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5v6byx | how does the pirate bay keep maintaining a well known easy to type dns address? | After the big raid in 2006 and the other subsequent attempts to shut down the Pirate Bay, I naturally assumed that we would all very shortly end up needing to copy-paste IP addresses into our address bar to access the Pirate Bay site which we'd be sharing on forums or whatever. But to my surprise, I've never had to do that. Nor have we had to use unrelated addresses like "_URL_0_" -- no, it's always straightforward "thepiratebay.country". How is this happening? I understand why the authorities aren't able to kill the pirate bay, but surely they should be able to deprive it of an easy obvious domain name. It has always remained so easy to access that a retarded monkey could use it. This seems remarkable. How have they done it?
I've searched other attempts at asking this question but none of the answers were very good. Most didn't seem to understand that the question was about the domain name and those that did seemed to simply repeat "can't do it" without saying what's actually been stopping governments around the world from at least making it less easy to access through a super convenient and easy to remember domain.
When I Google this, all I find are a bunch of articles about how to access the pirate bay, not about why governments haven't been able to take away their domain name. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v6byx/eli5_how_does_the_pirate_bay_keep_maintaining_a/ | {
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"Well, you mainly need to understand the politics of domain names and ICANN.\n\nICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the organization that oversees the internet in general through two primary tasks, IP address allocation to ISPS, and DNS. They \"oversee\" DNS in a bit of a weird way, here is why.\n\nThe ending of the domain name like .com or .org, is known as a Top Level Domain, or TLD, and while ICANN is the one to make it, it is always by request of some other organization, which becomes the administrator for that domain name. \n\nICANN's actual control of who registers what domain name is very limited and is left largely to the administrators of the TLDs. All ICANN does is make the TLD for it by adding an entry for it in the 13 root name servers, the backbone of DNS, ask 18 cents for each domain registered if the domain is bought, and just make sure that the administrators have all the necessary infrastructure to keep that TLD up and running.\n\nOutside of that, there are hundreds of organizations responsible for their TLDs, and if you register thepiratebay for each TLD, there ain't shit anyone can do about it, Sweden forces the administrator of the .se domain (which they do because .se is obviously administered by a Swedish organization) to take it down, they switch to another one based in somewhere Sweden can't reach. ICANN has its power in the matter limited both contractually and physically, there is really no way ICANN can take down a single domain name other than asking the administrator to do so."
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5wkciz | why do employment applications have a voluntary equal opportunity questionnaire, if race/ethnicity is illegal to hired based on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wkciz/eli5_why_do_employment_applications_have_a/ | {
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"No. These voluntary questions aren't determinate to your employment chances, and in fact are no even seen by the same people. Certain questions on here, such as minority information, are what makes the employer eligible for certain tax breaks (such as the credit for employing a recently released ex-con from a correctional institution, or someone receiving cash benefits from the state).\n\nEmployers can't see this information in hiring as it creates a conflict of interest where they are only hiring whomever will get them the most credits. ",
"Notice how it's always on a separate page? That information is supposed to be kept separate from the application & used **after** the interview/hiring process is over to compile statistics so that companies can determine if they've got any statistically significant problems in their hiring process."
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1m3k9j | how can a beer be 'dry' | Eg. Toohey extra dry .... Beer is a liquid .... Liquids are wet | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m3k9j/eli5_how_can_a_beer_be_dry/ | {
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"Dry in terms of alcoholic drinks refers to the flavour profile, not whether it's liquid or not. It's the opposite of sweet: it means the drink is bitter and slightly sour. ",
"It's describing the flavour. Dry beers have less residual sugars than other variations, resulting in less malty and more crisp flavours."
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3iqmz5 | why is it when someone uses contacts after they've worn glasses for some tine, they look strangely different? even if they have only worn the glasses for a few days or a week? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iqmz5/eli5_why_is_it_when_someone_uses_contacts_after/ | {
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"The same lenses that affect their vision also affect the way you perceive their eyes. Near seated makes eyes look smaller, farsighted enlarges them."
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24dhvg | what is rational choice theory? | I've been researching this topic and I can't find anything that actually explains it. I understand the premise of the theory, but as I understand it now, it makes no sense. Help me understand. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24dhvg/eli5_what_is_rational_choice_theory/ | {
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"In ELI5 terms RCT assumes that an individual will weigh up the costs and benefits of an action an proceed with the action if benefits exceed costs. On top of this it also assumes that an individual will always want more rather than less of something.\n\nFor example I offer you two bananas or one apple. Now, unless you value an apple at double or more that of a banana then it is only rational that you take the bananas."
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52uh4r | how can some people be afraid of something (animals, insects, heights) while others are completely unfazed by it? | Example: I'm terrified of heights. I never had any sort of traumatic experience that would make me afraid of heights, I just am. My wife, however, loves rock climbing and zip lining and stuff like that. Why is she fine with them while I can't be 10 feet off the ground without panicking? Thank you in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52uh4r/eli5_how_can_some_people_be_afraid_of_something/ | {
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"Not always the case, but a lot of irrational fears, say fear of bugs, even ones that aren't potentially dangerous are learned behaviors. You pick them up in you early developmental years, that is to say something in you childhood caused this fear. Some fears are primarily biological, you may have an actual genetic predisposition to a fear of hights."
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1zr6g8 | aside from any odors, does "fresh air" exist? oxygen is oxygen, right? | My wife is always opening our door in the winter trying to introduce "fresh air". I try explaining that it's probably an odor she's trying to avoid, but she's convinced outside air is somehow different. Note: I'm not talking about getting outside and exercising, I'm speaking of blowing outside air into your house. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zr6g8/eli5_aside_from_any_odors_does_fresh_air_exist/ | {
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"Aside from odors, you're right, there's probably not much difference between inside and outside air (unless your house is *so* airtight that you're getting a buildup of carbon dioxide in your house, but I highly doubt that).\n\nHowever, there *is* evidence that natural ventilation is good for changing the microbial community in buildings (most data comes from hospitals and commercial buildings, but it's not unreasonable to suspect that it would apply to residences as well). Basically the idea is that we have lots of bacteria and fungi living on our skin and we're constantly shedding them. This means that that microbes in the dust and in the air in your house are human-associated and that if they get in places they're not meant to be (like your lungs) they tend to cause problems. Naturally ventilating a building can change the overall makeup of the microbes in your house by allowing non-human associated bacteria and fungus to come in (which tend to not be infectious), blowing some of the human-associated microbes out, and generally increasing microbial diversity. This has been associated with lower rates of infection. Again, in your home, the effects might not be huge, but unless you have a particular reason not to, occasionally airing out your house is probably a good thing.",
"Well 'Air' and 'Oxygen' are two different things. 'Fresh air' might mean, air that is less congested with dust, odor, humidity, whatever. So in the context of that, yes it does exist.",
"Assuming your house is reasonably air-tight, there can be a significant difference in the composition of the air in your house vs. the air outside. There are potentially many things in your house that might be releasing various gases into the air, including yourself. Your body is constantly taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. Not to mention the occasional other bodily emissions. If you have any sort of combustion going on, be it a stove or a water heater or a fireplace, that could introduce other gases into the air. Even just the plain ol' stuff laying around (particularly newer things) can \"off-gas\" chemicals into the air. The infamous \"new car smell\" is a product of off-gassing from the various plastics and other materials in a new car, and probably isn't all that good for you.\n\nOdors aren't just smells that magically appear in our noses, they're actual particles of stuff floating in the air. Unpleasant odors generally mean that there's something in the air that our body thinks is bad. Flushing out some of that air with outside air is probably not the worst idea.\n\nWhen designing mechanical systems for buildings, there's generally a fresh air intake requirement. You can't just suck in and continually condition the same air already in the building, you have to mix in fresh air from the outside. There's been a good amount of research showing that people stuck somewhere with just \"recycled air\" have more health issues. Look up \"sick building syndrome\" if you want to read more. \n\n",
"As well as all the scientific reasons you can't really argue with the psychological ones. To me opening windows gives me an emotional boost, especially in the winter, since just hanging out in the cold is miserable. It feels like I will actully survive to see spring. The house seems very closed in and dark in the winter and fresh air seems to alleviate that for me."
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1jyzts | why do construction crews block of large portions of a road weeks before doing anything on it? | I'm sure there's a good reason, I just don't know what that reason is. I'm not talking about blocking off condemned roads and fallen bridges...I'm talking normal, drivable roads that could easily be driven on. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jyzts/eli5_why_do_construction_crews_block_of_large/ | {
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"They are more than likely working on it, you just don't see them when you drive by. They might be taking environmental samples, might have rain conditions, might get everything set and then a permitting issue causes a delay, might be one team who will set everything up to block off the road and the team doing the work got delayed in a different project. Could be any number of things."
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7j1n2m | how do brands manufacturing non-concentrated, natural fruit juice keep the taste constant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7j1n2m/eli5_how_do_brands_manufacturing_nonconcentrated/ | {
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"I'm not so sure they do. I drink apple juice, grape juice, and orange juice and I notice they do change in taste year in and year out and also season in and season out as the source of the fruit changes as seasons change in different parts of the world. So answer is, they don't control it. Some batches are better than others.",
"Most commercially-available year-round juices are infused with \"flavor packs\". These flavor packs are flavor extracts which are added to the juice to enhance the naturally-occurring flavor which tends to degrade over time. The most well-known example of this is orange juice, which must be stored for long periods of time in aseptic, oxygen-free tanks. During this period flavor tends to degrade at least slightly, so flavor packs are added to bring back and at least mimic the natural flavor of fresh juice."
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44ybn3 | how do dj's always find the right part of the song to start playing at? | Whenever I watch a DJ using a controller and some sort of program, they will find the perfect part of a song to start at in the middle of a mix. Say they use the build up from one song, then switch over to the drop in another song. How do they skip straight to the drop, right down to the correct beat? The few times I've seen one of those programs in use, it was just a long line of unintelligible waveform that I would never be able to find the right part of. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44ybn3/eli5_how_do_djs_always_find_the_right_part_of_the/ | {
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"DJs cue up the right moment in the song as the previous song is playing. This is why they wear headphones, so they can hear where they are in the next song before they start playing it through the speakers. A simple DJ setup is simply two media players. They cue up song after song and then fade between them so there is no gap in the music.",
"They are listening to two things at once. Usually the have headphones and they are wearing them so they cover one ear, with the headphones they are listening to what they are going to play next. With the uncovered ear they are listening to what is currently playing. Then they get the song to the correct location and beat match it, and only once it sounds how they want it to they send it out the main speakers.",
"we select those moments and save them to the file *before* we do our shows, not while we're DJing. all of my songs have the highest energy moments marked with a cue point, and i can skip straight to them by pushing a button."
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27ydhs | when i stare at the carpet, the area around my focal point appears to move almost like a liquid ripple - what is happening? | I found myself staring at some green carpet and noticed that almost immediately, the ground appears to be moving. This effect appears like a ripple on water or the wavey 'heat on a car racetrack on a hot day' shimmer. What is going on in my eyes or brain that causes this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27ydhs/eli5when_i_stare_at_the_carpet_the_area_around_my/ | {
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"I get this too! Especially when looking at the sky. Would love to know why. ",
"I get it when staring at a point with rapid color changing or general movement like driving. ",
"I've experienced this before. It's usually with a very short shag carpet at my SO's apartment. No idea what it is, but you're not alone!\n\nI assume it's because there are so many strands(?) that are going so many different directions- coupled with the fact that there are many different shadows, some parts of the carpet are flat, some stick straight up, etc. And when you're focusing on one part, the parts around your field of focus are all kinda blending together. Just like how you can't tell the texture of the wall in your periphery as you type on the computer- but as soon as you look at it- Oh! There's the detail! So, since the carpet's texture is so varied, when it blends together, it mimics motion in your periphery.\n\nAgain, no idea if anything I'm saying is true... just my theory.\n\nIt's probably cancer, though.",
"I get this to. I think the sheer amount of randomness and detail confuses the part of our brain that interprets movement. ",
"I get this when I stare at grass."
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3va6nl | how can someone rationalize being "pro-life" and be against gun control? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3va6nl/eli5_how_can_someone_rationalize_being_prolife/ | {
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"Those that oppose gun control frequently argue that gun control doesn't actually save people, but instead increases the danger, because it prevents people from protecting themselves with their guns.\n\nSo if you hold that position, its easy to combine with pro-life.\n\n\n",
"They are not related so cannot be contradictory. \n\nPeople who are anti-abortion are not anti-killing they are anti-murder. They consider the killing of an unborn child to be unjustified and therefore murder. These same people often view executing someone for a crime to be a justified killing, thus not murder. They also believe killing in self defense or the defense of others to be justified so both war and killing someone who is attacking you is not murder. They also consider a gun to be a tool, and think it foolish to blame a tool for how it is used. ",
"For one, guns are not used for the sole purpose of killing other humans. They can be used for fun, display, or for hunting.\n\nLikewise, and abortion is not performed for the sole purpose of killing a fetus."
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dv4ocr | this may be due to a lack of mentioning in history books, but why weren't bows and arrows used more during the civil war? | It seems to me that a longbow would have sufficient range and superior 'reload' speed to the musket. Any arrow wound would likely be fatal considering the state of medicine in that era. The resources diverted to treating the wounded would also be a bonus. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dv4ocr/eli5_this_may_be_due_to_a_lack_of_mentioning_in/ | {
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"That weapon requires a lot of strength and skill to use at significant range, compared to a rifle.",
"Using a longbow required not insignificant strength and skill to do well. But more importantly the effective range of a longbow is out to about 180 meters while the typical range of musket shot is between 150 to 350 meters.\n\nSo I suspect one of the major reasons they would be avoiding the use of long bows is that the archers would have been under musket fire for almost 200 meters before they became effective.",
"Longbows require significant skill, strength, and training to be good with. That's why most European armies phased them out in favor of crossbows long before firearms. Crossbows just required the ability to point and squeeze a trigger, the reload was slow but workable, and no strength was needed to keep the bow drawn\n\nIn comes the musket, and by the US civil war, the rifled musket firing minie balls. You could take anyone, even uneducated slaves, and make them good enough with a musket in an afternoon. Put 500 of them together and you'll do some serious damage.\n\nEven though the individuals are all less effective, the lack of skills and training required let's you field a bigger army and replenish losses easier than needing to make people workout for a year to be combat effective with a longbow",
"A bow needs a lot of strength to use. So you need to spend a lot of time training a soldier to fire a bow. \nYou can train a usable rifle soldier in 10 weeks. \n\nShooting a bow is hard work, after a few shots the soldiers get tired and they can't shoot anymore. \nA soldier firing a gun could probably shoot for hours if you gave him enough ammo. \n \nIt takes a lot of work to turn a piece of wood, some feathers, and some metal into an arrow. \nYou can just dump some lead in a mold and make a bullet. \nYou can also dump a bunch of stuff into a big vat and make gunpowder for a whole company at once really quickly. \n\nA bow needs special kinds of wood, that can't just be made in bulk for the pre-plastics sciences. \nA gun can be made with a factory pretty easily and quickly. \n \nArcher's aren't good at fighting people on horses if the horse guys get close. They needed people with sticks with sharp bits on top to protect them. \nA musket man can stick a knife with a fancy french name on the end of their gun, and become their own men with sharp sticks.",
"The \"muskets\" of the Civil War were fairly modern weapons with rifled barrels that had significantly better range than a longbow. Nor was a bow's rate of fire better in the long run, you might be able to loose 6 arrows a minute...for a minute or two before fatiguing, you can shoot a Springfield 1861 three times a minute all day long. People like to romanticize about the longbow, but the truth of the matter is we have very little information about what their effective range was in battle or what their rate of fire was. We do know what a well-trained modern expert can do under ideal conditions, but that's not the same thing.\n\nThe other problem with a bow is it requires a lot of strength and skill to use, things have to have to be developed over years...any idiot can shoot a gun. A great bowman *might* have been better than a great musketeer, but armies are built mostly on the average and below, and a bad musketeer can still be effective. A bad bowman is useless.",
"A rifle is pretty much \"point and click\", and could be used pretty effectively with little training. Many soldiers were also familiar with rifles for hunting.\n\nAnother point is that, with the technology available, rifles were easier to mass produce. A bow requires skilled people, to find the right wood and to handle it correcly.\n\nThere is also the psychological effect. The thunder and fire from cannons and rifles is scary. It also affect horses more.",
"The previous answers talking about longer range and easier training for rifled muskets are correct, but are leaving out the important consideration of ammunition. Paper cartridges for rifle muskets are lighter, more compact, quicker to produce and far cheaper than arrows.",
"Longbows used in combat up to c. 1450ish had draw weights of 100 to 150 pounds. Imagine lifting 100 pounds with three fingers of your right hand and holding it steady long enough to aim, without trembling. Do this over and over for hours. It took years of training for midieval archers to be able to hit anything at all, much less have the accuracy of c. 1860 long guns which were dead accurate even in the hands of farm boys.",
"To add to this; I think it was Benj.Franklin who wanted to arm the Continental Army with bows and arrows. The plan failed, as the flintlock musquette was the better weapon; its a dispenser of a bullet, a club\\[if needed\\] or a 'lance' if needed, or a crutch if needed! Any uneducated English conscript from Hocking on the Hill, could be trained to use it to effect. Ditto the soon to be US soldiers from Boston, N.C.Y or etc who had never seen nor used a musquette could learn it. Source; worked for the National Parks Service/Concord,Lexington,MA > "
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39xota | google voice/phone | I just dont get it. Why do people use it? Why not skype? I call people overseas all the time, would I have a use for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39xota/eli5google_voicephone/ | {
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"Becuase Skype charges money for all calls, but Google voice is free for calls to the same country. Personally, i dont call to other countries so i use google voice."
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3oa4q5 | if something has a 1 in 100 chance, most people would think that if you tried it 50 times, you'd have a 50% chance of it happening. but this isn't true. why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oa4q5/eli5_if_something_has_a_1_in_100_chance_most/ | {
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"Because trying it the first time doesn't have any effect on it happening the NEXT time. \n\nWhat you're really saying with the 50 tries/50% chance thing is not that there's a 1 in 100 chance of thing X happening, but that there's a 1/2 chance of X happening the first 50 times you do X. The latter implies a link between the fifty tries, but there isn't one.",
"The odds of it *not* happening are 99/100, or .99\n\nSo the odds of it *not* happening twice is .99 * .99\n\nThe odds of it *not* happening after 50 tries is .99^50, or .605.\n\nSo you have a 60.5% chance of failure after 50 attempts. That's the mathematical explanation. People think otherwise because of the gambler's fallacy.\n\nIf a balanced coin lands on heads 1,000,000 times in a row, the next flip is still 50/50, regardless of how improbable the set as a whole is. Previous outcomes do not change future odds.\n",
"Are you asking why a 1% chance fifty times isn't 50% chance overall, or why most people lack a basic understanding of probability?",
"Because expected value and probability are not the same thing.\n\nIf you tried 50 times, you would expect that thing to happen on average .5 times. \n\nBut that's not the same thing as saying that it has a 50% chance of happening if you tried 50 times.\n\nThose two are different questions: the first asks how many times you expect it happen. The second asks how often you expect it to happen at least once. The answer to the first will always be larger than the answer to the second if that thing can happen more than once.\n\nIt's the difference between: \"how many hits do you expect the batter to get today\" and \"how likely do you think it is that this batter will get a(t least one) hit today\".",
"I've also always wondered why the curve is not a straight line also, but seems to bend out. \n\nI think it's to do with it being an independent and not dependent event. \n\nCould someone better at maths do these graph please, i think it would explain it better. \n\n\n\nScenario 1 independent probability \n\n1 in 100 chance a coin comes heads. \n\ncould some do a bar graph of how the probability increases of heads with each throw of the coin. \n\ni know that even after 100 throws the probability is still only 63%, and it doesn't reach 100% maybe never. \n\nScenario 2 dependent probability \n\nThere is a bag with 99 black and 1 white marble. One marble at a time is taken out till none are left. \n\ncould someone do a bar graph with probability of white marbel being picked as each marble is taken out. "
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305hk8 | what happens to the energy made from revving the engine of a vehicle while in park/neutral, since it's not going to the wheels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/305hk8/eli5_what_happens_to_the_energy_made_from_revving/ | {
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"There are a few things all this energy is turned into. \n1. Heat. As any engine (internal combustion) it produces huge levels of heat that are disipated via the cooling system \n2. Friction. \n3. Rotation. While yes your car is in park/neutral you are still turning a mass. Example, in my manual (stick shift) putting the car in neutral and revving it causes the clutch, input shaft. and gears to rotate in the tranmssion, causing the creation of heat and thus energy loss. In an automatice it works similar. \n\nTake note at how all the gears are turning when the tranmission in the video below is in neutral.\n_URL_0_"
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3zyius | how do employee unions work in the u.s. and specifically what do the numbers mean when a "local" is quoted? | I'm from the UK which has a good union movement but I am always intrigued when I hear people talk about American unions, specifically, what do the numbers relate to? I.e. Local 199? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zyius/eli5_how_do_employee_unions_work_in_the_us_and/ | {
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"There are some very large unions that represent workers across the nation (or around the world) - for instance the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents 750,000 people across Canada, the USA, Panama, and Guam. \n\nTo make it a little more practical, most unions have local branches so that people can regularly meet with members of their union in their local area, so they have local representation, etc. Like you might have IBEW Local 89 that covers the city of Seattle and it's surrounding area (for instance. I don't actually know where local 89 is).\n\nBasically a union has a bunch of local offices, and each one has a number. That's about all there is to it."
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7azvgn | why do fathers have to pay child support for an unplanned pregnancy if the mother doesn't wish to abort; couldn't the father be allowed to pay the price of an abortion of that state and then no longer be held responsible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7azvgn/eli5_why_do_fathers_have_to_pay_child_support_for/ | {
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"Because the child support payments aren't about what's \"fair\" to the parents. The courts side *with the child*, so the child *always* gets the most out of it as reasonably possible.\n\nIf a woman raped a man and had his child, he would still potentially be required to pay child support, if his earnings were higher than the woman's and he could afford to make such payments, for the sake of the child."
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1i4kpz | what do the different temperatures on a washing machine do to my clothes? | like when it has cold/cold, cold/warm, warm/warm, warm/hot etc.
what temperatures should I be using for different types of clothes/fabrics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i4kpz/eli5_what_do_the_different_temperatures_on_a/ | {
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"Hot water generally cleans better but ages the clothes faster. Unless it's stained, I wash cold/cold and hang all my good shirts, shorts, and pants to dry. Warm *should* wash fastest, since it should fill the washer faster. YMMV.\n\nIf you follow the care labels on your clothing they will last a lot longer than if you warm wash everything and machine dry everything on normal or heavy settings.",
"Unasked advice but nowadays they make specialized detergents that are made for cold water only. I highly highly recommend always* using cold water, about half as much detergent as the labels say, and adding something like Borax to the wash. Also, use the gentlest cycle. Most people do not soil their clothing nearly enough to require the kinds of washing we put our clothes through.\n\n*Heavy work clothes may need hot water + biological solvents to be completely cleaned. ",
"The quick answer is usually:\nWhites = Hot;\nLights = Warm;\nDarks = Cold",
"The tag on your clothes will say what water temperature to use. \n\nGenerally though: \n\nCold- \nThings that are delicate like lingerie, pantyhose, wool, lace, etc. Anything that bleeds like those damn red socks. Anything that has bodily fluids on it like blood or semen. \n\nWarm- \nDark colors, anything that needs permanent press, synthetic fabrics (spandex and the like) \n\nHot- \nCotton, whites, things that are very dirty, things that aren't delicate at all like jeans, coveralls, etc. and towels. \n\n\nIn practice, you could just throw it all in there together and put it on cold, but it's not going to get the dirtiest things *as* clean and Martha Stewart will pop out of your fabric softener and give you a stern look. ",
"General tip I got when I moved out was Colors = Cold. Whites = warm. ",
"washing at hot temperatures is more effective against _URL_0_",
"Since your direct question was already answered, this key will help you understand what your clothing tags mean:\n_URL_0_",
"May I have another washing machine related question here?\n\nWhy on Earth do I have to wait like 1-2 minutes before I can open the door? I understand 5 seconds. 10 seconds. But why minute? Either the washing is finished or I interrupt it. It happens on every machine I used. "
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1qg8je | the google+ and youtube account merger | After watching this from the front page:
_URL_0_
Whats going on, when I post something to youtube it shows up on Google+.
