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81t11x | what makes it difficult to cure varicose veins? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81t11x/eli5_what_makes_it_difficult_to_cure_varicose/ | {
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"I don’t know about “cure” but the operation to have them removed is actually not very complicated. ",
"It’s not very difficult nowadays. There’s an outpatient procedure that *essentially* just injects them with a saline solution to “widen” the vein and voila! Goodbye varicose veins!",
"It's difficult to cure varicose veins because they are a clinical manifestation or symptom of a more in depth process. Typically people with varicose veins suffer from some form of chronic venous insufficiency. The degree in severity varies greatly amongst different people. I will only mention the symptoms of varicose veins here. Don't know how interested you are in the topic but to understand a condition it's usually good to know the normal physiology/biology first. Makes understanding whats wrong and how to fix it easier. \n\nThe venous system has both a deep and superficial component. The superficial system are the veins that are for lack of words superficial. A good example is the saphenous vein. The deep veins are the ones that are deeper such as the femoral vein. So if we are talking about the leg. The superficial veins (saphenous) are connected to the deep veins (femoral) by communicating veins called perforators. So blood flows from the superficial veins to the deep veins via the perforator which then essentially returns the blood to the heart. This process is achieved by the use of valves on the veins and muscles in your legs. The deep veins are either within a muscle or surrounded by muscle. When you walk or move your leg the muscle contracts helping move blood from the superficial system to the deep and back into circulation. The valves on the veins prevent the back flow of blood. \n\nSo people with varicose veins have a problem with the superficial system. This can be due to a genetic problem which causes incompetent or poorly working valves. It can also be due to trauma that someone may have had to the vein. Trauma can result in a clot forming which essentially damages the valves. It can also be caused by venous hypertension which I won't go into further but essentially also causes valve damage. So because the valves don't work the vein dilates and becomes what we know as a varicose vein. \n\nNow treating that is quite simple. We can easily ablate the vein. Basically you thread a catheter that heats up to 120 celsius into the desired vein. It's a quick procedure. Another way is sclerotherapy. Basically injecting the vein which causes a clot and the vein to collapse. However, although treating these individual veins may look nice it doesn't prevent new varicose veins from forming. Because if you have crappy valves in other veins then the same may happen there. So it largely depends on how bad the venous insufficiency truly is. \n"
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8znesg | most over the counter pills (e.g. ibuprofen) have a recommended dose of at least 2 pills. if this is the case why don’t the medicine companies start producing pills with twice the dosage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8znesg/eli5_most_over_the_counter_pills_eg_ibuprofen/ | {
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"Some people may require 3 pills but 4 would be too much. So if they doubled the dosage they would have to cut a pill in half which isn’t ideal ",
"Because some people need or want a lower dose. Lets say you have only a mild headache, then you would only need or want to take one ibuprofen.",
"Because they are made for people 12 and up typically so think 80-100 lbs- 1 pill every 4-6 hours, 100+lbs can take 2 every 4-6 hours. ",
"There's a few good reasons:\n\n1. If you only want a half dose, it's easier to take one pill than to cut a pill in half\n2. If you want a stronger dose, you can take 3 or 4 (check the drug label first!) and vary the dosage more easily\n3. A stronger pill would be larger and harder to swallow. Many people would rather take 2 small pills than one giant pill. ",
"It’s so that it’s harder to overdose on them. If you have one pill that’s max strength, it’s easier to intentionally or accidentally take more and harm yourself. Plus sometimes you don’t need a full dose to feel better.",
"Im spanish and here paracetamol and ibuprofen go from 500mg to 1gr you can buy them nearly like chewingum for like 1€ and with no prescription, the 500mg ones are difficult to find normally it will be 650mg or 1gr so it was quite shocking for me when I moved to england to find out I had to take 2 or 3 pills at once :/ "
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48x2fr | why can't adware/pop-ups trick you into clicking them through the x button that closes the pop-up window? | What I mean by this: for example on an Android phone there are pop-ups and similar things in apps and browsers - is there a real risk of getting infected with adware by clicking the X button to close the window?
If not, why? Isn't there a way or method of linking something to a button that closes a window? Same question applies to Windows as well.
EDIT: mean*
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48x2fr/eli5_why_cant_adwarepopups_trick_you_into/ | {
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"I can't speak for Android, but on desktops the close button is part of the browser, which doesn't permit websites to modify its function for just that reason. Web content relies on the browser or plugin to execute it; if the browser doesn't support something, it won't happen. However, sneaky adware often includes its own button that simulates the one on the real window, hoping users will inadvertently click that.",
"This is why I just leave the site whenever an ad obscures the screen. You can assign anything you want to any element in the window. Maybe the browser can lock it out but there is nothing stopping the programmer from drawing an X and assigning anything he wants to it.",
"Ads are usually delivered by an ad network (such as Google ads). This ad network does want to increase ad clicks but if they did this in a fraudulent way then the value of those clicks would go down.\n\nSo if shops realized that only 1% of clicks resulted in a sale they would not be willing to pay as much for that ad placement.\n\nSo an ad network doesn't just want to increase clicks but also to increase the value of those clicks.\n\nThis means it is in the interest of the ad network to avoid false or fraudulent clicks since really it is only properly interested clicks that ultimately provide value to the ads.",
"There is fake X's, also fake download links. For instance I use _URL_0_ to stream movies/shows for free and it's littered with them. You learn to navigate around them.",
"The X button is a core value of application or program windows (visible computer windows, page windows, not specifically limited to 'Windows' the Microsoft OS), in the core operating system. \n\nAny button within the browser window can be coded to open additional pop-ups or ads, etc. But the window itself is not connected to any coding from the web developer that would appear in, say an Internet browser window. \n\nLike, Ebay or Amazon may have an extension tool that works with Chrome, but those extensions are under specific regulation as to what they can and can not do, such as alter your computer's operating system for instance. \n\nBasically, what you see on the page is designed by a the web developer, the person who administers the website you're viewing and the functionality that goes with it (often times multiple designers, developers, etc).\n\nThe operating system, and the tools such as your browser, are designed to connect you in some way, in this case, to the Internet. The tool itself is developed by the Software Company who made the OS you are using. Though web browsers can be made for competing software companies that make alternative operating systems, but I think you get that already. \n\nEdit: grammar, spelling ",
"Your web browser decides how to render web pages. At some point, the browser people decided that they would only render real \"x\" buttons to close the window, and they made it so that it would be impossible to write a web page so their browser's \"x\" would do anything but close the page.\n\nSleazebags get around that by trying to create their own special windows with their own \"x\" buttons, but its actually really hard to make those look *exactly* like the native browser bar. \n\nThe sleazebag has to write a special code for every web browser and operating system, and even then they are still missing a few key pieces of information to scale the button correctly."
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byprch | how hard would it be for the uk to just scrap its plans and stay in the eu? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/byprch/eli5_how_hard_would_it_be_for_the_uk_to_just/ | {
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"This is better in r/askeurope.",
"Easy. UK can just revoke their Article 50 declaration unilaterally, it doesn’t need anyone’s approval in any other country - the EU has already stated that.",
"If parliament agreed to do it, it would be very simple. Straight vote, revoke article 50, cancel the process.\n\nPolitically, it would be very fractious, probably political suicide for many MPs voting for it."
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dfinvs | how do people who still fly confederate flags justify their state(s) motivations in the american civil war? are they pro-slavery or do they see/promote the original issue as something different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dfinvs/eli5_how_do_people_who_still_fly_confederate/ | {
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"Most of the ones I have run into try to argue that the South's secession was a political move to assert their rights as a state, not about slavery. So they believe that flying the Confederate flag is making a statement about state's rights. I don't personally buy the idea though, since the states were pretty clear they were leaving because of the move to abolish slavery though.\n\nAlthough, I have met one individual that used some... let's say colorful language to claim that slavery was good for African Americans and the end of slavery was a joke. So I'm sure theres a few others that share similar views."
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2vf0zp | why is ground beef currently $5-$7 per pound in the us? | I was shopping the other day and noticed (we're not big beef eaters in my house) that ground beef ranged from $5-$7 a pound for regular old store brand stuff. That was just outrageous to me.
What happened to raise prices so dramatically? It seems like only a few months ago I was paying far less.
EDIT: I am seeking a new taco recipe. _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vf0zp/eli5why_is_ground_beef_currently_57_per_pound_in/ | {
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"Dought in the cattle breeding/feeding area for a few years greatly reduced their produced numbers.\n\nSupply/Demand=raised beef prices.",
"Cattle ranchers have yet to recover from a 2012 drought, and beef production is headed for a 22-year low, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.\n\nChicken has been the leading meat produced in America for the last two decades. The second spot may be overtaken this year by pork as beef production continued decline. Pork production could also hit a record high this year. ",
"i've heard that more and more people are eating chicken over beef, i would think this would decrease the price... hmm. ",
"I've started eating lean ground turkey. It's less than $3 a pound locally (Tampa Bay area).",
"I actually talked to somebody about this a couple of weeks ago, who had a ranch, and here's what he told me:\n\nRecent droughts reduced the carrying capacity of ranch land and increased the feed price for feedlots. A lot of animals ended up going to slaughter early, resulting in a temporarily larger supply of beef, and lower prices. But now there are fewer beef cattle, as herd size hasn't caught back up to their previously high numbers yet. Lowered supply relative to demand is driving up prices, both in stores and earlier in the chain (beef cattle sell for much higher prices now than they did previously). And the higher cost of animal feed is a factor, too.",
"Cut your beef burger with some pork sausage. It makes meatloaf and taco filling so much better. Works any time you cook hamburger meat well done."
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1qayqi | clarification regarding islamism and islamic fundamentalism ? | Hello everyone.
I'm a Finnish highschool student, and I am doing a presentation about **extremist-Islam**.
During my research I noticed that (atleast) most of the extremist-Islam groups are either Islamists or Fundamentalists, but I can't really distinguish core differences between the two.
If you can somehow tie your answer to extremist-Islam, it is greatly appreciated.
I also had trouble finding reliable sources of information considering my main topic (extremist-Islam), any tips are appreciated.
EDIT: Just to clarify my intentions;
I'm not trying to denigrate Islam or muslims in any way, I'm just interested in the radical muslims (don't know what term to use, don't shoot !) and trying to understand the whole concept better. My text may sound biased or contain misconceptions(inadvertently), but instead of downvoting an honest try to study, correct me :)
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36aeud | why isn't inpatient, rehab-style treatment for obesity more common? | Increasingly, I see the unhealthy behaviors associated with obesity (e.g. overeating, cravings for sugar) described in terms of addiction.
When someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol, outpatient treatment often isn't enough. Even if the addict has access to excellent outpatient care and support groups, he or she may still be surrounded by enablers and temptations at home and lack the ability to stay sober without an initial period of constant supervision and guidance. The same applies to eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Why don't we provide more opportunities like this for the obese?
Maybe the upfront treatment cost is a barrier, but they could save a LOT of money in the long run. Health insurance carriers might even be willing to cover them if they're proven successful. Another issue might be that obese individuals tend to have a long, slow decline in terms of health, whereas other addicts are more likely to hit a dramatic rock bottom earlier in life that motivates them to attend rehab - overdose, alcohol poisoning, loss of family and friends,
getting arrested, etc.
Please note I'm not referring to high-pressure, competitive, rapid weight loss-oriented programs like on The Biggest Loser. I'm thinking of a place that would take a hard line on portion control and permissible foods, but would be a safe, supportive environment that focuses on the psychological issues behind obesity. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36aeud/eli5_why_isnt_inpatient_rehabstyle_treatment_for/ | {
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"One thing that is a major difference is that a drug addict is trained in rehab to avoid drugs, people who do drugs, things of that nature. Obese people, though, they still have to eat, and can't escape junk food because they're always going to run into it. One reason why people on The Biggest Loser always gain the weight back is because, when they're taken out of a controlled environment and put back into real life, the bad habits come right back because they're not trained to make good choices in the context of their lives.",
"Because obesity is not seen as bad as it is. It is an addiction to food yes, but people will never admit to it. It's always 'genetics' or 'conditions' or something. It's never the fact that they eat too much. To themselves, they're eating same as everybody else but in reality they eat too much. Whether it is not having portion control or snacks that amount to an exorbitant amount of calories they are completely oblivious to the fact.\n\nAlso, and this will come out as rude, but no one on his right mind gets morbidly obese or just overweight enough that it affects their health/daily life. You have to come up with defense mechanisms and ways of thinking that make it ok. Overeating becomes something that makes you feel good, but eventually it's one of the few things that does, so if they don't overeat/eat unhealthy they feel horrible because they don't know how else to face life.\n\ntl;dr: obesity is an addiction/disorder that should have inpatient rehab style treatment. fatties would never go to one unless forced. no one forces them. they stay fat."
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2ar2xr | why do i remember some of my earliest memories from a "3rd person" perspective? | One of my Earliest memories is sitting in the backseat of my car, in a baby seat. I was only 1 year old, almost 2. I was trying to lean over and look into a box that my 3 year old sister was holding. Inside was my cat.(Alive; just a kitten, we'd just adopted her). Whenever I remember this, I vaguely remember looking over from a normal, 1st person perspective. But I can also remember some sort of a 3rd person angle. In this vision, I can see the back of my head through the car window looking at the side of the car. With this I've been able to recognize the road we were on too. I have a few more memories like this too. Can anyone explain? Is it just my brain piecing bits of information, making a vision for me to better identify the situation? Reddit, ELI5.
EDIT: Changed the Age. I was almost 2. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ar2xr/eli5_why_do_i_remember_some_of_my_earliest/ | {
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"A lot of early childhood memories are a conglomerate of pictures you've seen and stories you've been told to flesh out actual memories of a time during which you didn't really have language skills or enough understanding to really make sense out of it all.",
"I read somewhere else (sorry, I can't remember a source, but hopefully someone will confirm) that when we recall something, we actually remember remembering. So that old memories are sort of 'rewritten' and modified each time we recall them. \n\nSo you can vaguely remember the first person looking over, but you remember more clearly *that* you remember where you were sitting, the stretch of road you were on. You remember the fact that you remember sitting in a babyseat trying to look over, and I guess that's why your perception has kind of moved from the first person original experience, to a sort of 3rd person narrator of the experience. ",
"Sorry, please do not give anecdotes as top-level comments. Top-level space is reserved for explanations for the OP, not for your own personal stories.",
"Well, this has been answered by everyone else but I'm going to compile the relevant parts into a neat little answer.\n\n1) Memories do not work like a recording. They are continuous reconstructions. This means that memory is a lot more imperfect than any of us give credit for. Memories change over time as we introduce more and more errors into our reconstructions. Information that is learned later can be introduced and integrated. This is the false memory phenomenon. \n\n2) If you think about it, your memories get really sketchy the further back you go. We don't automatically know how to store and retrieve long term memories. The method that we use changes and evolves as we develop. So a lot of our earliest memories are lost or confused. People telling us about these stories about what happened gets integrated and, as such, their point of view gets mixed in.\n\n3) Kids make funny mental connections. They don't have the experience that older people do. They sometimes have problems separating what they imagine and what is really happening because, well, the same areas of the brain can be activated when you are imagining seeing something versus actually seeing it. You hear stories about this all the time where a kid remembers playing with a toy train but finds out it was really just a block of wood he or she pretended was a train. \n\nSo, in a nutshell, something like this probably took place.\n\nYou were too young to really make good permanent memories. As I said, even good permanent memories work more like placeholders for a few highlights and we fill in details later. So, for something to make a real impression on you then and for you to think back on it enough times for it to create a fairly solid link for you to reconstruct it, it had to be something very shocking and/or interesting. Like a kitten.\n\nSome of the events probably happened more or less like you recall. Some events get strengthened. You may have seen the baby seat again at a later date and have some vague impressions of riding in it. But now that you have the seat in front of you, you can fill out some details of what it was like. The car was probably around later so you can fill in those details. Your sister is still around, the cat, and there are photos to help establish some of those details. You can really strengthen some of these parts. Other parts? Well, that gets harder. \n\nThis is where false memory, or confabulation, starts becoming a problem. You have probably talked about this memory several times with your parents. You may not remember it because, again, childhood memories are terrible. They may not even remember most of these talks because children babble at you daily for years and it is hard to recall every trivial conversation. \n\n\"We get cat. Cat in box,\" may have been significant to a 2 year old but, to an adult, it just sounds like they are telling you what they see right now.\n\nAs you talked to other people, your parents or whoever, you try to fill in some of the missing details. You have probably been told about bits and pieces of this from the perspective of your parents (or whoever was driving) that were told to you or someone else. Or the perspective of your sister who was older and had slightly more defined memories and a working verbal ability.\n\nBut, even without these elements, the reconstruction process can cause you to add in details that you don't realize as you try to make sense of some of these impressions. \n\nImagine there are two closely spaced vague memories. I realize the whole event seems continuous now but part of that is you keep going back to the memory and strengthening associations. I'm talking about when you were an actual baby and memories were a haphazard process.\n\nOne event is realizing there is a box in your sister's lap and you are curious about it. The other event is something is holding you back as you look at a kitten. \n\nAs you later try to fill in the gaps you know there was a car seat. Must have been the buckles that held you back. You know that the box was over there and you had to transition from point A to point B to see into it. That movement itself wasn't that significant originally so now you have to reconstruct it. So, what do you do. Well, there are probably a bunch of pictures of you as a baby and you have a notion of what you look like so when you filled in the detail of \"this head must have moved from here to here\" you started confusing in images of the head you've seen from the outside, one you already associated with the person that was that age, with the memory you are trying to repair.\n\nIt's screwy but we still do this sort of stuff as an adult. We just get better at storing genuine information. But it still happens. Experiments have been done where they have done things such as take a real photo from a family's vacation to Disney World and digitally added them posing with Bugs Bunny. They slip the picture back in with the family and talk to them later and they start recalling meeting Bugs Bunny there. They'll have really vivid details even though it obviously makes no sense that they should see someone wearing that particular costume there. \n\nTLDR: Memory is highly imperfect. Older memories have more time to get more errors that are introduced at a later time mixed in and associated with the real thing. Since we are constantly rebuilding and associating our memories we are really terrible at figuring out which parts are real and which parts are invented. "
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1n8i4q | do other higher order animals know humans are at the top of the food-chain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n8i4q/eli5_do_other_higher_order_animals_know_humans/ | {
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"No. That's why we humans still get eaten, bitten, trampled, gored, butted, stung... ",
"The 5\" grass hopper that jumped on me at work and made me flinch like a sissy and scream \"fuck!\" certainly doesn't, and probly wont believe it if you told him. ",
"We made the \"top\" they have no concept of \"top\"...just, \"Yea I could totally take that bitch down\" is the main view of \"top\" or not.",
"Take away the technology and we're suddenly not at the top any more. Near the top, certainly, but defenseless against other large predators. ",
"No, they do not see us on top of the food chain. But they can make a good guess our relative threat level. If say a lion sees a human, it will see it is itself is bigger then the human and that the human does not have horns like a gazelle, so it will attack the human. A cat on the other hand sees that human is bigger then itself so it will not attack. Now if the lion attacks the human and gets shot then it will recognize that humans are dangerous and not attack one again. Now if the cat finds a weak human who is sick and attacks and kills it it may also begin to hunt normal humans. Most animals would view us as say a weirdly shaped deer until after they try to attack us, which is when they will learn of our weaponry and begin to view humans at a higher threat level.",
"we think we are at the top, but do we really know that?\n\nwhat if Mass Effect is right? there is an alien race that waits for species like ours to grow to a certain size and then harvests us every x thousand years.\n\nor... bacteria are actually above us, we're just their temporary vessels. hail our bacteria overlords!\n",
"I think some animals in Africa are, in the sense that they seem scared of humans. Rhinos and elephants for example are shy and instinctively move away from or get angry at humans. This is despite the fact that they are bigger and, on an individual level, we pose no threat to them.\n\nI think this is because the large animals in Africa evolved with humans, so they have evolved to be scared of us. We come in groups to hunt them, so to survive they had to learn to avoid us.\n\nAs humans spread to other continents, they met large animals with no such instincts (animals which, due to their size, had nothing to fear from anything as small as us). And they all promptly went extinct. \n\nBut I'm guessing by \"higher order\" you mean like chimps and dolphins, and by \"know\" you mean something more conscious. ",
"Can I just say, that in my experience with mammal evolution in the midwest, mostly in Wisconsin, species have and are evolving rapidly in their mental capacity and understanding of life with humans.\n\nA lot of species of birds and mammals understand road signs and I believe some research in Canada found raccoons were reading street names as a way to navigate.\n\nI don't have a lot of evidence for it, but I believe mammals and birds are much more aware of what and who we are than we usually think. However they are just incapable of abstraction and seeing the big picture - however I feel many humans sometimes lack this ability as well. They don't see us as 'rulers' or 'king' of the food chain, but we are a major environmental factor for them, and each species has their own social structure and interpretation for their worlds."
