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6gmm5e | why public pools take 'safety breaks' for a few minutes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gmm5e/eli5_why_public_pools_take_safety_breaks_for_a/ | {
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"To give life guards a break. It's also nice adults (usually) have that time to be in the pool kid-free",
"* to give swimmer who might be fatigued, dehydrated, or cold a change to come out of the water\n* to give the lifeguards a break\n* to clear to pool in case any cleaning or maintenance is necessary\n* to keep people used to listening to the life guards\n* as a segue to adult swim\n* to give parents an convenient time to get their kids out of the pool and leave"
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1jh9gy | what's the difference between oil and gas? | What are they used for, how are they retrieved/created, what other fuels are related/relevant, etc. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jh9gy/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_oil_and_gas/ | {
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"Gas as in natural gas or as in gasoline?\n\nNatural gas is pumped out of the ground or retrieved through fracking and may be used instantly for power generation (discounting sour, as i dont think a five year old wants to get into that).\n\nOil is a thick black liquid either pumped straight out (as in Saudi Arabia) mixed in with sand (as in Alberta) or is incredibly thick and sludgy (as in Venezuela). Oil requires processing to turn it into kerosene, jet fuel, gasoline, plastic, etc. it is a more complex molecule than natural gas and thus can be turned into more things.",
"Oil is typically the term people use when referring to crude oil (the black liquid being pumped out of the ground that requires refinement). Crude oil is a mixture of many chemicals, mainly hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are then mainly classified by the number of carbon atoms in them. \n\nDuring the refinement process, a step called fractional distillation (fracking) takes place where the oil is heated up and the different carbon chains are separated. For example, natural gas (methane) has one carbon atom, and thus has the lowest boiling point, allowing it to come out of the liquid solution first. This process creates many of the hydrocarbons we use today (methane, ethane, kerosene, gasoline, diesel, etc). \n\nNow, when referring to a car in the US, gas and oil have a very different meaning. Gas is gasoline (typically an octane/ethanol mixture) and is the liquid that gets combusted to run your engine. Oil is a lubricant that is put into your engine to keep it moving and running well.\n\nSource: working on a refinery, engineering/chemistry major. Feel free to ask any more questions you have on the subject."
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fccfz9 | how does carbon dating differentiate between the age of a material and the time that the material was shaped? | I see carbon dating used all the time to give the age of stone tools. I always think to myself that the stone itself could be millions of years old, yet the carbon dating will put the age of the stone tool at tens of thousands of years old. How does carbon dating differentiate between the age of the stone and the time that humans shaped it into a tool? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fccfz9/eli5_how_does_carbon_dating_differentiate_between/ | {
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"Stone itself can't be carbon dated. There are other types of radiodecay dating that may work, but as you're saying they tend to show a geologic age.\n\nRather than dating the stone axe head, archaeologists will date the surrounding material. The axe was thrown in a garbage pile or buried with someone, and that provides the carbon-based materials for dating.",
"Carbon dating is used to date things that were once alive. \n\nCarbon dating works by comparing the ratio of carbon-14 to normal carbon-12 in a sample. \n\nCarbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon formed in the atmosphere with a half life of 5,730 years. It is created and decays at a set rate so the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in nature stays constant. \n\nIt enters the food chain through plants absorbing it as CO2, (and animals can then eat the plants), thus while the animal or plant is alive, the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 is the same as it is in the air (or ocean for marine plants and animals) \n\nWhen the animal or plant dies (as would be required to make a tool), it is no longer eating or photosynthesising and so isn't taking in any more carbon. \n\nTherefore, the ratio or carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample starts to change as the radioactive isotopes decay without getting replaced, while the stable carbon-12 stays around. Since the rate of decay is a known constant and the original ratio of the different isotopes is also known, we can determine how long the sample has been dead for by measuring the new ratio.",
"If you see carbon dating used all the time to give the ages of stone tools, you probably misunderstand something, or you are reading some pretty bad science. Carbon dating doesn't work on rock. Carbon dating like any other radiactive dating can't only give you a time for specific things.\n\nCarbon dating give you the age of death of a biological living thing and is limited to around 50,000 years. The way it work is the following. Cosmic ray hit the atmosphere and create carbon 14, which bind with oxygen to create CO2. Plant absorb CO2, break it with photosynthesis and us the carbon to build their body (remember the life on earth is carbon based). Herbivore eat the plan, carnivore eat the herbivore and so everything end up using that carbon. So at a specific time all living organism have the same carbon 14 ratio in their body as the atmopshere they are living in, because they keep renewing their carbon with fresh one as they eat/photosynthinsis. When something die, it doesn't exchange carbon with their environement anymore and so no new fresh carbon 14, the one their have in their body will decay. So if you look at something biological you can measure the ratio of carbon 14 and determine how much time passed since that things died. You can't date the stone tools, but if the tool have some leather we can know when the human kill the animal to get that leather. After around 50,000 years the carbon 14 decayed too much and we can't realiably measure the ratio. For carbon dating to work you also have to plot the ratio of carbon 14 in the atmosphere thoughout history and this can be done with ice core or with tree. The reason is that tree create their body with layers, each of them using the carbon ratio at the time.\n\nOne method for dating rock, especially old one is uranium-lead dating. This work with zircon crystal, which are very strong mineral. When they form uranium can fit into their crystalination pattern, but lead doesn't fit. So when the rock is formed you can't have any lead in the crystal. Natural uranium is U238 which decay very slowly, so if you look at a zircon crystal today you know that all the U238 come from the moment it was formed, but all the lead in it can only come from decayed U238. You can do a ratio of both and look how much time it took to reach that ratio by decay. This give you the age for the formation of the crystal. The lead and uranium were there before the crystal was formed, but it give you a minimum age for the earth.",
"Carbon dating only works with organic substances, not stone. It would be applied to wood, leather, or bone found near the stone, not the stone itself.\n\nBut the essence of the question you ask is a valid one. Carbon dating works because living things are always taking in carbon, including radioactive carbon-14. Once they die, they stop replenishing it, so the remain carbon-14 decays away over time. That means a wooden tool dates to when the tree died, not to when it is made. In practice, it isn't a huge problem, as those dates are usually very close, but it is something to be aware of.",
"The stone could be tied into a handle, or there may be fibers or blood on the edge or face of the tool."
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6557zx | when you flush a toilet, how does the water get sucked? is it by a vacuum or the just the additional water that is added | I'm asking in regards to conventional toilets not airplanes | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6557zx/eli5when_you_flush_a_toilet_how_does_the_water/ | {
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"Conventional toilets work on water being added from above. The force of the water rushing in and then pouring over the top of the S-bend sucks the contents of the bowl out. When the flush cycle completes, the toilet trickle-fills the bowl a bit more in order to wash the sides of the bowl and fill the S-bend to the point that an air seal is created to keep the smell out.\n\nConventional toilets do **not** work on siphons. If this were the case, when one toilet in the house flushed, all of them would, because they are all connected to a common sewer stack. In reality, the stack is vented to the outside above the rooftops to allow pressure to equalize, preventing one flush from causing a cascade.\n\n**TL;DR:** Toilets flush from the action of the water surging into the bowl and over the S-bend. No vacuum, suction, or siphon is involved, as sewer systems are not designed for that.\n\n**Edit: I've been corrected by people more knowledgable in plumbing. There is a siphon involved, but only through the S-bend.**",
"Depends on the toilet. Nearly all flush toilets have piping that goes like a un shape, with the bowl at the top of the u and the drain out the bottom of the n. The bottom of the u is filled with water, the top of the n and the drain is air.\n\nIn the 'washdown' design it is just the force of the water falling down from the tank that flushes. It makes the water level rise in the u, go over the top of the n, and flow away. The water level won't change much when you flush. This design is the norm in Europe.\n\nIn the 'siphon' design part of the pipe is narrowed and the water rushes in. This makes the water level in the bowl rise rapidly while the water moves into the pipe more slowly and totally fills it. The water level in the pipe goes round the top of the n and this starts a siphon, pulling the water round and out of the bowl. Only once the water in the bowl drops to the bottom of the U can air get in and break the siphon. This design is the norm in North America.\n\nAnd yes, it's a siphon. It doesn't affect the rest of the toilets because the siphoning water flow is only in the pipework for that toilet, with air further down the drains.\n\nThere are some other designs, but those are the main ones.\n\nEDIT: To be clear. A difference is that in the washdown design, the top of the un bend is always an air space even during the flush. In the siphonic design it fills completely with water when it flushes.",
"All these are correct.\nThe word I don't see is gravity.\nThat and potential energy.\n\nThe water in the tank is put there under pressure, lifting it up into the tank.\n\nNow that water has potential energy.\n\nWhen you operate the flush mechanism, the water falls, pushing the contents of the bowl over the s trap and the water continues down the sloped sewer line to either a septic system or the city sewer.\n\nTldr; gravity\n\nSource: am a septic tech"
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cfqfjr | why falling into a humans arms from a tall height is less damaging than falling onto concrete or grass. | Obviously a humans arms are less physically though than concrete but it doesn’t explain how it is a matter of life and death in some cases | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cfqfjr/eli5_why_falling_into_a_humans_arms_from_a_tall/ | {
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"It’s not that it’s just less tough, someone holding their arms out won’t be able to stop an entire body instantly so their arms sink first. The inertia carried by the falling body is slowed and the life is potentially saved. Compare this to if they hit concrete. Concrete would not move and would stop the body instantly. This would destroy internal organs and kill the falling body",
"Assuming you’re actually caught, it’s because the catcher helps you decelerate before you hit anything hard.\n\nIf you fall from enough height, it takes massive strength and balance to slow you down without really hurting either person.\n\nMost likely, outside of a movie effect, or a fairly short fall, the only benefit to hitting a person first is because they’re softer. In reality, both people probably would be hurt.",
"It's not the fall that kills you, its the sudden stop at the end. It sounds stupid, but it is literally true. The speed at which a person decelerates determines how much force is exerted on the body. If a falling person lands on concrete, the stop is very abrupt and there is no chance to slow oneself. If a second person is standing underneath the falling person, they might slow the fall so that the falling person suffers less injury.\n\nIt is essentially the same principle as an airbag."
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132gb7 | how glasses/contacts work | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/132gb7/eli5_how_glassescontacts_work/ | {
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"Ever hear of the word \"refracting\"? This is exactly what glasses/contacts are doing. Refracting is a big word meaning \"bending\". The contacts will \"bend\" the light rays so the image can hit your retina. The better your retina can record it, the easier it is for your eye to interpret what your eye is seeing. ",
"Ever fried an ant with a magnifying glass? \n\nNotice how you need to move the magnifying glass around (often up and down) to focus the sunlight into one tiny spot so you can fry the ant? Your eyes do the same thing (without the any frying) with light. \n\nThat is, your eyes gather light and focus it. In order to see properly (i.e., 20/20), the light has to hit a specific spot in the back of the eyeball. If if doesn't hit the right spot, then your vision will be blurry. Contacts make sure the light is focused on the right spot in the back of your eyeball. ",
"If you have a magnifying glass handy, pick it up and notice two things about it: 1) You can see things up close, but things far away are blurry. 2) The lens is thickest at the center and gets thinner out toward the edges.\n\nThat shape of the lens bends light to make things appear bigger, but the distance something is away from that lens determines if the light gets so bent that you can't even see it clearly.\n\nNow, what you can do to make the distant object clearer is neutralize the light-bending that the magnifying glass is doing. That can be done with a *concave* lens, the opposite of the magnifier - it is thickest on the outside and thinnest in the center. That will \"pre-shrink\" the image to a size where the magnifying lens can \"enlarge\" it to a clear picture.\n\n(I used quotation marks there because that's too much of an oversimplification to be truly accurate.)\n\nSo, people who need glasses have eyes that are like magnifiers (near-sightedness) or de-magnifiers (far-sightedness.) The lenses in their glasses simply de-magnify or magnify the image to neutralize what their eyes naturally do."
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54ctp1 | why is it necessary to treat livestock (poultry, cattle) with antibiotics so that it's safe for us to eat? | Why is it an issue that the food we eat are treated with antibiotics? Why is it necessary? If more of our food chain shifts towards antibiotic-free meat, what consequences does that pose? What does it take to grow "antibiotic free" animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54ctp1/eli5_why_is_it_necessary_to_treat_livestock/ | {
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"It is not necessary, and in fact that's in no way the reason why livestock are fed antibiotics; it's purely a matter of saving money and increasing yields for the farmer.\n\nAs to why it's a bad idea... _URL_0_\n\nThat's why. ",
"All of these answers, as well as your question, are incorrect and obviously politically motivated. In Canada at least, animals and their products (like milk) cannot be sold for consumption with antibiotics in their system - it's illegal and simply not worth doing. Animals are fed antibiotics for the same reasons people are - to help them with bacterial infections. ",
"Antibiotics decrease the chance of minor bacterial infections that would make the livestock sick. Instead of spending energy on fighting infections that energy can go into growth meaning bigger livestock to slaughter quicker.",
"If you're dog was sick, would you take it to the vet to make it healthy again?\n\nDo you, yourself go to the doctor to get medicine when you are sick so you can be healthy?\n\nFarmers don't just pump animals full of antibiotics to help increase their profit. The medicine they use is expensive. If they give to much, it could cause more damage than good for the animal. If they don't use it at all, that animal could die. When the animal goes to harvest, they are required, by law, to be free of antibiotics. If they test positive for any trace of medicine, that animal cannot be processed that day. That means the paycheck is going to be late, and there is more cost for transportation, food, heat, water, and more.\n\nFarmers are not evil people, who sit around trying to make the most money possible without regard to the people they are serving. Most farmers are families whose entire livelihood depends on animals being sold and processed. And they themselves usually eat the same animals they have raised in their farms. They clean the barn twice a day and do their best to prevent illness. But even if you wash your hands all the time, you get sick still. Sometimes it happens and can't be avoided.\n\nNow, there are obviously farms that break the rules, just as their are teachers, police, CEOs, etc that do. But not every teacher is a child predator, right? And not every police officer is crooked?\n\nPlease don't believe everything you see on TV, in the paper, or in the internet. Always look deeper into issues and don't make blanket judgements on what a few say to stir the masses.",
"If anyone else in this thread is actually in the livestock industry I'd be surprised. I raise cattle and not just a few. The only time our animals EVER receive antibiotics is if they are sick or have an open wound. It is illegal to sell animals for slaughter if they have been treated with antibiotics prior to the withdrawal period (45 days, generally). Again, I'm just talking about the beef industry. ",
"It is not necessary to feed livestock constant meds, it is necessary that they get them. They get sick just like we do, they are also exposed to pathogens that grow in the grass. Hand mouth and hoof disease, a cousin of anthrax is one of those that you can catch from meat. \n\nIt is cheaper to feed all the head of cattle antibiotics than try to identify which are sick and treating those. Also it is illegal to slaughter a sick animal defined as one that cannot walk on its own to the slaughter house. \n\nSo by feeding them antibiotics, they don't get sick, more head of cattle make it to slaughter, beef is cheaper for you (provided you aren't purchasing from the near monopoly of Albertsons, Vons, Safeway Lucky which are one brand). Cheaper meat means cheaper protein. \n\nThe downside is resistance. Pathogens reproduce quickly so any that are resistant to the antibiotics multiply and spread. Luckily very few pathogens can cross species though Hand Mouth and Hoof disease is one virus that can (not affected directly by antibiotics, indirectly by the stronger immune system). ",
"We treat animals with antibiotics for various reasons. In my country, predominantly to cure ilness, but in more intensive systems it can be used to increase growth rates (by changing the composition of gut bacteria to more useful gut bacteria), or to prevent a deadly infection spreading throughout the flock/herd before it is detected. There are very strict regulations regarding antimicrobial use, with regular testing at processing to ensure that there are no residues left in the meat. Farmers that fail to meet these standards (by ensuring the animals are taken off antibiotics for a set length of time prior to slaughter ) face serious consequences. \n\nHowever, current usage practices are still a big issue as it is promoting antibiotic resistance. Any time an antibiotic is used there is a chance that the bacteria involved will develop a way around the antibiotic. Obviously, with systemic use in the livestock industry increases this risk substantially. But having said that, there is a lot of debate between the medical and veterinary communities at the moment as to the best way to reduce antibiotic resistance. This is not just a livestock industry issue but a global issue with many parties at play. \n\nIf we shift more toward antibiotic free animals, pproduction efficencies will drop. If we halt antibiotic use entirely, it becomes a significant welfare issue because even in the most \"natural\" of environments, livestock are still at risk from deadly infections that require treating. Ultimately, judicious use of antibiotics is the way to go in regard to livestock production.",
"Because food farms are very crowded places. If one bird (pig, cow) got sick, all of them will, so antibiotics are used. Keep in mind that some sickness will always be present, so the farmer lives with that fear, What do they do? sometimes they prefer to prevent than to cure and just pump some antibiotic to that specific disease that hasn't appeared yet (but will). That practice have been growing among producers, specially if the local governments don't do anything to prevent it. Modern farms looks more like factories than farms (T.V. farms) so efficiency is highly priced because we need a lot of food. \nNot a native english speaker so I apologize if there's any mistake."
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21mzd9 | does getting vaccinated for the flu each year (if you're not elderly, a child, or someone with an autoimmune disorder, etc) encourage the virus to mutate into something stronger? why or why not? | I'm wondering because the vaccinations you get in your childhood last your lifetime (or at least a number of years). To the point where the disease becomes infrequent and has fewer chances to infect someone and mutate, etc. So I can see why they're necessary.
The flu mutates too quickly for that (similar to the common cold). So it's still fairly common. Using excessive antibiotics is responsible for stronger strains of bacteria, so I'm wondering if a vaccine that doesn't really seem to be effective for longer than a season is doing the same thing.
I don't really know that much about this stuff though so if someone could give me an explanation, I'd appreciate it! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21mzd9/eli5_does_getting_vaccinated_for_the_flu_each/ | {
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"No, not really.\n\nInfluenza is a fast-reproducing virus, and all fast-reproducing organisms evolve quickly. That's why geneticists use things like fruit flies to observe the evolution and inheritance of genetic material across many generations. Fruit flies have a 30 day life cycle, so you can observe 12 full generations in a year - you'd need 300-400 years to observe 12 generations in humans!\n\nWhen they prepare the flu shot for the year, the scientists try to predict which of the influenza strains is likely to 'get passed around' that year, and prepare the injection for that. This reduces the amount of flu that gets passed around, but influenza reproduces inside the cells of your body and has a 'life cycle' (though it's not-living) of *hours or days*, so they evolve quickly *without* the use of flu-shots.\n\nUnlike antibiotics, which are a standardized way of killing bacterial infections, and hence the bacteria can evolve against, a vaccine allows your body to recognize the antigen (foreign agent) and learn how to mount a defense against it, so that your body kills it quicker when you're exposed to it. Influenza's fast evolution is, in part, an evolutionary \"defense\" against the rapidity with which our body's can kill viruses."
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1xppr9 | the debt limit increased again...i'm still confused after reading both sides (dem/repub) opinions about what is actually happenening and what are the consequinces. | Can someone expain to me the main tenants of each sides arguement regarding the debt ceiling? I've heard it compared to credit cards and i've heard that is not a valid comparsion. What is exactly happening and what are the pros/cons for each choice to raise or not. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xppr9/eli5_the_debt_limit_increased_againim_still/ | {
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"The debt ceiling debate is a rather silly thing (in my opinion at least).\n\nUnlike virtually every other country on the planet, the US sets an arbitrary limit to how much money the government can borrow. This is called the \"debt ceiling\". The problem is that the same government passes budgets that very specifically overspend toward this ceiling.\n\nThe current situation is as follows.\n\nThe Democrats are in power, and want to accomplish their agenda. The Republicans hold control of the House and want to press their own agenda. \n\nSince the debt ceiling *must* pass through the House, the Republicans have the ability to not raise the debt ceiling which would put the US into default with its creditors. They threaten to do this unless the Democrats give them what they want.\n\nI'm sure others will have different opinion on this but I do not view this issue as having pros or cons. The debt we are taking on is for things *we've already agreed to pay*, and that *acts of Congress have approved*. Not raising the debt ceiling is hypocritical, stupid and foolishly damaging to the US's credit reputation and economy.\n\nIn short, people are playing games with our countries economy to push their own political agenda.",
"[Here is the excellent CGPGrey explaining it.](_URL_0_)\n\nIf we don't raise it: The country collapses, we can't pay any of our incurred bills, and we go full Greece. \n\nIf we raise it: things continue as normal. \n\nThat's a dramatic oversimplification of the issue, but the bottom line is that the debt limit \"debate\" is not actually a debate, or even a choice to be made - if we don't raise the debt limit, there will be mass financial collapse and that will shake trust in the United States - trust which is very, very important if we want to remain a global power. The choice to raise the debt limit is simple and always made in the end, but congress benefits from playing political games and extending the debate until the last possible second because our government is no longer of, for, or by the people, but of, for, and by those few currently in positions of power. \n\n",
"The Dem. belief is that they will stop spending so much, which as history shows, hasn't really happened. The Rep. belief is that if your house is flooded, would you pump the water (the debt) out, or raise your ceiling?\n\nBasically it's a bill that makes the government pinky promise to themselves that they won't spend any more money, which there is no legislation to force them not to."
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eecqhq | how can the ovaries be left after a hysterectomy when they’re attached to the uterus? are they attached to something else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eecqhq/eli5_how_can_the_ovaries_be_left_after_a/ | {
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"The ovaries are loosely 'connected' to the uterus by the fallopian tubes. After an ovary drops an egg out, it usually goes down the tube, which transports it to the uterus. This is why you can have ovary sparing hysterectomy cases when the ovaries aren't bad - this will allow the body to continue to receive natural hormone production. \n\nAn oophorectomy, by contrast, will only remove the ovaries, and a salpingo-oophorectomy will remove a fallopian tube along with the ovary. These may be unilateral (one side) or bilateral (both sides).",
"The ovaries lie within the peritoneal cavity, on either side of the uterus, to which they are attached via a fibrous cord called the ovarian ligament.",
"I was surprised myself to learn recently that there is a gap between the ovaries and the fallopian tube. The oocyte (egg) is just released into a gap (in the peritoneal cavity) and the fimbriae (fringy appendages) of the fallopian tube kind of grab the egg and take it in. It is amazing to me that the whole complicated process works as well as it does!\n\nThis video shows it occurring in live action. It's not as clear as fake videos, but it's just amazing to see the real thing.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"The ovaries are in close proximity to the uterus, they are not part of the uterus, so there’s no problem leaving them behind - they are supported in the body by plenty of independent structures and fed by a blood supply independent of the uterus.\n\nBut, even if they were deemed connected, there are lots of things even more closely connected that can be removed in part - for example, you can remove a lobe of the liver, a section of intestine, a part of a lung, or half a thyroid."
