifles innovation and prevents lower cost alternatives to existing services",
"because this is america land of the fucking idiots",
"\"Isn't the USA a free market?\"\n\nNo.",
"Is is possible for Tesla to make deals with tribes to establish their dealerships on reservations? Isn't it out of the state's jurisdiction?",
"Not at all. Those in power decide the rules on who can and can't sell what in which way. ",
"USA has no free market. Countries like Chile have much more free market.",
"because we our economy isn't really capitalism. that's why so many banks laughed all the way ... to themselves after the 2008 bubble.",
"I think it's cute that people think we have a free and unregulated market. Trade is regulated in everything from electric utilities to vitamins.",
"What really sucks is that a Tesla is the only American car worth buying.",
"Capitalism in a Representative Republic is not free market.\n\nCapitalists capitalize on Representatives to write laws restricting the market to give them favorable conditions.",
"Some time ago in my area, the Auto manufacturers were making websites and other forms where you can purchase cars direct, so you can get a < brand > care direct from the manufacturer.\n\nCar Dealerships, although they carry the brand logo on the building, are not the company and this cut dealerships out of potential revenue derived from the sales that now would go directly to the manufacturer. Dealerships are fairly large stakes in communities and bring a lot of revenue, so the dealership groups lobbied and had the law changed to prevent a car manufacturer from selling directly to the consumer.\n\nIn essence, it became illegal for a car manufacturer to sell to you directly, but was only allowed through dealerships.\n\nRecall, Dealerships existed for quite some time long before it was not feasible for the manufacurers to sell to the consumers, so they built dealer networks to distribute and sell cars to various areas. Now, this model really is not required as it is possible to approach it differently (Tesla is a fine example).\n\nSo this is the older model clinging on via the political system and not how a market would actually behave on its own without political intervention. The drawback is you could potentially put quite a few car dealerships out of business in this model.",
"The US is not a free market. There is a *lot* of red tape.",
"Because your country isn't actually free? ",
"Free market? Ho-hoooooo that's rich!",
"USA is not a free market, it is highly protectionist. Try selling Canadian lumber there under the NAFTA and see what roadblocks are put up. Try selling medical insurance there and see how the GOP fuck it up. It's highly competitive, which means you do anything and everything in your power to ensure you profit ahead of the rest. Big Pharma, Agriculture, Fossil Fuels, it's all backed by powerful lobbyists to twist laws in their favour. And yet it fails, mediocre education but expensive, mediocre medical care but expensive, run down infrastructure, political log jam, judicial partisanship...uhh the list of deplorables is endless.",
"Common misconception. America is actually not a free market.",
"The United States does not have a free market.\n\nHow it works is a large corporation, in an effort to squash competition, will pay lobbyists to introduce since sort of legislation that favors them but disadvantages someone else. A good example is licensing, requiring a license to do business, or requiring costly classes to be taken, etc. Another would be minimum wage requirements that prevent small businesses from hiring, but will allow larger businesses to improve their profits as competition dies when it can't keep up. \n\nSo, when Tesla can't sell in certain areas, it's because people are using the government to say, \"Fuck you, competition! I want my business to survive the changing marketplace and I don't care how unfair it is to other businesses or to consumers, because I'm an asshole!\"\n\nIt's called corporatism. Not to be confused with capitalism, where the government has a laissez faire approach to business and doesn't pick winners",
"We're supposed to be in a free market capitalist, but what we have now looks more like coporatism/fascism due to government and business being in bed together. Go ahead, blame \"capitalism\" for all your problems even though you've never lived in it. (not directed at OP)",
"No, it's not. But when things go wrong people sure have little hesitation to blame the \"free market\" the government mettles in constantly."
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3o49op | why do we use radiation therapy to cure cancer, when those who live near places with high radiation (chernobyl, etc.) get cancer from it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o49op/eli5_why_do_we_use_radiation_therapy_to_cure/ | {
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"Radiation can damage your DNA, causing mutation in the cells. Cancer is when cells get a mutation that makes them reproduce out of control and generally go haywire. \n\n**Targeted** radiation aimed directly at the cancerous cells can kill them, stopping their out of control spread and allow your body to regain ground. ",
"Radiation usually kills a cell. It does this by messing up the DNA within the cell.\n\nSometimes, very rarely, the DNA will be screwed up in just the wrong way and instead of dying the cell starts reproducing. A *lot*. This is a tumor. If you're constantly exposed to ionizing radiation then you're constantly rolling the dice to see if a cell is going to get just the wrong mutation like this and develop into cancer.\n\nOnce cancer has developed you can then turn around and use radiation directed at just the tumor to try and kill off the messed up cells. Theoretically you could cause another kind of cancer to develop, but ideally the radiation is targeted narrowly enough that only the target cells are significantly exposed. ",
"Because a random spread of radiation just makes your cells reproduce _URL_0_. cancer.\n\nBut radiation therapy uses a beam of radiation aimed exactly at the tumor, so it gets a very high dose, so high that it just destroys the tumor, but being careful to minimise exposure to healthy cells.",
"It depends on the type of radiation and what is being irradiated. For example, people with advanced metastatic thyroid cancer can be given a dose of Iodine 131 which gets absorbed in thyroid tissue and kills the tissue it is in. In those situations you look at the risk versus the reward. Would advanced metastatic thyroid cancer kill the patient faster than any potential cancers the patient may get down the line? Definitely...so you give them the 131. Furthermore, because you can make normal molecules that the body uses and tag them with a radioactive isotope, you can target different groups of tissue...which sometimes is the only way to attack some cancers.\n\nFurthermore there is a theory called hormesis that states that certain stressors on the body actually help the body because it keeps the immune system \"in shape.\" Think about places like Denver, CO Vs a place that is well below sea level. You get a substantially greater dose in Denver, but there cancer rates are actually one of lowest for large cities(I know there's a lot more than goes into cancer than just that.)\n\n"
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6gq927 | what makes one's mentality capable of pushing them further past fatigue or physical adversity than someone else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gq927/eli5_what_makes_ones_mentality_capable_of_pushing/ | {
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"Speaking from my experience in the Army, everyone is capable of overcoming physical adversity and fatigue. In the beginning it usually starts with something that motivates you, something you want MORE than wanting to quit. This could be not wanting to let someone down, a personal goal you are arriving for, or comraderie. Eventually your confidence builds with each small success you make, you ran a little faster, you rucked a little longer, you accomplished something you previously thought impossible. Your success becomes self sustaining motivation and pushes you through difficult times because you believe in yourself and know you can endure. All of this builds mental fortitude which allows you to overcome physical adversity. A healthy dose of pain tolerance can't hurt either!",
"General Toaster et al. have highly valid views in my experience. There may very well be people who are more constitutionally suited to such things. \n\nThere's also possibly a compartmentalization aspect. One part is screaming in terror while the operative part keeps on ticking through the appropriate responses. \n\nThere's also conditioning. I did lots of things that took extreme (relatively) exertion over long periods in tough conditions. This was decades ago. I still seem to be able to weather extremes, go a long long way, and bounce back very well. On the other hand, I can push myself to the edge of shaking physical collapse more easily than others, perhaps. \n\nBut training mind and body, keeping both that long term goal and what's right here now in mind. ",
"I don't know the answer, but when I see my 50 year old friend complete 100 mile races in less than 24 hours, and half the night it was cold and raining, I realize that people are just plain different."
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szs4o | if android is just an os on the hardware that is my phone, how is it possible to 'brick' it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/szs4o/if_android_is_just_an_os_on_the_hardware_that_is/ | {
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"I'm not too sure about phones, but a PC can be bricked if you mess up a BIOS update. \n\nBasically the BIOS (Basic Input/Output Settings) tells the rest of the machine how to use the keyboard and mouse and video, where the OS is stored and so on. \n\nIt's like going into work for your first day. You go to the boss(the BIOS) to find out where to go, or what you should be doing. But if the boss isn't there, you won't know what to do or where to go. \n\nAt least, that's what sort of happens with a PC. I might be mistaken on the phone though.",
"Hardware in general is useless without some form of software that tells the hardware what to do. When you 'brick' phone, you are causing the software that works at the lowest level to fail. It is the equivalent of wiping the BIOS on a PC. The machine fails to be able to issue the most basic commands such as loading the OS and recognizing the data cable to communicate with a PC. Without those 2 things, the phone becomes useless. Without the OS, you can't use it for it's intended purpose and without being able to connect it to a PC via the data cable, there is no way to re-program it for the normal user.\n\nWhen I worked in the cellular industry, we had tools to program the phones that connected to the contacts under the battery or in the SIM card slot, but I don't know if those are still around.",
"In your PC, you have two operating systems; the one you are familiar with and work with every day (Windows, OSX, Linux), and then there is the BIOS. The BIOS handles computing before your main OS loads. It shows the boot screen and tells you if a hard drive is unplugged or something. If you want to load a different OS from a different disk, or want to wipe your drive and install a new OS, your BIOS will let you do that.\n\nSmartphones have a BIOS as well, however, many of them are programmed to only load the Android OS as specified from the manufactorer or service provider (AT & T, Verizon, etc). To load custom versions of Android, we need to overwrite the phone's BIOS so we remove that restriction. When overwriting the phone's BIOS, if something happens (you loose power or you didn't follow the correct instructions), then it may get bricked. \n\nSo, essentially, if you screw up updating the part of your phone that tells it how to boot up, then it might not boot up again.\n\n"
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36whwp | singers spit on stage? | So I recently went to some punk/pop rock concerts and I notice the singer occasionally spits on stage. And they do it on purpose because sometimes they spit up, side ways, or even at audience (though maybe not directly at audience, but I was too far away to tell).
I tried to search on internet but can't seem to find a well explained answer. Want to know if this has to do with history, customs, culture, or is it just technique when singing live to not choke yourself? Or just to look "bad?"
TLDR: I went to Paramore and Tonight Alive concerts and saw the girls spit on stage. Bit startled. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36whwp/eli5_singers_spit_on_stage/ | {
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"In punk/hardcore punk shows it's not uncommon for the vocalist to spit on the stage, the audience or whatever, and for the audience to spit back. \n\nI'm not sure it serves any real purpose - perhaps they needed to spit anyway, but it's all part of demolishing the barrier between performer and audience that punk is all about.\n\nTo be clear, Hayley Williams is punk in the punk pop-est sense of the word, but a lot of the things she does on stage are taken straight from the handbooks of full on hardcore punk bands.\n\nEDIT: it's just one of those accepted things when you go to a punk gig - you might end up with some spit on you, the same way you might get hit in the face or landed on by a crowd surfer. Just comes with the territory. To be honest I haven't seen a great deal of spitting though, even at hardcore gigs. Don't know if it just doesn't happen that much anymore."
