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rfs01 | enriched uranium | What's big deal, why is there hardly any of it in the world, why is it so hard to get? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rfs01/eli5_enriched_uranium/ | {
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"Enriched uranium is used to make both [nuclear power](_URL_3_), which can provide electricity to an awful lot of people, and [nuclear weapons](_URL_6_), which can kill an awful lot of people.\n\nThat's what makes it such a big deal politically: **If a country is developing the ability to enrich uranium, how do you know if it is using it for peaceful purposes or for war?**\n\nOne of the best examples of this currently is [Iran's nuclear program](_URL_5_). Iran says it has the right to have nuclear power but some governments think it wants nuclear weapons to attack other countries.\n\nThere is a group called the [International Atomic Energy Agency](_URL_1_) that tries to monitor enriched uranium around the world to make sure it is used for peaceful nuclear power and not for nuclear weapons.\n\nWhy is there hardly any enriched uranium? It is expensive to make and it is tightly regulated by governments around the world.\n\nTens of thousands of tons of uranium ore are [mined from the ground](_URL_4_) each year.\n\nBut the machines used to enrich uranium are very costly and require highly educated engineers to run them.\n\nAdditionally, the international agency mentioned above and various countries' governments keeps close tabs on enriched uranium.\n\nDespite these efforts, however, [enriched uranium goes missing](_URL_0_), leading to concerns it could be in the hands of terrorists.\n\nEven a little bit of enriched uranium could be used to make a relatively unsophisticated \"[dirty bomb](_URL_2_),\" which could kill people and cause billions of dollars in damage in a city.",
"Enriched Uranium is comprised of the Uranium-235 isotope. If you don't know what an isotope is, it's basically the same element with a different amount of neutrons. Uranium-235 is called enriched because it is a very unstable isotope. By adding a neutron to Uranium-235, the isotope will split, releasing energy. This is called fission, and it is the basics of nuclear energy. However, Uranium-235 is not mostly found naturally. Natural uranium is only about 0.7% of 235 and the rest is the stable uranium-238. So, to enrich uranium, physicists basically separate the 235 from the 238. I won't got into to detail how they do so, but it is a very difficult and tedious process. Imagine having to find and pull out individual grains of sand from big lumps. Now, try and imagine doing that at the atomic level. It took five years to get 110 lbs of uranium, enriched up to 89% of 235 to build to first nuclear bomb.\n\n",
"Nice try North Korea....",
"There are two kinds of uranium...normal uranium and nuclear bomb/power uranium.\n\nIn nature, they are mixed together, with less than 1% being the useful kind. It is very difficult and expensive to separate or \"enrich\". Enrich basically means getting rid of the less useful uranium and increasing the portion of the good stuff."
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"http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-22/missing-nukes-fuel-terror-concern-as-seoul-meeting-draws-obama",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Energy_Agency",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon"
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45hcgp | how do navigational systems detect traffic jams with such accuracy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45hcgp/eli5_how_do_navigational_systems_detect_traffic/ | {
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"Your phone and everybody elses phone is always uploading data to the Google traffic database. So it knows how fast you are moving by tracking you and everybody else via GPS. That information is relayed back down to you. So if everybody is traveling well below the speed limit and there is a large concentration of cars clustered together it is clearly a traffic jam. That will get tagged in the database / query and sent down to you.\n\nGoogle is always watching. /r/privacy"
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1wqzt8 | how is nascar driving in any way difficult? they shift gears and drive around in circles. i just don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wqzt8/eli5_how_is_nascar_driving_in_any_way_difficult/ | {
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"Well this is how Richard Hammond (from top gear) [found it.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt's kinda like asking what's hard about baseball you just hit the ball with the stick.",
"I'm not a nascar fan, and but I do know that they are strapped into cars travelling at speeds over 200mph, in 100+ degree heat, for hours on end wearing a flame retardant suit thats not helping with the temperature. I can only assume the amount of fluid they can consume is limited, and if they need to pee, its catheter or nothing. The forces applied to their bodies are up to 4 g's in the corners, which makes returning blood flow to the brain incredibly difficult. Thats four times the force of gravity, pulling sideways on your body, over and over over. physiologically speaking it is very hard on the body to go in and out of these forces. At these speeds, navigating a track would be difficult even without 40 some odd cars darting around you…I can drive standard, but I would be scared fucking shitless of driving nascar.",
"Good points made already but consider this. You are traveling at 150-200+ mph and you are inches from other cars. Close enough that when the other car moves it makes your car move. You are actually bumping and being bumped by other cars when moving at these speeds. A mistake leads to possible death. That keeps your attention. The car is designed to work in certain ways as long as you the driver do certain things in the right order. If you do not the car can easily become air born and flip over. "
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jtns0 | the ideas behind adam smith's wealth of nations. | plz | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jtns0/eli5_the_ideas_behind_adam_smiths_wealth_of/ | {
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"Um...it's an incredibly dense book with tons of ideas. I'm not sure I can even come close to doing it justice.\n\nHe argues against mercantilism and is generally in favor of free-trade, which is the parts that get the most attention in debates these days but also wrote volumes about the fundamentals concepts in macroeconomics - labor, prices, capital etc.\n\n\n\n",
"TL;DR version\n\nDivision of labour makes producing things efficient.\nThis leads to:\n\nSelling your labour makes you more efficient. (i.e. the market places things where people/goods/services sell for the best/most efficient way - therefore making everyone better off.)\n\nWhich leads to:\n\nAll countries adopting division of labour (countries producing things they can sell for the best price, and not things they are bad at producing)\nWhich means:\n\nOne country stopping trading with another makes both countries less well off. (i.e. I won't trade you my pen, therefore you have a shortage of pens.) \n\nHowever, if I stop trading with you, I keep my treasure (gold, silver)...therefore you can't wage war against me (at the time, most war was done via mercenaries, which needed to be paid)\nHowever,\n\nHoarding gold does not make your opponent less well off. (they can get it from someone else - or trade with someone else) - this only works if every country became mercantile. \n\nAnd finally,\nPhysiocracy is just plain stupid.\n\n\n\n",
"You can make more pins per worker in a set time if you have a different person doing each of the stages of making it than if each person makes complete pins. \nTo be fair, I haven't actually read it all, I just remember the bit about pins.",
"Um...it's an incredibly dense book with tons of ideas. I'm not sure I can even come close to doing it justice.\n\nHe argues against mercantilism and is generally in favor of free-trade, which is the parts that get the most attention in debates these days but also wrote volumes about the fundamentals concepts in macroeconomics - labor, prices, capital etc.\n\n\n\n",
"TL;DR version\n\nDivision of labour makes producing things efficient.\nThis leads to:\n\nSelling your labour makes you more efficient. (i.e. the market places things where people/goods/services sell for the best/most efficient way - therefore making everyone better off.)\n\nWhich leads to:\n\nAll countries adopting division of labour (countries producing things they can sell for the best price, and not things they are bad at producing)\nWhich means:\n\nOne country stopping trading with another makes both countries less well off. (i.e. I won't trade you my pen, therefore you have a shortage of pens.) \n\nHowever, if I stop trading with you, I keep my treasure (gold, silver)...therefore you can't wage war against me (at the time, most war was done via mercenaries, which needed to be paid)\nHowever,\n\nHoarding gold does not make your opponent less well off. (they can get it from someone else - or trade with someone else) - this only works if every country became mercantile. \n\nAnd finally,\nPhysiocracy is just plain stupid.\n\n\n\n",
"You can make more pins per worker in a set time if you have a different person doing each of the stages of making it than if each person makes complete pins. \nTo be fair, I haven't actually read it all, I just remember the bit about pins."
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4nvxg6 | how do the chinese consistently get away with blatant acts of copyright infringement? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nvxg6/eli5_how_do_the_chinese_consistently_get_away/ | {
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"Copyright isn't enforced like speed limits: there aren't governmental entities out searching for infringement and punishing those who are caught.\n\nIt is up to the copyright holder to assert their rights, and then notify the courts of the infringement for redress.\n\nSo, unless Apple deliberately goes to a court in China to assert its copyright, Chinese manufacturers can keep making fake Apple products.*\n\n[Here's how to report copyright infringement in China](_URL_0_), which says they do reciprocity with treaty members, so a US copyright holds some weight in China, but the copyright holder has to step up and challenge the infringer in court. The government -- and this includes in the U.S., there's no \"copyright police\" here either -- doesn't care about copyright infringement until the copyright holder identifies the infringing item.\n\n*Edit: there's a little different case in terms of truly counterfeit items, like iPhones with the apple logo and everything, since that's outright fraud, but making something that looks and works identically as an iPhone, but not calling it an iPhone, is copyright issue, not fraud.",
"Chinese copyright laws are different from many other countries. So what seems like a blatant act of copyright infringement to you is actually legal in china. If a chinese company wants to sell a \"rip off\" in china then the company that got ripped off has no say if it is legal in china."
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2up7e9 | why is cnn so widely disrespected? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2up7e9/eli5_why_is_cnn_so_widely_disrespected/ | {
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"More Hype, racebait, clickbait\n\nThe website is absolutely awful now. \n\nEdit: Awful I mean",
"Because they spent hours and hours talking about deflate gate.\nBecause that's what they call news.",
"Because it is a for-profit entertainment station that uses raw emotion and fear to draw people in. They also try to appear that they are delivering information to help and inform the general populace, while in actual fact they are just maximizing revenue at all costs. Some of those costs include creating mass fear and hysteria at whatever this week's end of the world problem is.",
"For the same reason Fox News is.\n\nOnce you sort through all the nonsense arguments people level about bias and the like there really are only a few problems with both networks. First, they tend to overwhelmingly cover news that is anything *but* newsworthy and so both networks constantly bombard the audience with endless coverage of stuff like a missing airplane even though most of that coverage consisted of nothing but \"We don't have any information to give\". The second problem is that both networks are frankly *lousy* at distinguishing between editorial segments and news segments and as time passes what line may have existed has largely vanished.\n\nThe problem, then, is that both networks are fundamentally failing at the basic function of presenting the news while both actively and obviously push an agenda. The disrespect thus comes from two sources. The first is from people who actually want actual news reporting and the second is from people who sit on the opposite side of the ideological divide between the networks.",
"Not an answer but ... I don't know if you're aware that there are two TV News channels commonly referred to as \"CNN\" ?\n\nOne is seen in the USA \"CNN/US\", one is seen elsewhere \"CNN International\". \n\nI don't know which one you're referring to ? I've heard that \"CNN/US\" is significantly worse than \"CNN International\" . \n\nI've only seen \"CNN International\" - it's not too flash, about average for a US-centric-24-hour-rolling-news type operation ... in other words pretty bad.",
"Because they pretend to a serious news station, yet pander to the lowest common denominator US-centric gossip masquerading as news.\n\nFor example, in 2009, there were pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran at the same time as there was a coup in Honduras. CNN gave us a week of 24/7 coverage of Michael Jackson's death.\n\nThey also gave Nancy Grace her own show, for that alone they can never be forgiven. ",
"I'm sure I'm wrong about this, and both stations are equally cynical and venal, but you get the sense that Fox News at least *believes* in its homophobic, racist, jingoistic, reactionary bullshit. CNN, on the other hand, feels like a network that knows better but decides to pander to the lowest common denominator anyway.\n\nThere was a time, early in its existence, when CNN was respected. But when Fox came along, instead of taking the high road, CNN decided to ape Fox, leaving Americans looking for a respectable cable news source with absolutely nothing.",
"Mainly the idiotic fluff that they parade as news, their shallow examination of actual news, their lame coverage of ongoing events like desparate spouses trying to rekindle the passion that people had for the OJ Simpson car chase.\n\nBasically, CNN came about during the first gulf war as a serious channel which could offer a deep, continuous examination of a war in realtime. Now, CNN is just the first people to have done that and they have decided that this is the defining characteristic of journalism.\n\ntl;dr:\nCNN is the journalistic equivalent of the person who posts 'FIRST!' in a thread. You know how they ban that on websites these days? That is why CNN sucks.",
"They got Steven King interviewing Tyler the Creator. Need I say more?",
"I can remember a time when CNN was actually respected. I'm pretty sure their reputation fell off a cliff when they decided that covering Anna Nicole Smith's, and then Michael Jackson's, death was news worthy of 24 hour coverage for over a week.\n\nAfter that, people started pointing out more and more of the dumb stuff they consider newsworthy, to the point where 'CNN' is practically considered a recursive acronym for 'CNN's not news'.",
"I think each of the news organizations have their niche that they are best at covering. Not even effectively, but more of a \"This is what our viewership likes. I don't think that CNN's really has a niche. It just seems to be anything irrelevant, or covering something for a week longer than any other news outlet would. I don't visit their site anymore, because it rarely has anything to do with current events that are relevant. At this very moment, if you look at the articles available on the front page of each respective site:\n\nCNN's main lead is the execution of the Jordanian prisoners.\nFox News is the execution of the Jordanian prisoners.\nHuffpost is the execution of the Jordanian prisoners.\nMSNBC is Rachel Maddow on the anti-vaccination craze\n\nLooking at the next popular articles\n\nCNN: Vaccines work OP ED, 7 killed by SUV/Train crash, Bobbi Kristina in the hospital, selfies caused a plane crash, and How the Ukraine fighting got so ugly\n\nBobbi Kristina one of the most popular articles on a news site, and Ukraine fighting. Pretty wide disparity.\n\nFox News: Fidel sighting, and Cuba articles, SUV/Train Crash/Bakery faces government wrath after refusing to bake cakes for gay couples\n\nAppeals to the base. Castro BAD, SUV/Train Crash headline news for everyone, Bakery persecution BAD\n\nHuffPost Most Popular: Man walks 21 miles to work every day, 11 things that make a man instantly hot, Lip Sync battle to end all Lip Sync battles, and Midwest smacked by Blizzard\n\nYeah, tied with Buzzfeed for most clickbait articles on a front page.\n\nMSNBC: Jordan executes prisoners, Scott Walker makes major speech amid 2016 buzz, Pot pays off in one state, New wedge issue, Train crash\n\nJordan headline news, Scott Walker BAD, Pot GOOD, New wedge Issue, Train crash, headline news.\n\nIn all honesty, I think Fox News and MSNBC cater to their respective audiences better than others. Huffpost I really don't know how to describe. I stopped reading them awhile back.\n\nAnd if Reuters would ever figure out how to quit allowing advertisers to direct us to \"Java Updates\" I would read them more. They seem pretty newsworthy compared to other \"news\" sites.\n\nI'm tired, and it's probably a bunch of BS I just typed, so sorry in advance.",
"CNN really pissed me off tonight with their apparent fixation over the burning death of the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Wolf Blitzer and the works thought it was such an important issue to question why the other victims of ISIS were beheaded as opposed to burned alive. I find it quite distasteful how obsessed they are with spinning international events into infotainment. ",
"Wolf Blitzer may be the single stupidest person on the planet:\n\n_URL_0_",
"I can't believe no one has mentioned CNN's [financial ties](_URL_1_) to the Middle East and how this influences CNN International's [programming.](_URL_0_)",
"CNN is now a talking Mr Bean presenting sensationalism and speculation instead of facts. They were speculating cm of snow for the New York blizzard. Why load up British anchors for US news whe your HQ is in Georgia. What used to be useful headline news was replaced by a series of opinion segments. Zucker was a bad hire.",
"It's like front page Reddit. In order to get the most viewers you have to target the lowest common denominator. ",
"Why should they be respected? It's like asking why McDonalds isn't considered gourmet",
"In terms of trustworthiness, they live up to their motto as the most trusted name in news: [link](_URL_0_) and [link](_URL_1_) to the report itself.\n\nSo while they're the most trusted, they're also made fun of a lot for being sensationalist about stories they think are \"OMG HUGE\", like the missing Malaysian airline or Balloon Boy.\n\nI personally don't think CNN is any more of a bullshitty gossipy ratings-whore than practically any other major news network, though.",
"From what I have seen during the Ferguson riots, CNN was trying very hard to create tension between the police and the citizenry. Not that it needed to try that hard. Inflammatory headlines were the order of the day that seemed designed to make people feel just one emotion-- anger.",
"biases, bullshitting for views, manipulating the public, personal agendas - same reasons as all news networks.",
"They also talked about \"the hacker named 4chan\" and said \"pa$$word\" is a good password. This is when CNN lost all credibility to me.",
"Part of it is that they were once so highly respected and now have fallen out of favor for being so superficial in the sense that they give much higher priority to targeting news stories with a strong scandal factor but little actual importance. ",
"Because my sweet little five year old, CNN insists on hiring employees like Pierce Morgan- who is such an asshole even the British couldn't tolerate him, Nancy Grace that routinely talks her guests into suicide and harasses rape victims (seriously, don't even watch her interview of Elizabeth Smart or you are likely to vomit), Wolf Blitzer who harasses tornado victims, and Anderson Cooper who is an NSA shill. \n\nAlso, time and again the entire organization has proven that they do not report news, but instead are only interested in proffering propaganda so batshit nutty that even American's are suspicious. And we Americans will eat up nearly anything.\n\nIf on one day a year, it could even be April Fools Day, CNN delivered real cutting edge Jack Anderson type news that spoke truth to power, then more people might actually respect CNN. But alas, it is a cesspool of lies and misinformation and the American People's bullshit meter can't tolerate them any more.",
"Ever since 9/11... Everything is BREAKING NEWS with a big red banner on the front page. Headlines are sensationalized (Paris shooting anyone?)... And so many of the interviews are completely biased (Mr. Lemon). \n\n.\n\nTo me, no different than any other mainstream media except they try harder to hide their bias. Flip back and forth between CNN and Fox during an election for a good time. You will see there is no 'Fair and Balanced' coverage. They are supposed to be more legit than Fox. They try to be, but underneath they are opposite sides of the same coin.",
"For their hard hitting stories and their journalistic integri - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH LOLOLLOLOL HAHAHAHAH. yeah they're basically on the same level as fox news now. ",
"There are a number of factors that have eaten away CNN's respectability, a lot of it comes down to the same factors that explain the lack of History on The History Channel, the lack of learning on TLC or arts on A & E.\n\nWhen CNN started it was pretty much a 24 hour newscast, there were a few specialized programs like Showbiz Today but a lot of CNN was just news stories being reported.\n\nIt's worth noting back in these days, cable channels could do well just having one thing constantly. MTV got consistent ratings just airing music videos. The Weather Channel was just weather reports.\n\nAs more people got cable, there was more programming and CNN had a hit with Crossfire which became the iconic show where disagreeable people yell at each other. CNN also found big ratings and major cultural relevance when it got that dramatic coverage of the first Gulf War.\n\nThen Fox News came around and within a few years it was getting ratings that completely eclipsed CNN. A big part of that success was that a lot more people watched CNN but they would get caught up on what's going on and change the channel. Fox had fewer viewers but those viewers would watch several hours, giving them a much bigger household rating. This changed news, the goal became less about informing the audience but to keep them tuned in. Being too informative became a liability because that was seen as a chance to turn the channel.\n\n(Additionally, conservative talk radio rose in the 90s and they were big on insisting that there were huge scandals that would destroy the Clinton administration except the media wasn't reporting on it.)\n\nMeanwhile, NBC (not MSNBC) is having a different kind of success with making news more personality-driven as The Today Show becomes big based on the chemistry of the anchors, easily-promoted features and big stunts.\n\nThe latest change to hit CNN is that it's current boss is the guy who was a part in making Lockup a dominant part of MSNBC's lineup. Lockup helped make MSNBC more profitable since it didn't cost a lot to make, got really good ratings and could be rerun. CNN is doing a better version of that with its documentary shows.\n\nSo the disrespect to CNN comes to:\n- A lot of segments where people sit around and debate their opinions instead of sharing news, sometimes people would say untrue stuff without getting called on it\n- Sticking with a topic just because its driving good ratings, even if there's nothing more to discuss\n- Beltway-minded coverage of politics where optics is discussed more than policy, like focusing a story on how voters will respond to a candidate's position instead of asking if the position has a chance of helping the issue\n- Silly attempts at using the most current technology to make graphics that are supposed to be exciting but just comes off as silly, as seen many times on The Daily Show.\n- On air talent who aren't focused on delivering news as much as being a likable, fun personality that can get people to tune in frequently.\n\nTL;DR version, there's a lot less news on CNN and CNN used to be respected for its news. Now that there's less off it, it gets less respect.",
"CNN, FOX and the like are not news stations. They're sensationalizing agenda driving networks powered by their own respective political leanings.",
"The same reason many major new companies became a joke. Money and how to make it.\r\rBack in the pre-web days, there were two major sources where people got their news and information: Newspapers and TV news. Since these were the only sources on information, most people paid attention to these sources, so therefore many advertisers wanted to be in front of those eyeballs. News companies could afford to be impartial, because even if they pissed off an advertiser, there were dozens lined up behind it, ready to buy ad space.\r\rFast forward to 2015. People get their news from dozens of sources. That means individual news companies like FOX or CNN don't have a monopoly on information like they used to. This means advertisers aren't fighting to be on their channel anymore. Then FOX figured out that if they pandered to a certain viewpoint, they could take that band of viewers to advertisers and market things that would appeal to those viewpoints. So FOX started being the conservative news channel, locking up the conservative views. CNN and others simply borrowed FOX's playbook, but needed a different group of the population to market after. Hence, they became the anti-FOX and went liberal. Since neither is impartial, both are actually now entertainment news instead of actual news, which is why the qualify of news is crap now.\r\rTl;dr companies used to be paid enough to be impartial. Now they have to chase money.",
"There are lots of different reasons here already. Its probably highly dependent on who you are talking about disrespecting it. Where I live (a very conservative area) it always seems to be simply because it isn't FOX news and is \"too liberal\" compared to Fox's \"Fair and balanced\". I've heard people frequently call it Communist News Network or Clinton News Network out of disgust for it. When you read peoples' opinions of it online the other reasons in this thread may be more relevant though, unless you live somewhere similar to me.",
"People are sick and tired of bias in all of media."