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3svvjx | how did societies that mistreated slaves get into a mindset where their slaves were inferior/not humans? | I am just wondering how it could have spread and who started it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3svvjx/eli5_how_did_societies_that_mistreated_slaves_get/ | {
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"Suppose you're Jose Conquistador, and you've just arrived in what is now Mexico. You meet natives, who seem totally unaware of even the basics of civilized culture - their women go about with breasts uncovered, they cannot understand any known language, they even lack knowledge of the one true God! Truly, they must be a terribly primitive people.\n\nIt's easy to interpret \"different culture\" as \"worse culture\", basically. It probably didn't help that, because of superior military technology, Europeans had little trouble kicking pretty much everybody elses' asses during the colonial era - when a hundred of your guys can beat ten thousand of theirs, it's hard not to feel superior *as people* and not just in tech (even if the fight was far from fair to begin with).",
"The greek culture regarded everyone else as inferior ,the romans considered all non romans as barbarians. All cultures suffer from an ethnocentric vision of the world considering what is outside their culture as inferior and barbaric",
"It was a very gradual process.\n\nStarting in the late middle ages, all people were either nobles or 'serfs', which were almost like slaves. Serfs had to work the land in a job they were given, they weren't allowed to move, and they had to obey any order they were given.\n\nAfter the Reconquista, Spain and Portugal began to seek new lands, islands, and gold. One of the territories that they conquered, Mali, had similar system, but with the added ability to buy and sell their slaves for money. Nevertheless, these slaves were still considered human - there's a ways to travel on this road yet.\n\nFinding laborers useful in the colonies, the Spanish and Portuguese were eager to find ever more. At the same time, church authorities were pressuring those governments to convert local populations, so a compromise was reached - \"Encomienda\". Under this system, locals were either recruited or (somewhat often) taken and entered into a contract period where they would provide labor in exchange for being taught Spanish and Catholocism.\n\nThis lead to an expansion of an economy throughout the Spanish and later French territories that relied heavily on large, replaceable worker populations that could be tied to the land. While this was happening though, new opportunities in the colonies were changing things at home. With the need for more people to move around and reach colonial holdings, Serfdom was abolished. People were allowed to freely move and work on whatever they could find.\n\nAs the Encomienda system reached it's natural conclusion with the conversion of almost all of Latin America, the transatlantic slave trade began it's rise to prominence. By this time, Europeans had gotten used to being free men, and the idea that their work was valued enough that they could be recruited from across the sea. They'd also gotten used to the idea that workers were indentured and illiterate and being 'saved' by their work accommodations.\n\nThese beliefs perpetuated the myths that slavery was to the benefit of the slaves, who were not as good as the European. As Europe used it's newfound wealth and access to resources and (most importantly) sudden surge in unfilled work positions to develop new technologies, the opinion that Christianity made Europeans better was gradually replaced with the opinion that technology did - that somehow, the steam engine and the railroad and the firearm were a product not of colonial wealth, but superior ingenuity.\n\nFor many, this belief of cultural superiority still survives. We've only just begun, as a people, to look back on our history and realize that we didn't succeed because we were better than others, but because we were wealthier, and luckier, and leveraged those well.\n\n",
"It didn't have to 'spread' - it's the default state of human thought. The idea of humans being *equal* was invented a few hundred years ago by some theologians.\n\nIf you stop to think about it a moment, it makes a lot of sense. Just look at your peer group. Some will be smarter. Some will be more athletic. Some will make more money. Even within a very narrow category of people that most outsiders would describe as relatively homogenous, you can perceive all sorts of inequalities. If you weren't told ahead of time that all men are created equal, you'd probably scoff at the notion.",
"Actually it was sort of the other way around.\n\nSlavery has been with us since the dawn of civilization if not before.\n\nIt was the realization that this was not right that came later.\n\nThe idea that some stranger or outsider outside your own tribe might be just as worthy as you are is something that took a while to take hold.\n\nIt didn't help that society was rarely divided into slaves and slave-owners but often had many more layers, which allowed people to think that if they had to listen to their master/ruler who was above them, then the people beneath them should similarly have to listen to them.\n\nThe idea that everyone is equal and equally deserving of the same rights is still something very new and recent and it still hasn't caught on everywhere in the world and even in places where it has people sometimes fall back on the old way of thinking.\n",
"The subjugation of human beings may seem outlandish and appalling in modern times. But many of the things we do in modern times will seem outlandish and appalling hundreds of years from now.\n\nIn the early history of humanity, people began progressing in the creation of language, commerce, technology, farming, taming animals, etc. As well as conflict with one another. Not simply just holding people against their will and forcing them to do things. Technology isn't as it was back them, and isn't what it will be in the future.\n\nBack then, fuel wasn't the fuel of civilization. People were the fuel of civilization. As civilization began to evolve, more and more man power became a requirement to meet the whims of those in power. Therefore, they came up with many means and justifications to subjugate humans for the purpose of labor. If somebody committed a crime, slavery could be there punishment. If somebody was in debt, slavery could be a way to repay debts. Humans structured themselves into hierarchies. Eventually, you could be born a slave. A world that suffers from cognitive dissonance has no limit in its forms of ignorance. Including mindsets of humans, slaves, as less then humans. Or as animals or beats.\n\nSlavery went from centuries of being a standard aspect of human life, and legal throughout common law. A slave might have even argued with you if you tried to tell him that slavery was wrong, and that he should be free. As technology began to evolve, to less and less of a social norm. And eventually outright unacceptable as a social norm. Thank you technology.\n\nFor many slaves, it was a living. Better to be a slave with food, shelter, and some semblance of comfort than to be homeless and hungry. Even as technology evolves, humans still have to catch up in terms of our own systematic structuring of civilization. We get upset, and see technology as if replacing our jobs. Humans don't understand that the purpose of technology isn't to replace your job in a bad sense. It's mean to do your job for you.\n\nWhereas 100 workers might have been required to manufacture a certain amount of product. Technology allows for a factory of machines to create a larger output in less time with 10 workers. Those 100 workers are out of work, but don't have access to the benefits of the technology that is doing their job for them. It's not that technology stole their job. It's that society is still far from acclimating to the level of wealth distribution that modern and advancing technologies can bring.\n\nSo from a slave society that evolved in a way that treated human beings like animals. To a society that operates out of a dependency on labor in exchange for income. And eventually into a society where more and more technology can take over duties allowing humankind an increased standard of living with decreased work hours. This is a long way off, not because of technology. The technology has been around for a long time. And in fact, if humanity had gone in a different direction from the start, a much higher level of technology and better civilization could have arisen centuries ago.\n\nThe reason why it's a long way off is because society is still stuck in the same patterns. And therefore hasn't acclimated to the level of technology it created since the industrial revolution. The outright slavery, owning, buying, selling of human beings is past. But humanity is still stuck on mindsets that might take a pretty long time before a global revolution into a better civilization is here."
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drlov7 | how does dial-up internet work and what makes modern internet technology better than dial-up? | I mean, I remember the days of AOL. And I know you had some sort of phone connection required to actually connect to the internet and be able to browse the web. But I don't exactly know the nitty gritty specifics of how it all worked and how we use modern internet technologies today. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drlov7/eli5_how_does_dialup_internet_work_and_what_makes/ | {
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"Your modem literally started a phone call to a set number that had the ISP's hardware listening, then started whistling digital data in the audio frequency range. This is why the internet went down if somebody in the house picked up the phone in some setups. The audio frequency range can only support a painfully slow rate of data transfer, so later on the digital data got decoupled from the phone frequencies (often still on the same wire but at 1000 times larger frequencies so the signals are easy to separate from each other at the endpoints) and the phone numbers system.",
"Imagine a normal conversation on the phone in English \"how are you doing. good ,how about you\". computers don't talk in English they use binary \"0110100001101001\" now pick a tone, any tone that you can hear to represent both 1 and 0. these are the noises you can hear on a dial up hone connection. the reason we use tones we can hear like that is because the phone system only supported a few frequencies that you could hear (this is why phone calls sound so bad) broadband expanded this phone system so you could use much higher frequencies that we couldn't hear on the phone it also uses more frequencies so we can send more of those 1 and 0 noises at the same time. Nowadays we use even better technology like fiber optic cable which basically does the same thing except it uses light instead of electricity. and because of its higher frequency we can send more 1s and 0s in a shorter amount of time on many more frequencies at the same time."
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432r0i | what is that weird tingling feeling in my body after waking up from a nightmare? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/432r0i/eli5_what_is_that_weird_tingling_feeling_in_my/ | {
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"It's very similar to a [panic attack](_URL_0_). Basically it's your body's natural \"fight or flight\" response. "
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nqsfa | why we as humans tend to look fondly back at history? | I understand the notion of wanting to have been there, seen it, done it and been a part of the impact. But, I am seeing more frequently a sense of my generation saying "I love the 60's, it was such a wonderful time." I get it but I'm not sure why it is. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nqsfa/eli5_why_we_as_humans_tend_to_look_fondly_back_at/ | {
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"Because the past is safer than the present and they had enough time to rationalize whatever memory into something greater than reality, associated with collective consciousness regarding some decades as the \"good times\"? ",
"Charlie Chaplin once said **Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.**\n\nNow is limited to our own experiences and it's the close up. Many perspectives are available about the past and we can digest it at our leisure making it easier to focus on the parts we like about it.\n\nTaking the 60s example, they weren't really a wonderful time. It was a time of social injustice, war and political upheaval. A sitting US President was assassinated after all, not to mention the US was under apartheid. But looking back, there was great art, music and social movements happening in response to all of that, so those are our long-shot.",
"History graduate's simple answer: \n\nBecause history is in the past and people don't like remembering mistakes they've made and problems that have been worked out (or ignored), we tend to look back on history as if it was all good, or at least better than it actually was, and definitely better than things are now. It's simple escapism (wanting to be away from the situation you're in now). \n\nBecause you're intimately familiar with what is going on around you, but (at best) have a vague recollection of the past, you're going to automatically assume that things which you're less familiar with were easier, unless you have a very strong impression that they're not (no one, for instance, would suggest that the 1940s during the War was easier than now, but many people might think that the 1980s, which was as economically difficult as now, was better because their impression of it is nowhere near as solidly formed).\n\nNot the best explanation for a 5 year old, but still relatively dumbed down from the theoretical explanation I could give you :P",
"Because the past is safer than the present and they had enough time to rationalize whatever memory into something greater than reality, associated with collective consciousness regarding some decades as the \"good times\"? ",
"Charlie Chaplin once said **Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.**\n\nNow is limited to our own experiences and it's the close up. Many perspectives are available about the past and we can digest it at our leisure making it easier to focus on the parts we like about it.\n\nTaking the 60s example, they weren't really a wonderful time. It was a time of social injustice, war and political upheaval. A sitting US President was assassinated after all, not to mention the US was under apartheid. But looking back, there was great art, music and social movements happening in response to all of that, so those are our long-shot.",
"History graduate's simple answer: \n\nBecause history is in the past and people don't like remembering mistakes they've made and problems that have been worked out (or ignored), we tend to look back on history as if it was all good, or at least better than it actually was, and definitely better than things are now. It's simple escapism (wanting to be away from the situation you're in now). \n\nBecause you're intimately familiar with what is going on around you, but (at best) have a vague recollection of the past, you're going to automatically assume that things which you're less familiar with were easier, unless you have a very strong impression that they're not (no one, for instance, would suggest that the 1940s during the War was easier than now, but many people might think that the 1980s, which was as economically difficult as now, was better because their impression of it is nowhere near as solidly formed).\n\nNot the best explanation for a 5 year old, but still relatively dumbed down from the theoretical explanation I could give you :P"
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fyozny | america's wealth gap | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fyozny/eli5_americas_wealth_gap/ | {
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"Really low minimum wages across the board, crippling student debt, crippling privatized medicine system, and no income cap on executives of private companies which enables them to earn hundreds of percentage points more than the lowest paid employee in their company.",
"Has there ever NOT been a gap? I don't think the gap these days is worse than the age of industrialists/robber-barons. \n\nBut essentially it's technology. The robber barons made their first millions by creating factories and industry and processes that previously didn't exist. They rode the industrial revolution to the top of the pile. (and then stomped on anyone trying to climb up their with them). These days we've gone through the computer revolution, the Internet revolution, the smartphone revolution, and are arguably on the cusp of an AI revolution. Each of those brought with it better ways of doing things. Instead of an office building's mail clerk picking up an envelop from the 3rd floor, bringing it to a mail room, sorting it, putting it on a cart, bringing it up to the 6th floor, and putting it into an in-box... now we have an email server (being run with far fewer IT staff) sending TCP packets to someone's phone. That sort of better method earns extra money for the inventor and the company that can utalize it (but mostly the people who own both of those). Multiply that by ALL the little things that come with technological advancement and the rich are richer while the poor don't have anywhere near those gains.\n\nThat and the civil unrest that resulted from the robber barons has slowly died down over the years and unions are on their way out. \n\n(OYE, and for these sort of sociological questions, the difference between the average and the median are important!)"
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3zlaym | why is it so much more enjoyable to spend hours and hours doing repetitive tasks in a video game than it is at work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zlaym/eli5_why_is_it_so_much_more_enjoyable_to_spend/ | {
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"Usually video games have a reward system in place that you can easily track your progress and see a \"real\" reward for it in real time. If you grind more enemies, you get more points, new items, new stats, unlocks, etc. Numbers go up. Even on something like Minecraft, you may set out to simply dig a really big hole in the ground with no benefit other than having done it. However, you've set a goal and accomplished it, and that feels good.\n\nWork is often times you doing stuff you don't have a vested interest in. You also don't necessarily have incentive to do the work other than keeping your job and getting a paycheck.",
"Video games have much better reward schedules than real life activities - that is, they're designed to hit the \"you've accomplished something, you should feel good\" parts of your brain much more often than real work.\n\nThe other factor is that autonomy is important to enjoy work. You can literally walk up to somebody playing a video game, and tell them \"I will pay you $10 dollars an hour to do that\" and they will *immediately start enjoying it less*, just because they're not longer doing it just because they wanted to.",
"it does have to do with psychological rewards, but it also has to do with feeling that we are making choice. if somebody forced you to play a video game you had no interest in, it would be work.",
"Because it's what you want to do, because you benefit from it much faster, and you usually have a clear view of your \"progression. If I told you (a 5 year old) that I would give you a nickel for every toy you pick up off the floor at the end of the day, you'd have a pretty clean room. You want to do it (the key here also being that you don't *have* to do it or else you don't get a roof over your head), you get the payout almost immediately, and you can look at your toybox as it fills back up to see what you look forward to. \n\nThat's video games. Most \"work\" is the exact opposite of all of those things. You have to be there doing these repetitive things or else, you get paid bi-weekly, and there's not really any end in sight, especially if you work an hourly wage. \n\nThe incentive systems of video games vs. work is pretty skewed",
"Simply put, it's because no one's making you do it. \nI read a book by Derren Brown once that stated it like this:\nIf you were bored and had a pack of cards and a hat you could spend ages just trying to flick cards into the hat and time would pass quickly. If someone is making you do it, and you have to get so many cards in the hat every hour and you have to do it for so many hours a day, and get punished if you don't do well enough, that's work and is not enjoyable at all. ",
"Connection between effort and accomplishment is one of the biggest factors affecting a person's job satisfaction. When you cut and stack wood, you see the pile of wood at the end of the day. When you mow the lawn, you see the lawn looking better and the pile of grass clippings off to the side. When you work in an office, you're usually doing repetitive tasks but without seeing what is done with your work. As job satisfaction becomes more important to younger workers, we're seeing a lot of young people opting to start a business, work for a start-up, or take up skilled labor (such as brewing, distilling, wine making, cider making, farming, woodworking). \n\nGame designers learned a long time ago that in order to get you to keep playing, they had to make something that was at least a good skinner box. Neko Atsume (kitty collector) is a good example of a super-casual game that is a [Skinner Box](_URL_0_). Cats show up at random intervals based on what food and toys you have out in your yard, and you can take pictures of those cats and they'll bring you fish. The fish are used to buy more food and new toys which in turn help bring in other cats. Some cats are \"rare\" and so when one realizes that there's something to discover, one is compelled to check up on the game from time to time to try and see all of the cats and get more fish to unlock everything. Playing the game does not do anything except entertain the human need for a reward for something done, and it keeps one's attention by indicating there are more rewards to be obtained if one continues working for it. \n\nA short-term reward system is so effective that in the documentary Freakonomics there's an anecdote of someone teaching his daughter to use a training potty by offering skittles every time she used it. She was so enticed by the reward that she trained to use to training potty on demand in order to get more skittles. Getting a quick reward is in our nature, so companies can benefit from positive feedback loops. ",
"A new job is also fun for a little while.\n\nIf you had to get up earlier than you want, drive to an office then sit and play fallout every day for a year you'd be completely fed up of it.\n\nIf you get say 120-150 hours of play time out of a game before it becomes boring, that's only 3 weeks work.",
"I would say the video game tasks are things you WANT to do, so therefore you're more accepting to do it. Unless you very much enjoy your job, it would seem obvious why someone would find work tasks as \"boring\" or \"annoying\"\n\nIf I have to choose between dealing with people at my job and their sensitive money issues (I work at a CU with fraud) or playing my PS4 and working on gun challenges for BO3, I know what I'm picking.",
"at home you are allowed to stop any time you want. and you can assign yourself any task you want to accomplish.\n\nat work you have your task given to you that you must accomplish.",
"I think the simplest explanation is, regardless of what your job is, the fact I am on someone else's terms when I am there removes agency from me and diminishes my care. I'm working for someone else, unlike in a video game where it is for myself.\n\nAlso, the simple fact of being obligated to go to work makes me hate it. Even if it was an obligation to go eat dinner every day at the same time for X amount of hours, I would eventually hate **having** to do it. ",
"In addition to the psychological reward factors that others have stated, it is also a fact that most videogames place you in the role of an important person doing something meaningful, whereas at work you are just one schmuck out of 6,000,000,000 doing extremely trivial tasks just to pay for your car and spaghetti.",
"I wonder if you could see your paycheck deposited in real time if it would have the same effect. Like, for every widget you make, or every paper you fill out, a appropriated portion of your paycheck (equaling the total you receive every week or 2) was given to you. Like a per-action payment.",
"In videogames, you're doing the repetitive tasks **you** want to do. You can stop when you want. At work, you're doing the repetitive tasks **your boss** wants you to do. You can stop when your shift is over.",
"Although I love video games, that side of the answer has already been given.\n\nI think it is important to point out that many people see work as something that shouldn't be fun. If someone finds a way to enjoy doing their job well, they will generally get into trouble for it.\n\nIn many ways, at work, what is rewarded is the appearance of doing work, plus some random metric might be used as a goal. Work is often dreary by design.",
"Mainly because you aren't doing repetative tasks for hours in a video game. Games are designed to space rewards in a specific way and keep up with your skill aquisition. This is *really* difficult to do well, and even if it's done well, it won't work the same on every player. Many games get around this by rewarding the player more for taking on challenges that require greater skill.\n\nIf video games are an art form, the art isn't in the music, images, or storytelling, it's in how well the game hones in on your exact level of ability and challenges in just the right way to make you feel comfortable and skillful at the same time. The game simulates what it's like to be highly skilled and creates a flow state.\n\nAs an addendum, there is also a lot of \"gambling theory\" that goes into game design. The idea is to feed into addiction. These games aren't fun, though. They make you feel bad, even though you want to keep playing. This can also answer your question though - there's nthing addicting about repetative tasks at work. Now, if you were paid by the piece at a factory, that could be addicting. This is why salesmen often have commisions - the boss is trying to make selling addicting."