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4kyjrm | why do some movie directors shoot both film and digital? wouldn't that cause an inconsistent image quality, depending on the camera? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kyjrm/eli5why_do_some_movie_directors_shoot_both_film/ | {
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"The general public has no idea how to tell about different types of pictures from each other. While there are measurable differences that professionals can evaluate, laypeople look at the final product far more subjectively in terms of mood, visual emphasis, grain quality, etc. They are not measuring pixels or resolution or noise, they're just quickly taking it all in emotionally through a scene. It's like asking why books use one type of paper for most of it and then something different for the covers and glossy picture inserts in the middle. The audience doesn't care as long as the intended effect is delivered. \n\nIf the audience becomes aware of camera or medium switches, arguably some professional fucked up because that's taking them out of the moment. "
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8shxia | why is a vehicle left in a low gear like first (or even reverse) without the brake applied less likely to roll or move than left in top gear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8shxia/eli5_why_is_a_vehicle_left_in_a_low_gear_like/ | {
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"If you're in first gear, to get the car moving at any sort of speed, the engine has to rev pretty high, right? \n\nIf the engine is off, and the car is in gear, in first, that now means that in order to move the car, the drive-train would have to spin the engine very fast, which takes a lot more effort. For each turn of the car's wheels, the engine would have to turn many times. \n\nIf it's in top gear, then the ratio of engine rotation to wheel rotation might only be 1 to 1. That means to get the wheels to turn once, the engine only has to turn over once, which takes a lot less effort. \n\n",
"It takes energy to turn engine. In low gear the engine has to be turned many more times per distance rolled than in high gear, making it less likely to roll.\n\nOf course, it's better to just apply the parking brakes but in the past low gear was seen as an extra precaution (for example if the brake line snapped or was loose in the first place) or even necessary if the brakes were likely to freeze to the wheel in very low temperatures.",
"In low gear the engine has the advantage. In high gear the rolling car has the advantage like leverage. This is mechanical advantage. In the same way it's much easier to open a door by pushing on the handle side as opposed to pushing near the hinge.",
"When a car is left in gear, the driveshaft, transmission, and engine all rotate along with the wheels when it moves, creating resistance.\n\nWhen in low gear, these things rotate more times than in high gear, created even more resistance. More resistance means more force needed to get the car moving."
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8cywm7 | how do all animals know to start licking their wounds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cywm7/eli5_how_do_all_animals_know_to_start_licking/ | {
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"Saliva contains powerful painkillers, along with enzymes and other chemicals that kill germs and break down organic matter. When a mom spits on a tissue to clean her kid's face it's not just for the stereotype.\n\nAlso, the serous fluid that weeps out of wounds has a sweet taste, which at least for dogs encourages licking. [Link for further research.](_URL_0_)",
"Saliva helps with the healing process. Thats why sores in the mouth tend to heal faster than. Wounds of the body generally"
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9h47rj | how do deep sea creatures survive under the enormous pressure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9h47rj/eli5_how_do_deep_sea_creatures_survive_under_the/ | {
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"They're acclimated. The pressure inside their bodies is the same as the pressure outside their bodies. Since there's no pressure difference, they can breathe and function normally down there, although the ~~increased water resistance from the high pressure~~ *difference in the water's 'slipperiness' (called \"viscosity\") at that depth due to pressure and temperature* (edited, with props to /u/agate_ for the correction) from the high pressure (plus lack of high-calorie food) likely makes most of them generally move slower than surface creatures.\n\nThis is why deep-sea species are almost assuredly dead when you capture them and bring them to the surface unless you take extraordinary precautions. As they rise through the water, the pressure inside their bodies becomes tremendously higher than the pressure outside their bodies, and their internal organs rupture like an overfilled balloon as they're dragged up. \n\n",
"They stay at pressurized depths. A lot of fish that come to the surface can only stay at the surface for a few minutes, and if they are taken out of the water sometimes their skeletal system will collapse. Squid and whales are some of the few animals that can get away with diving in heavily pressurized depths and swimming near the surface. \n\nAccording to nat geo’s deep sea documentary. ",
"Pressure isn't an issue. Pressure difference is though.\n\nHigh internal pressure and lower external pushes outwards causing explosion (like blowing a balloon up too much).\n\nLower internal pressure and higher external pressure pushes inwards (like if you squeeze a bottle until it bursts).\n\nIf their external and internal pressures are equal. They're okay (like if you pushed on a door with 10kg force and your friend was on the other side pushing with 10kg force, the door wouldn't move).\n\nThat's the basics. It gets complicated when you get onto cells as they are like mini bubbles themselves.",
"What I’d like to add to the topic, is that there is also a Cetacean by the name of *Cuvier’s Beaked Whale* who actually descends down to depths of 3000m (9,800ft). This is twice as deep as a goblin shark, and deeper than the huge colossal squids. Why is this so crazy? Since it is a whale, it regularly has to go up for air. Cuvier’s beaked whale has foldable ribs, which means it can reduce air pockets for buoyancy. \n\nI am not sure how the whale just doesn’t explode when it goes up to the surface though. I guess as others suggested the foldable ribs might increase pressure inside the animal when it goes down to hunt squids. ",
"It's true that there is enormous pressure pushing on them from the outside, but there is just as enormous pressure inside them pushing back. Absolute pressures aren't really what matters when it comes to things getting squished, what's important is the difference in pressure between the inside and outside of the thing. That's why tires seem to go flat when you go down elevation and chip bags at stores in Colorado are all puffed up.",
"Water is almost incompressible, and those translucent fuckers down there are 99% water. No air cavities, like lungs, in their bodies can collapse.",
"Think of it like this. If you used a sponge at the surface and then brought it to extreme depths. The high pressure moves in and out of the sponge and there's nothing to really crunch (more or less). Now you take a human. We have lungs full of air, something like 5 liters. 5 liters (in volume at sea level) in volume and be compressed to very small (not sure exactly but I bet smaller then a quarter). So there's a lot of room for the air to be compressed and that's where many vital organs are. Fish dont have lungs full of air (with exception but that's a different topic) and water doesnt compresses very much. This doesnt mean it doesnt affect them at all or anything but it does mean their tolerance is MUCH higher then ours.",
"I like to think of it this way:\nImagine you bring an empty jar down to the bottom of the ocean. The jar has its lid off during the travel so pressure is never an issue - water just flows in and out as the pressure changes. When you reach the bottom you close the lid - it is now under very large pressure but of course it doesn't break because the same pressurized water is on the inside. \nA deep sea fish is like a jar that was filled with high pressure water and then sealed in the same environment. ",
"Edit: ELI5 tl;dr - As long as animals don't have any air-filled spaces in their bodies, they basically \\*are\\* water. Since water is pretty much incompressible, their tissues won't be compressed by increasing pressure - their tissues will just exist at the same pressure as the water around them, and it won't even matter to the animal, except at the deepest depths.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLots of partially correct answers here, so I'll clarify something:\n\nPressure is only an issue when you have air-filled spaces in your body, like lungs or air bladders. When you increase the pressure outside of an air-filled organ, the air inside will decrease in volume and the organ will begin to collapse in on itself (which is not always a bad thing - this is normal for lungs of deep-diving whales).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHowever, deep sea creatures don't have any air-filled spaces in their bodies. Even fishes whose ancestors had a swim bladder (air organ used for buoyancy) have completely lost the structure through evolution - no deep-sea fishes have swim bladders.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe tissues of animals are very similar in properties to water, as long as there are no air-filled spaces. Because water is basically incompressible, the tissues of deep-sea fishes will not be compressed by external increases in pressure, and as many people have said in this thread, their watery tissues internally are at the same pressure as the water externally. Basically, there is nothing to collapse - from a pressure perspective, it's as if the animal is just a part of the fluid environment, and there is no difference between external and internal pressure.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAt very large depths ( > 2000m), pressure can start to change enzyme function, because enzymes tend to only be effective under specific physical conditions. However, as lineages of deep-sea animals moved deeper into the ocean, they have evolved different enzyme functionality in response to this. However, only some lineages have successfully done this, which is why you see the same specific types of animals invading the deepest parts of the ocean all over the world. The best example is the hadal snailfishes, which are commonly found at the deepest depths (e.g., Mariana and Atacama trenches, which are thousands of miles apart). The snailfishes seem to be a group that have the genetic ability to adapt to the deepest depths, whereas many other deep sea fishes are evolutionarily stuck at \\~1800m.",
"It's not about the pressure, but about the pressure difference. Think about a balloon. Say you blow up a balloon. By blowing up a balloon you're increasing the pressure inside it and so it becomes bigger. \nThe size of the balloon is determined by the difference in pressure inside the balloon and outside the balloon. If you're standing on the ground, the pressure inside the balloon is for example twice as high as the outside and that stretches the rubber of the balloon. If you were to take that balloon into a plane high up in the sky where the air pressure is lower than on the ground, the pressure inside the balloon is maybe even three times as high as the surrounding air pressure, which causes the balloon to grow even bigger will grow bigger. The amount of air inside the balloon is stil the same, but simply because there's less air pushing in on the balloon makes it easier for the air inside the balloon to push out. That causes the rubber of the balloon to stretch even more than on the ground and might even cause the balloon to pop. \n\nNow say you took the balloon under water. Under water pressure is higher, so the balloon gets pushed in the deeper you go and the balloon will become smaller because the air inside the balloon has to push harder on the water outside. At some point the pressure outside of the balloon will be the same as inside the balloon. At that point the balloon is the same size as before you inflated it. It's not stretched nor is it compressed. There is zero stress on the balloon. The pressure inside and outside are equal (hence the term equalising if you pop your ears under water).\n\nReplace the balloon by a fish and the same principle applies. The air inside the fish is under the same pressure as the water outside it, so it's not stretching the fish nor is it compressing the fish. The fish is just being a fish. \nBring the fish to the surface however and the air will want to expand, stretching and hurting the fish, just like with the balloon. So as long as the fish is at that depth, it's happy.\n\nFun little note: This is why people learning how to scuba dive are constantly told ever to hold their breath under water, because if you hold your breath and then go up, you lungs will overexpand and could literally tear.",
"On the more molecular side of things, some dinoflagellates (simple sea-faring multi-celled organisms) replicate their genomes hundreds of times. Then, when they sink deep in the ocean where pressure is immense, their DNA can literally shatter. They then use an array of repair enzymes and the plentiful copies of their DNA to put the pieces back together when they get back to a more manageable pressure. Kind of like buying the same puzzle 10-20 times so when hurricane hits you might be able to finish the puzzle by combining pieces from all the sets. Life finds a way!",
"They manage expectations at work, have a supportive girlfriend and get outside/exercise daily when possible",
"I understand that deep sea critters die on the way to the surface. But say we put them in a pressurized flask before bringing them up to the surface, here's the question:\n\n\nDo they explode violently the moment we release the flask's pressure?",
"A couple hundred million years ago, there was a school of critters swimming around. They were happy living at certain depth, but competition was fierce. Some of them noticed some unexploited food source below them. Not too far, but deeper than they’d be comfortable with if they weren’t hungry. Some dove to get at the food. \n\nSome of those that dove died because they couldn’t take the pressure. Some didn’t. Those that didn’t had an edge - they had a less fiercely contested food source. They had offspring. Sone of those died due to the pressure. Those that didn’t, because of happy genetic coincidence, proliferated, passing on that happy genetic coincidence that allowed them to survive. \n\nEventually, they multiplied, and that food source became more fiercely contested. But there was another, deeper, food source. So the cycle repeated until there was no further down to go. Now they start looking for different food sources, with other critters making the evolutionary trek down. \n\nFast forward a couple million years and you’ve got an ecosystem. "
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6d1knt | how can tiny amounts of dangerous drugs be lethal? | Compared to our body micro grams of some drugs is nothing, but still can kill us. How? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6d1knt/eli5_how_can_tiny_amounts_of_dangerous_drugs_be/ | {