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5pxq31 | why do some people need to get up in the night and use the bathroom? isn't that slowed down during sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pxq31/eli5_why_do_some_people_need_to_get_up_in_the/ | {
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"\"Slowed down\" is not the same as \"turned off\".\n\nThere are many reasons, from drinking fluids too close to bedtime to actual medical conditions.\n\nJust like when you are awake, though, there is only so much your body can hold until it is time to relieve one's self. If it happens in the middle of the night, it can be enough of an irritant to wake you up and tell you to go..."
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4t1tpm | how do people who work for themselves get paid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t1tpm/eli5_how_do_people_who_work_for_themselves_get/ | {
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"There's a concept in accounting called Business Entity. Basically it means that the business is a separate thing from yourself. You keep the two finances completely separate, and when you need to \"get paid\" like for regular bills and such, you make a withdrawal from the liquid assets of the business, in the form of a check, and use it to pay your personal expenses.",
"They invoice their customers and they put that money into their business account. From there they pay themselves. ",
"You don't get paid if you work for yourself. You have to sell services to others to gain income.",
"They get paid by their customers. When people \"work for themselves\" it usually means they either own a business, where customers purchase their services or products, or they are freelancers who contract out for other companies temporarily and get paid by them."
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145gp7 | how does online translators like google translator, babelfish work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/145gp7/eli5_how_does_online_translators_like_google/ | {
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"In the most simplistic way, you can just do the equivalent of a search-and-replace to convert the words from one language to another. So for example, if I was translating from Italian to English, I would replace the word \"niente\" with \"nothing\".\n\nIn practise, it's a lot more complicated than that, though, because languages have grammatical structures that have to be followed, and different languages are structured differently. As another example, the Italian for \"I haven't done anything\" would be \"non ho fatto niente\". If you did a simple search and replace on words, you would end up with \"not I have made nothing\", which is quite far from what we actually want.\n\nNatural language processing usually involves parsing it into a [tree structure](_URL_1_). Here's [an example](_URL_0_) of one. Each point in the tree represents some conceptual component - for example, a verb phrase (VP) consists of a verb (V) and a noun phrase (NP). Once you have it in this kind of structure, you can restructure it to fit the language you're translating to, which means the sentence should be structured properly.\n\nThere's a huge amount of statistics necessary at each stage when processing natural languages, because language isn't structured in a strict, regular fashion: there are lots of ambiguities where the system can break down. Usually, huge collections of text (corpora) are used to train the processing systems. These are typically things like newspaper articles that have been painstakingly annotated by humans to remove any ambiguities.\n\nBear in mind that this is just a whirlwind tour of the basics of how this sort of thing works, and I'm no expert on it. There's a lot of research still being done into natural language processing, and machine translation is only one small part of it.",
"This is going to be hard to explain to a five year old. They work off of a dictionary between the source language and target language to translate the vocabulary terms. In addition, they use a database which attempts to read the grammar in the source language and assign parts of speech (subject, object, direct object) to the various words in the source language that can be then parsed into the target language. Sometimes, because of ambiguity in the source language, the translation software has to guess at what meaning what inferred in the source language.\n\nLet me give an example, the best way I can explain this is to show the process of the software: \nTranslate \"I gave the pen to the boy\" into French.\nThe software would assign a corresponding vocabulary word and grammar function to each word in the sentence.\n\nI = 1st person subject pronoun, equivalent is \"Je\". As this is the first word of the sentence in French, it needs to be capitalized. \n\ngave = the \"simple past\" form of the verb \"give\". The software has to recognize that \"gave\" is associated with the verb \"to give\" - it has a database with all of the past forms of every verb. \nThe software also has to recognize that since \"gave\" is after \"I\" in English, it is I who gave, as opposed to the boy who gave or the pen who gave (it determines who the agent of the verb is.) This is important, because the form of the equivalent verb in French, \"donner\", is modified depending on who the agent is. Furthermore, there are two forms of the past tense in French that would be equivalent to \"gave\" for the 1st person singular agent - \"donnai\", which is rarer and used more in books, and \"ai donné\", which is used in everyday speech. The software has to choose between these forms, and it chooses the latter, \"ai donné\", probably based on what most people translating would expect.\n\n\"the\" = definite article which refers to the pen, indicating that it is a specific pen,, and not a pen that was not previously mentioned or referred to. At this point, if the software is working word by word, it can't yet translate \"the\" into French, because there are different forms of \"the\" in French depending on the identity of the noun it is referring to. Nouns in French have grammatical gender, which means that they belong to one of two classes - \"masculine\" or \"feminine\". The translating software has another database where it indicates the grammatical gender of every noun in French. Nouns of different grammatical gender use different direct articles (\"le\" for masculine nouns and \"la\" for feminine nouns.) Furthermore, if the noun is plural, it takes a different article, \"les\". So the possibilities are \"le\", \"la\", or \"les\". \n\n\"pen\" = this translates into \"stylo\". However, the software needs to decide - is this a \"pen\" for writing, or a \"pen\" for animals? The software decides on a \"pen\" for writing, based on the fact that \"pen\" more often refers in English to a writing utensil, and it also makes this distinction from the context of the sentence (if you put \"animal pen\" into a translator, it will decide that you mean a pen to hold animals.)\nThe French noun \"stylo\" is a masculine noun, so the software can now pick the masculine definite article \"le\" for the \"the\" before \"pen\".\n\n\"to\" - This is a preposition/linking word in english which can indicate a variety of things. It can indicate direction towards (\"I go to Cleveland\"), it can indicate the infinitive of a verb (\"I'm going to eat\"), and it can be used to indicate the indirect object of a sentence, which is meaning in this situation. If the software sees up to this point \"I gave the pen to\", it can't yet decide on a suitable translation without seeing the word after \"to\".\n\n\"the\" - Another definite article which will modify the noun following it. Again the software cannot translate this word yet, because it depends on the gender and number of the noun which follows. However, it does indicate that it will be a noun that ultimately follows the word \"to\". As a result, the word \"to\" will indicate an indirect object, which can be translated as \"à\".\n\n\"boy\" - The software can translate this directly as a noun, \"garçon\", which is masculine, so the definite article \"the\" which modifies \"boy\" can now be translated as \"le\". \n\nLet's see the result:\n\n\"Je ai donné le stylo à le garçon\"\n\nThe software must now make changes to make it understandable in French. There are two contractions in the sentence which are required in French - \"Je\" + \"ai\" become \"J'ai\" and \"à\" + \"le\" become \"au\". So the new sentence is: \n\n\"J'ai donné le stylo au garçon\"\n\nIf you dump \"I gave the pen to the boy\" into Google translate, it actually gives you \"J'ai donné le stylo pour le garçon\", misreading the word \"to\" into one of its other functions. It does give you the option to correct this phrase, replacing \"pour\" with \"au\". \nBear in mind that if you are going to a different target language than French, the vocabulary database is going to be swapped and the grammar rules are going to be completely different as well. What's amazing to me is the difficulty of translation for computer software, having to make each of these decisions listed above and guessing context where necessary, and the relative ease for a human to translate the phrase - for someone who knows both languages, it seems so effortless to parse, the decisions are basically internalized, I don't have to worry about whether \"pen\" in French is masculine or feminine, I just *know*, and there is no determinative process. Humans are really good at internalizing language rules, but it's great that we've put in so much work with computers that they can spit out moderately correct sentences. \n"
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1rp7ms | what is going inside my computer when it gets a virus? | What gets effected and what is the point of the virus? I always wondered this as I curse in frustration and call IT. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rp7ms/what_is_going_inside_my_computer_when_it_gets_a/ | {
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"Computer code. Code is a sequence of instructions, written to perform a specified task with a computer.\n\nIt's like any other program , except it hides and make bad things happen to the computer and your data.",
"Computer viruses fall under the category of malware, or malicious software. Even though viruses are commonly used as a term to refer to any type of malware, a computer virus is technically a computer program that attaches itself to other programs. \n\nA computer virus is usually an executable file that, when executed, will usually perform the following tasks: \n\n* search for other files on the computer\n* if the file is a program, copy the virus's code to that program\n* execute a payload (which may or may not be destructive)\n\nOnce a program gets a virus's code injected into it, it becomes an infected program. An infected program, when executed, will run the virus code first before running the original code of the program.\n\nSince viruses only infect files when they're executed, they rely on user interaction in order to spread. Each time you execute the virus or a program infected with the virus, any new programs that were not infected before will become infected now. Keep in mind though, that unless the virus has elevated privileges, it can only infect programs that the current user has write-access to. \n\nAn anti-virus virus is a program that spreads like a virus, but when it's code is executed it will detect and remove any virus that has attempted to infect it. Think of it like a chain: virus, anti-virus virus, original program. First the virus code will run, then the anti-virus virus code will run and remove the virus attached in front of it, then the original program will run. Anti-virus viruses are just one of many of a concept for good viruses and are not widely used. \n\nBesides viruses, there are also computer trojans, spyware, ransomware, backdoors, worms, and fork bombs.\n\nTrojans are rogue programs, they are programs that claim to do one thing but instead do something else. For example, many trojan programs ironically claim to be anti-virus software, but in reality they have malicious payloads such as downloading more malware.\n\nSpyware is any program that collects users' personal data without their knowledge and consent. Spyware programs may run in the background silently while monitoring the user. In fact, many trojan programs can also be classified as spyware if they carry this feature. \n\nransomware will deny access to your computer or data unless you pay a ransom. Cryptolocker, for example, will encrypt the user's files and ask for payment in exchange for the password to decrypt the files. The password for decryption is stored on the hacker's computer and the hacker will not send the password unless you pay up. \n\nbackdoors classify a feature of malware that allows the program to give remote control of the computer to the hacker. Many computers installed with backdoors usually part of a botnet. A botnet is a collection of computers compromised with backdoors which can all be controlled en masse by a single person, usually for the purpose of overloading internet traffic to a bring a website down. \n\nA worm is an autonomous computer virus. Unlike computer viruses, worms do not require human interaction in order to spread. Worms usually have a database of exploits to use in order to find loopholes in networks for spreading. When a worm is running on a computer, it will execute any payloads it has and then try to enumerate over any computers in the same local network as it's host. It may try to scan the software ports of the neighbouring computers it finds to determine if there are any exploitable networking software on those computers. Once it finds a host with vulnerable software, the worm will run the appropriate exploit to transfer itself to that computer. \n\nViruses and worms naturally develop a mutual relationship. Multiple viruses may infect a worm, allowing the viruses to be transported across networks. Once the worm reaches a destination, the viruses copy themselves to that machine too. You can think of the viruses as piggy-back riding on the worm to spread at a faster rate. Any worm infected with a virus is known as a mutated worm.\n\nFinally the one of the simplest of all malware is the fork bomb. Fork bombs simply replicate instances of themselves in order to saturate computer memory and system resources. The result of fork bombs is the entire system becoming unresponsive, requiring a hard reboot. If a fork bomb is configured to always run when the system loads, the computer will crash every time it is turned on. The solution to removing a fork bomb configured for start up, is to boot to an alternate operating system and modify the system files of the original operating system. "
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1zmw0x | why use e^x to solve differential equations? | Hey, I've got a short question for all math-lovers out there: Why do we use e^x to solve differential equations? I mean, e is just a number like 2,3,4,... so why do we use 2.7..^x instead of f.i. 3^x ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zmw0x/eli5_why_use_ex_to_solve_differential_equations/ | {
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"There can only be one solution to any given differential equation (once you set boundary conditions). It's one of the many uniqueness theorems that math teachers love to drone on about. That's why we can only use e^x and not 3^(x).\n\nWhy is e e? The way I like to look at it is with the power series.\n\ne^x = 1 + x + x^(2)/2 + x^(3)/6 + x^(4)/24 + ...\n\nAnother way to look at the power series is that it's a solution to the differential equations that e^x solves, because it's its own derivative.\n\nTo get e, just plug in x=1, and there you go. We didn't pick it that way, it just is that way.",
"e is not just another number. It is unique, because it is the only number such that when you graph e^x, the slope of each point on the curve is exactly equal to the y coordinate. It turns out, having this property is super useful for other things in math, to the point that e is considered one of the fundamental constants of mathematics, like i, π/τ, and ϕ. ",
"Here is the best way to intuitively wrap your head around the concept of *e*: _URL_0_"
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2nxgih | why did reddit shut down r/thefappening but leaves some truly disgusting subs up? | Like r/necoPorn r/CuteFemaleCorpses and many others? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nxgih/eli5_why_did_reddit_shut_down_rthefappening_but/ | {
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"The Fappening was extremely high profile. When things go that high profile, you're forced to take action. Even 4chan, the cesspool of the Internet added a DMCA policy as a result of the Fappening.\n\n",
"I'm gonna go with the fact it targeted high profile wealthy people who probably have some high profile powerful lawyers.\n\nReddit probably removed to avoid the negative publicity for the website that the media would spin as well as any possible lawsuits.\n",
"Because\n\nA) While you might find those subs disgusting, they arent (usually) breaking the law. The pictures are posted by either the owners of the pictures or from news sources so there is no DMCA violation. The pictures posted were intentionally hacked off of personal and private accounts.\n\nB) One of the actresses had pictures from when she was underage, can't remember who she was. Technically it was pedophilia which is a big no-no",
"It was half to do with the celebs being rich yes, but at the same time, one actress whose pictures was leaked turned 18 less than a year beforehand, and so they could of had images of here up there that would be classed a child porn, meaning that the whole of reddit would be shut down if they didn't take action.",
"Enough people (and legal representatives) complained about *the fappening*. It probably falls under the remit of Revenge Porn legislation too.\n\nAs for the various other repulsive subreddits, not entirely sure why they're tolerated. ",
"A lot of the images on r/TheFappening would be subject to copyright and could have led to Reddit receiving hefty fines",
"Because not enough people complain about those.",
"Because TheFappening was impossible to ignore as it made national attention. And it involved people who matter, celebrities. But, you can make subreddits a hundred times more disgusting as long as it can be ignored and shit all over people who don't matter. ",
"There were multiple reasons, but the one that I'll give is that it literally was killing reddit servers. A network admin that works at reddit made a post about how he had to disable the subreddit at peak times so that it wouldn't take the site down. That, coupled with the DMCA takedown requests for the thumbnails, made it just impossible to keep the site up."
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26ipmx | why do i always dream about not being able to open my eyes / see clearly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26ipmx/eli5_why_do_i_always_dream_about_not_being_able/ | {
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"If that is what you fear, or if that is what you think about before you fall asleep, then that is probably why. If you want a scientific explanation, that will be difficult to find as these are not well researched topics. Most of the answers you will recieve will actually just be questions."
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1yr4rw | why are people under the legal drinking age of a country allowed to drink wine during religious services, though it is strictly prohibited in any other location? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yr4rw/eli5_why_are_people_under_the_legal_drinking_age/ | {
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"Legal drinking age doesn't have to mean legal drinking age. It can mean the age at which a person needs to be to buy alcohol from a shop that sells alcohol. It may be perfectly legal to drink alcohol, whether at home, in a church, or in a restaurant, depending on the law of the land, as long as the parents or carers are not letting them get drunk, before this age. ",
"Not all states allow minors to consume alcohol as part of religious services. Specifically in:\n\n* Alabama\n* Idaho\n* Indiana\n* Kansas\n* North Carolina\n* Pennsylvania\n* West Virginia\n\nthe consumption of alcohol by minors is illegal in all cases, with no exceptions.\n\nBy contrast, most other states allow the consumption of alcohol by minors with parental permission. This is not limited to religious purposes.\n\n[Here's a breakdown of which states allow what](_URL_0_)."
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1r1h7t | musical scales | Like on a guitar. What are they? What do they represent mathematically? Musically? Why learn them? What do they help with? Are there different types? Can you make new ones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r1h7t/eli5musical_scales/ | {
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"A scale is the set of seven notes (normally finishing with a repetition of the first note as an eighth) that harmonically fit together. The most common is called the major scale. For example, I'm sure you've heard the jingle \"doe, ray, me, fa, so, la, ti, doe\" - that is a major scale. They are useful for a lot of things. Almost all melodies (or instrumental solos) are based off the specific scale that matches the key the song is in. If the background instruments are playing a progression or riff in the key of C, the melody could be any sort of pattern of the notes contained in the C scale: CDEFGABC. For example, the Star Wars melody in the key of C is \"C, G, F-E-D, C, G, F-E-D, C, G, F-E-F-D.\" All of those notes are part of the C major scale. There is a major scale for every note on the piano, guitar, or any instrument. There are also different types of scales, like minor, blues, etc, that sound different and give different feels and effects to the music.",
"It's a set of intervals. An interval is the gap (in pitch) between two notes. Think of a scale as an artist's palette - a selection of colors to choose from. The two concepts aren't completely analogous obviously but it's the simplest comparison I can think to make. \n\nScales all have a very unique sound, and pieces written in the same scale and key will sound similar. ",
"Copying my post from [here](_URL_0_):\n\nMusic is based on ratios.\n\nThe perceived pitch of a note is based on its (principal) frequency. Our perception of the \"distance\" between two notes is determined not by the *difference* of their frequencies, but by the *ratio* of their frequencies.\n\nSuppose that you pluck a string and measure its movement. You will see see a vibration corresponding to a wave the length of the string. The frequency of this vibration is called the **fundamental frequency** of the pitch you hear. But you will also see vibrations corresponding to the string vibrating in halves, and in thirds, and so on. These vibrations will produce sounds with frequencies that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. These sounds are called **overtones**, or collectively the **overtone series** of the fundamental. They are generally quieter than the fundamental.\n\nAny vibrating object will produce overtones. Your ear and brain will interpret the combined sound of these frequencies as a single sound, rather than flooding your auditory awareness with the whole range of them separately. The **pitch** you perceive will be the loudest frequency (almost always the fundamental), and the relative prevalence of the different overtones (determined by the physical properties of the vibrating object) make the difference between, say, a trumpet and a clarinet playing the same pitch.\n\nIf a sound does not seem to have a definite pitch, then the vibrating object producing it is probably vibrating in a more chaotic manner due to its physical properties. Most drums are like this: they produce a whole mess of frequencies, and they are said to be \"unpitched\". Timpani (kettledrums), however, are designed to emphasize a certain frequency, and although they have a \"fuzzy\" drumlike sound, a single fundamental and series of overtones predominates, resulting in a definite pitch.\n\nBells are another interesting example. When you hear a bell, it often sounds like more than one definite pitch is being produced by the bell. This is because the bell vibrates in a manner that produces more than one fundamental and series of overtones. Your brain combines each overtone series into some fundamental, but it can't combine every overtone you hear into a single fundamental, so you hear more than one pitch. There are some weird applications of this. In Ravel's famous Bolero, he uses flutes and piccolo to simulate the sound of a bell by having them play different pitches to \"manually\" supply the correct fundamentals and overtones.\n\nAnyway, all of this concerns how a single pitch is produced. When we make music, we generally use more than one pitch. But with an infinite number of possible frequencies, how did we decide to use a certain set of pitches? The answer is that some sets of pitches are more harmonious than others.\n\nWhat does it *mean* for a set of pitches to be harmonious? Well, simply put, it means that their overtone series \"line up\" nicely. Suppose that you have a pitch of frequency N. This pitch consists of a fundamental at N and overtones at 2N, 3N, etc.. Then suppose that you introduce a second pitch at 2N. This pitch will have overtones at 4N, 6N, etc.. The overtones overlap completely! This ratio, 2:1, is the simplest in music, and we call it the **octave**. Notes separated by an octave are so similar-sounding to us that we say that they are in the same **pitch class**. For example, if you start at \"middle C\" on a piano (also called C4) and go an octave up, you will reach another note called \"C\" (C5), and an octave below middle C is called C3. Much of music theory is really concerned with pitch classes like \"C\" rather than pitches like \"C4\".\n\nGiven some \"starting\" pitch, we have all sorts of octaves of that pitch, but they sound so similar than we can't really make much music out of them alone. So we move on to the next simplest ratio, 3:1. Now, first, observe that a ratio of 3:1 is the same as a ratio of 3:2 multiplied by 2:1 (the octave). Because we consider pitches separated by an octave to be in the same class, we treat the ratios of 3:1 and 3:2 as describing the same sort of interval. For convenience, we usually talk about the interval in it's 3:2 form. We call this interval the **fifth**, or the perfect fifth in some contexts.\n\nIf you have a starting pitch with fundamental frequency N and a second pitch a fifth above it at 1.5N, then the second pitches overtone series will be 3N, 4.5N, etc.. Obviously, there is some overlap between this pitch's overtones and pitch N's overtones (2N, 3N & hellip;). Observe that all of these frequencies are overtones of the pitch .5N, which is one octave below N. The combination of these two pitches (N and 1.5N) is perceived to be harmonious because their common root & ndash; the highest pitch that would contain both their overtone series & ndash; is so close to the notes.\n\nOnce you have the octave and the fifth, you can reach all manner of pitches by \"stacking\" intervals. For instance, two fifths will give you a ratio of 9:4, which you can scale up or down with octaves into 9:2, 9:8, or (if you really want) 9:1024. In fact, just having these two intervals to work with lets us get arbitrarily close to any frequency we want, which puts us right back where we started as far as deciding which pitches we're going to use. The way out of this, for Western music, is to observe that twelve fifths gives us the ratio 531441:4096 (about 129.7:1), which is really close to seven octaves (128:1). If we take that 1.5:1 ratio that makes a fifth and shrink it juuust a little bit to ~1.498:1, then twelve fifths makes exactly seven octaves. The infinite \"line\" of pitch classes off to either side of your starting note becomes a circle (the **circle of fifths**), where you hit eleven more pitch classes before returning where you started. These are the twelve pitch classes of Western music, called the **chromatic collection**. All you need to fully define a chromatic collection is to pick a starting frequency and go in fifths from there. Nowadays, we usually say that 440 Hz is a pitch called \"A4\".\n\n(Note that the actual historical process of transitioning from the pure 3:2 ratio to this easier-to-manage system was a lot messier than described here. They tried to solve the problem by saying that most fifths are perfectly 3:2, but others are not quite. All sorts of interesting compromise approaches were proposed before the modern standard of \"equal temperament\" won out.)\n\nIn the chromatic collection, just as there are twelve pitch classes, there are twelve possible intervals between pitch classes (up to an octave). By restricting the set of pitches, you also restrict the set of intervals. The smallest interval is called the **semitone** or **minor second**. Its ratio is ~1.059:1, and all other intervals' ratios are multiple of this ratio. The interval of two semitones (~1.122:1) is called a **whole tone** or **major second**.\n\nWhen you take some collection of pitch classes (such as the chromatic collection) and \"squeeze\" it into the space of one octave, you call the resultant sequence of notes a **scale**. A scale is defined by the pitches in it and by the starting note, or **root**.\n\nAs you may know, a traditional Western musical scale has seven pitch classes in it, not twelve. A set of seven notes as used in a major scale or natural minor scale is called a **diatonic collection**. (A major scale can be turned intoa natural minor scale, or vice versa, by picking a different pitch from the collection to be root.) You get a diatonic collection by picking a starting pitch class and repeatedly taking fifths, but whereas in the chromatic collection you keep going until you reach your starting point again, in the diatonic collection you stop when you have seven notes. Why seven? The resultant scale will have a property called \"maximal evenness\": for any number of steps between notes on the scale, there are at most two different intervals that you could form by taking that number of steps. For instance, the interval between two notes one step apart could only be a semitone or whole tone (a minor second or major second), and the interval between two notes four steps apart could only be a perfect fifth (seven semitones) or a \"diminished fifth\" (six semitones). (The apparent off-by-one error between the number of steps and the name of the interval is historical: if you go up four steps, then you have looked at five notes counting your starting point.)\n\nThere is exactly one other sort of scale made of fifths with the maximal evenness property. If you take five notes instead of seven, then you end up with the **pentatonic collection**. You cannot form intervals of a semitone or a \"tritone\" (seven semitones, also called an augmented fourth or diminished fifth) with the notes in this collection, so it is, in a sense, incomplete. The interval between \"adjacent\" notes in a pentatonic scale is either a whole tone or a \"minor third\" (three semitones). The essential quality of this scale is that the intervals excluded (the semitone and tritone) are the most dissonant intervals. For this reason, it is easy to write music using a pentatonic collection that is pleasant, and difficult to write music that is discordant. Of course, when you're actually writing music, you can use \"extra\" pitch classes if you like; a scale is not a straightjacket\".\n\nYou can look at a pentatonic scale as a diatonic scale with two pitch classes \"missing\". You can also look at it the other way. Adding different notes to a pentatonic scale may give you interesting effects. For instance, if you add a certain note to a pentatonic scale, you get a blues scale."