Why is everyone annoyed about it?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qg8je/eli5_the_google_and_youtube_account_merger/ | {
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"Because people are getting tired of \"another social media\" site like Facebook and don't want to have to manage another account. So they dislike Google plus for its lack of differentiation to bring people over. ",
"Google is forcing YouTube integration with Google Plus because the company owns both platforms. Google Plus hasn't really been a homerun, so integrating it with the world's most popular video site (by a long shot, remember) is a way to get user numbers up.\n\nPeople don't like it because people never like change. It's the same reason everyone complains whenever there's a change in the way Facebook looks or works. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to dislike this integration, but generally, that's the feeling I get after living through countless controversial social media changes.\n\nAlso, a lot of people view Facebook as the only social networking site they need, so they're not very happy with being forced to make a Google Plus profile. I'll admit it is kind of silly to have more than one social networking profile, especially when one platform is clearly more popular than the rest, but the fact of the matter is that Google owns YouTube and can do what it wants with it.",
"I like having a choice - Google is taking that away from me."
]
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4i5yj0 | how does someone end up owing thousands in back taxes? | I keep hearing ads for agencies that help people who owe tons of back taxes reach settlements, but how does that happen to start with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i5yj0/eli5_how_does_someone_end_up_owing_thousands_in/ | {
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"Easy. Your W-2 was't filled out right and didn't automatically withdraw enough taxes. Then come tax time you owe thousands of dollars because you didnt pay enough during the year. However you didnt realize this was happening and don't have the money to pay right away.\n\nBoom back taxes.",
"If you don't pay enough in taxes, you still owe the amount not paid as back taxes. This can quickly add up if someone is suffering financial hardship, if an audit finds they are liable for more than they filed, or if someone simply didn't file. If someone cannot afford to pay them, then they may negotiate with the IRS to come up with some sort of settlement.",
"The most common way is to owe a small amount ($1-3k) in taxes that you don't pay (usually because you meant to get around to it but suck at life and forgot to send in your check or because you spent all your money and can't afford to pay the tax bill), then the IRS starts charging you interest and penalties on the money you owe. Five years later that small amount you once owed can now be huge.\n\nAmericans get to choose how many exemptions their employer should assume they'll have when they do their taxes. We all do it when we start any full-time job. However, lots of people with 1 exemption prefer to tell their employer 2-3 exemptions instead. This means they get more money each paycheck but will owe the IRS more money out of pocket at the end. The theory is that the end result is the same, but this way you get to earn interest until Apr 15 on that money instead of the IRS earning interest on it. However, even for young, relatively low income workers, this can easily mean they owe a grand or three in taxes out of pocket at the end of the year.\n\nFor the rest of us, it's very easy to end up owing thousands of dollars at the end of each tax year. This is doubly true for anyone who is married. When your employer deducts taxes from your paycheck, they are making an educated guess that you will be in the tax bracket that your yearly income from them would put you in. However, if your spouse makes appreciably more than you, then you owe more (because they pulled you up into a higher tax bracket), but your employer doesn't know it. That means you're going to owe money (often thousands of dollars) at the end of the year. The same is true if you just got a big raise mid-way through the year --- half of your checks had taxes deducted at a lower tax bracket, and so the end result will be off.\n\nYou don't pay that just once (or screw up your taxes and miss a big $2k adjustment, like you didn't realize that you now make enough that alternative minimum tax applies to you, or you mis-read the instructions and thought you could deduct your home's new microwave as part of your home office), then suddenly you owe money to the IRS in back taxes. Add in penalties and interest, and suddenly this tax burden becomes more than you can afford.\n\n[Edit - fixed my exemption reversal]",
"I'm a CPA tax accountant and prior to leaving public accounting for private industry, I had a few cases of this.\n\nThe most notable was a guy who owned a business (S Corporation) and he acted as a financial consultant (go figure). He claimed to me that he had been depressed for several years and despite making hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last 5 years, he hadn't filed a single tax return for his business because he was depressed and detached (but not so much that he couldn't rake in $$). Once we prepared all of his past due tax returns, he owed about $300k in just federal taxes excluding penalties and interest, which would've brought the balance well over half a million dollars. Since he claimed to have depression issues, and his doctor ended up writing a note that we attached to his tax returns when we filed them to abate penalties. I ended up quitting that job before we heard anything back from the IRS, but I guess it could've gone either way.",
"A) Your employer didn't withhold correctly\n\nB) You were self-employed or making investments and didn't pay the taxes on your profits\n\nC) You inherited something and didn't pay the taxes."
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5xdszm | why does drinking alcohol when hungover make you feel better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xdszm/eli5_why_does_drinking_alcohol_when_hungover_make/ | {
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"for much the same reason as it made you feel good the first time.\nThe dehydration and other hangover symptoms are still there, but the new rush of alcohol numbs you the same way it did the night before.",
"The alcohol in drinks is mostly a chemical called ethanol, but another chemical, methanol, is also present. \n\nThese chemicals are both broken down by your liver. When ethanol is broken down, the byproducts are fairly benign. But when methanol is broken down, it creates toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and formic acid that make a hangover much worse.\n\nYour liver prefers to deal with ethanol before tackling methanol. If you drink more alcohol while hungover, there's fresh supply of ethanol in your body to break down. Your liver will then stop breaking down methanol and creating nasty chemicals. This delay gives methanol a chance to leave your body through other ways like your breath and pee."
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2yqdnr | how can a male wearing a condom transmit hpv to a woman through vaginal intercourse? | I understand the other way around well enough, but this blows my mind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yqdnr/eli5how_can_a_male_wearing_a_condom_transmit_hpv/ | {
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"text": [
"There are bits of your skin that are not covered by a condom, and will rub on bits of her skin."
]
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|
2rwqo8 | all the different ways to cook an egg | I feel like I missed out on some Adult 101 thing, but yeah. What the heck is the difference between a poached egg, soft boiled, sunny side up, fried, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rwqo8/eli5_all_the_different_ways_to_cook_an_egg/ | {
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"Poached egg: boiling water (with a dash of vinegar), crack an egg into the water, let the white/yellow cook until soft.\n\nSoft boiled egg: boil egg (in shell) in water for a few minutes. To eat, crack the shell and eat the inside. Whites will still be soft, yellow will be runny.\n\nHard boiled egg: same as cooking as soft boiled, but cook longer so that white and yellow both solid.\n\nSunny side up: crack egg into hot frying pan, cook until the whites turn white and the yellow is firmed on surface, but still runny if broken.\n\nFried egg: see \"sunny side up\"\n\nFried egg, over easy: see \"sunny side up\". When almost cooked, flip over so that the yellow is sort of encased in the solidifying white.\n\nScrambled: crack open, mix whites and yellows until homogenous. add a bit of milk/cream. fry mixture in pan stirring gently until soft yellow curds formed.\n\nOmelet: see scrambled. pour mixture in frying pan and gently stir/agitate until one soft layer of egg. fold over itself. optional to add fillings before folding.\n\nThere are various sauces that can be made with eggs as well.\n\nThat's all I can recall off the top of my head."
]
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4qs6yl | how can muscles fatigue to the point of failure during an exercise, but after a short period of rest, repeat the same exercise with almost the same intensity? | For example, if doing dumbbell curls, why can someone curl a weight 10 times and fail the 11th try, but after a minute of rest, curl the same weight eight times and fail on the ninth? How does a short amount of rest equate to so much strength regained? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qs6yl/eli5_how_can_muscles_fatigue_to_the_point_of/ | {
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"Hard exercise causes certain chemicals to build up in your muscles. Once you stop exercising, these chemicals clear quite quickly.",
"Thinking of it in terms of \"strength regained\" is a bit of a misleading analogy. When you exert yourself, you're not really \"expending\" strength in the sense of having a limited quantity of exertion available and running out of it. What's happening is that a particular muscle group (in this case those of the arms) is being exerted continuously until it starts causing problems, including the buildup of waste chemicals as well as the depletion of nearby sources of other chemicals. Approaching those tolerances triggers the uncomfortable feeling that we call exhaustion, eventually escalating to pain. Resting that muscle group then allows the circulatory and other organ systems to remove the problems, mostly by removing the waste chemicals and replenishing the needed chemicals. There was never any overall shortage of \"energy\", although we commonly use that metaphor to describe this and other similar body systems, or a shortage of capacity to handle the chemicals building up, only a limit to the rate at which the body can transport chemicals where they need to be.\n\nA better metaphor to use might be that of a machine overheating. The machine has safety mechanism that force it to shut down before the heat causes much damage, and once the machine cools back down it can resume operation with very little degradation to its capabilities. With the body there are many things involved other than heat, but the pattern of recovery is similar enough to make it a useful metaphor.\n\nIncidentally, not all animals have quite that same kind of safety mechanism: a deer or a horse for instance can literally run itself to death. Presumably this is because deer and horses more commonly run away from predators, so in them having those safety mechanisms might occasionally make it harder to escape and thus harder to survive.",
"When you make a huge muscle effort, you burn the glucose (energy) in the muscle and produce lactic acid, in \"normal\" or \"more relaxed\" conditions, your muscle will degrade this glucose aaaaall the way down to CO2 and H2O, BUT, as your muscles are demanding much more energy, there isn't enough oxygen in the muscle to to the complete process, as a consecuence of this the lactic acid starts to acumulate in the muscles, up to a point where it can cause a cramp. When you take a little rest of a couple of minutes this lactic acid is taken from the muscles to the liver, where it becomes glucose again, and is released to the bloodstream so muscles can utilize it again. This is called [the Cori cycle](_URL_0_) in case you want to know a little more in detail.",
"I'm seeing a lot of wrong information floating around, so lets keep it simple and clarify some things.\n\nThere is ATP and there is Glycogen.\n\nATP is the currency of energy that your cells use to carry out an action. Want your muscle cells to lift a weight? Spend ATP. Want your liver to pull out poisons? Spend ATP.\n\nGlycogen is a storage form of energy used by both your liver and your muscles.\n\nSo how does this apply?\n\nYour muscle cells have a limited about of ATP on hand at any given second. If you do several reps quickly, you'll use up your ATP. Your cells are \"bankrupt\" because they have no more ATP to spend on moving those muscles.\n\nBut!\n\nThen you wait a minute or two. This gives your muscles time to convert that glycogen (stored energy) into ATP (usable energy) and then you're ready to go again.\n\nIf you do this repeatedly (work out, regularly, etc) a few things will happen. Your muscle cells will get larger and strong (which is why you get big, buff and defined) so those muscles can move heavier weights. Also, your cells will hold more ATP and be able to regenerate ATP faster, so you have a greater endurance for those workouts.\n\nAlso, the lactic acid thing is just wrong. Yes, lactic acid builds up during physical activities. Does it stop your muscle from being able to move? No. If your lactic acid built up enough in your cell to prevent it from functioning, that cell would die."
]
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2dhh3u | why do human muscles atrophy with neglected use when other animals, like gorillas, seem to never lose their strength despite never exercising? | There's no way their daily activities grant them enough exercise to warrant such strength. Especially gorillas who are kept in a zoo. I may be generalizing here, but those guys are lazy as fuh. They sit there and munch all day, but are still incredibly strong. I've never seen a gorilla and said to myself "wow, that gorilla looks tiny." | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dhh3u/eli5_why_do_human_muscles_atrophy_with_neglected/ | {
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"you're totally generalizing. they basically do pull ups and chin ups all day"
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39s8t4 | why does warm water taste so bad compared to cold water? considering the water was filtered, purified bottled water that was in the sun. | ^^ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39s8t4/eli5_why_does_warm_water_taste_so_bad_compared_to/ | {
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"A lower temperature does a good job hiding smells and odors. Remember this the next time you want to hide some bbq sauce in chocolate ice cream and serve it to you friends.",
"Your tastebuds are less sensitiv at lower temperatures. Thats why many cheaper alcoholic drinks are served chilled. If you want to taste somthing (let's say good whisky) drink it at about room temperature."
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8crpdf | how do radio repeaters work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8crpdf/eli5how_do_radio_repeaters_work/ | {
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"A single radio frequency “channel” in “simplex mode” (no repeater) is used like a bunch of people in the same room having a conversation. That is, if everyone talks at once it is almost impossible to hear anyone, and some people with louder voices can overpower others and end up being the only person heard. The bigger problem is when multiple people try to use one frequency and they don’t all want to talk to each other. Then everything is a big jumbled mess on that one frequency.\n\nRepeaters solve this bigger problem by setting up two frequencies, or channels, one for everyone to talk to, and then one for everyone to listen on. The repeater then listens on the first channel, and the broadcasts what it got on the second channel. Modern radios allow people to program a radio “channel” to transmit on the repeater’s “listening” frequency, and receive on the repeater’s “broadcast” frequency.\n\nNow, we still have the problem of random people talking “simplex” on the repeater’s receive frequency. Repeaters solve this by listening for a “tone” that modern radios can program so when you hit the PushToTalk transmit button on your radio, the special tone is sent which indicates to the repeater that this transmission is, in fact, meant for the repeater and isn’t some random chatter that happens to be in the repeater’s listening frequency.",
"Okay. I'm heading out to dinner now, but will take a look when I get back this evening. Hope I can help out. Kevin - K3BAR"
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8d6p46 | social media sites | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8d6p46/eli5_social_media_sites/ | {
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"The rule of thumb is that of you don't pay for a product, you are the product. Pretty much every company everywhere stores and collects your data, that's just what happens in today's world. The issue with Facebook was how it was handled, not the practice itself. "
]
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3mq9dv | why does facebook need 60 million lines of code in order to run? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mq9dv/eli5_why_does_facebook_need_60_million_lines_of/ | {
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"Facebook is complicated - it does more than just show you things people have shared, said, liked or whatever. Facebook's real business is in handling data.\n\nFacebook know you really well. They've got a good picture of you - they know what adverts you're likely to respond to, they know what pages to suggest you might want to check out. Crunching data so that you get to know how people act isn't easy. There's a huge proportion of your 60 million lines right there."
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3msa2h | why is it that someone can do something 'intuitively' and do it very well, yet when they try to explain it to others they just can't seem to describe how or what they do in a way that makes sense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3msa2h/eli5_why_is_it_that_someone_can_do_something/ | {
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"Because our brain doesn't run on English. Or any human language. Not for those sorts of things anyway.\n\nMy brain has gotten fairly good at knowing what to do when my sense of balance and vision and sense of touch all signal my foot suddenly stopped mid stride and I'm falling a bit forward - it knows to fall into one of those sort of run to keep my lower body under the upper body so I don't face-plant.\n\nThat doesn't happen because I think about it - I can't even think that fast. It happens because my brains builds these associations of feeling and reaction that it's learned. It tries to learn new associations and does fairly well with things like, for example, my learning to type effectively. I don't think about where keys are, I rather think of the words and my brain has figured out some way to get the letters from the words and to find the right keys. It's even gotten fairly good at recognizing mistakes int typing; I often feel like what I typed is wrong. It just *feels* wrong because my brain recognized that the letter in my head didn't match the movement of my finger there, or it didn't feel like a normal key depress because my finger slid between keys.\n\nSo I can't explain such a thing really because it's not something I ever learned consciously.",
"That's pretty much what the word \"intuitively\" means. It's something you grasp without a lot of instruction.\n\nFor example: try explaining how to speak. You move your tongue in this way, and tighten your throat this other way, but...not like that way, it's different. And you make words which are sound-pictures that you already know what they are, and other people know them.....\n\nOr walking: You put your foot in front of you and then take your weight off of your back foot but *without* falling over...\n\nSome people just have a knack for certain skills. I, for example, cannot for the life of me do any kind of drawing or art well at all. I understand the *concept* of looking for artistic [shapes](_URL_0_), but my brain just does not want to do it. I don't see simple shapes, my brain takes in the whole picture at once, which is *not* good for drawing.\n\nThen again, there are people with [absolute pitch](_URL_1_), which is a skill that *can* be taught (as far as we know), but when you ask people how to do it, it's just like...well, you hear the pitch, and you know what pitch it is...\n\nBasically, it's a skill that's ingrained so deeply in your brain that you never think about doing it, so you never think about how to explain how to do it."