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"Your body is pretty sensitive to some things, and the ratio of mass isn't always the best way to make it work. You're a lot bigger than a bullet, too.\n\nThe botulism toxin is one of the deadliest poisons, in part because it doesn't get used up, and affects nerve cells - one molecule can kill a cell and move on to the next one, and it doesn't take many dead nerves to cause trouble. \n\nPolonium-210 is extremely radioactive, so it's essentially shooting tiny bullets at your cells from the inside. And the bullets themselves are alpha particles: so small, that even tiny amounts of polonium can release billions, and each one can wreck a cell. If its ingested, it will pass through your system, firing all the way through, and hitting many different bodily functions. \n"
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oqgbr | the "fireworks" i see when i rub my eyes for a few seconds. | Chances are you've experienced them as well, I've just been wondering for sometime now what causes them and if I'm causing any harm to my eyes while seeing them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oqgbr/eli5_the_fireworks_i_see_when_i_rub_my_eyes_for_a/ | {
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"Basically, your retina has nerve cells and these are activated by pressure as well. Think the phenomena are called phosphenes...",
"Phosphenes\n\n > A sensation of light caused by excitation of the retina by mechanical or electrical means rather than by light, as when the eyeballs are pressed through closed lids.\n\nRead more: _URL_0_#ixzz1k7eqiUNh\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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69nkgv | how is calculus different from algebra? | I've never really understood this but was kind of afraid to ask. What kinds of problems does calculus solve that makes it so special? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69nkgv/eli5_how_is_calculus_different_from_algebra/ | {
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"Algebra is rules to write equations. 2x + y = 3.321, it has rules for the symbols and rules to operate with them. it tells you how to add, divide, do square roots or matrix multiplication. \n\nCalculus deals with other things: change. limits, infinity, differentiation, integrals, differential equations... It solves dx/dt=5 (the ratio of change of x with time)\n\nThere are other parts of mathematics like geometry and number theory.",
"\nAlgebra is analogous to learning your first language. You learn in steps, and it is a fundamental building block for more advanced stuff. \n\n**Language**\nLetters- > words- > grammar\n\n**Algebra**\nNumbers- > equations- > rules for manipulation\n\nCalculus would be more akin to the process of advancing speech skills. You learn which words work well together and certain catchphrases that will make you a more effective speaker. With these advanced skills, you can discuss more complex topics and learn/teach more effectively about those topics.\n\nCalculus is just an expansion of the \"rules for manipulation\" step I listed above. It just has a more focused application.\n\n\nFundamentally, calculus is about investigating the rate at which something is changing (and useful ways to use the information), whereas algebra is the fundamental language which allows you to investigate in the first place.",
"Calculus deals with calculations of quantities that are changing, these need special techniques not part of other branches of maths.\n\nA simple example, you can use an algebraic formula to calculate the displacement of a moving mass subject to a constant force using f = m.a and s = u.t + a.t^2\n\nHowever if your moving object is a rocket, expending fuel to provide the force, the mass, and therefore the acceleration, is changing constantly so simple formuli can't be used and you need calculus to do the same calculation.\n\nCalculus also gives ways to calculate maxima and minima of mathematical formulae and much other useful maths.\n\nedit for misspelling",
"Algebra focuses on solving an equation using static (unchanging) values where calculus uses dynamic (changing) values based on a rate of change.\n\nCalculus uses algebra to solve complex problems.\n\nExample: how much fuel does a rocket need to burn for a payload of X (unit of mass) to escape Earth's gravity? Changing variables include distance from the center of the earth to wherever the rocket is, (as gravity pulls less the farther you get away), and a changing total mass of the rocket as it burns fuel. \n\nSome rocket fuel is on board to lift other rocket fuel, to lift other rocket fuel, to lift the payload!",
"It's not really a metaphor. Distance given with an algebraic equation. Calc allows us to see the velocities and accelerations behind it. I'm not sure if you are criticizing or complimenting the post. Whatever though. I'm drunk now so Reddit posts from less drunk me and reflection by current drunk me don't really... whatever. ",
"Calculus essentially does two things. Calculates the rate of change or rate of accumulation. Algebra is a just set of rules where you substitute letters for numbers to solve an unknown or unknowns. In order to do calculus you need algebra. ",
"Algebra is the math to describe an unknown in terms of known things.\nCalculus is the math to describe how things change.\nGeometry is the math to describe shapes.\n",
"If you're a student taking math: calculus is just longer Algebra but with derivatives and more applications."
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7i8564 | why in english "t" and "d" sometimes sound like a japanese/spanish "r"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7i8564/eli5_why_in_english_t_and_d_sometimes_sound_like/ | {
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"Can you give some examples? As a native English speaker, I understand how T can sound like D when there's no glottal stop, but I can't think of a time they sound like Rs. Maybe I don't know what the Japanese R sounds like. ",
"Both sounds are made by tapping the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the boundary between gums and palate. The difference between a t and r is all in how much your tongue obstructs the air flowing out of your mouth. An extremely short and sloppy t might only completely block the air (the defining characteristic of a t sound) for a very short moment, meaning \"better\" may be slurred into \"bera\", for example.",
"Written language often doesn't convey all the subtleties of the spoken language, and the letters are often used to represent different sounds in different languages. (For example, in Polish, \"c\" is used for a \"ts\" sound.)\n\nThe sound you're talking about is called an [\"alveolar flap\"](_URL_0_): the tip of your tongue quickly taps the ridge behind your upper teeth. In North American English \"T\" is usually pronounced as a flap when it occurs in the middle of a word. At the beginning or end of a word, or in British English, it's more of a full stop to the airflow than a brief flap.\n\nThis same flapping motion is used for Spanish \"r\" (but not for Spanish \"rr\", which is a longer vibration called a trill). One of the most common ways Americans mispronounce Spanish is by using the English \"rhotic\" R. The Spanish word \"pero\" is pronounced closer to \"peh-doh\" than \"pay-roh\".\n\nJapanese also uses flaps, though I'm less familiar with the subtleties of pronounciation.\n\nTo wrap up: languages often share sounds, but the alphabet can't describe all the subtleties, and it's used inconsistently between different languages.",
"this occurs primarily in american and canadian english; less so in the various 'british' varieties. \n\nthis is called [flapping](_URL_2_). instead of pronouncing the 't' and 'd' fully, one would 'flap' it, producing a sound like 'r'. this 'r' is an alveolar flap and is quite common in the world's languages.\n\nit's a form of '[lenition](_URL_0_)', or making a sound 'weaker' in order to emphasize a more stressed part of a word.\n\nthe reason is probably unsatisfactory, but it's just a feature of the dialect. it's one of many sound transformations that have happened historically between the dialects. note that it rarely happens outside of the US and canada. the alveolar flap also occurs in a similar form in scottish english (how they pronounce 'r' in words like 'world').\n\nthe closest reason to 'why do it' is in order to preserve the stress pattern of a sentence.\n\nmost london dialects don't flap; instead, they use a glottal stop. (water, pretty, butter) \n\nthis isn't limited to english. in some finnish dialects, a 'd' pronounced fast enough can sound like an untrilled 'r'. final 'd' in hindi/urdu can sometimes be pronounced as 'r'. danish sometimes does this with their 'd' (although the danish language and the letter 'd' have a very complicated relationship)\n\nthis phenomenon has nothing to do with the spanish or japanese languages.\n\nfun fact: the word '[twenty/20](_URL_1_)' pronounced in american english causes a very odd sound where the 'nt' is. it's called an 'alveolar nasal flap' and is pretty close to unique to the english language. ",
"Short answer: We don't fully pronounce every sound in every word. The T in \"city\" and the D in \"middle\" are both pronounced as a \"flap\" (an incomplete T or D), which sounds to you like a Japanese or Spanish R. \n\nThis is a consistent rule for American English. If a T or D occurs between vowels, it is realized as a flap.",
"Something to note is that this occurs whenever we have 'T' or 'D' between vowels and the first vowel is stressed. For example, 'wáter', 'bútter', 'ládder,' and not 'boutíque', 'voluntéer', 'grotésque'."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping"
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98crw9 | why is the disparity between us and mexico pretty extreme, while the disparity between us and canada is not so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98crw9/eli5_why_is_the_disparity_between_us_and_mexico/ | {
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"Hard to ELI5 that but the long and short is Mexico has a historically short sighted government that only really cared about Mexico City for a couple centuries and failed to utilize it's wealth of natural resources, integrate natives into Western culture or build for the future. They are and have always been highly corrupt and while all governments tend to be that way Mexico had people trying to get Western rich off a third world economy which left pretty much nothing for the people in terms of developed infrastructure. When the industrial revolution hit they fell behind.\n\n"
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bkuavm | healthy eating and losing weight. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkuavm/eli5_healthy_eating_and_losing_weight/ | {
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"The main thing about losing weight is that your diet is the most important part of it. So lets learn a bit more about how food works!\n\n & #x200B;\n\nCarbohydrates give your body energy. That's foods like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar. It's very easy to eat too many carbs, and the leftovers get turned into fat. \n\n\nProteins are used to repair your body's cells, and to create muscle cells. That's meat, milk, cheese, beans. Your body can turn protein into energy in a pinch if it needs to. \n\n\nFats are full of lots of energy that your body can use. Some fat is needed to help keep your body working correctly. Oil and butter are fats, and foods cooked with them are full of fat. \n\n\nNow, your body gets calories from the food you eat. Calories are how we measure how much energy is in the food. In general, fats have LOTS of calories, carbohydrates have many, and protein has less. Your body is really good at storing extra calories and turning them into fat. So if you eat more food than you need, the extra food is turned into the fat sitting around your waist. \n\n\nSo, the main thing here is to eat less than you are doing right now. BUT! Many people try to do a \"I'll spend the next two weeks not eating anything, then I'll be skinny again!\" routine, but then go right back to eating the way they used to. In general, if you actually want to lose weight, you are going to have to change how you eat in general. \n\n\nSo... cut back in portions. Drink more water. Eat more vegetables, as they have less carbohydrates than most of the other good you eat, and the fiber in them will still help you feel full. \n\n\nExperiment with what works for you. The main thing here is that it isn't as important of what you eat, as much as how much you eat. But in general, eating less bready things, and more veggie things is probably for the best.",
"Carbs is a shortened term for carbohydrates, or basic sugars that your body quickly processes for a burst of energy. That includes bread, pasta, and most wheat and flour based foods. They tend to lead to weight gain because you consume more than you need, and so your body stores the extras in the form of fat.\n\nHere's some American Heart Association resources on a good diet to maintain:\n\n [_URL_1_](_URL_1_) \n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"I’m not going to pitch you any specific diets. I will say, however, that you already know you eat crappy food and need to stop. That’s your first big step. Sub in healthier alternatives or water when snacking. Yogurt, fruit, nuts, etc. I personally would not go the protein shake route until you have a routine of eating healthy meals and have progressed onto routine workout sessions. If you aren’t looking to gain substantial muscle mass, I question the need for more protein. You can eat tuna, eggs, beans, yogurt, lean meats for protein.",
"The bottom line is you need to be in a caloric deficit. That means the number of calories you eat per day needs to be lower than the number of calories your body uses per day.\n\nIf you search \"calorie calculator\" on Google you should be able to use a calorie calculator to estimate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) . If you then count and track the calories if everything you eat and make sure it stays less than your TDEE then your body will be forced to make up for the difference by burning your stored bodyfat.\n\nNote: a caloric deficit is the only thing that will cause you to lose weight. When you're talking about overall health, there's a lot more that goes into it in terms of food choices etc. Make sure you keep your protein intake high so your body is less likely to break down your muscle for energy, and try to eat a diet of nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables."
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2k5h7u | how does anything "move" through space | I feel like a real nimrode asking this but: How does anything "move?" In order for someone to go 10 feet, they first have to go 5 feet. And in order to go that 5 feet first, they have to go 2.5 feet. How can anything "go" in the first place? How Is Motion Possible, did I just miss this day in class?
EDIT: Sorry, I don't know quite how to put this. It's not about motion laws. It's about, how can anything move, given the reality that, before it can move, it has to move half? Not sure I can explain it better than this........