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272uoy | why is it whenever i stretch the skin on my neck i get a taste in my mouth? | I can't quite identify something similar to the taste. It is a bit of heat mixed a salty taste wth a mix of rainwater. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/272uoy/eli5_why_is_it_whenever_i_stretch_the_skin_on_my/ | {
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"I'm not really sure of an answer to your problem, but I think you might want to talk to a doctor. Thats not normal, and I'm kinda concerned for you buddy"
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j2otb | how raising taxes helps the economy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2otb/eli5_how_raising_taxes_helps_the_economy/ | {
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"I wouldn't say it helps the economy directly, it just generates more revenue for the government, and they are allowed to spend it however they like. They could invest it themselves on programs like NASA, or they can spend a heck of a lot more in a pointless war. ",
"First you need to understand that the economy goes through different phases, basically good-times and bad-times.\n\nTo prevent the bad-times from being really bad the government will spend money so that people can keep working to make money and feed their families.\n\nSo during good-times, the government raises taxes because people can afford it and then there will be money to spend in bad-times.",
"It can harm the economy by requiring people to pay more of their income to the government, meaning they spend less on everything else. \n\nHowever, it can be planned out to help the economy through several means. Some basic ones are: \n1. Funding government agencies so they can hire more people. This creates jobs, lowers unemployment, and means more people spending money even if the average person spends a little less. It also means fewer people needing government help such as unemployment, welfare, food stamps, and so on. \n2. Increasing government spending, usually on private (non-government) companies' products. This makes those companies more stable financially and increases their profits, theoretically increasing their likelihood to hire people to increase production, then doing all the benefits #1 did. \n3. Allowing the government to pay off its debts, which maintains its credit rating (the trust other countries have in its ability to pay off loans), so the currency doesn't lower in value. If the currency's value were to drop, international trade would be more expensive for people within the country. That would negatively affect any international company doing trade in that country, as well as result in higher costs for anything made with imported products, making a financial situation even more difficult. ",
"Nobody wants to raise taxes a whole lot on the lower and middle classes, but if the government makes the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes, then they will have money to provide more services such as health care, welfare, and other programs intended to help out people who can't afford necessities. With more money, the government can also start federal program that create jobs. \n\nEdit: our current income taxes are actually extremely low compared to how they've been in the past. \n_URL_0_\n\nUnder president Franklin D. Roosevelt the highest tax bracket was 94%",
"The government (well, really *governments*; federal, state, local) employs a lot of people. There's a lot of infrastructure in our nation that benefits us all as a whole. Sometimes we have permanent government employees who provide us services (police, fire, schools, etc), and sometimes we hire contractors to get specific tasks done (like pave roads, build bridges, or make bombs). The money that the government pays out to those people is then spent by those people at other businesses to buy food, goods, and services. The flow of money is what keeps our economy going.\n\nIf the government decides it can't afford to pay for all of these people, it will stop. Those people will now be jobless and the money the government used to pay them is no longer flowing through the economy. If that money doesn't get spent in other businesses, then those businesses have less money to spend on their employees, and a snowball effect happens as the economy gradually shrinks and unemployment grows.\n\nThe reason why raising taxes can help is that it will take money from those who make a lot of it to pay for the services the government normally supplies, which in turn fuels the general economy. They can do this because there is a greater demand for government services than there is supply. Unlike the private sector, where overall there is greater supply than demand. So new jobs aren't getting created in the private sector because the economy isn't flowing. But there's a great deal of demand from the public sector (teachers, cops, road maintenance workers, etc), but we (the government) are refusing to invest in them because the economy is down.\n\nWhy is that happening? Likely because many people see the government as a giant business and think it should be run as such. And if you run a business and the economy slows down, you cut back. But the government isn't a business and in many ways behaves contrary to how a business would behave. That was the idea behind the stimulus: if the government spends money on the economy, it can help jump-start it with an influx of wealth. However, that requires a great deal of money, and since there isn't enough political support for raising taxes on the people with the most money, it forces us to borrow into further debt. And the fear of debt kept the stimulus relatively small, so it's overall effect was limited.\n\nTL;DR - If taxes are raised, the government can fully fund its services without risking greater debt, which would put a lot of people back to work and put a lot of money back into the economy, which would in turn enable more private-sector jobs to be created.",
"Slow down guys, he's just a troll. "
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aezyhh | how do we know that that signal comes from 1.5 billion years away galaxy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aezyhh/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_that_signal_comes_from/ | {
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"There are many different methodes deending on the distance to an object.\n[Here](_URL_0_) is neat little graphic.\n\nOn galactic scales almost all rely on the fact that a stars atributes nearly exclusively depend on its mass. This mean that you can e.g determin the mass from which you get the total brightness. If you compare that to the perceieved brightness on earth you can determine the distance. \n\nIf you are interested in any of the other methds let me know."
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edjcch | do they actually put chalk around dead bodies? if so, why? if not, what do they use? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/edjcch/eli5_do_they_actually_put_chalk_around_dead/ | {
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"No. That was done way back in the past for the benefit of news photos, hopefully after a thorough investigation.\n\nThe chalk outline would contaminate the scene, so it's really just a thing for books and movies today.",
"They actually did use to, that way when pictures and things were taken after the body was removed it would help people understand the scene. However, modern investigators essentially never use chalk outlines to avoid contaminating the crime scene, something that wasn't as critical before the advent of things like DNA testing.",
"No. It's more a classical/historical thing that's become a popular trope in modern media. \n\nIt used to be a thing, for two reasons. It allowed investigators to mark roughly where a body lay in order to allow for the body to be removed for examination. More importantly, it allowed news and other photographers to take photographs of the scene without having a potentially gruesome body in it. \n\nNowadays investigators use other things like little flags or markers (such as [these](_URL_0_)) to indicate the position of various pieces of evidence (including bodies).",
"I'm a crime scene investigator, and I've never used anything to mark the position of a body.\n\nThe first thing we do when we arrive on a crime scene is start taking photos. This is to ensure that we can present the scene in court as it was upon our arrival. As we go taking pictures, we investigate and attempt to identify evidence, but at the very least, we get overall shots of the scene so it can be digitally preserved.\n\nIn this regard, we are taking photos of the scene with the body still there. In my area, the body's removal is typically the last thing that happens at a crime scene (about 90% of the time). So a chalk outline, or any other type of way to mark a body's position, is unnecessary. The body is removed, we take a couple of more photos showing the area the body was in after it's removed, and we clear the scene.\n\nI think part of it is digital photography. There's nothing stopping me from taking 600 pictures at a crime scene if that's what I have to do to help visualize everything for a jury. Back when investigators used film (before my time), it may have been a different story.",
"They used to. Now they use cameras.\n\nBefore digital, photography used to be an expensive, slow, and unreliable process. You took pictures, but you couldn't seem them right way, they had to be developed first. It would cost around a buck a piece, and if they were out of focus or you left the lens cap on, no pictures for you. With cheap digital photography, you just take a gajillion pictures and can be pretty sure you recorded everything you needed."
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5jjpqb | why and how does flour/dust explode? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jjpqb/eli5_why_and_how_does_flourdust_explode/ | {
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"It doesn't really explode, it burns. Explosives turn to gas almost entirely and this *new* gas causes a shockwave as it makes space for itself and pushes air away.\n\nFlour/dust burns, because it's dispersed fine particles it causes a huge fireball where entire volume is on fire, heating up the atmosphere air already there and causing it to expand.\n\nIt burns way better in the air than while piled up, because it's surrounded by lots of air and can burn from any side. \n\nSo if there's enough combustible dust floating in the air and an ignition source appears it can start a chain reaction where flames and heat from one grain of dust ignite the other particles nearby until the entire dust cloud is on fire."
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8x25rs | why don’t most major tollways accept credit cards? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x25rs/eli5_why_dont_most_major_tollways_accept_credit/ | {
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"Newer ones do but it's by way of purchasing a scannable window or plate tag and then they bill you later. I'm only familiar with the system used near me and it is a huge mess. Massive under/over billing. Tons of disputed charges.\n\nHigh speed cameras take a pic of every car. When tag is detected it's added to the bill. If no tag is detected it's reported and you get a bigger bill.",
"In the UK there are very few (mostly tunnels and bridges but some motorway stretches) but they all take debit and credit cards - contactless and chip & pin. \n\nThe newest near me is a pay online system: you pay on the day of your journey and there are multi-trip options. As you drive on to the bridge an automatic plate recognition system matches up your plate to payments already made. If you haven't paid on time they send you a large penalty charge instead. ",
"Having people pull up, reach for a card, try and scan it, have to re-scan it, wait for it to process, try to put in a pin, wait for a receipt to process all takes a while. The new system is to scan a license and send a bill later ",
"Too slow for processing at a toll booth, plus transaction costs would eat too much of the transaction. Since credit card processors charge a base rate plus % of transaction. So on a $1 toll, something like 30 cents might go to processing fees! Instead, most toll authorities offer transponders that refill with $20 or $40 at a time to reduce the processing fees as a percentage of revenue."
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1l4unn | fine experts of reddit, why would syria accept un inspectors on their territory if they are strongly suspected of chemical weapons use? what if these allegations were proven true? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l4unn/fine_experts_of_reddit_why_would_syria_accept_un/ | {
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"Failing to do so would probably lead to the presumption of guilt. The US has already said they believe the site is compromised, given that the attacks were 5 days ago, and there has been continually shelling (by conventional weapons) of the area during that time, so perhaps they think they have plausible deniability to anything the inspectors do find at this point."
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5d79b7 | why do those in authoritative positions i.e. politician, ceo, resign after making mistakes i.e. scandal, name call? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d79b7/eli5_why_do_those_in_authoritative_positions_ie/ | {
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"Damage control. The 'brand' they work for (political parties have 'brands' too, even the Pope can be thought of as a 'brand') becomes tainted with the scandal. By stepping down it minimises the exposure to the company/brand of the negative press and prevents fanning the media flames. Sometimes brands become guilty by association and people dropped as well. You'll see this in particular with sporting sponsorships. Companies will drop a cheat in a heartbeat because they don't want to be associated with drug cheats. \n\nSame thing with CEO. If they have a sex scandal they can either stand down or stay. If they stay all the press involving the scandal will also deal with the company. If this happens people might start to associated the company with scandal and lose trust. They might want to boycott the company for standing by somebody involved in a sex scandal. The will lose the previous reputation for a negative one. Eventually this can hurt their customer and investor base. \n\nIf they leave, the press might go after the person, but they won't go after the company. The association the company has with scandal is minimised by doing this and the reputation is more robust. "
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ap9czn | how is statistical significance determined in formulas | Things like P-test, T-test and iirc chi squared are all different statistical formulas which help you determine if the data you've collected is statistically significant.
Usually you compare the value calculated to the value appropriate for the sample size. But who or what determines the actual value tables for comparison? How do you know that for a given sample size your calculated value should be x and at that point it becomes a significant result? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ap9czn/eli5_how_is_statistical_significance_determined/ | {
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"Basically you can transform any data point into a z score through a series of steps. The z score distribution is what we use to determine significance, and it so happens that pinpointing the exact location of the average z score for a sample is easiest with large samples. A lot of time we just skip the language about the z score because it's lengthy to describe.\n\nDoes that answer your question?",
"To be more specific about Z-scores, there's something called the CLT, which tells us that if you take samples, it doesn't matter what the shape of the data you're taking is, the sample average will *always* approximate a gaussian, or bell curve.\n\nBecause it always becomes a bell curve, you can use that to make predictions. You can ask, if I think the distribution is really a bell curve with a mean of 5, what is the probability that my sample gaussian has a mean of 6?\n\nYou then put arbitrary boundaries on when you think it's significant. Common ones is 5%, 1% and 0.1%.",
"Well for R^2 testing, the formula graphs out data points. A line of best fit is drawn using the gradient averages for the two data sets as the cosine of the two angles.\n\nWhat makes a result significant is open to interpretation, but generally the settled upon “statistically significant” result is one that should show up by chance alone about 1 in 20 times. So you’re looking for a result with a “p” value of less than 0.05. This, of course, leads to all sorts of serious flaws (like that most published research is wrong), but it is what it is."
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af5ybi | what are magnetic poles and why is it significant that the north pole is moving so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af5ybi/eli5_what_are_magnetic_poles_and_why_is_it/ | {
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"If you play around with two magnets you'll see that they have two sides where they are stronger. Depending on how you hold them they either attract each other or repel each other. If you add a third magnet and do some systematic tests you can find out that the magnets have two sides you can distinguish - they are called north (N) and south (S) pole (I'll come to the reason of that). If N of one magnet faces S of the other the two magnets attract each other. If N faces N or S faces S they repel each other.\n\nPeople played around a bit with magnets. Instead of holding them in your hand you can also put them on a small piece of wood in a bowl of water, for example, then it can rotate easily and it is more sensitive to smaller forces. It turns out that they always align north/south on Earth. The pole facing north was called the N pole, the pole facing south is the S pole. What does that mean? Well, Earth itself is a (weak but huge) magnet. If the N pole of a magnet faces north then it must be attracted by a natural S pole - at the North Pole of Earth. Quite counter-intuitive, but we are now stuck with that definition.\n\nIt turns out this is just an approximation, the magnetic poles are not exactly aligned with the poles defined by the rotation of Earth. In addition the magnetic field of Earth changes over time, which means the positions of the poles change, too. We know they can even \"flip\" - the magnetic poles go from one (rotation) pole to the other. This happened many times in the past. Before such a flip the magnetic field of Earth gets weaker and the magnetic poles wander around quicker (as they are more influenced by smaller disturbances if the field is weaker). The magnetic field protects satellites and (a bit less) the ground from radiation that can be dangerous. Without it many satellites can fail and we might get sightly higher radiation doses at the surface, too.\n\nThe quickly wandering magnetic poles plus an observed weakening of the overall field suggest that such a pole reversal might happen in the not so distant future - which means something like 1000 years. It is not guaranteed, however, it is also possible that the field gets stronger again and nothing special happens.",
"The inner core of our planet is molten metal and as it flows around it creates a magnetic field around the Earth, changes in the direction of the flow changes where the poles are. The magnetic field around the Earth protect the Earth from being bombarded by Solar radiation, without the magnetic field virtually all life on Earth would cease to exist. The North and South poles occasionally swap places but it does take a very long time whether one is currently about to happen is unknown at the moment - _URL_0_",
"Magnetic poles are the most Northern and Southern points on Earth as determined by a standard (magnetic) compass. The shifting of the poles has several implications, but if this is derived from the post yesterday about redrawing maps, air travel is done by magnetic compass, as is some marine travel (talking about individuals sailing private vessels, not big merchant shipping vessels). If the poles move, a plane flying the same route as it always has will have to adjust it's heading (direction of travel) according to the shift in the pole. ",
"And is the south pole still opposite?\n",
"ELI5: What happens when the poles reverse?",
"It's important to navigation. While GPS and similar systems are primary today, lots of systems either use or fall back to magnetic compass readings. For example, all U.S. airport runways use magnetic bearings for their numerical designations, i.e. runway 22 is approached on magnetic compass heading 220 (plus or minus). \n\nIf the magnetic pole moves far enough runway designations will need to change. In my city runway 22 is now runway 23 because of the movement of the magnetic poles over the past 20 years.\n\nSimilarly, when I was in Boy Scouts in the 1970s the deviation between magnetic north and true north (\"declination\") was just 2 degrees, close enough to ignore. Today it is 9 degrees, which is enough to put you way off course if you are dead reckoning based on your magnetic compass without correcting for the declination.",
"Theoretically there is nothing that says single isolated magnetic poles can't exist ie an object only having a south pole without a north pole but every single elementary particle we've found so far are all magnetic dipoles so every magnet on a fundamental level will consist of particles like electrons that always has a magnetic a north and south side. \n\nUsually the direction of the magnetic dipole of all the individual particles are all in random directions so everything cancels out and you get non magnetic objects but if you align all the tiny magnetic dipoles so for example every north pole is pointing up and every south pole is pointing down then they will be working together and form a strong magnetic field that goes around the object from the north to the south pole. The definition of magnetic poles is just that the magnetic field always exiting from the north side and enters on the south side. \n\nEarth's magnetic field is even more complicated but if you hold out an compass it will align itself with Earth's magnetic field and the magnetic field will \"flow\" out of Earth's magnetic north pole into the south side of the compass and out of the north side and into the magnetic south pole of the Earth. The direction that the north side of the compass points is what we call north and is actually the magnetic south pole. \n\nIt's not really significant to us that it's moving since it's on such a huge timescale that it will never impact us but what's happening is that the alignment of Earth's magnetic dipole is changing direction over time because the process that creates it is inherently unstable. You get a butterfly effect kinda thing where a small random change can cause everything to just flip direction. \n",
"There's an awesome guy on youtube who buys dangerously large magnets and does interesting things with them. Just moving some of his larger magnets requires an empty room and great amounts of thought and preparation.\n\nOne of the things he did was explore the shape of the magnetic field, and he goes so far as to put a dangerously stron gmagnet in a globe to show how it matches what a compass does.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you watch that video, you'll have a better understanding of the earth's magnetic core and the shape of the magnetic field."
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3no1r4 | why is the skin on our palms/feet so different than the rest. | Also why can't you get acne on them. (scientific reasoning please) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3no1r4/eli5why_is_the_skin_on_our_palmsfeet_so_different/ | {
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"We evolved the skin to be different because we need our palms and the soles of our feet to be able to grip. Also, it's folding and creasing a lot more than skin on the rest of your body. ",
"It's a different type of skin called thick skin. It has several extra layers of keratin on it to protect it from the constant trauma of walking and using your hands. \n\nYou theoretically could get acne on them, but it's rare because the skin is so much thicker, it has a better barrier to bacteria and the pores that get infected on your face and cause acne are very difficult to get to on your hands and feet. "
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321u0f | how can a point and shoot optical lens zoom 65x when a huge dslr lens can't | _URL_0_
How can this small lens zoom so incredibly far when AFAIK there aren't even any DSLR's lenses with this capability and they are much larger. 65x is the equivalent of 21 - 1,365 mm. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/321u0f/eli5_how_can_a_point_and_shoot_optical_lens_zoom/ | {
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"That's a hell of a zoom, for sure. Without knowing much about it, I'm going to guess that the answer is as simple as it being a really cheap, crappy lens. It can zoom far, but it's probably extremely weak in all the other important areas-- resolution, color reproduction, bokeh, vignetting, etc.\n\nWhich makes it fine for consumer use, but it won't hold up to professional standards.\n\n(Also it's built-in, which means canon can streamline the process a bit)"
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cu49xk | scientists used an mri to image a single atom | [Source](_URL_0_)
I've read descriptions of the process, and I still don't understand. Please help? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cu49xk/eli5_scientists_used_an_mri_to_image_a_single_atom/ | {
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"they had an atom and then put a magnet (iron) next to it and measured the change in the magnet field, essentially.\n\nThat’s all an MRI does. Uses magnets to change magnetic fields in your body’s atoms, and measures the change to create an image. This paper was just doing it to a single atom."
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567m8z | can a jury decide to convict a person of 2nd degree murder if they are charged with 1st degree? | Do juries get any flexibility in the severity of charges when they are making their final decision? For example, say a defendant is being tried for 1st degree murder, and the jury is convinced that he committed murder. However, they think it is clearly 2nd degree murder, not 1st. Do they have to decide between convicting him of 1st degree or acquitting him, or can they decide to convict him of 2nd degree murder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/567m8z/eli5can_a_jury_decide_to_convict_a_person_of_2nd/ | {
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"Yes. The jury in most states (I think all, but I'm not sure) can find a defendant guilty of a lesser included offense if the court instructs them on lesser included offenses. A court should instruct the jury on lesser included offenses if there is substantial evidence that the defendant may have only committed the lesser included offense. \n\nSo take your example of 1st vs. 2nd degree murder. Let's say the only difference between them in this example is that 1st degree murder is premeditated. If the state charges the defendant with 1st degree murder because there's evidence that the defendant had a grudge against the victim then the judge would likely include a lesser included offenses instruction because it's also possible that the defendant committed 2nd degree murder (no premeditation). If there are detailed plans going back a year about how the defendant was going to kill the victim, though, then the judge might not include the instruction.\n\nHere's the Texas statute on the matter if you're curious (37.08): _URL_0_. The rest of the law comes from case decisions. "
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4ds1ry | why does the us government recognize middle eastern people as white on government documents/applications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ds1ry/eli5_why_does_the_us_government_recognize_middle/ | {
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"Because race is a social construct, and middle eastern people don't fit into any of the other categories as they are defined by the government. They aren't African, nor East Asian, nor Hispanic, for example.",
"The US Census classifies any person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa as \"White.\"\n\nAs for why exactly Arabs, North Africans, and Persians get considered \"white\" you have to go back to [this 1909 legal case](_URL_0_). A policeman of Lebanese descent arrested the son of a prominent lawyer, who argued that the policeman had no right to arrest him because he was not and could not become an American citizen, because he was not of the “white” race.\n\nThe courts determined that Lebanese people, as well as Arabs, Persians, etc are White and not \"Asiatic\" and were thus eligible for naturalization.",
"In most cases there are assumed to be three races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. Most people think of these as European, Asian, and African, but that's too narrow. Negroid includes Australian, Mongoloid includes North and South American, and Caucasoid includes Arab. Strictly speaking a Caucasian is someone from the Caucas mountains between Russia and Turkey, which are closer to the Middle East than to Europe."