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kqtcy | why my heart beating faster during exercise is good for my heart but my heart beating faster on cocaine is bad. | Like the title says really, surely it's all good contraction for the muscles? I know there are other reasons why people shouldn't take cocaine. Also, I'm aware that not a lot of five year olds need to know about this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kqtcy/eli5_why_my_heart_beating_faster_during_exercise/ | {
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"Let's pretend your heart is a person. During exercise, when your heart beats, it's like it is out jogging. During cocaine use, when your heart beats, it is like it's jogging and pushing a shopping cart. This is because during exercise your blood vessels get wider to let more blood go through, but during cocaine use your blood vessels get smaller, making your heart have to work much harder to push blood through them.\n\nI know this is in ELI5, but just in case you want to read about it on a higher level:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCocaine's effects are pretty much analogous to the effects of the stress response in the top answer (i.e. tachycardia and vasoconstriction).\n\nEDIT: I decided to tack on some explanation because as I think about it more, the real issue isn't just blood pressure, it's tachycardia and arrhythmias. \n\nAnother big difference for your heart (still using the exercise analogy) is when you are exercise, therefore your heart is running, if your heart gets tired, it will tell you that it's tired of running and you can stop exercising. But when you are taking cocaine, it tells your heart to start running and even if your heart gets tired the cocaine will not let it stop.\n\nThe above explained in medical terms: During exercise, most of the time you will know when you need to stop and you can easily just stop exercising and allow your cardiovascular system to recover. During cocaine use, if your heart becomes tachycardic and then has an issue (e.g. coronary artery vasospasm or CHF) you can't slow it down and this is going to exacerbate the issue, often to the point of cardiac arrest.",
"The main reason is that your body has mechanisms in place to control heart rate while running, mainly fatigue. Once you hit an extreme level of fatigue and your heart is pumping like crazy, you'll stop running, which will allow your heart rate to come back down and recover.\n\nOn cocaine, if it's already in your system, then you have no way of bringing your heart rate down after it gets too high. This means it stays too high, which a 5 year old should be able to understand is a bad thing.\n\nIn addition, there are several other reasons, such as the additional benefits of exercise on body parts other than the heart, the circulatory effects (exercise enhances circulation along with increased heart rate, cocaine does the opposite), and the fact that cocaine does other bad things to the body.",
"As a 5 year old you should not be taking cocaine.",
"This reminds me of a similar question I've often asked: when you lift something heavy, people say \"don't lift with your back!\" — unless of course you're trying to strengthen your back, in which case it's OK. Same action, different result.",
"I want to know why a five year old is doing cocaine!?",
"Wow I made an ELI5 that was *exactly* the same as this one a couple weeks ago. ",
"Alright, lets say there are two boys: Timmy and Tommy. Timmy likes to work out while all Tommy does is drink energy drinks and sniffs caffeinated Pixie dust (like a certain drug). When Timmy works out is muscles are getting actively tired and they need oxygen fast. Do you know what carries oxygen? Blood does. And do you know what pumps blood? The heart. Well when timmy is working out blood needs to rush nearly every place in his body and a result over time his veins actually get bigger because of this. Because of this is heart beat gets lower because his veins are bigger, his lungs increase their capacity and efficiency as well. \n\nHowever when Tommy does pixie dust hes not working out: He just looking to get high. His heart is getting a workout but nothing else and as such lungs and veins remain the same size. As result when Tommy is off the pixie dust his heart rate does not lower like an athlete, it remains the same before he did the pixie dust. Tommy could work out however but there are many many bad side effects that will eventually prevent him from doing so. ",
"Does something similar happen with meth use? What about other amphetamines such as many ADD meds?",
"I exercised once.",
"Lemme take a crack at this. \n\nPretend that you run a grocery store (heart). You have a lot of customers (blood) on a busy day. Luckily you put extra people on cash registers (open blood vessels) so now you can get customers through more easily.\nThis is jogging.\n\nAnother day a hurricane is on its way and you have tons of customers coming in again, except you didn't see it coming and only have 2 or 3 open registers! Those lines are going to get filled up, the cashiers are going to have to work extra hard, they're bound to make a mistake here or there.\nThis is on cocaine.",
"Let's pretend your heart is a person. During exercise, when your heart beats, it's like it is out jogging. During cocaine use, when your heart beats, it is like it's jogging and pushing a shopping cart. This is because during exercise your blood vessels get wider to let more blood go through, but during cocaine use your blood vessels get smaller, making your heart have to work much harder to push blood through them.\n\nI know this is in ELI5, but just in case you want to read about it on a higher level:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCocaine's effects are pretty much analogous to the effects of the stress response in the top answer (i.e. tachycardia and vasoconstriction).\n\nEDIT: I decided to tack on some explanation because as I think about it more, the real issue isn't just blood pressure, it's tachycardia and arrhythmias. \n\nAnother big difference for your heart (still using the exercise analogy) is when you are exercise, therefore your heart is running, if your heart gets tired, it will tell you that it's tired of running and you can stop exercising. But when you are taking cocaine, it tells your heart to start running and even if your heart gets tired the cocaine will not let it stop.\n\nThe above explained in medical terms: During exercise, most of the time you will know when you need to stop and you can easily just stop exercising and allow your cardiovascular system to recover. During cocaine use, if your heart becomes tachycardic and then has an issue (e.g. coronary artery vasospasm or CHF) you can't slow it down and this is going to exacerbate the issue, often to the point of cardiac arrest.",
"The main reason is that your body has mechanisms in place to control heart rate while running, mainly fatigue. Once you hit an extreme level of fatigue and your heart is pumping like crazy, you'll stop running, which will allow your heart rate to come back down and recover.\n\nOn cocaine, if it's already in your system, then you have no way of bringing your heart rate down after it gets too high. This means it stays too high, which a 5 year old should be able to understand is a bad thing.\n\nIn addition, there are several other reasons, such as the additional benefits of exercise on body parts other than the heart, the circulatory effects (exercise enhances circulation along with increased heart rate, cocaine does the opposite), and the fact that cocaine does other bad things to the body.",
"As a 5 year old you should not be taking cocaine.",
"This reminds me of a similar question I've often asked: when you lift something heavy, people say \"don't lift with your back!\" — unless of course you're trying to strengthen your back, in which case it's OK. Same action, different result.",
"I want to know why a five year old is doing cocaine!?",
"Wow I made an ELI5 that was *exactly* the same as this one a couple weeks ago. ",
"Alright, lets say there are two boys: Timmy and Tommy. Timmy likes to work out while all Tommy does is drink energy drinks and sniffs caffeinated Pixie dust (like a certain drug). When Timmy works out is muscles are getting actively tired and they need oxygen fast. Do you know what carries oxygen? Blood does. And do you know what pumps blood? The heart. Well when timmy is working out blood needs to rush nearly every place in his body and a result over time his veins actually get bigger because of this. Because of this is heart beat gets lower because his veins are bigger, his lungs increase their capacity and efficiency as well. \n\nHowever when Tommy does pixie dust hes not working out: He just looking to get high. His heart is getting a workout but nothing else and as such lungs and veins remain the same size. As result when Tommy is off the pixie dust his heart rate does not lower like an athlete, it remains the same before he did the pixie dust. Tommy could work out however but there are many many bad side effects that will eventually prevent him from doing so. ",
"Does something similar happen with meth use? What about other amphetamines such as many ADD meds?",
"I exercised once.",
"Lemme take a crack at this. \n\nPretend that you run a grocery store (heart). You have a lot of customers (blood) on a busy day. Luckily you put extra people on cash registers (open blood vessels) so now you can get customers through more easily.\nThis is jogging.\n\nAnother day a hurricane is on its way and you have tons of customers coming in again, except you didn't see it coming and only have 2 or 3 open registers! Those lines are going to get filled up, the cashiers are going to have to work extra hard, they're bound to make a mistake here or there.\nThis is on cocaine."
]
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d2nr9x | how do movies film an arrow hitting a person? | A good example is when Hagen dies in the movie Gladiator: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d2nr9x/eli5_how_do_movies_film_an_arrow_hitting_a_person/ | {
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"In early films they just had a shot the arrow leaving the bow, then cut to show arrow in the person. Later they used clear fishing wire to guide an arrow with a soft tip to the person, with packets of fake blood to explode on impact. Now they can just CGI it in.",
"Not sure if it's still used but they sometimes used to start with the arrow(s) in the actor, attached to a thin wire, and pull it out\\away during filming. Then reverse the footage afterwards.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis video is a little long but it shows how it's done quite well.",
"For The Adventures of Robin Hood, extras were paid $150 to be shot by Howard Hill, the \"Captain of Archers\" who made the shot where one arrow split another."
]
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6b87xe | how do cars work, from turning the key to pressing the gas/brake? | Additionally, how do cars use gasoline and how does this power the car after the battery turns it on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b87xe/eli5_how_do_cars_work_from_turning_the_key_to/ | {
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"Engines have cylinders, within which are pistons that move up and down. The pistons are connected via a crank, to a crankshaft which goes round and round. \n\n[Look at this image](_URL_0_) This is the basic idea about how up and down piston movement translates into a rotating movement that you can then use for power. The pistons are grey, the cranshaft is blue, the cranks are green. \n\nThe most basic engines just use one cylinder, but if you add more cylinders, you can make an engine that gives smoother power output because the crankshaft (the blue shaft at the bottom that's being turned) is being powered for more of its rotation. The diagram shows a three cylinder engine. \n\nWhat's pictured there is what's called a four-stroke engine, which means each piston perfoms four tasks one after the other. Again look at the diagram above. \n\nI'll describe each step now in that sequence. Just concentrate on one cylinder; they all do the same jobs in the same order, just at slightly different times. \n\n**Intake (Light blue)** \n\nThis is when the piston is pulling air (and a bit of gasoline) in from the outside, and the fuel tank. Once the piston reaches the bottom, that cylinder is closed, so it's a sealed space. \n\n**Compression (Dark blue)** \n\nThis is when the piston takes that air and fuel mixture, and compresses it tightly. When the air and fuel is compressed it can generate more power on the next step. \n\n**Combustion (Red)** \n\nThis is the point where the engine actually generates some power (and this is where the electrical system comes into play). A spark plug (black at the top), sparks (the yellow flash at the top) and this causes the fuel-air mixture in the cylinder to explode. That release of energy drives the piston down, creating useful work. \n\n**Exhaust (Brown)** \n\nAt this point, the cylinder is opened again to the exhuast, the burned exhuast gasses, smoke, carbon dioxide, whatever else, are driven out of the cylinder by the piston and out the exhaust pipe. \n\nAs you can see, of those four steps, only one actually generates power. So the only way around that is to either put a heavy weight on the end of the crankshaft (blue shaft being turned), so when the engine isn't combusting the fuel, the weight of the flywheel keeps everything turning until the next combustion stroke. Or, you can add more cylinders, timing them so the combustion strokes happen more evenly, around one full rotation of the crankshaft. \n\nYou were asking about the battery and what its function is. The battery basically gives the initial power to the engine, so the spark plugs work, and it also provides power to an electric motor which rotates the engine first. Because as we've seen not every movement of the piston generates power, the engine can't start itself from a stop, it has to be turned externally. In the olden days this was done with a handle sticking out the front of the engine which you had to turn; in modern cars it's done with ene electric motor. \n\nOnce the engine is turning under its own power, burning gas, you can use the power off the engine to do various things. One is to connect it to a little generator which allows the engine to then generate its own electricity, so it doesn't need the battery once it's running (indeed the battery gets recharged by the engine), but also, more importantly, you can connect it to the back wheels of the car to get you moving. \n\nWhat does the gas pedal do? As I explained above the first step the engine does is to pull air in from outside. The amount of air it pulls in determines how much gas it can burn, how much power it generates, and how fast the engine will turn. You control that air with the throttle, which is an adjustable valve which restricts airflow into the engine. How do you adjust it? Your right foot adjusts it, more press of the pedal, more air into the engine, more fuel being burned, more power. \n\nDoes that make sense so far? "
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64kkg3 | does spam email actually result in business for the spammer? | Same question applies to telemarketers and other forms of annoying spam. I get so much of it that instantly gets deleted... are there people who see it, read it, and buy what they're selling?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64kkg3/eli5_does_spam_email_actually_result_in_business/ | {
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"Short answer: yes.\n\nLong answer: The person(persons) sending you the spam is(are) most likely a low cost marketing firm. They get paid on the number of emails sent, and the size of their total net(in this case email account list). Some companies manage their own lists, buying lists from smaller companies, or from the firms mentioned above.",
"They're playing the odds. They may get one customer for a million emails, but if it cost almost nothing to send the million emails, they still come out ahead.\n\n[Robert Soloway gets 4 years in prison for spamming](_URL_0_) — from the article: \"For $495 customers could have an ad sent to 20,000,000 e-mails, or receive software allowing them to send up to 80,000,000 e-mails.\"\n\n[Christopher Smith (aka \"Rizler\") took in $24M](_URL_1_)",
"Yup. While they only make money off of a small percentage of the people they spam, spamming people is so low cost/effort that it makes it worthwhile for the spammers. \n\nAccording to [this article](_URL_0_) in a survey conducted by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, 12% of people they asked said that they were interested in what the spammers had to offer, 13% said they didn't know why they clicked on their spam emails, and \"6% wanted to see what would happen.\" ",
"I used to be involved with a company that was technically spamming people. There was a specific list compiled from publicly available information. We'd use this list to email people, even though they technically never opted in. Unsubscribe requests were honored, and while we abided by the \"letter of the law\" for legal reasons, it was certainly not in the spirit of the law. We were a spammer, but about as \"nice\" a spammer as you get. \n\nAnyway, that companies services averaged ~$5k per client as a one time fee. There is a particular certification/designation that is hard to get, and our firm helped people get said. Having that particular label applied to your company greatly increased the potential success of that business, so it made sense for people to sign up with us. I'm not going to go into more details, because that's not really pertinent, but it's a lot more above board than it sounds at first glance. \n\nBut our average email volume was ~150,000 per month, and of that, we'd have (at peak) 6-7 clients sign up for our services. We spent approximately $250 a month in mailings, for up to a $35k return.\n\nThat's a first hand account of a business model that did work, and why it worked. Obviously there are dishonest companies and cheats, who make a little from a lot of people, but that's one example of \"spam\" as a legitimate (albeit unethical) business model."
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"https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20130609014605/http://www.komonews.com/news/local/25774004.html",
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1ctw4j | what makes a politician worthy of running for either a senate or presidential position? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ctw4j/eli5_what_makes_a_politician_worthy_of_running/ | {
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"What do you mean? Do you mean simply just the requirements? As long as you meet the requirements of the office and can get people to back you anybody can do it.",
" > No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen\n\n_URL_0_"
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9m5a46 | how come when you’re really tired, and yawning throughout the day, you never yawn when actually trying to fall asleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9m5a46/eli5_how_come_when_youre_really_tired_and_yawning/ | {
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"You will yawn as your body tries its hardest to stay awake. Yawning helps you absorb as much oxygen in the air.\n\nWhereas as you're trying to sleep, your body is has to be rested and relaxed so you tend not to yawn when you're lying in bed."
]
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34aea7 | geosynchronous orbit vs. geostationary orbit vs. low earth orbit | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34aea7/eli5_geosynchronous_orbit_vs_geostationary_orbit/ | {
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"Low earth orbit is an orbit a little over 100 miles up. It's where the International Space Station is.\n\nGeosynchronous orbit is an orbit that takes 24 hours to complete.\n\nGeostationary orbit is a type of geosynchronous orbit where the satellite stays stationary relative to the earth. Not all geosynchronous orbits are geostationary, but all geostationary orbits are geosynchronous.",
"Geostationary is exactly that. Stationary. The satellite remains above the same spot above the equator at all times. Geosynchronous means the satellite will maintain an orbit around the Earth's equator and be in the same position \nat the same time each day. Read here to understand the types of orbits and their pros and cons. _URL_0_ If you don't mind answering, what spiked your curiousity in these space terms? ",
"Just to expand on what others have said, [here's a picture](_URL_0_) showing various orbital altitudes. Low Earth Orbit goes up to 1200 miles altitude, Medium Earth Orbit goes between 1200 and 22,236 miles. Geosynchronous and geostationary (a special case of geosynchronous) orbits are at exactly 22,236mi, the altitude mathematically required for a 24-hour orbital period. High Earth Orbit is above that.\n\nThe only humans who have ever left Low Earth Orbit were the Apollo astronauts on their way to the moon and back."
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1rr37u | testicular transplant | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rr37u/testicular_transplant/ | {
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"Yes because donor tissue is always the genetic make up of the donor and not the recipient. "
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1sxhck | why do visual graphics improve on the same console? | Say I have a playstation 3. Why is there an improvement of graphics of games?
When you first buy games the graphics are like realistic. Then later on 2 years later, a game is even more realistic than previously.
When you go from playstation 1 to playstation 2, the improvement in graphics is from the console. So shouldn't the graphics be basically the same since it is running on the same console system?
Why can't the graphics be super realistic from the start?
If you don't change the console, how do the graphics improve.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sxhck/eli5_why_do_visual_graphics_improve_on_the_same/ | {
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"The reason the graphics improve over the lifespan of a console is to do with the ability of the developers and how much knowledge they have of producing games with the current system i.e. they might be new to developing for consoles and they cant just instantly be amazing at developing graphics or game-play for it, hence why over the lifespan of the console graphics will get better with every game release (in theory) look at saints row 1 to saints row 4, mostly the same developers but they have learned how to develop for the system and hardware and improved there games.\n\nHope this explains it for you.",
"The quality of graphics doesn't just depend on the console you're using. In fact, how a developer writes a game is far more important in determining the quality of the game. There are several techniques that devs can introduce to make the game look and feel more realistic, but it is useless if the CPU+Memory+GPU on the console cannot make all the calculations in time. With time, game developers figure out how to best utilize the hardware available to them with a particular console.",
"Think of a console like a piano. You could sit down to a piano for the first time and make music without any real training, but it might not be very good. Over time as you learn how the piano works and how the different keys work together to make pleasing sounds, the quality of the music you make increases.\n\nThen, the piano manufacturer releases a new instrument called an organ. It's a lot like a piano, but it has a lot of extra keys and features that the piano doesn't have. While you'll be pretty good at playing the organ since you already have piano experience, you still won't be able to use the organ to its fullest capability until you've had a while to understand how it all works.\n\nThen, the manufacturer releases a new instrument called a guitar. The guitar uses the same concepts (notes, chords, rhythm etc.) as the piano and the organ but it has a much different architecture used to create those things. You would probably be able to make some decent music with it since your knowledge of notes and chords carries over from your piano/organ experience, but you'd have to learn some new techniques like strumming and fretting in order to get really good. And as you advance there's more than just strumming and fretting, there's stuff like harmonics and bends and slides and all those sorts of things that add texture to songs that beginners just don't really do or learn. You can eventually coax all of those things out of a guitar, but it takes time and experience to get there.",
"As someone who has dipped into programming a little, none of these answers are really good. In what ways does a program better utilize it's hardware? Does it process less information, or does it process it differently in some way? Is there a simple example to explain how?"