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1cbufg | how to encrypt my computer? (based on the askreddit thread inside.) | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cbufg/eli5_how_to_encrypt_my_computer_based_on_the/ | {
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"A while ago I remember a redditor suggested _URL_0_ as one of the best free encryption softwares. \n\nI haven't actually gotten around to doing it to my computer yet though. I assume that there are detailed instructions on the website. Good luck!"
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32ibwq | limited slip differential | How would one describe this and the advantages it brings? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32ibwq/eli5_limited_slip_differential/ | {
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"A differential is used to allow the wheels on a car to turn at different speeds. A basic differential goes from no difference (both wheels moving at the same speed) to maximum difference (wheels spinning in opposite directions).\n\nThe problem with a basic differential is that it requires both wheels to have traction. If one slips, then all the power from the drive train will go to that wheel. If you jack a car with a differential up on one side, and then run the engine, then the lifted wheel will spin in the air, while the car stays in place. This is bad in muddy or snowy environments where it's easy to lose traction on one wheel and get stuck.\n\nA limited slip differential limits the difference between in speed between the wheels. This allows the wheels to move at different speeds as required by the turning radius of the car, but does not allow one wheel to spin freely while the other wheel stays still if one wheel loses traction.",
"Others have done an excellent job of explaining how limited slip works. As for advantages, well - I drive a Ford F-150 with 4WD and limited-slip front and rear - and in snow and ice, if I can get *one* wheel out of four to grip, the truck will move. Highly recommended, will buy (limited slip front and rear, Ford or otherwise) again."
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1yebaa | the netflix and internet provider issue | I don't really see what the issue is. Could someone please dumb it down for me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yebaa/eli5_the_netflix_and_internet_provider_issue/ | {
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"Netflix provides movies to Internet users.\n\nMany ISPs are media companies that sell competing services, such as cable TV pay-per-view and premium movie channels. Netflix cuts into that profit area.",
"You pay Netflix to view movies. You also pay Verizon FiOS for your internet. You cannot view movies/TV on Netflix without them stuttering and continuously buffering, even though you have a nice fat 30 Mbps pipe, but you can view Redbox instant (Netflix competitor, owned by Verizon) without any problems.\n\nVerizon is essentially pushing their service over Netflix, by unfairly throttling packets coming from Netflix servers. Up until a month or so ago, your Netflix was just fine, but now with the net neutrality decision, Verizon can legally throttle Netflix and anybody they don't like, and there's very little that you or I can do about it."
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c5vfsz | the difference between runway fashion and consumer products. | I don't think I really understand the difference. I see brands like Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga present these avant-garde outfits on the runway, but obviously you're not going to see those in the store..bedsides creative expression, what necessarily is the purpose of that? How does it make money / benefit the company? And why do you occasionally see some kind of celebrity wearing one of the runway outfits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c5vfsz/eli5_the_difference_between_runway_fashion_and/ | {
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"Think of it sort of like concept cars at auto shows... they show an overall trend and concept exploration, which will inevitably be toned down once they get some feedback from influences and potential customers. They may stick with the colors and fabrics, but not the outlandish cuts baring body parts not shown in public, dialing back oversized details.",
"I've noticed a trend that may apply here while listening to long running fan made podcasts about movies and anime.\n\nPeople don't want to see the same thing over and over again. It gets boring. So when the average person sees 20 movies in a year, and 10% of movies have the twist that the ginger is actually the villain, the average person will see an unexpected twist.\n\nHowever when movies are your job, you watch 300 movies a year. By the end of the year you have seen the ginger villain twist 30 times and it's gotten old.\n\nSo when you make a movie to cater to people that have seen 300 movies this year, you can't have the ginger person be the villain. You also have a hundred other commonalities between those 300 movies to avoid, so you end up with something that seems out of left field to the average person because it's avoiding all those tropes. \n\nI think the same applies to fashion shows. The people they are made for look at fashion all day and you interest them by showing them something they haven't seen in their year of spending 40+ hours a week looking at fashion."
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81cxgy | does higher tariffs on steel and aluminum mean higher prices for canned goods and soda in alumium cans? | I'm just curious. I mean a lot of things are made from steel and aluminum and it would seem that any manufacturing cost are often passed on to the consumers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81cxgy/eli5_does_higher_tariffs_on_steel_and_aluminum/ | {
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"The price of something is the result of the addition of the cost of materials, human labour, marketing and other stuff so i think the answer is yes because your can is made up with steel.",
"Yes. If profit margins are to be maintained, all increased tariffs will be passed down to the end consumer.\n\nThis is also something that happens when you increase import tariffs on goods like cars, phones, steel etc. Consumers (or companies down the chain) are left with the choice of either paying a higher price for the imported product or buy an expensive one from a local company.",
"Short answer - yes. Longer answer - yes, but not much. If aluminum goes up 10%, we don't see a 10% increase in product cost because packaging is but a fraction of the the total cost of any product. Let's say, hypothetically, packaging is 25% of the cost. I don't think it's that high, but just for the sake of simple math, let's say it is. If 25% of your production cost get 10% more expensive, that represents a 2.5% increase in the cost of your product. That is likely to be passed on to the customer. So, something, but not a crazy amount. Longest answer - by imposing tariffs, it will incentivize companies to use American products rather than use foreign products at a lower cost. In essence, it will make American companies that are required to pay a living wage competitive with foreign companies who get away with paying their employees very little. This creates jobs and keeps money in this country instead of having it go overseas. So, the question I would ask is, \"are you willing to pay 2.5% extra to know that it keeps jobs and money in America where it can be spent and recirculated to help our economy?\" We have told companies, time and time again, that we would rather have it cheap than good or local. We need to decide to support our own companies, even if it costs a little more, if we want them to stay here and employ people. \n\nEdit - hit the button too soon. Added a bunch. ",
"It really depends on where companies decide to place the costs. They can choose to pass it onto consumers, eat into margin, or a mix. For things like soda there are other suitable containers so it might not make sense for companies to charge more due to competitors. \nIt can, but we have to see "
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3qhmoj | if tv shows are not broadcast in 4k, then how come there is a noticeable difference between a 4k tv and a 1080p tv when it comes to picture and color? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qhmoj/eli5_if_tv_shows_are_not_broadcast_in_4k_then_how/ | {
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"The 4K content may be streamed, or on some physical media. You can't get 4K content from Blu Rays, from TV, etc.\n\nThere may be a noticeable difference but more likely, the 4k tv is simply a nicer and higher end TV in general. We can only perceive the actual resolution difference on huge screens at certain distances. \n\nWhere are you testing this? Best Buy and other stores with TVs have many tricks to fool you into spending more. Best Buy consistently puts lower-quality source content on the cheaper TVs to make it look like there is a big picture difference, but there often is not.",
"Colour is entirely different to broadcast broadband - this is usually determined by the production quality and the hardware of the television. \n\nFor the most part, having worked in retail previously, the only real reason that people notice a difference is due to the televisions with 4K being very expensive, top of the line models with all the latest features of picture display, display screen technology, and image processing. ",
"It's not the easiest thing in the world to explain, but in a basic sense it's because you are going to have less color overlap between pixels.\n\nThink of running snes games on an old tube tv. All the lines and such kind of blur together and it actually makes the picture look better than it is in some ways, but no where near as sharp. If you look at snes games on a modern tv, all the lines are much much crisper, makes it look a lot sharper, which kind of makes it look blockier too.\n\nI don't even know how to explain this. The distance between individual pixels on the screen is greater on a 4k tv. So there is going to be a lot less color blurring between pixels resulting in a sharper picture regardless of what its displaying. A lot of people are going to say in their snobbiest voice \"while this is *technically* true < snort > the difference is minimal and shouldn't be noticable\". Except I notice it. And I noticed reading this post, that you notice as well. To me it's plain as day. I hear people saying all the time it shouldn't make much of a difference. Maybe they need glasses",
"There is not much tv broadcast in even 1080p. Most of it is 720p or less. Also what our eyes can even see makes buying a 4k silly unless you have a very large TV and a very large room and sit closer to it. Mostly it's just a bragging thing. Your eyes can only see individual pixels of a certain size. Once you get below this threshold it makes no difference how many more pixels you add. You would need to get a huge tv and sit very close to notice a difference. Most people don't want to do that. We have seen the same thing in the audio business where people are buying audio gimmicks that human ears can not hear the difference. People still want them, just like audiophile cables which sometimes are less conducting than the ones you get with the stereo, i.e. gold is not a better conductor than copper or silver. So if you want one to either make the neighbors jealous or to keep up with the Jones, that would be the only reason I could think of to buy a 4k."
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xyuij | how does c14 dating work? | A coworker of mine (who is a pastor) was telling me today about a friend of his who worked in a lab. He said that readings on a single sample would range from the thousands to the millions of years. The researchers at the lab would take 100 measurements of this sample, average them, and stamp the date. I'm almost certain that this isn't correct, but I don't know enough about the process to deny his claim. I know C14 isn't 100% accurate, but I don't think it is as inaccurate as he thinks it is. Can someone please explain this to me (like i'm five)?
edit: typos | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xyuij/how_does_c14_dating_work/ | {
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"all living objects absorb a level of C14 during its lifetime. When it dies that level of C14 decays. Because we know the half-life (the amount of time it takes for an amount of c14 to reduce to half of what was originally there) we can calculate the age of things based on how much c14 is left. Or roughly that.",
"Carbon 14 is an unstable isotope of carbon that has 2 extra neutrons. This special form of carbon is the result of bombardment from cosmic radiation. It combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to for carbon dioxide (except that the carbon is c14.) And plants and animals breathe this stuff and as a result have a certain amount of carbon 14 in their systems at all times. \n\nCarbon 14 is unstable, meaning it naturally changes into the regular stable form of carbon at a predictable rate. This rate is called a half life. The half life of c14 is about 5700 years. This means of you have a kilo of c14 today in 5700 years you will have half a kilo of c14 mixed with half a kilo of regular carbon 12. Another 5700 years and you will have 1/4 of a kilo, and so on. \n\nThere is a predictable ratio of c14:c12 common to all living things. The c14 is constantly decaying but is being replaced all the time as we breathe and eat. But the moment we die we stop ingesting c14 so the amount drops by half every 5700 years. By measuring the ratio it's possible to figure out how long ago the item in question stopped taking in new c14, therefor telling us how old it is. \n\nAs you know dividing something in half repeatedly gets you to a pretty small amount quite quickly. As a result c14 dating is only useful up to about 60,000 years because beyond that no matter how much c14 you started with it will be all gone. So anybody who tells you that carbon dating provided results stating that an object was millions of years old is either lying, misinformed, or a preacher. ",
"Basically it's like an hour glass. As the C14 decays, it's similar to the sand moving to the lower part of the glass. The half-life is a constant property of C14 and tells you after how much time will there be half of what you started with. The half-life of the hour glass would be 30mins. \n\nNow imagine if you will, that this hourglass had the ability to change how quickly the sand moved, based on how much sand there was in the top.... More sand, moves faster, less sand moves slower. This allows the hour-glass to ALWAYS be half full after 30mins. \n\nDuring an animal's lifetime, it's always acquiring c14, so we're always adding sand to the top of the hourglass. At the same time, c14 is decaying (sand is moving to the bottom). The top part of the glass, is the animal.\n\nThe starting amount of c14(sand) is always the same in living things. When the living thing dies, it stops taking in c14. We stop adding sand to the top, and let it all flow to the bottom. \n\nSince we know how long it takes for half the sand(c14) to be gone, how much sand(c14) we started with, and how much sand(c14) is left in the top(animal), we can figure out how long ago we stopped adding sand to the top. ie. the animal died."
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428gjb | how do geologists determine how much water falls from a water fall? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/428gjb/eli5_how_do_geologists_determine_how_much_water/ | {
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"The same way you measure volume of water that flows down a river. You go to where you can easily determine the cross sectional shape of the river. Then you measure how fast the water is moving. Do some math involving multiplication and perhaps integration over time and there you go.",
"That's actually hydrology (study of water,) not geology, which is the study of rocks and minerals.\n\nBut I can answer it for you, because I'm a hydrologist.\n\nBasically, a waterfall is just a river meeting a sudden cliff. So we can measure the flow either just before, or just after the waterfall.\n\nThe way that we measure the flow depends on how much there is. There are two main methods - one is called the velocity-area method, and the other one is called the dilution method. In velocity-area, you run a measuring tape across the width of the river at a point where the flow is pretty smooth, and at regular intervals you record the depth of the flow and the speed of flow. Multiplying average depth and average speed by the width of the section gives you the volume per second flowing past your section.\n\nIn the dilution method, you place a sensor in the river that can measure concentration of a known substance (like salt, or dye.) Then you dump a known volume of that substance into the river, and you can calculate based on the \"wave\" of dye what the flow rate was (I can do a better job of explaining this, but it wouldn't be ELI5 anymore).\n\nMost of the big rivers we deal with have some sort of permanent installation constantly recording the water level. We do occasional measurements of the flow rate, and then we build a relationship between water level and flow rate. That way, we can just go out and look at what the water level is, and calculate the flow rate."
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8drbcj | why are our fingertips, ear holes and nostrils all approximately the same size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8drbcj/eli5_why_are_our_fingertips_ear_holes_and/ | {
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"It's probably beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint to be able to clear the holes that let you breath air and hear tigers.",
"Our fingertips can dig out dirt, grime, foreign debris from our ear holes and nostrils. \n\nIf our ears and nostrils are too small, perhaps we will evolve pneumatic (ie. air) driven propulsion to evict foreign debris, but that maybe too cumbersome. I personally prefer to dig my boogers out and fling them at people."