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2jw9xt | why are dogs affraid of newspapers? | Bit of context, 2 dogs, ones a puppy who nips the other and the only way they stop fighting is if I make a noise with a rolled up news paper or magazine, any other techniques? Why does this work so well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jw9xt/eli5_why_are_dogs_affraid_of_newspapers/ | {
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"They were probably hit or threatened by a newspaper at some point, so now they have a scary, negative association with newspapers.",
"my guess would be that the loud smacking noise of it startles them, and if you start it when they are puppies, they grow up with a subconscious fear of it? "
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2co5l3 | seriously, what's the actual go with the crappy "i make this much in a week", "hot chicks in your area", and other assorted ads. what type of people are making them, what are they actually trying to achieve, and does anybody really take them at face value? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2co5l3/eli5_seriously_whats_the_actual_go_with_the/ | {
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"As a rule, scammy things target stupid people. They don't want smart people to respond because smart people are more likely to realise what's going on and cause trouble. So they deliberately make these dead-obvious ads/emails so that only the dense apply."
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3j27z6 | can you have a child with two fathers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j27z6/eli5can_you_have_a_child_with_two_fathers/ | {
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"Not.. really.\n\nIf we wanted to attempt this, we would need to use transgenic engineering - basically, have a particular bacterium eat a string of human DNA, then interact with another string of human DNA in such a way that it inserts some lengths of genetic code. This is how all transgenic organisms were first created, like all non-organic foods you buy at the grocery store.\n\nHowever, our success rate on transgenics is very, very low, with hundreds of attempts required before a stable offspring is created, which we then propagate. On a human, you would mostly end up with a bunch of dead kids, then a kid that, while he has DNA from two human males, also has some DNA from the bacteria.\n\nIn other words, it would be exactly as difficult as making a transgenic human that was part dog or part lemon. Doable, but highly unethical, expensive, prone to failure, and still not exactly that you're thinking of.",
"You couldn't cross two sperm cells. Egg cells have all the machinery for creating an embryo. It's not theoretically impossible, though. \n\nThe way, in theory, to do it would be to make stem cells from Dad-1, and then differentiate those stem cells into egg cells, and then fertilize that egg with sperm from Dad-2. As long as Dad-1's egg had an X chromosome, I can't see any reason why the embryo couldn't develop normally. That said, while the technique of going body cell to stem cell to different body cell has been developed, I don't know that anyone has used it to produce egg cells from a man. \n\nSource: former developmental biologist"
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2w48ok | how those pop up scams saying i "won a free ipad" actually work? | By the time I was able to go independently on the internet in my youth, it was already well known those were scams that led to viruses and such, but I was curious if they were legal because you actually could and can get an ipad or whatever they were giving away.
(Keep in mind, I am afraid to "search first" because I don't want it to lead to exactly one of these scam / virus heavy sites) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w48ok/eli5_how_those_pop_up_scams_saying_i_won_a_free/ | {
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"Back in 2004 a friend of mine, for 'fun,' decided he'd go down that rabbit hole and fill out any form that didn't ask for credit card info. After a few hours he quit, realizing that it was basically an endless train of online forms/surveys.",
"Some of them actually do give away a free X.\n\nBut only one of them. And they make a lot more money selling lists of thousands of names, phone numbers, and email addresses than they spend on the one single X.\n\nIt's really just data mining."
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4b8j1n | what are the actual jobs of high ranking people in the armed forces? generals, majors, colonels, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b8j1n/eli5what_are_the_actual_jobs_of_high_ranking/ | {
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"You oversee higher and higher levels.\n\nLt. Colonels are usually Batallion commanders.\n\nColonels are Brigade commanders (multiple battalions).\n\nA General would oversee a division (multiple brigades).",
"They are managers. Money, manpower, etc. The higher the rank, the more you become a politician and the further you are away from the reality of \"boots on ground\" or \"bombs on target\", just like the civilian world.",
" > Majors are typically assigned as specialized executive or operations officers for battalion-sized units of 300 to 1,200 soldiers.\n\n-\n\n > As the office of colonel became an established practice, the colonel became the senior captain in a group of companies that were all sworn to observe his personal authority — to be ruled or regimented by him. This regiment, or governance, was to some extent embodied in a contract and set of written rules, also referred to as the colonel's regiment or standing regulation(s). By extension, the group of companies subject to a colonel's regiment (in the foregoing sense) came to be referred to as his regiment (in the modern sense) as well.\n\n-\n\n > Historically the \"lieutenant\" was the deputy to a \"captain\", and as the rank structure of armies began to formalise, this came to mean that a captain commanded a company and had several lieutenants, each commanding a platoon. Where more junior officers were employed as deputies to the lieutenant, they went by many names, including second lieutenant, sub-lieutenant, ensign and cornet. \n\nIt just means varying level of responsibility, nothing interesting.",
"Think about a trade/function you are familiar with. A company with 1,500 employees has unskilled workers, skilled workers, supervisors, managers, directors, vice presidents a president and maybe a CEO.\n\nAn unskilled worker does their job, supervised. A skilled worker may do their job with limited supervision. A supervisor controls the work process of several others although they may also perform the work. A manager supervises even more and may have budgetary responsibilities. A director relies on managers and supervisors to handle the day to day operations and focus's on strategic goals and department operations. A vice president's view is focused up and out, developing the resources to execute the companies 'vision'. The president establishes (through consultation with vice presidents, directors and people of influence hopefully) that vision. The CEO is ultimately responsible for the company's impact on the community and spends most of their time interacting with influences outside of the company.\n\nThis translates to the military although each branch is different. A soldier, sailor, airman or marine has a specific task to perform, no matter how menial it is. A specialist usually does a more complicated task although it is usually a single effort. When a task needs more than one person, someone is assigned to oversee the task (Corporal, Petty Officer etc). When several ongoing activities are grouped together, a command structure is put into place with mid to senior level enlisted and one or more junior to mid level officers. This would be a platoon, section, work center or such. \n\nWhen a group of functional executors are put together, a management team is created to handle the operations, training and budget of the group. This gets into the middle grade of officers (Majors, Lieutenant Colonels, Colonels, Lieutenant Commanders, Commanders, Captains) We are talking about units of 500-5,000 now.\n\nDuring their career, some officer's are selected for political positions and some from operational. This decision is based on the officer's management style and greatly impacts their career opportunities.\n\nOfficers are college graduates and just like a BA can follow on to get an MBA or other degrees a BS, MS, PHD, so do officers get the opportunity. So do enlisted. Training does not stop with the completion of Boot Camp, AIT, A School, C School etc. \n\nGenerals and Admirals manages multiple major commands that they are responsible to the public and government for the impact that their units have.\n\nI've gone on long enough. Does this help?\n\n",
"My mom is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, and she's an occupational therapist. She does more administrative work than hands on patient care now though. ",
"In peace time, they're basically managers and public speakers\n\nIn war time, the higher your rank is, the more information you need to assess and your decision becomes less tactical and more strategic\n\nPut simply, this is what would happen:\n\nGenerals: Enemy's tank batallion is approaching Washington, I want Washington secured and Miami recaptured from the enemy, we need to cut off their beach head\n\nColonel: Deploy batallion A6 and A7 for Washington, they're better prepared against the enemy's tanks. Batallion A8 for Miami, they don't have as much firepower there.\n\nMajor: Unit Warhog will secure the White House, Unit Riflebutt will secure the Smithsonian\n\nSomething like that"
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3nd25g | with half the world bombing them and almost no support, how can isis still rise in syria? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nd25g/eli5_with_half_the_world_bombing_them_and_almost/ | {
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"They have massive oil fields that they use to get money on top of people joining them all of the time in order to keep their troop count high. ",
"Or perhaps they have more support than we are being told?",
"You have a huge population of unemployed and uneducated Muslim youths who have no future and are easy to radicalize. ISIS goes out at recruits them across the middle east and sends them into the fight. They have plenty of anti-Bashar and anti-western propaganda and in many cases outright lie to recruits, then they get them into Syria and confiscate their passports and they're stuck there. If they recruit more people than we can kill then they grow. Anti-insurgent wars are tough to fight because you can't just kill anything that moves, you need to be smart about it. If you bomb a wedding party or hospital or the wrong house then you just recruited x more terrorists and the cycle continues.\nSyria is running dangerously low on troops and supplies, the US and its allies are playing it cautious, and Russia likely does not give an F beyond propping up Syria's dictator. It is a very tricky situation to be in and very tough to say which is the best option.",
"There are a number of issues. \nFirst off, air warfare does not capture or hold territory. It can SLOW an advance, but it cannot REVERSE it. You need ground troops to do that. Also, a spread-out force is much harder to destroy with air attacks. \nSecondly, there are no effective ground troops that face off against ISIS. The Iraqi Army is ineffectual. The Syrian Army has other things to deal with, namely the Syrian resistance. And, ISIS is not attempting to hold large cities. They're holding countryside. \nThird, ISIS has the financial support of the resources it controls, namely a number of oil fields, and it is collecting taxes from those territories it controls. It has the financial resources to last. \nFourth, the casualties that ISIS is suffering is more than made up by their new recruits. \nThis is explained by the very effective narrative that ISIS has created for itself, and for the marketing that it has created to recruit new people. \n",
"So imagine half the world was bombing YOUR country, and you had no support. Would you STILL find a way to rise up and fight back?\n\nThis is the FUNDAMENTAL problem with war: those waging it build themselves up to be capable of winning against any odds, because they're glorious human beings. They dehumanise the other side, pretending that they are monsters, who need to die. But in fact, they TOO are glorious human beings, capable at once of infinite horrors, infinite resilience, and infinite strength of spirit. And every time we attack them, we cause rage, and anger, and vengeance AGAINST OURSELVES. Every time we dehumanise another human being, we dehumanise ourselves, AS human beings. Every time we diminish another human being, we diminish ourselves. And every time we war on a part of the world, we war on our part of the world too.\n\nGandhi said that \"there is no WAY to peace; peace IS the way.\" And it's very true. We can bomb an army forever, but so long as one guy survives, even a child who remembers, they will remember the violence done to them, and visit it back on us. And no matter how good we are at war, no matter how cruel and callous and hate-filled we are, no matter how capable of atrocities, and willing to wipe out even the children and the writing of our enemies... there will always be a concept, or a message that escapes, or a witness who sees the violence that was done and wants to turn that around.\n\nTDLR: war will go on, while we keep warring. ISIS rises PRECISELY BECAUSE we try to put them down, just as you would rise and fight back precisely because someone tried to crush you.\n\nThis has all been understood for thousands of years. There are universities devoted entirely to the study of peace, and ways to make it happen. We need to grow up, stop believing in war, and stop letting our governments perpetrate war. It is murder on a grand scale, and every one of us dies a little inside when others of our species die through negligence, much less our own direct violence toward them. It has to stop.\n",
"Let's put this on its head a bit, shall we?\n\nFacing off against the single most powerful military in the world insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan were able to fight. Our sheer numbers of well trained and equipped troops, informed by world class intelligence gathering capabilities, over-watched by armored vehicles and aerial vehicles of science-fiction level sophistication, led by competent and well educated officers and NCOs, supplied by a logistical train of nearly impossible complexity, and all of it funded by the most wealthy nation to have ever existed should have been able to crush any resistance. Yet it didn't. We killed thousands, and thousands more poured in. \n\nThese groups of fundamentalists, all grouped under ISIS (I think that is a massive simplification, the true complexity of the situation is probably only superficially understood by even the CIA or military intelligence, let alone CNN) are drawing recruits from around the world. Assad has his Syrian loyalists, the extremists have the whole world to recruit from. Add to this a massive amount of hard capital that ISIS has captured. From cash reserves in every bank that fell to them, the military hardware of any captured Iraqi or Syrian bases, and raw materials such as oil that they captured, ISIS is probably the most well funded fundamentalist group ever. \n\nISIS honestly may one day fall, but another group with another easily digestible name disguising the ever increasingly complex web of social and political connections in that region will rise to take its place. \n\nI don't know the solution, but the problem of fundamentalists fighting a constant war in that region will not go away anytime soon, no matter how many bombs are dropped. "
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61l5p1 | why does being near the ocean or a lake make us feel calm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61l5p1/eli5_why_does_being_near_the_ocean_or_a_lake_make/ | {
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"Quite simply, we learn to feel calm via some combination of conditioning methods:\n\n* Classical conditioning (e.g. you've associated oceans/lakes with another 'stimulus' that naturally produces calm, like going on a vacation or spending time with a SO)\n* Operant conditioning (e.g. positively or negatively reinforcing the feeling of calmness)\n* Vicarious conditioning (e.g. you've seen role models or media that reinforce the association of oceans/lakes and calmness).\n\nAlso, these kinds of (highly prevalent) questions are simply not ELI5. Oceans/lakes obviously don't possess an objectively quantifiable thing that always produces calmness in a person. In fact, that very feeling of calmness is going to to *depend* on a given person (i.e. subjective), and there are of course plenty of people who will have aversive/non-calm reactions to oceans/lakes.",
"Using this visualization in hypnosis is common to relax a person because it uses all 5 senses. You feel the warm sand. You hear the waves break you see the gulls. You taste the salty air. You smell salty air and warm sand. Using all senses at once is calming. "
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25eiov | why does the meat i buy at the grocery store have a one week shelf life, yet some premium meats are aged over 30 days? | Are they using colder fridges to store it while it ages, or radiation to kill germs/bacteria? Why cant I do the same at home? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25eiov/eli5why_does_the_meat_i_buy_at_the_grocery_store/ | {
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"beef aging is basically controlled rotting of the beef, which tends to concentrate certain flavors and increase tenderness. the rotted parts are removed by the butcher before sale. \n\nyou can dry or wet age your own beef at home, and can find guides online providing instructions. ",
"You can do it at home, do some searching around and you'll see.\n\nGenerally you see dry aged beef which just means the meat was put in a cool, dark, dry, clean place and left to set for X days. The outside of the meat looks pretty nasty (as you may expect) and is cut away. Beef, unlike some other meat, doesn't have a lot of bacteria in the meat itself. That is why you can have beef rare, you sear the outside to kill the germs but the inside meat is generally safe to eat raw."
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4898q2 | can someone explain in detail what happens during an f1 pitstop? | I mean i know they are able to push out the car in like 2.5 seconds and refuel and change the tires and stuff but what exactly happens during theses 2.5 seconds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4898q2/eli5_can_someone_explain_in_detail_what_happens/ | {
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"They don't refuel anymore. Generally it's a tire change and sometimes they adjust the wings. They can replace certain parts, but obviously that takes longer than 2.5 seconds",
"I think its worthwhile to note that before a driver pits the car, they will be on the radio with the team, to make the tire choice/last minute adjustments. \n\nOnce that stuff is all ironed out, the pit crew will bring the new tires out as per the drivers speculation. Some teams use a crewmember that holds a \"lollipop\" which is basically a stop/go sign on stick. \n\nAs the car comes into pit, there are 4 people who handle the wheel guns, and another 4 or so people that handle moving the old tires out of the way, and putting the new ones on. Plus a person to come in and make small wing adjustments (if the driver has called for it).\n\nOnce all four of the wheel gun operators hold their guns in the air, the person who is operating the lollipop looks for other cars that might be coming into the pit area. If the coast is clear, they will turn the lollipop to the go side, and lift it out of the way to let the driver take off. ",
"There are some reasons to do a pit stop: \n\n* Changing tires. Dry weather requires other tires than rain, so if it starts or stops raining, changing tires can be done very quickly. Since tires can be replaced in under 3 seconds, it's usually efficient to use \"soft\" tires. They tear down quickly, but perform a lot better and are worth 3 seconds of change. Last time I checked the drivers were weren't allowed to only use soft tires, and had to switch between soft and hard at least once during the race. \n\n* Refueling. Less fuel means less weight and better lap times. This meant it was better to start with 1/4 tank and refill two or three times instead of racing with a heavy car for half the race. Refueling took about 7 or 8 seconds and is no longer allowed. Cars now start with full tanks that last all race. \n\n* Something is broken. After a light crash your front wing may be broken or your tire has collapsed. If you can make it to the pit stop they can change those things. More severe problems like engines, gearboxes, ... anything that doesn't allow you to reach the pit or can't be replaced in < 10s means game over. \n\n",
"In short: \n\nTire change\n\nIf front wing is damaged, that is changed.\n\nMinor wing adjustments/snapping back in panes that may have loosened in a minor accident.\n\nCleaning the drivers helmet/screen\n\nFew years ago they used to refuel. They don't do that anymore.\n\nAll the above in 2.5 to 4 secs. \n\nIf the pitstop takes longer they are usually trying to fix some accident damage or malfunction in the system controls. They could also swap steering wheel if damaged/malfunctioning but I haven't seen that happening, if at all, its very rare. \n\nAny other bigger damage that may take more than ~30 secs and they don't bother with it/retire. Probably because by then you would be at the end of the grid in a damaged car and the limitations of how many components you can change on your car over the whole season and fines/penalty for using parts earlier in the season. ",
"What exactly happens? Not much really, just tire change since refueling has been banned.\n\nWhen the F1 car comes in for a stop, first thing that happens is the front and back guys use some sort of lever to lift the car. Then about 3 mechanics are assigned on each tire - one in charge of operating the pneumatic wrench to remove/install the wheel nut, one mechanic to remove the old tire, and one to put on the new one. Once the tire has been replaced, the mechanic with the pneumatic wrench will make a hand signal to tell the 'lollipop' guy that side of the wheel is done. Once he sees all 4 sides giving the OK sign, the lollipop guy will signal to the driver to get ready, front and back guys 'jack down' the car, moves out of the way, car speeds off.\n\nAll done in 2.5 seconds."
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24dzd2 | why would net neutrality be a problem with fast internet, like google fiber? | Since Google Fiber is offering 1Gbps, which is insanely fast, would ISPs not be worried about traffic hoarding companies, like Netflix? They would essentially be able to handle all the traffic, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24dzd2/eli5_why_would_net_neutrality_be_a_problem_with/ | {
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"The ability to handle the traffic and the willingness to do so are different. Your ISP can give your 1 Gbps for most things and 200kbps for youtube unless you pay them extra. It's not a hardware failure, it's a \"my pockets aren't full enough\" failure."
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1kmrkf | how do people with the lower-half of their body missing dispose of the waste in their bodies? | I saw a man begging for money with the lower half of his body missing and it made me wonder how do they get rid of the food/water they take in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kmrkf/eli5how_do_people_with_the_lowerhalf_of_their/ | {
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"I doubt he was actually missing the lower half, he just didn't have legs. If he was missing all those organs, he would be dead.",
"If you want all the gory details, you can read up on the *hemicorporectomy.* The short and delicate version is that the patient undergoes two procedures called *colostomy* and *ileal conduit urinary diversion* that reroute the body's solid and liquid wastes to artificial openings."
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648yp3 | hydration question | Why do fighters cut weight by dehydrating but then people say you lose weight by drinking more water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/648yp3/eli5_hydration_question/ | {
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"Fighters temporarily cut weight by drying out. The weight loss is usually within about 5-8 lb but there have been people that have gone much lower for a bout.\n\nIn regular diets hydration allows the body to do it's best when digesting your food in order to break down the largest amount of necessary nutrients. In theory, you get more nutrition from less food and still feel full because of the water volume displacement. "
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cho7wj | with the quantity of frozen water on the moon higher than we previously thought, will there be any dangers with using this as drinking water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cho7wj/eli5_with_the_quantity_of_frozen_water_on_the/ | {
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"Well, the moon has two very abundant things, sunshine, and cold. It would be very easy to set up a bunch of solar panels, then use the electricity from that to boil the water, then use the cold outside to condense that steam back into distilled water, which would be safe for drinking. \nOtherwise, it might be technically safe, but would taste terrible. It's got four billion years of dust dissolved in it, doesn't it?"