SECOND EDIT: Please Sstop Sending Me Rude Messages To my Inbox | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k5h7u/eli5_how_does_anything_move_through_space/ | {
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"Let's talk about Newton's Laws of Motion.\n\n**Newtons First Law:** Any object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by a force. An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by a force.\n\nThis means that if you have an object that is currently floating in space and you want to move it, you would need to apply a force to the object.\n\n**Newton's Second Law:** The amount of acceleration (the change in speed) that an object undergoes when a force is applied is determined by the object's mass:\n\n Force = Mass * Acceleration\n\nLet's say you have a rock floating in space. The rock's mass is 1kg. You apply a force of 1 Newton (yes, the unit for force is named after Newton himself) to the object. The acceleration on the object will be 1 meter per second per second. That means after one second the object's speed will increase to 1m/s, and after two seconds its speed will be 2m/s, etc.\n\n\"But how do I apply this force?\"\n\n**Newton's Third Law:** Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.\n\nThis means that if I am in space and push on the rock with 1N of force, the rock will push back on me with 1N of force as well. The rock will then start moving away, and I will move in the opposite direction as the rock.\n\n\"That's pretty inconvenient, I wanted to move in the same direction as the rock.\"\n\nIn that case you would need someone to push both you and the rock away at the same time. Or, instead of someone, you could get some*thing* to do it. Let's talk about rocket motors.\n\nRemember how if you push on the rock then you will also start accelerating away? Well, if you happened to have a bag of rocks and threw them away one-by-one then you would increase in speed for each rock you threw. If you threw the rocks faster, then your increase in speed would be faster.\n\nA rocket engine works by hurling very small gas particles away very, very quickly. Because of Newton's third law, you will accelerate in the opposite direction the rocket engine is throwing the particles. That way, you and your pet rock can both go wherever you please.",
"it's cool if you thought of this independently, because it's an ancient paradox called Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox, which attempts to illustrate that motion is an illusion/impossible. it puzzled mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers for at least a thousand years I think, it's only resolved mathematically by infinite converging series. Google it!\n\nedit: I mentioned it before in a thread about ancient philosophy, so I'll just copy & paste my old comment that explains it (and how it's resolved)\n\n *I first heard it as an arrow flying to a target, I've also heard it as a man trying to complete a journey, I'm not sure how it was originally phrased*\n\n*it asks the question of how an infinite process can ever end or be completed, as you said you must first complete half the distance, then half of the remaining half (a quarter), then an eight, and if it takes some time to cover all those fractions of the distance, it would take forever to get there, ie. you never would.*\n\n*the series looks like this: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ...*\n\n*and Zeno was right in that it does indeed go on forever. It is only resolved mathematically(because an arrow obviously can hit a target, duh) by the fact that while the series has infinite terms, the sum of those infinite terms converges on a finite value, which is 1 (you travel 1 times the total distance, duh)*\n\n- so it's cool that the same conundrum occurred to you as occurred to a great philosopher only two and a half millennia ago!\n\nedit: you could make the same argument about moving thru time or aging too, before today is half way over it must be a quarter over, etc. it was originally made to support a philosophy called Monism proposed by a philosopher called Parmenides, Zeno was his student. they believed that all motion and all change was illusion, and that reality was 'one', singular, timeless, and unchanging. They didn't solve it in Ancient Greece, they just ignored it, the math required is relatively sophisticated, more so than even the Greeks had developed at that time"
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6v8fem | why hasn't life on native american reservations improved? why is drug and alcohol abuse still so rampant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v8fem/eli5_why_hasnt_life_on_native_american/ | {
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"On most Native American reservations, there's no particular need for anyone to work or improve themselves because the combination of federal funding and casinos gives everyone a 'basic income'.\n\nThe result is a situation where large numbers of people just depend on that money and make no attempt to better their lives.\n\nIf you happen to be born into such a community, you never really have role models for any other way of living so it's rare that people growing up there try to make anything better out of their lives.\n\nThose who *do* attempt to better themselves tend to leave the reservation behind - further compounding the problem of young children having no role models.\n\nAll of this is further heightened by the simple fact that most Indian reservations are located in remote areas where interaction with the larger world is limited.",
"It's important to note that reservations are generally located on land that the US didn't want, so Native peoples were moved from their (large) traditional territories to much smaller, inferior spaces -- spaces that also have very little access to infrastructure, are geographically challenging, etc. \"Indian removal\" policies also sometimes displaced Native peoples vast distances, into wholly new climates, and forced new ways of living, often antithetical to the ways of life that had been practiced for generations. Add to that the policies of educational programs designed to provide Native children White education while eliminating all traces of their prior culture, the situation has been fraught, to say the very least."
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2ro8b6 | with the advent of 3d printers, what happens now to the china (producer) u.s. (consumer) global relationship? | How does this affect the symbiotic relationship between the two countries? Are we less safe and more likely to go to war if we don't have to rely on one another for sustainment? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ro8b6/eli5_with_the_advent_of_3d_printers_what_happens/ | {
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"3D printers, while awesome technology and really cool to watch, are still in their infancy. It will probably be another decade at least before the average household owns one, if they ever do at all.\n\nEven if we hit a 50% adoption rate, there will still be a massive amount of things that are still cheaper to import than make on a 3D printer, and there will still be a ton of things that can't be printed on the consumer grade 3D printer.",
"In short, nothing - at least in the foreseeable future. A lot of technological development needs to take place before 3D printing can challenge the economic advantages (from an American consumer perspective, at least) of Chinese manufacturing. Even if you had a 3D printer that could print an iPhone in your own home (let's ignore for now the fact that an iPhone is a complicated device with many parts), it would still be more efficient to simply outsource production to China (i.e. Taiwan, but you get my point).",
"Nothing, for a long time. It's still a lot more expensive to 3d produce something, the 3d printed object will still have worse quality, and you won't be able to produce even a fraction of the same amount of product."
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1qkdi8 | why are lab rats more often used (are they?) for scientific research to aid our understanding of genetics, diseases, the effects of drugs etc. in human targets as opposed to primates which are physiologically more similar? | On the surface I don't see much resemblance between rats and humans (except perhaps that there are too many of both on this planet), so why are they preferred for trials and experimentation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qkdi8/why_are_lab_rats_more_often_used_are_they_for/ | {
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"[Hank Green explains](_URL_0_) better than I ever could.",
"Rats have large litters, quick maturity cycles, and are significantly cheaper to raise and maintain than primates."
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2zag86 | why the specific order of attaching the cables when boosting a dead car? | I know you have to attach the cables in a specific order when jump-starting a car (red cable to dead car's battery, other end to live car's battery, black cable to live car's battery, other end to piece of metal on dead car) but I don't understand why this specific order is the safest and least likely to cause a battery explosion? I've tried to look this up but I can only find tips for jump-starting cars, not an actual explanation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zag86/eli5_why_the_specific_order_of_attaching_the/ | {
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"The battery pushes energetic electrons out of the negative and takes them back (with no extra energy beyond their \"normal\" energy) on the positive side.\n\nIf you disconnect the positive first, and then do something stupid like touch the exposed metal, then those energetic electrons will try to travel through your body and into the earth doing lots of damage along the way.\n\nIf you disconnect the negative first, and touch the metal end... you don't have much to worry about. The earth isn't negatively charged. It has nothing to contribute to the battery.",
"The reason for the order is to minimize the chance of sparks near the dead battery which is more likely to discharge potentially explosive gas. Connecting the red first to the dead battery means any sparks should be near the good car (they're likely to happen when the 2nd connection is made), and connecting the black to a grounded part of the car keeps any sparks away from the battery. ",
"Both explanations so far aren't quite right.\n\nBasically the negative end of the battery (\"The earth\") is connected to the chassis of the car, whilst the positive only runs through insulated cables, the reason for connecting them seperately in that order is so that you don't create a short circuit by first \"charging\" (bad term, sorry) the chassis before you charge the battery."
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357dr2 | why are some people mad at joss whedon over the avengers 2: age of ultron? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/357dr2/eli5_why_are_some_people_mad_at_joss_whedon_over/ | {
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"Their reasons boil down to:\n\nBlack Widow got kidnapped and held hostage and needed a man to rescue her, where none of the men got treated similarly. (This was mainly because ScarJo got pregnant during filming)\n\nBlack Widow got a romantic subplot, and people were upset because they liked that for once a female character didn't need a storyline about being in love with a dude, and then that went away.\n\nThe revelation that Black Widow was sterilized in the same conversation where she talks about being a monster made some people believe Whedon was trying to say that a woman who doesn't have babies is a monster. \n\nThat, and the fact that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver weren't Gypsies or Jewish like some versions of them in the comics, and the fact that people on the internet like to argue and be angry because it makes them feel good."
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aamfq0 | why jewish people don't consider themselves caucasian\white? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aamfq0/eli5_why_jewish_people_dont_consider_themselves/ | {
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"Because in America, being white is considered an ethnicity rather than skin color, and Jews are a different ethnicity than the rest of the white people who originated from european regions. Still, many white skinned Jews will call themselves white because of their skin regardless of the ethnic use of the word."
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39fgmp | why are those pipelines not straight? just 90 degrees to their destination. why do they have "bumps"? | why are the pipelines like [this?](_URL_0_) and not straight, only with 90 degree curves to their destination? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39fgmp/eli5_why_are_those_pipelines_not_straight_just_90/ | {
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"I'm not sure about that picture, but the Alaskan pipeline has the divinations in it as a safety measures against earthquakes, its designed to flex so the pipeline doesn't bust and kill everything in Alaska.",
"Thermal expansion will cause pipes to expand in Summer, and shrink in water. So, the bend allows it to flex, so that it doesn't break the pipe.\n\nNormally, they use expansion gaps for that, but when you're transporting liquids or gasses, leaving a gap in the pipe tends to have sub optimal effects.\n\nIt's known as a loop expansion joint."
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17b2jw | time travel/wormholes! | I'm sorry but my browser is being a dick and blocking sites from where I am... There's no way it hasn't been asked but I can't see them.
I don't get time travel and lack of evidence nor wormhole travel. Is time or is not not a constant. Do we live in a single moment? I don't know!
Thanks chappettes/chaps! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17b2jw/eli5_time_travelwormholes/ | {
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"Ok, first: time travel.\n\nTime travel is certainly possible. But only forward. That is specifically because time is not constant at every point in space. Your passage through time depends on your speed. If you are moving faster than something else, less time will have passed for you than the other thing, even if you were to start and stop your stopwatches at the same time! If you were to expand on that, and go MUCH faster than the other thing, by the time you stop, 5 seconds may have gone by for you, but 5 years may have gone by for the other thing!\n\nI once watched a documentary where they talked about a \"future train.\" Essentially, you would go into this train, and it would start accelerating to a speed very close to the speed of light (obviously it would be going around the world several times per second). Using this train, you could time travel to the future! By the time you got out, it may have felt like a half hour, but you could have gone from the year 2013 to the year 3013! Of course, sadly, there would be no return trip. According to mathematical models, to be able to go back in time, you would have to move faster than the speed of light, which is impossible (right now anyway). \n\nNow, second: wormholes\n\nWormholes are still just a theory. There is no way to prove or disprove their existence at the moment. But basically, it all hinges on the fact that we really have no clue what happens to things when they go into a black hole. The fact that they exist at all seems to break a few laws of physics, yet, they exist. When you cross into a black hole, for all we know, the laws of physics break down and you could do anything you want. But the theory is that black holes are doorways to other places, other times, or even other universes! If you know anything about dimensions higher than the third (look it up on youtube. It will change the way you think about the universe), you know that there are dimensions for time and universes as well as space, we just can't see them or even understand them. But if wormholes are possible, we can travel through these extra dimensions to get to other times or universes without breaking the laws of physics (i.e. going faster than the speed of light). So, if wormholes are possible, then there would theoretically be a return trip for our future train.\n\nReally cool stuff! I recommend doing extra research :)"
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3l4vg4 | why is the younger generation much better at technological things than the older generations if they have both been using them for the same time? | Basically why are younger kids so much better at using electronics than older people, and why is it so hard for them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l4vg4/eli5_why_is_the_younger_generation_much_better_at/ | {
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"Two main reasons: The younger generations grew up with tech, so they don't know \"the old ways,\" while older generations are hesitant to use the tech. Also, younger brains learn things more easily than older brains.",
"It is a mixture of a couple of things. \n1. Technology is much cheaper to the point that you see kids as young as 2 years old using an tablet device or phone rather than older generations not having access to computers until they got to school age etc. \n2. Older generations not keeping up with the latest technologies because it would mean adopting something new which means learning all over again. As learning is time consuming and as you get older you have less time, it becomes a balancing act of whether it is worth diving head first into a new technology or learning enough to get by while maintaining current technology as your primary source."