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3yius8 | what is so complicated about a nuclear bomb that prevents so many governments/regimes from building one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yius8/eli5_what_is_so_complicated_about_a_nuclear_bomb/ | {
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"The basic \"gun type\", not all that much, provided you've got the fissile material.\n\nThe implosion type is much harder - the shockwaves from the conventional explosives that compress the fuel have to arrive in a spherical surface, despite being triggered at a number of points on a sphere - if they don't, then the core spits out of the \"joins\" between the approaching pressures and nothing much happens except an awful radioactive mess.\n\nBut perhaps the biggest problem is the fuel - the equipment to make it is highly specialised, and difficult to hide.",
"The biggest challenge is that you need a special Isotope of Uranium to build one, called U^235 (Uranium 235).\n\nThe problem is that it is very rare in nature, only accounting for less than 1% of the total amount of Uranium on our planet.\n\nThere are ways to seperate Uranium 235 from the natural occuring Uranium 238, but they are expensive, plus you need a decent amount of Uranium to start with, in order to produce a nuclear Warhead filled with U^235 that is capable of a big enough explosion.\n\nEDIT: Spelling",
"Nice try, Iran. We've caught you. I consider our little nuclear agreement null and void. Prepare for bombing campaign.",
"It's mainly the fuel, if you make a Uranium bomb. The isotope used, U-235, has to be separated by weight from U-238. There's only about 1% difference in weight and no chemical difference so the process is difficult. Uranium is turned into a gas (Uranium hexafluoride) and then spun in high speed centrifuges to separate the isotopes. The centrifuges have to be built using special steel because they spun so fast and you need a lot of them to make much fuel because the process is so inefficient.\nIf you make a Plutonium bomb the separation process is much easier but you need to make the Plutonium in a nuclear reactor. And the bomb itself is trickier to build. You need to compress is from all sides at the same time. That requires special circuits and design to make the explosives go off at just the right time.",
"Gathering material as Quizznor said is a huge hurddle to overcome. The other is the accuracy in designing and making the weapon. You can't just slap some U235 into a hand grenade and make a nuclear detonation.\n\nGetting the fusion to happen, and be efficient takes skill in designing and machining. So a certain level of production skill is needed. Don't expect an African nomadic tribe to assemble a working weapon even if given all the parts.",
"Nobody has figured out the holy grail of a pure-fusion weapon. So you're stuck with having to try and obtain difficult to get materials for fission weapons. And those materials can be traced and have special requirements in handling.\n\nEngineering is still difficult too. Things need precision and have to be set off just right for it to work. Yes, it's 1940's tech, but some places still don't have the high quality materials or tooling to do the job. (For instance, look at the tolerances in some WWII aircraft engines and how expensive it would be to do that level of machining now.)",
"Any modern government that invests the resources into a nuclear program is able to do it. The reason they do not is because of numerous treaties that promise help with civilian development of nuclear power for states that agree to forgo production of a bomb. Making a bomb is also very expensive, so states often recognize it is better to spend that money elsewhere. ",
"I'd guess there are a few dozen first world states that could build bombs but are signatories to the Non-Proliferation pact and also protected by another power's nuclear umbrella. \n\nFor example, Canada has every element necessary to go ahead and do so but decided back in the early years of atomic warfare not to build its own weaponry. ",
"The engineer guy has a good video on this.\n_URL_0_",
"Besides the material there seems to be much delicate machining and technology in just putting the bomb together. I don't claim that he knows what he is talking about but the Tom Clancy novel The sum of all fears has a lot of detail about the building of an A bomb by a non governmental agency. You will have to wade through his cold war and a future history that is very different from what actually occurred.\nI picture Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan and it's all good.",
"[Previously discussed several times](_URL_0_) and [some more times](_URL_1_).",
"For an informative *and* entertaining read, get *The Sum of All Fears* by Tom Clancy. He goes into some detail about how fusion bombs are made. \n\nHe gets around the need of fissionable material by supposing that some terrorists get ahold of an Israeli fission bomb, and hiring a disallusioned German nuclear scientist to rebuild it into a 3-stage fission bomb. \n\nOne point that he makes is that the actual machining is no more difficult that that performed by optical lens makers!",
"Whoa whoa whoa....I mean realistically the most complicated part is getting the neighboring countries and superpower's approval. I mean the technology know-how is out there. It might not be state of the art, but could still be Soviet-era blueprints/data. \n\nBut from all the WWII videos I recall, vast amounts of Water is required as well. Might be something to think about when you look at the Dams we have. "
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5gfzno | considering the technological advancements we've made with phones, why is it not possible to talk to someone on phone and use the internet at the same time? | With all the things that the current smart phones can do, why can I not do something as basic as talk to a friend and check something online at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gfzno/eli5_considering_the_technological_advancements/ | {
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"Why can't you? What type of internet do you have?",
"That is, and has been possible for several years. In the end it comes down to cellular network technology. I'm not a super expert, but will link sources for your reading. \n\nIn the US, there are four major companies: Verizon, Sprint, AT & T and T-Mobile. These four carriers use two different technologies. \n\nSprint and Verizon use CDMA and AT & T T-Mobile use GSM. Now, I won't go into super specific (mainly because I'm not an expert), but the difference between GSM and CDMA is, GSM can have both a data and voice connection active at the same time, whereas CDMA cannot. \n\nCDMA must switch between the two (voice, data) depending on what is happening. \n\nGSM can use both streams if you will. So for AT & T and T-Mobile you can and have been able to browse and talk simultaneously for years. \n\nSprint/Verizon it comes down to if the phone has two radios built in, or their current status on VoLTE (Voice over LTE). There is a CDMA network technology called SV-DO (simultaneous voice and data optimization) but US carriers haven't adopted it. It's possible but blame the carriers! \n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_"
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5qferj | why will i not work out if i know i need to? and how can you get over it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qferj/eli5_why_will_i_not_work_out_if_i_know_i_need_to/ | {
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"Find out how to change that \"need\" to \"want\". Overly simplistic? Yeah, but it's the truth. Try and remove \"need to work out\" from your thinking. That's what is holding you back. "
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1uu8mg | why does my cat not like human food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uu8mg/eli5_why_does_my_cat_not_like_human_food/ | {
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"My cats looove hooman food. \n\n"
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5ckxdi | why do hiccups occur, what causes it to stop, and why does it sometimes hurt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ckxdi/eli5_why_do_hiccups_occur_what_causes_it_to_stop/ | {
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"Hiccups are an involuntary spasm caused by the diaphragm, that flat disk shaped muscle under your lungs that, when it contracts, pulls air into your lungs. \nThere are several causes for hiccups (laughing/crying too much, anxiety, pneumonia, indigestion). There are several methods to stop hiccups and why some of the old wives tales may have some scientific backing.\n\nFor example holding your breath causes the build up of carbon dioxide (CO2) and your brain practically tells your diaphragm, \"get your shit together because we need oxygen!\" This is the same with drinking copious amounts of water in varying positions other than in an upright position, jumping jacks while holding your breath, etc.\n\nAnother solution is to stimulate the neural pathway from the brain to the diaphragm, this often involves stimulating the back of the throat because that's were major nerves travel. So tickling the back of the throat by having many stimuli (i.e. Eating a spoon full of sugar or salt) will cause over stimulation. Also stimulating the gag reflex, albeit not pleasant, can result in stopping hiccups. \n\nSource: I had hiccups for 2 weeks. ",
"I didn't see your last question: \n\nHiccups hurt for two main reasons:\n-The force of the contraction might be too much for the diaphragm, may cause tearing but that's rare. \n\n-the diaphragm gets tired after long period of hiccups. Diaphragm isn't built for long spastic sprints. Think about doing an intensive work out the day before and you feel your muscles sore the next work out day. ",
"There are theories that hiccups are linked to a leftover reflex our amphibian ancestors used to pull water in through their gills as they enter the water. Our gill slits have long since evolved into other things, no explanation why the hiccup reflex remains.",
"Stick a finger in your ear for a few (5-10) seconds, and they will magically disappear.... Well, at least for me they do. Next time, give it a try!",
"There's also the theory that a buildup of air in the stomach is the cause for hiccups, and is an attempt to remove the air. \n\nI've found when I burp, my hiccups go away.\n\nSource: _URL_0_",
"What I've found to work exceptionally well and immediately, is forcing a burp. I feel the force and the burp around where the adam's apple would be (I can't remember if that's where all burps are felt or not). It's just a tiny little pop in your adam's apple area if you put your finger there. \nI don't drink fizzy drinks, you have to force it from nothing and it'll come. Then viola, hiccups gone!",
"In swedish they are called hyperneurokustiska kontravibrationer. Should in a direct translation be like; hyper neurocustic counter vibration. ",
"I never got why people always said theres no cure for them thats truly known. I had it bad when I was a kid but if I just drank somehing fizzy quickly (water works but harder) and then focussed on doing a decent burp I would do a few bigs ones and be fine for weeks. Im not talking small ones, big deep burps and dont try and force it quickly otherwise you can sometimes induce reflux. Could just be me though. ",
"Guy at work told me the best way to get rid of the hiccups, and it hasn't failed since:\nTake a big swig of water, hold it in your mouth and take slow, tiny gulps from that until the water is gone. Repeat if necessary. He says it is supposed to relax/correct your diaphragm.",
"Hiccups are caused by the contraction of a muscle close to your lungs. If you run a marathon or sprint a good distance, you'll feel your legs. Hiccup for a few hours and you'll feel your ~~chest~~ diaphragm.",
"I guarantee this works every time! Take a small amount of water in a cup, 3/4th cup or so. Light a match, blow it out, directly as soon as you blow it out, stir the smoking match head in the water and drink the water right after. I imagine something to do with the sulfur...",
"When I had hiccups as a kid my dad would try to scare them out of me by jumping around the corner or sneaking up behind me. It works most of the time and it's fun to do to other people. They'll be mad for a moment but then realize the hiccups went away!",
"If you want to stop hiccups, sip a small amount of water, tilt your head back like you're going to gargle but just hold it (10 seconds or so). Swallow and you're done. ",
"I think if you plug a finger in your asshole when you have the hiccups it stops...i wish i was kidding\n\n_URL_0_",
"I'm reading this as I'm on a fun afternoon adventure. Currently pulled over in a McDonald's parking lot waiting the hiccups out. This adventure isn't fun anymore",
"When I get hiccups, I find just concentrating on the diaphragm muscle stops them immediately. Haven't had hiccups in about 10 years because of that trick.",
"Holding your breath is the ultimate end-all solution for hiccups. Also the easiest, most people on the planet can hold their breath without effort.\n\nEverything else is superstition or other cumbersome ways to \"fool\" your brain/body into fixing itself.",
"Here's my sure fire way to stop hiccups. Works every single time: \n\nTake a deep breath and hold it for ten seconds. Then swallow. Finally let the breath out slowly. \n\nBeen using this method for years!",
"I watched a video once where some scientist suggested hiccups were a vestigial reflex leftover from our evolutionary transition from living in water to land ",
"I used to get punished at school by a teacher who thought I would hiccup in class on purpose. My hiccups would \"disrupt the lesson.\" \n\nMy awesome momma taught me this definition of hiccups, and told me to repeat it to the teacher if it ever happened again: \"Hiccups are an involuntary intake of air caused by a spasm of the diaphragm.\"\n\nI think I got in trouble for saying that to the teacher--once--then Momma visited the principal and suddenly hiccups were ok.",
"Woke up to this great reaction from all of you Redittors, spent ~20 minutes reading through all the comments. Thanks everyone, especially /u/HookerofMemoryLane for making it a great start to the day for me!\n\nCheers to no hiccups!!!",
"I can help you get rid of hiccups & cramps.\n\nMake a fist. SQUEEZE it as HARD as you possibly CAN, RRRRRGH! Now focus on your fist. Use your breath. With each exhale, relax your fist a little bit. You want to be loose. Yes, I know a fist doesn't seem like it has anything to do with hiccups. But the fist is an easy demo of the gist of what I want to teach you.\n\nNow do the same thing, but focusing on your throat/diaphragm. Don't think of anything else, just the problem of your hiccups, just your throat, just relaxing. On each exhale, try to relax a little. Sometimes you won't be able to relax on that exhale. Sometimes a hiccup will make you tense & undo some of your progress. That's fine. Don't get frustrated & toss this idea aside. It takes a while to get the hang of it, but it's a very gentle technique & very worth it. It helps to practice in a quiet room with no other stimulation. You must be completely in the moment of working on this. (but once you get good at it you won't be limited to a quiet room, you can use the technique anywhere.)\n\nFor me, with bad leg cramps, it took a while to not simply tense more with the pain. But tensing actually exacerbated that pain. As I practiced, the pain became tolerable, then nearly non-existent, & I welcomed any cramps for the opportunity to practice.\n\nBonus: While you're in bed tonight about to go to sleep, lie still & do a full-body check. Bring to mind your hands, shoulders, legs, chest, neck, ect., even toes! Are you holding tension? If so, start breathing slowly & gently. Focus only on that body part. Let it release. It feels pleasant to not carry that stress, doesn't it?",
"Guaranteed cure that my wife and I call the \"Lesbian Water Trick\" since we learned it from a lesbian couple. Anyhoo....\n\nHave someone cover your ears with the palms of their hands to make a seal. Take a couple big swigs of water. Hiccups gone.",
"There is nothing more aggravating than hiccups that won't go away. That's actually kind of a fear I have. That and having a ringing in my ears that never goes away.",
"Can I ask a follow up question here? What about these hiccups I've had for 8 years? ",
"Seeing as your first and last question have been answered, I'll offer my cure for hiccups. Been a bartender for a long time, this cure has only failed once. Lemon wedge, teaspoon of Angustora bitters. Drink bitters, bite lemon, instant cure. "
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3tv6y6 | why do popup ads let you escape when they could simply just trap you in until you do what they said. | Im thinking it has to do with legal reasons but im not really sure | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tv6y6/eli5_why_do_popup_ads_let_you_escape_when_they/ | {
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"Websites hosting ads want return business, so they can continue showing ads. I would imagine any time they try to force you to click on an ad the user is never coming back.\n\nAs far as I'm aware there's no legal requirement, it just makes business sense."
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2gzkwg | if the argument for spaying/neutering pets is that they will live longer due to lack of reproductive cancers, wouldn't this also be true of doing these procedures to humans? | Other than the overpopulation argument, the claim made by many vets/animal services organizations that spaying/neutering will help your pet live up to 6 years longer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gzkwg/eli5if_the_argument_for_spayingneutering_pets_is/ | {
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"It does apply to humans, but the reason the dogs live longer is because they dodged a bullet by not being susceptible to cancer. Simply removing gonads does nothing for longevity.",
"Yes, if you removed a human's uterus/prostate/testicles, they would on average live longer due to not developing cancers in those organs. \n\nAre you asking why we don't do that to humans? That's because we usually choose to get regular tests rather than have unnecessary surgeries that change our mental, sexual, and emotional states. We don't test animals the same way for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it's really a waste of time to develop testicular-cancer and ovarian-cancer checks for dogs when it's already so easy and so beneficial to just remove the testicles and ovaries. It lowers' the animal's stress, it prevents unwanted animals from being born and suffering, it prevents health problems in the animal, and the animal doesn't feel humiliated or frustrated by its lack of a sex life or emasculation the way a human would. \n\n\"Neuter your pets, they'll live longer\" is primarily a way to try and persuade those people who wouldn't neuter their pets for the normal reasons. There are a lot of people who ignore the stress, aggression, unwanted feral animals, etc issues but who will give in and do it if you tell them it'll help the pet live longer. You should be neutering your pet anyway.",
"The answer to why humans don't do it is very simple. We don't want to walk around ball less. We humans prefer to run the risk of extra diseases and keeping our organs intact and only remove them if they produce a problem."
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3btsgv | why do some employers withhold your first paycheck and only give it to you along with your second? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3btsgv/eli5_why_do_some_employers_withhold_your_first/ | {
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"In some places I've worked, it just takes time to put you in their payroll system. Often, these are places that outsource their payroll and it's out of their control.\n\nI've also worked in industries where there's a problem with junkies working for a week or two then getting too fucked-up to care about coming back to work. Making everyone wait a pay cycle discourages that."
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22ltvm | why is sharks fin singled out for consumption bans, while other delicacies, such as foie gras, are left alone? | I'm not saying that Sharks Fin isn't extremely wasteful and a pointless food, but I'm wondering why it seems like it's been singled out in North America as a delicacy to be banned?
Unless the process has changed, the process of making Foie Gras is pretty cruel and sadistic. Ducks and geese are locked in dark rooms, while being force fed corn with fat until their livers are nearly 6 times their usual size. Because ducks/geese don't typically consume that much, they have metal tubes forced down their esophagus, which feeds the fatty food directly into their digestive systems.
I did a quick search on google, and it seems like only California and 2 cities in the US (San Diego and Chicago) have banned the practice of "Force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras".
**EDIT** Region specified | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22ltvm/why_is_sharks_fin_singled_out_for_consumption/ | {
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"We're running out of sharks, we're in no danger of running out of ducks or geese.",
"All sorts of places have banned foie gras, actually. Notably California. It's also illegal to produce in much of Europe. \n\nThat said, it's an interesting question. My wife often says that the shark fin soup bans are essentially racist, as they are specifically targeted at the Chinese, whereas if the actual aim were to stop the killing of sharks, it would make more sense to just ban shark products altogether. I'm inclined to agree with her, actually. ",
"There are not cruel ways to make foie gras, but there are no ways to produce shark fins in less stupid way. ",
"Is Foie Gras cruel and sadistic? A quick web search supplies this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBut as /u/bguy74 says, the ban is less about cruelty and more about endangerment.\n\nEdit: OK, I thought I'd better put more effort into this as a top-level comment. I don't think foie gras is any more cruel than most factory farming methods. The animals are killed, and then the liver is removed, and other useable meat is also taken. With shark finning, the sharks are caught, the fin removed, and then they're returned to the sea alive, where they will eventually die from a combination of blood loss and loss of mobility. If sharks were farmed and killed in a conventional way, then I don't think that most countries would have a problem with the practice.",
"Foie Gras is banned in *some* places. \n\n_URL_0_",
"This comes down to farming, humans are decimating the amount of sharks found in the wild. Same thing with Russian caviar, blue fin tuna and whale. We have no way to easily farm these (caviar is sort of doable). If you want to talk about how horribly the foul that are farmed for foie gras are treated just think for a second on how many chickens are consumed in America in a day. Fast food alone has such a huge intake of chicken that the only way to make sure people can have dirt cheap meat is to raise it in horrible conditions. The foul raised for foie gras actually get treated pretty well past the force feeding because when the selling price is 50 dollars a pound for that liver you want to keep your product healthy. Mass produced chicken that's worth $0.20 cents a pound or less is raised horribly because it doesn't make business sense to treat it well. Industrial animal farming has huge impacts on the environment and possibly our health. If all meat was farmed sustain-ably and ethically the price would be off putting for most people. \n\nTL;DR Sharks are a limited natural resource, ducks are farmed. Cheap meat consumption is way worse for the environment and quality of life for farm animals."
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3hmnyx | why is there still a need for a real-life person to come read gas and/or electric meters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hmnyx/eli5_why_is_there_still_a_need_for_a_reallife/ | {
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"I work in the gas industry. For right now, our customers have meters that are read wirelessly. We still require a human to drive down your street so that their wireless unit can be close enough to pick it up, but we don't have to go up to your meter anymore.\n\nPrior to that, it was simply the best way to have a tamper-proof system so that the meter would read the actual amount of power/gas and be reported properly.",
"In poor countries you have these are legacy systems. They remain in use because smart meters cost a lot of money to buy and install although that quickly pays for itself. But the lump sum cost is there to be born by utilities that are often loss making for populist reasons. Also for political reasons it is not good to fire thousands of meter readers. ",
"My house has a wireless meter for gas and one for electricity. They have been slowly changing them all out but it's not an quick process. ",
"A new generation of \"communicating\" meters are slowly being deployed in France. No need for an operator to come and check it, everything is done at the communication center. So the technology exists, it's only a matter of investment to change all existing meters.",
"It is cheaper to pay someone 30K a year to read 24k water meters a year than it is to install a million+ dollar a year (AMR) system.",
"I work in the water industry. There are many factors, but I'll try to keep it simple to maintain the spirit of this sub. \n1) the change to a fixed network system (that's the industry term for what you're asking about) has a high up front capital cost. Generally, the users of the service end up absorbing the cost, so in the interest of keeping people from complaining our having to pay more, they just keep everything the same. \n2) Many places do use a fixed network. Everywhere I've worked in northern California utilizes this system, and it's becoming more common. \n3) It isn't really cheaper. You still have to send staff out to repair, troubleshoot, and replace the radios that communicate meter data back and forth. Adding the technology doesn't, at least in my experience, reduce staffing requirements. When my previous employer switched from going door to door reading meters to a fixed network, the department didn't shrink. ",
"The technology is available to have meter readings transmitted to your supplier wirelessly, it's being rolled out in the UK over the next few years. The UK government has set a target to have every domestic property have an electric and gas smart meter by 2020. Some suppliers (like British Gas) have already started their roll out, other suppliers are waiting for the introduction of a centrally operated data communications company which will receive and distribute smart meter data.\n\nThe technology to transmit readings wirelessly has been around for many years and has been used for some major business consumers in the UK. The benefit of rolling out similar technology to all domestic properties has always been deemed too expensive or not beneficial enough until recently. ",
"There isn't anymore. Your local metered utilities may not have upgraded their meters to full wireless, which is technically possible, and deployed many places.",
"There isn't. Here in PA we had Smart Meters installed. There are a few Pros and Cons with this.\nApparently, the Smart Meters can monitor patterns in your usage that they could possibly use to figure out when you watch TV, how often your fridge runs, and other possible breaches of privacy.\n\nAlso, I noticed that there are 20 - 30 additional WiFi access points around me that I would assume is interfering with Wifi on my router."
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qfroc | nuclear non-proliferation treaty | What I THINK I know is this:
Countries without nukes pledge not to develop them.
Countries with nukes pledge to share nuclear technology related to "peaceful" nuclear power plants.
Countries with nukes have pledged to destroy their own arsenals, but there are no real signs that they ever plan to do this.
Israel has not signed the treaty. Israel has developed nukes, but the U.S. has not acknowled that Israel has developed nukes, because acknowledging this fact would force the U.S., according to U.S. law, to stop giving aid to Israel.
Israel has not signed the treaty because it does not want to submit to inspections.
Iran, as a signer of the treaty, does submit to inspections of its "peaceful" nuclear facilities. Inspectors in Iran have not found evidence that Iran is developing nuclear bombs, althought it is reasonable to assume that it is doing so secretly.
These points are what I THINK I know. (This is how I would teach it to a 5-year old). But can anyone verify that I've got these main points right? Are there parts that I have misunderstood? Can anyone add some interesting details? Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qfroc/eli5_nuclear_nonproliferation_treaty/ | {
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" > it is reasonable to assume that it is doing so secretly.\n\nThis isn't reasonable at all since as you acknowledge there is zero evidence of any nuclear weapons programme in Iran, all their nuclear facilities are constantly monitored by the IAEA both through video camera and physical visits including many surprise ones, and from the fact that Iran has proposed to put additional limitations on its programme as well as many concessions that go way beyond its legal obligations, including opening it to foreign participation. No other country has ever done this."
]
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4uvckz | how are denonym suffixes determined | Example :We call people from New York, "New Yorkers." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uvckz/eli5_how_are_denonym_suffixes_determined/ | {
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"text": [
"If you're looking for a concrete set of rules, there isn't one. The English language is diverse and flexible, and with that comes some inconsistency.\n\nThe *-er* suffix tends to follow names that tend in consonants, which is a feature shared with e.g. German. New York / New Yorker, Hamburg / Hamburger. The *-n* tends to follow names that in vowels as in Arizona / Arizonan. Sometimes *-ian* is used a suffix with consonants, as in Oregon / Oregonian; the *-ia* suffix indicates place names so it is comfortable to use it for demonyms. *-ish* is another Germanic suffix we can use, as in England / English. If you say someone is *New Yorkish*, they'll get what you mean, although that's not the standard demonym. Sometimes the local practices is followed; from Kosovo we make Kosovar."
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66d27y | why did it take so long for someone to invent the airplane? | I understand there has been brief stints with gliding but as far as my limited knowledge goes there was no big emphasis on flight until the wright brothers.
How is it that someone today could design and build a cheap RC plane in their shed when it took 1000s of years for a working, powered aeroplane to be properly designed and built? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66d27y/eli5_why_did_it_take_so_long_for_someone_to/ | {
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" > How is it that someone today could design and build a cheap RC plane\n\ntry doing it from scratch without all the preassembled parts available for purchase that have been tested to ensure they will all work together. that's why. ",
"Engine technology had to reach a certain point before they were small enough, powerful enough, and efficient enough to allow for powered flight. ",
"On the contrary, there were loads of people trying to fly before the Wright Brothers. To fly an aeroplane successfully required a fair few discoveries and inventions. Firstly the general idea of the scientific method - that you can learn things by experimenting, and that you can know things the ancients didn't and even prove the ancients were wrong. Then basic aerodynamics, what makes a good wing, that kind of thing. Also understanding that you don't have to flap like birds but can fly with fixed wings. Then proper control - aeroplanes turn by banking and few people before the Wrights realised that was the best way. Finally, if you want power, an engine that has a good enough power-to-weight ratio, and steam engines didn't really cut it.\n\nA modern hobbyist can draw on all those centuries of knowledge and experience. The pioneers were figuring stuff out for the first time.\n\nAnd there were other easier ways to fly. Man-lifting kites and hot air balloons were both invented long before the Wright Brothers flights."
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1goqbw | what is the difference between the manning and snowden case? why are people calling snowden brave and manning a traitor? | I keep seeing these arguments and people calling them traitors get downvotes while people calling them heroes get upvotes. Explain the situation and argument please? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1goqbw/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_the_manning/ | {
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"Disclaimer: A lot of people on reddit support Manning to some extent. \n\nThat said, Snowden is deliberately and selflessly putting his life in real danger in order to expose specific truths about how the government is potentially violating our constitutional rights. He's leaking specific information regarding specific NSA programs that do specific things because he feels that American's rights are being violated. A very noble and brave thing to do.\n\nManning just took a flash drive in, dumped a bunch of crap onto it off the network, and mailed it off to wikileaks knowing at least some of it was juicy. He didn't know what he was leaking. Literally. In fact, some of that information could very well have been confidential for a reason because it actually would risk lives if it were public (like the names and locations of CIA spies, or people providing information about terrorist groups to the US government at great personal risk). \n\nThat being said, I still don't know that I personally would call Manning a traitor. His intentions were good, he just wasn't very smart about it. Snowden, however, clearly has a plan, and is trying to target things which are true violations of the constitution, not just blindly screaming \"HEY GUYZ THE GUVERMENTS DOIN STUFF\".",
"Well, basically both were in a position where the government was trusting them with secret information and they betrayed that trust. In general, people who think that the information they revealed was stuff the public had a right to know think they're heros. People who think that the information they revealed potentially put other service members/spies at risk and made the U.S. look bad think they're traitors.\n\nThe basic difference between them is that Manning is a member of the military, and his revelations concerned America's actions abroad, and what info we had on foreign governments. Snowden was a civilian, and his revelations concerned the government's ability to spy on its own citizens here at home. \n\nPeople care more about the chance of being spied on themselves than they care about foreign governments getting spied on. And there are supposed to be constitutional protections for American citizens against the government spying on them. So Snowden's revelations probably seemed more important to a lot of people, and more worth breaking his word for. \n\nThat's not as true of Manning's. People expect a certain amount of spying between governments.\n\nSecond, while the info Manning revealed was fairly low-level, security-wise --- reports from diplomats and other people openly known to be American agents in foreign countries --- it involved a lot of stuff culled from those agents talking to actual people in those countries. The type of thing enemy governments might be able to use to help identify spies/leakers/America-friendly people in their own countries, potentially putting such people at risk of getting caught or killed. \n\nSnowden's reveals were about a computer program, basically --- taking a bunch of files from Google and Facebook and Verizon and sorting through them. The fact that it's now clear the government is doing this doesn't put any particular individuals at risk. \n\n**Note: I don't think there's any evidence that anyone specific was harmed because the leaks.** I think people just analyze the potential for harm differently. \n\nFurther, Snowden was a contractor; Manning was in the military. For better or worse, people usually think of military service as a vocation --- something you do for more than just money, for honor and duty and patriotism and all that stuff. People demand and expect more loyalty and patriotism from soldier than from civilians. So it's a bigger deal when they leak. \n\n"
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70b3vb | what was stolen in the equifax hack and how could that information be weaponized? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70b3vb/eli5_what_was_stolen_in_the_equifax_hack_and_how/ | {
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"The hack gained access to about 143 million accounts. Each account was the name, date of birth, SIN and address as well as credit information. \n\nIt's a credit tracking company, all the information it had was everything a person needs to apply for credit. \nAs such it's everything a hacker needs to steal an identity or open credit cards and bank accounts under those names. These fake identities could be used to max out all credit available on each account. \n\nWhile individual people might be able to prove it was identity theft and protect themselves, that money still actually goes somewhere and it costs the banks and credit card companies ( or their insurance companies) money. \n\nIn terms of worst case possibility: 143 million fake low limit credit cards (say $1000) transferring money to foreign banks which are then transferred to other banks which eventually end up in the hands of a single organization would be 143 billion dollars in the hands of say, ISIS or the Russians, or North Korea. \nWhile simultaneously ruining the way North America uses credit systems. This results in a revision of credit systems in North America and drastically reduces the amount of credit people are given. Suddenly people can't get the credit to buy houses that they used to and a collapse of the economy just like the 2008 sub prime mortgage collapse caused. "
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9t79l2 | czechoslovakia's break-up | When nations break-up it's usually due to war or some sort of conflict, but Czechoslovakia's break-up was pretty peaceful, it seems. It's like one day there suddenly were 2 countries instead of 1. And it seems both countries get along fine. So who was behind the break-up? Did the people have any saying in it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9t79l2/eli5_czechoslovakias_breakup/ | {
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"Czechoslovakia was a collection of regions historically grouped together by various empires for logistical purposes and was never truly a unified culture that could function well as a stand alone nation. After the fall of the USSR they attempted to operate as a single nation but it simply did not work due to cultural differences of the various ethnicities in the region so they decided to separate peacefully (for the most part). ",
"After the velvet revolution, Czechoslovakia was a federation of Czechia and Slovakia. Basically the prime ministers of both states met and discussed the future of Czechoslovakia. Czech prime minister wanted more centralization (Prague rule basically) while the Slovak one wanted more regional independence. They could not make a compromise so they basically decided to split the country. There should have been a referendum as stated in the constitution but in the end it was the decision of those two people only. The end."