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67rbjg | how is it that we can breed a lion with a tiger and not a human with another type of ape? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67rbjg/eli5_how_is_it_that_we_can_breed_a_lion_with_a/ | {
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"First, there's a huge taboo around bestiality to even try. Second, species are defined by their inability to produce viable children, meaning that the children can't survive past birth or produce another generation. We can make ligers and tigons(?), but the ligers and tigons can't reproduce.\n\nedit: i overgeneralized, sorry",
"We have 23 pairs of chromosomes, other apes have 24. A viable offspring needs the same number from each parent, it can't have 23 pairs and one extra lonely one.\n\nOther species can create hybrids because they happen to have the same number of pairs, such as lions and tigers.",
"Lions and tigers are more closely related to each other than humans and other apes are.\n\nModern humans did interbreed with neanderthals and denisovians however, since they all existed around the same time, and were sufficiently closely related."
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3ueym8 | why do broadcast networks require cable subscriptions for online viewing? | Wouldn't they be able to charge advertising dollars for online streaming just like they do for over the air broadcasts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ueym8/eli5_why_do_broadcast_networks_require_cable/ | {
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"I don't know about on desktop, but networks (like Fox, ABC, NBC, CW, etc.) allow non-subscribers to watch episodes for free (with ads), some will withhold new episodes for a week unless you do have a subscription, apps for channels like USA will allow you to watch a certain amount of shows without signing in.",
"Because they make more money from cable subscriptions and advertising. They believe, true or not, that it's more profitable to encourage people to buy cable subscriptions than it is to try and get advertisers to pay for streaming advertisements. Notice that you may see more commercials per break on cable than Hulu or CBS, or are more likely to see the same company's commercials multiple times versus a wider variety on cable.\n\nThis is changing over time, but some companies are slower or less likely to risk making the transition until it is clearly more profitable to allow internet only subscriptions."
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1gs1ke | if you can't reliably live off minimum wage, why don't states set it much higher? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gs1ke/eli5_if_you_cant_reliably_live_off_minimum_wage/ | {
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"Supply and demand.\n\nAs you increase the price that employers have to pay their employees, they will want to hire less.\n\n**Example**: Wal-Mart hires 20 people at $8/hr each. Minimum wage is raised to $10/hr. To make up those losses, Wal-Mart fires 4 employees. If we extrapolate these lay-offs to an entire state, the number of unemployed people should increase.\n\nHowever, it is important to note that many economists point out that over the years, as minimum wage has increased, unemployment does not seem to increase according supply and demand as it would be expected to. This could be because only 5% of the US labor force works at, or below the federal minimum wage, so it doesn't matter much when the minimum wage is raised.",
"1. You aren't necessarily supposed to live off of minimum wage. If it is your second job, or if you aren't the primary household earning, it isn't the main source of family income.\n2. What you need to live on has nothing to do with the value of your work. Bagging groceries just doesn't provide a lot of economic value to the store.\n3. Only a small portion of the work force earns minimum wage.\n4. Many states do have a higher minimum wage than the federal standard.\n5. Whether or not you can live on minimum wage is highly dependent on the local cost of living. ",
"Because corporations constantly lobby politicians to make sure minimum wage is low so that they (the corporations) can maximize profit.",
"Because there is no reason why wages would be tied to the needs/desires of the worker. The connection is frivolous.\n\nWages are based on contribution, the value added to the profit chain, and on the supply of workers to contribute that value.\n\nHence, someone who can keep a computer secure from hackers can make $100/hr; someone who can use a broom can barely make anything.\n\nRaising the minimum wage just eliminates those jobs that aren't worth the arbitrary price that was chosen for MW. Maybe the employer only sweeps their floor twice per week instead of every day. Maybe the employer stays late and does it himself, leaving 1 person unemployed and another (the employer) missing his family time."
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a5w19u | why do people go insane when locked in solitary confinement? | As the title suggests. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5w19u/eli5_why_do_people_go_insane_when_locked_in/ | {
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"We are social creatures. Luck of social interaction combine with extreme boredom (partial sensory depravation) does the trick. Sensory depravation works like this: your brain constantly processes sounds, images and when you in confinement you are cut off from them and your brain starts to create its own, so after long solitary confinement you can go crazy from that. ",
"I’d suggest taking a look at the first free episode of season 1 of Vsauce’s Mind Field, called Isolation. They go heavily in depth and conduct a very detailed interesting experiment on why it’s so unnatural and harmful for humans to go without social contact.",
"The free pilot of MindField on Youtube has a really interesting exploration of this.\n\nHuman brains are wired to constantly do SOMETHING. Anything. One of the biggest markets in the world is entertainment for a reason.\n\nIf you have no one to talk to, nothing to play with, and nothing to really do, your brain gets confused and “breaks”. \n\nThe most common thing is for the brain to “make up” things to do and people to talk to, which it will eventually start to believe are real to help cope with the situation. This is a mental disease known as schizophrenia, essencially “seeing things that aren’t there”. It can occur for various reasons, but solitary confinement increases its chances exponentially.\n\nSome studies show that when trapped in a room with nothing but a machine that shocks you, most people would prefer the physical pain of the shock to the boredom, just to “have something to do”.",
"So for people like myself who still prefer to be alone most of the time, perfectly fine to be without any human interaction, so long as I am stimulated by other means, means I am not a part of society’s perception of what the norm is? \n\nI choose not to interact most of the time even when I am around people. I feel sometimes the conversations people have amongst themselves are so forced, because of their situation and environment, not really because they really like each other’s company. Unless I have something I feel is accurate and worthy of sharing, that can really add value to the conversation then I don’t partake in it. \n\n"
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10tn9r | debits and credits in accounting | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10tn9r/eli5_debits_and_credits_in_accounting/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6gjihh",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Can you be more specific as to your question? A debit is when you deduct money from an account, and a credit is when you add money. In accounting, your balance sheet (a list of accounts) is divided into two sections, \"Assets\", and \"Liabilities and Owners Equity\" (money you owe and how much your company is worth). Let's assume you are a business selling furniture to another business. A business buys $1000 of furniture from you. You debit $500 from your inventory account (an Asset that shows the value of how much stuff you have for sale), and credit $1000 to your accounts receivable (an Asset that shows how much your customers owe you). Because this created a profit of $500, the value of your company goes up $500, so you also credit the Owners Equity line (a line showing how much your company is worth). At the end of the month you bill the other company for $1000 and recieve payment. You debit your accounts recieveable $1000 (to show you are no longer owed money) and credit your cash account (an asset that represents the value of all the money you have) with $1000 to represent the receipt of $1000 cash.",
"NB. Credits and debits do not necessarily equal + and - \n\nIt depends what you are increasing or decreasing.\n\n- An increase (+) to an asset account is a debit.\n- An increase (+) to a liability account is a credit. \n- A decrease (-) to an asset account is a credit. \n- A decrease (-) to a liability account is a debit.\n\nfrom _URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debits_and_credits"
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||
3ocrte | why is american football scored the way it is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ocrte/eli5_why_is_american_football_scored_the_way_it_is/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvw10v3"
],
"score": [
12
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"text": [
"This gets asked literally every Sunday, often on Thursdays, too.\n\nIt comes from rugby scoring. It used to be that a field goal was worth 3, a try (touchdown) was worth 1, until they realised that a try was much harder to win than a field goal, and made the game more exciting."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8wqpvr | what's a glory hole? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wqpvr/eli5_whats_a_glory_hole/ | {
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"text": [
"It’s when you dig a hole at the beach, get in it and have all your friends compliment you from outside of it.",
"Well... Um... You see it's a hole commonly found in men's bathrooms and sometimes they stick their umm.. privates in it and the person in the next stall....pleasures them with their mouth😂😂😂😂😂 ",
"It's a hole where one person inserts his member and another plays with it on the other side. ",
"It’s generally found at truck stops. A hole that is located on the wall of a bathroom stall where “women”(other men) will suck you off. Pornog’s have these with men and women but thats all a fantasy. ",
"_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIt's a hole, in a public place (eg - a bathroom stall or a private booth in a sex shop), that allows a man to place his penis through a divider so that an anonymous stranger on the other side can perform some sort of sex act on them.",
"You should not use words you do not understand. \n\nA glory hole is a hole in a wall, typically in a bathroom (however I'm sure the Internet can find then I'm all sorts of strange places), in which a man inserts his genitalia to be stimulated erotically by an anonymous person on the opposite side of the wall. "
]
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[],
[],
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"https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glory_hole",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_hole_(sexual_slang)"
],
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||
5gi4ue | how is the governments email system any more secure than gmail? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gi4ue/eli5_how_is_the_governments_email_system_any_more/ | {
"a_id": [
"dasewnh"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"There are many things one can do to make an email system more secure, and this can delve into incredibly complex territory, so this will be *extremely simplified*. \n\nFirst and foremost, having *complete control* over your system is very important. The government needs to know their system inside and out. They need to know where all the servers are located, where all the data is, what *exact* software is on there, etc. \n\nThis also means control of every single piece of incoming and outgoing email. It means senders and recipients on your internal system can be verified, and it means you can implement extremely strict verification procedures with whomever you need to communicate with. Furthermore, your system can warn you -- before sending -- whether the recipient can support (or is allowed to read) the level of security you need.\n\nYou can also implement very strict access control, and again, you can do this on both ends. You can absolutely verify who's reading who's email, because your device will have to authenticate itself to the servers. \n\nLastly, because you control all the data, you can protect *that* to as strict a degree as you like.\n\nNote that there's nothing inherently saying Google can't implement this stuff, or that I can't do this with my private email server in my basement. But there is a trade-off of security vs ease of use, which makes it unlikely for Google to be super strict by default. The government (or any private organisation that doesn't offer services to the public) can make access to their systems as difficult as they want in the name of security - and *that* is really what makes it more secure. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
dc4jjp | how does online currency get added into circulation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dc4jjp/eli5_how_does_online_currency_get_added_into/ | {
"a_id": [
"f25y314"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"For ACTUAL currency, it doesn't, all money are represented by actual physical money. When you move money from accounts to accounting, the money is not generated or destroyed, it is physically reallocated.\n\nWhere as digital currency like bitcoin, Because there is no physical value behind it, its why its so turbulent. As of right now, its completely separated from the current actual currency circulation, and is only traded by individuals, what this means is only valuable if the other person buying or selling believe it has value."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1mwzox | internal combustion engines | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mwzox/eli5_internal_combustion_engines/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccdhwck"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Gasoline engines: Two main kinds; two-stroke and four-stroke. They both use spark plugs to ignite the fuel-air mixture.\n\n**Two-stroke** engines empty (exhaust) and recharge (fuel-air mixture) cylinder in same motion. [Like this.](_URL_1_)\n\n**Four-stroke** engines have four motions for every power stroke. 1. (down) Fuel-air mixture is sucked in; 2. (up) Fuel-air mixture is compressed; 3. (down) Detonation that produces power; 4. (up) exhaust is forced out. [Like this.](_URL_0_)\n\nThen you have **diesel engines** that mostly work on four stroke principle but they don't have spark plugs because cylinder is under constant pressure and diesel likes it so it detonates itself.\n\nIf you're interested in timings of camshafts and stuff like that I can try to explain it but I'm not on the best of terms with it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/4StrokeEngine_Ortho_3D_Small.gif",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Arbeitsweise_Zweitakt.gif"
]
] |
||
2kmu27 | why can't we grow organs for people yet despite new stories always claiming that scientists have successfully done so? | Just curious how close or far away we are from the average joe getting a new liver grown for him in a hospital in any town USA? I keep hearing stories about 3d printed organs and organs grown in science labs but I'm not science smart in the least and need a kindergarten walk through, thanks!
Edit: sorry grammar nazis for making you shed tears of anguish over my title, I'm on a phone... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kmu27/eli5_why_cant_we_grow_organs_for_people_yet/ | {
"a_id": [
"clmsqio",
"clmsrlo"
],
"score": [
3,
3
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"text": [
"Sensationalist news stories about one-off lab results in some small scale study don't mean that the technology is viable, economical, or safe.\n\nThe news media love to pump out click-bait headlines, the fact that any realistic application is two decades away is just a footnote in the article.",
"We're just on the ground floor of this technology. We're just *barely* at the point where we can grow organs that will work in mice. And not much of that, yet. That means tiny organs, functioning for short amounts of time. \n\nThe tech will eventually get all the way to where we can give people new organs, but it's going to take decades. We have to make sure we can grow the printed organs big enough, iron out all the bugs inherent in hooking them up to a human adult's circulatory system, making sure nothing's going to cause an immune response in the patient, making sure the new liver/kidney/whatever isn't going to fail in a month, etc. \n\nIt's a very long road from proof-of-concept to print-out-a-new-liver.\n\nEDIT: one exception to this is 3D printed/sprayed skin grafting. That technology is VERY close to rollout-ready. It's about to revolutionize burn treatment."
]
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[],
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|
13etho | the difference between this subreddit in its present form and /r/answers or any of the other answers subreddits. | Seriously, what happened, guys? This subreddit was a tremendous idea and for a few months there it was actually staying true to its original form, but now you look at both the questions *and the answers to the questions* in the threads here and they're as esoteric as an /r/answers thread. I like good, thorough answers, too. But I go to /r/answers for that. I know I'm not the first to complain about this, but it seems like this has to change. This subreddit is rendered pointless if it is just a carbon copy of /r/answers, with the only difference being we attach "ELI5:" pointlessly to every question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13etho/eli5_the_difference_between_this_subreddit_in_its/ | {
"a_id": [
"c73dlaf"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"ELI5: the difference between this sub and let me google that for you."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2d1kiu | two sets of identical twins essentially marry and have kids...the kids are biologically siblings? | Hard to explain but in reference to this post _URL_0_ and the comments about their future kids being biological siblings. How does that work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d1kiu/eli5_two_sets_of_identical_twins_essentially/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjl6j2l"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"They are not biologically siblings because siblings by definition come from the same parents. However, because both sets of parents contain identical genomes, cousins from these two relationships would genetically be as close as siblings are (though that doesn't necessarily have to be very close)."
]
} | [] | [
"http://imgur.com/gallery/Kj2YuIT"
] | [
[]
] |
|
1m2b1w | how does money laundering for a large sum of bills (let's say $10,000,000) work, and why do criminals find it necessary to launder in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m2b1w/eli5how_does_money_laundering_for_a_large_sum_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc52vmp"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"So lets say you just made $100,000 from some illegal things. You are not about to claim that on your taxes, otherwise you would be both telling the government you committed a crime and giving them the chunk out of your money and no one wants that. \n\nYou can't just take that money to the bank, anything over 10k and banks are required to ask questions, and if they notice frequent huge dumps of 9k they are still going to ask questions. \n\nPoint is you cant just all of a sudden have a fuck ton of money without any paperwork showing why, its fishy. Same thing goes for you suddenly owning really nice things, should you suddenly role up in a lamborghini people are going to wonder where that money came from. \n\nSo you have to turn this dirty money into clean money, this is called laundering. In the TV show Breaking Bad there is a good example of it, where a character runs a car wash.\n\nLet say you run this car wash and 5 people come to you that day, you might then make 5 fake receipts for another 5 people who paid in cash. Only those extra 5 people never happened, thats just you funneling your dirty money into your legit business and it coming out as clean money shown as legit income on paper. \n\nNow the above example is slow, if you need to suddenly turn a couple million into clean money you are going to have to do something a bit more fancy. "
]
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[]
] |
||
2virxv | climbing mt. everest - don't we have the technology to make climbing relatively safe, at least for rescue and cleanup crews? | While climbers don't want to be *overly* helped by equipment (for example going so far as to attempt climbing without oxygen), don't we have the technology to make at least some aspects of climbing safer for professionals who work there? Isn't it possible to have a lightweight pressurized and heated suit for rescue crews? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2virxv/eli5_climbing_mt_everest_dont_we_have_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"coi022m"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"No. Pressurized means that the suit is sealed, which means it is a full body suit, thus bulky.\n\nWinter clothes and an oxygen bottle do the job very well. Winter clothes keep you warm, while oxygen bottles keep you concious near the peak.\n\nFrankly, the real issue isn't the gear. The problem is that tourists with no proper training or experience are making the trips. There are guided tours to Mount Everest now, and many tour companies who do not make sure the tourists are in the condition to make it to the top, yet try to get them there."
]
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[]
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|
5zgscq | if you're trying to drink more water, does it make any difference if you drink it all at once or small amounts more frequently? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zgscq/eli5_if_youre_trying_to_drink_more_water_does_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"dexzg9m",
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3
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"text": [
"You'll feel bloated and full if you drink it all at once. If you're exercising or playing sports it's very important to drink smaller amounts every now and then so you won't feel full.",
"If you're trying to get hydrated drink pedialite ( or store brand equivalent ) it has the proper isotonic properties to be most efficiently absorbed by your body. you can also make it yourself with sugar and salt. correct proportions are somewhere floating around the internet. "
]
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[],
[]
] |
||
50wled | if i hover my finger 0.5mm above my phone's screen, it doesn't register a touch. but when it has a hefty glass screen protector on and i'm wearing gloves, how does it still sense contact? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50wled/eli5_if_i_hover_my_finger_05mm_above_my_phones/ | {
"a_id": [
"d77iwfy"
],
"score": [
38
],
"text": [
"Most touch screens work via the electrical property of \"capacitance\", which is the ability of materials to store energy when exposed to an electric field. \n \nYour body has this property primarily due to its water content. Water is a \"polar\" molecule...one end is slightly positive and the other end is slightly negative. So it can be rotated by an electric field, hence storing energy. \n \nWhen you use a touch screen with something between you and the screen, there are two major factors: (1) Is the something electrically conductive; and/or (2) Does it have high capacitance itself? \n \nIf the intervening material is highly conductive, then it's just like your finger is touching the screen, from an electrical point of view. You've simply added a resistor to the circuit. \n \nIf it has a lot of moisture or is otherwise able to store energy due to an electric field, then it is as good as your finger is. Or almost as good. Or possibly better. Depends on the material. \n \nIf you can manage to get your finger *really* close without touching the screen, it will also work. But it has to be pretty darned close, since the electric field used by the touch screen is very weak. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
aajfgr | how do businesses create sales forecasts/projections? | I realise (assume) that market research is the crux of it, but is it as simple/unreliable as "we asked 100 people if they'd buy this, 20 said yes, so we're projecting 20000 sales from 100000 manufactured units" or something similar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aajfgr/eli5_how_do_businesses_create_sales/ | {
"a_id": [
"ecsp3l5"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"If you collect enough data you can project it forward.\n\nLike if you sold 10 items every March every year but this year you sold 11 and every june you sold 5 items you could project sales of 5 or 6. The amount of data you have move the projection closer to 5 or 6.\n\nOften times it's just what you would like so last years figures with 15% growth added on."
]
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[]
] |
|
4oisju | why should sublingual tablets be dissolved under the tongue instead of just swallowed or dissolved on the tongue? | I'll be giving my son melatonin tonight in a sublingual tablet and I want to give him the right answer when he asks.