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3hcus2 | what is happening to your body when it is overheating? | Like heat exhaustion and dehydration | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hcus2/eli5_what_is_happening_to_your_body_when_it_is/ | {
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"When you start to be hot, the body tries to regulate body temperature, sweating is one of means used to regulate temperature, this consumes a lot of water. \nIf the body fails to regulate the temperature, you risk to start exhaustion, you sweat more, have headache, fast breathing.. \nIf this continues, it becomes dehydration, fainting, nausea, you become mentally instable, breathing speed will increase and can cause organ failures. \n\nCauses are often physical effort in a very hot surrounding, humide environment or harsh temperature difference between your body and outside. \nUnusual high body temperature disturbs enzymes responsible for cellular respiration, this leading to organ failures, and death if nothing is done... \n\nUplifting isn't it? "
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cap10n | how does disney's domination of the box affect the consumer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cap10n/eli5_how_does_disneys_domination_of_the_box/ | {
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"I believe the worry is that if they dominate the industry then they can get lazy and not produce quality movies. \n\nThis is basically an argument against a monopoly. When a monopoly forms in an industry they can engage in various actions such as overcharging customers or, in our case, make shabby products. \n\nWhen there are many (or at least a considerable amount) of companies that compete then they will work hard to win your heart or they will fall out of the market/not make any money. \n\nThat's the issue with this. Disney is becoming a monopoly in the entertainment industry (specifically TV and movies).",
"Let's imagine a world in which 95% of movies released in theaters are produced by Disney. Yes, other people can and will always produce movies, but Disney owns all the popular franchises, has the capital to produce big-budget films, has the connections to ensure they're given wide distribution, etc.\n\nNow let's imagine that a top-level Disney executive decides that they want to influence American politics.\n\nThey don't need to do something explicit like making a certain political party the heroes, nor do they need to do something from a spy movie like inserting subliminal messages. They just need to frame some cogent political questions in such a way so as to make the movie persuade viewers one way or the other.\n\nWith 95% of the movie world under their control, they can achieve this easily. Children will want to see their favorite franchise, Marvel movies and Pixar movies, and will be exposed to the same message, from a young age, over and over again for years.\n\nThis is just one (rather dramatic) example of why media monopolies are bad. There are many others; what if all of Disney's executives and producers are white men? What if they all live in California? What if they are all rich? What if they are all racist?\n\nOne media company controlling all movie releases is not super realistic, but these issues are exactly why people talk about the importance of representation in media, and talk about what demographics control the media. If only a narrow demographic controls the majority of media, then that demographic's viewpoint is going to become the \"default\" one - and other viewpoints will be viewed as strange, annoying, or wrong."
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cr1hq4 | how does colourblindness work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cr1hq4/eli5_how_does_colourblindness_work/ | {
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"The ocular nerves are very sensitive. If one or more of the nerves are malformed during gestation people can be born with less than the traditional 3 cones in their retina. This results in the inability to see certain colors like red/green color blindness.",
"I'm colourblind and people automatically think I only see \"black and gray\" but that's not true. While I don't know how it works (sorry) it's just really difficult to tell the difference between colours (for me mainly red and green)",
"Technicolor was used to create movies in full color back in the days of black and white film. How it worked was a special camera would record the same shot three times: one in red, one in blue and one in green. When you combined those three layers of film the colors would “mix” together and you got a full color image. \n\nOur eyes work similarly. We have three sensors in our eyes called cones, and they each see things in certain colors, kind of like those cameras I talked about. They each send signals to our brains, which combines those images to create full color images for ourselves. When one or more of those cones are deformed or damaged we stop seeing that specific color and since color is a spectrum with a lot of overlap, that means people won’t be able to tell the difference between various colors. For example if your blue cone is damaged, not only will you not see blue but you won’t really be able to see purple, since you need blue to make that color. Most colorblind people only have one or two damaged cones but people who’ve lost all three see the world in black and white, like those old movies."
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4y8a7g | why are some swords single edged, opposed to double edged? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y8a7g/eli5_why_are_some_swords_single_edged_opposed_to/ | {
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"A sword requires a certain amount of metal in order to remain sturdy enough to function, and the thickness of a sharp blade isn't enough. A blade with two sharp edges is going to be heavier and wider than a sword with one, so if you don't need two edges it is more efficient and superior to only have one edge.",
"It has a lot to do with how they are intended to be used. Swords that are intended to be swung like an axe or a machete have no need for a edge on the back side. When you dont have the requirement of being double edged you can form the blade differently to make them more aerodynamic making them easier to swing resulting in harder/sharper cuts. As far as I know most swords throughout history and cultures have been single edged."
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2mw2gv | why does it seem like the last 15 minutes of sleep after my alarm goes off is the best and deepest i've had all night? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mw2gv/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_the_last_15_minutes_of/ | {
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"[There is an old post on ELI5 that might answer your question.](_URL_0_)\n\nTop comment [(link)](_URL_0_cetwzg3):\n > During sleep, a horomone called melatonin is released throughout the night to induce a relaxing sensation throughout the body. Once the body is triggered to wake up (I.e. sunlight or an alarm clock) the body stops producing melatonin. The problem is that even though melatonin is not being produced anymore, the remaining melatonin in the body lingers for about 35-50 min which is the half-life of melatonin.\nEdit: since im the top post which is awesome sauce btw!, ill add some info\nMelatonin production is halted by blue light, thats why it is beneficial to use a program like f.lux to reduce blue light from electronic screens\nMelatonin has little to no role in depression, depression normally has to do with neurotransmitters in the CNS\nSource: Endocrine class I took\n\n**Update**: Included top comment from other post.",
"I agree, I'm pretty sure I woke up and fell back asleep like 5 times, with 5 different dreams.",
"Because likely, its the only sleep you consciously remember having. ",
"There is an iPhone & android Sleep Cycle App (69p) which you put under your pillow and it uses your movement to monitor your sleep cycle. Give it a 30-minute alarm window, and it'll wake you up when you're in a light phase of sleep rather than when you're sleeping deeply.\n\nAs it wakes you up from the lightest phase of sleep (the natural waking point) you are apparently more refreshed. \n\nI haven't used it myself but it's something I read about earlier today.",
"I learned in Biopsychology it's due to Circadian Rhythms and Ultradian Rhythms, anyways I think without looking it up that - *Ultradian Rythms are a daily 90 minute cycle - during that cycle you are more alert during a certain part of that cycle regardless of if you are sleeping or not. So by hitting the alarm you are essentially waiting for your *Ultradian Rythm rhythm to roll over to a more alert state.\n\n*Edit I actually meant the Ultradian Rhythm* and originally posted that it was the Circadian Rhythm\n\nMore than 50 years ago, the pioneering sleep researcher Nathan Kleitman discovered something he named the \"basic rest-activity cycle\" -- the 90 minute periods at night during which we move progressively through five stages of sleep, from light to deep, and then out again.\n*\nAlthough it's much less well known, Kleitman also observed that our bodies operate by the same 90 minute rhythm during the day. When we're awake, the movement is from higher to lower alertness. Other researchers have called this our \"ultradian rhythm.\" ",
"Also your probably waking up and the end of a sleep cycle, if you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle you will be very drowsy, sleep cycles last 1 1/2 hr to 1 3/4 hr",
"The last 15 minutes are usually the worst of mine",
"Cheapest solution: Have a baby. Sleep is no longer required because it is no longer available. ",
"the cycles between nrem and rem sleep\n\nwhen you begin sleeping and as the night goes on the nrem and rem cycle between each other\n\n\n45 minutes nrem and 15 minutes rem\n30 minute nrm and 30 minute rem\n15 minute nrem and 45 rem\n\nI dont really remember the exact numbers, but you get the point. Most of your dreaming occurs at the end of your sleep cycle. thats why when youre in a really good dream you always get called to wake up for school or etc. \n",
"This happens to me too. I chalked it up as being the only sleep I was actually aware of, and that any disturbance during the night would feel the same way.",
"The answer has been given, so I'll tell you a near alternative hypothesis that has not been proven but it's still interesting.\r\rThere was once a man who dreamed about being a shoplifter during the french revolution period. He stole an apple from a local merchant because he was hungry, but he was caught by the guard and sent to prison. He spent days in there, until when the guards decided to give him death penalty for whatever reason. The day after he is being escorted through a crowd of angry people gathered around a guillottine, and eventually his head gets chopped off. The very moment he is decapitated, he wakes up. However, he doesn't wake up natuarally: he is awoked because a book fell from the library above his bed and hit him in the neck.\r\rBecause of that, this man believes that his dream was created the very split second his neck was struck by the book. After he was hit, his brain tried to come up with an explaination to justify the unknown pain to the neck, and that's how his dream started.",
"I think I may know the answer. Early morning is the time we normally have dreams and REM. It is also the time our dreams seem more vivid. We tend to remember the time well just before we wake up. \n",
"Because you hate everything about what's going to transpire in the next 12 hours. I've been there. Yesterday."
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1j3h7k | why are gas gauges less accurate when the tank is low? | So after filling up I get about 200 miles until I'm at half a tank, but I'm lucky if I get another 100 before I'm sitting on empty? Why is an accurate gas gauge seemingly impossible? It's like this on many cars I have driven. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j3h7k/eli5why_are_gas_gauges_less_accurate_when_the/ | {
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"The gas gauge operates by having a float attached to a long arm. The floats rides on top of the gas, and the angle of the arm gives you a rough idea of the level of gas. But it's not super accurate.\n\nFor instance, try to visualize the float in a completely full tank. It will be pushed all the way to the top of the enclosed tank. As the gas level lowers, the float will stay pegged to the top until the gas level falls below the height of the float's diameter. In other words, the float will stay pushed up against the ceiling of the gas tank until the gas level falls enough that it can float on top of the gas and still have enough headroom not to hit the ceiling. So the first few gallons burned will not move the indicator away from \"full\".\n\nNow you also have to consider that the tank is not perfectly squared off on the sides. It will generally have some sort non-symmetrical shape, which means that the float falling X degrees at the top of the tank often will not correspond to the same amount of liquid as the float falling X degrees near the bottom of the tank.\n\nFinally, the manufacturer puts a \"fudge factor\" into the system to keep you from running out of gas when the gauge is near \"empty\", so \"E\" on the gauge usually doesn't represent when you're completely out of fuel.\n\nSo you can see how this combination of factors tends to cause the gauge to be \"top heavy\", spending more time above the halfway mark than below."