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a3qjd4 | how do we know the centre core of the earth is hot, filled with lava? wouldn't it make more sense that things get colder the deeper towards the centre you go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3qjd4/eli5_how_do_we_know_the_centre_core_of_the_earth/ | {
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"The pressure would increase the further down you go. That combined with friction and maybe a few other things contribute to its high temperature. ",
"Because it's mostly metal, and it's spinning. We know it's spinning because it generates a magnetic field. \n\nIf it was cold it wouldn't be able to spin.\n\nAlso you have to bear in mind it's under insane unfathomable pressure. That pressure creates heat. And it's surrounded by a shit-ton of insulation(the earth surrounding it.\n\nAlso, we know it's hot because of volcanism.",
"We have bounced sound waves off the center core of the Earth, and those sound measurements give a quite precise measurement of its size and layering.",
"How do we know it is hot? The molten rock which occasionally spurts up is a clue, it certainly isn't getting that from the surface. We also can use seismic waves from earthquakes to determine that the mantle isn't solid which strongly implies it must be molten, therefore hot.\n\nThe models of the formation of the planets say that they collected together from the gravitational influence of debris from an exploded star, and the force of the resulting compression (**not pressure**) heated the planet. The surface could cool but the core would remain warm. However that still isn't enough: Despite being under great pressure it would have cooled to the point of solidifying by now if not for the inclusion of heavy, radioactive elements which release heat as they decay. That plus the insulation of so much rock above keeps it hot.",
"If you're cold and wrap yourself up in a blanket, it heats you up because there's a solid layer trapping your body heat inside. The more layers and the thicker they are, the more heat you can trap. The center of the planet is effectively wrapped up in the biggest, rockiest blanket imaginable.",
"If you take a mine tour in the middle of a freezing winter you realize it gets hotter the deeper you go. Really neat experience,i wasn't even thinking about the temp difference when the tour started but we were unbundling down there. "
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4cp8a5 | why does it hurt my ear to listen with one ear bud on a certain volume level when that same volume level is fine when listened through both ear buds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cp8a5/eli5_why_does_it_hurt_my_ear_to_listen_with_one/ | {
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"It is your brain reacting to the difference between both ears. If you have both earbuds in your brain determines that this is normal, if you have one in and one out it has a point of comparison and the louder side will draw your attention.\n\nIf the difference between the 2 inputs is extreme enough your brain will drag your attention to the louder side to tell you something is off, pain is a guaranteed way to get your attention. ",
"just an idea, when the sound waves from each ear bud pass through your head to reach the other ear, they might be causing some interference, reducing the amplitude of the waves. So while it may be the same volume, the interference of the waves could be reducing your perceived volume, making the volume fine. Or I could be completely off track. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ "
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4id9rs | how do blogs make money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4id9rs/eli5how_do_blogs_make_money/ | {
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"There are multiple possible revenue streams.\n\n1. Ads- Sign up with some kind of ad company like Google's adsense that serves ads or go straight to the company yourself if you're big enough. If a user views or clicks on the ad, you get money.\n\n2. Affiliate marketing. You sign up with an affiliate program with a company like amazon. If you send a blog reader to amazon and they buy something there, you get a percentage of the sale. Ex. I wrote a blog post reviewing a toaster. I post a link to the toaster on amazon. If the reader is interested, clicks on the link, and buys something on amazon, amazon gives the blogger money.\n\n3. Sell your own products. Ex. Maybe you have a cooking blog and you use it to promote your cookie company. Readers like your articles, so they decide to try out your cookies.\n\n4. Sponsored blog posts. Really, a subset of ads. Say you have a popular blog about computers and technology. IBM pays you money to write a blog post about IBM's new research and technology. \n\n5. Sell Memberships. Say you have an investing blog. Some of the posts might be free, but others might be behind a paywall that you have to be a member to access.\n\n6. Use your blog to promote your brand or expertise in something, so you get paid for things like speaking engagements, workshops, online courses or get a book deal.\n\n7. Build up a domain name or blog to enough popularity and you can sell it to someone else.\n\n8. Use the blog to collect emails or other personal information of readers that can be used for future marketing or other purposes."
]
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aojzv0 | discord | can someone explain discord to me and how it works? I want to find others to play xbox games with | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aojzv0/eli5_discord/ | {
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"Discord is a semi-private hosting service for chatting. Each server is like a subreddit, where there are mods and rules and purposes. Anyone can made a server. If you're trying to find people to play games with you'll want to find a server with that purpose.\n\nIt's basically a cloud version of teamspeak/ventrilo, which is why it's organized the way it is. With TS/vent you had to have a buddy physically host a server program on their PC and everyone else connected to it, or pay a company to host one for you. Discord kept the look/feel of the setup but it's just a chat platform like Skype/FB chat/ etc.",
"I play DnD on _URL_0_ using discord for voice. \nI also play a couple MMO’s and connect to different servers for those. \nI also have some of my XBL friends on another server(so they don’t have to opt in on DnD stuff or mmo stuff) \nI’m also in another discord for some audio work on I do on another reddit account(as are a bunch of Redditers from that corner of the web)\n\nThink of discord like a map of your town. All the cool places are on it. As are(potentially) your friends. Including those you don’t know about yet. \n\nIt’s a good love child of like teamspeak or ventrilo, and an instant messager like aim, or icq. \n\nTl;dr : it’s what Skype would be if it didn’t insist on REDACTED group calls. And arguably superior because of that. "
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7q3qlu | how do pregnant women gain weight/grow a human while being advised not to consume any extra calories for the first 6 months? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7q3qlu/eli5_how_do_pregnant_women_gain_weightgrow_a/ | {
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"After 6 months of pregnancy the fetus weighs just 1 kg. This is well within the range of ordinary fluctuation a person would experience without consciously eating more."
]
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6q0da6 | what is "fake news" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q0da6/eli5what_is_fake_news/ | {
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"text": [
"current events that are happening recently in the world and the programs that are releasing the \"news\" are lying about it? right?"
]
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11dtlo | why do the young hate on republicans? | I wasn't sure what to title this. The title isn't quite what I came here looking for, but rather, to spur a discussion.
I'll start off by saying I'm a young (late 20's) Democrat, and have always voted that way.
I've always heard a similar complaint among young people. Basically "Fuck the rich, we should tax them more because they make lots, and then spread the wealth. Social programs, etc, etc."
I myself have never hated on the rich. I think as children we realize we can have the american dream if we want it. We can determine our own futures, we can work for ourselves if we want, create a business and be our own boss, our success knowing no limits. I have no problem with some business owner making millions, who produces something, creates jobs, etc. They likely took a fairly large risk at some point in their life. Maybe they quit a 9-5 job, with only $1000 to their name, and went off to start a business they had a vision for. They let go of the expected pay check, the security of knowing you have money coming in to provide food, shelter, etc... and took on some risk. They may have struggled for 5-10 years to put food on their plate, maybe they worked 16 hour days, and maybe they finally created a winning company. Maybe now they make 10 million a year. Good for them. They should. They took on risk, held a vision, attained the vision through thick and thin, and are now getting rewarded for it.
I myself am just a regular old employee of a large company. I make my salary, I have very little risk, and am compensated fairly for what I do.
Maybe my question is, rather than my title,... Why do people hate on the rich?
This whole post was spurred on by an email you might have read recently sent out by Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel. Rather than link it here, because many have biased titles, I'll paste the email below.
--------
*To All My Valued Employees, As most of you know our company, Westgate Resorts, has continued to succeed in spite of a very dismal economy. There is no question that the economy has changed for the worse and we have not seen any improvement over the past four years. In spite of all of the challenges we have faced, the good news is this: The economy doesn't currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. Of course, as your employer, I can't tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn't interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose. In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best. However, let me share a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest.The current administration and members of the press have perpetuated an environment that casts employers against employees. They want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. They label us the "1%" and imply that we are somehow immune to the challenges that face our country. This could not be further from the truth. Sure, you may have heard about the big home that I'm building. I'm sure many people think that I live a privileged life. However, what you don't see or hear is the true story behind any success that I have achieved. I started this company over 42 years ago. At that time, I lived in a very modest home. I converted my garage into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you. We didn't eat in fancy restaurants or take expensive vacations because every dollar I made went back into this company. I drove an old used car, and often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. Meanwhile, many of my friends got regular jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a nice income, and they spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into this business —-with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford to buy whatever I wanted. Even to this day, every dime I earn goes back into this company. Over the past four years I have had to stop building my dream house, cut back on all of my expenses, and take my kids out of private schools simply to keep this company strong and to keep you employed. Just think about this – most of you arrive at work in the morning and leave that afternoon and the rest of your time is yours to do as you please. But not me- there is no "off" button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have that freedom. I eat, live, and breathe this company every minute of the day, every day of the week. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. I know many of you work hard and do a great job, but I'm the one who has to sign every check, pay every expense, and make sure that this company continues to succeed. Unfortunately, what most people see is the nice house and the lavish lifestyle. What the press certainly does not want you to see, is the true story of the hard work and sacrifices I've made. Now, the economy is falling apart and people like me who made all the right decisions and invested in themselves are being forced to bail out all the people who didn't. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed 42 years of my life for. Yes, business ownership has its benefits, but the price I've paid is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the costs of running a business have gotten out of control, and let me tell you why: We are being taxed to death and the government thinks we don't pay enough. We pay state taxes, federal taxes, property taxes, sales and use taxes, payroll taxes, workers compensation taxes and unemployment taxes. I even have to hire an entire department to manage all these taxes. The question I have is this: Who is really stimulating the economy? Is it the Government that wants to take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have not, or is it people like me who built a company out of his garage and directly employs over 7000 people and hosts over 3 million people per year with a great vacation? Obviously, our present government believes that taking my money is the right economic stimulus for this country. The fact is, if I deducted 50% of your paycheck you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should you? Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, that's what happens to me. Here is what most people don't understand and the press and our Government has chosen to ignore – to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Instead of raising my taxes and depositing that money into the Washington black-hole, let me spend it on growing the company, hire more employees, and generate substantial economic growth. My employees will enjoy the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But that is not what our current Government wants you to believe. They want you to believe that it somehow makes sense to take more from those who create wealth and give it to those who do not, and somehow our economy will improve. They don't want you to know that the "1%", as they like to label us, pay more than 31% of all the taxes in this country. Thomas Jefferson, the author of our great Constitution, once said, "democracy" will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate business, not kill it. However, the power brokers in Washington believe redistributing wealth is the esential driver of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change they want. So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone. So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn't? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job. While the media wants to tell you to believe the "1 percenters" are bad, I'm telling you they are not. They create most of the jobs. If you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the "1%"; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country. You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities. If that happens, you can find me in the Caribbean sitting on the beach, under a palm tree, retired, and with no employees to worry about. Signed, your boss, David Siegel*
------
So why is it that most people hate the rich? Why do young seem to hate Republicans? Why do people love the idea of taking from the rich and giving to poor? I understand some poor are very deserving, jobless, and out of work due to the market. Others though are lazy and deserve nothing. Also I want to differentiate between what I view as the good rich and evil rich. I'm all for people getting rich off producing something, creating jobs, etc. I'm not referring to thieves of wall street who get money by stealing via deregulation, tax schemes, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11dtlo/eli5_why_do_the_young_hate_on_republicans/ | {
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"The young are usually optimistic and open to new ideas. The old have seen optimistic ideas fail and want concrete solutions which are often not ground-breaking or new. \n\nThis does not necessarily mean that the old are correct in their logic. The two balance themselves out nicely.",
" > Why do people hate on the rich?\n\nBecause what you said isn't really true.\n\nThere are some people who get rich in the way you say. But it's a *lot* easier to get rich if you are born rich. You get a better education, you have better connections... basically every step on the road to making a lot of money becomes easier the more money you have. So it's dumb, and pretty offensive to the poor people who work just as hard, to claim that \"deserving\" rich people are just more awesome than the rest us.\n\n\nBy the way,\n > They let go of the expected pay check, the security of knowing you have money coming in to provide food, shelter, etc... and took on some risk. They may have struggled for 5-10 years to put food on their plate, maybe they worked 16 hour days,\n\nFor a lot of people, this isn't a risk; it's just what life is always like. For a lot of people, this is what they *wish* life was like, but they can't find work for any number of hours a day. There are *huge* numbers of people who would love to be in a position where they have a 9-5 job to give up and go start a business.",
"The young don't hate the rich because they're rich, but because of how they got where they are (as a whole throughout history) and what they plan to do with the money.\n\nBack in the 50s and 60s America was a \"manufacturing economy\" which meant that a lot of products where made and sold in the United States. During this time, there were plenty of jobs to go around for anyone coming straight out of high school. As a matter of fact, out of high school you can own a car, a house, and support a housewife and two kids, while collecting savings and receive a pension from your employer when you retire. \n\nDuring the 70s-80s there was a huge transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. This was due to the fact that all the middle level jobs were moved to foreign countries for less pay. What did this mean? It meant that college was almost a requirement for living outside of poverty conditions. As a result, a lot of jobs in the densest urban areas disappeared, and the cities decayed, leaving plenty of working class people (usually immigrants) out of jobs. The more educated people and employers (most often white) left the cities and moved into the now more affluent suburbs. \n\nToday's America is one in which there is a huge difference between the rich and poor, because the jobs that gave people the opportunity to exist in that middle class environment is either moved to a foreign country for cheaper, or still being worked by an almost retiring generation. \n\nHigh school graduates that live in the suburbs have no prospect for a quality of life that existed in the 50s. What happens now is that they are essentially forced to go to college, however fit or not they are for it, at many times incurring debt, to go to a shrinking job market, where their anti-union employers do not provide pensions, health insurance, vacations, etc.\n\nLess and less jobs are available, while the cost gets pushed to the average citizen, who has to depend more and more on debt to have a basic quality of life. \n\nSo how does this relate to Republicans? They are against increasing taxation on them. The rich people who are in charge of bringing the jobs to other countries have seen their profits EXPLODE because they are spending less on their labor. However, none of that money makes it back to the citizen.. It did in the 50s, when they hired more people, but not anymore.\n\nRepublicans also believe that higher taxes for welfare programs and social security means that you're taking money from hardworking people and giving it to lazy people, but if you read what i just wrote about the shift in our job market, its easy to understand why our unemployment rate is at 8 percent. \n\nAs a result, we live in a country where education is expensive, health care is expensive, transportation is expensive, food is expensive, and there aren't enough jobs to give people incomes to afford those things, meaning that if you're born poor, there are very low chances you'll leave that bracket. When you're rich, you have a great life in America. \n\nCountries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, have very high taxes, but as a result they have high minimum wages, free education, and free healthcare. The people in countries like that have a much higher quality of life. Business owners in America, especially the owners of corporations and banks (often Republican or Libertarian) do not want that because it will reduce profits despite it helping the average citizen.\n\nAnd that is why young people hate Republicans",
" > So why is it that most people hate the rich?\n\nI don't hate the rich. I hate the inequality. I don't like income tax. But since we have it, I don't like that it stops at some 38%, in a tier structure. Due to our existing income tax law, the poor are taxed a bigger slice of their pie than the rich.\n\nIf someone wants to blow their money and live the poor life due to poor decisions, that's fine by me. I'm willing to allow people to choose to ruin their lives, or live mediocre at best. But I don't like that our tax laws favor the rich.\n\n > Why do young seem to hate Republicans?\n\nI don't like Republicans because the party has been hijacked by religious crazies who push the old Republican tagline but don't actually follow through. I also see them as war mongers. Traditionally, the Republican party has been one of small government and fiscal conservation; Republicans today pay lip service to this but enact tax laws that favor the rich and support foreign war.\n\n > Why do people love the idea of taking from the rich and giving to poor?\n\nPolicy makers are mostly 1%'ers. Also, there is a substantial influence in policy by corporations and their lobbyiests. By taxing inequality, and not the rich, we can acheive a fair tax system where everyone carries their fair share. If policy makers, corporations, and the rich want to increase inequality, they can pay for it too. So to be clear, I'm not just aiming at the rich individuals, but at corporations, too.\n\n > I understand some poor are very deserving, jobless, and out of work due to the market. Others though are lazy and deserve nothing.\n\nI don't agree a distinction needs to be made. In my experience, the \"deserving\" you describe either find whatever work they can scrape up, or they change industries to where there is need. The \"lazy\" as you put it spend most of their effort scheming and have nothing but perpetual poverty to show for it. I would not describe the latter group as being significant.\n\n > I'm not referring to thieves of wall street who get money by stealing via deregulation, tax schemes, etc.\n\nI don't think these people necessarily exist. Many of these people operate within the law, even if their actions are shady as fuck. Cudos to them for finding the gaps. Now, lets patch them.\n\nI think the system works, it's just that the system can be rigged by way of changing the system to favor the wealthy. If I have the money, I have the power, time, and resources to focus on changing the laws to favor me, while the poor are too busy trying to make ends meet to pay attention to what's going on.",
"Because Republicans hate the young. \n\nRepublican policies:\n\nFlat Tax (flat income tax rate): Disproportionately affects young people, because they earn less than the median income. \n\nOpposed to Education Reform/Education Spending: Young people attend the shitty schools Republicans insist get shittier.\n\nOpposed to Health Care Reform: The largest group of uninsured people in the country is children (under 18). Republicans are opposed to programs which are designed to help them get access to health insurance. \n\nPro-War Stance: Only young people die in wars (well, young Americans). 2,000-ish people died on 9/11, and then the Republicans sent 6,000 18-25 years olds to their death, and untold tens of thousands have been grievously wounded. \n\nEconomics: Republicans borrowed $4T from young people to fight a war, while the economy was growing at 3% a year (from 2004-2007) (the people who would've paid for it if it had been funded by taxes like the Civil War were mostly 'old' Americans who have jobs and pay the most taxes). Then they tanked the economy, borrowed another $1.3T to bail out pensioners who invested all their money in banks. \n\nGovernment Regulation: Republicans repeatedly \"borrow from the future to earn a profit today\" by weakening regulations of the environment, financial system, business, etc. Banks for example: Republicans repealed Glass-Steagal, then 8 years later the economy imploded. In the intervening 8 years, the financial sector quadrupled in size. The Republicans made out like bandits, and young people today can't find jobs. \n\nAbortion: Young people are the most sexually active, abortion and contraception limitations are restrictions put on young people by Republicans. \n\nWealth: Republicans complain about how hard it is to be rich. I've been poor, and I've been rich. There's no fucking comparison, and anyone who says there is should have their money taken away and be made to live in a ghetto. \n\n"
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3muoqx | why does kentucky usually vote for a republican for president, but a democrat for governor? | This remains fairly consistent, and it has always baffled me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3muoqx/eli5_why_does_kentucky_usually_vote_for_a/ | {
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"i tend to vote elephant local. Donkey regional and federal.\n\nI sway towards republican / conservative policies but the higher up gop is all fucken bat shit wacko fear mongers that sell us out.",
"For starters, the state parties will tend to have different views than their national equivalents. The north-east equivalent of this was when R Lincoln Chafee was a perfectly reasonable Senate rep for the views of Rhode Islanders, but Democrats successfully campaigned on, among other things, \"sure he agrees with you, and us, but the first vote in every session he wants to put the people in charge who disagree with you on every issue\". That line only exists in national elections, in state-wide it's purely how do they fit for the state. So if you're a conservative Democrat running for state office in Kentucky, you can tell the voters \"we agree\", and get in, but on a national level you say \"we agree\" and the voters reply \"sure, but your colleagues don't, and we don't want them in charge\".",
"Because political parties aren't the same in each state: Democrats lean to the left, and Republicans lean to the right; but in most states, the state party moves to find have a chance in local elections.\n\nThis means that you will find (Conservative) Democrats in Texas who are more conservative than (Liberal) Republicans in California; the former who are likely vote for the Republican Presidential candidate, and the latter who are likely to vote for the Democrat.\n\n"
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5d6a9x | why do you need an "escape velocity" to leave earth's gravity? since gravity is a force, shouldn't it be countered by an "escape force" and not velocity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d6a9x/eli5_why_do_you_need_an_escape_velocity_to_leave/ | {
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"Gravity weakens the further you get away from the source of gravity. Escape velocity is the speed that you'd need to go so that your velocity is always slowed down exactly as much as the force of gravity is weakened over the same distance, so you don't need any extra force to \"escape\" from the gravitational influence of the body in question.",
"Rockets don't apply to a constant mass, so this concept of 'escape force' isn't really useful.\n\nRockets work by vomiting out mass at a high speed, causing the rocket to go in the opposite direction to conserve momentum. This means the rocket is losing mass, which means that the 'escape force' is non constant. It's just not easy to calculste\n\nWhat IS easy to calculate is potential energy. Every object has potential energy due to gravity--the further something is the more potential energy it has.\n\nSo you set your destination in space as zero. Then you calculate the potential difference between ground and the other point. In order to escape, you must turn that potential into another form of energy; kenetic energy.\n\nAnd that's easy: E=(mv^2)/2. \n\nAnd knowing the velocity tells you how much thrust you need from your rocket to reach space. Any more fuel is a waste. Any less is a failure.\n\nOne of the cool tricks is that gravitational potential energy is proportional to mass. So is kenetic energy! So you can actually remove mass from both sides of the equation and find escape velocity to be the same for a 1 kg rocket as it is for a 100 ton rocket. And as the rocket loses mass, it's escape velocity doesn't change. It removes a changing variable from the equation, which is ideal.",
"You aren't trying to stop gravity from working, you're just trying to reach a position where it has much less effect on you. The farther away you are from the source, the smaller the effect, but with a source the size of the Earth, you have to go very fast to get that far away before gravity pulls you back towards it.",
"sure, you need an escape force over a distance (if you push something up, you're exerting enough force, but not over enough distance). so now it's escape force over distance, which is energy. Kinetic energy, to be exact. Which is directly(ish) related to velocity. Now, since objects can have different mass, you can say it takes xxkJ*kg, or more simply a velocity."
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6oia1p | why is it not night-like on cloudy days? | Even when there is nothing but very dark storm clouds at 1 PM, it is still light out, it is not dark. If the sun is blocked, why is there still light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6oia1p/eli5_why_is_it_not_nightlike_on_cloudy_days/ | {
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"Clouds aren't totally opaque, and they often don't cover the whole sky. Some light just ends up getting through. You will notice, though, that sometimes it randomly gets dark on a cloudy day. That's when the cloud's shadow lines up with your position, making it dark.",
"The sun isn't blocked. Lots of light is making it through the clouds. Depending on the density and darkness of the cloud, more and more light does get blocked. Which is why very dark storm clouds that are filled with a lot of water particles that are about to rain down cause it to be darker. \n\nLight also bounces around and off things, so even if there is a super dark cloud right overhead, there is still a lot of light that is hitting the earth elsewhere and then reflecting off near you to provide light. Like when you are under an awning - it's not pitch black, because of the reflected light. ",
"Clouds are made up of water molecules suspended in air, as well as any other contaminants they may have picked up while evaporating. Water refracts light, rather than completely absorbing it. This refraction saps the light of some of its energy, albeit very little. \n\nIf you continue to refract the light over and over, eventually the light loses enough energy to be visibly darker. Think of how far light can make it through the ocean before it eventually fades completely out. Clouds aren't quite as dense as the ocean, but they do refract and absorb light! Darker clouds are denser, and refract more light, but because of their nature, they will never get dense enough to completely block light before they release their liquid payload. \n\nThat's why darker clouds mean bigger storms, and why they \"block\" a lot of light, but never all of it!"