*edit* word | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4oisju/eli5_why_should_sublingual_tablets_be_dissolved/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"When you use a sublingual tablet the medication is absorbed into your bloodstream through all the blood vessels under your tongue. If you swallow it, or even if you let it dissolve on the top of your tongue, it will be swallowed and go into your stomach, be absorbed in your intestines, and then pass through the liver. Those extra steps will degrade some medicine so taking them sublingually is a better delivery system.",
"As the other comment said, drugs absorbed through the oral mucosa bypass the hepatic (liver) circulation in the first instance and go directly into the systemic system. Gut absorption undergoes 'first pass metabolism' (metabolises by the liver first then enters the systemic circulation). Interestingly the last part (I think lower 1/3 if I remember correctly) of the rectum also bypasses first pass metabolism so some drugs can be given per rectum (up the bum!) for the same reason. "
]
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[],
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f48hez | how do induction cooking work | I watched my mom cooked food with the induction cooktop several times but please explain how does it work, thanks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f48hez/eli5_how_do_induction_cooking_work/ | {
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"text": [
"There are coils of wire underneath the cooktop. When the power is switched on, the coils of wire are fed alternating electrical signals, which causes a magnetic field. When something ferrous (steel) is placed on the cooktop, the steel acts like a one-turn transformer short-circuited. Electricity is induced in the steel, but has no-where to 'go' so it turns into heat.",
"Electrical friction essentially. \n\nCreate a changing magnetic field under a metal pot. The electrons in the pot see the magnetic field and try to line up in it. The field keeps moving though and the electrons can’t keep up. They get dragged a bit and give off heat.\n\nDo this process rapidly and frequently enough and your metal pot starts to heat up.",
"So I am going to try this ELI5...\n\nYou probably know about electric engines. When you run an electric current through the engine, it creates a shifting magnetic field which causes a magnetic metal to move. This turns electricity into movement.\n\nYou may also be more familiar with electric stoves. In this case they run electricity through coils so that the electricity turns into heat.\n\nThese two pieces come together in a rather unique way on a induction cooktop. First, we use the first part, except in reverse. Rather than using electricity to create the magnetic field, we use a magnetic field to create electricity. This is why if you place a plastic pot on an induction stove, nothing will happen, because it cant interact with the magnetic field.\n\nWhen you do put a proper pot on an induction cooktop, that magnetic field creates an electrical charge, however we use the same properties of an electric stove here. The charge does not stay as electricity, but rather the flow creates heat, just like it does in an electric stove.\n\nSo in short an induction cooktop actually turns your pan into the heating element, which is why the stove itself never really gets very hot comparatively. It directly heats the pat which then directly heats the food.",
"The heating occurs because an electric current flows in the pot that you put on the stove. If you put a glass pot on the stove, no heating occurs because the glass is a very poor conductor and charge will not flow, so no heating. So how does the stove get electric current to flow in the pot without an electrical connection? This is the induction part.\n\nA changing magnetic field will produce an electric field. An electric field will apply a force to the electrons in the conducting metal pot, which causes the current to flow, and this current is what causes the heating. To produce a changing magnetic field, under the stovetop there is a coil of wire. The current in the wire coil produces a magnetic field. If we flip the direction of this current, the direction of the magnetic field will also flip. This changing magnetic field is what induces the electric field.\n\nIf there is no pot on the stove, the induced electric field is still there, but there is nothing to carry the electric current so there is no heating. You can put your hand on the stovetop and it will be cool, since the induced electric field won't cause a significant electric current in your hand.\n\nA few extra details/notes:\n\n\\- the scientific principle of induction at work here is called \"Faraday's Law\"\n\n\\- the faster the magnetic field is changed, the larger the induced electric field, so the larger the current and so more heat\n\n\\- the larger the current in the coil under the stovetop, the larger the magnetic field, and thus the larger the change when it filps direction, so the larger the current in the pot and so again, more heat\n\n\\- this mechanism is the same principle by which phone with a \"charging pad\" can be charged without \"plugging in\" (wireless charging). Except the induced current in the phone is captured and used to charge the battery instead of heating the pot\n\n\\- this mechanism also works to read credit cards or other cards with magnetic bar codes. When you \"swipe\" your card, your motion causes the magnetic field in the card reader to change, which induces a flip-floppy current in the bar code reader. This flip-floppy signal is read and converted into your card number or other information.\n\n\\- If we didn't know about Faraday's law, our lives would be very, very different. We would not have electricity piped to our homes. We may have batteries running things, but sooo many things depend on Faraday's law that I personally rank it up there with the germ theory of disease in terms of importance and impact on humanity.\n\nJust a few corrections from other posts: \n\n\\- the pot does NOT need to be ferromagnetic, like iron. It just needs to conduct. So copper pots will work. \n\n\\- the electrons do have intrinsic magnetic fields and they do try to line up with the magnetic field. But this does nothing to help the heating or the electric current. The actual desired effect is that they feel a force in the direction of the electric field, and this movement is the electric current that causes the heating.\n\n\\- the magnetic field does not create the charge. The charges (electrons in the metal) are already there. The changing magnetic field creates electric fields, which move the charges."
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30jsa4 | why does the us military have so many different special forces groups? what are the main "differences/duties" between them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30jsa4/eli5_why_does_the_us_military_have_so_many/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Each service used to have a small group of people who did stuff that was pretty far outside the 'norm' but related to the overall mission of the service.\n\nNavy: SEALs, which developed from the \"frogmen\" of WWII. Specialized in underwater demolitions, small boat operations near coasts and rivers, basically gave the navy the ability to project pinpoint force from the water.\n\nArmy: (in declining order of size) Rangers, Green Beret, Delta Force. The Rangers are infantry soldiers with additional training for things like breaching defenses, assaulting up steep cliffs, and operating with limited logistics and supply. Green Beret were designed to be inserted into foreign territory to train native forces for insurgency and counterinsurgency work. Delta Force was conceived as a hostage rescue unit and gained antiterror capabilities.\n\nAir Force: Pararescue teams, designed to be inserted behind enemy lines to locate and rescue downed aircrew and if necessary fight to an extraction point.\n\nMarines: Force Recon. Of all the services, the Marines resisted the idea of \"special forces\" the most. Force Recon are Marines who are trained to operate with limited logistics, and as snipers and force protection.\n\nIn the 1990s the military consolidated a lot of these programs into a new organization, SOCOM, Special Operations Command. All the services pooled their special forces teams, and a unified command structure was built to remove duplication of effort and to select the right mix of \"operators\" for various tasks. The services still retain some control over the people in their parts of SOCOM but generally speaking their tasking and training is handled jointly in an interservice mechanism."
]
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||
zbubu | why are insects important? | I'm actually trying to teach some students and I cant explain it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zbubu/eli5_why_are_insects_important/ | {
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"Because they are part of the ecosystem. for example: Hawks could not survive without bugs because they eat smaller birds, the bird at the bottom of that chain must eat something smaller right? So they could eat berries, or bugs. So that is the first part. Some plants could not live without Bugs. Bees for example pollinate flowers, so that the flowers can reproduce. Cows depend on plants for food, and therefore also on bugs. Nearly all plants and and animals depend on insects for these reasons. ",
"Related but amusing... In the Hercules series done by Sam Raimi, Iolaus (Herc's best friend) is swatting bugs off himself and asks Zeus, \"Why mosquitoes?\" \nZeus shrugs nonchalantly and replies, \"So the birds have something to eat.\"",
"1. Insects are low on the aerial and land food chain. Many small animals have a diet composed either entirely of insects or mostly composed of insects. This makes them vital for smaller carniverous or omnivorous life, such as smaller species of birds.\n2. Insects pollenate. Because a majority of plants are stationary, they are unable to find mates themselves. So, they attract insects with scents and colors, the insects come to the plants and extract sugars and saps (for nourishment), then fly to a different plant. While they're on one plant, pollen attatches to the insect, usually on the leg, and when they visit new plants, the pollen is dropped off and exchanged, allowing for fertilization and pollenation. (There's a great Magic School Bus episode about pollenation that works for all ages. Show it to your class)\n3. Many insects have been known to show rudimentary intelligence. Ants in particular organize themselves into highly efficient colony structures that at times have been known to organize resources centrally, wage wars, and even mine minerals. Bees also demonstrate communication with each other by dancing to tell the rest of their colony where there's flowers for making honey. (Again, a great Magic School Bus episode on bees)\n4. There are more insects in the world than any other life, and their total mass (biomass) is also greater than any other animal."
]
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|
4i3s73 | why do we get that odd satisfying feeling when we watch certain objects be perfectly organized in patterns? | Something like those GIFs that give the same feeling | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i3s73/eli5_why_do_we_get_that_odd_satisfying_feeling/ | {
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"A large part of our brains has evolved to look for patterns. It's part of how our intelligence helps us survive. Noticing patterns allows us to recognise where is best to look for prey or avoid predators. It allows us to work out when dangerous flood are likely to happen each year. It helps us spot when something is wrong and we're seeing a dangerous camouflaged predator hiding in a bush or tell that something has changed in the soundscape around us and danger might be close. \n\nSpotting patterns can help us feel safe where realising that a pattern has been broken by something can make us uneasy. Patterns allow us to spot danger and anticipate things that might be to our benefit. So we like them."
]
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[]
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|
auy7vl | what is our goal for humanity? is there a goal for humanity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/auy7vl/eli5_what_is_our_goal_for_humanity_is_there_a/ | {
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"Well, given most of us try to stay alive and reproduce, I'd say stay alive at least long enough to reproduce. Everything else is a bonus.",
"Between the over 7 billion of us there are, you're going to get quite a few very different and sometimes contradictory answers to such a broad question. I'd like to think that in general, most people's goal for the society they live in would simply be to make life easier for everyone living in that society, but in practice that often doesn't seem to be the case. Rather, people are often convinced that certain other groups of people don't deserve to live comfortably, for one reason or another."
]
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[],
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||
4r1the | how exactly do fireflies light up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4r1the/eli5_how_exactly_do_fireflies_light_up/ | {
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"The firefly produces a chemical called Luciferin in its lower abdomen. It also produces an enzyme called luciferase which, in the presence of magnesium ions, oxygen and ATP (adenosine triphosphate), breaks down Luciferin and gives off light as a byproduct.",
"What I have always been curious about is how it seems that fireflies have different spectral outputs. When I was a kid they all seemed to have the characteristic day glow green with a long, slow pulse. years later it seems that their color had shifted to a more white 'LED\" with shorter pulses (at least were I live). Maybe life cycle? Difference species? \n\n[over 2000 different species!](_URL_0_) \n\n[The-not-ELI5-answer](_URL_1_)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/firefly/",
"http://jgp.rupress.org/content/48/1/95.full.pdf"
]
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||
2y7pi2 | why does the fda allow carcinogenic chemicals into our food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y7pi2/eli5_why_does_the_fda_allow_carcinogenic/ | {
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"Arsenic is super common because it is in our ground water, and it is unfeasible to remove all of it even when we treat our water. Your water company is regulated to bring it down to a safe level, but trace amounts are still going to end up in your water supply, any food product that comes into contact with tap water or ground water, and pretty much anything that grows in the ground. ",
"Nothing in your post is correct. Chicken does not contain arsenic, the FDA is not willfully allowing chicken to be sold with dangerous levels arsenic contamination. The FDA is not aware of this problem or actively avoiding the issue because that issue does not exist.\n\n[In 2011, Pfizer discontinued a type of chicken feed that caused very slight detectable levels of arsenic in chickens, under pressure from the FDA.](_URL_0_) The levels of arsenic were low enough to be safe for human consumption\n\nSo no, if anything the FDA has actually prevented chicken with detectable levels of arsenic from being sold.\n\nWhere the heck are you getting your information, reposts on your facebook wall from shady clickbait websites?",
"There is a *big* difference between having a toxic substance and having an amount big enough to matter. As a perfect example, right now, there is virtually a 100% chance that you have MRSA on your skin and Clostridium difficile (c diff - a bacteria that causes severe diarrhea) in your gut. the key is that you have such a low amount of them that you don't have to worry.\n\nSimilarly for molecules like arsenic, there is a concentration at which eating them will not cause any noticeable side effects during a lengthy human lifetime. ",
"Most of the beef we eat has feces in it too. There's \"acceptable levels.\" "
]
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"http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304392704576373832064333552"
],
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||
2imi4q | why did i have to adjust the tracking on my old vcr? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2imi4q/eli5why_did_i_have_to_adjust_the_tracking_on_my/ | {
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"text": [
"It adjusts the angle the head uses to read the tape. This helps synchronize the sound and video signal. Audio is recorded lengthwise and video is spiralled across the tape. sometimes a slight variation in speed or stretching of the tape may require a slight adjustment to get them aligned .. usually the older or more used the tape cassette the more tracking I used to do .. Thanks for the memories."
]
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[]
] |
||
5bekqt | if the moon can eclipse the sun why can we see stars every night? | If the moon can almost entirely block out our sun shouldn't there be a massive amount of planets between us and the stars to block them out too? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bekqt/eli5_if_the_moon_can_eclipse_the_sun_why_can_we/ | {
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"The moon can block out the sun because it's massively closer than any planets. Sometimes that one really bright star you might see in the night sky is actually Venus. It's just a tiny point of light and it's the closest planet to the earth. Other planets in our own solar system will be even less visible than that. Planets outside of our own solar system are entirely invisible to the naked eye.",
"They only marginally dim the light due to the sizes and distances involved. My thumb is very near and can block a sun sized object, but my thumb at twice the distance doesn't stand a chance.\n\nThis dimming of light from other stars when exoplanets transit in front is one of the best ways to detect exoplanets. :)"
]
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[],
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|
4wddmk | what would cause the two visual bands of static across the tv in an otherwise clear picture, when fast forwarding or rewinding a vhs tape? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wddmk/eli5_what_would_cause_the_two_visual_bands_of/ | {
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"When you fast forward, the tape is moving faster than necessary to play the picture. In your case it might be 3 times as fast. The VHS tape contains diagonal strips for each frame, with a band of audio and control information at the edge. When the video head scans over that edge control band, the information it sees doesn't have the relationships needed to make the picture. You're seeing the head track across one frame, the gap between them, the next frame, the gap between them, the third frame and then the control band."
]
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[]
] |
||
200r33 | can you use binoculars into a mirror to see something far away behind you? | Will you get the same results as just looking at it in front of you with binoculars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/200r33/eli5_can_you_use_binoculars_into_a_mirror_to_see/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"As long as it isn't directly behind you, yes. Otherwise your view of it would be blocked by your own head/body."
]
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[]
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|
1yd0t2 | how are multi-level marketing companies like vemma legal and not considered pyramid schemes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yd0t2/eli5_how_are_multilevel_marketing_companies_like/ | {
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"The crucial difference is that there is actually a real product being transferred.",
"It's simple: They offer ways to make money selling a product. *Technically* they are legal because of this. There are mountains of regulations for these kinds of companies, and most are or have been under federal investigation, or have a lawsuit against them. \n",
"Honestly, I think they are WORSE than pyramid schemes or Ponzi schemes. For one because they prey on naive, desperate or vulnerable people like high schoolers and college students who can't find jobs and have no money. But what's even worse is that they push some kind of product as their only link to legality, and usually this product is some way-overpriced health supplement based on faulty science or pseudoscience that offers no real benefit."
]
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[],
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w804t | when i go to bed my stomach makes pretty loud noises, some high-ish pitched some not. what's happening that causes that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/w804t/eli5_when_i_go_to_bed_my_stomach_makes_pretty/ | {
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"Wow, this thread is ruthless. Good job, lividd for making it though unscathed. "
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||
14vpdh | why do archers fire arrows in waves? wouldn't they kill more people if they fired at will? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14vpdh/eli5_why_do_archers_fire_arrows_in_waves_wouldnt/ | {
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"If there's one arrow flying at you, you can just move to the side. If there are a hundred, there's no place to go.",
"But how would they know which one is Will?",
"Think of it like this: Could you wipe out more people with a tsunami or a rainstorm?",
"One important factor here is the actual movements that the archers performed when firing. A person needs a clear space to perform the individual movements of archery. However, when archers were grouped on a battlefield and firing *en masse*,they would also consider the risk of attack by enemy melee infantry or cavalry. Therefore they would try to stay close enough together (and probably close enough to their own infantry) for mutual support. Space would be even more restrictive when firing from fortifications or from behind barricades. They therefore had to strike a balance where they had enough room to perform the necessary movements, but were not so far apart that their formation could be easily penetrated by the enemy, or would waste precious \"covered\" space. Synchronizing movements allows the archers to stand closer together. It minimizes the risk of friendly fire injuries within the formation (you wouldn't have to worry about a close-by comrade suddenly drawing his bowstring back without warning and intervening his arm between your just-released arrow and your target). This is the same rationale used for gunpowder age line infantry regiments \"Ready! Aim! Fire!\" sequence as well- it reduces the risk within ones' own ranks while (and this is the less well-founded assumption here) maximizing the effect of fire on enemy formations.",
"Probably also easier to keep track of how many arrows you have left too. If everyone is just shooting you may run out of ammo prematurely. If everyone shoots in a group it's pretty simple to do the math.",
"A lot of the time, the purpose of archers on the battlefield isn't to necessarily kill that many enemies but to damage their morale. And nothing puts the fear of god into someone better than a wave of arrows arcing across the battlefield towards you.",
"It isn't about firing fast as it is about slowing the other guy down and allowing your men to get into position. At least when it comes to muskets. Odds are you didn't have your entire army shooting at the same time. You have part of them shooting and then another part of them shooting. It provides a sustained fire. A steady rate of fire is infinitely more effective than people just shooting willy nilly. The point of volley fire is to turn your archers or muskets into something like a machine gun: with a machine gun, most of the time you want the other guy to hide so he doesn't see your buddies when they circle around. Or if he dies, he can't really do anything about it.\n\nAlso there is the matter of actually killing people working better if they fire en mass. Firing at will means the men have to aim more. They don't like that. In combat your average soldier doesn't want to know that he is killing people. So you get all of your troops to fire in groups so they can pretend it wasn't their arrow that killed someone else.\n\nLike a five year old: It makes the bad men have to stay under their shields longer and lets the good guys with bows pretend they didn't hurt anyone.",
"Allow me to interject some perspective from modern battlefield tactics. In a base defense scenario, there something called a \"final protective line\" or FPL. That's basically the point on the battlefield where a soldier armed with a heavy heavy machine gun should always keep an eye on, it's his job to make sure nobody crosses that line unscathed. Now if enemies start getting close to it, he doesn't try to pick them off one by one, he just aims down the line and lets loose about a meter off the ground, effectively creating a \"lose your legs\" zone. I can kind of see parallels between this and the archer question posed above.\n\nTL;DR: You can count on more hits if you cover a set area rather than everybody firing individually."
]
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8oihhm | how do kuka robotic arms work? | maybe the title doesn't say much? i don't know, but I wanted to know if anyone can explain to me what kind of technology the KUKA robotic arms, or any other similar products, use in order to have arms which are not only capable carrying extremely heavy objects (i.e. car doors) while themselves being extremely heavy, and on top of that being able to do these automated jobs with such speed and precision.
And on a side note, could that technology be made more compact to the point that a smaller version of these arms could be carried by someone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oihhm/eli5how_do_kuka_robotic_arms_work/ | {
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" > And on a side note, could that technology be made more compact to the point that a smaller version of these arms could be carried by someone?\n\nSmall enough: maybe. *Light enough* to be carried: I guess no unless you accept the arm to be a little bit less rigid (more \"wiggly\") and change to lighter (more expensive) materials for the arm. Those robot arms also use a lot of energy (I read in some articles that a bigger one use about 700W just to hold the position and up to 60kW at peak [source](_URL_0_))\n\nAlso: a super strong robotic arm that would be attached to e.g. your shoulder or back could hurt you very badly because your legs/torso would still have to support all that forces that the arm can generate. You would need more something like Fallout power armor in this case."
]
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[
"http://info.eu.tmi.yokogawa.com/acton/ct/19192/s-0060-1709/Bct/l-009b/l-009b:729/ct2_2/1?sid=TV2%3AI0mMEcoLj"
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3heh54 | how would citizenship be granted if the 14th amendment were repealed? | With many of the Republican candidates openly calling for an end to "birthright citizenship," a clause within the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, how would citizenship be granted? Would additional legislation be needed to replace that clause? How was citizenship granted to non-slaves before the 14th Amendment? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3heh54/eli5_how_would_citizenship_be_granted_if_the_14th/ | {
"a_id": [
"cu6om0w"
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"text": [
"Same way it is now. Birth or naturalization. The end to birthright citizenship only closes a legal loophole that the 14th was never meant to cover in the first place. The 14th amendment, along with the 13th and 15th, dealt with granting rights to black slaves and defining them as citizens since they were legally under the united state's legal purview, while illegal immigrants are not."
]
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|
1nakfk | how can the sentinelese people, who number ~250, and been living on the same island uncontacted for 60000 years, not number higher in population or be inbred to the point of severe consequence | Looking at the exponential growth that the human population has showed, would we not expect more than ~250 people to be living where there has been undisturbed existence for more than 60000 years?