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alnaym | what would happen if you put water under soo much pressure that when you froze it, it couldnt expand. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/alnaym/eli5_what_would_happen_if_you_put_water_under_soo/ | {
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"Ice expands compared to water because if forms a nice open spacey crystal. Once the pressure gets high enough the ice takes on a different crystalline form which is more compact and so there's no expansion. \n\nBelow about -60C it doesn't matter what the pressure is water will freeze.\n\nIf you increase the pressure the melting point stays around 0C until you get to 100bar (100 times normal air pressure) Then for a while the freezing point drops until about 5000bar where the temperature has to be around -25C. However after that increasing the pressure starts raising the melting point again so by about 20000 bar water freezes at 100C. \n\nKeep increasing further and water will be solid at almost any temperature.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;",
"Okay so ice under normal Earth pressure and temperatures forms a certain pattern of molecules that expands. However, ice can form different patterns based on pressure and temperature.\n\n _URL_0_\n\nWater is 1 gram per 1 cubic centimeter, so anything less than 1 on the density chart expands, and anything above 1 contracts. ",
"There us many types of water ice with, 18 separate known crystalline phases of ice with different crystal structure and density are known. They do not all have lower density the water so all do not expand when frozen some can even contract.\n\nThe most one you get if you freeze water in normal condition on earth is Ice l_h and it that type of ice is less dense the water. \n\nThere are other like Ice III that if formed at 250 K at 300 MPa and have a density of 1160 kg/m^3 so it is denser the water so it can be formed without increased volume but it decreases instead.\n\nYou can see the phase diagram that show the pressure and temperatur the diffrent types of ice existhttps://_URL_0_ So youy can see at if you juse apply enough pressure to water it can freeze at the 100 degrees that is the boiling point in normal pressure, The pressure need to be a bit over 20 kilo bar = 20 000 times atmospheric pressure.\n\nYou can ream more at with information on the different phases _URL_1_"
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2u2ojz | what causes the feeling of impending doom or of being watched? | I've had this eerie feeling these past two days, but I can't explain how or why it's happening, and my google search has been inconclusive. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u2ojz/eli5_what_causes_the_feeling_of_impending_doom_or/ | {
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"It could be a lot of things.\n\nIt could be stress, it could be lack of sleep, it could be a poor diet, it could be that it is now the dawn of the third day and 24 hours remain.",
"Anxiety can play a role in this as well. If you're anxious you are often more alert and paranoid. You pick up on small things that you don't normally notice, so your body is trying to be prepared for anything. ",
"I work in cardiology, A symptom inherent to MI (myocardial infarction), a heart attack is described as impending doom. Your heart sends a message to your brain essentially saying \"You're dying\". ",
"Low frequency sound is a contender for causing this. \n_URL_0_\n\nEarthquake zones, large generators/engines, waves can all cause these and while they are too low to be consciously heard, they are percieved through the whole body.",
"I would ask the guy hiding in the bushes outside of your bedroom. ",
"Did you get a new type of weed?"
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65qjil | where and how is offline spotify/netflix content saved? | I searched my phone to see where the content is saved, but did't found anything | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65qjil/eli5_where_and_how_is_offline_spotifynetflix/ | {
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" > Inside the SD drive, I can find the spotify folder with directories android/data/com.spotify.mobile.android.ui/ and then /cache and /files.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt appears that Spotify also encrypts the files so you can't use them in other applications.",
"They are most likely saved to the SD card but they probably have some sort of encryption so that you can't watch or listen to it from the gallery only on Netflix "
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4mnppf | how do plants absorb water? how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mnppf/eli5_how_do_plants_absorb_water_how_does_it_work/ | {
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"By the roots. Don't think of water you see in a cup. You have to think of water as 2 hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Water is a very polar molecule, so it gets help to pass through the roots (cell membrane) and into a cell. The cells then send the single water molecule to where it needs to go.",
"There a lot of simplistic and pretty erroneous answers here. Yes, plants absorb water through the roots, but the main cause of water absorption is mainly due to photosynthesis.\n\nWhen a plant undergoes photosynthesis, they release O2 into the atmosphere. They release it via microscopic pores on the undersides of leaves called stomata. When these pores are open during active photosynthesis, water also passively leaves the stomata as well. This creates an imbalance of water concentration, and due to the negative difference in water in the leaves and water in the ground/roots, the water will passively travel upwards due to capillary action. This osmotic force allows it to overcome gravitational forces.\n\nDue to this action, plants in drought frequent areas actually have very few stomata compared to those plants in temperate areas. These same plants have also broken up the photosynthesis process such that they can perform gas exchange during the night where they would lose less water."
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5vxzpe | the cloudflare incident and what i, a consumer, need to do about it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vxzpe/eli5_the_cloudflare_incident_and_what_i_a/ | {
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"Cloudflare is a company that provides a service to websites that help improve security and performance for those sites. A big service they provide is DDOS protection. They act as a proxy between the user and the website servers, so a lot of data passes through Cloudflare.\n\nCloudflare had a bug that allowed for certain HTML data to cause Cloudflare to leak sensitive information about the web site. This information could allow information such as passwords to be leaked to a hacker.\n\nUsers should try to change their passwords on any site that uses Cloudflare and look out for emails from websites warning them to change passwords.",
"Repost from another thread about the bug:\n\n## Quick overview of the bug itself\n\nLet's imagine I operate a website that uses one of cloudflare's affected services. You request a webpage from my website. Cloudflare grabs the page from my servers, does its magic on it, and sends you the actual page contents.\n\nNow, imagine there's another page that also uses those cloudflare services, and the code for that other page is broken in some very specific ways. Somebody else requests a page for that site, and, when cloudflare tries to apply its magic to the broken page, it fails.\n\nThe problem is, the cloudflare service needs some memory to work with to do its magic. Sometimes, the memory that it used to do magic on my page when it's serving your request gets reused when trying to handle the broken page. When the bug gets triggered, it doesn't actually put the right things in that memory, so the memory still contains the stuff that was used on your request. Then the service sends the contents of that memory to the second guy, as if everything had gone right.\n\nResult: The guy requesting stuff from the broken page gets data that was meant for you. Cases have been found in the wild where this \"data\" included passwords, authentication tokens, private messages, and more. When I say \"the guy requesting stuff from the broken page\" that actually includes google, bing, duckduckgo, and other search engines that have crawlers exploring the web repeatedly. As a result, some of those secrets ended up in search results, visible to the whole world. At least Google has since purged as many of those as it could find, I can only assume others have too, but it's unsafe to assume all those things are gone. The issue has also been around since mid-late 2016, as I understand it.\n\n## What it means for you\n\nIf you're a user of any affected cloudflare-using website, your credentials might've been compromised. Some fine folks are collating a [list of affected websites](_URL_0_), you might want to force logout and change passwords on all of those."
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2047q2 | jet streams | How are they created? If I were to skydive into a jet stream, would I be propelled at 400 km/h? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2047q2/eli5_jet_streams/ | {
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"Basically They are high winds between the boundaries of tropical storms/climate and the poles storm/climate or boundaries between different levels of the atmosphere. The earth spinning and the change in temps cause the high winds. Yes you would be propelled to high speed if you entered one. Just like in the movie finding Nemo when they hung out with the turtles. My grand father took a flight from Hawaii to Washington and they few with the jet stream. The captain came on and said they were moving at 800mph for a short time"
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4lwg2i | how does venmo make money? | I don't see any ads, or ever pay fees | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lwg2i/eli5_how_does_venmo_make_money/ | {
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"Venmo charges users 3% to cover the costs of transaction fees they are charged by your bank and your friends bank. This isn't profit though as Venmo pays the fee too.\n\nThey charge merchants to accept Venmo.",
"I've always heard that while venmo has the money before its cashed out, it's put under an account and venmo keeps the interest generated. It would be fractions of pennies, but considering how much money flows through the app, it adds up."
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k6hti | why at & t merging with t-mobile is triggering antitrust challenges but sirius/xm merging is not an issue. | There are no other players in the satellite radio world so it seems like Sirius/XM have a monopoly on things there. AT & T/T-Mobile merging still leaves Sprint, Verizon and a bunch of local type carriers (Cricket, etc.) so that doesn't seem to be as big of a deal. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k6hti/eli5_why_att_merging_with_tmobile_is_triggering/ | {
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"Antitrust is basically geared towards critical industries. \n\nMobile services play a critical role in the way Americans live and work. There are more than 300 million feature phones, smart phones, data cards, tablets and other mobile wireless devices in service today. Only four nationwide providers of these services – AT & T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon – account for more than 90 percent of mobile wireless connections. The proposed acquisition would combine two of those four, eliminating from the market T-Mobile, a firm that historically has been a value provider, offering particularly aggressive pricing. ",
"The argument for the Sirius/XM merger was that it competes with terrestrial radio (AM/FM/HD Radio), thus the two entities combining would not create a monopoly. Also, unlike maintaining the exorbitant cost of cell towers, it's conceivable someone could come along and start their own satellite radio service to compete with SiriusXM by just shooting a couple satellites in the sky. ",
"One is a luxury the other one isn't. One company could be allowed to run the entire jewelry industry, because it's simply not something you need. However, one company could not run the entire food industry because you need food.",
"Screw Sirius / XM...how does Ticketmaster get away with merging with Live Nation?",
"You can curse in the woods too because no one will hear it. ",
"Alright, you and you brother Charlie love sandwiches, right? And you like to have peanut butter with grape jelly, or strawberry jelly, or marshmallow fluff sandwiches.\n\nAT & T is peanut butter, and they want to make it so that every time you have a GSM-flavored peanut butter sandwich, your only option is grape jelly. Eventually, they'll downgrade to store brand grape jelly, and they'll probably only offer creamy peanut butter to reduce costs. Sure, you can still eat bologna and cheese sandwiches, or even a BLT, but if you want any peanut butter, you'll only have one choice.\n\nNow, as for Sirius and XM - between you and me, Charlie has always been a little bit slow. And would you believe that a couple years ago, he came in the kitchen and demanded a poop and rocks sandwich? It didn't really even make sense - who wants poop and rocks? There are already awesome sandwich ideas out there, especially Pandora and smart phones, just to name a few. For some reason, Charlie, thought this was the next big thing, so I gave Charlie the exclusive rights to poop and rock sandwiches. Whatever, Charlie. Enjoy listening to Howard Stern like it's still 1995 - I hear he's allowed to swear when he eats poop and rock sandwiches.\n\nAnyway, let's have sandwiches for lunch and then I'll tell you about the time Charlie tried to decide between HD and Blu-ray sandwiches, without realizing that both taste like shit.",
"How was the Sirius/XM merger not an issue? Pretty sure it was deliberated for longer than any other merger in regulatory history. It was a bloody mess, and almost didn't happen. ",
"Cellphones are pretty much 'necessity' nowadays. Someone creating a 'monopoly' could control prices as everyone kinda needs to have one (so, first brings prices down to put competitors out of business and then raise prices to make huge profits). Satellite radio on the other hand is just 'nice to have' niche. Even if you have monopoly in satellite radio business you can't control the prices that much as people will simply stop buying the service.\n\nThink of it as lemonade vs. toilet paper. There are two lemonade stands in your city, you buy them both and raise prices, no one cares as the lemonade is not necessary thing. There are two stores that sell toilet paper in your city and you buy them both and double the toilet paper price, people will complain as they pretty much must pay to you whatever you ask.",
"Satellite radio isn't something that most of the population of America has. Cell phones, however, are a very big part of daily American life. If AT & T merge, they will have more of a monopoly on customers, meaning that all the companies can charge more for the same or lower quality services because there are so few companies to choose from. ",
"Because nobody gives a shit about satellite radio, and everybody uses a cell phone.",
"Satellite radio is a luxury for entertainment, Cells phones are basically a necessity for personal and business needs, a satellite radio monopoly means not everyone gets to listen to the cool stations, a cell phone monopoly means one company controls how the rest of the world communicates. I'll leave to you to see what's wrong with that.",