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28nxql | why do some chemicals like gasoline and antifreeze feel good on the nostrils to smell? | Specifically, they don't just smell good, they feel nice and "soft" when you breath them in. Am I crazy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28nxql/eli5_why_do_some_chemicals_like_gasoline_and/ | {
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"Yer a grease monkey. Grants.\n\n100 octane and 110 leaded. Mmmmmm"
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3kci5x | how come if one person is speaking at a certain volume (that's relatively quiet) and other start speaking at the same volume, it sounds louder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kci5x/eli5_how_come_if_one_person_is_speaking_at_a/ | {
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"Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm fairly certain that it has to do with the frequency. So for example, if you have a high pitched and low pitched sound at the same volume, they would just be blended by your brain. But if you heard two people talking, since their vocal frequencies still inevitably match somewhere, it seems louder. This is also why some people can be identified by voice in a crowd of countless others while speaking."
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d8pvk7 | how do you get ill from not cleaning your hands before you eat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8pvk7/eli5_how_do_you_get_ill_from_not_cleaning_your/ | {
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"If you don't clean bacteria and viruses off of your hands, you may get them on your food as you eat which will then go in your mouth and make you sick.",
"It's more from not washing your hands after using the bathroom. However, even if you do wash your hands after using the toilet, you can't trust that other people do. And if you think about the amount of things we touch everyday that other people have touched, it's a bit ew.\n\nBasically, there's traces of poo everywhere from people not washing their hands properly, and if we ingest those traces, we get an upset tummy.\n\nMoral of the story, wash your hands after you poop and before you eat, and never sh*t where you eat."
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18n54t | ; the war in the middle east (incredibly embarrassing to ask as a us citizen, but i want to learn.) | I could go on all day about how many excuses I have for not being up to date with the war in the middle east (mainly being that I was in elementary school in 2001) but that's besides the point.
I think a good place to start would be a simple explanation before I read huge detailed articles, so that I have a simple understanding of everything to refer to.
EDIT: Should have said conflict, not war. Also, I am not putting "Answered" yet because I still want more people to enter the discussion, although great answers have been given.
EDIT 2: I love this place, so much time and effort put in to answering the question I was afraid I would just get made fun of for asking (like "wow get informed dummy lol"). Thanks to all who answered. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18n54t/eli5_the_war_in_the_middle_east_incredibly/ | {
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"There are several conflicts going on in the Middle East. The ones most Americans are thinking of include:\n\n* The War in Afghanistan, which the US is now pulling out of\n\n* The War in Iraq, which the US is no longer directly involved in\n\n* US involvement in Pakistan, where the US uses drone strikes and has a complex relationship with the Pakistani government\n\nIn addition, the following conflicts are also ongoing in the Middle East\n\n* Al-Qaeda in Yemen, where the US provides drone strikes and technical assistance to the Yemeni government\n\n* Conflict between Israel and Palestinian groups over the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The US is backing Israel in this conflict with funding and weapons..\n\n* Espionage and sabotage against Iran's nuclear program by the US and Israel.\n\n* Civil war in Syria between the government and opposition groups/rebels. The US is not directly involved, but is indirectly involved through diplomatic and intelligence channels.\n\nAnd of course:\n\n* The Libyan Civil War, which ended after United Nations intervention in 2011.\n\n\nEach of these conflicts has a complex background, some going back all the way to World War II. Which do you want to know about in particular?",
"Well, it isn't \"the war\", it's several dozen conflicts and areas of instability. I'll list the ones with direct American involvement.\n\nAfghanistan - The United States (along with NATO) invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic group that controlled the country and supported Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Taliban fled into the mountains along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and have been waging an insurgent war against the US and trying to reclaim power ever since. The thing to note about this area is that neither the Afghan nor Pakistan governments have political control there, it's a very underdeveloped place where local tribal leaders and warlords have de facto sovereignty. Some of them support the Taliban, some don't. \n\nPakistan - The US government has been allied with Pakistan since the 1980s in hopes that American influence will keep India and Pakistan from engaging in nuclear war. Since the invasion of Afghanistan, the US has used Pakistan as a base of operations to fight in Afghanistan and in the part of Pakistan where the Taliban is hiding (along the border with Afghanistan). The problem with Pakistan is that it is probably the least stable government in the world. There are factions in the government, notably their equivalent of the CIA/FBI that actually support the Taliban and others, notably the military that support the US. The Civilian government has very little control over these forces as well as several others that are all in conflict with each other. President Obama expanded the use of military drones (remote control airplanes with missiles and bombs) to attack Taliban targets. This has become controversial because there has been a lot of collateral damage (civilians killed by being next to the intended target).\n\nIraq - Sadaam Hussein was a cruel dictator the the US propped up during the Cold War to oppose Iran. The US and other western powers sold him and helped him develop production facilities for several chemical and biological weapons. Iran and Iraq went to war in the 80s and chemical weapons were used extensively. Later Hussein used nerve gas to attack members of a minority group in northern Iraq called the Kurds in an attempted genocide. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait to seize oil and ports on the Persian Gulf. NATO intervened and pushed Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq was instructed to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and their facilities and submit to UN inspections to ensure that the disarmament was happening as planned. In 1998, Saddam kicked all inspectors out. What happened between then and 2003 is still highly controversial, there are a lot of unknowns. In 2003, the US started pushing for UN inspectors to be let back in. Hussein complied at first, but limited the scope of the inspection and eventually kicked them out again. After failing to receive authorization from the UN, the US invaded (the actual reasons are far more complex than just the Weapons of Mass Destruction, but will take too long for this basic overview). The invasion quickly overthrew the Iraqi government and captured Saddam, who was later executed by an Iraqi trial. The US didn't find and chemical or biological weapons. Iraq is ethnically divided between Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shi'a Persians. Not long after the invasion, these groups started a civil war to try to kick each other out of power. The US occupation lasted until 2011, when Americans withdrew from the country. The place is still unstable and different factions continue to bomb each other.\n\nLibya - 2011 saw several uprisings and revolutions in the Middle East. One of the biggest ones in the news was Libya. The dictator Mohammar Ghaddafi had a history of openly supporting terrorist attacks on the West in the 70s and 80s. He also ran a pretty restricted government and after Tunisia's revolution was successful, Libyans started protesting as well. Ghaddafi responded by using the military to attack the protestors. The protestors started fighting back and the situation devolved into civil war. Eventually the UN authorized NATO to institute a No-Fly Zone (destruction of Libya's military aircraft and airfields as well as destroying all anti-aircraft weapons). France took the lead in the intervention with heavy US financial and naval support. NATO assisted the rebels in overthrowing Ghaddafi, who was killed as soon as the rebels found him. Libya now has a weak provisional government. There is also a problem with the rebel groups because some of them were part of an organization called Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) (they are not Al Qaeda, but are very loosely linked). AQIM later attacked the American Consulate in Benghazi, murdering the US ambassador and several other workers.\n\nSyria - Like Libya, protests broke out in Syria as part of the Arab Spring. Also like Libya, the repressive dictator Bashar Al-Assad attacked the protestors, turning the situation into a civil war. Unlike Libya, Syria has friends on the UN Security Council that can prevent any action from happening. Syria also has a massive cache of chemical weapons. The civil war in Syria has spilled over into bordering countries like Lebanon and has also ended up with small attacks on NATO member Turkey. This has prompted American forces to set up anti-air and anti-missile defense systems on Turkey's border with Syria. Many fear that the US is posing themselves for an invasion. The reality is that the US really doesn't want to invade, but if chemical weapons are used, they would be compelled to by international norms. \n\nThere are also various other operations to root out members of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, and various other countries in the region.\n\nI also haven't touched the Israel-Palestine issue because that would take far too long to explain in full.",
" > I could go on all day about how many excuses I have for not being up to date\n\nDon't worry, some people just don't read/care about world news and so are even more in the dark than you. You know there's something going on, that's already better than some.\n\nI had a friend who after Obama's first elections, didn't know there even *was* elections going on in the States (I live in Canada). Some people don't even know who their own prime minister is, so forget about the Middle East!",
"Because it hasn't been covered yet, an attempt at explaining Israel and how the US is involved: (I'm going to try to take a non-controversial approach here. I'm not pro-Israel or anti-Israel)\n\n\n-How Israel got started\n\nHatred of Jews was popular among more than just Hitler and Nazi Germany during the 1920s-1940s so many European Jews moved to the region of Palestine/Modern day Israel to create a sort of \"It's-okay-to-be-a-Jew Zone\".\n\nAt the time, Great Britain controlled the area and kept the peace but in 1947/1948 Great Britain ceased control and the UN proposed a plan to turn the area into two regions: an Arab region and a Jewish region. The Jews liked the plan but the Arabs in the region hated it and it sparked a lot of violence that snowballed into a civil war. Neighboring nations sided with the Arabs and it turned into a full scale war.\n\nThe war was a major victory for the Jews (now the nation of Israel) and they captured a lot of territory because of it. Many Arabs in the region continued to fight back and forth with Israel until 1967 when tensions reached a point where war looked inevitable. Israel launched a preemptive strike against basically all of it's (hostile) neighbors at once and had another decisive victory and captured more territory.\n\n-US involvement:\n\nAfter the 1967 war (called The Six Day War), the US had fears that Egypt (Israel's primary enemy) was becoming too friendly with the Soviet Union so the US started backing Israel as the US's sort of \"Buddy in the Middle East\". The US sold them some fighter-bombers and that started a long relationship of the US equipping Israel with weapons. Throughout the Cold War, Israel did a lot to help the US against the Soviets by sharing various secrets/captured equipment, repeatedly winning brownie-points with the US and strengthening US-Israel relations.\n\n-Why a lot of Arabs/people on Reddit don't like Israel:\n\nThey didn't give back the land they captured during either war (and I'm pretty sure there have been smaller similar conflicts that resulted in land grabs since '67) and there are a lot of angry refugees/decedents of refugees that are fighting to reclaim land that they claim is theirs but Israel claims is part of Israel now. Israel often continues to expand with little regard for the Arabs in the region. This is a pretty controversial topic and it's also worth noting that some of the people fighting Israel want their land back and others want to wipe Israel off the map.\n\nIsrael is and has been the victim of numerous terrorist attacks since it's founding (for the above mentioned reason). It also has a history of what most people consider overreacting to them, which garners sympathy for the victims of Israeli attacks/counterattacks."
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cq9bml | does napping for a short amount of time actually help you catch up on sleep? if so, is there an ideal length of time to sleep that is the most beneficial besides just as long as you can? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cq9bml/eli5_does_napping_for_a_short_amount_of_time/ | {
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"Napping can definitely improve your focus and wakefulness, but it won't erase your sleep debt. A great number of studies have been done on napping efficacy, and it seems that the magic number is somewhere around 30 minutes. It's enough to give you a big boost, but not so much that you are able to get into REM sleep, which takes around an hour and a half to be effective and will just leave you more tired if you don't finish that cycle."
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6g0dm9 | why do we eat fermented foods like kefir, kimchi & kvass? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g0dm9/eli5_why_do_we_eat_fermented_foods_like_kefir/ | {
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"Because fermentation provides multiple nutritional, preservative, and flavor-related benefits.\n\nBeer, for example, uses fermentation to create alcohol and carbonation (Beer is basically liquid bread).\n\nBread uses fermentation to increase the volume of bread while improving its texture.\n\nMiso paste uses fermentation to turn soy beans into a highly nutritious flavoring that contains massive amounts of umami.\n\nKimchi uses fermentation to allow cabbage and other vegetables to remain edible for months or years instead of days or weeks. Not to mention the tangy flavor and nutritional value.\n\nCheese uses fermentation to make milk into something that tastes amazing and stays edible potentially for years instead of something that goes bad in days.\n\nBasically, Food + Fermentation = Awesome.",
"May be because our great-great-great-great.... grandparents couldn't avoid to have food fermenting. \n",
"Scarcity was the standard for food until very recently in history. Fermentation preserves food to allow it to be stored long term for the times when it's hard to come by. "
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22dxdk | what would happen if a desert started to get a lot of rainfall? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22dxdk/eli5what_would_happen_if_a_desert_started_to_get/ | {
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"Hopefully you'll get better answers but to my limited knowledge, it's not so much about the lack of rain so much as it is the soil not absorbing it. So in certain deserts when there is a huge rain fall the soil locks up like cement, causing floods. ",
"Interestingly, there was recently a special on TV about the Sahara Desert and how it was so entirely made up of lakes and forests several thousand years ago. It was very very lush. Now, there is sand and water would mostly wash away as nothing is there to retain the water. When plant life forms, thrives then dies, soil will form and it will go back to what it was before. The earth is in constant flux. What is forest will change. Lake and rives will eventually dry up. ",
"People will stop calling it a desert"
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3t96tb | how is it possible when charlie sheen had unprotected sex when he was hiv+ that he did not infect his partners? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t96tb/eli5_how_is_it_possible_when_charlie_sheen_had/ | {
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"You do not instantly get HIV by having sex with a HIV infected person, In fact the risk is actually quite low. \n\n\nA meta-analysis of 10 studies exploring the risk of transmission through vaginal sex was published in 2009.4 It estimated the risk of HIV transmission through receptive vaginal sex (receiving the penis in the vagina) to be 0.08% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 1,250 exposures).\n\nA meta-analysis of three studies exploring the risk from insertive vaginal sex (inserting the penis into the vagina) was estimated to be 0.04% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 2,500 exposures).\n\n(I linked the article I got this from in another comment, but may as well post it here _URL_0_ )",
"If he was on meds and had an undetectable viral load, it is actually impossible to transmit (or so current studies show.) There have been NO new infections between one positive and one negative partner in a variety of different studies. It's still something good to tell his partners but as he likely was tested for all STI's as well as blood work to monitor his viral count, he was probably less likely to transmit any disease to them, let alone HIV.",
"The article states: \"the actor also insisted it was ''impossible'' that he had knowingly transmitted the disease to other people and was upfront with all of his past partners about his condition.\" \n\nI read this NOT that it actually was impossible for him to have transmitted the HIV, but that he didn't *knowingly* infect partners, which I believe is relevant to the legal cases.\n\n*EDIT: Formatting.",
"He has an undetectable viral load. There have been zero documented cases of HIV transmissions from an HIV+ person with an undetectable viral load. He has his blood checked 2-3 times a year and according to his Dr. It has always been undetectable.\n\nIs it mathematically possible? Yes. Has it happened and been observed? No. The risk of transmission is very very very very low. "
]
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"http://www.catie.ca/en/pif/summer-2012/putting-number-it-risk-exposure-hiv"
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1jrysy | how a mechanical computer works as opposed to an electric one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jrysy/eli5_how_a_mechanical_computer_works_as_opposed/ | {
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"They use gears, slides, scales, chains, and other mechanisms to perform the computations.\n\nSo examples are slide rules, the Curta calculator (a wonder of precise mechanical engineering and construction), one episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe showcased a mechanical computer that measured the square footage of a leather hide run through it using wheels and an accumulator counter. And there's the antikythera mechanism, a computer used to work out dates for calendars. Sextants and survey theodolites are also mechanical computers.\n\nThe reason that mechanical computers are not as widespread as electric computers is that they have a problem called \"lash\", where the gears don't quite fit together exactly, or wheels slip a little, or there's a little slack in a chain or belt. It introduces errors that accumulate during the operation of the computer, and makes some operations impossible - because the amount of power that would be needed to perform the operation is impossible to apply in the infinitesimal distance the mechanism has to move to perform the calculation, or it would snap an axle, or the tolerances (precision) of the gears would have to be smaller than a molecule in order to prevent errors from accumulating. "
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5d0jmv | how do scientists measure how much a tectonic plate moves per year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d0jmv/eli5_how_do_scientists_measure_how_much_a/ | {
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"GPS Ground stations. If something is at one coordinate, and a year later it is at another coordinate, they can tell that it has moved",
"There are some fixed gps coordinates placed around the world that is used for this. Usually it's a base station for scientists or similar. \n\nThey then collect data for many years and with that determine the trend of how tectonic plates move. The movement is fairly linear (correct me if this is wrong but that's how my data of Europe looked like during my first year of Uni ) and you can perform linear regression to find the average movement per year. "
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4sizix | why do criminal offenses "expire", so that after a while the offender can't be charged for a crime anymore? | I just recently read that the crimes of the holocaust will never lapse, so the offenders can always be charged for them. But why do other offenses "expire"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sizix/eli5_why_do_criminal_offenses_expire_so_that/ | {
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"What you're talking about is called a [statute of limitations](_URL_0_).\n\nThere are three main reasons to have them:\n\n1. To encourage prosecutors to press charges in a timely fashion. This streamlines the legal system and prevents bloated files of suspects-who-haven't-been-charged-yet.\n2. The accused may have evidence to successfully defend themselves, but this evidence often disappears with time. An eyewitness might remember seeing them at a restaurant the night of the crime, providing an alibi. But if you wait ten years before prosecuting the suspect, then the witness will have totally forgotten. \n3. Waiting so long for prosecution of a minor crime is considered cruel - you give the defendant a sense of relief and security for a few years, and then rip it away suddenly.\n\nNote that \"heinous\" crimes like rape and murder do not expire this way. We're talking about stuff like drug possession, or petty theft.",
"Well, partly because after too long an individual is not likely to maintain a presumption of innocence. Do you keep records of and remember the details of what happened to you specifically on the night of June 2, 1995? Without a statute of limitations, it would be easy to find a few pieces of vague and/or circumstantial evidence with which to convict you.\n\n\nFurthermore, so crimes have to limit like murder. But, let's say you stole $1,000 about 20 years ago. After all that time if you have not committed any further crimes because you changed your life around, is it really in the best interest of the government to take someone who is no threat to society and is paying taxes by throwing them in jail for 3 months over a 20 year old crime? Prisons and jails are operated by the department of corrections. After 20 years, what are we really correcting at that point? "
]
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4izr5k | why does eating "junk" food after a long time of eating "clean" wholesome food result in discomfort in the body. | Like if you have been eating wholesome healthy meals for a long time without consuming "junk food" (e.g. fried/oily food, fast food), your body will feel discomfort when such "junk food" are consumed compared to people who have been eating "junk food" regularly in conjunction with normal wholesome meals. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4izr5k/eli5_why_does_eating_junk_food_after_a_long_time/ | {
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"i always think about it the same way as i get used to wearing crappy shoes and don't even realize the negative side effects. Then i buy really nice high quality shoes they are comfy and my feet feel good and walking is easy and feels awesome, then i buy crappy shoes again and all the sudden my feel are killing me and everything feels weird and wrong. I got so used to the crappy stuff i never realized the problems i had because of it. Not a biology explanation and not sure it's an answer you wanted but it is how as a non biology person experience it.",
"Actually, going from junk food to healthy food also makes you feel discomfort in the early stages.\n\nIt's not so much the type of food that makes you feel discomfort, than the sudden change of diet. Your body is simply not used to breaking down these ingredients and needs time to adapt. In the meantime, you feel discomfort because your body is struggling to take care of these long-forgotten type of food.",
"I'm no nutritionist but it sounds like the body is having a difficult time digesting the junk food because of all the sugar and other processed materials they put in fast food. A person that eats fast food all the time will have some serious constipation issues or at least have pebble poop; at least that's what happened to me. I switched over to fresher non-processed foods and when I started doing this I would feel better and had regular bowel movements that were healthy looking. If you feel crap going from junk food to healthy food, it's probably due to the fact that junk food is laced with a TON of sugar."
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6wtlru | . why can't email services provide an unsend option (at least until the recipient opens it) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wtlru/eli5_why_cant_email_services_provide_an_unsend/ | {
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"Because at that point it's on the recipient's email server. They can't go in and delete stuff on another machine. \n\nAdd to that that the standard email uses is ancient, and if you update it at all, good luck having anyone else be compatible with it. ",
"The email protocol and the way email servers work is at its core pretty similiar to and was modeled after physical mail.\n\nYou send a message which goes to your outbound mail server (kind of like your post office), which sends it to the recipient's mail server (Kind of like the destination post office). On which it sits until the recipient checks for new mail and opens it. \n\nBasically there's no mechanism built in to say, tell a destination mail server to delete the message after you've sent it. This would take a massive, massive update, introduce plenty of new potential security issues, and wouldn't guarantee that all copies of said message were deleted since any IT person administrating said server could just make backup copies/circumvent the deletion process.",
"You can recall an email in Outlook but it can only be recalled if it has not been opened by anyone. This only applies to internal domain mail. If it leaves the network it is not able to be recalled.",
"Unsend and recall features do exist, but they only work if sender and receiver are on the same email-server and the admins configured the featured.\n\nIf for example both you and I work for _URL_0_ and have emails like me(at)_URL_0_ and you(at)_URL_0_ and both of us have a mailbox on the same exchange or domino or similar server and the feature is configured to work, than it might be possible to unsend a mail before the recipient opens it.\n\nNo guarantees though.\n\nIf the receiver works at a different company which has its own email server than there isn't really a way to recall the message.\n\nEmail doesn't normally include much in the way of authentication, so it would be hard to proof that the one trying to recall the mail is the same one who originally send it even if everyone could agree on a protocol to send recall notices.\n\nSetting up unsend on a single system can be involved and doesn't really work as well as one might hope and even if everything works you would still have to deal with users who don't understand that the feature only works inside their own company and not outside it, so most IT divisions don't bother or advertise its existence.\n\nBig email providers like Gmail etc could in theory try to implement something like this across their entire email structure but it would presumably be really difficult in such a large setup. Getting the timing right and knowing what is synced where probably become unmanageable at that scale. So Gmail offers you something else, if you enable it you get a 10 second or so window after you hit send to rethink if you really wanted to send that mail before it gets send for real and you can undo sending in that time frame."
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29r8to | what is goldman sachs and why are they so hated? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29r8to/eli5_what_is_goldman_sachs_and_why_are_they_so/ | {
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"They are an investment firm that was involved in insider trading. A lot of middle class citizens using the same investors were not let in on the profits although their money was used for the purchasing of stocks that profited from the illegal use of insider information. ",
"It's just an investment bank... Primarily they find investments that are profitable and have the capital and resources to engage in those investments. These investments range anywhere from securities and financial instruments to companies/newly formed corporations. They also facilitate a company going public.\n\nThey're hated for a few reasons. One of them is that sometimes, the investments they make are destructive to \"Main street.\" An example being that it is sometimes profitable in the long run to buy out a company and close it down/merge it with another company rather than trying to save it/keep it running. Of course this only looks good on accounting/their books, and increases profitability.. but it looks all bad when the people who lose their jobs protest and the media pick up on it. Another big reason they're hated by the public is because they're seen as the reason the financial crisis in 2009 happened: the culture of greed, excess, and ruthless profit seeking. Basically, because of their profitability (and continued profitability after the crisis and bailouts), Americans and a lot of other people around the world associate Goldman and banks of the like as having engineered such a crisis at the expense of the public/taxpayers.. And they don't think enough regulation has been put in place to make sure that these giants are held accountable for their missteps."
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2ufyzm | why is my laptop battery at double the capacity of my cell battery so much larger? | My cell phone battery has 2200 mAh but my laptop 6 cell has 4000mAh. I know that my laptop battery provides a lot more volts to my system than my cell phone does, but... my cell phone battery is puny and apparently holds half as much power as my laptop battery which could d easily fit over 10 of my cell phone batteries.