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3yxi2w | how or why do some strains of marijuana have an orange smell to them? | Im familiar with sativa and indica and the difference between the two but a, uh, close personal friend said his bud smells like oranges. Just wondering how and why it is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yxi2w/eli5_how_or_why_do_some_strains_of_marijuana_have/ | {
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"A combination of what's called terpenes provides cannabis with its unique bouquet. Although less well-known than the major cannabinoids (you may have heard of THC or CBD, for example) , terpenes are instrumental to the physiological and psychoactive effects of cannabis. \n\nOne terpene that can be present in cannabis, called Valencene, is also present in Valencia oranges and contributes to the citrus aroma of some cannabis strains, like the one your, uh, friend, is smoking currently. "
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4elclj | why is japan's currency so low compared to other first-world countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4elclj/eli5_why_is_japans_currency_so_low_compared_to/ | {
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"It really isn't. It's low compared to the dollar, but it's on par with the cent. They just don't have separate names for different levels of currency like the U.S. does. The U.S. says that 100 cents is a dollar. Japan says that 100 yen is 100 yen, and 1 yen is the smallest value that you can get in currency.",
"At work we had a new guy fresh from Turkey. He knew nothing about American currency, only that he was getting paid $450 a week. He came in after passing a nearby smoke shop and saw cigarettes were $1.75 a pack and was concerned his entire paycheck would only buy two packs of cigarettes. We explained how it worked, and gave him on of those paper shopper type magazines to see what his paycheck could buy. He was shocked to find he was making four times as much as he expected to be making, and already expected to make far more than he made in his country. He spent his first paycheck in about ten minutes. ",
"This is not the first time I see this. Is this a **common** misconception that a currency where you get more units of another currency is a *better* currency?\n\nMoney is an arbitrary value and is only worth what you can buy with it, it doesn't matter if it's 100.000 or 10 of something as long as you get the same value from them.",
"To add to answers, something that happens from time to time when countries go into hyper-inflation - eventually the inflation problem is fixed, but it's still $100,000,000,000 for a loaf of bread. So they create a new currency, and declare its value to be OLD$100,000,000,000 to NEW$1. Nothing has changed. The values are the same. They just change the numbers.\n\nThe numbers are meaningless. Japan could create a newYen worth 1000 oldYen if they wanted to, but obviously they don't because people would find the change inconvenient, and there's no benefit.",
"How much a currency unit is worth is completely arbitrary. It's the changes in the value that matter. "
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161gle | why is it called the "democratic people's republic of korea" when it's not a democracy or a republic? | This also goes for any other countries who do this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/161gle/why_is_it_called_the_democratic_peoples_republic/ | {
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"Your mum wants to get you to eat some food you don't like, so instead of just calling it cabbage, she calls it delicious super tasty munchy fun time. But the cabbage is severe famine and human rights violations.",
"it's like how the Patriot Act takes away all your rights.",
"There is actually an election that goes on in DPRK, but there is only one person on the ballot (and no one else is allowed on). Even if there were other candidates, the people would still elect Kim Jong Un anyway",
"Because the world considers democracy to be a good thing, so most countries are going to put on a show to claim their leaders represent the will of the people.\n\nPlus, North Korea *does* have some vestigial democratic institutions. They have a parliament that consists of elected members. Now, it has very little independent power, and everyone runs unopposed, but there is at least the appearance of democracy at some level. ",
"It's a form of propaganda called the [\"Big Lie\"](_URL_0_). It was originally coined by such nice men as Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels and its implications were further explored in Orwell's book '1984'. Basically says that if you tell a big enough lie (such as: a repressive authoritarian communist state - is actually a \"democratic people's republic\"), and you tell it often enough with enough conviction - people will begin to believe it. If there are any conflicting sources, or anyone who contradicts the \"big lie\", it begins to fall apart, but if it is upheld unquestionably and relentlessly, people will believe it and eventually even *rationalize and defend it* themselves. ",
"For the same reason that the *War Department* changed its name to the *Department Of Defense*.\n\nSee [*Newspeak*](_URL_0_) from 1984. ",
"[A republic is a form of government in which the country is considered a \"public matter\" (Latin: res publica), not the private concern or property of the rulers, and where offices of states are subsequently directly or indirectly elected or appointed rather than inherited. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch.](_URL_0_)\n\nBy this definition, you can make a point that North Korea is indeed a republic.\n\nAs for \"Democratic,\" that's completely a question of personal point of view.\n\nIs the USA democratic? In my opinion the USA have a system that is optimized to only alternate between two parties with almost identical programs.\n\nIn theory a member of a third party could win an election, just as Kim Jong-un could lose an election in North Korea.\n\n**tl;dr:** If you don't have a reigning monarch you can call your country republic. Almost every country calls themselves democratic, even if most of the world disagrees. There are no absolute measurements for either word.\n\n",
"We have those too: Right to work. Fair and balanced. And others.",
"It is a republic because they don't have a king or queen.\n\nThey claim to be a democracy because democracy is the rule of the people (the demos) and most people are working class and they rule on behalf of the working classes and in their best interests.\n\nThey do not have elections because they know the upper and middle classes always trick the working classes into voting against their own interests. \n\nThe extent to which actual people believe these things is another matter.",
"Good question. I don't think anyone has actually tried to answer your question in a serious way. Here is my take on it. You will find the DPRK constitution [here](_URL_0_ 5:Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens). If you look through it, it sounds not too bad. Especially the parts guaranteeing rights of freedom and speech and freedom from oppression. You'll find similar text in the People's Republic of China's constitution and probably the same in the former USSR constitution. On paper, a lot of the oppressive regimes have very nice sounding laws that promises equal or superior rights to that of the USA. \n\nSo simply based on what's written governments like the DPRK and China can claim to be a republic or democratic. I mean, look, it's right there written on it's founding papers! However, in practice what ends up happening is state security, \"public safety\", and harmonious society ends up trumping human rights. Anytime the government needs to do something terrible, it makes up an excuse and points to one of those three reasons and says \"your rights don't count here.\"\n\nI currently live in China and see it just about everyday here. Why no public demonstrations? To protect the citizens from lies and to keep the hooligans from looting! Why don't human rights lawyers get a fair trail? They're a threat to national security and we have to keep him locked up! Why not report on all of the corruption? To promote a harmonious society free from western influences.\n\nAt the end of the day, all governments want to sound nice and democratic on paper. Which is why it's in the name of so many terrible regimes but in practice those rights are pushed aside the minute it becomes inconvenient."
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dc9fvd | why do only some types of transplants require immune suppressants? | Why does only some types of transplants - organs, require the recipient to take anti rejection meds? Why isn’t it required for things like cartilage or skin grafts
Edit for typos | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dc9fvd/eli5_why_do_only_some_types_of_transplants/ | {
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"Some parts of the body are deliberately isolated from the immune system at large by the body itself. The cornea for example is really easy to make transplants for because the immune system doesn't touch it. The cornea needs to be transparent, so it doesn't have blood vessels or anything running through it, it's just a layer of cells that a few macrophages (very basic components of the immune system that do nothing more than destroy bacteria) run though. Likewise, the skin is an impermeable membrane, so the upper layers don't really need to be visited by the immune system. It's also worth noting that these surfaces are *surfaces* - they constantly get worn down and replaced by new cells. This means the foreign cells are only temporary, and will eventually be replaced by own-cells. \n\nAlso, many of these transplants are, if permanent, sourced from your own cells (either by locational transplant or by extracting and growing grafts from stem cells), and you rarely need immunosuppressants if you're dealing with your own cells. Cells have proteins on their surface called antigens, and these are how the immune system recognises foreign and own material. If a cell has your own antigen, the immune system ignores it, cos it's probably meant to be there. If a cell has an antigen belonging to something else, like a bacterial antigen or an antigen from another person, it figures \"well this is probably foreign, best kill it, it's here to destroy us and steal our resources!\" In fact, the immune system is so zealously xenophobic that it doesn't even care if the foreign cell is doing a useful job or is here legally, it thinks *all* foreign cells should be exterminated. That's because the body doesn't have a very good education system, and so immune cells are taught to fear all foreigners, not just the nasty ones, just in case a foreigner might be nasty and is just hiding it really well. Basically, the immune system isn't taught how to tell the difference between a good foreigner and a bad foreigner, so it gets rid of all of them, just in case. Immunosuppressants are drugs, and they make the immune system like, totally wasted, dude. The role of an immunosuppressant is to make the immune system so fucking high that it's completely incapable of doing its job. That lets the foreign cells do *their* job without being killed. This does of course come with the downside that when a foreigner who *is* trying to destroy you gets in, the immune system has no idea what's going on and just keeps being high. \n\nSkin grafts and corneal transplants and such, being grown from your own stem cells, still have your antigens. When an immune cell comes around and looks at them, they just show them their legal antigens and the immune cells move along. That's why these don't need immunosuppressants, even if they are transplants that live close to the immune system."
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683pjn | how is it that medical studies suggest vitamins/supplements mostly get passed through our systems with little to no benefit, however one small prescribed pill can regulate my blood pressure or control diabetes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/683pjn/eli5_how_is_it_that_medical_studies_suggest/ | {
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"There is a concept called bioavailability, which deals with how much of a substance actually enters your body. Your body is better at digesting some substances than others. That's the simple answer.\n\nPrescription medicine isn't just the active drug; it also includes a way to deliver it. Medications can be injectable, inhalable, topical, etc to get into your body. They can also be combined with other substances to control how your body uses it. The difference between a 12-hour pill and a 6-hour pill is extra stuff that makes your body metabolize it more slowly."
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oa4iy | why my stride is feels longer after getting of a treadmill and not after running distances on say pavement? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oa4iy/eli5_why_my_stride_is_feels_longer_after_getting/ | {
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"Wild speculation: Your stride on a treadmill is a lot more constant than it would be out in the real world, where you have to account for things like dips/rises in the sidewalk, curbs, stopping at crosswalks, etc etc. Also, you tend to be able to run faster on treadmills since it's constant, which could result in a larger stride.",
"Also on this, on a treadmill you don't walk or jog like you usually would with full ground contact. You instead are also making mini-leaps, your bodies' natural reaction to be ahead of the moving ground I suppose. This is why an elliptical is preferred. Less impact, no jumping.\n",
"Just a hypothesis, but I would say its because on a treadmill, you have no visual reinforcement that you are moving, no matter how long your stride, your eyes are telling your brain that your not going anywhere. Because of this, your brain has limited information to judge your stride length. Conversely, on pavement, your eyes are telling your brain how long your strides are by judging the distance you cover. "
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3o3dbo | how can cell phone carriers say that it's a better deal to do a monthly payment plan until a $700 phone is paid off, when the 2 year contract fee is only $200? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o3dbo/eli5_how_can_cell_phone_carriers_say_that_its_a/ | {
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"You are paying for the phone either way. The $200 option seems nice, but the rest of the cost is built into the contract. \n\nThat being said, prices haven't gone down now that you are paying full price over the term of the deal, so the $200 price still seems cheaper to me in the long run.",
"I actually did the math on this recently, just to see. We swapped providers and I thought the exact same thing.\n\nIntuitively, it does seem like the 2 year contract is cheaper, except you are missing key details.\n\n* The actual cost of the 2 year contract has the phone price baked in, so you are paying for the phone either way.\n\n* If you pay for the phone outright in installments, you are on the hook for the full price of the phone, so they reduce the overall monthly cost to *a bit* lower than what you would pay for a 2-year contract. Less investment on their end, so they don't need to hedge their bets with a higher monthly cost.\n\n* Once your pay off the phone itself, your monthly cost drops dramatically. My wife and I are paying $50+ a month for our new phones, but once they are fully paid off, that portion of the monthly bill is gone entirely. With a contract, your monthly cost would just stay the same indefinitely, and you would still pay another ~$200 for a new phone every 2 years if you wanted one."
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5clvgj | computers | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5clvgj/eli5_computers/ | {
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"This is quite difficult to explain like you're five, but the effective answer is that everything a computer does is based at it's lowest level on binary. Binary has two states; 0 and 1, or more simply, no and yes.\n\nWith this system of yes' and no's, it's possible to represent all sorts of logic. For example, binary can be used to represent numbers with combinations of 0s and 1s, for example 0101 is the simple representation of the number 5. Once you have numbers, you can do letters, which is what ASCII is.\n\nThe other main component is rudimentary logic operations; most basic of which are ANDs and ORs. Again, using binary and knowing that 0 is false and 1 is true, we can do things like this:\n\n1 AND 0 IS 0\n\n0 OR 1 IS 1\n\n1 AND 1 IS 1\n\n0 AND 0 IS 1\n\n1 OR 1 ID 1\n\n0 OR 0 IS 0\n\nEtc. We can create these logical instructions using circuitry and logic gates which correspond to the different operations (AND, OR, NAND, XOR, etc). In fact, it's possible to build an entire computer out of NAND gates, as it is possible to create the other operations using configurations of NANDs. \n\nComputers do exactly that: using a network of NAND gates, and figuring out how to represent all information in terms of clusters of 0s and 1s, we've been able to slowly build more and more complicated computers.",
"Think of a light switch that's not on/off, but connected to two different lights such that one or the other is on depending on the state of the switch. Based on the input to that switch it will supply power to one or the other light bulb and the input is your finger. \n\nA transistor is kind of the same way, except it gets to make the decision based on the input signal which could come from a human input device or another transistor. Scale this up a few million/billion/etc times and you can do some pretty complex stuff. \n\nAbout the monitors, LCDs are a matrix (think squares on graph paper) of liquid crystals that change when energized. Each pixel consists of 4 squares (2 green, a blue, and a red) so when power is supplied to the squares they'll either be dark, bright, or somewhere in between so that when light is shined through them they'll make a picture. \n\nOne thing to keep in mind when considering the level of complexity involved is that basically everything we make today is based on code we wrote much earlier (WWII comes to mind, but it could've been much earlier). If you wanted to start from scratch you'd be busy for quite a while trying to reinvent the wheel that the world has been refining for decades. "
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6ltwrt | what exactly is the g20 conference, and why is police violence associated with it, no matter where it is held? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ltwrt/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_g20_conference_and_why/ | {
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"It's a big event including the wealthiest 20 countries of the world so there is always reasons to protest concerning the behavior and the politics of these 20 countries : inegalities, wars, etc... \n\nThere is always people everywhere it is held to protest against it."
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4azu6c | why do shower "loofahs" need to be thrown away? isn't it cleaned every time you use it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4azu6c/eli5_why_do_shower_loofahs_need_to_be_thrown_away/ | {
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"People who keep large aquariums use them in their filtration systems with the specific intent of growing large colonies of (beneficial) bacteria. In your shower, they might not be so beneficial.",
"No, in fact a loofah (like a sponge) is pretty prime real estate for bacterial growth due to the tons of small spaces and moist environment. Body wash is generally not antibacterial, its primary purpose is to get dirt off your body.\n\nApart from cleanliness, the physical action of scrubbing also causes mechanical wear and tear which causes it to loosen and fall apart over time."
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a9bymq | how do lights change colors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9bymq/eli5_how_do_lights_change_colors/ | {
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"I think we need a little more explanation... Do you mean like traffic lights or RGB lights?",
"Lights that change collors will actually have three small lights inside them which can turn on at various brightness. \nThe lights inside will be a red, green, and blue. These will turn on at various brightnesses to cause different colors to appear. Red and blue for purple is the obvious one, and the lights work together to create any other color. ",
"I'm assuming you mean RGB lights, like LifX or Hue bulbs and strips.\n\nEach of the points of light is actually a set of tiny LEDs, like pixels on your TV/Computer, that are composed of sub-pixels in red, green, and blue. By dimming different colors and diffusing the light outward, the light mixes into the colors you want to display.\n\nTurning the Red all the way on, and the Green about halfway makes the light orange.\n\nIf you know the RGB values for the color you want, you can make the light practically any color you want."
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325zvp | do i look the same as i do in a mirror? | Let's get this cleared up once and for all. Do you look the same as you do in the mirror? The camera? Neither?
I've heard that you look different in a mirror because it flips your image, so you look like you do in a camera.
I've also heard that you look like you do in the mirror because since humans have 2 eyes and a camera only has 1 lens, it will perceive you differently.
I was just wondering because I look like a 8-9/10 in the mirror and somewhere around a 6/10 from my phone's camera. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/325zvp/eli5_do_i_look_the_same_as_i_do_in_a_mirror/ | {
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"No, you don't look the same as you do in a mirror. In the mirror you see your image flipped, so essentially you see yourself in reverse. That's why you seem to look different in photographs compared to how you're used to seeing yourself (reflected surfaces) because a picture of you is your \"true\" appearance, whereas a mirror's image of you is a \"flipped\" image. The differences are only subtle, but because your face would look weird as shit if it were symmetrical the differences are definitely there. ",
"There are a number of reasons you look different in real life as opposed to photos. I'm going to disagree with the rest of the answers here and say the image flipping shouldn't make much difference at all, other factors are much more important.\n\nI also doubt having two eyes will make much of a difference either as 3D films look virtually identical to their 2D equivalents, and they're filmed with two cameras.\n\nDifferent cameras and lighting situations will be more flattering due to the way they handle light, some might pick up more blemishes on your skin whereas others might make your face look really red or whatever. This is why professional photographers have big studios with fancy light umbrellas to try and make someone look as good as possible. \n\nI don't know loads about the eye but it's basically a really high tech video camera, it can respond to really different levels of light in short amounts of time, also it's always rolling so you don't get caught in those awkward facial positions that occur with a camera. Considering your eyes are the most similar camera to everyone else's I think you looking at yourself would be more reliable, but it's impossible to say \"That's what you look like to everyone else\" because you will never be able to find out.\n\n\n\n\ntl;dr: It's all about the lighting, the camera and the moment"
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1r8k77 | how and why do climates exist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r8k77/eli5_how_and_why_do_climates_exist/ | {
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"Many climates are related to the latitude of the location and the tilt of the earth's axis. Arctic climates simply receive less direct sunlight throughout the year and thus are have colder climates. The equator on the other hand receives a roughly uniform amount of sunlight year round. Areas in between vary with seasons depending on if the sun is shining directly on them or at a sharper angle. All these temperature differences cause wind and sea currents.\n\nThe other major factor is geography. Mountains can cause one side to receive more rain than the other. Coastlines can direct cool or warm ocean currents, affecting the climate thousands of miles away.\n\nThere are other factors too, such as dense foliage (as in rain forests) or the lack thereof."
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k2ihd | p/e ratio. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k2ihd/eli5_pe_ratio/ | {
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"Price to Earnings ratio: The total stock market value of a company divided by how much money the company actually earns. A very high P/E ratio is one of many indicators that a stock is \"overvalued\", meaning the stock market is driving up the price of the stock based on hype, brand recognition, and uninformed speculation rather than real financial numbers.\n\nLet's say Jack told you if you wanted to buy his lemonade stand, Jack's Lemonade Stand is worth $1million. Jack also tells you his lemonade stand earned $400 this year. So Jack's P/E ratio is 2500 meaning \"obnoxiously laugh in your face overvalued\" just like some actual well-known stocks on the real stock market.\n\n",
"When people buy stock their buying part of the company. The company is divided into pieces and each piece is a stock. So let's say you made a company that sold shoes and divided it into 100 stocks. If you owned 50 stocks you would own 50% of the company.\n\nCompanies also make money. This money is used to pay employee, buy supplies, purchase new hardware and investment, pay taxes and gives back to the stock holders as well as many other things.\n\nThis money coming after they've paid off their expenses will be called Earnings. Now a P/E ratio is the cost of share of the company divided by Earnings of that particular share of a company. So if your shoe company has 100 stocks and each stock costs a dollar, and your company has a earning of 10 dollars. Then your P/E would be 10 or\n\n1 dollar per stock/ (10 dollars total profit/100 the number of stocks)\n\nHigher P/E numbers tend to denote companies that will be making more in the future(Because people are willing to pay alot of money for stock even though their not making much money.) Or companies that people over value.\n\nLower P/E numbers tends to denote companies that will be making less money in the future.(Because people don't want to buy their stock even though their earning money at the moment.) or companies that people under value.\n\nP/E scores are one of the factor people use to determine if they should by stock in company. It is not only evaluator buy one of several.\n\n\nNote: If a company made no money or lost money it has a P/E score of N/A or undefined even though mathematically you could determine a P/E score that is negative. ",
"Price to Earnings ratio: The total stock market value of a company divided by how much money the company actually earns. A very high P/E ratio is one of many indicators that a stock is \"overvalued\", meaning the stock market is driving up the price of the stock based on hype, brand recognition, and uninformed speculation rather than real financial numbers.\n\nLet's say Jack told you if you wanted to buy his lemonade stand, Jack's Lemonade Stand is worth $1million. Jack also tells you his lemonade stand earned $400 this year. So Jack's P/E ratio is 2500 meaning \"obnoxiously laugh in your face overvalued\" just like some actual well-known stocks on the real stock market.\n\n",
"When people buy stock their buying part of the company. The company is divided into pieces and each piece is a stock. So let's say you made a company that sold shoes and divided it into 100 stocks. If you owned 50 stocks you would own 50% of the company.\n\nCompanies also make money. This money is used to pay employee, buy supplies, purchase new hardware and investment, pay taxes and gives back to the stock holders as well as many other things.\n\nThis money coming after they've paid off their expenses will be called Earnings. Now a P/E ratio is the cost of share of the company divided by Earnings of that particular share of a company. So if your shoe company has 100 stocks and each stock costs a dollar, and your company has a earning of 10 dollars. Then your P/E would be 10 or\n\n1 dollar per stock/ (10 dollars total profit/100 the number of stocks)\n\nHigher P/E numbers tend to denote companies that will be making more in the future(Because people are willing to pay alot of money for stock even though their not making much money.) Or companies that people over value.\n\nLower P/E numbers tends to denote companies that will be making less money in the future.(Because people don't want to buy their stock even though their earning money at the moment.) or companies that people under value.\n\nP/E scores are one of the factor people use to determine if they should by stock in company. It is not only evaluator buy one of several.\n\n\nNote: If a company made no money or lost money it has a P/E score of N/A or undefined even though mathematically you could determine a P/E score that is negative. "
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4y5m9r | if a poll is conducted by randomly dialing land lines, how is it able to get an accurate representation of the population? | I recently read that less than half of Americans have a landline. Almost nobody I know under the age of 35 has one. I'd imagine that younger Americans with a landline fall into different demographics than most people their age.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y5m9r/eli5_if_a_poll_is_conducted_by_randomly_dialing/ | {
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"There is a lot of discussion exactly how accurate that is.\n\nBut that is nothing new, phone polls always has some demographic skew...people who were home a lot, people who answered their phones, people who didn't just hang up, etc.\n\nMany poll have adjustment factors. They ask for various demographic information, then adjust the the data to fit the general population. For example, if 70% surveyed were male, they would adjust the result so their responses only contributed to ~50% of the final result.",
"Most polls now have two parallel projects to dial both landline and cell phone numbers \n\nSource: I work in this industry"
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1pfw39 | kidney stones | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pfw39/eli5_kidney_stones/ | {
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"The simplest explanation is that the person doesn't drink enough water which causes urine to become very concentrated. Calcium becomes so concentrated that it begins to crystallize. When the crystal grows large enough it begins to cause pain. The large crystal has no where to but out the urethra. \n\nThere are many other factors but this is the most common cause. \n"
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4u70eu | how is the universe expanding if gravity pulls things together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u70eu/eli5_how_is_the_universe_expanding_if_gravity/ | {
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"Wouldn't physicists like to know.\n\nBut seriously, they dont know. At this point, all we have are some theories. Mainly, dark energy. Basically an unknown, undetectable force that pushes on everything in the universe. Locally, its not strong enough to overcome gravity, which is why stars, planets, orbits, galaxies, etc. still exist; but on a cosmic scale, it is strong enough to push all the clumps of mater (which are basically clumps of gravity), away from each other.\n\nIt's also worth mentioning that, since dark energy expands space itself, and isn't technically *moving* anything, the expansion of the universe is actually faster than the speed of light. Some galaxies are moving away from each other so quickly, that light from one galaxy would never be able to reach the other, because it cant travel fast enough.",
"You have a spring. The spring likes to stay the way it is. If you pull it, it resists compression to try to stay the way it is. This is gravity.\n\nYou and your friend each grab one side of the spring to stretch it. You are dark energy.\n\nIf you and your friend pull on the spring and let it go, it will compress itself back together to its original state.\n\nIf you and your friend pull together such that your pulling is stronger than the compression of the spring, the spring will keep on stretching and stretching.\n\nIn other words - there is some universal force that is causing the universe to expand at a rate faster than gravity is pulling it together. This force is constant, so it's always acting. At large enough scales this force is much more powerful compared to gravity, so that the universe expands.",
"How does rockets fly up if gravity pulls them down? Because they pushed up harder than the gravity. Same with the universe... Something is expanding it harder than gravity is squeezing it together. We don't know if we will expand forever or will gravity eventually turn it around.",
"Gravity pulls *things* together.\n\nThe expansion of the universe is the expansion of *space*, which isn't a thing - it's the space in which things are.\n\nSo while gravity can pull things together, the space in which those things exist is stretching outwards.\n\nThe balloon being inflated isn't a great example, but it shows sort of what can happen.\n\nYou can have two ants walking on the surface of a balloon while it's being inflated - those ants can be walking towards each other and getting closer together while the balloon is being inflated and getting larger."