Also, would they not be so imbred that there would be severe genetic deficiencies?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nakfk/eli5_how_can_the_sentinelese_people_who_number/ | {
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"text": [
"Or... by now all the genetic diseases have been bred out. Only new mutations would occur. On a side note, it would be fascinating to eavesdrop on their life and society! Even to hear their language. Linguists would have an orgasm.",
"Peoples in this situation often work out unusual reproductive arrangements, the most common and effective being polyandry.",
"My anthropology is rusty... But many small indigenous populations have self sustained using well defined moiety system. You can only mate outside of your moiety, which allows for pairings no closer than first cousins. You can go a buttload of generations with first cousin pairings without seeing a problem.",
"* We don't actually know how long the Sentinelese have been on their island, only that it's more than 300 years. We know anatomically modern humans reached the *general area* about 60,000 years ago, but that doesn't tell us when they reached that particular island.\n* We don't know that they've been undisturbed the whole time they've been on the island. If one group of people managed to find it, a few others could easily have, particularly if we're talking about 60,000 years. For all we know there could have been a new group of people arriving every 500 years to add to the gene pool.\n* If the island can't produce enough food for more than ~250 people, then there can't be more than ~250 people living there at any time. So a lot of them just die at an early age.",
"Inbreeding is dangerous only if family in question has recesive genetic defects.\n\nSo it only increases chances of already existing issues comming to light, but unlikely to create new ones.\n\nSo this is wholy dependent on existing genetic issues and if you are lucky, you get none to minor issues.\n\nIt is not dagerous to inbreed if your family has praticed it for several generations without much issues, but if your family has no history of it, there can be many genetic deficiencies ready to show up which had no chance of comming to light.",
"concerning inbreeding, there have been good explanations.\nbut about them beeing only ~250.\nin part thats probably due to the available amount of food. as said before. but a big part will also be due to the lack of modern medicine. the population of the world only started growing exponentially when penicillin was discovered. without any antibiotics and vaccines people can die of all kinds of minor injuries. a small cut you get while walking through woods can cause sepsis and kill you. the mortality rates giving birth will be relatively high for both mother and infant. add to that the number of diseases that used to kill people off until not even 200 years ago in our societies and you've got enough reasons why there are so few of them",
"I'm more interested in knowing how the hell they managed to survive a tsunami that swept right over their island."
]
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2uuhkj | why does the military and the government announce all over the media that its going to attack a terrorist group? doesn't that just give the terrorist group some intel and time to relocate or perhaps get ready to fight or avoid air strikes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uuhkj/eli5_why_does_the_military_and_the_government/ | {
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"They dont really give specifics though. They just say we gonna attack. Not when or where. ",
"when you abduct and execute foreign national you pretty well expect to be attacked I suppose",
"They announcement is made for political reasons, to convince you, the voter, that your elected officials are, \"doing something\"\n\nIf the goal was a military victory, there would be no announcement.\n\nNo one serious thinks you can win against ideology with bombs, but you can win elections by bombing people far away."
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||
qyzpr | what happens when you eat a deficit of junk food calories every day? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qyzpr/eli5_what_happens_when_you_eat_a_deficit_of_junk/ | {
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"text": [
"Junk food is not some homogeneous thing. What are you eating? You'll lose weight, regardless.",
"You would [lose weight](_URL_0_).",
"There's more to food than calories. Junk food is generally food which is energy rich but \"nutrient\" poor. You'd lose weight, but you'd lose other things faster; those things your body needs to keep you functioning.",
"You'd lose weight thanks to the calorie deficit. \n\nYou'd also start exhibiting subtle signs of malnutrition if all you are having is empty calorie food without healthy nutrients.",
"You'll lose weight, but likely also be nutrient deficient. A calorie deficit is a calorie deficit; no matter how you slice it, it will cause your body to burn fat."
]
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"http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html"
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84lnje | how does an architectural drawing get translated into a physical building? who decides how many bolts, the type of material, etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84lnje/eli5_how_does_an_architectural_drawing_get/ | {
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"I am a plumbing designer. The basic answer is that all the pieces go through many hands before a building is built and it depends on what kind of project.\n\nA structural engineer will determine what type of skeleton holds a building up, concrete footers, if steel and concrete, what columns and beams hold up the floors, ect. Framers work with them to determine trusses in wood frame buildings.\n\nOn big enough projects(basically anything commercial and not just single houses), there is a design process for each trade. Engineers most of the time come up with plans for the trades but depending on the quality of engineers(usually cheaper bids taken and therefore corners are cut), the level of detail and similarity to what actually gets built will differ.\n\nI work for a company that installs plumbing hvac and fire protection systems. In the office we have project managers, estimators and designers(me).\nBetween us we take plans that architects and engineers produce and turn them into workable and cost effective projects for our trades. Construction companies work on maybe a 5% profit margin so this is important because the plans we receive are generally not set up to be cost effective(knowledge of code and experience in the field is important to know what does and doesn't work and how to save money and be more effective with time).\n\nJobs tend to change while in progress as well so we have to be able to adapt to make a functional building.\n\nEstimators bid a job based on rough plans.\nThey determine what type of materials in a bid based on job specs, cost and codes.\nDesigners take those plans after a bid is won and produce shop drawings for the field guys and do material takeoffs as well sometimes to determine what is needed for the project.\nProject managers take this info and convey it o the field foremen who make it happen on site.\n\nHope this wasn't too wordy. Any other questions related to this are welcome",
"When you’re talking about things that detailed like bolts, it’s usually the building codes that take precedence because the construction company never wants to spend a dime more than they have to.\n\nFor instance, when putting in a plywood shear wall, you need to nail it to the studs; the architect and/or structural engineers will (based on local building codes) usually put nail size and placement requirements directly on the blueprints (for example 12d @ 4” oc) which means 12 d nails, every 4” on center.\n\nIn the real world, these are rarely followed “to a t” because things get in the way and we’re dealing with people.....Also, things come up like let’s say the plywood guy is 3 nails short and he’d have to drive to Home Depot to install those last three nails on a sheet of plywood that already has 97 nails in it. Chances are he’s going to say “meh, close enough” and move on. Inspectors aren’t checking every single sheet of plywood and counting every single nail and comparing it to the plans.\n\nFortunately, architects/engineers/building codes apply safety factors into the design to account for everything from variances in building materials to “nailing issues” \n\nTLDR: these specs are usually on the blueprints.\n\nSource: I’m a structural engineer.\n\n"
]
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3ry4j3 | if a plane went above, then below, then above the speed of sound a bunch of times would it create a bunch of sonic booms? | Could a plane travel very close to the speed of sound before rapidly accelerating and decelerating to generate multiple sonic booms in a row? If a plane stayed at the speed of sound exactly would it be in a perpetual sonic boom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ry4j3/eli5_if_a_plane_went_above_then_below_then_above/ | {
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"text": [
"An object travelling faster than the speed of sound is *continuously generating a shockwave* for as a long as it exceeds the speed of sound. It only sounds like a brief 'boom' to a distant listener because the plane has already flown past- to hear another one, it would have to turn around and fly past you again.\n\nIf you're having trouble visualizing it, imagine it like the [wake](_URL_0_) of a boat. Instead of waves of water, a plane makes waves of air."
]
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[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Fjordn_surface_wave_boat.jpg"
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5um80x | how did actors and entertainers become our most idolized in society, and when can you start to see the first display of this in human history? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5um80x/eli5_how_did_actors_and_entertainers_become_our/ | {
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"I would guess because they have such a broad pop culture influence that everyone can interact with. *Most* people have people they idolize more than celebrities, but those targets of praise aren't common across large groups of people, for obvious reasons. Think of the \"mile wide and an inch deep\" figure of speech.\n\nA physicist might idolize Hawking, a foreign policy expert might idolize Kissinger. But other people are more likely to simply not care.",
"Entertainment predates written records, however stories were spread by word of mouth and and certain profession storytellers. One famous today is Homer with stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Actors were not really famous until more recent history. The skill of acting was not very important due to the first theatre and stage play written works did not rely the performer for the story. Many time the scene would be explained while someone with a mask would act the role. Fame for actors unless known for other reasons were not known. Story telling however structured by the Greek tragedies and comedies are still famous. During the time of Shakespeare actors started being known but not respected or admired. The advent of motion picture attached fame and skill, but even that took time to mature as what we think today.",
" > When?\n\nIn the US, it was in the 1920s. \n\nPrior to that, actors were not really welcome in polite society, especially in polite Puritan society. Historically this has been true in many places, at many times. When political and/or religious troubles started actors, artists, and gypsies are the first to be rounded up. Nobody wanted to have an actor in their family.\n\nIt wasn't until the movie studios got their 'star-maker machinery' up and running that people started looking *up* at actors instead of looking down at them.\n\n > How?\n\nIntentionally.\n\nA few things came together at the same time: the technology to make and show motion pictures, a generation that experienced a slight uptick in quality of life following the American Civil War and the driving of most of the pesky Native Americans and Mexicans out of the places that white people wanted to live, and the arrival of unions.\n\nLouis Mayer, the second 'M' in 'MGM', had noticed that the unionization of laborers was biting the studios in the butt, and he predicted that it wouldn't be long before actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers were all unionized, which would ruin the sweet deal the studios had going on. Preventing that from happening would be a good thing for the studios. It would also be a good idea to raise the image of his industry, to fight that \"actors are scum\" attitude I mentioned above.\n\nSo he created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He got 36 of those actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers together, wined and dined them, and told them that if they joined this new Academy thing they would become the elite players in the glamourous new industry of movie stardom and celebrity; or, they could grub around with the unions begging for table-scraps. All 36 signed on, in the process becoming the Founding Members of the Academy. Two years later they held the first award ceremony, hosted by Academy president Douglas Fairbanks (Robin Hood, Zorro, The Thief of Bagdad). It was a swanky private dinner, and a ceremony that lasted 15 minutes. That first ceremony is the only one that wasn't broadcast on radio or television, but Mayer made sure there were plenty of reporters on hand.\n\nAfter that it was all advertising. They started out broadcasting the winners on the radio months in advance, then found they could generate more buzz by not releasing the winners to the press until 11pm on the night of the ceremony. (Commercial television sets weren't found in the average home until after WWII; the first televised 'Oscars' ceremony was in 1953.) The studios found that not only was it was cheaper to fund the creation of a few superstars than it would be to pay a bunch of unionized workers slightly better wages, but by creating the *idea* of a 'celebrity' they could entice more of the general public to go to the cinema. The scheme paid for itself, many times over.\n\nPost-WWII was when the whole thing really got rolling... companies would hire famous actors to advertize their products, or give them clothes and jewelry and cars for the exposure in the press; red-carpet galas were held, with a thousand flashbulbs going off every time a limousine door opened; magazines and gossip rags were created to keep people talking about celebrities.\n\nThey basically created royalty in a form that would be accepted in the US. Then, as always happens, once one entire generation had grown up accepting something future generations would assume it was *always* like that. Once the idea of movie 'stars' reached critical mass, the studios couldn't have stopped it if they wanted to."
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4o9uwz | relativity of space travel near the speed of light. | Planet A is 100 light years away from Earth.
Spaceship can travel at 99% speed of light.
According to relativity, around that speed people on the ship would experience 1 day of time equivalent to how people on Earth woud experience ~ 1 year?
So do we on the Earth see the ship arriving in 101.01 years, while the people on the ship would just arrive in ~100 days from their point of view?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o9uwz/eli5relativity_of_space_travel_near_the_speed_of/ | {
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" > ~100 days from their point of view?\n\nCorrect.\n\n > we on the Earth see the ship arriving in 101.01 years,\n\n201.01 years. The light from Planet A has to travel a 100 lightyears back to Earth. \n\n",
"That's correct. People on Earth would see the clocks on the moving ship slowing down from the effect of time dilation, just as relativity predicts.\n\nBut wait. The people on the ship don't see themselves moving. They see themselves staying still and everything else moving at 99% of the speed of light past them. So why don't they see it taking themselves 101 years to get there? After all, it's 100 light years to the planet, and the planet is moving towards them at 99% of the speed of light. Doesn't this contradict what the people on Earth see?\n\nThe answer is another fun relativistic phenomenon: Lorentz contraction. When things move at high speed, they contract along the direction of motion in exactly the same way that time moves slower. So the people on the ship observe the length between them and the planet reduced by exactly the same factor that the people on Earth see their time slowed down. So they only experience one day, just like the people on Earth thought they would."
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3veu4w | google's "im feeling lucky" button | Never really understood it. What does it do? What information does it give that is different from the normal search and why is it even there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3veu4w/eli5_googles_im_feeling_lucky_button/ | {
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"You know how when you do a search, you get a list of sites? That one just goes to the first one automatically. Exciting, I know.",
"It takes you to the first search result of the term you googled. If you search facebook and hit it, it will just take you straight to facebook",
"Clicking search will provide you with search results ranked in order of relevance. The \"I'm feeling lucky\" doesn't take you to those search results. Instead it automatically takes you to the web page of the top result."
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3dlgfc | can 50 cent get away with pretending to be broke to avoid paying court fees? | There are recent pictures of him hitting the strip club and throwing hundreds or thousands of dollars on strippers, he won a $1.6 million bet on the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight two months ago and Forbes listed him as having $166 million again, 2 months ago. So we know he is hiding money but if the court can't technically prove that he is hiding money, can he get away with declaring bankruptcy to avoid the court costs? Will he be arrested or fined if the court can prove he's lying?
I apologize for not knowing some of the legal terminology that would probably help make better sense of these questions . I don't know much about the court system but I am interested in the story and sympathize with the woman he owes money to. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dlgfc/eli5_can_50_cent_get_away_with_pretending_to_be/ | {
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"The type of bankruptcy he is declaring is not personal bankruptcy and its s tempirary measure to allow him to liquidate cash rather than defaulg on his payments",
"What happened was that 50 cent had a suit or case against him by some woman and they want like 10 million or some stupid amount for some accusation. Now to avoid that they (50 and his 50 lawyers/financial advisors) decided to file bankruptcy (chapter 11 I think? ) which allows him to restructure his debts and holdings, meaning they're going to play with his money and that could take about 3 years or something unbelievable like that. In the meantime this lady wants money, but when you file for bankruptcy the assets can't be touched except for small amounts so they can offer her like half a million and she'll have to wait 3 years until they can begin trying to get any more and who knows if she can hold out on that or if they'll take it. It's just a con on some lady. So I've heard through the grapevine. ",
"The simple answer is that you can have a lot of money and still be bankrupt. All that is required to be \"bankrupt\" is to have less asset worth than total debt, and an inability to satisfy said debts.",
"Let's say your lemonade stand did really well and you've earned $100. You use it to buy a nice new treehouse and some cool Power Wheels. You don't have any cash left, but you still own $100 worth of stuff, and Forbes Top Toddlers still lists your wealth at $100.\n\nThen, you manage to acquire the a sex tape of one of your enemies, release it publicly, get sued in court and are ordered to pay your enemy $10 immediately.\n\nYou're then able to go to a different court and explain to them that you don't have any cash, and it'll take some time for you to find someone to buy your used Power Wheels. You put together a plan showing how you intend to get the cash needed to pay your debts, and if the court thinks it's fair, it prevents that enemy from trying to collect money from you in the meantime.\n\nThen, your enemy who recognizes you're just stalling from paying her says, \"Hey, I'll take $5 now instead of $10 in two years,\" you agree, manage to find $5, and pay off your newly reduced obligation. You come out $5 ahead, because you gotta get rich or die tryin'."
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4dmcnw | why did the us military overthrow the gaddafi regime creating a lawless state in libya? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dmcnw/eli5_why_did_the_us_military_overthrow_the/ | {
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"They didn't. Gaddafi was overthrown by an internal revolution (i.e. a Civil War). NATO did get involved in providing air cover, however that was after the \"Arab Spring\" had triggered the revolution, and involved a lot of actions by people other than the US military.",
"To prevent a massacre in Benghazi.\n\nEuropean allies had been pushing for regime change and a military intervention in Libya since the start of the civil war. Their concerns included attacks on civilians by the Gaddafi regime, a desire to support the nascent Arab spring, and particularly in the case of a France, a desire to reassert itself as a military force in Africa.\n\nThe Americans were initially hesitant, but their strategic and communications assets were critical for any viable intervention. Their calculations changed once the pro-regime military gained the upper hand and began advancing on the northern cities such as Benghazi.\n\nYou have to remember the Obama state department and west wing are full of old Clinton staffers. They remember Yugoslavia and Rwanda, when they were accused of sitting idly by as civilians were massacred. This argument was enough to tip those skeptical of US involvement into supporting an intervention.\n\nOnce intervention began, of course, the strategic calculus changed, and began to include ending the civil war and nation building. This occurred both because of US supporters of this strategy and our allies concerns.\n\nRegardless, the initial goal was to bomb a column of Gaddafi troops and prevent a massacre. That was successful. Everything afterward was less directed and more confused.",
"Gaddafi was the dictator of Libya for several decades. He's been implicated in multiple terrorist attacks and his regime committed war crimes against thousands of Libyan citizens. Libya was just one of the many countries that collectively became part of \"The Arab Spring,\" where protesters fought to bring down autocratic governments & dictatorships. In some countries, relatively peaceful progress was made, but some governments attempted to shut down any form of democratic protest. In Libya, the protesters fought back against the Gaddafi Regime.\n\nThe eastern part of Libya was taken by rebels relatively quickly, and they set up a capital city - Benghazi. Both the Gaddafi Regime and the NTC rebels committed terrible war crimes against each other and civilians. The Gaddafi Regime began bombing the rebels until the UN Security Council imposed a no-fly zone over Libya. This was the beginning of the end for the Gaddafi Regime. With NATO support, the NTC rebels took control and defeated the Gaddafi Regime.\n\nThe United Nations had to step in to do something about the terrible atrocities being committed in Libya, and when it was deemed okay for countries to step in and support one side over the other, the NTC rebels were an easy choice over the autocratic, war criminal Gaddafi.",
"Do you want an answer or did you just want to make a political statement in the form of a question. Fuck these loaded questions."
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g3iwdw | can someone explain “money making” to bail out an economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g3iwdw/eli5_can_someone_explain_money_making_to_bail_out/ | {
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"Making money appear is really easy for any nation with a central bank—they print it. \n\nAs to how it helps bail out an economy is a much sketchier proposition. Theoretically, injecting some quick additional cash into the economy could help soothe the fears of businesses, investors, and consumers, and make them more likely to spend money and not slow down the economy. Whether this actually happens in practice or whether people actually just save whatever extra money they’re given because they’re still scared of what’s going on is up for debate."
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2r45pl | how does torque vectoring work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r45pl/eli5_how_does_torque_vectoring_work/ | {
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"Well, step one, what is torque vectoring?\n\nSimply put, it's a way of directing power from the engine in a car to the wheel that needs it. In most cars, it just goes to the wheel with the least resistance. This happens because of the differential, the part that splits the driveshaft into two wheels, and allows those wheels to turn at different speeds. It's easy to see how if one wheel loses grip, and it gets all the power, it can reduce performance/traction. In AWD cars, there is a front, rear, and center dif (center splits it forward and backwards, front and rear diffs split it left and right to each wheel).\n\nThere are passive torque vectoring systems that use a fancy differential to do this. As one wheel loses traction, and therefore exerts less force, it actually gets less power (instead of more like tradtional differentials). Audi's Quattro system is a fantastic example of this. \n\nThe newer \"Active\" systems accomplish the same idea with a computer. Either they play with the differential to put more power to a particular wheel (Mitsubishi's system, Acura's SH-AWD for example) or they apply the brake to the wheel they wish to send less torque to (Mercedes and Porsche systems). As I mentioned, most differentials send power to the wheel with the least resistance, adding resistance with braking means the other wheel gets the power. The advantage with active is that torque can be forced to the outside wheels to help make sharper turns."
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3pn6wa | how does "frequently changing my password" make my accounts any more secure? | It seems like playing different numbers in the lottery every week to increase your chances of winning. In the 1990s when you could spam thousands of login attempts per second this made sense, but now authentication servers prevent that.