"Antitrust is basically geared towards critical industries. \n\nMobile services play a critical role in the way Americans live and work. There are more than 300 million feature phones, smart phones, data cards, tablets and other mobile wireless devices in service today. Only four nationwide providers of these services – AT & T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon – account for more than 90 percent of mobile wireless connections. The proposed acquisition would combine two of those four, eliminating from the market T-Mobile, a firm that historically has been a value provider, offering particularly aggressive pricing. ",
"The argument for the Sirius/XM merger was that it competes with terrestrial radio (AM/FM/HD Radio), thus the two entities combining would not create a monopoly. Also, unlike maintaining the exorbitant cost of cell towers, it's conceivable someone could come along and start their own satellite radio service to compete with SiriusXM by just shooting a couple satellites in the sky. ",
"One is a luxury the other one isn't. One company could be allowed to run the entire jewelry industry, because it's simply not something you need. However, one company could not run the entire food industry because you need food.",
"Screw Sirius / XM...how does Ticketmaster get away with merging with Live Nation?",
"You can curse in the woods too because no one will hear it. ",
"Alright, you and you brother Charlie love sandwiches, right? And you like to have peanut butter with grape jelly, or strawberry jelly, or marshmallow fluff sandwiches.\n\nAT & T is peanut butter, and they want to make it so that every time you have a GSM-flavored peanut butter sandwich, your only option is grape jelly. Eventually, they'll downgrade to store brand grape jelly, and they'll probably only offer creamy peanut butter to reduce costs. Sure, you can still eat bologna and cheese sandwiches, or even a BLT, but if you want any peanut butter, you'll only have one choice.\n\nNow, as for Sirius and XM - between you and me, Charlie has always been a little bit slow. And would you believe that a couple years ago, he came in the kitchen and demanded a poop and rocks sandwich? It didn't really even make sense - who wants poop and rocks? There are already awesome sandwich ideas out there, especially Pandora and smart phones, just to name a few. For some reason, Charlie, thought this was the next big thing, so I gave Charlie the exclusive rights to poop and rock sandwiches. Whatever, Charlie. Enjoy listening to Howard Stern like it's still 1995 - I hear he's allowed to swear when he eats poop and rock sandwiches.\n\nAnyway, let's have sandwiches for lunch and then I'll tell you about the time Charlie tried to decide between HD and Blu-ray sandwiches, without realizing that both taste like shit.",
"How was the Sirius/XM merger not an issue? Pretty sure it was deliberated for longer than any other merger in regulatory history. It was a bloody mess, and almost didn't happen. ",
"Cellphones are pretty much 'necessity' nowadays. Someone creating a 'monopoly' could control prices as everyone kinda needs to have one (so, first brings prices down to put competitors out of business and then raise prices to make huge profits). Satellite radio on the other hand is just 'nice to have' niche. Even if you have monopoly in satellite radio business you can't control the prices that much as people will simply stop buying the service.\n\nThink of it as lemonade vs. toilet paper. There are two lemonade stands in your city, you buy them both and raise prices, no one cares as the lemonade is not necessary thing. There are two stores that sell toilet paper in your city and you buy them both and double the toilet paper price, people will complain as they pretty much must pay to you whatever you ask.",
"Satellite radio isn't something that most of the population of America has. Cell phones, however, are a very big part of daily American life. If AT & T merge, they will have more of a monopoly on customers, meaning that all the companies can charge more for the same or lower quality services because there are so few companies to choose from. ",
"Because nobody gives a shit about satellite radio, and everybody uses a cell phone.",
"Satellite radio is a luxury for entertainment, Cells phones are basically a necessity for personal and business needs, a satellite radio monopoly means not everyone gets to listen to the cool stations, a cell phone monopoly means one company controls how the rest of the world communicates. I'll leave to you to see what's wrong with that."
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1m59za | what did obama just say about what we're doing in syria? and what exactly is going on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m59za/eli5_what_did_obama_just_say_about_what_were/ | {
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"Obama claims that he has proof that the Syrian government deliberately used chemical weapons.\n\nHe claims that he *could* order the strike on his own authority, but feels it would be better to ask Congress.\n\nBut he notes that Russia has made an alternate proposal recently, which he thinks would also be an acceptable response but would not require military action. He is thus asking Congress to delay their vote on using the military, to see if Russia's proposal will make it unnecessary."
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3ca7pa | if a completely undocumented person from e.g. a poor tribe in africa/asia, managed to get to e.g. western europe, he never said a word and it was 100% impossible to track his country of origin, what would the authorities do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ca7pa/eli5_if_a_completely_undocumented_person_from_eg/ | {
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"Assuming they were somehow mentally impaired and was incapable of answering any questions about where they were from and they could not find anyone who knew them, they would be assumed to be a foundling and they would acquire the nationality of the state that found them.\n\n > Article 2 For the purpose of assigning nationality, a foundling shall be considered to have been born in the State where it was found and from parents of that State's nationality. That presumption may be displaced by proof to the contrary. ",
"Either he is kept in an immigration center.. or he would be released and considered a tolerated illegal.\n\nIn theory the authorities could have a strontium test done.. and they could know where he had been born, where he had grown up and where he had been since his last hair cut. But I imagine that a test like that is quite expensive and reserved for murder investigations, paleontology and archeology.",
"If he never spoke he wouldn't be deemed fit for society (including attempts to get him to sign, write or draw). At which point the country he arrived in may have him tested and sanctioned until they found out why he didn't talk. If he spoke but refused to remember (faking amnesia) he may be held and tested by professionals. Genetic testing can usually identify what region of the world your ancestors came from. \n\nIs not a walk in free card, and of course each county will have different regulations. But I guarantee someone has thought of this in an immigration office. ",
"I once worked in legal aid for asylum seekers in UK, and came across a more likely version of your question. One man I saw swore he was from country A and told a story about being a child soldier. He didn't have any papers, saying he lost them on the way.\n\nThe UK tried to deport him to country A, but country A said he wasn't from there and pointed out he didn't speak the language and didn't know things any national would know. Country A wouldn't give him papers and wouldn't accept him as one of their own. You can't deport someone if they don't have papers to get them into the receiving country. Immigration services worked to find a receiving country, but the man wouldn't change his story and it is quite difficult to show that someone is from X without cooperation from that person.\n\nWhen I saw him, he was locked up and sticking to his story. I'm not sure what he hoped to achieve: best case scenario would be that the authorities would eventually decide to believe his child soldier story and grant asylum, but that seemed really unlikely because there were lots of holes in that story and he'd already been convicted of serious violent crime in the UK by then. \n\nI guess, if he had a plan, it would be just to wait out the system in the hope that - surely - they can't keep him locked up forever. I thought, if his life to date has made that seem like a good plan, maybe he should be given asylum after all. \n\nWith your example, given the individual is not being wilfully obstructive, maybe the wait in detention would be shorter. Though, if he never said a word (in any language) I reckon he'd have to face questions about his health too.\n\nTL;DR - they can't deport you without a destination, but immigration detention rules are harsh so I wouldn't bet on freedom and assimilation in the short term.\n\n \n\n\n\n"
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1ybhdn | why does it become harder to stay thin/fit with age? | I know people tend to exercise less as they get older but even those who make a huge effort to stay fit say it gets harder in your 30s/40s. Does it have something to do with metabolism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ybhdn/eli5_why_does_it_become_harder_to_stay_thinfit/ | {
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"Yes, your metabolism starts dropping rather quickly. Mostly because most of your cells stop dividing for bodily growth, which takes a surprisingly large amount of energy. "
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5ohz4y | how are millions of letters every day checked for things like anthrax or other biological hazards? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ohz4y/eli5_how_are_millions_of_letters_every_day/ | {
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"Quite simply, they arent. these sort of threats dont happen often enough for the postal service to have a devoted structure in place for it. Now important positions and companies may have internal processes for it but there is no formal system used by the public mail.",
"There are only a few places that would check it. Since the federal government was a target of the anthrax attacks the Federal Government will check mail that is sent to them for security purposes. \n\nIf you write to the president or congress it will go to a mail screening/sorting facility first and then delivered to the recipient. \n\n"
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2u6a6r | can us ever repay its national debt? | Is it possible to ever get the 17 or so trillion dollar debt back to 0 and how so? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u6a6r/eli5can_us_ever_repay_its_national_debt/ | {
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"Yeah, you could, but it would be immensely stupid, given that the value of money always drops due to inflation. America borrows with interest rates less than global inflation, which means US basically makes money by borrowing money.",
"When the dollar loses value, dollars become cheaper. That is when large chunks will be paid off.\n\nThere are other things too.\n\nBut, ya it could be.\n\nRemember that there is good debt and bad debt.\n\nIf you owe me 50$ and don't pay, you have a problem. If you owe me $50,000,000 and don't pay, I've got a problem.\n\n",
"I think it goes without saying that government isn't really anything like personal debt but it might help put things in perspective using a more familiar idea we can grasp.\n\nPart of the problem with the perception of our debt being a big problem is that the numbers are big. Mind bogglingly big. Scary big. Our debt is roughly $17,000,000,000,000. And, yes, that is a big number. But let me show you another number: $17,000,000,000,000. Why, yes. That is the same number. $17,000,000,000,000 also happens to be our Gross Domestic Product or GDP, which is what our country produces in a year. Think of the GDP as our annual salary as a country.\n\nNow if you met a person who made $170,000 a year (a much easier number to get your head around) and that person was in debt to the tune of $170,000 say with a house a couple of credit cards and that person always paid all of his bills all the time, most people would say that person has very good credit and isn't at risk of going bankrupt and would likely be a particularly good candidate if they decided to get another loan. And so long as their income grows proportionally with their debt and they keep paying their bills, they'll continue to be a safe bet to continue to receive loans. In other words, if their debt rose to $200,000, that'd be okay if their income was also in the neighborhood of $200,000.\n\nNow what you want to know is: Can the debt ever be repaid? And the simple answer is, \"yes, but you wouldn't really want to\". Keeping our house metaphor in tact for the time being, if we wanted to get out of debt, we could pay less for the stuff we use and use the difference to pay down our debt. But there's a problem: What do we cut? Food? Medicine? Clothing? Home Security? Everything we're spending money on we more or less need. Sure, we could nibble around the edges and find a few dollars here and there, but not enough to make a really big difference. Going back to our full scale US debt, it sounds good to say you're going to cut our $10 million budget for ketchup research or $6 million in pork for a courthouse in Milwaukee, but that's like saying you're going to pay off your mortgage by rummaging around for spare change in your couch. When trillions are on the table, millions won't cut it and billions will barely touch it.\n\nWhich isn't to say it's impossible. Just about 20 years ago the Clinton administration had a plan to pay down the national debt by raising taxes and cutting spending. According to that plan, we would have paid off the national debt by the far off future year of 2011. Unfortunately, when we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, that added expense sidelined the debt repayment and ballooned our debt. And then in 2008 and 2009 the financial crisis happened and various stimulus packages and tax relief packages meant our debt ballooned again. It's really been a lousy decade for debt and deficit.\n\nBut have no fear: Should we do the obvious yet politically suicidal thing of raising taxes and cutting spending we can get our debt under control again (until the next big crisis, at least). But we don't want to pay it off, mostly because a lot of our debt isn't owned by foreign countries: it's owned by people like you and me in the form of government bonds. (Basically you buy XX in IOUs from the government and they'll pay you back XX plus interest after a given amount of time and these are generally seen as safe but low(er) return parts of many investment portfolios for individuals and businesses.) If the government is debt free, that means there are no bonds to invest in, which isn't very good for the economy. Economists might disagree on how much debt is good and how much is bad but most would agree that it's best to have some.\n\nSo that it. Our debt is big, but it's not concerning because it's about the same size as our GDP. It should probably be at least a little smaller, which is simple and hard because everyone knows what needs to be done (higher taxes and lower spending) but nobody is willing to do it. But much like needing to lose weight you can't just exercise more OR cut calories, you've got to do both. And while we could one day, 20, 30 years from now slowly get to zero with modest cuts and tax hikes, we don't really need to or want to because it would mean lower, slower economic growth as a nation and fewer quality investment opportunities for individuals and businesses."