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2mifkj | the scientific reason behind why your body works more efficiently alkalized | I am just wondering if someone could explain to me, scientifically, why our bodies work more efficiently alkalized than acidic. What regulates the alkalinity in our bodies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mifkj/eli5_the_scientific_reason_behind_why_your_body/ | {
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"One of the job of the blood is to carry Carbon Dioxide from the tissues to the lungs to be exhaled out. And the blood does this by converting the the majority of the CO2 to H2CO3 (bicarbonate--as the the baking soda stuff.) Bicarbonate is known as a buffer, which means that it is able to donate and absorb hydrogen atoms keeping the pH of the blood (and by extension the rest of your body) constant at 7.35 to 7.45. A blood pH of 7.55 (or above) or a blood pH of 7.10 (or below) is enough to kill you.\n\nSo in effect, the best thing you can do to keep your body pH correct is to KEEP BREATHING (oxygen), eating that salad will not do anything one way or another.",
"/u/gemmabeta has a great explanation of regulation of acid/ base chemistry, and is right on that diet has very little to do with it. Even a very small change in blood pH will straight up kill you. \n\nAs to why alkaline blood is more 'efficient,' there are many reasons. One is the production of acid in many metabolic processes; for example lactic and pyruvic acid by muscle cells. Slightly alkaline blood helps compensate for acidic environments at the cellular level. Another reason is that many molecules, especially amino \"acids\" can become acids or bases depending on the pH. That's part of the reason that enzymes are so sensitive to pH. Like body temperature, pH has to be closely regulated to preserve enzyme function. \n\nedit: postscript-- your body does a very good job of regulating this for you. Any acid/ base imbalance is a sign of a MAJOR health problem. Not something you can change by eating kale and apple cider vinegar"
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6bg3oc | why is liquor cheaper in japan than in the us | It would make since to me if it were closer, but I'm on vacation and noticed a handle of Jim beam was roughly $10 cheaper in Tokyo than in Indiana which is just North of the state it's made in. I saw similar price differences in all the brands I recognized, especially Tanqueray gin, and Jack Daniels (I don't know where the gin is made, but I know the whiskey is from Tennessee). Is this a tax thing or something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bg3oc/eli5_why_is_liquor_cheaper_in_japan_than_in_the_us/ | {
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"Looking around, it looks like Indiana's liquor tax is about $0.54 a fifth & the federal tax rate is about $2.50 but that only accounts for about $3 a bottle. Indiana's 7% sales tax is another $1.05 on top of a $15 bottle of liquor.\n\nThat doesn't even get us up to $5. How do you account for the other $5? I did some searching and couldn't find anything.",
"There are two things that influence the price: \n\n1. How much will people pay for it? If they don't buy it for $15 you will sell for $10\n\n2. How much taxes do you have to pay on it.\n\nAs a small example: Scotch is cheaper in Germany than in Scotland even though its produced in Scotland.",
"Ok so I used to work as a bar tender in Japan. It's the tax structure. Basically one of the things Japan taxes alcohol on is malt content which means that beer is relatively expensive as well as some high end whiskeys. Clear liquor by virtue of not having malt is cheaper."
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77rigd | why do diseases/afflictions and the extent of their effects vary greatly from region to region | How can an African man generally be fine with Malaria at least once a year, or walk around with untreated cuts without a problem.
But when people from the western world come to Africa, Malaria tends to be more aggressive and almost always fatal to them, and even slight cuts have the tendency to be septic?
I am West African.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77rigd/eli5_why_do_diseasesafflictions_and_the_extent_of/ | {
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"Their immune systems aren't adapted to both the environment, and are overall weaker. It's a common trait within western countries with improved sanitation and healthcare. All throughout their lives, their bodies have not been exposed to the same pathogens a native of the region would. It's also why allergies, immune system overreactions, are so much more common in Western countries. ",
"We adapt to our environment and the diseases in them. You inherit some resistances from your parents through DNA, others through inoculations and exposure to the disease during childhood, and still others from general health. \n\nIf we move out of that environment and into a new environment that has different diseases and parasites, we may find we are less adapted to dealing with them. We may eventually develop a resistance over time, but it requires exposure to the diseases and parasites, which make us sick. \n\nIt's similar to the reasons why drinking water in other countries may make you sick, but not the locals. They earned their spot in that food chain by dealing with that sickness for generations and developing immunity. Visitors did not. \n\nFor malaria specifically, it has been theorized that sickle cell anemia, while itself a kind of disease, was an adaptation by some sub Saharan African peoples in order to survive malaria. The same mechanism that causes mis-shappen red blood cells, also makes it harder for malaria to infect and spread through a person body. \n\nMalaria is also spread through pests like mosquitoes and some people have body chemistries that don't attract blood sucking insects as much, or may even repel them. Other people may act like mosquito magnets, something in their sweat or breath attracts mosquitoes and they get bit more often. "
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otyyo | i have a cold, why is only one of my nostrils runny? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/otyyo/eli5_i_have_a_cold_why_is_only_one_of_my_nostrils/ | {
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"Probably because you only have one 'good' nostril that works. Try it, block one nostril and try to breath through your nose then block the other. They will both work but one will work a lot better than the other. \n\nThe interesting part is that your 'good' nostril actually changes back and forth between the left and right nostril. The frequency of this varies from person to person, it could be hours or days.\n\nFrom what I last heard they don't really know why this happens."
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fvsq9f | what is rust and why does it form? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvsq9f/eli5_what_is_rust_and_why_does_it_form/ | {
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"Rust is an oxidized fourm of a metal, the metal chemically changes itself, say you have iron, and it chemically cimbines with oxygen because it wants to reduce its charge to zero",
"Rust is just iron reacting to the oxygen in the air. Iron and oxygen make iron oxide,which is rust.",
"Alright, I'm seeing lots of comments on how rust is just iron oxide, but I'm hoping to add my two cens here by talking about rust in a little more macroscopic sense.\n\nAll metals form crystals when solid. These crystals are usually so small they're invisible, involving less than 20 atoms in a simple geometric configuration (usually cubes & rectangular prisms, for iron). Still, these simple geometric shapes stack on top of each other to form solid metal, and the effect of this crystalline nature changes the mechanical, chemical and thermal properties of the metal.\n\nWhen iron rusts, its crystals change in structure. The neat stacks of whatever crystalline structure it used to have get replaced by crystals of iron oxide. These iron oxide crystals are much larger physically than the usual iron ones, meaning the exposed surface wants to expand drastically. The surface then cracks and curls away from the material as it is oxidized, since it doesn't have enough room to expand and stay within the rest of the structure. This exposes fresh iron to more oxygen, meaning the entire piece can eventually crumble away into rust.\n\n\nBut it doesn't have to be this way! Stainless steel and aluminum have oxides that are a very similar shape and size to their normal crystalline structure, meaning the oxides dont upset the surface and just form a solid layer of inert material, protecting the rest of the material from oxygen. This is why stainless steel and aluminum \"dont corrode\", in reality they do, it's just that it creates a surface sheen of oxides that stops oxygen from reaching the rest of the material. \n\nA lot more about metals can be explained with their crystalline nature: alloys, fatigue, work hardening, temper, annealing, self-lubrication, etc. But this comment isn't a university course."
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3xm4s5 | if metals are the best conductors of heat, why are flasks made of them? | Surely they should be made of good insulators to prevent heat loss. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xm4s5/eli5_if_metals_are_the_best_conductors_of_heat/ | {
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"The inside of a flask is usually an insulating material - see [this](_URL_0_) example of a typical flask. Note the outer-case might well be metal but the inner cases that provide the insulation would typically be double-walled glass.\n\n\nAlternatively see [this](_URL_1_) graphic for a different way of achieving the same thing.",
"Usually insulating flasks have two walls, with a layer of vacuum in between them. Since there is no material to conduct heat, the only way heat is transferred between the inner and outer walls is from the walls radiating heat, which is an insanely slow process because shiny metal does not emit (or absorb) that much radiation."
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1xcmnw | vampire academy: ugh. how does the movie industry end up screwing up books so badly? who makes those "creative" changes, and who approves them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xcmnw/vampire_academy_ugh_how_does_the_movie_industry/ | {
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"Personally, if movies were word for word adaptations of books, they would be hours and hours long, plus most of whats happening would be slow and full of long dialogue scenes, due to the way books work. Movies are a completely different form of media to books. You have to allow some discrepancies in production and story telling, otherwise Lord of the Rings would of been 20 hours long, and no one would of watched it.",
"I heard that in the movie -I am Legend- they actually intended to go with the original story line. But the \"test audience\" was to stupid to understand it. So they butchered one of the main story points which made some scenes not make sense. I'd imagine similar things has happened. "
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8hxqul | why are jellyfish of different colours like yellow, blue or even red? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hxqul/eli5_why_are_jellyfish_of_different_colours_like/ | {
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"They have microorganisms inside them that are coloured. The same jellyfish can have different colours depending on its environment."
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cvxaqi | when wearing multiple layers, does the colour of the lower layers of clothing have any effect on staying warm/cool? | After seeing an infrared image of a person it got me thinking if dark lower layers of clothing would actually draw heat away from the body whereas white would reflect it back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvxaqi/eli5_when_wearing_multiple_layers_does_the_colour/ | {
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"No. Colors reflect/absorb light, not heat. A black shirt still absorbs light when you're indoors, but it doesn't get hot because the light isn't sunlight.",
"on paper, yes. lighter colors will reflect more radiant heat back toward your body. \n\nin practice, however, the amount of radiant heat you produce is trivial, and the effect caused by different color fabric is similarly too small to consider. convection is simply orders of magnitude more significant.",
"If the layers of clothing are in contact then heat will transfer by conduction and the colours aren’t relevant. Colour definitely matters for the outer layer; that’s partly how “space blankets” of thin, shiny (aluminised) plastic sheeting work."
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3w6kup | how do they measure distance traveled in space? | Edit: I understand triangulation and distance = time x velocity and all that. I was thinking more along the lines of on earth we have odometers on cars. The distance the car travels can be measured by the car on from the space that it is moving through (on). No external measurement or calculation is necessary because the space it's traveling through (on) is tangible and directly measurable. I was wondering if there was a way to measure the distance traveled through the vacuum of space on a spaceship without having to make all those astronomy-y calculations. Is that possible? Again, not using known speed and time to calculate distance. Sorry I was not clear to begin with. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w6kup/eli5_how_do_they_measure_distance_traveled_in/ | {
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"You can measure the angles between bodies like planets and stars and easily triangulate where you are.\n\nIf you were to approach light speed, you'd have to compensate the doppler effect though.",
"The trajectory and velocity are known, so they can just compute distance travelled using those with the amount of time they've been traveling.",
"They use lightyears for exceptionally large distances and kilometers for smaller distances or for a more impressive sounding number. There's another unit called an Astronomical Unit which is equal to the distance from our sun to earth. The way that they approximate the distances is done by using known distances and looking at how big that known distance is on a telescope then expanding it. Like if you were to line your thumb up with somebody at a certain distance and they were one thumb tall. Something else at that some distance being 40 thumbs tall would just be 40 times the height of the known individual. Over long distances they use mathematical calculations to account for parallax, warping due to gravity and other light sources etc. Also, for things that aren't the same distance away you can do a conversion and figure how far away it is from you using lasers or approximations based on other celestial bodies. ",
"If you are traveling in space with a mirror. Then they would send light from earth to your mirror. Light will reflect and come back.\n\nWe know speed of light = 300000 km / s.\n\nWe will calculate the time it took for light to come back say 5 secs.\n\nSo distance traveled is 300000 multiple by 5 = 1500000 km.\n\nSince light has traveled double distance to and fro, we divide by 2.\n\n750000 km. You just measured distance traveled in space.\n\nStay awesome."
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2vy3ni | why do dogs continue barking unless told/yelled at to stop? | So during the night whenever my dog hears a noise she will start barking and continue to bark even if there are no more strange noises. If I go and yell the command that she knows to be quiet she will settle down (eventually bark again when she hears another noise) but if I don't say anything she can continue barking for 5min+. Why is this? Is she barking to let me know of something and me saying quiet is letting her know it's okay/has the behavior for someone to say something been enforced? Some nights I have had to resort to physically hitting her bottom because she would just not shut up. I don't want to get a bark collar in fear they will never bark again. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vy3ni/eli5_why_do_dogs_continue_barking_unless/ | {
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"I wish I had an answer as well. My dog has been getting worse and worse as he's gotten older. I don't know if he is losing his senses or going senile. He's 10 now and over the last year it has gotten ridiculous. He was never, ever like this when he was younger.",
"I believe it is because we have been breeding them that way for thousands of years. Think of them as the poor man's intruder alarm. Dogs that alert their owners to perceived danger should continue barking until told that it is okay.\n\nI also understand that wolves do not bark (or bark much) and this is the reason why.",
"Pretty much doing what they were bred for. Different dog breeds were bred for different purposes. Some were for herding, some for guarding against intruders, and others for hunting. Didn't say what type you have so can't tell you if your breed is more barky then others. So she/he was doing what they were supposed to do more then likely for hundreds or thousands of year. Hell there was one breed of dog that was bred to rotate the meat cooking over the fire pit.\n\nSo if you are looking for a way to get her to stop barking, you can go the collar route. I don't like shock collars but they make ones that spray citronella instead. More startles them and keeps the mosquitoes away then hurts them. The other thing you can do is behavior training, but that usually requires a lot of work, upkeep and consistency. ",
"My pitbull will bark when she hears something too...especially at night. What I started doing (instead of telling her to stop barking/getting annoyed ) is saying \"good girl dutch....it's nothing/it's ok\" She is just instinctively trying to protect me & by telling her good girl, she calms down instantly. ",
"It is a self-rewarding behaviour. Barking soothes the dog's anxiety and is reinforced when the cause of the barking desists. Noise happens outside, dog barks, noise stops - barking appears to be a successful strategy so the dog will repeat it next time there's a noise.",
"When you shout at your dog for barking, the dog will get excited that you're barking together. Giving the dog a different command, like calmly telling the dog to sit, redirects his attention and will be more effective in the long run."
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358qt4 | why do dogs sneeze like crazy when they're excited to see you? | Seems to be pretty universal with most dogs I've met/owned. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/358qt4/eli5_why_do_dogs_sneeze_like_crazy_when_theyre/ | {
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"Dogs make a certain sneeze when they're happy or they want to play!\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's to \"tell\" other dogs that they're not being aggressive. Basically they want to play and they missed you!",
"My dog does that and I try to do the same, like making fun of him, when we haven't seen each other for quite some time. :D"
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sokcz | the "fall" of the dutch government | Why did they all resign? What replaces the government? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sokcz/eli5_the_fall_of_the_dutch_government/ | {
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"In parliamentary states (particularly the older ones) people vote for their local MP, their MP represents a party and members of that party decide who will head the party (when comparing it to the US system imagine if the state reps from the party with most seats voted to name the president). In a case where no single party has sufficient votes to win outright on their own a number have to group together to form a coalition, that coalition will then approach the head of state (in this case the queen) and request to form a government.\n\nIn such a coalition if any members leave this can cause them to lose sufficient MP's to no longer be able to maintain a government. Different states treat it differently but in general once that point is reached the sitting government must dissolve and an election must be called to replace them (a new government cannot be formed without an election). In most situations the existing government remains in power until the election but in cases of a minority coalition (as this is) staying in power would paralyze government and absolutely nothing would pass. To deal with this situation the government resigns which gives them the opportunity to form a new temporary coalition government to act as steward until the new election.\n\nIn this case one of the parties in the coalition (The Freedom Party) withdrew in opposition to proposals to limit deficit spending for 2013, under EU rules most EU states have to submit proposals to deal with their deficits by next week and the resignations today are an attempt to form a new government quickly and send out the proposal next week that the budget will be cut by 2% in 2013.\n"
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2s80rr | why do americans make so much money compared to mainland europeans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s80rr/eli5_why_do_americans_make_so_much_money_compared/ | {
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"Who's more likely to tell you their salary: a rich person, or a poor person?",
"A six-figure (US dollar) salary in the US is actually a very high wage. Around 20% of **households** make that annually, and that number includes families who, combined, make that amount. $50k a year (for each partner in a household making $100k) is considered, in most of the US, as enough to live on comfortably enough, but not wealthy.\n\nThe fact is, some of the people who claim to make six figures are lying (just because it's the internet), and many of them are being truthful. But the people who make minimum wage or other low-medium salaries are much less likely to go bragging about it on the internet.\n\nAs an American living comfortably enough in my 20's with a $42k salary."
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2mrs2v | how does salt help put out a fire in a kitchen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mrs2v/eli5how_does_salt_help_put_out_a_fire_in_a_kitchen/ | {
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"Salt is (reletively) non-reactive and has a high melting point. By putting salt on a fire, you can keep the hot whatever from getting the oxygen necessary to burn.\n\nThis smothers the fire.\n\nAdded bonus is that cleanup is easy since salt dissolves in water."