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2rp4qr | what is going to happen now with the new antibiotic being discovered? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rp4qr/eli5_what_is_going_to_happen_now_with_the_new/ | {
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"If it hasn't been approved by the FDA, then nothing for probably 5 years.",
"We will over use it for treatment of aliments that don't require antibiotic treatment and once again we will have a problem with antibiotic resistance. "
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80nfk8 | what is the physical state of foam? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80nfk8/eli5what_is_the_physical_state_of_foam/ | {
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"Ambiguous. Foam can be liquid or solid. It's defined by containing lots of trapped bubbles, not by its physical state. ",
"Shaving cream is liquid, Styrofoam is solid.\n\nAs /u/stuthulu said, \"foam\" is a medium containing trapped air bubbles, and can be solid or liquid depending on the medium itself."
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6wp1ci | why does the temperature vary even though we rotate in a perfect circle around the sun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wp1ci/eli5_why_does_the_temperature_vary_even_though_we/ | {
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"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why the seasons on Earth are so predictable? ](_URL_5_)\n1. [ELI5: What causes Earth's seasons to change? ](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: What exactly causes seasons? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5 : How seasons are affected by the Earth's rotation/tilt. For both north and south hemispheres. ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Seasons, how and why do they occur? ](_URL_3_)\n1. [ELI5:Why does earth axial tilt dictate seasons but the distance from the sun does not? ](_URL_2_)\n\nIt's not a perfect circle, by the way -- but close enough.\n",
"In addition to what others have said, it's worth noting that [earth's orbit](_URL_0_:) like that of other planets, is an ellipse, not a perfect circle. "
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25v7gr/eli5_what_exactly_causes_seasons/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ajypn/eli5why_does_earth_axial_tilt_dictate_seasons_but/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p6jme/eli5_seasons_how_and_why_do_they_occur/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n56ji/eli5_what_causes_earths_seasons_to_change/",
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4p86p8 | difference between uefi and legacy booting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p86p8/eli5_difference_between_uefi_and_legacy_booting/ | {
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"Unified Extensible Firmware Interface(UEFI) is the successor to BIOS. UEFI uses the GUID Partition Table (GPT) whereas BIOS uses the Master Boot Record(MBR) partitioning scheme. GPT and MBR are both formats specifying physical partitioning information on the hard disk. Below I have listed the difference: \n \n* Max partition size in MBR is ~2TB whereas in UEFI it is ~9 ZetaBytes \n* MBR can have at max 4 primary partition whereas GPT can have 128. \n* MBR can store only one bootloader whereas GPT has a separate dedicated EFI System Partition(ESP) for storing multiple bootloaders. This is very helpful if you have two or more operating systems which require different bootloaders. \n* UEFI offers secure boot which can prevent boot-time viruses from loading. ",
"Legacy Bios is something that is based on the way the original PC (1985 IIRC) booted.\n\nIt has a lot of limitations, like size, capabilities that you can build in and ways it knows how to continue with your boot (basically reading the information on the HD and deciding how to boot from that, the MBR mentioned in another comment)\n\nIt has those limitations exactly because it doesn't know much about your PC beyond what the BIOS from 1985 knew. Yes, it got enhancements, but it couldn't do much beyond that because of backwards compatibility.\n\nUEFI (and not only them) came to address those limitations. Now it is smarter, knows more about modern hardware and can do smarter things.\n\nIt \"messes\" with Linux because there's usually some mismatches that are getting ironed out with time (like fields have some information that windows expects but they're not exactly that, etc) and also Secure Boot\n\n"
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5cjf6a | why do we use a clock where am and pm are so unbalanced? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cjf6a/eli5_why_do_we_use_a_clock_where_am_and_pm_are_so/ | {
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"The idea is that noon and midnight are generally focused around the middle of the day and the middle of the night.\n\nSince these two points rarely change, it makes sense to have the divide at those times.\n\nNot to mention that our dating system has the new day start at 0000, which is the point in the middle of the night.",
"It's easier to tell when the sun is at its highest point than when it is on the horizon. The level of the horizon depends on your position (even at sea, where it depends on your height) and atmospheric refraction makes objects appear higher than they really are, in a weather-dependent way.\n\nIt's much easier to measure exactly when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, there are meridian instruments for doing just that. Note that the \"M\" in both \"AM\" and \"PM\" stands for \"meridiem\": meri-diem; mid-day.\n\nAnother point is that the variability of the seasons would mean that starting a day at sunrise would make the variability of sunset twice as great. Mind you, these days we effectively use daylight savings time to achieve the same effect.",
"They are set around midday and midnight. Those points do not shift about much at all. So Noon and Midnight are set on the clocks and the other hours fall accordingly. ",
"A useful counter-example: The ancient Romans divided the day into 12 hours and the night into 4 watches. The day hours always ran between sunrise and sunset, which meant that hours were longer or shorter at different parts of the year. Here's a neat animated graph from the wiki: _URL_0_\n\nA system like that is more \"natural\" in a time with comparatively few mechanical clocks, where most people told time by the sun and stars, but it's not really a system that lends itself well to commerce. For example, imagine working a job that pays by the hour; in the summer you'd be doing almost twice as much work for the same pay. It would also make business telecommunications a nightmare. ",
"People prefer to wake up near the start of the day, partly because of biology, and partly because it was easier to work in the daylight. \n\nThat means you go to bed about 8 hours before that. That put any of the hours of darkness you remained away in the evening."
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5u3xcg | if it's safer for infants and toddlers to ride rear facing in a car, why aren't all passenger seats also rear facing? wouldn't it also be safer for adults to face backwards? | Some train seats face backwards so it can't be too uncomfortable for passengers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u3xcg/eli5_if_its_safer_for_infants_and_toddlers_to/ | {
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"Yes it would be...it would also be safer on airplanes if everyone sat facings backwards relative to the direction of travel. The human body can absorb much greater G forces in that posture. Why doesn't it happen? People don't like it....people like to see where they are going.",
"I think it has a lot to do with travel sickness. Looking out of the window helps with car sickness because it gives you a visual input for what the balance stuff in your ears is sensing. Sitting backwards might be disorientating and lead to more travel sickness.\n\nAlso, adults can wear seatbelts properly whereas infants are reliant on the car seat.",
"Yes, it would be much safer to ride backwards. Airbags would be unnecessary (at least the front ones) and the seats could be made to absorb all the impact of a head-on collision. \nBut people just don't like it. We constantly trade convenience for safety. It would also be safer to wear a helmet while driving, but it just won't happen. ",
"Babies and toddlers don't have very strong neck muscles. What might be a mild case of whiplash in an adult but be a broken neck in a small child. That is why they need to be in a rear-facing car seat. Once they reach a certain age, their neck muscles are strong enough to handle the impact from a typical car accident.\n\nSeat facing backwards would be safer for head-on collisions. However, the logistics wouldn't work very well - the driver needs to see forward obviously. Facing the rear of the car can also make car sickness worse."
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1s5opz | why are colours like pink or brown not in the colour spectrum? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s5opz/eli5_why_are_colours_like_pink_or_brown_not_in/ | {
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"Pink is light red. Brown is dark orange. They're both adjustments to the *brightness* of colors in the color spectrum.",
"_URL_0_\n\nMaybe this?",
"There are three facets to colour. The two-dimensional colour spectrum diagrams only represent one facet, hue, so they don't include colours produced using the other two facets.\n\n**Hue** is essentially 'which color-family is it', broadly. So green, blue, red, any of the colours on the rainbow.\n\n**Saturation** is how intense the colour is. So you take a broad colour, like \"blue\", and then you turn it into *types* of blue based on saturation. [This is one hue at different levels of saturation](_URL_1_).\n\nThen there's *brightness*, or how bright the colour is at that saturation. 0% brightness will be black and 100% brightness will be white, regardless of the colour and saturation.\n\n[Here is a three dimensional colour diagram](_URL_0_). Each point along the surface is a different hue; the vertical axis is brightness; distance from the center is saturation. Every point in this three-dimensional diagram is a unique colour. You can see that if you follow only the very outer surface edge, you get the traditional colour spectrum, without pink or brown. \n\nPink is made by going to red, and moving closer towards the center, losing saturation.\n\nBrown is made by going to orange, and moving towards the floor, losing brightness.",
"This has to do with the three color receptors in your eyes.\n\nThe ideal eye would be able to distinguish the exact wavelength of light (it's \"color\") seen at every receptor, but this is too difficult a task.\n\nInstead, the receptor looks for the strength of a single specific color (red, green, and blue), then your brain takes the response of the three different color receptors, and takes a guess at what single wavelength would have been there.\n\nThe interesting thing though, is this process is imperfect. So there are colors you see, that can't be recreated by a single wavelength. The color you saw was an illusion of mixing multiple wavelengths, and was then interpreted as a single color by your brain.",
"Starting point: What we call \"light\" is just a small part of the electromagnetic\nspectrum (which is to say, a range of wave frequencies), which also contains\nradio, microwaves, x-rays and a ton other intersting things.\n\nOur eyes are capable of feeling (and our brain is capable of processing) light,\nand we ordinarily map each frequency to a colour. Low frequencies map to red,\nhigh frequencies map to violet, and yellow, green and blue lie somewhere in between.\n\nThing is, though, we don't actually have the equipment to sense all those frequencies\nseparately. Instead, we have three types of colour-detecting cells in our eyes, and\nthose each react to frequencies near the red, green and blue ranges of the visible spectrum.\nWe can't actually tell that something is yellow -- instead, when we see yellow, both the red\nand the green detector cells fire, and our brain takes that to mean that the light you're getting\nis also something between red and green -- yellow!\n\nThis is, incidentally, how computer monitors work. They're not capable of displaying\nall that many colours, they just have tiny red, green and blue bits, and you get to\nmake a pixel look yellow by having it emit both red and green in such a combination\nthat it stimulates your eyes the same as if it were actually proper yellow.\n\nNow, pink, and brown, and white, and other colours that \"don't exist\". Pink, brown\nand white are nowhere in the rainbow, there is no electromagnetic frequency that\ncorresponds to any of those colours, and it's in this sense that those colours\n\"don't exist\".\n\nBut... we have three types of colour detecting cells, right? it's easy to figure\nout what happens when you stimulate both the red and green, or the green and blue:\nyour brain just figures it's seeing something in between those colours. But if you\nstimulate both red and blue, but not green, what happens? Well, you see pink/purple,\nthat's what happens. If you stimulate all three types of cells at the same time, what\nthe hell is that? That's when our brain sees white. Brown is when you're getting some\nof everything, but less blue than the other two.\n",
"Browns are made when two colors are put together from different ends of a spectrum ex: blue and orange\n\npink is a desaturated red\n\nSource I am an Ex print designer",
"To piggy-back on this question, what about neon colors? They don't seem to fit any color model either. ",
"[This is roughly how your eyes see colours](_URL_0_), 3 different types of cells in your eyes to see 3 different primary colours (red, green and blue).\n\nThe horizontal axis is the whole colour spectrum, with the number representing the wavelength of the light. The vertical axis is how much the cells in our eyes react to that wavelength. As you can see there is actually a lot of overlap:\n\nGreen light is 530nm, we see it as green because it strongly activates our green sensing cells while weakly activating our red and blue sensing cells. \n\nRed is 650nm and activates the green sensing cells much less than the red sensing cells, and doesn't activate blue sensing cells at all. \n\nBlue is 450nm and pretty much only activates our blue sensing cells with just a bit of green activation.\n\nNow, when you have yellow at 575nm it's activating the red and green cells almost equally, and turquoise at 475nm activates the green and blue cells equally.\n\nWhen you have something like pink, that colour has to be a mix of red, green and blue in a combination that isn't caused by any one of the spectral colours because no spectrum colours activates blue, red and green highly together.",
"Brown is the linear combination of Red, Yellow, and Orange. Just as gray combines the Green, Blue, Violet, end of the spectrum. Pink is A highly reflective red (containing a great deal of white light). They are all there.",
"Simple answer, they don't exist, our brain create them from a mix of different light wavelengths.",
"The color spectrum is like the keys on a piano. Pink and brown are like chords."
]
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2s4eo9 | eligible/in-eligible receivers in football | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s4eo9/eli5_eligibleineligible_receivers_in_football/ | {
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"Must be numbered 1-49 or 80-99. Must be lined up either off the line of scrimmage or the last man on the line of scrimmage. \n\nIf there's an offensive player lined up outside of you on the line of scrimmage while you're on the line of scrimmage it's called \"being covered\" meaning the outside player is covering up the inside player and making the inside player ineligible. "
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||
q9npy | flash video to mp3 online converter | Always wondered how does it convert the video to audio. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q9npy/eli5_flash_video_to_mp3_online_converter/ | {
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"text": [
"Video is just visual + audio data. Strip away the visual, you're left with the audio."
]
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|
1rqa1m | what do teams of developers such as those behind instagram do every day? | With apps like Instagram, I don't understand what the teams of developers do all day long. I understand that maybe with the initial coding of the apps it would make sense to work in a team, but how much upkeep could a finished app possibly require from one person, let alone a whole team or even building's worth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rqa1m/eli5_what_do_teams_of_developers_such_as_those/ | {
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"It's not a finished app. Developers will generally be working on either adding new features or making the old ones more efficient.",
"One of the things you learn from working as a programmer for a while is that there is no such thing as a \"finished\" software project. There are always bugs to fix, features to add, and changing requirements because no useful piece of software exists in a vacuum and you'll need to make it interact with an ever-changing set of other systems to keep it useful."
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[],
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|
ctu1zu | can you change the pitch of your voice through vocal cords surgery? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctu1zu/eli5_can_you_change_the_pitch_of_your_voice/ | {
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"Yes, it IS possible. Success, as usual, can vary. Risks too. Can't answer more specifically though.\n\nI did a quick google search just now and pretty much all results I found were related to transsexuality. Maybe ask for advice on one of those subreddits. Not really the same underlying issue but definitely the same goal, right?",
"I’d like to see a voice recording of your voice lol, not trying to be rude generally curious, and to answer your question yes you can. Not very popular tho",
"A good voice teacher may may be able to train you to make some of those adjustments without surgical intervention - again, see an ENT for referral.",
"You don't necessarily need a surgery. Many trans men are adapting their voice with vocal training to a higher pitch. That's one thing females can't do, they can just try to speak in a lower pitch but will always keep their natural voice. Voice training doesn't have those risks surgery obviously does, do you maybe could try that out.\nGood luck!",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere’s a video depicting a trans woman’s experience with the surgery and (pretty extensive) recovery. I don’t really know anything about the surgery itself, but hopefully this is helpful to you!"
]
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3iyepd | when feeling sick in a car, how does looking out the window help? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iyepd/eli5_when_feeling_sick_in_a_car_how_does_looking/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Body/inner ear feels movement, eyes don't see movement. Brain gets confused.\n\nLooking outside gets rid of that feeling since now what you feel agrees with what you see."