Why can't they just shove a bunch of cell phone batteries in serial or something instead of using a huuuge laptop battery? Is battery technology a lot better in cell phones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ufyzm/eli5_why_is_my_laptop_battery_at_double_the/ | {
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"You hit the answer in your own question- voltage. Most laptop batteries are around 11 volts, where most cell-phone batteries are around 3.6 volts or 4.2 volts. The voltage of an individual Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) cell is 3.6 volts. You increase capacity by wiring individual cells in parallel. \nFor laptop batteries, the voltage must be increased by wiring in series, and then capacity expanded by wiring in parallel. It takes 3 Li-ion cells to output 11 volts- so it takes approximately 3 times as much space to create a laptop battery with the equivalent current capacity of a cell phone battery. \nAnother way to look at this is total power output- we'll use Watt Hours. \nWatt Hours equal mAh X V/1000, so your 2200mAh Cell phone battery puts out almost 8 Watt Hours, and a 2200mAh laptop battery would put out 24.2 Watt Hours- a big difference. Just to be complete, your 4000mAh laptop battery, assuming 11.1 volts, puts out 44.4 Watt Hours. \nSo, in summary, when comparing Cell phone and Laptop battery capacities, you are comparing apples to oranges. When you account for the total power capacity, you see the difference. \nSo in essence, they do shove a bunch of cell-phone batteries in a laptop, they just need to be wired in series *and* parallel- which takes up room. Another issue is since laptop batteries are larger and heavier, they require a thicker case, which also adds to bulk."
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3ju2se | if a teenager is sentenced to prison, what will they do once their out? | They won't be able to graduate from high school, go to college, develop skills and get a job. They probably have no prospects once their out.
Prisons are meant to rehabilitate, so what do they do to ensure that the prisoner can be independent when released?
Minor queston: Can a teen be sentenced for 10-15 years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ju2se/eli5if_a_teenager_is_sentenced_to_prison_what/ | {
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"Well they could get their GED. And still go to college, and have a successful life if they really wanted to.",
"Some prisons have GED, and even college classes that are offered. As well as jobs for some types of jobs to let the inmates learn a skill. You can receive a life sentence if you're a teen, and the crime committed is serious enough.",
"They offer GED courses and even college courses while you are in prison. They could actually leave prison with several college degrees if they are serving 10-15 years. \n\nAnd there are 3 purposes for a prison. 1) Punishment for wrong doing. 2) removing a threat from society. 3) Rehabilitation. "
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7z5vdz | what determines if a compound is organic or not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7z5vdz/eli5_what_determines_if_a_compound_is_organic_or/ | {
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"text": [
"Carbon. Organic chemistry is the study of compounds that contain carbon atoms. While organic compounds *must* contain carbon, there is some debate over whether *every* carbon-containing compound is organic (for example, diamond).\n\nUsually it's carbon plus other things (mostly hydrogen and oxygen)."
]
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||
7k59ql | what happens to your body during and after competitive eating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7k59ql/eli5_what_happens_to_your_body_during_and_after/ | {
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"text": [
"I guess what I'm really curious about is the process right after the binge. Do they get super constipated? Do they force themselves to throw up? How long their uncomfortable for?"
]
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||
2o6cbp | if two identical people, same weight same height, were put on the same diet, and monitored to do the same activities for a period of time, how different can the results be? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o6cbp/eli5_if_two_identical_people_same_weight_same/ | {
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"One standard deviation is about 5-8% in resting metabolic rate for humans. Standard deviation for physical activity is about 1%. If you consider that about three quarters of your energy burn is resting, then there's roughly a 4-6% standard deviation for total metabolism burn.\n\nTwo standard deviations is considered a fairly extreme difference (one guy's on the very low end, other guy's on the very high end). The likelihood is low, but if you have two guys the same size (mildly sedentary 180 pound young male with an average rate of around 2500 calories), their actual metabolisms could be as low as 2.4k or high as 2.6k - meaning, over the course of eating and performing the same activities for a full month, one of them will be about 1.7 pounds heavier than the other.\n\nBasically, there is no predisposition for people to gain weight unless they have a serious medical condition. If someone's fat and blaming their metabolism, they're looking for excuses. If they're skinny and claim that they have a high metabolism, it's probably because they just don't eat that much - but think they do.\n\nThere was a study on this: _URL_0_\n"
]
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"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15534426"
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d0n6vf | how do electronics with no moving parts degrade over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d0n6vf/eli5_how_do_electronics_with_no_moving_parts/ | {
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"Techie here but this is only a guess. You still have current moving around the system and even though there are no moving parts heat is still being generated. So there is friction happening still. That will cause those electronics to degrade",
"I'm told that a lot of it comes down to thermal cycling and mechanical vibrations. Electronics are made of a bunch of different components fit together on a microscopic scale. Changes in temperature cause these components to expand and contract at different rates and slowly wiggle themselves apart. Not only this, but normal vibration also contributes to the wiggling problem.",
"One common cause is electrolytic capacitors. With heat and time they dry out and go out of tolerance. Many times old electronics can be repaired just by replacing those capacitors.",
"Over time, multiple parts of machinery oxidize, rubber dries out and creates micro fractures that allow air and dust to penetrate metal components, and the electrical currents degrade the wiring and circuitry until they inevitably burn out. \n\nIt’s important to acknowledge that just because you can’t see the parts working and stressing themselves doesn’t mean that the parts aren’t under stress and undergoing wear and tear.\n\nOftentimes, components can be replaced or repaired, but they will require routine maintenance to mitigate the damages to the equipment caused by the atmosphere over time and the electrical currents passing through the wires and circuitry, because those are constants.",
"Electronics are built with tiny metal circuits created on \"boards\" made of silicon and other polymers that have the ability to transmit and conduct micro-currents (think tiny amounts of electricity flowing across multiple wires). The issue they face is that of heating and cooling processes that occur due to both operating and environmental factors. When a device heats up it is typically due to a large draw of electrical current from the battery (causing the battery to heat up) by the processor which in turn the battery then dissipates that heat across the many parts of the device. A device heating up can also be because the environment is hot due to the suns radiation or some other external source. Over time as the device goes through hot and cold cycles the internal parts undergo degradation (think how steel gets more brittle and hard the more often it is heated and cooled). Add in the fact that devices are subject to movements and vibrations such as finger taps on a screen or being dropped on the ground, and you begin to create microscopic cracks on the various materials which in time affect the ability of those parts to conduct micro-currents. Eventually a part fails and causes malfunctions. Thus while the parts may never have an actual purpose resulting in physical movement they are still subject to very small forces that move them slowly over time.",
"They don't have moving parts, but they can degrade in other ways;\n\nHeat/cold cycles can cause components (and the connections between them in particular) to expand and contract, eventually allowing things to crack.\n\nCertain components like capacitors can contain fluids and other materials that can dry over time and change how they work.\n\nExposure to the atmosphere can cause some materials to oxidize or react, which can degrade them or cause other problems (such as the whiskering of solder connections)."
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39bxfx | when i'm sitting on the toilet after i #1 and #2 considerably, wiped my butt thinking i'm done, why do i still have to pee. sometimes a lot. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39bxfx/eli5_when_im_sitting_on_the_toilet_after_i_1_and/ | {
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"text": [
"You are not fully emptying your bladder the first time.\n\nIf you are consistently getting the sensation of having to pee, with little to nothing coming out, could be along the lines of UTI or bladder infection. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
63kfb0 | what is a power play in hockey? | What is a power play in hockey and anything else I need to know about the game? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63kfb0/eli5_what_is_a_power_play_in_hockey/ | {
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"Your team is on a power play when the opposing team commited a penalty and recieved 2, 4, or 5 minutes in the penalty box. It means you play 5 on 4 or 5 on 3 etc.\n\n\nAs for anything else you need to know, what else are you confused about? \n\n\nA tidbit related to power plays: When the opposing team commits an infraction such as slashing but your team has control of the puck. The ref will raise his hand which means \"delayed penalty\". Play will continue until the penalized team recovers posession at which point it is blown dead.\n\nDuring this time, the team with posession will often pull their goalie to get a 6th skater on the ice (similiar to how they do at the end of the game when losing, since you can have 6 players on the ice, goalie or not). There is no downside because the opposing team can not end up scoring the empty net since play is dead as soon as the team loses posession. (This can turn bad if your team accidently scores in their own goal, but not common)"
]
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68tjcg | why does a hot drink in a mug suck your hand in? | If I make a hot drink (such as tea or coffee) in a mug and place my hand over the top, creating a seal while the drink is still very hot, why does my hand get sucked slightly into the cup as if air was being removed from under my hand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68tjcg/eli5_why_does_a_hot_drink_in_a_mug_suck_your_hand/ | {
"a_id": [
"dh14yf8"
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"text": [
"As it cools the air contracts: heat can be regarded as molecules bouncing around, the hotter the material the more they bounce, so they fill more space. As they cool they bounce around less, so they take up less space.\n\nYou can also think of it as bouncing less against your hand as the air cools. "
]
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|
3ehgtg | how is the u.s. legislative branch able to stop the iran nuclear agreement? | Is it because it involves actions (like sanctions) that Congress does have authority over? It seems that international agreements is a function of the executive branch. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ehgtg/eli5_how_is_the_us_legislative_branch_able_to/ | {
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"text": [
"The administration negotiated something that is not quite a PR stunt and not quite a treaty (which would require the approval of the Senate). From Iran's perspective the only thing that they really care about is lifting of sanctions. The US sanctions regime is a law, and that law allows the President to end the sanctions for reasons of national security. If there were nothing else going on, the President could just trigger that clause and end the sanctions.\n\nHowever, Congress passed a law that requires the deal to be subject to Congressional review before that Presidential national security trigger can be pulled. At the end of that process the Congress can pass a bill that removes the President's ability to unilaterally end the sanctions. That bill can be vetoed and it will take a 2/3rds majority in the House and the Senate to overturn the veto. So barring a total revolt of the Democrats (not impossible, btw) in the Senate, the President is probably going to get to put the deal into effect.",
"Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 (basically the Treaty Clause) of the Constitution gives the President the authority to negotiate treaties with a foreign nation *but* it must be confirmed by the Senate.\n\nIt has happened before that treaties were nullified by Congress. A great example of this would be the *Treaty of Versailles* with the end of World War I.\n\nPresident Woodrow Wilson had a major part with forming the *Treaty of Versailles* but the Senate never ratified it and the United States didn't *officially* end hostilities with the Central Powers until 1921."
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k61gw | magnetic tape | Really been into reel to reels lately... been recording on one and love it. Curious how the magnetic tape works or rather how it captures sound | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k61gw/eli5_magnetic_tape/ | {
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"Let's start with what magnetic tape is actually made of. It's a length of plastic with some kind of metal or metal-oxide stuck to it. Metal-oxide is a fancy way of saying rust. :)\n\nWhen the tape passes under the recording head a small electromagnet magnetizes the the tape, creating a varying magnetic field based on the sound you are recording.\n\nWhen you play back a tape, the play head reads the varying electromagnetic field from the tape and sends it to an amp.\n\nIn the case of stereo or multi-track tape, there are several different signals recorded in parallel tracks across the width of the tape, just like having multiple lanes on a highway.\n\nTake a look at this link for more detailed information: _URL_0_\n",
"I painted some tape with dilute ferrofluid. Ferrofluid is magnetic liquid.\n\nIt lets you see the audio pattern on the tape! The little Norths and Souths on the tape will attract the black liquid. The pattern looks like barcode. Two little strips of barcode: one for the R channel, one for the L.\n\nSo R-R tape is really just a long long barcode, but with norths and souths rather than black and white stripes.",
"Let's start with what magnetic tape is actually made of. It's a length of plastic with some kind of metal or metal-oxide stuck to it. Metal-oxide is a fancy way of saying rust. :)\n\nWhen the tape passes under the recording head a small electromagnet magnetizes the the tape, creating a varying magnetic field based on the sound you are recording.\n\nWhen you play back a tape, the play head reads the varying electromagnetic field from the tape and sends it to an amp.\n\nIn the case of stereo or multi-track tape, there are several different signals recorded in parallel tracks across the width of the tape, just like having multiple lanes on a highway.\n\nTake a look at this link for more detailed information: _URL_0_\n",
"I painted some tape with dilute ferrofluid. Ferrofluid is magnetic liquid.\n\nIt lets you see the audio pattern on the tape! The little Norths and Souths on the tape will attract the black liquid. The pattern looks like barcode. Two little strips of barcode: one for the R channel, one for the L.\n\nSo R-R tape is really just a long long barcode, but with norths and souths rather than black and white stripes."
]
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[],
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"http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/audio-music/cassette.htm"
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624kwp | this new bill that repeals the old fcc privacy law. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/624kwp/eli5_this_new_bill_that_repeals_the_old_fcc/ | {
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"The FCC Privacy regulation would have prevented ISPs from selling your social security number, medical information, information about your children, and similar extremely personal information without your express consent. This regulation would have come into effect later this year. The FCC is now prohibited from trying to make similar regulations in the future.\n\nSo there's no actual change to the status quo: ISPs are able to sell any information they have about you. Your ISP may allow you to opt out of this; I recommend searching for < ISP > Residential privacy policy, and searching for \"opt-out\" on that page.",
"I actually wrote a somewhat indepth post regarding what the rollback means and what you could do to protect yourself: _URL_0_\n\nVery basically: your internet service provider ISP (meaning Verizon/AT & T/T-Mobile...) can now collect, store and sell your internet browsing history, the content of your messages and emails (if these are available), your geo-information (GPS data on your phone), and which apps you used on your phone (and when, for how long...).\n\nThis data comes with your name (or potentially, social security number) and will be used by advertisement companies for targeted marketing.\n\nOfcourse, advertisement companies know nothing about keeping databases secure, so we run the risk of someone leaking this information. At which case everyone is getting doxed.\n\nHope this helped.",
"Thank you to those who have responded. What steps can I take to make sure my information is secure?",
"So what is going on in our government?\n\nThat such obvious corruption is naked and bare out in the open?"
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8iahua | how come normal sleeping aids, such as melatonin tablets, don't make you feel anywhere near as sleepy as benedryl do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8iahua/eli5_how_come_normal_sleeping_aids_such_as/ | {
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"Melatonin mostly seems to act on the body's clock, signalling \"night.\" That's an important part of sleep, especially if the body's clock is thrown off (jet lag, shift work) but there's a lot of other stuff involved.\n\nBenadryl blocks histamine from acting in the brain. Histamine has a couple roles, but one is to stimulate wakefulness. Block that, and you get sleepy.",
"I'm tempted to argue \"because melatonin tablets are just a placebo\".\n\nThe best meta-analysis studies out there (those studies which combine a bunch of smaller studies to make a better conclusion) conclude things like melatonin reducing sleep latency by about 5 minutes and increases total sleep time a night by about 5 minutes too. The problem with this is that negative studies (ones that find that a drug doesn't do anything) aren't often published, and it wouldn't take many negative studies to shift a 5 minute change to a 0 minute change.\n\nIt also makes sense that melatonin might essentially be inactive when given orally: we know it is subject to metabolism of many enzymes that are found in the gut. \n\nFinally, essentially always the case that eating a neurotransmitter has no effect, because of the fact that your body is usually teaming with enzymes that break down said neurotransmitters."
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1y8gb0 | does unplugging appliances from the wall plug actually save much energy? | I know that you can save energy extensively by turning appliances off standby, e.g. DVD player, stereo, TV etc. What I don't really know is if whether it is worth switching off appliances like kitchen appliances, e.g. toaster, blender/ milkshake mixer, lamps etc. I use a milkshake maker every morning, and my dad turns it off at the powerpoint every day. Can I tell him its not worth it?
I know there's so many sources saying that this does save energy, but I'm just skeptical about some appliances in particular. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y8gb0/eli5_does_unplugging_appliances_from_the_wall/ | {
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"Simple electrical appliances such as toasters, lamps and blenders have a switch so that turning them off is the same as disconnecting them.\n\nElectronic devices such as TVs, DVDs and stereos usually don't shut down completely, instead they go into \"standby mode\", so that they'll still respond to the remote control. Unplugging them does save energy, but the amount of energy is probably miniscule.",
"I was under the impression that when people do this, it's usually for safety reasons rather than power saving. Turning off at the wall removes any possibility that an electrical fault in the device could cause a fire. Whether you consider this a worthwhile use of time is debatable.",
"it depends entirely on the appliance. some appliances don't draw any electricity at all when they're turned off. others do. you could check out a device like the [kill-a-watt](_URL_0_) if you want to check power consumption levels of a certain appliance!",
"To add to the other responses, if a device is drawing power, it will generate heat. If you have something sitting in standby mode and want to check if its using a lot of energy, just feel if its warm. I know my cable box and roku player both are hot to the touch even when not being used.\n\nThis also works for chargers. Some will constantly draw power when plugged in (even without anything hooked up to them to charge) but most nowadays will automatically shut off. If its drawing power without a charging device, it will feel warm.",
"Devices that use [\"standby power\"](_URL_0_) have been steadily decreasing their consumption to using [only one watt](_URL_1_) which translates to 9kWh of electricity per year - not a lot. But if you trust [_URL_2_](_URL_3_), they're using up to 10% of the energy in your house.\n\nIf you have devices that are constantly drawing more because they aren't on standby - clocks, modems, routers, coffeepots that keep the water hot at a moment's notice, amplifiers, etc. - then you're probably looking at more energy use.",
"As has been said, most electric appliances do not consume power unless active. If it has a circuit board, it may burn some energy when plugged in (for example, a clock on a coffee pot) but it is negligible. \n\nSome higher end devices have a standby mode that limits power consumption to a bare minimum.\n\nThe one that has not been mentioned is transformers. Any device that converts voltage from the wall to DC will typically continue to burn power. The biggest culprits are probably laptop power packs and phone chargers. *Those* you should unplug if you're worried about consumption.",
"My wife frequently leaves a hair drier plugged in and sitting on soft furnishings, which freaks me out . . she cannot understand the risk . .",
"Fractions of a penny, but it depends on your electric company fees.\n\nMost, if not all, electric companies charger per Kilowatt hour, or kWh, which is 1000 watts used for 1 hour. So, if you had an AC running at 1000 watts for 1 hour, it would cost the unit that your company charges you, maybe around 12 cents which seems to be the US national average judging from a quick Google search.\n\nHowever, most devices use much less than 1000 watts. Devices in standby usually use less than a watt, up to 1-2 watts. Let's take the upper end of that range, 2 watts, which might be an inefficient laptop or desktop in Sleep/Standby mode. If that device was in that state for 24 hours every single day, for one entire year, it would use up 17.52kWh. So multiply that by whatever your electric company is charging you, let's say 12 cents and the total cost would be around $2.10 for an entire year of the device in standby. \n\nIn other words, if you think unplugging a device using a few watts for a few hours each day will save you significant money, the answer is no, not really.",
"Save much energy for you? I don't think enough for you to notice a difference on your bill. But enough people doing this can make a difference to your energy utility provider. ",
"One thing that people forget to take into consideration is that every kW of energy used by an appliance, whether switched on or not, adds heat to your home with the same exact efficiency as an electric heater. So are you using an electric heater? Don't worry about unplugging things, they are helping to heat your home\n\n\n\nTl;dr Don't worry about it, it's helping heat your home."
]
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1ptvg6 | the difference between humoral and cellular immunity | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ptvg6/eli5_the_difference_between_humoral_and_cellular/ | {
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"Humoral immunity is provided by things like antibodies. They just float around in your body fluids and inhibit pathogens.\n\nCellular immunity is your immune cells going around and destroying pathogens."
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5ocgr3 | why do companies pay employees based on the number of hours worked, rather than the quantity/quality of work produced? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ocgr3/eli5_why_do_companies_pay_employees_based_on_the/ | {
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"In many fields this is not a viable option. No way to verify quanity/quality. Commission based sales jobs are the exception to ths. ",
"Such a system could not work unless there was a way of precisely quantifying the work done by an employee, and that work would have to be done largely without the help of other employees. \n\n"
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extknj | underground structures not collapsing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/extknj/eli5_underground_structures_not_collapsing/ | {
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"Are they digging into clay?"
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6zokq5 | how does the sun 'bleach' things like bones, plastics, paper, etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zokq5/eli5_how_does_the_sun_bleach_things_like_bones/ | {
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"Sunlight (particularly UV light) can react with the chemicals responsible for the color. Typically pigment molecules are large aromatic molecules which are particularly sensitive to UV light. As sun shines on it these pigments are broken down and the color fades. \n\nMelanin, the brown pigment in your skin, protects your cells by absorbing most of the UV light that hits your sun.",
"Photobleaching is the most common mechanism (but not the only one). In this process, light from the sun is absorbed by the molecules that are responsible for color (absorbing the sun light is why they are colored.) The light excites the electrons in the molecule generating a free radical that reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere. This is a faster version of what happens to fats when they go rancid. This repeats until the molecule no longer absorbs light effectively, i.e., it reflects everything, and becomes white."
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6yxf3z | how is it possible to still be susceptible to chicken pox if you've already gotten an up to date immunization shot for it? | I was reading [this article](_URL_0_) on Twitter today from my local news about a nearby college where two students tested positive for chicken pox last month and was shocked when I read something I didn't even know was possible: "...if you are immunized, it's possible you may get a milder form of the disease...". How is this even possible for people with up to date immunization shots? Also, this school [requires proof of immunization](_URL_1_) to register for classes, so it's odd how the two kids still developed it... Perhaps they were of the 1% who is vaccinated but is unlucky enough to still get the pox. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yxf3z/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_still_be_susceptible/ | {
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"No vaccine works perfectly for everyone. Some people don't develop a strong immune response for one reason or another. This is one of the reasons it's important to vaccinate everyone. When enough people are protected, it's harder for a virus to spread to the people who aren't protected."
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1ufjg6 | people eat blue cheese, which is mouldy. but why do we throw out shredded cheese that goes mouldy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ufjg6/eli5_people_eat_blue_cheese_which_is_mouldy_but/ | {
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"Different kind of mold. The mold on a blue cheese is not bad for you, but the mold that grows on top of cheese in your refrigerator may make you sick.",
"It's a different kind of mold. [Here](_URL_0_) is a video all about food and mold. \n\nSome molds are edible, but others produce toxins that will make you sick if you eat them.",
"Not all mould is the same. Indeed, there are probably as many species of mould out there as there are species of insects. Some moulds are deadly toxic, some stink, some are tasty. \n\nMost cheeses use moulds to develop their flavor. Cheddar is one of those that don't. You have no idea of what mould has grown in your bag of shredded cheese, so you don't know if it is toxic, and it most certainly doesn't taste good. So it is time to throw it out.",
"I know what kind of mold is in my blue cheese. I have no clue what's growing on my shredded cheese. If I want moldy cheese, I buy blue cheese. If my shredded cheese has molded, then it has become a cheese that I did not want. "
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3h3mgu | if the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (ttip) is so secret, how will it's provisions and edicts be enacted or enforced? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h3mgu/eli5_if_the_transatlantic_trade_and_investment/ | {
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"It's only being kept secret during the negotiations between countries. Once the language has been agreed upon, and the question of ratifying it goes to a vote, it will become public.",
"Because it's not really secret.\n\nThe details are currently under negotiation, but the full bill will be available for everyone before anyone gets to vote on it.\n\nThis is nothing new or particularly notable. It's just that stupid people with narrow world-visions are foaming at the mouth about it."