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5237g6 | how does life insurance work if you can almost guarantee 100% of policy holders will make a claim? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5237g6/eli5_how_does_life_insurance_work_if_you_can/ | {
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"More people pay per month than collect. This is the way that all insurance works. Even when all members eventually collect they have many times more at that point in time not collecting they their payouts are only a fraction of the money they take in. ",
"They're betting on the probability that by the time you die, they'll have made more money from investing your premiums than they have to pay you.\n\nThere's two kinds of life insurance - one that has a fixed term, for instance 30 years, then expires. Those are cheaper, but if you don't die in 30 years, they make bank on your premiums. The other lasts indefinitely, but is more expensive - in those cases, they're hoping your premiums total what your beneficiaries will get paid. In the latter case, usually, there's a clause that once your premiums equal the payout amount, you don't have to pay anymore (so you never pay in more than your beneficiary gets out), but in those cases the life insurance company has basically taken out a long-term no-interest loan from you (until you die), during which time they get to invest the money and get a return on it before having to pay it back.",
"The average person pays more than they collect, which is the same as any other form of insurance. When dealing with a significant amount of people, a company can play the odds because, in the long run, they'll win.",
"Insurance companies in general make a vast majority of their profits on investments, not your premiums. When I took a basic business insurance course, I believe the number was 95% of the profits were made on investments alone - this was a broad generalization, but you get the point.",
"if you have paid premiums for years then allow it to lapse, all the money from those years has just become a boon to them.\n\nEdit: i don't know who gave me Gold or even why but thanks so very much!! this will make me smile for a while.",
"Most people have *term* life insurance, under a 20 or 30 year term. This is why it's cheap as hell to get term life insurance at age 22 or so... it's pretty unlikely that you'll die while insured even if you keep paying premiums for the 20 or 30 year term, which most people don't anyway. Term life becomes really expensive when you're in your 40s and especially 50s or older when it actually is statistically likely that you'll die during the term. Only a very small percentage of term life policies actually pay out, a quick Google search says only 3%. \n\nWith whole life insurance, you are paying steeper premiums for generally a smaller death payout, but there is also a cash value to the policy which will eventually, theoretically, surpass the amount of money you paid into it, because some of the money is being invested. Whole life is another can of worms but consensus among people without a financial stake in selling you whole life is that it is not a very good investment for *most* people.",
"Something others have left out: most life insurance policies have certain exceptions. Some won't cover effects of diseases you had before signing up. Others won't cover natural disasters. Most won't cover suicides, or at least have a waiting period before that coverage kicks in. Each one is going to be slightly different, but there's always the chance that, even though you died, your insurance won't be paying out because you died the \"wrong\" way.",
"**ELI5 Redux**\n\nYou have three toys: one toy you can only play with for a little and one toy you can have for the rest of your life.\n\nIf you have the first toy for a little while, you probably won't break it and mommy and daddy won't have to buy you a new one. Mommy won't have to spend more allowance on another toy!\n\nIf you have the second toy for a long, long time, it's definitely going to get dirty, broken and possibly even fall apart! So it will need to be replaced one day far, far away and then more allowance must be spent!\n\n\n^I ^failed ^miserably...\n________________________________________________________________________________________\nAlright, I am a Financial Adviser in Canada with a life licence, I'll try and break it down a bit.\n\nSo there are three types of life insurance provided in Canada, not sure about the U.S., and they are as follows:\n\n1. Term\n2. Whole Life\n3. Universal Life\n\n**Term**\n\nTerm insurance is usually provided in fixed yearly terms like 10, 20, 30. These are usually provided in situations of short-term liabilities like debt repayment, mortgages, child care services, etc. \n\nThe risk factor for a term insurance policy is relatively low in the eyes of the insurer and so the premiums reflect that. They are usually super low compared to other life insurance policies and in most cases don't payout at the end of their terms so the insurer takes in your premiums, invests it and makes money off your money. After the costs for setting up a new client, everything is all profit.\n\n**Whole Life**\n\nWhole life is different from term as it covers you your entire life. This means that the insurer is guaranteed to payout under normal circumstances so the premiums will be much higher to reflect that risk. This type of insurance is used in cases of leaving a legacy, charitable donation upon death, covering income tax in final year, etc.\n\nBeing that these are mostly guaranteed payouts under normal circumstances, the amount of money the insurer makes off your premiums over the course of your policy until you die minus the payout may leave them in the green depending on investment performance and how many premiums you have paid in so far.\n\n*Premiums are proportionate to the risk to the insurer*.\n\n**Universal Life**\n\nSimilar to whole life in the fact that it covers your entire life, but it has an investment vehicle inside of it that allows you to grow money in a tax-deferred account. This is a very complex product and along with any investment account comes with MER (Management Expense Ratio) which covers the cost of the insurer for managing the investment account.\n\nAgain, the situation is the same with universal life as it was with whole life, these are guaranteed payouts under normal circumstances so your premiums are higher, they adjust for the financial impact risk. Depending on their investment performance and how long you have been paying premiums for, they still may be in the green after they have paid out your death benefit. \n\n**Notes**\n\nInsurance companies are like banks, they're a business and their bottom-line is their profits and performance to their shareholders. If insurance wasn't a profitable business model, Transamerica would have died out a long time ago, the company was **founded in 1928** and Industrial Alliance (IA) was **founded in 1892**.\n\nNot too mention we haven't covered the possibility of claims that were voided due to exclusions, circumstances, material fact, preexisting condition, etc, but say the insurance company has a ratio for that for every 1 claim payout, they have 15 that never payout, there's more room for them to profit.\n\nIf further explanation is needed, feel free to ask which part doesn't make the most sense and I can help you!",
"Say Charlie is 20 years old and signs a life insurance contract to pay out $100,000 to his family when he dies. The insurer estimates that 20 year old males like Charlie, on average, die at about age 70. This means Charlie pays insurance for about 50 years, or about $2000 per year on average.\n\nThen there are the subtleties:\n\n* If Charlie pays $2000 this year, the insurer can invest that (along with all its other money) in stocks, bonds, property, etc, and in 50 years (or whenever Charlie dies, whichever comes first) that money would have accumulated to a lot more than $2000. Repeat this for every $2000 premium Charlie pays (but with a shorter time horizon as time goes on obviously). The result: the insurer can usually afford to charge Charlie a bit less than $2000 per annum.\n\n* Due to inflation, $100,000 in 50 years' time is probably gonna worth a lot less than $100,000 today. The insurer isn't profiting off this, and will usually drop the premium even further so it's fair (otherwise it loses business to insurers who do price fairly).\n\n* 20 year old males like Charlie may die at age 70 on average, but that's a best guess (which is different from a conservative guess). The insurer needs to have some margin in case Charlie, and a whole bunch of other people, die sooner - they can't just assume the \"average\" plays out as expected.\n\n* On top of that, in most regulated countries an insurer has to charge enough so that it can convince a government body that it isn't about to go under (e.g. that it has enough funds to pay X% of claims with probability Y% in the next Z years). The modelling required for this also needs to take into account external factors like the chances of the economy tanking, the investment environment, and even medical advances prolonging life.\n\n",
"Very few policy holders make claims.\n\nMost life insurance is **term** life. You buy it for a certain amount of time, usually 10 years, then can renew it after. If you don't die, the insurance company makes money.\n\nAlso, a lot of people choose not to renew their insurance as they get older. The purpose of life insurance is to protect those dependent on your income. Once you kids are on their own and your are retire, it becomes unnecessary.\n\nFinally, even if you keep your policy your entire life, the insurance company takes those premiums and invests them. Your beneficiaries might get $500K when you die, but if you have been paying premiums for the past 40 years, that could very well have earned more over that time.\n\nThe insurance company really is only losing money if you die early in the policy's term. That is covered by all the people paying premiums and not dying.",
"One of the things people haven't talked about, is there are billions of dollars of unclaimed life insurance benefits from deceased policy holders.\n\nThe insurance doesn't seek you out when you die.... Your spouse or relatives or friends or whoever has to notify the insurance company to be paid out. So if you and your spouse die in a car accident, and your kids are left, but don't know about your life insurance? Well, you better have someone that knows you have life insurance and needs to get it paid out.",
"The best explanation I ever heard is that they are betting you that you'll live long enough to pay them more in premiums than they'll have to pay out when you die.\n\nSo, if you die young, you win!",
"I was probably around 8 when someone explained this to me, the money you give them is invested in low risk markets to get a profit.",
"long story short, collect enough in premiums over a person's lifetime, that if you invest it safely, it will be worth more than you actually have to pay out at the end. Charge fees like crazy throughout. Build your own national funereal company and refer the widows to that company, so they spend the money back into your pocket. ",
"This is kind of oversimplifying to keep it short but 2 things play into it largely. \n\n1. Not all policies are permanent. A parent may have a term policy from their kid's birth until maybe college when they can take care of themselves, or a company may offer you life insurance when you are working there, but it lapses if you leave. Also, some people may default and not pay until they die, so the policy lapses/defaults.\n\n2. They assume that they can make enough money over the decades you are paying for the policy that by the time you die, they will have still made enough money off you to be profitable and give you your fair share.",
"I think one reason would be that many people over the course of an insurance policy, may hit a rough spot and cease to make payments, thereby voiding the policy. This would, of course, raise the company profit because no payouts will ever occur under it.",
"I see a lot of replies involving term life and the word \"betting\". I'll only explain how a life insurance company makes money through whole life insurance only. \n\nIt's not \"betting\", and it's rather risk pooling. If you have 100 policy holders, and if you look at the individual case by case, yes you lose money with 1-2 policy holders, but you gain within the other 98. The premium is calculated through the mortality data and the rate of return expectations so that there is a thin margin across the pool of the policy holders. Generally, if one is expected to live long, the less actuarial value (expected payout value for that policy holder) since not only can you collect more premium on that person, but also the payout amount, even if it's fixed, is valued less the more in the future, for reasons of interest rates and inflation. So, let's make up a hypothetical whole life insurance policy with a benefit of $100k,where I collect a single payment of a lump sum premium on all newborns of a hypothetical segment. Irl, a mortality table is required, but let's make it simple and assume assume that we know that for this particular population, 90%will die at the age of 90, and the other 10%will die at 0 meaning I need to pay the promised benefit of 100k immediately. The expected rate of return (that I will be able to achieve through investing the premium I collected until I have to pay out) is 6%. In this case, the actuarial value of this policy for a single policy holder is $15,327.09 assuming I didn't make a calculation error, and I am expected to make money if i charge anything above that. Remember, we are talking about a hypothetical whole life insurance policy where we know we will payout $100,000 to all policy holders eventually. ",
"#1 - only about 1 to 2% of term policies pay out. People either stop paying premiums, outlive the term, switch to another company, etc. \n\n#2 - only about 30% of permanent policies pay out. People either stop paying premiums, cash it out and use cash value elsewhere, switch to another company or the contract doesn't earn the requisite interest rate initially assumed and it lapses. \n\nVery profitable. Very, very profitable. The greatest investor ever (Warren Buffett) isn't neck deep in insurance companies for nothing...\n",
"While the explanations above are good, life insurance in general is odd. You are essentially betting the insurance company that you are going to die, while they are betting you won't. \n\n\"Hey insurance company, I'm going to die soon.\"\n\n*\"No way. You are going to live for a long time.\"*\n\n\"Nuh-uh! I'm gonna die. Want to bet?!\"\n\n*\"Sure. $20/month for every month you live and I'll give you like $100K if you actually die.\"*\n\n\"DEAL! Sucker, I'm gonna show you. I'll be dead in no time!\"",
"Most people don't make claims. Here's how it works:\n\nYou're in your 20s with kids. You agree to pay the insurance company a small amount of money every year for 20 years. In exchange, they will give your kids a lot of money if you die.\n\nBut most people won't die during that time. So most of the time, the insurance company gets to keep a little bit of your money. But you're happy with this arrangement because something did happen to you, your kids would get a lot of money.\n\nAfter the 20 years is up, the insurance company wants a larger amount of money every year if you want to do it again, because you're more likely to die when you're in your 40s. But your kids are adults now, so you aren't as worried about what will happen to them if you die. So you don't renew the policy.\n\nThat's a simplification, but that shows why most life insurance policy holders will actually never make a claim.",
"I work for a life insurance company, and you really don't need to know most the info in this thread to answer your question. All you need to know is the following:\n\nFirst, The insurance company makes money in two ways:\n\n 1. Owners of insurance policies pay the insurance company every year to keep their policy.\n\n 2. The insurance company invests some of the money from 1.\n\nAs long as the premiums plus the profits from their investments is greater than the amount paid out in insurance claims, then they have made a profit (after paying their employees, etc.).\n\nSecond, The insurance company predicts, based on data gathered from previous years, approximately how many claims they will pay in the next year, how many new policies they will have in the next year, etc. The people that make these predictions are called Actuaries, and they are very smart, and their predictions are very accurate.\n\nThen the company prices its products based on these predictions, so that they will have enough premiums to collect, invest, and profit off of. Insurance companies change their rates once annually.\n\nThat's really it.",
"Former agent here. I've seen the correct answer spread out over a couple responses. Here's the tl;dr: 90% of all term policies never pay out, that's pure profit. Secondly, life insurance companies invest all the money you pay them into stocks and bonds, and they're VERY good with that money. Iirc, no life insurance company has ever filed bankruptcy in America.",
"Some people will not renew, so they make money from their previous payments. Alot of people will move to other companies, say for instance if they find a better deal or what have you, so they get to keep those previous payments. Also some people may cancel their policies if they get a job where the company provides free life insurance, so again the previous insurers keep all past payments there too. I have done all three of these things lol amd my loved ones will never see a penny that I've paid into old policies cos they're void when you move.",
"ELI5: If you buy whole life insurance, your premiums plus the interest the insurance company makes on them will - statistically - exceed the death benefit payable to the beneficiary.\n\nWith term insurance, it's a straight up bet that you will not die, and the odds are solidly in favor of the insurer. Beyond a specified period of time, term premiums start rising rapidly. I have a ten-year term policy that matures in eight years. At that time, my $45 per month premium jumps to something like $700 / month if I want to keep it. Obviously, at that point NOBODY keeps the policy, and the insurance company has simply pocketed all of the premiums.\n\nOnly rarely do the odds work in favor of the insured. My wife has terminal cancer, and her $150,000 life insurance policy costs me $250 per month (rated highest risk). Sadly I'm pretty sure that I am going to win that bet.",
"You can bet that someone will die, and only a fool will cover your bet. But what if the bet is on *when* someone will die? Now things are interesting. ",
"Most people let their policy expire. Do you need life insurance once your kids have moved out and your house is paid?",
"I want to add a few minor things to this, not sure if its been covered already but here goes. \n\nDying while covered doesn't always result in them paying:\n\n* suicide within 1 or 2 years\n* if you say you're \"non-smoking\" and then autopsy reveals tobacco use, they dont have to pay\n* if you partake in certain risky behaviors, such as juggling chainsaws, skydiving or egregiously stupid bullshittery.\n* die in war, or in certain countries, or perhaps anywhere out of the US depending on the policy\n* a beneficiary murders you (and sadly this happens all too often )\n* (perhaps) you develop a significant health condition and dont tell them or try to hide it. Again, it depends on the contract. If you get terminal cancer while covered, it will pay, and sometimes pay you before you even die. But if you develop colon cancer, get it treated, and then try to renew the policy without disclosing your cancer, they dont have to pay if you die later of other causes.\n\nAnd paying the claim sometimes doesn't cost them anything. They can sue entities responsible for your death to recoup the cost of payment. such as if you were killed by a drunk driver (who had money) or a plane crashed, building caught fire, etc. They can sue the insurance of whoever was liable to get reimbursed.",
"Another point that I haven't seen yet is about the cost of capital. Life insurance companies get a HUGE amount of capital, and they are betting that they can invest this money and make a return. So they can invest in real estate, bonds, stock market, etc. Therefore, if you paid in $50k over the life of your policy and make a claim for $100k when you die, they are betting they could have more than doubled their money in that time. ",
"You pay every month until you die. So if you live long enough to pay more than they turn out, they make a profit. \n\nOf course there are also people who die shortly after taking the insurance, so the profit has to be greater than what those people cost the company as well.\n\nBasically, they're betting on how long you will live. They know that if you live another X years, they'll make some money, so after taking your habits, health, and age into consideration they try to estimate your life's value, and if that's high enough they insure you."
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4c8k93 | how do teams get hats and shirts right after winning a championship? | I just watched a March Madness game where the winning team was given hats with their team logo on it, about one minute after they won. Is custom gear just made for both teams for each case? How do they do trophy/plaque engravings then? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c8k93/eli5_how_do_teams_get_hats_and_shirts_right_after/ | {
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"Because they get made ahead of time. And then the ones that lose just dump them to charities and third world nations.",
"They do both possibilities ahead of time.\n\nThe gear for the losing team is destroyed or donated to developing countries where no one has heard of March Madness.\n\nFor trophies, they make two plaques, sometimes temporary ones, and do it properly after."
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5dd8ty | can you use heroin without getting addicted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dd8ty/eli5_can_you_use_heroin_without_getting_addicted/ | {
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"Yes.\n\nIn the United Kingdom heroin is prescribed under the name diamorphine where it is used as a powerful painkiller for people with serious physical trauma or who've just had surgery. It's even given to mothers after cesarean section. In this heavily managed setting, addiction rates are incredibly low.\n\nBut what you seem to be asking is if one can use heroin *regularly* without addiction. I don't know the answer but I doubt it."
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34a7p3 | how is baking soda made, and why is it so cheap? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34a7p3/eli5_how_is_baking_soda_made_and_why_is_it_so/ | {
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"Baking soda is made by a [reaction](_URL_0_) of salt water, carbon dioxide (taken from limestone), and ammonia (frequently made from natural gas) though the process returns most of the ammonia used and it can be captured and re-used. None of those ingredients are expensive. ",
"Thank you for asking this. It's something I've noticed but never thought to ask about or look in to. Baking soda is 39 cents a box at my local Dollar Tree. How the hell does that pay for the labor, the boxes, the shipping, etc.....? "
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1v2jep | how do game designers "balance" games? | Say in Civilization 5--each civilization has its own special abilities. How do designers make sure that each is approximately equally powerful?
It seems like it would require a lot of math. Does it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v2jep/eli5_how_do_game_designers_balance_games/ | {
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"Might be mathed, but a lot of internal playtesting goes into most games. If a developer notices that Richard Nixon is winning every test game, they might tone down Watergate.",
"Lots of tweaking during development and beta testing. ",
" > It seems like it would require a lot of math. Does it?\n\nYes.\n\nI'm writing my doctoral thesis in comp sci on game development and balance is a big part of it.\n\nI can't tell you specifically what Firaxis does, but to some degree things can be a lot of math, which are well suited to ELI5 because well, the math depends on your combat model and that is game specific.\n\nBut there are a lot of fairly profound design and philosophical choices. Should a phalanx unit be able to defend against a tank? With what probability? Math lets you tweak parameters to make whatever you want happen, but ultimately what the math should do is a design choice. \n\nWhen it comes to more orthogonal choices - like the faction bonuses, where one guy gets bonus money and another guy gets bonus diplomatic relations well, they aren't really balanced in any purely theoretical math sense. It's not really realistic to try and weight 1 unit of money versus diplo reputation. The idea is to basically run the game a LOT, AI on AI, player on player, AI on player and figure out the probabilities of winning and losing. In a game like Civ where a lot of the game is AI factions against AI factions you can do a lot of balance by just automating the game and seeing how it goes, and keep going until a large enough sample sets gives you close to equal probabilities for each faction. \n\nEnter into the discussion: Starcraft. Starcraft is an esport rather than just a single player game. In this case your tolerances on advantages to a given faction are much lower than they are for something like Civ (or the other extreme, Skyrim, where you can kill the last boss with about 3 hits if you are so inclined). \n\nBalance really works in multiple layers - units against units, collections of units from an era against other collections from an era (say early game/late game, or 'ages' in Civ), overall strategies that may encompass multiple eras against each other, and then all of the indirect (non military) systems balances against each other. \n\nOh, and in Civ thinks are heavily biased by starting location and conditions, this is deliberate - in SC you're trying to give everyone an equal chance, in a historical game you're trying to give a realistic starting condition. In civ the randomness is part of what makes the fun of the game, and optimizing around random conditions, so each game is different. \n\n\nEdit: One thing to add. Sometimes good balance is about thinking outside the immediate set of equations around your combat and say ' lets add reload delay to this weapon, shrink the clip size, or to change how the scope works' or the like and you get away from bullet damage and rates of fire as big overarching math concepts and change how players can actually use the tools given to them. ",
"It can vary a lot depending on the type of game but usually problems in balance are identified through extensive playtesting and/or collecting and analysing statistics, etc. Once balance issues are identified here needs to be serious thought about different balancing measures and the consequences of each option.\n\nSome game designers don't play the game that they are 'balancing' or bother putting any serious thought into the effects of balance changes and just pull shit out of their ass (e.g. Alan Kertz aka Demize99. He's in charge of the balancing for Battlefield).\n\n"
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2hadau | during filming (tv, movies, porn) how does one edit out the voice of the director, who (from what i've seen on tv) sometimes give the actors notes (loudly), and are relatively close to the camera / boom mics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hadau/eli5during_filming_tv_movies_porn_how_does_one/ | {
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"The director won't speak over lines, generally. If he doesn't speak while another actor is speaking then you can replace his voice with what we refer to as \"room tone\". Basically when we get a chance during the filming of a scene everyone will stop in place and make no noise. The audio team records the ambiance of the space for 30 seconds or so. This 'room tone' can be inserted anywhere in the scene without people being able to hear the difference since it already sounds exactly like the background noise that is underneath the actors' lines.\n\nIf the director DOES speak over an actor's line, there are three options/explanations.\n\n1. The actor who was speaking is not being featured in this shot, and his audio won't be used anyway. For example, in a scene with 2 people you will typically have a close-up shot for each person. If you are doing the close-up of Person A, then Person B's audio isn't as important since the mics are normally set to get Person A's performance. Talking over a Person B line won't be harmful.\n\n2. ADR - Additional Dialogue Recording. Or Automatic Dialogue Replacement. Nobody knows what it stands for. I like the former. Basically the actors come into the studio and re-perform the lines in sync with their original performance, and then you splice the clean audio into the scene. This is time consuming and annoying to do.\n\n3. The director doesn't give a fuck."
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67rcc3 | how do artists "get away" with samples in their music? | What made me think of this was $uicideboy$. In over 25+ of their songs they have samples from other musicians such as Three 6 Mafia, Future, Young Thug, etc.
They've also sold such music for $ (Eternal Grey was even put out on cassette).
Here's a guide the guys over at /r/g59 put together showing the songs with samples.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67rcc3/eli5_how_do_artists_get_away_with_samples_in/ | {
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"They don't, necessarily. Many pay for the use of the sample. If they are part of a major label, their is much scrutiny before a release and often a large enough budget to pay for the sample.\n\nSmaller artists will often take the risk because they most likely won't be sued unless their music is popular. The drive to gain traction will almost always outweigh the fear of legal troubles. \"We will cross that bridge when we get there\".\n\nThere are certainly samples that have been destroyed to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. Those are harder to prosecute.\n\nAnother possible scenario is that there are many old school sample albums that were released specifically for people to rip beats from. There are some classic samples ripped from \"sample records\". Nothing illegal here because that's the intended use."
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5voh37 | why are humans the only species on earth that have gained higher thought? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5voh37/eli5_why_are_humans_the_only_species_on_earth/ | {
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"Are we? Lots of animals communicate, build tools and domiciles and even exhibit self awareness when presented with a mirror. It's because we haven't figured out a way to communicate our higher thoughts with them, doesn't mean the don't have them...\n\n_URL_0_",
"Well look at it this way. Anytime someone or something has threatened what we have now we do what humans do best. Destroy that shit and extinct it's species. "
]
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4c5alw | can we magnetize a demagnetized magnet to its original power, or even stronger? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c5alw/eli5_can_we_magnetize_a_demagnetized_magnet_to/ | {
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"Yep, think of magnet as a sort of battery for magnetic charge. \nIf you stroke a demagnetized magnet, with magnetized magnet, you transfer some of the magnetism from one magnet to the other. \n",
"The individual atoms of a ferromagnetic substance are themselves magnetic. Generally, they point in random directions and the magnetism is largely cancelled out. In a magnet, most of the atoms point in the same direction, instead of every-which way.\n\nTo remagnetize a material, you just need to expose it to a large magnet - some of the atoms will realign with the field of the other magnet, leaving it with a weak magnetic field. \n\nIf you want to restore it to its former strength or stronger, you will probably need to melt it down and re-cool while it's in a strong magnetic field. While it's liquid, the atoms can move freely and align easily. When it hardens again, the atoms are \"stuck\" in alignment, making a permanent magnet."
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[],
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1wwc34 | what happens if an actor dies during the period of film production? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wwc34/eli5_what_happens_if_an_actor_dies_during_the/ | {
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"They find a new guy to finish the movie, start from scratch with a new actor, or the project dies. \n\nHeath Ledger died mid filming and they altered his character to allow for other people to play said character throughout filming. ",
"Sometimes CGI is employed. When Brandon Lee died during the filming of *The Crow*, footage of his face was digitally superimposed onto certain shots in order to finish the movie.",
"In John Candy's last movie, \"Wagon's East,\" [they just reused footage.](_URL_0_)",
"Well in Plan 9 From Outer Space, Bella Lugosi died during early in filming and the way they decided to handle it was by having a lookalike play him and hold a cape in front of his face which is why this is one of the worst movies ever made.",
"They have a pie fight at the end. i.e. Curly's last episode on the three stooges.",
"Watch Fast and Furious 7 when it comes out. \n\nPaul walker died literally nearly halfway through shooting. ",
"Would like to add, that movies of a certain size are insured against such an event, which means that they have the option to say \"fuck it\" and take the insurance money.",
"Is this question prompted because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and the Hunger Games movies? Because I really want to see how they finish the third one now...",
"It looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman's role in Hunger Games won't be recasted. I didn't realize they were that far into filming the last two movies.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Usually, studios will insure the film for incidents like this. They will take out policies on actors, directors, and basically anyone who becomes 'part' of the film i.e. a headlining actor. If a key Grip dies during filming... they just get a new grip. If the actor dies, the studio will collect on the insurance. Sometimes, they will continue the project anyway or change the story around just enough to get a finished product out of it. i.e. The Crow.... \n\n",
"Depends on the movie.\n\nFor *Gladiator*, they had most of Oliver Reed (Proximo)'s scenes filmed when Reed died. They altered the ending of the film so his character dies, as while the character was meant to survive the film, they hadn't filmed enough of his scenes in the last half hour of the movie, so they used some body double/CG trickery (as well as using unused outtakes from other scenes) to give Proximo a death scene.\n\nFor *The Crow*, they used body doubles and other trickery to fill in the scenes that Brandon Lee hadn't yet filmed.\n\nFor *The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus*, they'd filmed about 1/3 of Heath Ledger's scenes. Luckily for the production, they had filmed almost all of his character's \"real world\" scenes, so they recast the character every time he goes through the mirror into imaginationland (or whatever it was called) - so Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell play the character when he's in the different dream worlds. They also rewrote/restructured the ending to take place entirely within the dream world/imaginationland when it was originally meant to take place in the real world, as Ledger hadn't filmed the ending yet.\n\nFor *The Matrix: Revolutions*, Gloria Foster died during production, so they scrapped the footage she'd shot, recast the part with Mary Alice, and threw in a line explaining that she was forced to change her appearance for one reason or another, which works because her character is a program within a computer simulation anyway.\n\nFor *Fast & Furious 7*, Paul Walker had finished half (or less) of his part, so they're re-writing the film to give his character a send-off of some sort using the available footage of him. They also had to delay the release date.\n\nMy understanding of *The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2* is that Philip Seymour Hoffman had already filmed all of Part 1 and the majority of Part 2, and that he had one week's worth of filming left to do. My guess is they'll go the *Gladiator*/*The Crow* route and try to preserve his performance as much as possible while changing as little as possible about the script (so, using CGI/body doubles/outtakes).\n\nSo yeah - it depends on the film (they could never have done what they did with *Parnassus* or *Matrix: Revolutions* with any of these other films), how far into production they are, how much filming the deceased actor has left to do, and what they were able to film before they passed away."