If your password gets hacked it's because someone got access to a database with passwords in it and they'll run brute force algorithms against the encrypted password until they find a match... changing your password will have no affect on that process so why do we have to keep changing them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pn6wa/eli5_how_does_frequently_changing_my_password/ | {
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" > If your password gets hacked it's because someone got access to a database with passwords in it and they'll run brute force algorithms against the encrypted password until they find a match... changing your password will have no affect on that process so why do we have to keep changing them?\n\nAssuming you used a strong password, by the time the hacker managed to crack it you will have changed it already, so their cracking attempts will have been for nothing.",
" > If your password gets hacked it's because someone got access to a database with passwords in it and they'll run brute force algorithms against the encrypted password until they find a match... changing your password will have no affect on that process so why do we have to keep changing them?\n\nChanging the password has no effect on the process itself but it does make its result useless. Brute force attacks take time to complete, and security breaches can go undetected for some time. The idea behind making your password long and changing it often is to make any stolen information outdated and useless before it can be used. If your password is long enough to take two weeks to decrypt and you change it every week, stealing a database and decrypting your password does nothing because by the time the decryption finishes you will have changed the password already anyway."
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jae6p | explain like i'm 5 what effect the downgrade of the credit rating will have | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jae6p/explain_like_im_5_what_effect_the_downgrade_of/ | {
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"Probably none. The rating is a tool that measures how confident someone who lends money to the US can be that the country will give back that money. The lower it gets, the riskier it is and so people ask for more interest in the money they lend, so the government loses money. So, at best, the interest rates may rise a bit.",
"Can Americas credit rating go back up to AAA? What wouldve happened if we defaulted?",
"Probably none. The rating is a tool that measures how confident someone who lends money to the US can be that the country will give back that money. The lower it gets, the riskier it is and so people ask for more interest in the money they lend, so the government loses money. So, at best, the interest rates may rise a bit.",
"Can Americas credit rating go back up to AAA? What wouldve happened if we defaulted?"
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6j7wbj | why do people like sad movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6j7wbj/eli5_why_do_people_like_sad_movies/ | {
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"There has been some research to suggest that when people are sad, they like to listen to sad music and watch sad movies/television. Something about feeling empathy with the characters allows most people to work through their sadness.\n\nAside from that, people just enjoy **feeling stuff**. Whether it's sadness, joy, anger, fear... they just like to feel. Sure, joy is usually better than the other possibilities, but joy isn't as easy to come by as the others."
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cctg4d | since electrons flow from negative to positive, why are cars grounded to the negative terminal on the battery? | Seems like you'd want to be careful with the source of the electrons so the negative terminal would be covered/protected and the positive would be wired to the frame. But it is the opposite. I presume there is a good reason that I do not understand. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cctg4d/eli5_since_electrons_flow_from_negative_to/ | {
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"It really doesn't matter whether you use positive or negative ground. Some vehicles have had positive ground. The convention of saying that current flows from positive to negative was established by Ben Franklin before we knew about electrons. Conventional current flow is opposite electron flow. Current flows in a loop from source to load and back to source. \n\nInterestingly, electron flow is very slow compared to the speed of electricity. It is usually less than 1mm/second while electricity flows at 50% to 90% of the speed of light. Electricity travels as an electromagnetic field. I like to think of it as one charge pushing the others along like a drinking straw full of peas. Add a pea to the end and one will immediately pop out the other end.",
"The direction electrons flow is, in terms of circuitry, irrelevant. Voltage is actually relative, and does not exist without two terminals. For instance, if you have the negative terminal grounded (at zero volts) and the positive terminal is \"live\", then you can think of it as the positive terminal sucking electrons from the grounded terminal. This also means that grounded terminals are almost always safe to touch, no matter if they're \"positive\" or \"negative\" (I use quotations because if it is grounded, it is at zero volts and therefore neither positive nor negative). In q high voltage system, if you're shocked by a positive terminal, it is because the positive terminal sucks electrons out of you, which causes a shock. In this case, you are serving as the negative terminal.",
"Ground is simply defining a given point in the circuit as a 0 reference. It doesn't much (there are some secondary considerations) matter which way it is as long as you're consistent about it. Lots of old vehicles, military vehicles, and old military vehicles do it the other way around and define the positive side of the battery as ground. It's even fairly straightforward to convert a vehicle's grounding.",
"For historical reasons, positive and negative were defined before we knew about electrons. The convention was set that electrical current flows from positive to negative.\n\nMost electrical current is transmitted by electrons which we now know are negatively charged - so while the current flows from positive to negative, the negative electrons flow from negative to positive. In special cases, such as in electronics and in batteries, electrical currents can be carried by positive current carriers, which flow from positive to negative.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe safety issue comes from completing a circuit - connective negative to positive accidentally. It really doesn't matter which one is covered - just that one is. Obviously, you can use the chassis of the car as a free wire, so you can connect one terminal of the battery to that - and then you cover the other one.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHistorically, cars used to be wired with battery positive connected to the chassis. This is because if you get water into an electrical circuit, the negative metal corrodes. Because of low quality wiring insulation made from varnished cloth, water used to get in a lot. By having positive connected to chassis, the repairable wiring would corrode, protecting the chassis. When electronically controlled alternators were developed in the 1970s, it became much easier and more efficient to build the electronics with a negative chassis - so this is how things have stayed."
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7ejuuz | how do they stop a large gas main fire? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ejuuz/eli5_how_do_they_stop_a_large_gas_main_fire/ | {
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" > Just got me wondering how they keep it from going back up the line.\n\nFire needs three things to continue: Fuel, oxygen, and heat. There's no oxygen in the gas line, so fire can't burn there.",
"Depends on the intensity of the fire. Generally they shut off the flow of gas further up the system. Letting the remaining fuel burn off, cooling it with water or foam and sealing the well.\n\nThere are methods to shutting off fires at oil wells which can involve the use of explosives or other methods of capping the well.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Orion township? That was crazy huh? ",
"Fun fact, they used explosives to put out the oil rig fires that Saddam started in the first Gulf War. "
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65w82m | how do animals with multiple heads share a body, do they at all share body movement, also does this take place in humans? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65w82m/eli5_how_do_animals_with_multiple_heads_share_a/ | {
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"[This has happened in humans](_URL_0_).\n\nIn that case, they each control half the body because the nervous systems are well separated.\n\nWhether that's the case in other animal examples depends on how well defined each head's nervous system is and how the body is attached to them. There have been examples where one head appears to have full control, cases where they're split, and cases where the heads aren't fully separate and effectively have one brain stem that controls the body."
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2fs9rj | why is the usa different from other countries with its measuring systems, sports, soccer instead of football and whatever else makes it different | TIL Americans are offended when asked about their measuring system
Calm the fuck down | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fs9rj/eli5_why_is_the_usa_different_from_other/ | {
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"I can't comment on the sports but the measuring system has its reasons.\n\nThe american measuring system is often lambasted for being useless. From a scientific stand point, this is more or less true. If you are in manufacturing or sales, the units of length can be very useful. The american system of measurement makes it very easy to divide things in to 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 and multiples thereof. Need to cut a board that is 5 1/3 ft long. In the american system that is easy to do, in metric 1 and 2/3 meters is not nearly as easy. Possible, yeah, easy no. So for countries with a manufacturing base, there is actually some logic for the quickness of using american measurements. For science and memorizaiton, not so much (I say this as a scientist).\n\nWhy we haven't switched? Inertia. All americans grew up using the American system as a frame of reference. Saying it is 90 outside means its hot. If I told someone it was 30oC they wouldn't know if it is hot or cold. To switch, they would have to develop a new frame of reference and that takes time and energy. So they haven't yet, we are slowly switching as more stuff is made metric only but it will be a long time before we see a complete switch. "
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bxj882 | how does the turing test work, and why is it still debatable whether it has been passed or not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxj882/eli5_how_does_the_turing_test_work_and_why_is_it/ | {
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"Simple. You are put in a room with a 2 keyboards and 2 screens. On one end there is a person, on the other, a programm. \nYou ask both whatever questions you want, for how long you want.\nThe person is not trying to trick you. If you can't figure out reliably which is the computer and which is the person, the programm has passed the turing test",
"There is no one \"Turing test\". To understand why people talk about it, quick history lesson.\n\nAt the time computers were being envisioned by early pioneers, we had this idea that machines should be able to do computations. But what is computation? Multiple people, among them Turing, had their own idea of how to rigorously define what is computation, to have this theoretical background that makes sure computers can do any computation. Turing machine was Turing's answer to this, and they formulated cool Turing-Churchill conjecture saying that yeah, this Turing machine idea probably encapsulates what we mean by computation.\n\nAnyway, in this world where people are trying to define what computation even means, people wanted to know if these computation machines could think. And lots of philosophical debates started. What does thinking even mean, how do you detect presence of thought, is human brain uniquely capable of thought...\n\nAnd Turing came up with this simple test to direct people towards something practical instead: if you cannot tell the difference between words produced by a computer that may or may not think, and words produced by a human, does it matter if computer thinks or not? From your point of view, it shouldn't matter. So Turing simply proposed, lets test that then to see if computer thinks, if you can tell the difference.\n\nFor the most part, Turing test obviously has not been passed. You cannot have free-form discussion with a computer without illusion of thought shattering quickly. But if you restrict the test or scope of questions or length of interaction, you can get fairly good results for computer. And the thing is, there is no One True Turing Test. Turing test is an idea about testing humans and their ability to differentiate computers from humans rather than trying to assess computer thought directly. It doesn't have one set of rules, you can do tests in that spirit in multitude of ways, and people have done so. All that matters is that ultimately a human is tasked to tell the difference between a human(that presumably is capable of thought) and a computer(the supposed 'unknown') from their output alone."
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1fmhvu | deriviteves and limits in calculus, purpose of infinity | I've seemed to have forgotten how that works. Calculus 1 and 2 slipped my mind, and I honestly wish I can remember. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fmhvu/eli5_deriviteves_and_limits_in_calculus_purpose/ | {
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"Remember slope from Algebra? Slope is a number that indicates the steepness of a line. Higher slope means steeper lines, negative slope means going down (from left to right), zero slope means flat.\n\nA derivative of a function (that is, a collection of variables, constants, and operations) gives a new function that can tell you the slope of any single spot on even a complicated curvy shape. The slope of a line is always the same, but the slope of something like a parabola changes; part of it is steep, part is pretty flat, and some goes up and some goes down. The derivative of a parabola function will tell you that. \n\nThe reason limits are involved is due to the underlying idea of how the slope of a graph in one spot can be calculated. Imagine marking two spots on either side of the point you want to know the slope of and connecting them with a ruler. The line you draw is probably pretty close to the slope of the graph at that point you're interested. Close, but not exact. So you shift the 2 points closer to the place of interest and draw a line again. Close, but not quite. You can keep doing this and get them closer an closer to the point, and your answer will get better and better. Eventually, the points are infinitesimally far away, that is, as close as they can get to each other without being at the same place. This is the limit of the situation as the distance between the points approaches zero. You can use the \"Definition of Slope\" equation/limit to calculate slope of complicated graphs but mathematicians noticed that many common functions like exponents and trigonometry functions have predictable derivatives we can just memorize.",
"[Understanding Calculus With A Bank Account Metaphor](_URL_1_)\n\n[An Intuitive Introduction To Limits](_URL_2_)\n\n[Calculus: Building Intuition for the Derivative](_URL_4_)\n\n[How To Understand Derivatives: The Quotient Rule, Exponents, and Logarithms](_URL_0_)\n\n[How To Understand Derivatives: The Product, Power & Chain Rules](_URL_3_)"
]
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[],
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"http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-understand-derivatives-the-quotient-rule-exponents-and-logarithms/",
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-calculus-with-a-bank-account-metaphor/",
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-introduction-to-limits/",
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/derivatives-product-power-chain/",
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/calculus-building-intuition-for-the-derivative/"
]
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|
m1vjd | the difference between ntfs and ext4. | EDIT: Specifically, how do they operate differently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m1vjd/the_difference_between_ntfs_and_ext4/ | {
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"text": [
"ext4 and NTFS are filesystems, used by computers to store information on hard drives.\n\nNTFS is the filesystem for Windows operating system, and all the way back to Windows NT in the 90's. \n\next4 is the most recent ext filesystem used by the Linux operating system.\n\nA Windows machine can't read an ext4 filesystem without software to help, and a Linux machine can't read an NTFS filesystem without different software to help.",
"ext4 and NTFS are filesystems, used by computers to store information on hard drives.\n\nNTFS is the filesystem for Windows operating system, and all the way back to Windows NT in the 90's. \n\next4 is the most recent ext filesystem used by the Linux operating system.\n\nA Windows machine can't read an ext4 filesystem without software to help, and a Linux machine can't read an NTFS filesystem without different software to help."
]
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|
3bquu1 | how do you know if someone is a bad actor or if its the director who is bad? | I've never been in a movie or even on a set, but I'm assuming the director is the one telling the actor how to act and the actor does it, is there someway to tell who is responsible for a bad scene/movie? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bquu1/eli5how_do_you_know_if_someone_is_a_bad_actor_or/ | {
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"text": [
"If a good actor does a bad performance in one movie, he's a good actor with bad direction.\n\nIf an actor does a bad performance in every movie he is in, he's a bad actor.\n\nPersonally I think the best actors are the ones who actually play different characters, instead of themselves in different scenarios, so I personally think if an actor plays the same character in every damn movie, it may be a good believable character, but the \"actor\" is not actually \"acting\"...\n\nBut that's just me."
]
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[]
] |
|
5j1prc | why can you only use certain elements/atoms to make an atomic device? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j1prc/eli5_why_can_you_only_use_certain_elementsatoms/ | {
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"Only atoms that are relatively unstable (and tend to explode into smaller atoms) can be used. They are like tiny one-atom-sized bombs just waiting to go off.\n\nIron isn't like that. Uranium is."
]
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[]
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||
1otvjz | why did nature make some pain "unbearable," such as non-anesthetized amputation or severe burns? | I get why there's pain, and even "pretty bad" pain serves a purpose in trying to keep the body away from whatever is causing the pain. But why is there pain that's so severe that people would rather die than continue to feel it? Wouldn't the human body want to prevent that and have pain that was "mostly bearable."
Also, I know pain is subjective, but from many accounts I've seen over the years, stuff like amputation (with no medication), severe burns, the stings of some rare insects or bites from some animals can create a pain so severe it seems weird that the scale even goes that high. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1otvjz/eli5_why_did_nature_make_some_pain_unbearable/ | {
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"Pain is an evolved thing, not a designed one. It works as it is, and that's all it needs to do.\n\nWell it might be nice to not feel such severe pain it's not really going to help us survive if we don't. Whether you want to kill yourself or not doesn't matter much when the injury in question is likely fatal anyway. (And an amputation or the like is almost always fatal without medical treatments not widespread until the last century or two.)",
"The body is not capable of distinguishing between a pain you cannot hope to avoid or treat and one that you can, hence you will feel pain regardless of if there is anything you can do about it. Further, nerves don't really care what other nerves are doing, each one is sending the pain signal individually, but when they reach your brain your brain throws up a \"Holy shit\" alarm and gets overwhelmed. Generally when this happens either as you state you continue feeling unbearable pain, or you go into shock and possbily die. Your brain isn't capable of safely filtering through all of the signals during such pain because it is far too big of a workload, and because it can't tell what the heck is actually going on it just reports all of it or none of it, and none is very bad because of shock, among other issues."
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6liu0e | the first generations of useful genetic mutations | Sorry the title is probably a laymans term. I understand how natural selection results in the success of genetic traits such as poison/venom, toxicity tolerance, elongated extremities, etc, and how they can therefore become amplified through generations.
What I would like to know is how these mutations came to be in the first place. For simplicities sake, I will use eyes as an example: how did single cell organisms become photosensitive? Is there any idea as to how these useful genetic mutations pop up in history?
Edit for clarity: how do genetic mutations originally begin? Are they really just a freak chance? If environental circumstance is a factor, how does DNA suddenly know what mutations will be useful?