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5n5p86 | why are politicians always criticized for "flip-flopping" when their views likely changed over time to represent those more in line with the voting population (as an elected representative's opinions ostensibly ought to)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n5p86/eli5_why_are_politicians_always_criticized_for/ | {
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"Because their views often \"change\" *after* they have been elected while supposedly endorsing a particular view (and getting voted in partially based on that).\n\nAfter they are in power, changing views would almost necessarily push them *further* from the voting population since those original views were what got them voted in originally. Why shouldn't this be criticized?\n\nAlso, politicians are public figures and get criticized for *everything*. If they don't change their views, then they get criticized for never changing their views, instead, possibly by a completely different critic.",
"A person without convictions is a person without an ethic/moral compass. In other words, they will say one thing and do another.",
"They aren't \"always\". But one can spot the opportunists pretty quick. It's usually that behaviour in addition to other political actions. Actions like moving to a state in order to easily be elected, denying you are interested in a higher office and then turning around and running for a higher office. A history of subterfuge, obfuscation and stonewalling.\nCouple all that with, \"I've changed my mind\" and one can't help but think, \"hmmmm\".",
"Some people are very adamant about certain views and will vote based upon those views. If a politician decides to change that position due to general public pressure, then he will be heavily criticized by the few that voted for him because of his previous view.",
"The main reason politicians change their stance is LOBBYISTS. It has little to do with constituents. A beneficial deal was struck. Always follow the back-scratching and the money.",
"As a voter, I'm bothered by these things because some principles, like equal rights and ending oppressive policies like the drug war, should NOT be dependent on what's popular. The sort of people I want representing me will have these principles regardless of mainstream attitudes of the time.",
"Many are guilty to what we call political opportunism. It's one thing to change a policy over several years, it's another thing to change a policy over a few days, or as soon as you announce that you're running for office under a specific political party.\n\nIt's like when a politically moderate person announces they're running for office, and then takes a nose dive into the policies of the party they represent, when they didn't necessarily support that party's belief system prior to.",
"It's the flop part that's bad. Flip is OK that means they changed their mind based on new information. Flip-flop is going back and forth and can be seen as indecisive and an inability to understand and take in information properly. ",
"A couple reasons. First is we love \"Gotcha!\" news. \"OH! We caught you in a lie or you said something else, you're in trouble now!\" That simple idea is much easier to understand and grasp on to than \"well this person thought carefully and adjusted their position.\"\n\nNow there is some legitimacy in calling some \"flip-flopping\" cases out. Occasionally a politician is pandering or trying to take both sides of an argument. Sometimes someone will say something in a red state and say basically the opposite in a blue state... in some cases it's clear they either don't have a position but are just saying what the people they are in front of want to hear.\n\nThe issue is that there have been some times when a politician was correctly called out for such behavior, but that just leads to people to want to see more of it. That inevitably leads to \"this person said the country wasn't ready yet for gay marriage when the country was largely opposed to it, but now that the majority of people in polls support it they're pushing for legalization of gay marriage... they're a total flip-flopper\" which may be pandering, but also could be respecting the will of the people or changing their mind along with the rest of the country over the course of a couple decades. ",
"Political parties are organized around hot button issues like taxes, civil rights, abortion, guns, religion, etc. The political parties and their lobbies and their most partisan voting base demand 100% fidelity to their issues. However, the actual work of governing requires compromise and adjustments to deal with new problems.\n\nTake taxes as an example. Back in 1988 George H.W. Bush promised \"read my lips, no new taxes\" during his presidential campaign. Of course, GHW Bush wasn't really a true believer in supply side economics and he was just saying what his political base wanted to hear. He had also made promises to reduce the deficit and balance the budget. \n\nDuring his first term in office, Iraq invades Kuwait and GHW Bush leads us into war. As a practical person, Bush knew that he couldn't go to war, cut taxes and balance the budget. Those 3 things can't happen at the same time. So Bush raised some taxes to pay for the war, but he was labeled a \"flip flopper\" in the 1992 election and he lost to Bill Clinton (with some help from Ross Perot).\n\nGHW Bush was almost certainly \"right\" to raise some taxes to pay for the war. His only other alternative was to add more deficit spending to pay for the war effort, which would have broken a different campaign promise (though maybe a less politically costly mistake). GHW Bush's rivals in the Republican party criticized him over \"flip flopping\" on taxes. His Democrat opponents also used the \"flip flop\" criticism, even though they agreed that it was right to raise taxes to pay for the war, because they only cared about winning the election. Your political opponents will almost never compliment you for reaching across the aisle to compromise, because they want to win elections. Instead, they'll attack you as a \"flip flopper\" because it will cost you votes. ",
"sometimes it is a genuine change of opinion. most times it is pandering to a certain population for thier votes only.\n\n\"social security is good!\"\n\nsecured votes from some. then a month later..\n\n\"social security is bad\"\n\nsecured votes from others. \n\nnow we don't know what this person actually thinks, and both segments of voters are just left hoping.",
"Voter A hates Candidate B, because CanB hates same sex marriage. Voter B LOVES that CanB represents them in this regard. CanB wins the election and then flip flops to agree with or simply be indifferent on the issue of same sex marriage. This pisses off VotB because now their chosen candidate no longer represents them. VotA still hates CanB due to the nature of the flip flop. CanB never explains why they flip flopped, so both VotA and VotB assume its due to wanting to have the popular opinion and pandering to voters for the next election, never a result of personal growth as would be preferred.",
"I think we don't take the time to differentiate a \"Flip-Flop (When you take one side to gain favor from one group, then take the other side to gain favor with another) vs. a change of opinion due to research or seeing new evidence. The latter is one of the most critically important traits a human can have. But we tar and feather any politician as a \"Flip-Flopper\" if they even charge their mind slightly.",
"I have a different take. If you choose to represent me you should investigate the issues and discover a policy that meets the facts and political climate and stick with it. If you flip flop, that means a) you didn't investigate b) you made up a fantasy policy or c) you just lied to me to get me to vote.\n\nFrankly, its mostly b) and c).",
"Because its an easy attack, and a sign of one's \"weak character.\" Its a lot easier to say, \"Sen. Kerry is a FLIP FLOPPER\" than it is to defend it by saying, \"Sen. Kerry, like many in America, honestly believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Upon learning that it was not true, Sen. Kerry opposed increasing military presence in Iraq- for as bad as Saddam Hussein is, the United States, and our weak \"coalition forces\" do not have the resources necessary to stabilize a large and populous nation once the vacuum of power occurs.\"\n\nThis is a big problem in the Untied States Senate, where compromise is a BIG part of everything the Senate does. Senators are supposed to soften the bills that come out of the house, be reasonable, and put country over party. Unfortunately, because of this silly \"flip flopper\" sitgma, Senators are afraid to govern and we get gridlock.",
"Quite a number of issues here, really.\n\n* When they campaign on a specific stance or issue, and then change it as soon as they're in power, it appears (and generally is) disingenuous. If they espoused that opinion during the election, they wouldn't have gotten elected.\n* When they make a strong stance on principal, and see that it's not getting them any support, they swap it to match the prevailing political winds, it comes across as fickle and pandering.\n* Regardless of the reasons for a politician changing their mind (including gaining more information or the situation changing - which usually makes the change legitimate and thoughtful), their opponents are going to hammer home the idea of flip-flopping because it is in THEIR best interests to make the other appear weak or indecisive.\n\nBottom line: Whenever a politician changes their mind on an issue, the question \"why\" has to be front-and-centre in the mouth of the populace.\n",
"The term \"flip-flop\" suggests not merely that a politician has changed his mind, but that he has done so for reasons of political expediency, not principle. \n\nAmericans put up with an incredible amount of nonsense from our politicians, but there remains some lingering sense that *sincerity* covers over a multitude of sins. Nobody likes an opportunist. ",
"The question is clearly biased in the wrong way. The questioner ASSUMES that \n\n* Politician's views change after being elected to match their constituency's views. \n\nThis is demonstrably false. In general, at least in North American Politics, the following is true : \n\n* Politician's lie when they are running for office, promising their constituency things that the constituency wants. They flip-flop later, and do whatever they damned well please, because most North American political systems have no reasonable method of recall, other than outright revolution. \n\nDonald Trump is 100% proof of this. He promised that he would get Mexico to pay for a wall separating the countries. He has already said that he will ask AMERICANS to pay for the wall. He said he would prosecute Hillary for her crimes. He has now said he will not do that. Two of the main planks the he was elected on -- he has \"flip flopped\" on. Not because his constituency changed their mind - quite the opposite - He has flip-flopped because he now has 4 years in which he can do whatever he wants, and the people who voted for him can do absolutely nothing about it. Except Revolt. \n\nANd all of these flip-flops before he's even sworn in! Note that I am not JUST bashing Trump and the Republicans. Democrats would have done exactly the same thing, with different \"ideology\" behind their actions. ",
"I think it's less about \"opportunistic\" flip-flopping and more about how politicians function as symbols of policy to the public.\n\nMany voters hold the same ideologies all their lives. For the majority of the population, political ideologies aren't born out of rigorous policy analysis and diversified debate. Usually people align their politics with the values of their respective cultures, religions, education, and socioeconomic experience. For the most part, these things do not change radically over one's lifetime (though most people experience modest socioeconomic movement).\n\nPeople see politicians as the embodiment of their political values. This is why issues like abortion and gay marriage are still politically relevant - for many people who oppose these things, they look for politicians who also vehemently oppose these things. Voters (rightly so) see politicians as their political representatives that should embody and communicate their own cultural values. Because these values don't change, they don't think the politician should change.\n\nPolitics, though, is not just an activity - it's a career that consists of constant debate, policy analysis, and continued education. Politicians may go into politics holding onto their cultural values, but as they engage in the study and practice of political science, these values are challenged and are likely to change. A good politician should change his or her views throughout his or her career, as certain policies will fail and create new problems to face.\n\nBut voters don't want careerists as their representatives. They want manifestations of their own belief system. So when politicians change (good or bad), they interpret this as a kind of fraud. \n\nThis is why, IMO, there needs to be much more focus on actual policy planning and implementation during campaigns. Most voters who stand for \"less government\" or \"for public welfare\" probably haven't researched all the ways their politician has failed to deliver any kind of comprehensive solutions for the problems they want fixed, or achieved success by becoming for flexible with a certain stance. ",
"I can't really explain it. But this reminds me of when Obama caught flack for \"evolving\" and eventually supporting marriage equality after being elected. Some people were like \"You're acting less bigoted now? You lied to us! Flip-flopper!\"",
"That's just empty rhetoric.\n\n**I'm** big-boned. **You** are fat.\n\n**I'm** lean. **You** are anorexic-looking.\n\n**I'm** tough. **You're** uncaring.\n\n **I** have made careful consideration, my views on the matter have evolved. **You** are a flip-flopper. \n\n **I'm** highly qualified. **You** are an elitist.\n\n **I'm** experienced with a track record of results. **You** are a Washington insider.\n\n**I** know how to compromise and negotiate. **You** cave to the opposition.\n\n**I'm** a strong leader. **You** are a dictator who shoves things down our throats.\n\n**I** make wise treaties to bring about peace. **You** negotiate with our enemies.\n\nJust empty rhetoric to whip up your base or manipulate uneducated swing voters.",
"Changing your views is fine, you should always be open to changing your views if it turns out you were wrong, the issue arises from politicians changing their views for dishonest reasons. \n\nIt's often very easy to spot when a politician has changed their views, simply to get votes or because they got paid to do so, also it's very unlikely for people to change their views from one end of a spectrum to the complete opposite end of a spectrum. Abandoning your beliefs is very hard, which is why people often have problems doing so. \n\nTake religion for example, it's very unlikely for someone that is very religious, goes to church every week, helps with services, volunteers, is in different groups at the church, etc to then change into someone who is Richard Dawkins type of Atheist, that just very rarely happens unless there is a major event that triggers it (say a death of a child or something like that), most people instead of becoming a hardcore atheist would instead more likely become, agnostic who doesn't go to church, but still believe some parts of the religion they were once part of and believe.\n\nIt's the dishonesty of them \"changing\" which is what makes it wrong.",
"Wait what's happening? Why are you talking in the present tense? Which politicians are criticized for flip-flopping anymore? \n\nDid you not see the Presidential election, and the guy who won? No one gives a fuck about flip-flopping anymore, unless it's politically expedient to. I.E. if they're your opponent you accuse them, but you don't actually give a fuck if it's your team.",
"It is like the old saying goes, \"A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything\". People expect politicians to have thought long and hard about their ideologies and positions on issues. Politicians are not supposed to just change their ideas based on what is popular.\n\nAn isolated flip-flop can be tolerated, but if a politician is doing it all the time you should not trust them.",
"Their views should change with the evidence, not the polling. If 60% of Americans started sniffing glue non-stop and thought murder ought to be legal, would you want your representatives to just say \"okay\"?\n\nAdditionally, it's their *job* to understand the issues. Many are bad at it but we elect people to be our proxies because we have our own jobs and can't spend all of our time reading up on every facet of every issue. They're supposed to be doing what's in our best interests **not** voting based on how we might answer a poll.",
"Sorry if it has already been said, but in my experience those aren't the ones criticized for \"flip-flopping\". The ones criticized for it are those who are faking, those who are trying to score political points, those who \"flip-flopped\" for the wrong reasons or the wrong ends, those who \"flip-flopped\" on the spot or within a very close time interval, and those who \"flip-flopped\" from something that was actually morally good to something morally wrong.",
"A few reasons.\n\nFirst and foremost, it's because the general population treat politics like a partisan sport, not civic duty. When it's *your* politician, it's an \"evolution of their understanding.\" When it's *their* politician, flip flopping, and a sign of hypocrisy. \n\nAdditionally, it kind of *is* a sign of hypocrisy, or at least untrustworthyness. If I were to tell you that I think we shouldn't get ice cream, then say that maybe we should... how do you know what I really believe? How do you know what I am planning to do? How can you trust that when I say I am or am not going to do a thing, that I won't just change my mind later?",
"What you've described is a flip or a flop, not a flip-flop. A flip-flop is when they go back and forth on an issue, not when they changed their mind.",
"Their purported views aren't necessarily their actual views, rather they're saying it to become electable. Like Hillary all of a sudden being pro-gay when she wasn't exactly an ally in the 90s and early millennium, because back then it would have benefited her more politically to be against gay rights than for them.\n\nIt's an aspect of breaking trust. Politicians say \"vote for me and I'll do this\", so you give them their vote and as soon as they're in office they say \"y'know what, I changed my mind.\"\n\nFair enough if there's new evidence and thought on a subject that is genuinely persuasive to changing minds, but politicians very rarely acknowledge that. Rather they act as if they've always held the current view, and never thought anything different, but only when questioned directly on why the change of heart will they actually openly admit to it.\n\nTrump is actually a perfect, but more flagrant, example of a flip-flopping politician. Saying whatever it takes to get elected, and now he's won, he's quickly backtracking on a lot of his big policies, his only excuse being \"Well, this is what I actually meant.\"",
"Changing views over time isn't what flip flopping really is, its when your views change from month to month, saying one thing one month, then saying another thing the next, as if that is what you always believed.\n\nPeople want a leader, someone who knows best, not someone who just base their views on what ever is popular.",
"Well, one part of the reason is that the media prefers covering \"flip-flop\" and \"hypocrisy\" charges over substantive issues, because they don't have an obvious ideological valence, and so won't alienate half the audience. That's a major part of it.\n\nBut I think an even larger it is that people have a fundamentally wrong theory of politics and \"flip-flop\" charges play into it.\n\nThe theory goes that we, the good people who know how the world works, keep trying to find politicians who will implement our good and wise ideas; but they keep turning out to be cynical rascals who won't do it, maybe because they're being bribed by corporate lobbyists or because they care more about what fancy cocktail party intellectual elites think about them. So the central task of politics becomes finding politicians who really, truly believe the same things we people do; the ideal politician is a terrifyingly sincere ideologue who will let justice be done though the heavens fall.\n\nBut this all is a bunch of bullshit.\n\n* Voters don't have any detailed understanding of policy, nor should they be expected to. There's no reason for individual people, unless they are weirdos who actually *like* thinking about policy, to do elaborate and personally costly research before voting, and even if they tried most people would be terrible at it and come up with wrong answers. The sensible thing to do is to figure out in a very crude sense where your most basic values lie, and then go find out what's being said by people and groups that share your values but actually have the time and expertise to do policy work and go with whatever they're saying. To be fair, it's [increasingly possible to be a successful politician while being nearly as policy-ignorant as the average voter.](_URL_0_) But this in part is because voters subscribe to the flawed theory of politics I'm criticizing, and keep voting in dumber and dumber ideologues; and still, on the whole, politicians have a far better understanding of their job than the people voting for them do.\n\n* No-one wants to believe this, but the vast majority of politicians in countries like America are sincere civic-minded people who honestly believe in the policies they advocate, and make serious and meaningful [efforts to fulfill their campaign promises.](_URL_1_) Outright corruption in American politics is rare and very effectively policed. Campaign contributions are a terrible way to convince a politician to move away from a previously decided policy; the really important effect of campaign money is [to strengthen the hand of politicians who already want to do what the contributor wants.](_URL_2_) If an elected official substantially changes their position on an issue it is almost always because the situation changed. Often this is because *the very same people who claim to be angry that politicians flip-flop* changed their opinion on the issue! It's well known in surveys that people tend to falsely report their past preferences to have been the same as their current ones; normal people can tell their own stories to be consistent in a way that public figures can't.\n\nThe flawed folk theory of politics that gives rise to the obsession with \"flip-flops\" has larger negative consequences for society. We keep instituting badly designed reforms to fix problems that don't exist, and end up making the actual problems worse. Term limits, ever-increasing intraparty \"democracy,\" rigid committments like the infamous Norquist taxes pledge. Then when the problem gets worse we demand more of the same failed reforms. It's very troublesome and I don't like where it's taking us.",
"A flip-flopper is someone who changes his/her opinion in order to satisfy a crowd, and then the next day, change it again to satisfy another crowd, and repeat the next day. Tell the liberals you are pro choice, tell the conservatives you are pro life. Tell the liberals you are pro gun control, tell the conservatives you are anti gun control. A flip-flopper only says what a crowd wants to hear.\n\nSomeone who changes their view over time by analyzing a situation and watching how the variables change is NOT a flip-flopper.\n\nFor a fictional scenario, let's use gun control. If Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton back in 1992 said that they were against gun control and a bunch of massacres started appearing at an exponential rate to the point where a gun-related crime happened at least once every week, then it would be obvious to raise gun control in 2017. They aren't flip-flopping on their previous ideals, they are making changes to adapt to 2017's environment. If in November they said they were pro abortion and in December they were anti abortion, and in January back to pro abortion, then you have a flip-flopper.",
"The simple answer is the mainstream media. They want to sell papers or increase viewers, and in order to do this they provoke the strongest reaction they can and, typically, they turn a positive story into a negative one. By portraying a politician as a deceitful, indecisive \"flip-flopper\", they create a big issue that will create more interest than if they simply admitted that the politician in question simply listened to advice or public opinion and bravely accepted that they had been wrong.",
"People like to vote for candidates who share their views, or at least will do what they can to get their views promoted. Let's take an issue, gun control, as an example. I personally am pro-gun and do not want a candidate to represent me who would try to push for more gun control. If a candidate came up who was formerly anti-gun and is now pro-gun, I'd have a hard time voting for that candidate over another candidate who had always been pro-gun. The reason being, I want a representative who I can trust to do what I consider to the be right thing regardless of whether or not it is the most popular thing to do. In different times in our history, being anti-gay or against the Civil Rights Act would have been popular and a politician changing his views to match up with the majority would have been popular, however, it wouldn't necessarily be the right thing to do. \n",
"It's most likely used because it is effective in labeling someone as having weak character. One could argue that views on core issues should be very deep rooted and well researched by political leaders and it should not be able to \"flip\" those in a matter of 4 years.\n\nIn my opinion though it is idealistic to think politicians held more well researched opinions on popular matters than anyone else. Flipping on a topic on popular demand shouldn't be a big deal.",
"it's not a flip-flop unless a view has changed \"back and forth\".\n\nIf you flip once, that's fine. If you flip-flop, you aren't very careful with the positions you hold. If you *use* the term \"flip-flop\", you have no place in political discourse.",
"\"Flip-flopping\" because you were swayed by a persuasive argument is perfectly fine and to be expected, but it's obvious to me that many politicians switch sides too often and too abruptly for it to come off as nothing but empty talk devoid of conviction or self-reflection. Also, have you noticed that the switching strangely enough tends to coincide with their reelection bids? Changes of heart don't seem to happen too often when they're not worried about being unseated, how odd; it's almost as if they're just doing it for votes. (Obligatory /s)\n \n \nIf our leaders don't truly believe in what they say, how can *we* possibly believe in what they say? \n\n \nEdit: Forgot a word or three.",
"For me it doesn't have to do with a politician changing their views but politicians saying they had those same views all along and not admitting that they've changed their thoughts",
"Because it means that their stances are not genuine and will change them on a dime depending on many variables.\n\nFor Hillary Clinton, she most likely changed her beliefs just because the population started to change. Although it could have also been donation money which would change her mind.\n\nIt's bad because we know that she might flip flop again. For example, gay marriage and Hillary Clinton. She was against it. However, \"new information had come to light\" about it. What a joke. What new information about gay people could she have gotten?\n\nFlip flopping politicians, notably Clinton, are disliked by the public because they can easily be manipulated. Maybe like a puppet? "
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"https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-keep-most-of-their-promises/",
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644332"
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3fbrht | what's the difference between german engineering, american engineering, japanese engineers, etc when it comes to automaking? | Are countries keeping great car making secrets away from each other or what? What is it about the way that different nations make cars that even matters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fbrht/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_german/ | {
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"As someone who worked in the automobile industry, I can tell you that the difference is priorities. German priorities are reliability and consistency. Japanese priorities are efficiency and making each car as identical as possible. American priorities are styling and lowering manufacturing cost.\n\nThere are no secrets in the industry, given the nature of the regulators. I was at GM when there was a huge internal debate over car keys. GM cars had two (one for the doors and one for the ignition) and German cars had only one. GM tried very hard to get suppliers to line up with a single-key production pipeline, but they buy so many locks that the worldwide lock manufacturing excess capacity didn't allow a single-year switchover. It took like 5-6 years to get all the cars switched.\n\nEverything seems simple, when you look at one car at a time. GM delivered 10M cars last year, and doing 10M of anything is a big problem.",
"I'll take a stab at this:\n\nThe Germans are known for over-engineering their vehicles. A few years back, I had borrowed a Mercedes S class sedan, brought my music and the connectors and thought I could get my tunes to play in this fancy car. Yeah, No dice. The cassette adapter couldn't be used as there was a metal door that needed to completely close before the cassette was accepted, so the little wire made it get rejected. OK, let me try the FM adapter, uh. Nope. Digital tuning prevented any attempt to fine tune to a blank spot on the FM dial... To keep it short, I was stymied by the extra engineering that went into this car. \n\nAlso, German cars are knows to us expensive parts (think Stainless steel tubing) that my friends late model VW dealer told her it would cost $1200 to import this critical part to fix her car. \n\nJapanese engineering: think Toyota and think of a single button or switch being tested by a robotic finger 1 million times before the automaker will consider it good enough for their vehicles. Will anyone ever push a button 1 million times? No. But this the level of perfection that is daughter in big two Japanese vehicles (Toyota, Honda) . Not all of their models measure up of course, and second tier Japanese firms cars fall below US makers in overall quality tests (Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, etc) \n\nSometimes the Japanese can over engineer too: think Toyota sludge problems that hit their Toyota and Lexus cars a few years back due to the extremely tiny tolerances for oil to lubricate their engines. But the general reputation of Japanese engineering is perfection in the harmony of the parts that make up the vehicle. \n\nU.S. Engineering has taken a bad hit since the heydays of the 50's and 60's. Starting with the post oil crisis cars of the 70's, big 3 automakers placed profits over quality. This persisted until the renaissance of 1990's when U.S. quality began to climb back to where the Japanese were a few years prior. Now your best American cars rival the Japanese, with the best car, Tesla Model S being the highest quality car Consumer Reports had ever rated. Over all though, U.S. Cars tend to offer the best value and performance and arguably style over imports, if not always the highest over all in handling"
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4aefo9 | how easy it for a thief to steal credit card info from several feet away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4aefo9/eli5_how_easy_it_for_a_thief_to_steal_credit_card/ | {
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"If your credit card has an RFID chip, then yes, this is theoretically possible. However, it's not a very common mode of attack--it's much more likely that you used the card in a credit card terminal that was skimming the information. That didn't necessarily happen recently for the fraud to occur now."