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2a9ux9 | why is the epa so disliked? | I don't know much about the EPA and its practices, however I will need to soon, so can anyone explain to me why I have heard negative comments about it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a9ux9/eli5why_is_the_epa_so_disliked/ | {
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"The rules that they have to enforce make it harder for some people and corporations to do business. The EPA is very necessary and very effective at what they do, but they do in fact make life harder for some people/corporations because the EPA has the ability to restrict or even shut down their businesses. To those people/corporations, their business is more important than the environment, so they don't have very much nice to say about the EPA. Most people don't have any interaction with them, so they don't know much about them, so they don't defend them, and the negative opinions get all the attention. ",
"Because they're an evil government bureaucracy that sends in jackbooted stormtroopers to prevent honest businessmen form making an honest living.\n\nThat is, IF, by \"prevent honest businessmen form making an honest living,\" we actually mean \"prevent greedy, soulless scumbags from dumping toxic waste into the drinking water supply because it makes them more profit.\"\n\nPlaces like Texas that trumpet their \"business friendly laws\" are typically nightmarish hellscapes of dirty air and flammable water. They are more than happy to let you build your fertilizer manufacturing plant right next to a school (yes, we mean the SAME kind of fertilizer that can--and occasionally DOES--suddenly blow and wipe whole towns off the map). And they'll even let you tell the State Fire Marshall to fuck off if he shows up to inspect your facilities. No way THAT could not be a good thing.\n\nYeah, the EPA is not perfect, they occasionally do stupid shit. But make no mistake about it: they are what's keeping America from looking like it did back when I was a kid: air you could cut with a knife, rivers you could--no fooling--set on fire, Cthulhu babies being born because companies poured horrifically toxic stuff down the drain and into the environment. \n\n\n\n"
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1nzwfn | why does perfume smell different from when it is in the bottle versus when it has been applied to skin? | I know it probably has something to do with the oils on our skin, but it has always made me curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nzwfn/why_does_perfume_smell_different_from_when_it_is/ | {
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"That's exactly it. It mixes with your skin oils, the alcohol (which is MOSTLY but not completely scentless) evaporates off and you're left with your own unique twist on the basic smell.\n\nWhile we're on the subject, one thing I wish everyone knew is that perfumes have an expiration date. It's usually a long one, like3-7 years, but the essential oils do denature after time and the chemistry breaks down. This is the reason for the \"old lady perfume\" smell. Most likely they've had the bottle so long that it's turned."
]
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1kw1k2 | language | How did people decide on words, and who communicated to the others in the area that, say, English, was their official language? How does a group of people create a language and then convince the rest of the tribe or colony to go along with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kw1k2/eli5language/ | {
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"Languages don't form over night, they are evolutionary, much like animals turn in to more suited animals for their environment, over time languages too adapt to the changing requirements of their users.\n\nEtymologists (The people who study the evolution of languages) posit that languages first formed as grunts and noises which people used to indicate displeasure, happiness, emotional responses. Over time, they attributes certain noises to objects, a grunt of a particular pitch could mean tree, another pitch or sound could mean rock.\n\nAs languages evolved, people began to put together simple sentences and the local population who grew up in the second generation with these simple phrases would evolve these further.\n\nEventually, over the course of tens of thousands of years, we have the \"advanced\" language we have today.\n\nNo doubt, in ten thousand more years, the people of tomorrow will believe the language of the present day was also simplistic."
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2cwgxv | hadoop and how it fits in with amazon ec2, s3, and amazon map reduce | Imagine I am a five year old who has used Amazon EC2 and S3 with some frequency. I also use Amazon Redshift, so seeing how MapReduce and Hadoop fit in with everything else would be really helpful. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cwgxv/eli5_hadoop_and_how_it_fits_in_with_amazon_ec2_s3/ | {
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"MapReduce is a technique for handling large amounts of data. You get a bunch of computers (usually virtual- in the case of Amazon Elastic Map Reduce, you're using EC2 machines) and send part of the data to each of the machines. MapReduce gets its name from two important functions used in functional programming: map, which takes a function and applies it to every item in the list, and reduce, which groups items in a list together based on some criteria. If you're not dealing with large amounts of data (and by large I mean it should be measured at least in gigabytes, if not terabytes or petabytes), it's probably not worth it to use map reduce because it has a lot of overhead moving stuff between machines- you'll be better off shoving the data into a database and using that. "
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3v26rs | in calculus, what do d, d/dx, dy/dx, etc. each exactly mean? | I have an alright understanding of derivatives and integrals but have never understood these notations at all. I've been getting by fine for a while but now I'm getting into u substitution which seems to require a much better understanding of this system than I have. Sometimes it seems like d/dx is saying "do the derivative of this" and other times it seems like it's part of the function and getting changed in all sort of ways. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v26rs/eli5_in_calculus_what_do_d_ddx_dydx_etc_each/ | {
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"**d** = an indefinitely small sliver of [whatever follows]\n\n**d/dx** = the derivative of [whatever follows], with respect to x\n\n**dy/dx** = the derivative of y with respect to x\n\nIt's true that, even though a derivative is really something you're doing to a function, that it sometimes gets treated as a variable in an equation, that can be moved around like any other variable. Why we can do this doesn't have any simple explanation that I've seen; mathematicians just do it because it produces useful results.",
"Since you've asked for formal understanding I'm going to be a lot less ELI5 than I usually would.\n\n-------------\n\nd/dx is an operation on functions f(x) (and note that we've specified the name of the variable). It takes in a differentiable function, and returns a function.\n\n-------\n\nd is an operation on functions f(x,y,z...). It takes in a function and returns its *total* derivative, which is a function of the form g(x,y,z,...) dx + h(x,y,z...) dy + k(x,y,z...) dz + ... Because this thing has these weird symbols \"dx\", \"dy\", and \"dz\" in it, this isn't really a function in the proper sense. It's something called a \"1 form\" - that is, a thing you could do a single integral over. Exactly what a 1-form is in the formal sense is very far out of ELI5 territory.\n\n-----\n\ndy/dx is the result of applying the operation d/dx to the function y(x).",
"Are you saying that you understand f(x), f'(x), f''(x) notation, but mess up when you have to integrate or differentiate with the d/dx notation? Or is it some more abstract issue you have?\n\nThe original reason why we had f'(x) and dy/dx as two ways to express the same idea was that Newton and Leibniz independently figured out calculus.\n\nThe reason we keep both around is that f'(x) is cleaner, but dy/dx is much more useful. Two main reasons:\n\n1. You've memorized a bunch of shortcuts for differentiating polynomials, exponents, trigonometric functions, and so on, I'm sure. But when you are not just applying the shortcuts directly, but proving things directly or using multiple shortcuts in a coordinated way, it's really important to remember with respect to which unit you are differentiating/integrating.\n\n2. Let's say we have a function f(x, y, z). Call it the electrical force on a charged particle as it moves through some kind of three dimensional field. X, Y, and Z are left-right, up-down, back-forward. What does f'(x, y, z) mean? Not much. To know the rate of change of the force as the particle moves through the field, you need to ask \"as the particle moves *which way* through the field?\" df(.)/dx, df(.)/dy and df(.)/dz all have a clear meaning - the change as you move right, up, or back. It could be that moving one way increases the field, but moving the other way decreases it. The d/dx notation helps keep that clear."
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2q0qeb | why do some shows/movies specify that "the events and characters depicted in this [show] are fictitious." | "Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental."
Is it really necessary? I assume it has something to do with defamation, but is there a precedent? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q0qeb/eli5_why_do_some_showsmovies_specify_that_the/ | {
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"The film \"Rasputin and the Empress\" was the first major defamation case cited by wikipedia. In 1932 during the worst of the depression they paid over a million dollars to settle. The film was taken off the market to prevent further lawsuits. So many \"Law and Order\" episodes are based on real events that they would be sued repeatedly without the disclaimer protection. ",
"Because people on shows could share a name with someone in real life, and if for some reason they associated the behavior of the person on the show with the person in real life, they could sue for such defamation.\n\nThough it should be OBVIOUS that its a show...in some cases you never know if a case could be brought, and in doing so costs incurred to defend against such case (never mind damages). So you disclaim. Its cheaper, takes a few seconds, and covers your ass.\n\nSome shows do take \"current events\" or \"recent events\" and its obvious enough who they are depicting even though the names are changed, so again, you disclaim."
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a1488r | why did they jump from windows 8 to windows 10 and skip 9? | Is 9 like an unlucky number or something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1488r/eli5_why_did_they_jump_from_windows_8_to_windows/ | {
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"According to Microsoft: “Windows 10, because 7 8 9.”\n\n(Get it? Seven ate nine.)\n\n_URL_0_",
"One suggestion was that some old code used to check if the current OS is either Windows 95 or Windows 98 by checking whether the OS name starts with \"Windows 9\", so giving the new OS the name Windows 9 would break that code.\n\nAlternatively, this is pure marketing, just like Apple jumped from iPhone 8 to iPhone X. Microsoft announced that Windows 10 is the \"last version\" of Windows, i.e. they're just planning to keep updating it instead of releasing Windows 11 (or something like that) in a few years, so they chose a convenient name.",
"It's possible that a lot of software simply looked at the OS name to figure compatibilities and whatnot.\nI believe the issues arose when they realised that rather than looking for \"Windows 95\" or \"Windows 98\"… they looked to see if it started with \"Windows 9\".\nSkipping 9 and going straight to 10 negates this issue.\nSource: _URL_0_",
"The number 9 is quite an unlucky/cursed number in East asia, both having slightly different but still negative connotations in China and Japan. With a huge Asian market, Microsoft doesn't want to miss out on a mass amount of sales just because of a superstition so they skipped 9. The exact same reason there isn't an iPhone 9",
"tl;dr: psychology and marketing\n\nReal reason is most likely to streamline their brand across the board. OneDrive, XBox One, Windows 10, ect.\n\nThey probably used 10 as calling it Windows One would be very confusing as it already exists :)\n\n10 fits much better in that list of services than 9. Also they wanted to make it Windows 10 simply not look like a new Windows but THE Windows. They currently have no plans to release a new operating system and they'll continue expanding Windows 10. If they used 9 you'd be more likely to assume that they'll release a new version in a couple of years.",
"Windows 95, 98 and 98 v2 are often collectively referred to as Windows 9x so that could have caused confusion. No idea whether that entered the mix though.",
"There was some speculation that some very, very bad programmers might check for the version of Windows in extremely stupid ways.\n\nThe fear was that someone might have coded to check weather the OS was called something starting with \"Windows 9\" and only allow the program to install or run if it wasn't. (to check if it was \"Windows 95\" or \"Windows 98\" or \"Windows 98SE\")\n\nThat would of course be a totally stupid thing to program and I have never heard of any software actually doing so, but a lot of stupid people have written a lot of stupid code for Windows, so who knows.\n\nA more likely explanation is that there was no technical reason for skipping the number but just a marketing reason.\n\nMicrosoft was also around the time renaming many of their products with \"One\" in the name and it has also be speculated that they kept from extending that to their OS to avoid similar confusion. 10 at least is clearly more than 7 or 8."
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"https://www.pcworld.com/article/2690724/why-windows-10-isnt-named-9-windows-95-legacy-code.html"
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4o3dj4 | how did this comic book hero craze start? it seems like there have been 4-5 movies per year since the 2010s began | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o3dj4/eli5_how_did_this_comic_book_hero_craze_start_it/ | {
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"X-men in 2000 was judged as a commercial success as were its follow up films. This prompted Marvel to make the Spiderman series, which was also pretty successful. These were the films that really kicked off the modern craze.",
"It's worth adding to the other answers on here that we've also hit a generational shift. All the kids that grew up in the days of comic books... are now the adults with the power and money to make movies. So obviously they make movies about the things they love.\n\nOver the next couple decades we'll see a similar growth in the gaming-movie world as the generations that grew up playing video games come to power.",
"Although Superman and Batman came before it, it was really X-Men in 2000 that launched the current comic book hero craze. Batman and Robin was so terrible it nearly killed the comic book genre. But between Bryan Singer and an all star cast, X-Men proved that comic book movies could be money makers. Sony followed up in 2002 with Spiderman which was a HUGE movie, breaking many records with how much money it made. Both movies led to sequels and comic book movies had been brought upon us! Unfortunately, this led to Catwoman and Daredevil which were commercial failures and almost killed the genre - but Chris Nolan brought us Batman Begins which was able to revive Batman and superheroes as a whole. This also led to a new direction, where superhero movies would be more \"gritty\" and realistic because Batman Begins and its sequels were so successful.\n\nIn 2008, Marvel had made enough licensing money from movies (Sony made Marvel's Spiderman, Fox made Marvel's X-Men and Fantastic Four, etc.), that they decided to create their own movie studio, and released Iron Man. With Robert Downey Junior's charisma, the movie was a huge success, and let Marvel put down the first tentpole in what would become the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and the Avengers. It's interesting that Iron Man has become such a huge success, because Iron Man was considered a B-list comic book hero, but Marvel had already sold off the rights to their A-list heroes (Spiderman, X-men, Fantastic Four, etc.), but now Iron Man is a household name.\n\nSo, to sum up:\n2000-2002: X-men and Spiderman show that comic book movies can make bank\n\n2003-2004: Daredevil and Catwoman almost kill comic book movies\n\n2005: Batman Begins shows comic movies can be good, but also dark and realistic\n\n2008: Marvel creates own film studio, bets it all on Robert Downey Junior and wins big, leading to entire cinematic universe with 13 movies and counting."
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3zh2pe | what is going on when a server (such as the playstation network) "goes down"? and what exactly are they doing when they're fixing it? | The playstation network is down and it's cold out and well, I'm curious: What exactly is happening when a server is down or "hacked" and what are they physically doing inside the computer (or internet, I'm sorry if this is a stupid way to word it) to fix that issue? Thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zh2pe/eli5_what_is_going_on_when_a_server_such_as_the/ | {
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"Typically, they have installed some new software on their computers, and it didn't work right. The quick fix is to put the old software back and restart it, while they work on correcting the new version.\n\nSometimes, there has been a physical problem like a power outage or a cut cable. Then they have to send a work crew to fix it, or connect to an alternate.",
"Imagine your playstation is a phone, and the \"server\" is like your friends phone. You want to call your friend to play a game of 20 questions, and you call, but they don't pick up. They might not pick up for a bunch of reasons, like \n* they're sleeping (planned maintenance outage) \n* their phone battery died (unplanned maintenance outage) \n* they dropped the phone in a pool (hardware problem) \n* some one stole their phone and is using it to do bad things (hackers).\n\n",
"If you have only a very basic understanding of computers stick to /u/AlienBloodMusic 's explanation if you want to get a bit more technical read on...\n\nGenerally speaking a company such as Sony will have multiple servers with two aims. \"Redundancy\" (if one stops working there's another one to take it's place) and \"Load Balancing\" (spreading the effort between them). The number of servers is generally dictated by the number of users, importance of the service being provided and budget (as well as a couple of other things). In Sony's case all three of these factors are large so they will have a ton of servers.\n\nWhen your console cannot contact sony's servers it's not because one server is down.... It's because every single server is down. Now some will say that this is for something like an upgrade or maintenance but this is a very amateurish approach for Sony to take. You don't simply switch them all off and upgrade them all at once. An upgrade would be done one server at a time or at least in batches to keep the continuity of service.\n\nSo what other options are there? Well first off there's the possibility of power failures, but again you would feel sufficient redundancy in terms of back up generators or separate power grids would be in place here, so i doubt this would be the case. Then you've got the environmental factors (flooding, ambient temperature and broken air-con melting the servers etc) but this would cause vast amounts of damage and would likely take down PSN for a very long time. Again i doubt this would be the case.\n\nSo the other main option is that they've been \"hacked\" as you said. well actually hacking itself would be unlikely to take down servers. Hacking is more of a gaining access to (a bit like the N Koreans did to sony when they did that film about killing KJU) places where you should not have access kinda thing... its the mere picking the lock of the door. Once you are in the front door it would be possible attack the servers by planting viruses that could cause hosts (the hardware that contains the servers) to shut down. Or maybe even getting into the front porch (i.e not even hacking the servers) would be enough to mess about with the load balancers causing the servers to crash (i'll explain that in a min) in a kind of point and shoot fashion by overriding the load balancer's normal functionality to point at one server at a time.\n\nThe final and probably most likely option is the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. This is where a group of computers (probably in the order of millions for it to be big enough to take down PSN) that have had a silent virus installed on them to make them operable by the \"hackers\" (called a botnet) start sending large amounts of packets to Sony's servers (think of a packet as a unit of work for a server). \n\nNow, lets say one of sony's servers can handle 1 packet a second (just for ease of explanation) and it has 10 servers behind a load balancer (the destination for the packets). This means that 10 packet per second can be handled. so what happens when the load balancer receives 20 packets per second for a prolonged period of time... well each server would receive 2 packets per second... one of which would be processed and the other would be put into a \"buffer\". A buffer is like a packet waiting room. The problem is that there are only a limited number of seats in the waiting room. so lets say there was enough buffer space for 100 packets on a server, at the example rate a sever would be able to cope for 100 seconds before its buffer ran out of room. \n\nOnce it runs out of buffer space the server will basically stop working and shut down to protect itself (similar to how humans pass out under too much stress) now obviously once one server dies the 20 packets per second have to be split between 9 servers not 10 which further exasperates the problem providing a kind of domino effect.\n\nIn terms of \"fixing\" a DDoS attack thats not really possible... there are ways you can try to slow the flow of packets by either blacklisting certain IP's that continuously send suspect packets or work out what type of packet is causing the increase flow and destroying those packets before they reach the servers. But basically really all they can do is turn off the servers to prevent any damage (e.g overheating), tell everyone they're doing \"maintenance\" (*cough* Bullshit *cough*) and sit it out.\n\nThe longest successful DDoS I saw when doing my BSc. dissertation was something like 21 days so only 20 more to go ;)\n"
]
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[],
[],
[]
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|
btcdvc | if the point at which water changes states from liquid to gas is 100°c, how then, when you spill water on a table or elsewhere, does it eventually (and relatively quickly) become evaporated in ~21°c temperatures? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btcdvc/eli5_if_the_point_at_which_water_changes_states/ | {
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"text": [
"So boiling happens at points in the water where the water reaches 100C and has enough energy to change state. Evaporation happens at the surface of a volume of water. Random movement of the water molecules occasionally impart enough energy into a molecule of water that it can escape the bonds of the water around it and move into the air. Water evaporates more slowly in humid weather because the partial pressure of water in the air is higher while boiling will happen regardless of humidity.",
"You misconceive the idea of a boiling point. It is not the point where a liquid changes phase from liquid to gaseous, it is the point where the pressure of particles changing phase from liquid to gaseous becomes greater than the ambient pressure, hence large bubbles of gas start forming in the liquid, it boils.\n\nTemperature can be conceived as an average energy of all the particles (of the liquid in this case), some have more, some have less - some have enough to change phase from liquid to gaseous. The lower the temperature the lower this average energy and hence less particles evaporate, the higher it is the more particles evaporate (which is why if you heat water on the stove it starts to steam long before it reaches 100°C). This also has the side effect that liquids cool down when some of it evaporates since the evaporating particles are the ones with higher energies and therefore the average energy (=temperature) of the leftover liquid particles becomes lower."
]
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[],
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||
3g4xwk | how does a computer calculate 2 + 2 = 4? | What exactly is the engineering/processing that's going on in order to calculate that value? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g4xwk/eli5_how_does_a_computer_calculate_2_2_4/ | {
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"text": [
"Computers work in binary.\n\nThe binary equivalent of 2 is 10, and the binary equivalent of 4 is 100.\n\nWe can line up binary numbers underneath each other and add them up just like normal decimal numbers:\n\n 10\n + 10\n ---\n 100\n\nSo, how does the computer add these numbers up?\n\nWell, first of all, we have to combine transistors - tiny little electrical switches - into logic gates - simple circuits which can tell whether each of its two inputs are 1 (high voltage) or 0 (low voltage), and create an output that depends on the inputs. The two main logic gates are AND (which produces a 1 at the output if both of its inputs are 1) and OR (which produces a 1 at the output if either of its inputs are 1). A NOT gate has only one input - if the input is 1, it outputs 0; if the input is 0, it outputs 1.\n\nNow, we combine these logic gates together to make what's known as an adder circuit. To design your adder circuit, you make a table of all the possible inputs, and what output you want.\n\nSo, just like decimal, when we add binary numbers we start on the right hand side. The right hand digit of the result comes from this table:\n\n A B O\n\n 0 0 0\n 0 1 1\n 1 0 1\n 1 1 0 (and carry 1 to the next column)\n\nWe could say, then, that the output is equal to: ((A OR B) AND NOT (A AND B)).\n\nAnd the carry bit, which gets carried to the next column just the same way you carry when you add decimal numbers, is equal to (A AND B).\n\nAnd that's it for the right-most digit!\n\nThe other digits are a little more complex because they have to add not only A and B, but they also have to take into account the carry bit from the previous digit. But the principle is exactly the same - write a logic table (which will have 8 rows, not 4, because of the carry bit), write logic statements that describe the output and the carry bit, then build these logic statements out of logic gates.\n\nAs you can see, there are several layers here. And that is how computers in general work - lots of layers, with a bit of extra complexity added at each layer.",
"Your computer's processor is made up of a series of transistors- electronic switches- that are wired together. If the switch receives a high voltage input (ok, it's not that high), it's flipped one way. If the switch receives a low voltage input, it's flipped the other. Using a handful of transistors, you can make what we call \"AND\" gates and \"OR\" gates. An AND gate outputs a high voltage only if both of its inputs (it has two) are high. An OR gate outputs high if at least one of its inputs is high. By combining these, we can define simple sets of rules for how the computer should act. \n\nComputers use binary math, where each digit only has two values (high/low, off/on, true/false, whatever you want to call it) instead of 10 like we normally do. So it can use those logic gates I mentioned earlier to define what to set each output digit based on the input digits (we call these digits \"bits\", short for \"binary digit\"). \n\nYou can see an example of a mechanical binary adder [here](_URL_0_), for a demonstration of how it can work using marbles and gravity."
]
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[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A"
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