Edit 2: Thanks to the users who responded numerous times to help me understand this topic. I think I have a grasp of this now: Very basic forms of physical mutations do not require a dramatic change in DNA to occur, and because there are numerous factors that influence the accuracy of DNA duplication, these mutations can occur quite frequently. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6liu0e/eli5_the_first_generations_of_useful_genetic/ | {
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"So, Fred is the first organism to sense light. He can detect prey and females better than his peers. So, he eats more and has more children. Half of those children will be able to detect light (they got Fred's mutant gene) and half won't (they got Mom's \"normal\" gene). However, they will eat more and have more children. In time, they will crowd out the version that is insensitive to light.\n\nThese mutations pop up all the time. Today, the ecosystems are pretty stable and each animal that remains has a pretty secure niche. Sure, there are some endanger species, and their niches might be up for grabs, but mostly we see things like new patterns of fur that might make you more desirable for zoo breeding programs.",
"Others have talked about random chance mutations. One of the reasons why it seems so far fetched is that we think of genes as something that we need and we instinctively understand that if you mutate that gene then you'd be making a new gene that might not work as well as the original.\n\nIt turns out that there are other ways that changes can happen other than a randomly lucky mutation in a gene making something better. One of the more interesting ways is *gene duplication*.\n\nSo imagine you have a gene that codes for a protein that transports oxygen. Then you have a screwup in the DNA replication process that causes a duplicate of the gene. No big deal, now you have two copies of a gene that you needed not one.\n\nHowever, now that you have two copies of the gene, the selection pressure that existed to keep the gene working is not applied to the second copy. In other words, the second copy is free to mutate. \n\nNow that second gene could mutate to do nothing at all - this is really common. Sometimes though, the second gene mutates to do something new or different. In fact, this has probably already happened when myoglobin gene duplicated and mutated into the hemoglobin gene and again when hemoglobin duplicated and mutated into the alpha & beta sub-units of modern hemoglobin. See [here](_URL_0_) for a short summary.\n\nEvolution is cool.\n\n"
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobin#Evolution_of_vertebrate_hemoglobin"
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3zxzv0 | why is "playing dead" so rarely used tactic in war? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zxzv0/eli5_why_is_playing_dead_so_rarely_used_tactic_in/ | {
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"There's the false retreat, that the Spartans supposedly used, but that's the closest you'll get to playing dead on the battlefield.",
"Easy, in an extreme situation, nobody is going to let a possible living threat in his rear. One more bullet in the head ensures the risk is zeroed out. \n ",
"Soldiers are trained to be on the lookout for this technique, and if they come across dead enemy soldiers at close range, shoot them some extra times just to be sure. So if you \"play dead\" you are likely to be \"really dead\" before you can do anything about it.",
"On an individual soldier basis, there are plenty of examples of where a wounded or fearful soldier hid among the dead, as the enemy approached \n\nAs a tactic it doesn't work, certainly not in modern warfare. Everyone pretends to die, until the enemy gets close, then suddenly come to life, jump up and Rambo style mow everyone down with a machine gun is more Hollywood.",
"It was used.\n\nNative Americans and other aboriginal groups used it as part of their guerilla warfare tactics.\n\nThe Red Army used it in the Great War because they had a seriously lack of guns (roughly 1 gun per 10 soldiers). They would wait until the Germans were walking through what seemed like a field of corpses and then woukd attack with any weapons they had available resulting in the highest number of deaths by any nation in the war.\n\nIt just doesn't work in modern wars because of heat sensors and the knowledge that it was tried in the past. Soldiers are trained to look and see if the bodies are actually injured and to check if they are dead upon first encountering them.\n\nThe new version of this would be to pretend to have a broken down car full of explosives and wait for the soldiers to think it was just junk and wait until they went passed. But even now soldiers are aware of this and are extra vigilant.",
"Anything that moves is VC. Anything that doesn't move is a highly disciplined VC. Discipline my friend.....discipline. ",
"Warning NSFW:\n\nWar trophies & desecretion of bodies:\n\n* _URL_0_\n\n* _URL_1_\n\n"
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61ubw6 | in the context of carl sagan's analogy of explaining what a tesseract is, what does it mean for an object to be completely flat? | _URL_0_
In the video Carl Sagan gives an analogy of flatland, a universe where the beings only know left/right and forward/backward, but not up/down. The beings have width and length, but no height, i.e. they are absolutely flat. I don't understand what it would mean for anything not to have height though. Like even 10^-35 meters is some height. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61ubw6/eli5_in_the_context_of_carl_sagans_analogy_of/ | {
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"That's exactly what it would mean, no height. \n\nIt's not something that can \"really\" exist, in the sense of being found in our universe, at least at the level of direct human perception. It's a construct designed to illustrate a point, like the train that moves at the speed of light. ",
"A two-dimensional denizen of [Flatland](_URL_0_), which Sagan refers to, would have length and width, but no height. \n\nYou couldn't pick him up, it would be like trying to pick up a shadow.\n\nOne unusual notion, which Sagan also mentions, is that you could--looking down at him--see inside his body. Just as you could see inside his house. It makes sense if you think about it. A creature who lives in two dimensions needs walls for his house, but he would have no concept of a roof, something \"over\" his house. There is no \"over.\"\n\nThis raises the somewhat disturbing thought that if a creature from the fourth physical dimension showed up near me and said \"Hello,\" he could see the inside of my body. I have skin covering my body to protect it above and below me and to my left and my right and front and back. I have no skin covering my body (as far as I know) to protect it from another direction. \n\nIf this fourth-dimensional person said, \"Hi. I'm right here,\" I wouldn't be able to see him, even if he was close enough to touch. I don't have a physical mechanism to look or to reach in any direction but up-down, left-right, front-back. If my fourth-dimensional friend picked me \"up\" into his dimension, I could look \"down\" and see inside my house and all of my friends.\n\n\nThe reason we enjoy thinking about a two-dimensional world is to help us think about what a four-dimensional world would be like. Since we have an understanding of an extra dimension which the Flatlanders don't have, we can think about how they would react when confronted by it.\n\nTake the universe for example. A good way to play with a two-dimensional universe is to take an uninflated toy balloon and make dots on it with a marker. These dots can represent people or planets, or galaxies, or whatever. \nThen slowly blow the balloon up. The two-dimensional universe is expanding. You'll notice that all of the dots are moving apart from each other. There is no one dot which is the \"center\" of the universe. All are equally moving apart.\n\nA Flatlander leaving his home dot would travel in a straight line and eventually find himself back where he started. How would he explain that? Well, the universe must curve back upon itself somehow. He would have a very hard time drawing a picture of it, but he can measure it and he knows it's happening.\n\nIf our Flatlander wanted to get to a dot on the other side of the balloon, he would have to travel across half his universe. We three-dimensionals can see a short cut that he can't. He could cut across the center of the balloon and get there in a fraction of the time. But how could we explain that to him? \"Just go down and cut across the center,\" would involve concepts totally alien to him. We can't just point the way, because he can't look where we're pointing.\n\nGetting back to our personal situation. We live in a three-dimensional universe which is expanding. No one point is the center. Everything is moving away from everything else. Sound familiar? \nIf we want to travel to a planet on the other side of the universe, there's only one route we can see, and it's a long way. \nIs it possible there might be a short cut that a fourth-dimensional person could see, that would be obvious to him, but that we can't even imagine? Even if he and I were talking right now, he couldn't point the way to me. I am unable to look where he's pointing.\n\nHere's where cosmologists and Sci-fi writers have a lot of fun thinking about wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges and other things. By first thinking of our Flatlander trying to understand our three-dimensional world, we can see the work we have to do to understand a four-dimensional one. The short cut could be right \"under\" our feet, and maybe someday we'll learn where to look.\n\n____\n\nFinal point just to cover all the bases. We technically *do* have a fourth dimension of time. This is actually vital to studying huge things like the universe. When we look at a celestial object, we need to know where it is in the three dimensions and also *when* it is. Some of the things you're looking at in a telescope are actually thousands of years older than the image you're seeing. They may have blown up by now. Which leads to the question of what we mean when we say \"now.\" \nThat's a lot of fun to think about, too. But it's more fun to think about an invisible friend who can see inside your guts.\n\n"
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6mm6fi | how do t.v. stations know how many people are watching their shows? can someone possibly "hide" from this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mm6fi/eli5_how_do_tv_stations_know_how_many_people_are/ | {
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"There's a company called Nielsen that tracks viewers within a given area - they send out \"boxes\" that are attached to TVs, which lets them know what channels/shows are watched and at what time. People get paid to have these boxes (last I heard, it may have changed).\n\nIf you don't have one of these boxes, you're not part of the statistic, so there's nothing you need to do to \"hide\"."
]
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||
3swafg | how does alcohol tissues placed on the stomach help cure nausea? | This is something I learned from my grandma ever since I was little. Whenever I feel nauseous I just put some alcohol on a small towel and place it on my stomach. The nausea disappears in ~30mins.
What is happening that stops my nausea?
I've read that smelling alcohol pads can also stop the nausea, is this the same thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3swafg/eli5_how_does_alcohol_tissues_placed_on_the/ | {
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"The main two factors are (a) time and (b) the placebo effect.^* Up to 30% of symptoms can resolve with using a placebo. Our brain has enormous control over our bodies. That's why, when they do scientific studies, they compare a drug against a placebo.\n\nIn other words, there's no specific reason why it works. Grandma could just as easily have advised you to put garlic under your nose.\n\n* The placebo effect is basically when you give someone a drug that doesn't work (e.g. a sugar pill) but tell someone it's going to work. Their belief in the medication actually makes it work a little. "
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7xss2r | how can we prevent the mentally ill from possessing guns when health records are protected information? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xss2r/eli5_how_can_we_prevent_the_mentally_ill_from/ | {
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"It could be implemented easily but it won't be. Too many morons are clamoring to ban any type of firearm and gun owners won't budge because they see it easily going from implementing reasonable gun laws to complete prohibition.",
"It really varies state to state, but [most states](_URL_0_) require one of two events:\n\n- The court found you to have a mental issue severe enough to warrant actions\n\n- You were involuntarily committed to a mental institution\n\nNeither of those are private events covered by HIPAA - they are matters of public record.\n\nNow, for states that have stricter rules, you can still have the doctor pass along disqualifying information without disclosing your specific health information. Having them send a \"disqualify\" flag doesn't speak to the specific health information.",
"There is already precedence for doctor's to share confidential information with police if they believe that someone is reasonably expected to be a harm to themselves or others. Just as HIPAA is a law, a simple law amending it saying mental illness must now be reported to agency X could get around this issue. ",
"Maybe if we stopped stigmatizing mental illness and treated it the same way we do other diseases, people would stop hiding it and get some help. There's no more shame in having a mental illness than there is in having cancer or heart disease, yet the way we (as a society) treat it, you can hardly blame people for not coming forward and asking for help.",
"Same way a doctor gets permission, you sign a piece of paper allowing it. Also, there can be a lot of mental health information outside of your medical records. If a court orders that you be held for psychiatric observation, that is a matter of public record.\n\n > Who decides who is “ill enough” to be banned?\n\nWe perform studies to try to link various mental health diagnoses to gun violence. Unfortunately, the gun lobby has done everything they can to block government funding of such research, so we don't have those answers yet.\n\nBut on the other side, there are a lot of disingenuous gun control advocates who are really after gun prohibition. There is legitimate concern that background checks that go beyond the criminal could be made so strict they effectively become a backdoor ban."
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6j7gpt | why are bathroom scales so inaccurate, when all they have to do is measure pressure applied to within 0.001 accuracy or so? | It seems strange that the readings they give are often contradictory
- I just weighed myself twice and gained 1.5kg in 20 seconds. And they differ greatly from the scales used by pharmacists and clinics.
For that matter, the scales that *they* use have to be regularly calibrated, I believe every few months.
What's so difficult and error-prone about measuring the weight of a person with a reasonable degree of accuracy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6j7gpt/eli5_why_are_bathroom_scales_so_inaccurate_when/ | {
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"Cheap bathroom scales are not going to be as accurate as doctors scales which cost 10 times as much. Even electronic ones are mechanical devices, and have to deal with friction of the moving parts. If you want accuracy, buy a beam balance. If you *really* want accuracy, you will need to get it calibrated every few months. "
]
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[]
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|
1qkwmr | the difference between poorly written and well-written code | How does Programmer A write better code than Programmer B? Assuming the same project, what might be some marks to indicate good or bad coding? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qkwmr/eli5_the_difference_between_poorly_written_and/ | {
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"The amount of code used to achieve the desired goal can be a good indicator, i.e. the amount of redundancy in it. speed of writing the code and it's clarity. And most importantly the quality of the results.",
"A couple of things to point out here.\n\n1. There are often many ways to accomplish a task. Some ways of accomplishing it are *faster* than others. Speed is an important part of writing good code.\n\n2. Programmer A's code might be more readable. This is largely cosmetic -- the insertion of comments, judicious choice of variable names, indentation and spacing, etc, but overall code that is more readable is easier to maintain.\n\n3. Programmer A's code might be more modular, or might have a greater sense of logical flow, than Programmer B.\n\n4. Programs should be as short as possible to get the job done, but no shorter.\n\n5. Programs should be robust. Programmer A's code might be able to handle \"messier\" inputs than Programmer B, who forgot to foolproof/idiot-proof the code.\n * Example: say you're writing code where the input is 2 numbers and the output is their sum. So input: (1 5), output (6). Programmer A might have a few lines of code that handles the input (one five), with output (\"Please enter two numbers.\") Programmer B might not have those lines, and his program might crash when you give it the input (one five).\n\nThere are other principles, but that lays out a few of the most important.",
"Good code is simple when it can be & complex when it needs to. Bad code is complex when it needn't, and oversimplifies things, leaving out important details.\n\nGood code is well organized & easy to follow; bad code is a mess that leaves the reader confused.\n\nGood code is concise & takes advantage of available language features and libraries; bad code reinvents the wheel constantly.\n\nGood code is modular & reusable, bad code copy & pastes.\n\nGood code is maintainable, bad code is hard to follow.\n\n\nLet me give you some examples of bad code from an 'enterprise' application I once worked on:\n\n* There were thousands of database tables, all of which had confusing 7-letter names.\n\n* There was a 2-300 line function to recreate a bitwise XOR.\n\n* In one program, there was a 2000 line **IF** statement. There were two halves of 1000 lines each (it was obviously copy/pasted). They were identical except for 2 lines in the middle of it all. One of those lines was a bug (that had only been fixed on one half of the conditional).\n\n\nThere's far better places to discuss this - a proper ELI5 because assumes you know virtually nothing about programming (if that's the case, the difference is \"other programmers don't want to murder you and your family after working with your code\"). If you're a noob, /r/learnprogramming is a good start; if you want to discuss things with other programmers, /r/programming is the place. If you want to get off Reddit, _URL_0_ is a good place (but it's probably been asked so use the search).",
"Just to add to the others. Optimization is also a pretty big deal. You can take a badly written code and make it 50x faster (I had an example like that a couple of month ago) or use half the memory.",
"The explanations given here are pretty good if you have a base in programming but if you were truly 5, here's how I would explain it : \n\nIf you want to find out what 7 times 1 is you can do it in different mathematical ways. You could do 7*1 or 1+1+1+1+1+1+1.\n\nBoth work, but one is clearer and more concise.\n\nThat's basically better code. ",
"The difference between good code and bad code can be a little hard to pin down. The most obvious difference is performance. If Programmer A's program does the same thing as Programmer B's, but is twice as fast, then Programmer A's code is better. But its not that simple. Programmer B's code might use less memory, and that might be more important then speed.\n\nIn general good code is code that follows good coding practices. It should be easy to read and have good comments. It should be easy to maintain or expand. It should be loosely coupled, you should be able to change out different parts without breaking the whole thing. It should be well encapsulated, each class and each function should only do one thing. Code should be reused whenever possible. The list goes on and on. \n\nThe thing to remember is that getting a program to work is the easy part. Keeping it working, and keeping the users satisfied is the hard part and will be where most of the time and money is spent. So good code is code that makes your future job easier.",
"Good coding does the job without wasting memory and is easy to be modified later, possibly by someone not even involved in the original project.\n\nBad coding is whatever the fuck gets the job done.",
"It comes down to this: how quickly could another programmer pick up your code and understand it? Quicker understanding = better code. That can be accomplished with good code organization (example: very focused class structure, namespaces, etc.), non-redundant code, and use of reliable frameworks.",
"Professional programmer here. A few other replies have focused on differences in speed or resource usage, but that's not really it.\n\nThe major difference between \"good\" and \"bad\" code is how easy it is for another programmer (or yourself, at a later date) to read the code, mentally internalize what the code is doing, and to be able to make changes to it if changes are required. We call this \"maintainability\".\n\nThere's a variety of ways in which code can be hard to maintain, including:\n\n * Over-use of \"goto\" or breaking out of loops makes it hard to follow the program flow\n * Bad formatting makes it hard to read\n * Unusual loop structures or platform-specific code, where standard loops and standard code would work just as well\n * Lots of global variables/flags that change the behaviour of something in a completely different part of the program if they are changed, and it all hangs together in a fragile spiderweb that breaks in unpredictable ways if one part goes slightly wrong.\n * Lack of modularity means it's harder to read and internalize the code, and the effects of a bug can kill a large part of the program, instead of being isolated to a small region.\n",
"In my opinion it would fall down to: if requirements would change or new features would be requested, how much changes would you need to make? Would you have to throw away current implementation to make another?"
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ogjgl | how can you "double" temperature? | This is a weird question but bear with me: A friend of mine once told me that you can say "4°C is twice as warm as 2°C but what is twice as warm as 0°C ?" I guess this is kind of difficult to say because temperature is a measurement of heat energy but just tell me that I'm not mistaken when I say that doubling the Celsius or Fahrenheit or Kelvin value is not really twice as warm , as the relation to the energy needed or involved or observed is not actually related to the numeric value of any of these scales.
Example that underlines my "hypothesis" , with the example above would be 2°C and 4°C and 275°K and 277°K ... it doesn't work because none of these are linear right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ogjgl/eli5_how_can_you_double_temperature/ | {
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"Every substance has a specific heat, defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of a unit mass of that material by one degree. This means that doubling the absolute temperature (i.e. °K) requires twice as much heat. This doesn't work if we're talking in °C, because 0 °C doesn't mean zero heat. However, on an absolute temperature scale a doubling of temperature does correspond to a doubling of the physical quantity of heat present in the material.\n\nIn reality specific heat can vary with temperature so there isn't a perfect correspondence. Roughly speaking, though, twice the absolute temperature means twice the heat.\n\nEDIT: So to your friend's question, I guess 273 °C is twice as warm as 0 °C. You have to convert it to °K and back for the question to make any sense. This also means 4 °C is *not* twice as warm as 2 °C in any physical sense.",
"4°C is not twice as warm as 2°C. To prove it you only need to convert it in another unit: 39.2°F is not twice as hard as 35.6°F. As you understand, these scales are relative scales, and the zero were set arbitrarily.\n\nBut \"twice as warm\" still can exist because there is such a thing as a minimum temperature. And the Kelvin scale is based on this temperature: 0K is the lowest possible temperature, and it's about -273°C. So you could say 300K (27°C) is twice as warm as 150K (-123°C).\n",
"The scales are linear, but what C and F miss is what is known as a \"natural zero\". The zeros on these scales don't correspond to zero heat. So you could say that 4C is twice as warm as 2C, but you would be dead wrong.\n\nThe Kelvin scale does have a natural zero and there you can meaningfully say that 4K is twice as warm as 2K.\n"
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b123b8 | if it is cause of a gene, why can humans not be medically tested to find out if they are homosexual? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b123b8/eli5_if_it_is_cause_of_a_gene_why_can_humans_not/ | {
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"The theory was never that it was one single gene, but rather some unknown combination of active and inactive genes.\n\nThere is no single 'selfish' gene either yet we have the term.",
"There are genes that are strongly linked to being gay, and we can certainly test for these. However, the presence of a group of genes linked to homosexuality doesn't mean there's a 100% chance of that person being gay. So the test wouldn't tell you anything useful."
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9jgmts | why does walking with your arms in sync with your legs feel so strange. | If you move your left arm foward when you are taking a step with your left leg, it just feels so unnatural. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9jgmts/eli5_why_does_walking_with_your_arms_in_sync_with/ | {
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"It's not just the arms that move when you walk. It's your entire body. As your arms swing, your torso also rotates, your butt sways from side to side. So, basically, as you walk, your body is actually twisting and turning all the time.\n\nThe reason it feels weird to move your arms in sync with your legs is because it goes against this whole group of synchronized motions that the entire body is doing. So, one member of the group is doing something that it's not supposed to be doing. That's why it feels weird.\n\nAs for the reason why we walk this way, it's simple mechanics. Your pelvis acts like a fulcrum for your body. Let's say you take a step with your right leg. You don't simply extend your leg forward. Your pelvis twists to left, pulling your right leg forward, while your upper torso twists to the right, to compensate for that movement. This is helped by your left arm, which swings forward, to balance the weight of your right leg.\n\nIf you do it wrong, it feels unnatural because you are fighting your natural instinct to walk correctly."
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47a9ui | what prevents president obama from using executive order to shutdown gitmo? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47a9ui/eli5_what_prevents_president_obama_from_using/ | {
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"Congress would refuse to fund any such action.\n\nThe President can order anything he wants, but nobody can act on it if the Congress specifically denies funding.",
"The problem is largely political. Congress passed a law preventing these detainees from coming to the US. This means there are two options:\n\n1. Turn the detainees over to another country to house them (nobody wants the burden and the target on their backs).\n\n2. Let them go free (political disaster for Democrats in election year)."
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1diaah | healthy eating habits, and what i should focus on eating to become healthier | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1diaah/eli5_healthy_eating_habits_and_what_i_should/ | {
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"healthy eating habits are incredibly personal; ask a nutritionist, not the internet.",
"an apple a day keeps the doctor away",
"In general you want to divide a normal plate into 1/2 non-starch vegetable, 1/4 starch, 1/4 protein (meat).\n\nEat your largest meal in the morning > lunch > dinner\n\nTa-da!",
"\"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.\""
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4fup4v | how is it that americans spend the most per student out of any other nation, yet there are constantly problems with school budgets? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fup4v/eli5_how_is_it_that_americans_spend_the_most_per/ | {
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"infrastructure, teacher salaries, pensions, but probably mostly that there is vast differences in school budgets since they are tied to property taxes. affluent areas skew the average, while the districts with financial troubles are typically in the poorest areas.\n\n"
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2s0jwa | why can't i taste the inside of my mouth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s0jwa/eli5_why_cant_i_taste_the_inside_of_my_mouth/ | {
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"Because you would become insane from the stimuli. You don't also see your nose all the time. ",
"Why would you want to? And by that I mean, what evolutionary benefit would that give you? How does the fact that you can taste your own mouth make you more likely to survive than your cousin Bob, who can't?\n\nAs for the technical reason, you can't taste the inside of your mouth because there are no taste receptors attuned for the chemicals that are naturally inside of your mouth. Taste is a chemical response, the proteins on your tongue react to the various chemicals in food, and send a response signal to your brain. Things that you want to be able to taste are things that make food good, like sugar, protein, fat, fiber, etc, and things that make food bad, like poison. Since your saliva is neither of those things, evolution, and therefore your body, couldn't care less. ",
"Neural adaption. Basically, your brain only cares about a *change* in stimuli rather than every stimulus that comes along. Your brain knows how to ignore a stimulus if it isn't changing. So, if you are tasting/feeling the same thing all the time, your brain is going to ignore it. ",
"Sensory fatigue, if you step out of the shower and spray your whole body with Axe cologne it will appear to you the scent soon diminishes. Your nose just get tired of the stuff, but everyone else thinks you wreak. \n\nI'm a retired chef, when working on a sauce it is a good idea to avoid tasting the same thing over and over in an effort to get the seasoning just right. Give it you best first try and then \"clear your palette\" by tasting something entirely different, a bit of wine that might be served with the sauce, a bit of bread and then return to the task anew. "
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