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10k7dp | how do you type in japanese characters (or other character-based languages)? | I know there are specialized keyboards and I've seen videos of people mashing multiple buttons as once, but I was wondering what the various keys signified and how you know which ones to combine to get a specific character. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10k7dp/eli5_how_do_you_type_in_japanese_characters_or/ | {
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"Japanese actually has *three* different writing systems. [The first two are syllabaries](_URL_4_), which are like alphabets, but each \"letter\" represents a syllable (eg, \"ma,\" \"ka\"). One of those syllabaries (hiragana) is used for native Japanese words, and the other (katakana) is used for foreign words. Japanese sentences are usually written using a combination of hiragana, katakana, *and* kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) all at once, and it's the kanji that are difficult to type, since there's so many of them. \n\n[Today's Japanese keyboards](_URL_1_) have both English letters and hiragana on them. When they type in a word (say they write さかな, or \"sakana\"), [an option will come up](_URL_3_) which offers kanji that are pronounced \"sakana\" (like 魚, \"fish,\" or 肴, \"appetizer\"). They have the option of changing what they wrote into kanji, or leaving it as-is.\n\nIn Chinese, it's similar, only they don't have the option of an alphabet to use - a lot of people today type things using our alphabet, which then [gives a choice of characters](_URL_2_) just like with Japanese. (Edit: This is called the \"pinyin method.\" There's [other methods](_URL_0_) too, but I'm not familiar with how popular those are in China or Taiwan.) Or, a lot of kids today are using just our alphabet, I've heard. ",
"I'm taking Japanese at my high school, so I've had to type up whole essays on the computer. I just went to the Control Panel (I use Windows, I don't know if it's the same for Macs), clicked on \"Region and Languages\", and then added Japanese (or whatever language you want to use) to the input languages. "
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2bbhwq | why is the world watching as russian separatists take over the malaysian airlines crash site? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bbhwq/eli5_why_is_the_world_watching_as_russian/ | {
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"Would you rather us launch air-strikes on the separatists? Drop paratroopers? Cross the border in tanks? The only thing that any of those options will succeed in doing is getting us into a large-scale conflict with Russia, in their own backyard. No one has any interest in doing that, so we will continue just wagging our finger at them.",
"Because the cost of involvement outweighs the cost of standing by. \n\nUkraine, by way of the fact that they haven't already defeated the separatists, obviously does not have enough power to dislodge them from their country. So, if Ukraine can't get the separatists out, who is responsible for getting them out there?\n\nLet's assume that we decide to take that responsibility on. What are the risks/costs we face? First and foremost, our objective is to take and hold a location, so this isn't just something we can drop in a SEAL team for and expect victory. We'll need more boots on the ground. So we put boots on the ground, the next step is that we have to displace the separatists from the site. This is going to be expensive - we have to find troops that we can pull from somewhere else, move them and their material to this part of the world where we have very little influence, and then we have to pay them for combat. \n\nSpeaking of combat, the separatists aren't going to like being pushed out of there. We'll probably kill a few of them (and they'll probably kill a few of our guys) in the dislodging process. This is where shit gets messy - Russia likes the separatists. We know this because Russia gave them the missiles to shoot down high altitude planes with. So if we start killing guys that Russia likes, Russia is going to start defending their interests from our interference. \n\nThe worst case scenario is that they defend their interests (the success of the separatists) by way of deploying their own army nearby. Maybe some of the separatists are already Russian army officers. So if we kill some of their guys, they will retaliate. Remember, we're in their back yard for this exercise - they have their entire army right there, while we have only a small portion of our army available to us. Then the situation escalates. We kill some of their guys, they kill some of ours and bring in some tanks. Now they have tanks threatening our troops, so we deploy our tanks to counter their tanks. Now with our tanks on the border, they deploy helicopters and planes to counter the tanks, so we move our air force into the area and bring the Navy in for cruise missile support. They deploy their air force and navy and then ready their nuclear arsenal, which in turn causes us to ready our nuclear arsenal. And for what? A plane that everyone already knows the separatists shot down?\n\nThis is the scenario of how a cold war becomes a hot one, and something that is really bad for pretty much everyone involved. Countries defend their interests, often by use of force if needed. We wouldn't tolerate Russia or China setting up military bases in Mexico, because that brings their influence by way of [hard power](_URL_0_) to our border. Why would Russia tolerate us doing the same to them?",
"Because nobody who has the power to intervene would profit from intervening.\n\nFor example, the Dutch government. The Netherlands gets a lot of its energy from Russia, so it's in the interests of both to maintain a stable relationship. The Dutch government's initial reaction made all the right sentiments: enough to express their anger, but not enough to 'rock the boat'. Unfortunately for them, the Dutch people (voters) demanded a stronger reaction, so the Dutch government followed up by opening war crimes inquiries and demanding that Russia use their influence to facilitate the matter. \n\nRussia may go some small way towards obliging them, but they will be stone-faced for the most part because they know that the Netherlands can't enforce its demands and doesn't intend to anyway: both sides need the status quo to remain.\n\nThis is the same with all governments. The Dutch are not unique. The U.S.A., for example, won't intervene because they would destabilize Europe and nobody can afford that. On the other hand, they could go into Iraq and Afghanistan because doing so was not risky for any economies they have a stake in, and it was healthy for their own economy.\n\nGovernments will always put their re-election/staying in power before their countries (themselves before the many), and their countries before other individuals or groups (the many before the few)."
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4p1bdu | why is it that in certain fighting scenes people will hold the knife upside down? | In several fighting scenes of movies or tv series people can be seen either holding the knife the conventional way, with the blade protruding between the thumb and the index finger.
Sometimes however, they will hold the knife upside down (somewhat aligned with the forearm). _URL_0_ as an example. Skip to 1:08 if you don't care for the scene.
Is there any reason to this? Is it a fighting style? Preference?
Thank you for your time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p1bdu/eli5why_is_it_that_in_certain_fighting_scenes/ | {
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"Lots of misinformed answers here. There are 2 primary knife grips. \n\nSabre Grip - blade up (pointed towards enemy), relaxed firm grip, but easy maneuverability/precision due to the blade leaning forward on index finger and pushed by thumb\n\nReverse Sabre Grip - blade will be pointed downward, however, exact angle depends on your edged weapons training. Essentially the same relaxed but firm grip as normal Sabre style.\n\nThere are 2 modified grip style to the Sabre, called: Hammer Grip and Reverse Hammer (aka the serial killer). You basically hold the knife tightly, not angled but straight up... Or down.\n\nEach of these grips has offensive/defensive advantages and disadvantages. Sabre grip is great for quick slashes and precision that utilize \"negative space\" during a swing (if you're skilled). But overall it has the best reach, which is a great offensive tool in a knife fight.\n\nNow, the Reverse Sabre grip, has much less reach, but can be equally as quick as the Sabre grip (with much more training). The massive advantage to this style is that you can set up counters and parry much more effectively. This makes the reverse Sabre grip an excellent defensive tactic.... If you have the training."
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5ky9f1 | why are passwords using random letters and numbers more secure than a password like password123? | The answer might seem obvious, but I'm struggling to understand how a password that had random letters (ex. Hgafyvz1086) is deemed to be more secure than a password such as Password123 or Cat927. I mean to us, those passwords might seem simple but to a computer those words are also just random letters. Password123 has a capital letter and a set of numbers and so does Hgafyvz1086. Why is that more secure? Password123 was just an example and I know that's a common password for some, but just take any word from the English language and add a set of numbers and it's still not perceived as secure compared to a password with random letters and numbers. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ky9f1/eli5_why_are_passwords_using_random_letters_and/ | {
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"When hackers try to break into someones account standard procedure is to start by trying all of the most common passwords. Then try a bunch of words and numbers and words with common misspellings. Then finally they will either give up and try another target or start trying random characters. To be clear the testing is still being done by a computer its just been programmed to try more common passwords first, say the 10,000 most common passwords which would be stored in a notepad file on the hackers computer or something. ",
"because \"password\" is a word that can be found in a dictionary. \"Hgafyvz\" is not.\n\nthe first round of attemptes are to run every word in the English dictionary with variations on capitalization and numerics. because humans typically choose passWORDs they can remember, not a string passCHARACTERS. \n\n\nthe best way to choose a password is a long multi word sentence with mixed numbers \"Don't use Password123 as the password\" is a much stronger password than \"o2139j4ojsoiaofzsoioi;j\"",
"You have to consider password security from the perspective of a computer and a human. Some passwords are harder for computers to guess and some are harder for humans to steal.\n\nUsually when there are large password hacks, what happened is that someone stole a list of hashed passwords. That means the passwords were put into a one-way algorithm that can’t be undone. If you give the algorithm the same input, it gives the same output, but you can’t look at the output to get the input. That means that hackers have to guess your password, input into the algorithm, and see if the output matches what’s been stored. The best way to do this is to just have the computer go through a bunch of random passwords, see what the output is, and then match it against the stolen list. \n\nSince the computer is guessing randomly, having more characters available and using longer passwords makes it harder to guess. Using only lower case letters gives 26 possibilities for each letter. Adding in upper case makes it 52. Adding in digits makes it 61 and so on. And of course you have to make a guess for each character in the password, so the longer you make the password the more possible combinations there are and the harder it is to guess. Hackers also know what some of the most common passwords are and will usually check those ones first.\n\nHumans can’t guess passwords quickly, but they can guess common ones. They can also sometimes see you type in your password and remember it. As a result, passwords that can easily be read as you type them in, common passwords, and passwords that are easily guessed from knowing you are weak against humans.\n\nPassword123 is weak against both humans and computers because it’s a common password that’s easily guessed. Humans will try it and hackers will use it as an input to compare against hashed passwords. In general, the most important thing to stay secure against computers is having a long password no matter what it says. If you toss in a few numbers or symbols it will also throw off most humans trying to guess your password or spy on you.",
"Because of dictionary attacks - hackers don't start to pick password one character at a time, instead they first try a list of commonly used passwords, then try list of proper words with 1 at the end to meet password requirements(because let's be real, almost everyone uses 1)",
"Some people here got it right, but I'll provide you with a more correct explanation.\n\nI'm a web developer and security is my priority. If you do not know what you're doing use already available authentication frameworks.\n\nAnyway, hackers usually won't try brute-forcing (that is, repeatedly trying password and username combinations) the login form. They'll try to obtain a database leak and try to find a password which is represented by a given hash (human readable password \"converted\" into seemingly random combination of numbers and letters).\n\nYou can't get to know just the first letter (/u/NidoKid34 is wrong here). You either know none or the entire password.\n\nNow, it is possible to find a vulnerability in the entire hashing scheme. But that would render even most \"secure\" passwords useless.\n\nWithout a \"hole\", hackers try passwords from a predetermined list of hashed passwords and their variations (called a rainbow table). Random passwords have less chances at appearing in said table, because they aren't as commonly used as, let's say, \"password\". Because of said tables, passwords are frequently salted (a random string is \"hashed\" with the password and then stored in the database in plain text). [I can explain this, but it's not necessary for OP's question to be fully answered.]\n\nBut, special characters (!@$%\\^ & *) aren't the only things that make passwords more secure. [You can make a secure password with dictionary words.](_URL_0_)\n\nI suggest this xckd-style passwords to everyone since these are easy to remember. The most secure solution is to use a password manager (like KeePass) and a different password for each site.\n\nFeel free to ask me any questions, I'll answer them and then edit my answers into this comment.\n\n**TL;DR:** Hackers don't like calculations, more complex passwords require more calculations.",
"Typically when you enter a password on a website it gets converted into what's called \"MD5\" (a form of encryption) whenever you type your password in it gets converted to MD5 again using the same system and if it matches what is saved in your account you're allowed access.\n\nIf that database leaks (more common then you'd think) people will see your MD5 hash and they can look up in what's called a rainbow table (a list of passwords with their MD5 equivalent) if your hash has been used before, if it has they now know your password.\n\nIf your password is unique, and doesn't show up on the table, then they now have to crack it which takes much longer.\n\nTL:DR; password records can speed up the process if your password isn't unique",
"Thank you to everyone for your responses! I know Password123 was a very weak password to begin with but I was just wondering why ANY word in the dictionary, big or small, would not be considered strong enough. Thanks to all who commented, I understand now! ",
"Mainly to avoid dictionary attacks. Mathematically, the password AS@!@^415 isn't going to be much of a hindrance over \"password\" in a brute force attack. However, against a dictionary attack, where attackers first try common words and combinations of words, \"password\" will get broken in milliseconds.\n\nBruce Schneier gives an excellent breakdown of good passwords: _URL_0_",
"Dictionary based attacks.\n\nIf you have a brute force attack with a dictionary, it will likely guess Password123 at some point, or some variation of it (like password123, PassWord123, etc). To be able to account for 94$$w0rd123, or P455w0rd123, etc would require a much more sophisticated type of attack to be able to crack things in a timely manner.\n\nComputers can try an insane amount of passwords, so if it has a list of 10,000 possibilities, it can rip through them in no time at all. If that list suddenly becomes 10,000,000, it will take more time.",
"Because they are harder to guess.\n\nIf I am hacker, I am going to start with a list of stupid passwords before I move on to the harder ones. Password123, abc123, and letmein first, followed by common names, common words, then common names and words followed by letters.\n\nOnly then will I move on to the more randomized passwords.",
"[Here's an article about the most common PINs.](_URL_0_) Because PINs are often chosen by humans instead of randomly by a computer, some PINs are ***far*** more common than others. If you're trying to break into someone's account, trying the common PINs first makes the most sense because you're going to do a lot less work for a good chance at getting in.\n\nThe same principle applies to passwords. The more common (and less random) they are, the faster someone can get past them.",
"Not sure if the responses I've seen are ELI5 enough, so I'll have a go.\n\nWhen a hacker wants to break into your account, there's generally two ways that he can try. He can either use a computer program to enter every possible combination of letters and numbers (called Brute Forcing, which takes an exhausting amount of time), or he can [type every password he knows](_URL_0_). This if often called a \"dictionary\" attack because it uses a list of commonly used passwords, generally not an actual dictionary. If your password is something like \"password123\" or another highly used password, there's a much better chance the hacker will use it as part of a dictionary attack. A random sequence of characters the same length (\"1surk$830kM\") would be less common and thus less likely to be guessed.\n\nBonus: The only (or at least most significant) thing that protects against a Brute Force attack is length, not complexity. To a computer, \"!($ & #%()\" is as complicated as \"password\" - they're both 8 characters. If you want to create a truly secure password, you have to prevent both Brute Forcing and Dictionary Attacks, by creating a lengthy but unique password, giving rise to [correct horse battery staple](_URL_1_) - but don't use that as a password, it's too famous now.",
"Usually if someone is trying to guess your password, they know you personally. Anything related to your personal life (e.g. pet names, year of birth etc.) are easy for them to find out or look up. Random sequences are always your strongest bet to defeat a human attacker. I think that much is obvious and not the point of your question, so we can drop it.\n\nWhat about to a machine though? What is the difference between Hgafyvz1086 and Password123 if they both meet the same constraints?\n\nTo a perfectly random password cracking algorithm? Nothing at all. They would be effectively the same.\n\nHowever, that's not the case in the real world. Anyone who's actually interested in cracking a password isn't going to waste time trying every random string. They're going to start with a text file that contains a set of common passwords. You can get such a list online, and on it you'll find thousands and thousands of passwords including every variation of common passwords that you can and cannot think of.\n\nPassword cracking algorithms can also be programmed to start with dictionary words, followed by common number extensions or with common special character replacements.\n\nIf I were to make it my hobby to crack passwords, I would write an algorithm that adds any successful password attempt to my password list, so that it gets tried sooner next time.\n\nWhen you use a randomized password, you're essentially ensuring that your password is not included in a password list.\n\nOn the other hand if you create a random password and you have to write it down to remember it, you might want to make sure it's kept somewhere safer than your desk. \n",
"A common mistake people make is that thinking Password123 is a dictionary attack phrase because \"password\" is in the dictionary. A custom dictionary however may contain Password123 as a \"try these passwords first\" in an attempt to guess the password.\n\nIn a hybrid attack, a system could use a dictionary lookup, and then try both capitalization of the first letter or lowercase, and sticking some numbers at the end. In this case, Password123 can be determined fairly quickly. \n\nBut in a different case: myPassword!now1772 vs xshdcmyYP1$. \n\nThe first password is more secure. The password simply contains more characters. In a brute force attack, it'll take much longer to crack. Both of them are not dictionary words even though the first CONTAINS dictionary words. A computer does not see 3 words there like we do. It is simply a string of characters.\n\nThe biggest reason I like passwords like the first password is because it's tremendously easier to remember. I dont have to write it down, and the only place I'll ever \"save\" it is in my head. \n\nFinally, don't think of a \"dictionary attack\" as an actual dictionary. In some cases it may contain the entire English dictionary, but it can include passwords that are extremely common, like Password1 as a \"dictionary\" word.\n\nPasswords should be longer than 14 characters in today's world, especially in wireless networks to be complex enough that a brute force would take longer to complete than the life span of the value of information it protects.\n\nMany years as a network security admin have prepared me in making long security posts ;).",
"First understand how passwords are cracked - watch this: _URL_0_\n\nThen learn what a good password is, or why Password123 is insecure - watch this:\n_URL_1_",
"So dictionary attacks,\n\nYou've heard that. How about something more in depth? Not only is your \"Password123\" not very random, neither is \"Hgafyvz1086\".\n\nBoth are 11 characters long, and they're both printable characters, limited to letters and numbers. If you look on an ASCII/UTF-8 encoding table, you'll see that each character is stored in computer memory as an 8-bit byte with a decimal value between 48-57 (characters '0' through '9'), 65-90 ('A' through 'Z'), and 97-122 ('a' through 'z').\n\nThat's 62 possible different byte values for any character in your password. Your passwords are 8 bits x 11 characters = 88 bits long, which can represent an integer between 0 - > 309485009821345068724781055, but because of your limited number of characters, your not using all the possible bits in each byte. The most significant bit is always 0, so we only need to contemplate 7 of the 8 bits. Your whole password represents an integer between 58256001848723777642311728 - > 148067338032172934840875642. That's a mere 89811336183449157198563914 different values. But since we're only using 10 digits, 26 lowercase letters, and 26 uppercase letters, only \"characters^number_of_characters\" = (10+26+26)^11 = 62^11 = 285,311,670,611 of those values in that range can actually be represented by your password complexity. THAT'S PEANUTS for a computer.\n\nAn attacker can make grand assumptions about password complexity. If you're going to type it in from your keyboard, even using punctuation, it doesn't increase the number of possible passwords that much. The number of possible passwords they have to attack becomes limited.\n\nThere are two ways to harden your password from attack: use non-printable characters, and use longer passwords.\n\nByte values 0-31 and 127 are control characters, they don't have a printed representation and (mostly) can't be typed into a keyboard directly. Then there's Extended ASCII; that 8th bit adds 127 more values.\n\nThe thing with binary is every additional bit doubles the number of possibilities, and each additional character in your password adds 8 at a time.\n\nThe thing about these rainbow tables is they're HUGE. Terabytes, exabytes. And they take a long time to generate. Your goal is to ensure your password doesn't end up in this table, and their goal is to generate the smallest table that gets the biggest bang for their buck. If an attacker doesn't care about breaking every single password, they're going to take every shortcut they can. If they can skip non-printable characters, you only need one, and you've beaten them. But it's easier to produce tables for every combination than it is for ever increasing combinations. Like I said, every additional bit doubles the size of their rainbow table. Typical tables are generated for up to 32 characters, the big ones go up to 64. If your password is 33 or 65 characters, it's not in their table.\n\nIt's easy to make a long password, just take a passage from a book or a poem, something easy to remember.\n\nBut it gets even easier and better than that. Use a keyring program. It uses a master password to protect a locally encrypted file. That file contains the passwords to all your things. These programs can be given a set of password criteria, and they will generate passwords for you, printable and not, with whatever rules, and up to the maximum length. All they're going to do is random-ish-but-with-rules some very large integer, because that's all your password is, in the end. These programs will put your password in your clipboard so you never have to know it or see it, so you can just paste right into the password field. Even Windows, Linux, and OSX have features where the clipboard will wipe itself after a paste, and it will refuse to paste in plain-text, so you can never actually see it on screen. Put the software and the file on a thumb drive, and plug it in only when you need a password - just like you wouldn't leave your keys in the ignition when not in use. So you only need to know one easy password and all the rest are managed.",
"When you steal your friends iPhone to play keep away for a few minutes, which combinations do you try first? \n\nI'm sure you know couple of common ones. \n\n1234\n\n4321\n\n1379\n\n2580\n\nAnd of course their birthday if it fits in 4 digits. \n\nSo what makes these passwords less secure? \n\nMathematically, nothing. If you were to roll 4 10 sided dice (0 to 9), all of these have an equal probability. \n\nSo then, something *must* make them less secure. The reason they're less secure is because when we (attackers) steal our friends phone, we know that these are more common passwords.\n\nOK, so when I gave the last example and said there was mathematically no difference, I lied a bit. A typical single. Character has 80ish possibilities (0x30 to 0x7f in ASCII) \n\nYou can figure then that the length 'n' of any password has 80^n different possibilities. Because the function is exponential, we know two things, one good one bad. The good thing is that adding one or two characters to the end of your password will dramatically increase its strength. The bad thing is that if an attacker can know beforehand any of the characters in your password, the difficulty to guess it *decreases* dramatically. Consider the following example:\n\nI'm going to attack two people using an online login service. One of them has a completely random password, and the other's starts with 'pass' \n\nAs per company policy, both are 8 characters long. \n\nFor the random password :\n\n80^8 / (1000×3600×24x365) ≈ 500,000 years\n\nFor the one we know half of, we only have to guess 4 characters and just append them to \"pass\" \n\nThis gives us \n\n80^4 / (1000×3600) ≈ 11 hours. \n\nNow this is assuming only 1000 guesses per second, but most modern computers have 4 or more cores, so further divide this. Someone like me could guess a poor password in less than 3 hours. \n\nEDIT : I invite you to look at the ROCKyou password leak, you'll see why people can make guesses about what words are in passwords\n"
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1d3olu | why it's a big deal the "austerity movement" has been proven wrong and what it means | I've come across two different articles on the same thing, [this](_URL_0_), "The Austerity Movement is Crumbling", being the most recent one and I still don't understand what austerity is or why it was wrong or what the kid who proved it wrong's paper proved. I checked the early ELI5 questions on austerity but none of them made any sense, and described it in terms that were way beyond my comprehension.
Also...does it matter? Or is it just a political talking point? Is it just an English thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d3olu/eli5_why_its_a_big_deal_the_austerity_movement/ | {
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"Let's say you are spending a lot more money than you earn. If you cut your spending down to a bare minimum, that's austerity, and lot of people think that is what countries with too much debt need to do.\n\nThe problem is, cutting spending can make it harder to earn money. If you sell your car to save money, you can't take a night job delivering pizzas. There are a lot of people who think spending money to stimulate economic growth and increase revenue is a better way to get out of debt than austerity.\n\nThe problem is there is a fine line between economic stimulus and irresponsible spending...a lot of politicians use anti-austerity rhetoric as an excuse to spend money on pet projects despite not being able to afford it.\n\nAs for austerity being \"proven\" wrong, that is a gross overstatement. What happened is a study that austerity supporters have frequently cited was shown to have serious flaws. Austerity vs. growth is still very much an open issue."
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