]
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||
kq2xj | what is the source of europe's debt? | Why are all these countries collectively sinking in debt? Who has that money?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kq2xj/what_is_the_source_of_europes_debt/ | {
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"The first thing to remember is that there's no such thing as \"Europe\" really. It's just a name we give to a group of countries. It's not a sovereign state.\n\nThat said, each of the individual countries in Europe have sovereign debt. *Every* country has sovereign debt; sovereign debt is how governments fund themselves.\n\nThink of it this way. Say you decide to go off and start your own country, on an unclaimed island or something. You have some territory — the aforementioned island — and you have a permanent population — you. Those are the first two ingredients you need to make a state. The next ingredient is some kind of political entity: a government, in other words. Of course, anybody can just say \"Poof, here's a government,\" but in order to make a state you need a government that has two properties: First, it has to be *legitimate,* and second it has to have an unchallenged monopoly on the legitimate use of force within the boundaries of your territory.\n\nFor your imaginary country-of-one, this is easy. Just declare that a government exists. It's automatically legitimate, because the only person who lives there is *you* and *you* consent to be governed by this new government. And it's got an unchallenged monopoly on force, because there's nobody there but you to challenge it. So ta-da. You're a sovereign state now.\n\n(Getting other sovereign states to *recognize* your sovereignty is a whole other kettle of fish, but we'll ignore that right now.)\n\nNow that you're a state, you decide you want the government of your state to do something. Like build an frigate so you can have a navy, for instance. That takes capital … and your new government doesn't *have* any. So what do you do? You do what any entity does when it wants to raise capital: You sell bonds.\n\nA bond is, essentially, a promise to pay. Think of it like a very formal and specific type of loan. You — acting as a representative of your new government — go to the bond market and say \"I'm selling 10,000 one-year bonds for $100 each at 10% interest on maturity.\" What's that mean? It means that you're selling ten thousand *promises* for $100 each. Promises to do what? Promises to, after one year from the date of issuance, buy back each bond you sold at the face value — that's $100 in this case — *plus* ten percent of the face value, or $110.\n\nWhy would anybody buy this bond? Because there are people out there who have capital — that is, money literally sitting in their pockets — who want to convert that capital into an asset that they can hold on to or sell. For instance, if I had an extra $100 in my pocket, I might decide to buy one of your bonds and hold on to it for a year. That'd be a good deal for me, because after a year I'd be able to sell that bond back to you for $110. *Or*, once I have the bond, I could choose to turn around and sell it to somebody *else* for $105 — more than I paid for it, but less than the bond is actually worth. So I can either invest for the long term and make a good profit, or invest for the short term and make a quicker but smaller profit. It's good for me.\n\nMeanwhile, it's also good for you, because you go from having no capital to having a million bucks — that's 10,000 bonds sold at $100 each. You can then turn around and use that million dollars in capital to *do* things. Things like, going back to where we started this, building a frigate so you can have a navy.\n\nBut notice there's something we've left out. Once you've sold all your bonds on the open market, you've got your million dollars … but you've *also* got a *liability* of $1.1 million which is going to come due in a year. Because remember, what you sold to earn that million bucks in capital was a *promise to pay* a million dollars *plus* ten percent a year hence. So if we add up your capital — $1,000,000 — and your liability — –$1,100,000 — we find that you're actually a hundred grand in the hole. That's what we call *sovereign debt.*\n\nSo how can this work? Doesn't it just seem like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul? Absolutely, because in this simple example we haven't introduced the idea of *revenue* yet. If you just sold a bunch of bonds with no way of paying them back, you'd be in a heap of trouble. (Or rather, you would be if anybody had actually bought those bonds, which nobody would if it was obvious you had no chance of buying them back at maturity.) But if you have some source of *sovereign revenue* that'll earn you at least $1.1 million in a year, then you're golden. At the start of that year, you effectively \"borrow\" a million bucks by selling bonds on the open market, then over the course of that year you get money a little at a time, until at the end of that year you have enough to buy back all the bonds you sold.\n\nSo where do states get revenue? These days, it's mostly from taxes and other assessments. But in this example — your nation-of-one — there's nobody for you to tax, so we have to imagine you have some other source of revenue. It really doesn't matter what that is; let's say you collect palm fronds from the beaches and make lovely little woven baskets which are so quaint and charming they sell like Fabergé eggs. You can then export these baskets — that is, sell them beyond your country's borders — and then *tax yourself* to put money into your government's treasury. In that way, you can build a frigate with the million bucks you bought on the capital market, then export baskets for a year and end up with enough in your treasury to buy back the bonds you sold. Doing this will, of course, deplete your treasury, so in order for your government to keep doing useful things — that one frigate is nice, but now you really need to build a road from the beach to your basket-weaving factory at the top of the hill — you issue another round of bonds. You raise another big bolus of capital, which you then invest in your economy, which allows you to buy back that round of bonds when they mature, and then you issue another round of bonds, re-invest, grow the economy, buy them back, issue another round and so on.\n\nWhich means that, at any point in time, your government actually has significant sovereign debt. But at the same time, your little nation is thriving. How can this be? How can you be successful and yet in the hole at the same time?\n\nThe answer to that is that sovereign debt simply works *differently* from how personal debt works. When a person has debt, we think of it as a problem that needs to be rectified; a person's net worth is supposed to be *positive,* not negative. But a government doesn't do anybody any good if it has a positive net worth. It doesn't *help* a government to have money sitting idle in the treasury. Governments are only useful when they're *doing stuff,* so that means there needs to be a steady flow of capital *through* a government, like water passing through a waterwheel that drives a mill. Stuff only gets done as long as the water's flowing.\n\nSo where's the problem come in? The problem comes in when there's a disconnect between the perceived value of your bonds and the actual value of your bonds. To go back to our example, imagine if your little woven baskets really *didn't* sell like Fabergé eggs, but instead were almost worthless. Nobody would buy your bonds, right? Because there'd be no chance that you'd ever be able to buy them back. So you decide to *mislead people* about the value of your baskets. Maybe you bribe an art appraiser into saying publicly that your baskets are worth millions or something, and thereby convince people that your revenue stream is a *lot* more healthy than it really is. You thus sell lots of bonds, and when those come due you don't have the cash to buy them back. You've got a sovereign debt crisis on your hands.\n\nThat's essentially what happened in Greece. The country misreported its financial situation, thus hiding the fact that it actually had much more sovereign debt than it could handle. This caused investors from overseas to put in about four times more orders for bonds than the Greek treasury was really able to commit to, which lead to the Greek government overborrowing. When word of just how unbalanced Greece's sovereign debt was, the Greek government's credit rating was downgraded, which really just made matters worse, because Greek bonds became toxic. Nobody wanted to trade them. It was a mess.\n\nSo anyway, all of that is just prologue for what's really a very simple answer to a very simple question. Who buys these government bonds? Anybody who has capital that they want to invest in a safe way for a modest return. Banks, investment funds, insurance companies, things like that. Why do they buy them? Because sovereign debt is pretty much the safest investment in the world. Why do problems happen anyway? Because sometimes, unfortunately, there ends up being a disconnect between the perceived market value of government bonds and the actual value of those bonds. When the market corrects, the perceived value of the bonds drops like a rock, which creates all sorts of problems because until the perceived value goes back up, nobody wants to touch those bonds with a ten-foot pole.",
"The first thing to remember is that there's no such thing as \"Europe\" really. It's just a name we give to a group of countries. It's not a sovereign state.\n\nThat said, each of the individual countries in Europe have sovereign debt. *Every* country has sovereign debt; sovereign debt is how governments fund themselves.\n\nThink of it this way. Say you decide to go off and start your own country, on an unclaimed island or something. You have some territory — the aforementioned island — and you have a permanent population — you. Those are the first two ingredients you need to make a state. The next ingredient is some kind of political entity: a government, in other words. Of course, anybody can just say \"Poof, here's a government,\" but in order to make a state you need a government that has two properties: First, it has to be *legitimate,* and second it has to have an unchallenged monopoly on the legitimate use of force within the boundaries of your territory.\n\nFor your imaginary country-of-one, this is easy. Just declare that a government exists. It's automatically legitimate, because the only person who lives there is *you* and *you* consent to be governed by this new government. And it's got an unchallenged monopoly on force, because there's nobody there but you to challenge it. So ta-da. You're a sovereign state now.\n\n(Getting other sovereign states to *recognize* your sovereignty is a whole other kettle of fish, but we'll ignore that right now.)\n\nNow that you're a state, you decide you want the government of your state to do something. Like build an frigate so you can have a navy, for instance. That takes capital … and your new government doesn't *have* any. So what do you do? You do what any entity does when it wants to raise capital: You sell bonds.\n\nA bond is, essentially, a promise to pay. Think of it like a very formal and specific type of loan. You — acting as a representative of your new government — go to the bond market and say \"I'm selling 10,000 one-year bonds for $100 each at 10% interest on maturity.\" What's that mean? It means that you're selling ten thousand *promises* for $100 each. Promises to do what? Promises to, after one year from the date of issuance, buy back each bond you sold at the face value — that's $100 in this case — *plus* ten percent of the face value, or $110.\n\nWhy would anybody buy this bond? Because there are people out there who have capital — that is, money literally sitting in their pockets — who want to convert that capital into an asset that they can hold on to or sell. For instance, if I had an extra $100 in my pocket, I might decide to buy one of your bonds and hold on to it for a year. That'd be a good deal for me, because after a year I'd be able to sell that bond back to you for $110. *Or*, once I have the bond, I could choose to turn around and sell it to somebody *else* for $105 — more than I paid for it, but less than the bond is actually worth. So I can either invest for the long term and make a good profit, or invest for the short term and make a quicker but smaller profit. It's good for me.\n\nMeanwhile, it's also good for you, because you go from having no capital to having a million bucks — that's 10,000 bonds sold at $100 each. You can then turn around and use that million dollars in capital to *do* things. Things like, going back to where we started this, building a frigate so you can have a navy.\n\nBut notice there's something we've left out. Once you've sold all your bonds on the open market, you've got your million dollars … but you've *also* got a *liability* of $1.1 million which is going to come due in a year. Because remember, what you sold to earn that million bucks in capital was a *promise to pay* a million dollars *plus* ten percent a year hence. So if we add up your capital — $1,000,000 — and your liability — –$1,100,000 — we find that you're actually a hundred grand in the hole. That's what we call *sovereign debt.*\n\nSo how can this work? Doesn't it just seem like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul? Absolutely, because in this simple example we haven't introduced the idea of *revenue* yet. If you just sold a bunch of bonds with no way of paying them back, you'd be in a heap of trouble. (Or rather, you would be if anybody had actually bought those bonds, which nobody would if it was obvious you had no chance of buying them back at maturity.) But if you have some source of *sovereign revenue* that'll earn you at least $1.1 million in a year, then you're golden. At the start of that year, you effectively \"borrow\" a million bucks by selling bonds on the open market, then over the course of that year you get money a little at a time, until at the end of that year you have enough to buy back all the bonds you sold.\n\nSo where do states get revenue? These days, it's mostly from taxes and other assessments. But in this example — your nation-of-one — there's nobody for you to tax, so we have to imagine you have some other source of revenue. It really doesn't matter what that is; let's say you collect palm fronds from the beaches and make lovely little woven baskets which are so quaint and charming they sell like Fabergé eggs. You can then export these baskets — that is, sell them beyond your country's borders — and then *tax yourself* to put money into your government's treasury. In that way, you can build a frigate with the million bucks you bought on the capital market, then export baskets for a year and end up with enough in your treasury to buy back the bonds you sold. Doing this will, of course, deplete your treasury, so in order for your government to keep doing useful things — that one frigate is nice, but now you really need to build a road from the beach to your basket-weaving factory at the top of the hill — you issue another round of bonds. You raise another big bolus of capital, which you then invest in your economy, which allows you to buy back that round of bonds when they mature, and then you issue another round of bonds, re-invest, grow the economy, buy them back, issue another round and so on.\n\nWhich means that, at any point in time, your government actually has significant sovereign debt. But at the same time, your little nation is thriving. How can this be? How can you be successful and yet in the hole at the same time?\n\nThe answer to that is that sovereign debt simply works *differently* from how personal debt works. When a person has debt, we think of it as a problem that needs to be rectified; a person's net worth is supposed to be *positive,* not negative. But a government doesn't do anybody any good if it has a positive net worth. It doesn't *help* a government to have money sitting idle in the treasury. Governments are only useful when they're *doing stuff,* so that means there needs to be a steady flow of capital *through* a government, like water passing through a waterwheel that drives a mill. Stuff only gets done as long as the water's flowing.\n\nSo where's the problem come in? The problem comes in when there's a disconnect between the perceived value of your bonds and the actual value of your bonds. To go back to our example, imagine if your little woven baskets really *didn't* sell like Fabergé eggs, but instead were almost worthless. Nobody would buy your bonds, right? Because there'd be no chance that you'd ever be able to buy them back. So you decide to *mislead people* about the value of your baskets. Maybe you bribe an art appraiser into saying publicly that your baskets are worth millions or something, and thereby convince people that your revenue stream is a *lot* more healthy than it really is. You thus sell lots of bonds, and when those come due you don't have the cash to buy them back. You've got a sovereign debt crisis on your hands.\n\nThat's essentially what happened in Greece. The country misreported its financial situation, thus hiding the fact that it actually had much more sovereign debt than it could handle. This caused investors from overseas to put in about four times more orders for bonds than the Greek treasury was really able to commit to, which lead to the Greek government overborrowing. When word of just how unbalanced Greece's sovereign debt was, the Greek government's credit rating was downgraded, which really just made matters worse, because Greek bonds became toxic. Nobody wanted to trade them. It was a mess.\n\nSo anyway, all of that is just prologue for what's really a very simple answer to a very simple question. Who buys these government bonds? Anybody who has capital that they want to invest in a safe way for a modest return. Banks, investment funds, insurance companies, things like that. Why do they buy them? Because sovereign debt is pretty much the safest investment in the world. Why do problems happen anyway? Because sometimes, unfortunately, there ends up being a disconnect between the perceived market value of government bonds and the actual value of those bonds. When the market corrects, the perceived value of the bonds drops like a rock, which creates all sorts of problems because until the perceived value goes back up, nobody wants to touch those bonds with a ten-foot pole."
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3bauxv | the difference between $300 ray ban sunglasses and $20 mall kiosk sunglasses | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bauxv/eli5_the_difference_between_300_ray_ban/ | {
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"In my experience I have notice that the name brand are usually made of better material not as heavy and the lenses are clearer. You can tell the difference if you try them both on. ",
"Better quality lenses, more durable frames. I've got a pair of Arnette sunglasses that I've had for close to 11 years (purchased when I turned 18, I'm 29 now) I've replaced the lenses in them twice. I've sat on them, lost them in various purses, dropped them countless times and they're still going strong. The last time I 'lost' them I bought a $20 pair of gas station glasses and the first time I sat on them by accident they broke right across the nose.",
"There is some difference. Not all \"polarized\" and \"UV protection\" is equal. Your $20 throw kiosk glasses are not 100% UV protection or 100% polarized to reduce all the glare. They can call them \"polarized\" or \"UV protection\" because they do give some, but it is not the same.\n\nThere is a law of diminishing returns, however. A $50-100 pair is without a doubt better than the $20 pair. However, the $300 pair doesn't really provide any more benefit than that one though, other than having a fancy brand name.",
"I don't know. But my Oakley glasses have been threw hell and back. I've had one pair for six years now and never had to replace anything on them. Plus if you look into the proper glasses from brand name companies some offer asa approved lenses and frames. Nice being able to wear good glasses to work. If your in construction",
"About $180.\n\nMore seriously, there might be some qualitative differences in manufacturing, or the $200 pair might have a better warranty, but more than likely there will be no major differences other than the name and the price. Practically every brand of glasses and sunglasses are made and owned by an Italian company called Luxottica. It's not like the $200 pair will save your life when the $20 pair will get you killed. ",
"Ray-Ban are owned by [Luxottica](_URL_2_) and simply put they are overpriced and you mostly pay for the brand and not the quality. And $20 sunglasses can be just as good as expensive sunglasses if it comes to UV-protection ([Source 1](_URL_1_), [Source 2](_URL_0_)). $300 sunglasses may have better lenses and can use better materials/production for the frame - but that's about it.",
"Luxxotica employee here, I would have to agree with the diminishing returns thing. Personally, I think about 150 dollars is about the most you have to spend on good sunglasses, that being said not all sunglasses are created equal. \nIn my opinion, RayBans are all about style; I don't think their lenses or polarization has too much to it. Whereas something like Oakley is designed not only to protect you from the sun, but the lenses are damn near bullet proof (tested by shooting a 1/4 ball bearing at 100mph right at the lenses) and the frames tend to be much more durable than your average sunglasses. \nThen there is shit like Maui Jim, the only glasses I'm aware of that actually have color filters in them, everything looks amazing through those lenses. \nI was glad to hear mention of Arnette, they make pretty good stuff (more sport-style, oakley-like stuff) and for half of what anyone else is charging.\n\nThe rest is all the same, your 800$ pradas have shit lenses and are held together with screws made from used chewing gum and bits of string. Those Tiffany and co glasses are another 500 because a \"jeweler\" used a pair of tweezers to glue the rhinestones in place.\n\nI wrote this on my phone before leaving for work, so sorry for run on sentences and lack of content.",
"The difference is that you can lose 15 pairs of $20 glasses for the same price as one pair of $300 glasses.",
"Fashion stylist here (my family has worked in the industry for 35 years and is well known). \n\nAt the end of the day you are payong for the brand name. Securing a patent, copyright and/or trademark, you are paying for those fees when you purchase a product. \n\nA pair of raybans are going to better constructed than a pair of $20 kiosk glasses (in most cases) but when you compare Raybans with Gucci sunglasses, you are paying for the brand name. ",
"Anyone have links to an online store where you can buy Wayfarer knock-offs? \n\nI usually get mine at random flee-markets and they are hit and miss. If I could buy 2-3 pairs of decent quality 20$ fake Ray-Bans, I would be a happy camper.",
"I know it seems like a lot, but I paid about $300 for a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses on a whim when I was half drunk. Those are the best damn sunglasses I've ever owned. Everything is so sharpe and the lens and frames are very high quality. I bought a second pair a few years later because I wanted a different style. \n\nTrust me, I used to hate the idea of spending more than $50 on sunglasses, but it's probably the best decision I've made regarding eyewear. The added bonus when you spend that much on sunglasses is that you protect them like a child. "
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2374185/Are-cheap-sunglasses-safe-We-asked-eye-expert-analyse-cut-price-shades.html",
"http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pricey-vs-cheap-shades-put-to-the-uv-test/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2agagm | why does my morning erection vanish right after i urinate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2agagm/eli5_why_does_my_morning_erection_vanish_right/ | {
"a_id": [
"cius6vx"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"Morning Wood is the body's way of not urinating while asleep.\n\nErgo, once you urinate, you don't need it anymore."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
38lxh5 | when someone "owns" a plot of land in a country like the usa, do they really own it or are they just buying exclusive rights to use the governments land? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38lxh5/eli5_when_someone_owns_a_plot_of_land_in_a/ | {
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"text": [
"You really own it, but there are still local, state and federal laws to consider. There is also something called eminent domain, a way which your property can be seized and paid for at market \"value.\"",
"We \"own\" it in name, but only as long as:\n\n1) We pay our property tax on it (usually on the order of 1-2% per year), and\n\n2) The government doesn't want it for anything else (\"eminent domain\").\n\nSo yeah, nomenclature aside, we really don't \"own\" anything. The government just lets us pretend as long as they don't want it for something else, and we pay our annual extortion on it.",
"That's what ownership *is* in most countries. In the United States, for example, ownership of land gives you exclusive rights to use it subject to laws of the land. Also, the government reserves the right to invoke Eminent Domain to use (or seize) that land (though they promise market compensation). Going any deeper would take us into philosophy of property law.\n\n",
"You want to Google alloidial and fee simple title. Allodial title means total, unqualified ownership. I think the \"own\" you're asking about. In the US, that's almost completely reserved for governments. Its possible to get this in Texas and Nevada, I think.\n\nFee Simple is what basically everyone has. You own it, but the government can tax you for it, or force you to sell it to then (the fifth amendment requires them to pay you a fair price)"
]
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[],
[],
[],
[]
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||
6w7uvj | what does gatorade do for your body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6w7uvj/eli5_what_does_gatorade_do_for_your_body/ | {
"a_id": [
"dm6bb5g"
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"text": [
"Gatorade has electrolytes like sodium and carbohydrates in it to replenish electrolytes your body expends while working out. Other than that, it's really just sugar water. It doesn't have any magic properties that will make an athlete perform better. If you're trying to lose weight, you're better off just drinking regular water."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2rk9ak | are diplomats completely immune? | Can diplomats do whatever they want?
I have some more specific examples like:
Can he hit a person?
Can he be charged for fraud?