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69uerp | what are astronauts actually researching on the iss? | I have been wondering what astronauts from different regions are actually studying and looking at on space.
I know there are different laboratories but I am not quite sure what they are working on. And even if each region is working towards the same goal.
Furthermore, after many years, are they still looking at the same study, or is it a series of developments over this time period.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69uerp/eli5what_are_astronauts_actually_researching_on/ | {
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"Labs on the International Space Station are sort of like they're for rent. You make a proposal and if some boss people like the idea, you can get room allocated. Though it's obviously a lot more complicated, and your proposal has to be pretty damn interesting, because there's plenty of competition to use the world's only 0g lab.\n\nMost of the studies are about how life of various kinds are affected by microgravity, or observing solar radiation - what it is, how it affects stuff. (Engineers figured out early on that solar radiation screws up computer memory, an annoying side effect.)\n\nSome of the experiments they run are on insects and plants, and many concern the actual astronauts themselves as test subjects."
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6eq1mg | how does autism develop after adolescence and into adulthood? | Is the individual able to cope better with the situation due to a more developed brain? Does it become less noticeable if it was severe as a child? Does it keep progressing or is there a point at which an individual stops on the spectrum? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6eq1mg/eli5_how_does_autism_develop_after_adolescence/ | {
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"Autism Spectrum Disorder describes a very wide range of behaviors and levels of functioning. While some adults with ASD are able to attend college and pursue their careers, others have severe cognitive impairments and need help with basic life skills. There are some nonverbal children who grow up to be adults with excellent language skills,while some will always remain nonverbal. So it really depends on the individual - each person with autism has a unique timeline of development. Preschool, speech/language therapy (for communication skills) and occupational therapy (for daily living skills) make a huge difference, especially before Kindergarten. In early childhood it's hard to tell how far the child's skills will go.\n\nIn my experience teaching young adults/teens with autism, I notice that my students between 13-18 show a lot of the same emotional changes that typical teens face. Things like mood swings, tantrums, and increases in self-injury are pretty common. Autistic teens who spend most of their time in regular classes have to navigate an extremely complex social world - it's like everyone else has the manual to social interaction except for you. I bet if you ask a lot of parents of autistic kids, most of them would say teenage years are rough. These were definitely my brother's worst years (he has severe autism). Of course this isn't the same for everyone.\n\nBy 18-25, the storm of puberty fades and many autistic people become more mature, just as non-autistic people do. At this point a lot of professionals see this point as the beginning of a plateau (e.g. \"a 25 year old nonverbal adult will never learn to speak\"), but in my experience this is a great time to introduce new skills. This is the time when my students tend to show more social interest, are more willing to try new experiences, and are able to focus with more patience. There are some adults who don't change much after this age - it depends on the supports they get and the level of their impairment.\nRealistically by this age, an adult with severe autism will always have severe autism, but he/she can still continue to learn new ways to communicate or learn to do new things independently. \n\ntl;dr It depends on the person and how much help they get. "
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4iwmx5 | how does drowning work? i know that you become unconscious but do you start breathing in water or just stop breathing all together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iwmx5/eli5_how_does_drowning_work_i_know_that_you/ | {
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"For example, let's say someone ties a cinder block to your leg and chucks you in a lake. You voluntarily hold your breath. But, after awhile, you pass out due to your brain becoming hypoxic. \n\nYour body is craving oxygen, so it begins breathing on reflex. This reflex pulls water into your lungs, which then blocks the alveoli from being able to transfer oxygen to red blood cells. ",
"There are two possibilities:\n\nOne, the urge to breathe becomes overwhelming and you breathe in water and two, the water causes a laryngospasm (your vocal folds shut down your airway) and your airway gets sealed off. This is called dry drowning."
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641eev | 20 years ago, the country was divided by the o.j. simpson trial. now it seems almost everyone unanimously believes o.j. really did it. what changed public opinion? | I have been watching the "Made In America" mini-doc on Hulu and have seen all the tension and divide that plagued America back then almost similar to how it is today. I am a 21 year old male who's been raised in Los Angeles all my life, so I was just a baby when all this was going. I just want some insight (hopefully) from any Redditor who was there during this controversial times and who have seen the shift in public opinion from "maybe he's guilty" or "maybe the police were trying to frame him" to an almost one sided opinion "he did do it." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/641eev/eli5_20_years_ago_the_country_was_divided_by_the/ | {
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"In the 1990's a majority of whites people thought he did it. A majority of black people thought he didn't do it. Today a majority of white people think he did it, a slight majority of black people think he did it. Black people's opinion on the subject has changed.",
"Likely the people who supported OJ actually believed did it.\n\nRemember the OJ case came right after the Rodney King verdicts which showed police brutality on video and they got away with it in court. This caused a riot.\n\nSo when OJ was acquitted by the courts, people who were enraged by the Rodney King verdicts felt like they had gotten something back. This corrupt system favored them in this case.",
"While he was acquitted in the criminal trial, he lost the civil suit. \n \nAnd it probably didn't help that he signed off on (and was paid for) a book called [If I Did It](_URL_0_) that was ghostwritten by someone else but claimed that he was the author. ",
"Common sense doesn't always happen immediately. I also think younger people (like myself) don't recall the racial tension that was going on during the time, that could have influenced the divide. OJ to us was never a celebrity, he was a has-been who murdered his ex-wife in cold blood. So we never tried to defend him or his memory.\n\nSo, when you don't have that context, you just look at the facts and it seems quite clear that he did do it.",
"Of course, hindsight is 20/20. At the time of the trial, no one was really sure what to believe and those who supported him supported him, and those who didn't didn't. Looking back at the case after 20 years, most people now understand that he most likely did it, not to mention he had the nerve to write a book about it titled \"If I did it\", which is basically just rubbing it in everyone's faces that he escaped conviction after probably committing the crime. ",
"Keep in mind that a lot of the people who wanted OJ to go free actually believed he did it - that's even the attitude expressed by some of the jurors. The trial became much more about race relations than about the facts of the case, to a lot of people.\n\nBut since the trial, there's been a civil trial (which OJ lost), about $0 spent trying to find the drug lord hitmen who OJ promised to track down, a book or twelve that have come out (none of which depict him favorably), a conviction for armed robbery, etc. Not to mention, DNA evidence (which was very new at the time of the case) has become a huge part of the legal process - the people who didn't trust it or didn't understand it back in the mid-90's now know just how crazy accurate it is.\n\nNone of this means that OJ is guilty, necessarily.... but when you put it together on top of what was already a very convincing case, that door of reasonable doubt gets narrower and narrower. Now that emotions are out of the picture and everyone has a clear picture of what's going on, it's much easier to say that the prosecution bungled a slam-dunk case and the defense seized on the race issue to push their guy through.",
"There was an excellent true-crime drama: The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. This drama was much more convincing than the actual trial. Part of that in 20/20 hindsight, the producers knew how the actual prosecution panned out. The other part of the difference reflects a change in the relationship between African Americans and the police. While the relationship's hardly \"great\" today, it was much much worse in in the 1990s (which were also better than the really bad days of the 1940s and 1950s).",
"And yet there's a lot of people who still don't think he did it - that he son did it, and OJ has been covering for him, a theory which has gained more traction over the years. So perhaps your question has a little confirmation bias in it.",
"Can't believe I'm the first to say this but watch ESPNs 30 for 30 they did called OJ: Made in America. It's a 5 part series but it covers this specifically and it answers it quite well. IMHO the documentary explained quite well that acquitting OJ of the murders was retribution for the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King. ",
"Most people have ALWAYS believed he did it. I remember being in 10th (or 11th) grade in science class and the teacher stopped teaching, turned on the radio, and we all heard the verdict live. I was completely shocked that they came back as ~~innocent~~ not guilty. Watching a documentary on Youtube recently one of the jurors believes steadfastly that the cops framed OJ and that was the reason why he voted ~~innocent~~ not guilty. The jury was shielded from everything we saw from the outside of the trial, and the whole glove incident was just a disaster for the prosecution.\n\nHe did it, though.",
"A lot of people who wanted him acquitted believed he was guilty. There's this idea, right or wrong, that if you're rich and white the law doesn't apply to you (see: affluenza, he wouldnt do well in prison, etc). \n\nThis case showed that if you were rich and black, you too could be above the law. A black man killed a white woman and was acquitted. In a fucked up way, it was a huge win for civil rights. ",
"A lot of people didn't understand DNA profiling or the science behind it. I think with time, as the public became more educated on DNA analysis and the science of it, more folks have begun to see the ways in which DNA evidence was essentially ignored by the jury, because they didn't understand it.\n\nLets also not forget that Police brutality and racism in LAPD were widely broadcast and acknowledged by the general public prior to the trial, this only fueled the fire of racial divide. There was very much a sizable population which felt that LAPD were just pointing the finger at a Black man, OJ, because they always have and could. There was a very strong push for the innocence of OJ as he would be among one of the few accused Black men to be successfully defended against our Courts and considering the overt racism of LAPD, it would have been a welcome break from the day in and day out violence against People of Color. \n\nThere is also the celebrity protection element. People dont want folks they admire to do bad things. OJ was a role model to many, a young successful Black man, getting ahead in a white man's world. The last thing fans and followers want to accept is that their idol murdered his wife and another dude in cold blood.",
"The way I saw it the trial wasn't about whether or not he killed his wife, but whether he could get away with it as a black man being prosecuted by crooked white cops. The verdict was proof that white police tampering with the prosecution of a black man actually can backfire.",
"In order to get a conviction, the state has an obligation to prove someone committed a crime, and they have a duty to do so in a legal and ethical manner. If a person did it, but the state violates the law during the prosecution, it's actually important that the defendant isn't convicted, because if we reward that behavior for a truly guilty defendant, it creates an incentive for the state to continue that behavior, which increases the chances that they'll do it to an innocent defendant some day and get a wrongful conviction.\n\nThe US judicial system's core principle is that it's better for a guilty man to walk than for an innocent man to hang. Regardless of whether OJ did it, the defense was able to sell a narrative that made it look like LAPD was trying to frame him. I don't remember the details and I'm not taking a position on what the reality was, but this got OJ sympathy with some of the public and reasonable doubt with the jury."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
dcp2r8 | why some 60s tv tapes look so awful compared to others? | Look at The Judy Garland show vs a Live Concert with Liza Minneli
The quality looks so different
_URL_1_ vs
_URL_0_
Another good example is the Apollo 11 landing and the lost high quality tapes:
_URL_2_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dcp2r8/eli5why_some_60s_tv_tapes_look_so_awful_compared/ | {
"a_id": [
"f29jwt7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The camera used to record it and the film would have already affected the quality of the image.\n\nBut because everything is shot on film, the film had to be digitised and the quality of the digitisation can affect the quality of the image too.\n\nSo if you're playing a digital version of a poorly scanned roll of film that was recording a television broadcasts (which are low quality for bandwidth purposes), you're bound to have crappy images."
]
} | [] | [
"https://youtu.be/jKPFJIGJ_jk",
"https://youtu.be/rwWE34_V8RQ",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes"
] | [
[]
] |
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