What about murder? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rk9ak/eli5_are_diplomats_completely_immune/ | {
"a_id": [
"cngmutr",
"cngmylb",
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"text": [
"Diplomatic immunity is normally more a show of good faith that a host country won't try to deliberately impede a diplomat's duties while he is abroad.\n\nIf diplomats are accused with serious crimes, diplomatic immunity is typically revoked by the country of origin.",
"Someone with diplomatic immunity can still be expelled from a country. Breaking local laws without good reason, even if it doesn't result in expulsion, would be very bad for a diplomat's career. In serious cases, such as fraud or murder, the diplomat would probably be prosecuted by their own country.\n\nA good example is [Andrei Knyazev](_URL_0_) who couldn't be charged with killing someone when he was driving drunk in Canada because of his diplomatic immunity. He was recalled to Russia where he was tried and jailed for 4 years.\n\nA diplomat represents their home nation abroad and it would be very bad for diplomacy if the diplomat was seen to get away with breaking the law. Usually the potential outrage and diplomatic problems are strong motivation for a country to keep an eye on its diplomats.",
"I see somebody's been watching Lethal Weapon 2."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1881488.stm"
],
[]
] |
|
1pbixw | how do some insects survive high velocity impact during flight without immediate fatalities? | I just saw a beetle, about the size of the tip of a adult human thumb, lift off from the ground and travel at a speed which would easily be more than 200mph if it were of comparative human size in relation to the distance traveled in a few brief seconds, and then smash head-first into a motionless vehicle's rear window. The resulting thump was very loud. Without losing a beat, the beetle recoiled a bit, lost only a few inches in altitude, then turned in mid-air and climbed higher and flew away.
Now, if this had been a human flying into a brick wall at 200mph, that would have been the end of the voyage. Surely even a chitinous head and armored body can't explain how the beetle's connective tissues between the head and thorax could withstand such a brutal impact... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pbixw/eli5_how_do_some_insects_survive_high_velocity/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd0oh8k",
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"text": [
"A beetle's body does not have too much mass, and the velocity of the beetle is not too high either. Therefore, the momentum of the impact is not enough to cause significant damage to the beetle. Velocity X Mass = Momentum. If the mass or velocity of the beetle was increased, damage to the beetle is more likely to occur.",
"Because it is not travelling at 200mph\n\nA 110 lbs human (50Kg) travelling at 200mph (320 kmh) coming to a dead stop (0.01 seconds) at a brick wall would experience a force of around 445,000 newtons.\nA beetle (0.01kg) flying at 50 mph (80 km/h) (which is waayy too fast but for calculations sake) coming to a dead stop (0.01 seconds) would experience a force of around 80 newtons.\n\nyou can see how scale can dramatically change forces. \nNow a beetle is a lot more fragile than a human but essentially we are made up of somewhat similar materials. This means that a beetle can withstand a 20 foot drop while humans don't fare as well. (also there is stuff with aerodynamics but i wont get into that)",
"F=MA. The mass of an insect is very small. Therefore, the forces present are greatly reduced."
]
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[],
[],
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|
2vwqka | how do pop musicians score a chart topping hit on the release of their first album, and go from nobodies to ubiquitous in a matter of weeks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vwqka/eli5_how_do_pop_musicians_score_a_chart_topping/ | {
"a_id": [
"colljz6",
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"text": [
"Studio with money, industry connections and payola.\n\nThe music is just the particular product they sell, but it's just business.\n\nTo me, as an art form, that type of product lacks soul. I stopped buying into it after high school.",
"Some corrections: They were not *nobodies*. They were *somebodies* to plenty of people. Just because *you* didn't know of them yet doesn't mean they weren't working hard on their careers. There is an effect that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, *The Tipping Point*, which speaks to how these mass shared cultural moments occur.\n\nAs for the ubiquitous thing, there are traditionally very few channels of musical output that the majority of people in the United States connected to. The main one being radio. Even today, the radio has the largest audience of music listeners in the nation. \n\nLogically, the rest follows.",
"The process and resulting growth is made to look as organic as possible, when really its the producers, Co-song writers, label and its executives who try and pick out a succession of what they believe to be winning singles. Marketing then get the songs on the radio, TV, organise interviews and so on until you've heard the song enough times to deem it popular or hopefully worthy of purchase if you like it! Often an 'artist' will be walked through the entire process of creating and delivering their vocals. "
]
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[],
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||
eky5d1 | how does scientists calculate the surface area of planets and/or landmasses on earth? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eky5d1/eli5_how_does_scientists_calculate_the_surface/ | {
"a_id": [
"fdeg8mk"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The surface area of a sphere has a known formula. This can be derived using calculus. More accurate surface area calculations can be used by applying that same calculus to a more accurate oblate ellipse of the Earth's cross section, like the [WGS 84](_URL_0_ ) model.\n\nPlanets, are just like Earth, but the data is not as precise.\n\nCalculating land vs sea is done with photogrammetry. Pictures are used, but it gets complex (in the case of Earth) because the land under Antarctica isn't externally visible."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System"
]
] |
|
1pi3gp | what's the deal with the number 64? | There's the Commodore 64, Nintendo 64, 64-bit Windows, Mega 64 (a video game group)... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pi3gp/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_the_number_64/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd2itc5",
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"text": [
"It's the amount of bytes or bits that the processor contains in the N64 and Commodore 64, I assume Mega 64 is a reference to that brilliant Nintendo Console. As for Windows 64 it's basically the same, all of the architecture's processors run across 64 bits.\n\nSo in terms of the Commodore and Nintendo they were showing how powerful the console was, I believe Playstation One was only 32 bit.\n\nEdit: ZorMonkey has kindly highlighted the error in my post. The Commodore 64 had 64 K in *memory* rather than processing power. ",
"Computers work in binary, and binary likes twos. It's just like how we use decimal (base 10) numbers, so we like tens and hundreds and thousands and so on. They just feel more natural for us to work with, because they're easy to deal with in our number system.\n\nTens, hundreds, thousands, etc. are all powers of ten: 10^(1), 10^(2), 10^(3), and so on. So, if we like powers of ten because we count in tens, computers probably like powers of two because they count in twos: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and so on.\n\nThat's why 64 shows up all over the place. You can look up what a 64-bit architecture (which is what the N64 uses) means in the [search function](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=64+bit&restrict_sr=on"
]
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|
5rd1mq | senate filibusters and the "nuclear option" in regards to confirming supreme court nominees. | People keep mentioning it in all the SCOTUS mega threads | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rd1mq/eli5_senate_filibusters_and_the_nuclear_option_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"dd6axyy"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"The nuclear bomb is the worst weapon ever because it's got the biggest effect. The nuclear option is the worst senate rule ever because it's got the biggest effect.\n\nThe nuclear option is just a simple change of rules in the Senate. It \"blows up\" the ability of a Senator to filibuster the nominee (which requires a more votes to break) and allows the nominee to be approved with a simple majority vote. When President Obama couldn't get his executive appointments approved by the Senate because the Republicans in the Senate threatened to filibuster them, the Democrats (who ran the Senate) changed the rules so that they didn't have to overcome the filibuster for lower level appointments, but they left the ability to filibuster SCOTUS nominees. Then they (just shy of announced) hinted that they would blow up the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees if Hillary won and the Republicans obstructed her pick for the new Justice. \n\nIt will be interesting to see if the (10?) Democratic Senators who are up for election in \"red\" States roll over and vote to approve the judge. This would help their chances of re-election AND preserve their ability to (at least threaten to) filibuster any future SCOTUS nominee. I like Trump and I like Gorsuch, but I don't much like the idea of eliminating the filibuster but I suspect the Republicans may do it if the Democrats insist. :/"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
52824l | how did the court come up with the punishments for crimes. eg. 15 years maximum for gbh. | How did these numbers come to be, politicians? Is it something thats studied and they found, oh, he's definitely going to learn his lesson after X amount of years for this crime. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52824l/eli5_how_did_the_court_come_up_with_the/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They make it up!\n\nWith the war on drugs came a big dick measuring contest with who's going to be \"tough on crime\". The 24 hour news cycle solidified this.\n\nLet's say youre a politician trying to make their mark and you hear about this new drug that the kids are using. Well marijuana carries a one year sentence(misdemeanor) and cocaine 5 (felony), and this drug is \"bad\" so let's make it a felony since felonies are bad.. 5 years. If we make the sentence one year or rehab the media will blast me for being soft on crime, better make it 5. \n\nThat's why things that were considered relatively minor years ago are now felonies. Also no one usually gets the max. They stack multiple felonies against you and you plea guilty. That is another issue though",
"Crimes are usually a certain type of misdemeanor or felony (e.g. class D felony) which have specified sentencing ranges in the law statutes. There are also mandatory sentencing laws (\"Mandatory minimums\") most famously for drug sentencing. These just say that anyone convicted of certain offenses must be sentenced to a minimum of a certain amount of time. \n\nThe process of setting these, especially mandatory sentencing laws, is fairly political."
]
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[],
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] |
|
39toua | what do hedge fund managers actually do? like what would a typical day at work be? | I can't get over how much money these guys make. What sort of education is required? Is it very difficult to make it into these positions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39toua/eli5_what_do_hedge_fund_managers_actually_do_like/ | {
"a_id": [
"cs6cu5d"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"A hedge fund usually gets 20% of the profits plus 1% management fee. To earn that they have to constantly look for new investments, anywhere in the world. It's a constant job.\n\nTo work in investment banking you usually need a business degree from a top tier university to be a junior or senior analyst. That is the first 4 years of your career. After that you need an MBA from a top tier graduate school. And your cfa certificates, then you can work for a hedge fund. Prior experiences in mergers & acquisition or venture capital often helps.\n\nWorking in corporate finance is usually a negative."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
9qgrmr | how does the south american caravan work?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qgrmr/eli5_how_does_the_south_american_caravan_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"e893338",
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"text": [
" > where are they sleeping\n\nOutside.\n\n > getting water\n\nOutside, the stuff is just laying around. They can even carry it with them in containers!\n\n > or going to the bathroom??\n\nOutside. Little known fact, not just the Pope can shit in the woods.",
"They're sleeping outside.\n\nThey're getting water from rain/rivers/good samaritans/public bathrooms/vending machines. \n\nThey go to the bathroom on the side of the road.\n\nThere's a lot of homeless people in this world. If they can get by, so can migrants. "
]
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[],
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||
z1olg | - aquaponics | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z1olg/eli5_aquaponics/ | {
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"c60pdzy"
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"text": [
"Aquaponics is pretty much the combination of a small plant bed with a fishtank so that both of them benefit from the relationship. The water for the fish eventually becomes gunked up with shit and rotten food, so the muck gets pumped around to the plants, which use it as fertilizer. The water is then pumped back to the fish (or whatever's in the tank)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3m716o | apparent retrograde motion | Why is it some satellites appear to move from west to east when they orbit the Earth in the same direction as the moon? I know it has something to do with the Earth's rotation but for some reason I'm unable to wrap my head around the counterintuitiveness of it all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m716o/eli5_apparent_retrograde_motion/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvci75j"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Imagine you're in a car in the fast lane, looking out the side window.\n\nYou're cruising along at 70mph, everyone else is going 60mph.\n\nFrom your view, it appears like everyone is doing 10mph backwards. This is a simple example of retrograde motion.\n\nThe Earth is spinning fast enough (with you on it) that it can appear that certain satellites are moving backwards, when really, they're moving forward but slower than we're spinning.\n\nWhen we talk about rotation and orbits, this means that certain satellites can take on strange paths that appear to \"loop\", as opposed to the simple backwards motion we'd see in cars travelling in a straight line."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4a5bf6 | why are our current methods of producing meat considered "unsustainable" by many environmentalists? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a5bf6/eli5_why_are_our_current_methods_of_producing/ | {
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"text": [
"Meat animals consume so much grain, if everyone consumed meat at the rate Americans do now, the world would not have enough grain.\n\n",
"Raising cattle takes a lot of water compared calorie-for-calorie with vegetables and grains. Also cattle produce a lot of methane gas, which contribute to global warming.",
"Cows are an inefficient middleman.\n\nIt takes a little land to grow plants and feed them directly to people.\n\nIt takes a lot more land to grow plants to feed them to cows that provide the same amount of food to people.\n",
"In the food chain, energy is lost when you go from one level to the next. This can be from any number of reasons like inefficient digestion, energy lost as heat, energy expended by activity, etc. So a only a fraction of the biomass becomes biomass in the organism doing the eating. This inefficiency grows at a very fast rate as the food chain gets longer.\n\nLet's say that only 10% of energy is passed on from one level of the food chain to the next. So a human eating corn gets 10% of the energy that that corn contained. But a human eating a cow that ate corn only gets 1% of that energy from the same quantity of corn. Why? Because the cow only got 10% of the corn's energy and the human got 10% of the cow's energy. As a result, you need 10x more corn to get the same amount of energy by eating beef as you would by directly eating the corn. Getting as close as possible to the lowest level of the food chain is the most efficient thing.\n\nNow, it's not necessarily that simple. Livestock can actually increase the efficiency of our food chain. Say you have that corn farm. You can pass on 10% of the corn's energy directly to people. But part of that lost energy is in the parts of the plant we can't eat. Well, certain livestock can and we can extract some extra energy from the corn by letting them process it into something we can eat. Such ideas are part of farming strategies like biodynamic agriculture, which aims to work with nature to increase productivity of the land.\n\nCurrently, factory farms are heavily favored in our country. They are economically efficient at producing environmentally inefficient food products. I will try to be brief in outlining some of the issues that tend to plague modern day agribusiness from an environmental perspective:\n\n1. Feed for these livestock are not old farm wastes like I mentioned above. Instead, perfectly fine land is used to grow corn and other specific feed crops for livestock. We could extract more energy from this land by growing produce that humans eat directly.\n\n2. The feed crops are often not proper for the animals they are given to. Cows are not adapted for eating corn but we feed it to them anyways because it is great at building bulk fast. As a result, these cows often have major gastrointestinal problems that require antibiotics to treat. Right now, more antibiotics are used to treat factory farmed animals than humans. Significant use of these antibiotics will over time decrease their efficacy as bacteria evolve to resist them.\n\n3. These concentrated factory farms produce a lot of animal wastes that can be incredibly tough to deal with. Back in the grazing days, it would easily integrate into the soil. But now it is a problem that needs active management. There are sometimes even issues with using these wastes as fertilizer because of concerns about heavy metal concentrations in the biosolids, especially if they're processed certain ways. This can make their applications a health hazard.\n\n4. Economically, it's all propped up by a tenuous system. Corn is a great animal feed because it is excessively cheap and available. Corn and a few other crops have a price floor set by the government, which means the government subsidizes these crops when the market price falls below a certain level. As a result, there is no economic feedback mechanism that says \"whoa there's way too much of this on the market.\" Now, buyers still get the product at a discounted rate thanks to the government subsidies. As a result, they have a very cheap crop that can be used for all sorts of ancillary uses. One is feed for livestock. Another are all those hard to pronounce ingredients in processed foods. Corn-based ethanol has been another thing attempted. All of this is propped up by government policies that interfere with normal market mechanisms.\n\nUltimately, the biggest concern is perhaps the land use required for more and more people to adopt a meat-heavy Western diet. And directly related to that is the water required as well to make it work. The amount of food calories in an 8 oz hamburger patty could instead be 80 oz of vegetables if we didn't use the inefficient livestock step. Just think about it: a single hamburger or a week's worth of vegetables come from approximately the same land and water inputs. And beyond all of that are a number of ancillary problems I have outlined above as well as a few more I didn't even get into.",
"It takes far more energy, land, water, and resources, and it is also far more polluting, to raise animals and then slaughter them for food. \n\nThink of a 200lb pig. For the sake of argument lets say that every part of that 200lbs is edible and everybody gets 1/2 lb of meat when it is slaughtered. That would feed 400 people for 1 meal, or 125 people for 1 day. \n\nNow think about how much food it took to feed that pig when it was born, to pack on 200lbs. Think about how much urine and excrement that pig produced in it's life while growing to 200lbs. Think about the space required to grow all that food, and dispose of all that waste. If you used those resources to grow corn, instead of pig feed, then that same amount of land, food, and time, would feed thousands of people, or 1 pig. As you go higher up the food chain, you get diminishing returns in the amount of final energy or calories in the organism VS how many calories and food it took to feed the things that it ate... \n\nWe call this entropy, and it' a measure of the energy lost in a closed system. You never get back as much energy as you put into something via work. You can use 1,000,000 kcals of food to feed an animal over it's life, but when you slaughter that animal, you don't get back a million kcals, you don't even get back a decent amount of the kcals you put into feeding it. \n\nThe reason that everything on the planet isn't starving, is because we are not in a closed system. The amount of total calories in all plant and animal life on this planet, is not a fixed number because new calories are being added every day by plants converting sunlight into food. So even though every step up the food chain is more and more wastful of energy, the fact that the system has energy pumped into it via sunlight every day, is what sustains us. \n\nIf all the plants on the earth suddenly died and no new plants could grow, the entire planet would run out of food for higher life forms in just a few years. \n\n",
"The most recent episode of Vice has a good rundown on this, but basically, there are sustainable ways of producing meat, and unsustainable ones. If you have a small herd of cows that you move from field to field eating grass and pooping in the fields, the manure fetrilizes the grass so that in a few months to a year when the cows come back to eat there again, there will be plenty of grass to eat. This is sustainable, in that, if done right, the land stays fertile and producing more food for the cows to eat. \n\nWhen cows are concentrated in a feedlot, the concentration of waste is too high for the environment to absorb naturally, and seeps into rivers, throwing of the algal and bacterial balance of the rivers, which depletes oxygen, killing off fish and frogs, and so on. The food that the cows in the feedlots eat is mostly GMO corn, which can be grown in abundance more cheaply than pasturing cows. The corn fields are so depleted of nutrients that chemical fertilizers must be used, which runoff into streams, upsetting the balance. Also, corn fields are sprayed heavily with herbicides and pesticides which basically prevent anything but GMO corn from ever living there."
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3p16nm | why do noises like the running of a river never get boring but a song on repeat drives you crazy after a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p16nm/eli5_why_do_noises_like_the_running_of_a_river/ | {
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"Most likely due to the fact that the sound doesn't repeat over and over. The water is making a different noise and bouncing off rocks slightly different all the time. So no pattern is truly created so it thus \"never\" gets boring "
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6gfr57 | what is dry drowning, and how does it happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gfr57/eli5_what_is_dry_drowning_and_how_does_it_happen/ | {
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"Dry drowning is inflammation in the lungs causing fluid build up as a reaction to water getting in the lungs.\n\nThey call it dry drowning because it doesn't appear usually for hours or days after the actual incident that introduced water into the lungs.",
"_URL_0_\n\nYour lungs can't absorb oxygen. It's called Dry Drowning because it doesn't need any fluids to occur.",
"There's also secondary drowning which can happen mostly to kids if they inhale water.\n\n_URL_0_",
"What are symptoms to show someone is susceptible to dry drowning ? ",
"Does this mean every time I accidentally inhale water and have a coughing fit, I should go to the hospital/my doctor?",
"I posted this in response to the top comment as their explanation was incorrect but just making a separate post to provide an answer to your question. \n\nYour vocal cords, which sit at the top of your airway, are quite sensitive. In dry drowning, water hits the vocal cords which causes spasm - otherwise known as laryngospasm. In basic terms, the vocal cords snap shut in a protective reflex which seals off the airway and lungs. In reality, the victim suffocates rather than drowns - no water enters the lungs. \n\nMany people here are describing secondary drowning, which is an inflammatory condition caused by water entering the lungs and causing irritation. Fluid build up occurs within the inflammatory response causing pulmonary oedema, or fluid filled lungs. \n\nTo confuse things however, laryngospasm can also cause pulmonary oedema. Our breathing works via negative pressure - when we open our rib cage, that stretches the lungs open and creates a small vacuum causing air to rush in. This is how we breathe - we don't 'suck' air in per se, we create a negative pressure environment with the muscles in our rib cage and diaphragm and air rushes in to equalise pressure between our lungs and the external environment. \n\nWhen laryngospasm occurs, the victim may still be using all of those muscles to try to breathe but their airway is sealed shut. So, they are creating a negative pressure environment in their lungs, but with no way for air to get in to equalise the pressure. The victim then ends up drawing fluid from their tissues into their lungs instead, resulting in pulmonary oedema, or fluid filled lungs. \n\n",
"Cracked wrote about this a couole of hours ago. Dry driwning and delayed drowning. Both terrifying.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Well there's dry drowning and secondary drowning. They're a bit different. Dry drowning is when your face is submerged in water and your vocal cords slam shut preventing water getting into your lungs but also oxygen. Your body burns through what oxygen it has, your brain eventually gets starved of oxygen and you die without ever getting water in your lungs. \nSecondary drowning is when you get water in your lungs, enough to wash away the healthy surfactant fluid lubricating your lungs making it much harder to breath. The water also causes damage to the lung tissue causing swelling and inflammation of the lung membranes involved in getting oxygen from the air into your blood stream. So despite you breathing air and oxygen into your lungs, the membrane of your lung is now swollen and too thick for the oxygen to cross to your blood stream. ",
"YUS I CAN ANSWER THIS! We beach lifeguards call it parking lot drowning as our slang (secondary drowning is the correct term I believe), because people often feel the onset of the symptoms when they are in the parking lot leaving the beach to go home. \n\nInhaling water is really bad, and when you do your body can over react, like it does when you're stung by a bee. Ocean water is the worst because of the bacteria and crap in it. When your lungs figure out there is water and gunk in them they respond through a couple of ways, for secondary drowning it's called edema, pulmonary edema or wet lung, and it is your body trying to flush out your lungs with mucus and other bodily fluids. There is also inflammation sometimes. \n\nThis is similar to the overreaction your body has to a bee sting if you're allergic because the poison (or in this case fluid in lungs) won't kill you, but your body flips out and kills itself. \n\nTreatment is just giving the patient oxygen. Key thing is figuring out whether or not patient inhaled water, a stethoscope can hear gurgling or wheezing in the lungs sometimes."
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6tesyr | if we were still at war with nazi germany, nazi supporters would be tried for treason. why now are nazi groups aloud to persist, unchallenged by law? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tesyr/eli5_if_we_were_still_at_war_with_nazi_germany/ | {
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"I'm assuming some sort of combination of the 1st amendment and not committing any war crimes.",
"You fight ideas *WITH* ideas. \n\nProviding they are not breaking laws or actually hurting people, public shunning, mockery, ridicule, and shaming, are pretty effective ways to change non violent behavior, attitudes, and beliefs. \n\nThere were some pretty effective social movements based on those principles. \n\n",
"Nazi Germany does not exists. Nazis were a political party and the US has first amendment rights so you can't do anything to them. As long as they are peaceful that is.\n\nYou may not like or agree with what they say or do but that's why we have the first amendment. You have to accept the good with the bad otherwise not allowing people to express their own views would be a form of fascism ",
"Simply expressing support would not be sufficient to try someone for treason even back in war times. That would be deeply unpopular, but not treason unless you'd do something *material* in regards to the enemy war effort.\n\nFor example, you can look at organizations like German American Bund or British Union of Fascists. In general, their organized activities were prohibited during the war and leaders were detained for various issues; but the detained people, as a rule, were not tried for treason and the vast majority of their members (tens of thousands of them!) weren't tried for anything ever.",
"All these people are quoting free expression.\n\nMe, I think it's good they still exist. They're like a showcase example of a dumb idea, just so we can remember why it's a dumb idea and to never pursue it again. ",
"That is not true. The Nazis in the US (yes we had a Nazis Party) were not tried for treason in the US during WWII simply for holding their beliefs. If that was not sufficient for it during time of war it most assuredly is not now. ",
"There is a very fine balancing act between avoiding government censorship and persecution of political groups on the one hand, and allowing desctructive elements to fester until they become too big to deal with on the other.\n\nIf you give the government powers to imprison people for holding certain political beliefs, how is that fundamentally different from what the Gestapo did? And who gets to say exactly which political opinions are allowed and which are not?\n\nBack in the Germany of the 1930s, the popular belief was that it was the Communists who were the dangerous, subversive elements, and the Nazis promised to deal with them. It was when the Reichstag building burned down -- apparently as part of a Communist plot, although nobody can ever be 100% sure of that -- that the Nazis were able to push through their Enabling Act, a kind of emergency legislation, ostensibly to eliminate this threat to society, but which in fact made it possible to effectively ban all other political parties and dismantle Germany's entire democratic system.\n\nFor obvious reasons, modern Germany is very keen to ensure that extremist political groups can never do such a thing ever again, and so they had to come up with a way to ban such organisations without giving a future government the power to eliminate all opposition in exactly the way the Nazis did.\n\nGermany's approach takes on this form: first, the German constitution contains lots of written guarantees of certain basic human rights. Many clauses are subject to what's called an \"eternity clause\", meaning they can never be repealed or weakened for any reason whatever, and they must be included in any new constitution that succeeds the current one.\n\nThen, there is a ban on any political party that is, in the language of German law, \"antagonistic to the constitution\". That is, if your political movement can be shown to be actively working towards undermining the constitution, it can be banned.\n\nThe bar is set quite high, though. The authorities have to gather a *lot* of evidence, and this often means infiltrating the movement. There was an embarrassing case a couple of years ago, when some agents had infiltrated such a movement so successfully, that they rose up through the ranks and some of them were partly responsible for the very policies that were supposed to be evidence of the party's anti-constitutional aims. (It's difficult to blame the agents -- after all, they really didn't want to break cover.)\n\nThen the constitutional court has to study the evidence, and decide whether or not to withdraw the organisation's status as a political party.\n\nBut even if you ban the organisation, you can't change the minds of the individuals. They will simply regroup, and join or found a new party, taking care to ensure that in public at least, they stay on the right side of the law.\n\nThe real key to this, though, is not the nuclear option of suspending basic rights for certain classes of people. It seems to be education, and here Germany has an advantage. All German schoolchildren are taught about the rise of the Nazis and WW2, and in particular they are all made to visit a concentration camp. The message \"Never again\" is drummed into them from a very early age.",
"In the US, the legal standard for treason is very high. Expressing support is not treason, and US explicitly protected by the First Amendment.\n\nI recommend reading the Constitution. It isn't very long.",
"I could try to explain it, but it has already been done in such an excellent way, I dare not ruin it.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"\nIf my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. \n\n1. We're not at war with Germany anymore\n2. First Amendment protects peoples' rights to be shitheads\n3. Treason is defined as \"*Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason*\" < -- walking around with a swastika flag and tiki torch doesn't count\n4. Allowed.",
"If you don't act upon it (or at least within the boundaries of the law) you can believe what you wish. We do live in freedom. ",
"Because you cannot say freedom of speech and actions is true while prosecuting someone for saying and believing things that you deem wrong. ",
"The American Bund party was the U.S. equivalent of the Nazi party in the 1930s. But by 1941, the House Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II."
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3timkr | why does lighting fork off it to different directions? | if currents take the shortest route to ground why does lighting fork off in many directions sometimes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3timkr/eli5_why_does_lighting_fork_off_it_to_different/ | {
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"The lightning seeks out the path of least resistance and forks out as it comes across different possible paths, once it reaches the ground, [the full force of the lightning bolt follows the completed path](_URL_0_).",
"That missing N really messed with my mind before I decided to click the title and find out about this fork business."
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vwv7h | what is ibm's purpose? | What do they manufacture?
I know they have a thing for polishing mouse balls, but other than that I'm drawing a blank. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vwv7h/what_is_ibms_purpose/ | {
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"They invent stuff and do research. Thank them for such wonders as the ATM, hard drives, and the barcodes on everything you buy in a store.\n\nRecently they made a computer that's better than people at Jeopardy. _URL_0_",
"I worked for them as a Federal Consultant. Research, software, hardware, services."
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9hb87e | why do graphics drivers push out updates so frequently? i don't *notice* anything different after an update, so what's happening under the hood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hb87e/eli5_why_do_graphics_drivers_push_out_updates_so/ | {
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"Simplified enormously, your graphics card has memory, and processors inside, and the graphics you see, especially in games, aren't \"loaded up\" like a video that's already made and just available for download, but the game actually creates the 3D environment that you see, and, more importantly, DEFORMS it when you change perspective or look around, and objects become obscured or visible based on what you're doing.\n\nSo the processors are needed, to do all the mathematical deformations, so that your environment inside the game appears to be moving and reacting and having physics the way you'd expect.\n\nAnd all of these mathematical calculations can't work unless there's a \"standard\" - an agreement between the hardware makers (NVIDIA, ATI, etc.) and the software makers (game developers) about how things SHOULD work. \n\nThat's what a \"driver\" does; it takes a command like \"draw me a sphere, made of water\" and translates it to \"processors number 1-23, work on drawing a sphere; processors 24-62, work on the transparency of water; processors 63-92, work on how light should be rendered when it passes through water\" and so on.\n\nSo, new games come out all the time. And these new games want to draw new things in new ways all the time (graphics is a big deal in games). So NVIDIA and ATI periodically update their drivers to support these new games that \"push the envelope\" and basically change the supposed \"standard\" to where it's not agreed by all parties anymore.\n\nIf you look at patch notes for a graphics driver update, you'll see it's mostly fixes intended to make these newer games work on the video card.",
"About 95% of the time, they are fixing bugs that they didn't find before because their testing is generally inadequate. The key thing they are striving for is getting a product to market as quickly as possible, and quality is not job #1. They want the quality to be just good enough that they don't get a bunch of bad reviews or too many returns. \n \nThe rest of the time they are adding minor features that may not be noticeable, or even applicable to what you are doing. \n \n*Source*: I worked at nVidia for a while.",
"Its generally not a tech reason, its a almost always a pure **business** reason for *frequent* updates\n\nIn ages past, software and driver updates were few and far between, so most gamers and computer folks thought they were being neglected on their high priced cards with minimal updates and support. Now they didn't need updates generally, because things move pretty slow and the drivers and software work extremely well in almost any condition, even forward looking, thats how they are made. But when an update came, it was a happy day, even if it did nothing.\n\nBut, as competition in graphics cards increased, and prices rose, they got this idea to essentially \"fake\" they were providing amazing support and updates on a regular basis-- and the fans, and users utterly loved it, thinking they were getting WAY more than they paid for (again these cards are not cheap) i.e. \"OMG they update it every week so it always works right, instead of every 6 months!\" Its soooo worth it.\n\nIn reality, these updates are generally extremely minor bugfixes and tweaks that don't effect but the tiniest rare outlier user configuration and do not need consistent frequent updates since they are so small and so rare they can be rolled up into a single update very infrequently.\n\nIts not a tech thing.\n\nIt's pure business to placate the user that the company is doing something to help them game better. The placation of users by providing constant \"updates\" is a normal business practice in many industries, so that consumers don't get worried and riot and then start calling the company, and so on. Ever been at an airport and the plane's been delayed and they come on every 15 minutes to update you?! Nothing changed right? but you got an update -- this is **Exactly** the same.",
"Graphics drivers these days don't just simply provide a generic OpenGL/Direct3D interface for the card & just let the games use the card as a resource. Graphics drivers are chock full of optimizations & bug fixes for different games, hardware & softwareconfigurations.\n\nIf you look at the release notes for the most recent nVidia drivers, for example, you'll see that the highlights are:\n\n* Added support for RTX 2080 & 2080Ti cards\n* Provides the optimal gaming experience for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Forza Horizon 4, and FIFA 19\n\nbut the entire release notes are 36 pages long. In addition to those things you get:\n\n* new version of CUDA libraries\n* support for new raytracing libraries\n* new version of VULKAN libraries\n* OpenGL extensions for raytracing with RTX cards\n* SLI/3d profiles for a bunch of games\n* Experimental support for OpenCL 2.0\n* new backwards compatibility code for DX10/DX11 games\n* New HDTV resizing code\n* dozens of specific bug-fixes\n\n...and these sorts of things are constantly coming out. If the rate of releases bothers you & you're not having any problems, it's probably safe to stay with the WHQL versions of the drivers which come out far less frequently."
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3c46tn | why can some companies use phrases such as "world's greatest ____" or "america's favorite ____" when they haven't been compared to everything they're trying to be better than? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c46tn/eli5_why_can_some_companies_use_phrases_such_as/ | {
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"There was a court ruling on this somewhere, basically this operates under the idea that it's so blatantly false that no one would believe it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Here in India, if you're sued for a statement like that the person suing you needs to prove that the statement is false. Basically you can say anything, until you're proven wrong."
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1ea5r2 | why are x86 programs not compatible with arm processors if the operating system is on both platforms? and vice-versa? | Edit: Thank you for the responses!
I'm a nooby computer science student. I thought it was the operating system's job to run programs in a manner that the actual machine can understand. So if we take Windows 8, for example, which is now on both traditional x86 and the Arm platforms, why do the Arm-based Windows machines fail to run x86 programs?
Is this a general thing, or is this just a decision that Microsoft made? In other words, I've seen Android, which is typically made for Arm devices, run on x86 based machines... does Android on an x86 machine run any old app installed from an .apk, or is it a general incopatibility thing with the hardware? Like, "just because Android was ported to x86 doesn't mean the programs have been"?
Does any of this make sense????? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ea5r2/eli5_why_are_x86_programs_not_compatible_with_arm/ | {
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"Running x86 on Arm is like trying to put diesel in a gas car - they're just not made to run it. Even if you're driving a car that's available in both forms, it won't work. The gear shift and brake pedals might be in the same spot but the engine won't run the same stuff.\n\nDifferent CPUs, different instructions, even if the OS provides the same system call interface.\n\nThe way Android works around this is to run all your programs on a **virtual machine**. This is a program that 'pretends' to be a CPU. You can compile a program to run on this virtual CPU and the program will run anywhere you've written your virtual machine.",
"x86 and ARM are two different Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs). An ISA defines what operations a processor can perform. While x86 and ARM may share many instructions at an abstract level (add, subtract, branch, etc..), the actual opcodes (the 1s and 0s) used to make the processor execute work are not the same.\n\nWhen a program is compiled, it is translated into machine language, which consists of the instructions the processor can understand. If a program is compiled for the x86 ISA, an x86 processor will be able to execute the program. However, an ARM processor will have no idea what the program's instructions mean, because they aren't defined in the ARM ISA. \n\nThe operating system handles many things programs need to execute, however instruction translation is not one of them."
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2exqon | why it feels like you get a little extra oxygen when you breathe out after holding it in? | FRDFG DFG DFG DFG FRDFG DFG DFG DFG FRDFG DFG DFG DFG FRDFG DFG DFG DFG FRDFG DFG DFG DFG FRDFG DFG DFG DFG | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2exqon/eli5_why_it_feels_like_you_get_a_little_extra/ | {
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"text": [
"Your desire to breath mostly comes from an excess of carbon dioxide, not from too little oxygen. When you exhale you get rid of the CO2 and so you are relieved. ",
"Brain tells you you have too much CO2, not too little oxygen. Breathing out removes CO2. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1gmq2o | is a tiger any smarter than a house cat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gmq2o/is_a_tiger_any_smarter_than_a_house_cat/ | {
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"It depends on what you think smart is. They have pretty much the same instincts, and will react similarly to any stimulus that is related to hunting, mating and other natural things. The size difference does have some control over sheer processing power, and cats have been bred to lose certain wild traits, in exchange for human compatible traits. \n\nShort version- They are pretty much equal, but tigers should be smarter. Cat's may seem smarter because they're used to people and have lots of traits that humans associate with intelligence. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
d2gjdm | lets say a truck has 500 horsepower, and a supercar has 500 horsepower. why can the truck haul/tow but the supercar can't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d2gjdm/eli5_lets_say_a_truck_has_500_horsepower_and_a/ | {
"a_id": [
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"A super car could definitely get the same trailer to speed just as fast, if not faster, given it could get traction. \n\nTow ratings are often more about braking and structural strength than horsepower. Diesel engines from the 80s and early 90s rarely ever broke 200hp, but they could pull big trailers because their frames and brakes could handle the big loads.",
"Mostly gear ratios and torque. Think like a bicycle. If it's in a low gear you can pedal as fast as you can and you wouldn't go very fast but you can pedal up a big hill with ease. If you're in a high gear you can pedal as fast as possible and youd be moving pretty fast but good luck getting up that hill. Think of the hill as the \"load\". Trucks are geared low. Racecars are geared high."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
a9qz56 | what is there to stop food/drinks manufacturers from outright lying about the ingredients and nutritional information of their products? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9qz56/eli5_what_is_there_to_stop_fooddrinks/ | {
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"text": [
"Usually steep fines and punishments when caught.\n\nAnd it is *when* caught, not *if* caught.",
"In the United States, the Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) enforces several laws that let them fine or even imprison manufacturers. Their inspectors visit factories to look out for contamination, and their investigators look for the cause of any incidents that do occur, and punish the companies responsible.\n\nThis system doesn't always work as well as one could hope, but it does save lives.",
"I used to work for a cookie baking company. I was the quality control supervisor and I had to run quality checks and submit COA's (Certificate of Authenticity) to some major companies, like a well-known weight loss company I shall not name. You tend to watch your butt on stuff like that. I also did the nutritional labeling\\ingrediants list and you really need to get that one right. We also had regular inspections."
]
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[],
[],
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||
3a9hqd | what is realpolitik? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a9hqd/eli5_what_is_realpolitik/ | {
"a_id": [
"csaidlc"
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"text": [
"Realpolitik is doing things (like leading the country) not in the way that's fair, or morally right, but the way that works and/or maximize your country's own interests.\n\nFor example, if you're an eastern-europe Prime Minister, and you feel Putin is being a dick, but you need russian gas so you avoid any confrontation with him so as to avoid him punishing you by raising the gas prices, that's realpolitik. \n\nOr if simply you avoid confrontation because you feel you'll be more influent over his behavior by staying allied than by becoming confrontational, that's still realpolitik.\n\nRealpolitik is basically \"getting real\" over what you can do, and what you'd like to but can't (or at least shouldn't) because you have constraints."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bacukd | how are animals able to inherently know what herbs/plants are edible but humans can't without prior knowledge? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bacukd/eli5_how_are_animals_able_to_inherently_know_what/ | {
"a_id": [
"ekanl5t"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Many animals have a more acute sense of smell than humans; that would be useful sometimes. They might be able to tell in small tastes what berries are bitter -- signifying poisonous— better than humans, too. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5cgea2 | how did music genres get their names? ex: rock & roll, country, hiphop... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cgea2/eli5_how_did_music_genres_get_their_names_ex_rock/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"**Rock and Roll** - [From rock (move back and forth) + and + roll; originally a verb phrase common among African Americans, meaning **\"to have sexual intercourse\"**;](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: Adding this comment since we are supposed to do more than just post links. Once you know what Rock and Roll is a euphemism for, it makes listening to music from the 20s through 40s a lot more entertaining.\n\nGive a listen [to this](_URL_0_) with what you know now. [This one](_URL_2_) might also put a smile on your face."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvzmBA91P3c",
"https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rock_and_roll",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGuDWDIgrdQ"
]
] |
||
6226qu | why do certain wild animals (whales, dolphins, etc.) that are otherwise predators try and help humans they encounter? | I was reading this article the other day: _URL_0_
It got me to thinking about all the times I've heard stories of people being saved by dolphins while stranded or something similar. I know people have a tendency to anthropomorphize animal behavior, but it seems extremely altruistic to me. Shouldn't they view humans as competition or an easy food source? It seems like there are a lot of animals out there that don't try and attack humans but are otherwise vicious hunters.
A lot of people explain instances like the one in the article above as a maternal instincts, but humans obviously look and smell like a different animal species. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6226qu/eli5why_do_certain_wild_animals_whales_dolphins/ | {
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"Blue whales have also been known to protect seals from orcas. Elephants are known to avenge their fallen and remember, and mourn as they walk by the graves of those they knew.\n\nI think this may be due to the ability of consciously aware creatures to sympathize (or empathize) with another conscious being. Sympathetic and empathetic emotions both have a negative effect on individuals with those emotions. \n\nBasically, since we have the desire and ability to help dolphins, they too are also possessed of the same.",
"I would like to point out that people who are drowned by dolphins for fun are not around to tell heartwarming stories of their encounters with dolphins. Dolphins can be dangerous and have been known to attack humans and kill other animals apparently for sport, as in, the animals pose no threat to the dolphins and are not eaten. People are just more conditioned to the idea that dolphins are friendly and fun-loving so stories about them saving people tend to spread easily."
]
} | [] | [
"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140311-paul-nicklen-leopard-seal-photographer-viral/"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
mwolx | why are cars so damn expensive? | Obviously new technologies cost money, and supply/demand/what the market is willing to pay has a big factor. But you'd think that over time it'd get easier and more cost efficient to build/design a car.
So why does a new one cost tens of thousands of dollars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mwolx/eli5_why_are_cars_so_damn_expensive/ | {
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"It has gotten easier and more cost efficient to build a car. The problem is, technology has also continued to evolve. If you were building the cars of 60 years ago, they'd be much cheaper. Why aren't we building those cars? People are willing to pay for safer and more advanced vehicles.",
"Well lots of reasons:\n\n* Materials. Obviously a cheaper car will have cheaper materials. Perhaps more plastic than other cars or fabric instead of leather, but even in the case of fabric, not all fabric is of the same quality. This adds a lot more to the cost than you might think. Add in the actual drive train and the materials alone definitely add up. \n\n* Features / Amenities. If you wanted a car that had zero amenities and zero features it would actually be relatively cheap. When you add things like all wheel drive, power steering, or air conditioning, or stereos, or power windows, or anything non-essential, it might be \"standard\" equipment but it's certainly not free. \n\n* New technologies. There are engine technologies that are cheaper to leave out than put in -- things like variable valve timing. VVT requires not only completely physical parts but a different computer to manage it. When you have to tool your manufacturing machines to be able to make the cheaper parts as well as the more expensive ones, it ain't free either. Also, safety features.\n\n* Research and Development. This has to be paid for some how. A lot of R & D actually comes from racing, which then gets distilled into consumer technologies. Even though we've been building engines for years and years, there's still improvement to be had from engines and companies will invest in developing new technologies.\n\n* Brand. Some cars simply cost more. Sometimes it's definitely worth it. Sometimes it's just because of a brand name. \n\nThey can definitely make cheap cars, but you definitely get what you pay for if that's the route you go.",
"Hah, compared to equivalently complex pieces of machinery, cars are amazingly cheap. Yes, cheap! The costs for industrial machinery such as cnc milling machines, plastic mold tooling, assembly line equipment, etc, costs sometimes 10 times as much. They aren't fundamentally any more complex than a car, and in fact are often a lot simpler.\n\nWhy are they so cheap? Economies of scale (_URL_0_). Simply put, when you make a lot of something, the up-front costs of designing it and making the tools to make it can be spread across lots of whatever you're making.\n\nAnd some of these other redditors are right - the relative cost of a car has dropped a lot in the past 20 years. For example: a new civic costs less than one made in the 1990s, and you get a lot more car for your money.",
"It has gotten easier and more cost efficient to build a car. The problem is, technology has also continued to evolve. If you were building the cars of 60 years ago, they'd be much cheaper. Why aren't we building those cars? People are willing to pay for safer and more advanced vehicles.",
"Well lots of reasons:\n\n* Materials. Obviously a cheaper car will have cheaper materials. Perhaps more plastic than other cars or fabric instead of leather, but even in the case of fabric, not all fabric is of the same quality. This adds a lot more to the cost than you might think. Add in the actual drive train and the materials alone definitely add up. \n\n* Features / Amenities. If you wanted a car that had zero amenities and zero features it would actually be relatively cheap. When you add things like all wheel drive, power steering, or air conditioning, or stereos, or power windows, or anything non-essential, it might be \"standard\" equipment but it's certainly not free. \n\n* New technologies. There are engine technologies that are cheaper to leave out than put in -- things like variable valve timing. VVT requires not only completely physical parts but a different computer to manage it. When you have to tool your manufacturing machines to be able to make the cheaper parts as well as the more expensive ones, it ain't free either. Also, safety features.\n\n* Research and Development. This has to be paid for some how. A lot of R & D actually comes from racing, which then gets distilled into consumer technologies. Even though we've been building engines for years and years, there's still improvement to be had from engines and companies will invest in developing new technologies.\n\n* Brand. Some cars simply cost more. Sometimes it's definitely worth it. Sometimes it's just because of a brand name. \n\nThey can definitely make cheap cars, but you definitely get what you pay for if that's the route you go.",
"Hah, compared to equivalently complex pieces of machinery, cars are amazingly cheap. Yes, cheap! The costs for industrial machinery such as cnc milling machines, plastic mold tooling, assembly line equipment, etc, costs sometimes 10 times as much. They aren't fundamentally any more complex than a car, and in fact are often a lot simpler.\n\nWhy are they so cheap? Economies of scale (_URL_0_). Simply put, when you make a lot of something, the up-front costs of designing it and making the tools to make it can be spread across lots of whatever you're making.\n\nAnd some of these other redditors are right - the relative cost of a car has dropped a lot in the past 20 years. For example: a new civic costs less than one made in the 1990s, and you get a lot more car for your money."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale"
]
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|
3c9fxz | why doesn't the syrup in soda settle at the bottom of the can or bottle? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c9fxz/eli5_why_doesnt_the_syrup_in_soda_settle_at_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a solution. Settling only occurs in a suspension.\n\nThe molecules of syrup are spread out evenly and surrounded by water molecules. This is energetically more favorable than the syrup molecules sticking together, so they will never gather at the bottom."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bjpesd | how did x and y become the standard for unknown variables? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bjpesd/eli5_how_did_x_and_y_become_the_standard_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"ema3m65"
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"score": [
5
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"text": [
"Rene Descartes wrote a book [a book](_URL_0_) using them, it caught on."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_G%C3%A9om%C3%A9trie"
]
] |
||
5opm3u | why do some people get sick so often and i get sick only about twice a year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5opm3u/eli5_why_do_some_people_get_sick_so_often_and_i/ | {
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"Not an expert but the immune system is important and some people's are not as good as others. For example, increased stress and negative emotions can reduce the antibody response to an illness: \n[Marsland et al (2001) antibody response to vaccination](_URL_0_) \nThere are others factors too like diet (vitamin C is good for immune system strength) and exercise and general health lifestyle. \n",
"You have probably been lucky, and not been exposed to as many contagious people. Do you have much contact with children?",
"There could be a lot of different reasons.\n\nSleep, stress, exercise, age, diet, hygiene.\n\nThe people in my office who get sick all the time are older, smokers, and overweight.",
"I think the two largest contributors are \n\n1: genetics. How good is your immune system at fending off unknown external invaders?\n\n2: frequency of exposure. You're much more likely to get sick more often if you work in an area where there is a lot of people collecting into small spaces. Probably the career where you're going to get more sick on average is a teacher simply because you work in an environment where so many people gather all the time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/hea/20/1/4/"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3frcjk | why the smoke curling off the tip of the cigarette is blue, but when you smoke the color of smoke is white? | FYI: [visualization](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3frcjk/eli5_why_the_smoke_curling_off_the_tip_of_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctr7ui4"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It has to do with the lungs adding water vapor / stuff to the smoke which affects its Rayleigh scattering.\n\nWalter Lewin has a nice demonstration/explanation of this in one of his MIT lectures.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_).\n\n(the smoking starts at about 3:30)."
]
} | [] | [
"http://i.imgur.com/hAhzssV.jpg"
] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQSIt5CRFj8"
]
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|
y85uw | how did we develop all this advanced technology in less than 300 years when it took us hundreds of thousands just to learn how to farm? | What happened? What was the catalyst for all this advancement? What event occurred that started an avelanch of progress? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y85uw/how_did_we_develop_all_this_advanced_technology/ | {
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"The major catalyst was the industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century.\n\nPolitical stability and the ability to efficiently produce food were contributing causes to the industrial revolution happening.\n",
"Capitalism. We finally ended the cycle of collectivist serfdom and slavery, and the ideas of Aristotle flourished for a long enough time to let the idea of natural individual rights take hold. Freedom of the mind allowed for the greatest period of innovation ever in the whole of human history. We're still riding the philosophical wave of the Enlightenment.",
"It seems most of these answers center around the modern advancements (which I, as in most people, will argue is a much greater advancement in overall technology, than the previous generations combined), but your question asks about the last 300 years, but really it goes back further than that. For me the past 600 years have been a technological boom, from telescopes, to compasses, to extensive navigation tools, we have seen even before the major boom of this era (i.e. the last few centuries). This is because it takes a lot to learn to walk and nothing to learn to run. Meaning, once you build a foundation, the rest comes easier. \n\nIn reality some of these advancements should have came earlier, but because of war, and destruction of large libraries from the time of the Greeks, and the Egyptians, that were lost for many years, so never to be found. But once some where found, you had the building blocks for further advancements. And once you make those, then the advancements of modern times is a lot easier to fathom. It's just easier to run once you first learn to crawl.",
"Technology is a multiplier, not an adder. In other words, if you wanted to add a long list of numbers before the earliest computers, you had to divide it up and send it out to many, many people to do it by hand (or abacus, or adding machine, whatever). Total person-hours, let's say, is 100 for this list of numbers.\n\nThen early computers come along, and one person in about an hour can make a deck of punch cards that add all the numbers. Then they need a slice of time on the computer, they have to organize that with whoever controls access, taking some of that person's time, there's a bunch of upkeep for the computer (they used to be giant), etc. Total person hours dedicated to your job: maybe 5.\n\nNow you can write a simple command on the linux command line that sucks in your list and spits out the result, total effort, few seconds if you're already familiar with the command line.\n\nLet's say you're not familiar with it, though. So you invest a few minutes to learn how to do it, reading doc or whatever. Now you know. So maybe it took you only 10 minutes. But wait...every time you ever need to do that work or anything similar, you can do it in a few seconds, so spread over your entire life (and everyone you teach), the total amount of time for this particular task might be much less.\n\nThe result is the same, you have a total. The work required to get there is vanishingly small, and in modern life, much of the time you spend learning how to do things is applicable to many more tasks down the road. Unlike all the adders in the first example, they know how to add, and it's applicable, but they hit the top rate of productivity very quickly and stay there forever.",
"I disagree somewhat with the other posters so far. While there are certain catalysts that helped boost our progress from time to time, when you look at the big picture overall you see a trend of continuous improvement in technology over time.\n\nThe reason we are advancing faster now than we were before is simple: Each new innovation not only helps us get our chores done faster, it helps us *innovate* faster. In other words, the progress of technological advancement is not a straight line (linear), it is an accelerating curve (exponential).\n\nBasically, since the first proto-human picked up a stick and used it as a tool, we have been advancing faster and faster - using that stick to build the next tool, then using that next tool to build the next one and so on.\n\nIf you are interested in this kind of thing, you should read some books by [Ray Kurzweil](_URL_0_). I'm not claiming he is completely correct, but he definitely has compelling arguments for continuous exponential growth.",
"population is the main driver. [population](_URL_0_)\n\nas time moves on there are more and more people developing technology"
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Intelligent-Machines-Kurzweil/dp/0262610795"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_(lin-log_scale\\).png"
]
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|
4lng21 | how do they design sudoku puzzles of varying difficulty levels? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lng21/eli5_how_do_they_design_sudoku_puzzles_of_varying/ | {
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"Two ways to adjust the difficulty of a Sudoku puzzle. \nFirst way: More free numbers will make the puzzle easier to solve. A standard Sudoku will have 81 numbers. If you're already given 4-5 numbers per section you are already half way done with the puzzle. Dropping this number down to 2-3 or 3-4 per section is a simple way to increase difficulty. \nSecond way: Free number spacing. Easier Sudoku puzzles will have the free numbers spaced in a way to make a couple sections solvable moments after you start. Many times you will be presented with 6-7 numbers in a row or column on 'easy' difficulty puzzles making the first step quick. \n\n5|||1|||7|||\n:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|\n||2||||7|1||\n3||1|4|||8|5|2|\n6|1||5|7|2|4||8|\n|||2|9|6||||\n||4|||3||6|2|7\n|4|5|9||8||7||\n1|3|||||9|8|6|\n2||||1|||4|3| \n\nSo in the above example we have 2 easy start points. \n\n1: We already have 7 of the 9 numbers needed for row #4 (missing 3 and 9). Row #7 has a 9 in the third position so I know row #4 will need the 3 in the 3rd position and the 9 will then go in the 8th spot. \n\n2: In box 4 we already have 6 numbers (missing 1, 4, 8). Row 6 already has a 4, so the missing #4 in box 4 must go in the 5th row position. This leaves numbers 1 & 8. Box 2 has a #1 in the 4th column, so the missing #1 must go in the 6th column/6th row for box 4 leaving the #8 in the 4th column/6th row. \n\nUsing these two start points, the rest of the puzzle can be filled in fairly quick. To make this puzzle harder, the designer would have either given less than 41 free numbers or spaced them in such a way that we could not solve a row and the center box moments after starting. \n\n1|9|||6||||3|\n:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|\n|||3|||4||9|\n||2|||||7|5|\n|||||5||4||2\n||||4||2||\n5||2||3|||||\n||1|5|||||6||\n||6||8|||9|||\n8||||4|||7|1|\n\nSo in this example. Not only are we only given 28 free numbers, but there is not a single column or row with more than 4 free numbers. This makes this 'hard' example have no 'obvious' first move. \n\nEdit: lots of formatting stuffs. Tables are hard\n",
"A lot of it is handled by a computer. You can have a program generate random puzzles, and then check the difficulty of each one (as well as making sure it can be solved through pure logic, no guessing required). The main component of difficulty is how \"narrow\" the solution space is - if there's a part of the puzzle where there's only one possible number you can deduce at this point, then that increases the difficulty a lot more than if there's 3 possible paths you can take (multiple ways to deduce the same number, or multiple numbers that all help you figure out the other ones). Setting more steps of the puzzle to have fewer solutions would bump up the difficulty.\n\nTo be honest it's kind of hard to explain, but if you've solved a decent amount of puzzles, surely you'd notice \"hard parts\", even if you're not entirely sure *why* they're hard. The designer (either a human or a computer) can intentionally add or remove those parts - they're not just accidents! An expert designer knows the exact \"paths\" by which you can solve a puzzle, and can set things up so the difficulty is just right.\n\nI made a sudoku-solving program before, and setting it up to check the difficulty was pretty easy once the rest was done. Any big-name sudoku collections would probably use a similar method to judge difficulty. Low-quality ones might just do a rough estimate based on how many free numbers you're given, though."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1w5pii | what does it mean to have good "chemistry" with somebody? | I hear about romantic chemistry all the time in TV shows and books, but I've never quite understood it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w5pii/what_does_it_mean_to_have_good_chemistry_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"ceywydn"
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"score": [
4
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"text": [
"Sometimes when you are interacting with someone, you'll get along well, understand eachother easily, share ideals, etc. It's essentially the same as saying that you get along very well with each other."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
24egur | how is fire able to be on the surface of water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24egur/eli5_how_is_fire_able_to_be_on_the_surface_of/ | {
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"ch6bdyb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There's something else on top of the water that is burning, like oil or fuel or flotsam."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
38qihm | why do some mix of colors get their own name (eg. pink-which is red & white), while other colors are just named by the two colors, (eg. light blue-which is white and blue)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38qihm/eli5_why_do_some_mix_of_colors_get_their_own_name/ | {
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"There isn't really a good reason. How colours are talked about and which shades get their own names is influenced greatly by culture. For example, people with red hair are called that despite having orange-y hair because orange used to be considered a shade of red. Then when the orange fruit was imported to English-speaking parts of Europe, orange as the name of a colour took off. \n\n[More info](_URL_0_). "
]
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"http://www.wired.com/2012/06/the-crayola-fication-of-the-world-how-we-gave-colors-names-and-it-messed-with-our-brains-part-i/"
]
] |
||
62e3h9 | why do you get heavier when you go "limp"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62e3h9/eli5why_do_you_get_heavier_when_you_go_limp/ | {
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"You don't. What makes it harder to lift someone when they go limp is basically about finding a good hand hold that provides a level lift. If you have to use extra strength to grip them, that's strength you can't use to lift them.",
"You don't get heavier, you get more unwieldly. By being a weight with a shifting center of gravity extra effort is required to keep the weight steady rather than sliding off to the side.",
"It's the same reason why you can't lift as much weight using barbells/dumbells as you can using a weight machine: you're forced to use stablizing muscles to balance the shifting center of mass, and therefore can't use as much strength to do the press/pull."
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20htwg | screensavers...how does a computer save energy/power by displaying a highly active moving image (s)? | Wouldn't this drain the available power more so than just putting the computer to sleep or turning off the monitor? I am looking at my work computer and it has the bubbles bouncing around which makes me ask. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20htwg/eli5_screensavershow_does_a_computer_save/ | {
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"Screen savers were actually originally used to prevent a single image from being \"burned\" into a screen's phosphors; it does save more power to simply turn the monitor off.",
"this has nothing to do with power, but with a technology from probably before you were born:\n\nin the good old times, computer monitors and TVs were built of cathode tubes, and they were not using stupid commercials to zombify us, rather the X-rays emitted from the monitors were dumbing us perfectly well.\n\nCathodes tubes are vacuum tubes in which electrons are accelerated towards a phosphor screen (the \"screen\"). When the electrons hit the screen light is emitted (along with a good dose of X-ray radiation - I needed a dose of it every night between 8 and 10pm).\n\non computer monitors, a constant stream of electrons to the exact same point led to a \"ghosting\" effect, in which the image becomes permanently 'burned' on the screen. To avoid that, screen savers were put in actions if the screen was left unchanged for more than a few minutes.\n\nThis doesn't apply to modern LCD screens, so there is no need for a screen saver anymore, unless you need to hide the internet porn pages you were just watching.\n\n",
"Stop looking at bubbles and get back to work."
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6sotnn | does gravity attract objects? | I seem to be getting two conflicting views of gravity or not seeing them as the same :
1) it attracts objects like a force (which we observe every day) and it acts in one direction
or
2) Gravity is the bending of spacetime. A small object passing a large mass changes direction as it follows the curved spacetime caused by the larger mass. The object is not "pulled" towards the center mass by a force but is simply following the warped/stretched spacetime path. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sotnn/eli5_does_gravity_attract_objects/ | {
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"It's technically both. It bends spacetime to attract objects but a simpler way of explaining it is just to say it exerts a force on the object",
"It really depends what you're dealing with. Macroscopic objects(rocks/people) then treat gravity as a force like number 1. Subatomic particles and waves like neutrinos and light? Treat gravity like a curvature. You could always treat gravity like a curvature but it is unnecessary most of the time and just makes life harder\n\nAlso for #1, gravity attracts in both directions. The gravity of Earth pulls you to the ground and your gravity pulls the ground to you, but you're so small that your gravity does not cause significant acceleration on the Earth",
"Gravity isn't necessarily a direct \"attraction\" or pull directly on another object.\n\nAn object with mass will bend the space around it in towards itself. That bending space-time acts as a conveyor bringing anything else (with mass) stuck within it along for the ride.\n\nBut the other object has mass too so it's bending its own space-time. The effects of both objects compound so in effect both objects are more or less \"falling\" towards each other. \n\nThe more massive each object is, the more bent the space-time gets, the faster the other object falls towards it.\n \n \nSo in essence the objects aren't being pulled by each other, they're being pushed by the space around them in the direction it's being bent.\n\n\n The trampoline analogy is useful. If you put a marble on the edge of a trampoline it won't move much. If you put a bowling ball in the middle it warps the area around it and the marble falls towards it even though the bowling ball did nothing to the marble itself. (however ignore for this analogy that the earth's gravity is moving the marble. Imagine it's the trampoline fabric stretching towards the bowling ball that's really moving the marble) ",
"It's number 2. Mass bend spacetime and any object will be affected by this curvature of spacetime.\n\nBut we can't see the curvature of spacetime so to us it seem like gravity is a force acting on object. But in reality gravity is a force acting on spacetime.\n\nNumber 1 is the effect of gravity that we can see everyday, it's also easier to understand. In most field, like engineering, this way of thinking about gravity is enough to make it work. You don't need to understand the curvature of spacetime to understand how gravity affect a building. "
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1ecqud | what is jacksonian democracy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ecqud/eli5_what_is_jacksonian_democracy/ | {
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"Part of an essay prompt on your take-home final."
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1a335y | why is what "to catch a predator" legal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a335y/why_is_what_to_catch_a_predator_legal/ | {
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"There are a ton of laws you can get caught for with intent alone. This is no different.\n\nIf you conspire to rob a bank - have a plan of attack, robbery tools, dates, times, a get-away plan, guns, etc... and you get caught, you are going to jail for conspiracy to commit a bank robbery. \n\nSame with sex offenders, murderers, etc... ",
"In many states, attempting to become an internet predator is itself a crime. So even if you're never actually in a position to molest a child, and even if there is no actual child in the first place, you can be charged with that crime.\n\nNow, there is an important point that you brought up. What if the person caught never *would* have molested a child, if the To Catch a Predator people hadn't shown up? Well, that's covered by a legal concept called entrapment, and it does mean there are some restrictions. For instance, the TCaP people cannot begin private conversations themselves, and they cannot be the ones to bring up sex. Doing those things would be entrapment, and entrapment is a valid defense."
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yxuq1 | why hasn't the united states renewed the assault weapons ban? | Does the second amendment make this ban unconstitutional? All I can find is confusing numbers and multiple different sources saying different things. I cant understand any of the reasons behind keeping it if the people who say it didnt lower gun crime are correct, but other places say that it did lower gun crime. Im very confused. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yxuq1/why_hasnt_the_united_states_renewed_the_assault/ | {
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"Well a couple of things: \n\nFirst does it violate the 2nd Amendment? Well it matters how you read it. If you read it as saying that the right to bear arms should be read literally, then it doesn't guarantee you a right to own every weapon ever produced. Meaning that there is no way to stop a government from saying you can't buy certain styles of guns, but that you are allowed to own other styles. If you read as more of a guaranteed right, then yes it does violate the 2nd Amendment. This isn't an exact science, and this is why the Supreme Court exists, as to be able to examine the law, and read what the law means in the context of a case.\n\nSecondly, did it reduce gun violence? Well again this all matters to how you read into it. There was small reduction every year in gun violence, leading up the ban, and most that argue that it didn't help will say that because of a stable economy and a reduction in poverty, the rate dropped dramatically, and that drop would exists no matter if the bam was in place or not. Then there is the theory (proposed by Freak Economics) that maybe the drop had to do with abortions. The idea is following 1972 and Roe V. Wade, women could now get legal abortions in the South (which is illegal in a lot states, and also have a very high crime rate). So if you fast forward 18 years later (or 1990 and beyond) there was a lot less kids born into a household who might not be able to raise properly (single mothers, poverty stricken families, etc.). Now the 18 year point is important, because idea is most crime would be committed by someone who is 18-25 years old, so if a large group of people were never born, who would might have went to a life crime, then the numbers drop, and the drop would dramatic. Most sensible people on this side of the argument will say the assault rifle ban had some effect on crime, but not a huge one, and it was other factors that really caused the drop.\n\nThe other side of the coin is, because of the assault rifle ban, it was no harder to get assault rifles. And if someone tried to, say through illegal channels, get an assault rifle then it would be easier to track, and arrest that person before the crime was committed. This argument does hold some merit, but it's not something tangible that you grab ahold of. Because the question becomes how many people looking for an assault rifle illegally would actually commit a crime? We can't know for sure because we only know if they did or didn't commit a crime with the weapon before they were arrested.\n\nBasically the issue is not clear, because there is never a black and white way of the world. The economy didn't just fall because there was one single person to blame, it was a lot more complex than that. And the same applies here. As far as I see it, the multiple factors did lead to a dramatic drop in crime, but it's impossible to know which one was the most beneficial, and which one was really just buffed by the other ones, and so it looks good because of it. Unless we can go back in time and remove factors to find which one was the glue holding the whole thing together, we will never really know.",
"Lack of political will coupled with the proven ineffectiveness of the first assault weapons ban. The ban allowed \"pre-ban\" materials like magazines to remain in circulation and it allowed people who stockpiled them to get very wealthy. \n\nIf they were to bring it back it would enrich even more people since a lot of merchants have stockpiled vast sums of magazines that would be banned. This could be circumvented by trying to get them out of circulation after a ban but the ways to do this are either buy backs, which have a bad track record, or confiscation, which is something the government of a free country should never do. \n\n",
"Thatsumoguy's answer is good, but there's another important factor; not everyone agrees that \"assault weapon\" is a meaningful category. For instance, under the federal ban, a gun with a pistol grip and folding stock was categorized as an assault weapon. Guns with these things *look* scarier, but there's not really a good reason to think they're more dangerous.",
"Good answers. I'd just like to add that the term \"assault weapons\" is an extremely subjective and ambigious term."
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3gwqn8 | why do we sometimes "feel" when someone enters the room even though we dont see/hear them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gwqn8/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_feel_when_someone_enters/ | {
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"Probably because you saw/heard them and just don't realize it. You don't have any special 'human detector' sense, but you can certainly notice something with your normal senses without necessarily being fully cognizant of what it was. \n\nThat, or you just have a confirmation bias from all the times you thought \"I feel like someone is in here' and looked and were right.",
"The hair on your body can detect changes in air pressure and current, in addition to changes in atmospheric charge. Most mammals have a bio-electrical field.",
"My question is, why do we feel someone entering the room when no one is there, or in the house.",
"You may not see someone but you may hear footsteps, hear a decrease in sound as they pass in front of something, see a shadow as they block a light source, etc. If you're in direct sunlight or near a bonfire, you can feel people's infrared shadows, but that requires pretty specific circumstances.",
"2 things which people believe but which are not true are\n\na - we primarily use sight to detect things\n\nJust not true, most people use all their senses pretty much all the time - it's just we're most AWARE of what we see\n\nb - that we only have 5 senses\n\nSight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell\nAlso nonsense, we have a LOT more than 5 - this covers it better than I could\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAll-in-all, your brain gets get a LOT of information and makes judgements based on all of it\n\np.s. of course, someone behind you - even if silent - changes the light in front-of-you/reflects in things too - even if you don't \"see them\" your sight offers clues",
"We can feel the air pressure change slightly or low noises that echo slightly different. Think in a Daredevilish sort of way , but on a smaller scale.",
"This is in no way scientific, at all. Whatsoever. No legit evidence. BUT I have always experienced this in my life, like when the phone rings and you are like 'shoot, that's grandma' without any prior knowledge of her calling in the last 6 months. I don't think it's crazy daredevil/Spider-Man senses, I think it is your human brain predicting logical conclusions. Every now and then you will wait an extra moment at a green light and watch a car blow the red light in front of you like 'daaaaamn they would have slammed me!'. It wasn't spider-sense, it was 'shoot it is right around 12:55ish, people are rushing back to work from lunch break' even though you didn't consciously think that. Human brains are complicated crazy machines, and I think they are capable of way more than we have gotten out of them yet.\n\nThis sounds like a crazy person's rant but we have ALL had those moments when we know who is calling before we look at the phone, or we stop to adjust our shirt just before the cute girl from HR walks into the hall, our brains are just way smarter than we are.",
"The change in the air. You can notice the subtle sound difference as they pass into the room, disrupting the air around you.",
"Slightly related in a round about way, I think, there was a sleep study conducted ( I have no source, I learned about his in a sleep therapy class kinda thing) where a person was laid on a bed, and a drape was placed across there neck area causing the area from the head up to have total blackness. The room was then made to be totally black as well. They were hooked up to an eeg machine to measure brain waves, and let to fall into stage 4 sleep (the deepest level) then they pointed an laser pen at their calf, and the brain was able to acknowledge the light, even though the eyes couldn't see it. I think a similar thing somehow happen when people enter a room",
"I think there are a number of possible things that you can literally feel when someone enters a room, and so it might be different from person to person.\n\nI'm pretty sure that for me, the hairs on my arms, the back of my neck, etc. are feeling a slight breeze or pressure change - if the person entered quickly enough, of course."
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6hur34 | what's the difference between a sports jacket and a suit jacket? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hur34/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_sports_jacket/ | {
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"A suit consists of matching jacket, pants, and sometimes a vest. They often have patterns that don't go well with unmatched garments.\n\nA sports jacket can be paired with a wider variety of pants, and will often have more neutral patterns and colors to make this easier to do.",
"Suit jackets are paired with trousers. They're meant to be bought as a set and worn as a set. They are meant to be quite fitted, without room for a lot underneath.\n\nSports jackets fit looser, have room for layering, and are made with a more rugged material that doesn't necessarily match the rest of the outfit.\n\nA blazer is sorta in between, like a suit jacket that doesn't come with pants and has a little more room to breathe.",
"A suit jacket is part of an entire suit, meaning it has pants made of the same material and color. It's a matched wardrobe. \n\nA sport coat or blazer is a stand alone garment that is meant to be paired with any pants that can match, whether or not they are the same color or material. \n\nGenerally, the suit is more dressy and the sport coat is more casual or business casual. ",
"To actually explain like your 5. When something is marked as a sport coat or blazer it's usually a little more flashy. Eg. A paisley lining they also tend to be made out of a stiffer wool. They are expecting it to be worn with jeans\n\nJackets are what you call a blazer f its part of a suit. And you will have a matching set of pants with it",
"... I finally have to post on one of these, as it seems people googled some answers that clothing dealers hand out as a 'they will buy it either way.'\n\n- The differences between a suits jacket, and a blazer, is in the material it is made of, and the button layout/design. Blazers are of denser cloth, and their buttons tend to be lower and closer together. A suit jacket is made of soft material, generally the same as the trousers, and it's button layout is more spread to ensure the material lays flat.",
"The sports jacket was originally a British jacket worn for equestrian sports and hunting. It was made from durable weatherproof material like tweed and had vents and pleats which allowed for greater movement. It was adopted by the American rich and eventually it turned into just a plaid jacket (which looked a bit like tweed) worn by any old scum.",
"There are about 5 layers of formality for jackets. \n\n1. White Tie - a full tailcoat that goes down to the back of your thighs. \n2. Black tie - a 'standard' tuxedo jacket that covers your butt and satin lapels. \n3. Suit \n4. Blazer \n5. Sports Coat \n\nThere are no hard and fast rules when it comes to what counts as what when it comes to Suit jacket, Blazer, or Sports Coat. Modern suit jackets have trended more toward the casual sportscoats. \n\nFactors that make it more formal - neutral colors like charcoal or navy, neutral colored buttons that blend in with the suit color, solid or simple patterns like pinstripes, peak lapels, straight pockets, not too tight of a fit. Factors to bring it more to \"sport coat\" - louder colors, partial lining, slanted pockets, slim notched lapels, metal or colorful buttons, exterior stitched pockets, thicker materials, etc. \n\nHOWEVER - if its sold with matching pants or if the store offers pants as a 'suit separate', its going to be labeled a Suit Jacket no matter how casual of a jacket it is. If there are no matching pants for sale, its going to be labeled a Blazer or Sports Coat no matter how formal it is. "
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1dwt2a | how does a visualizer work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dwt2a/eli5how_does_a_visualizer_work/ | {
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"The word \"visualizer\" could mean thousands of things. What's the context?"
]
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||
119plr | mitt romney's tax reform | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/119plr/eli5_mitt_romneys_tax_reform/ | {
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"gotta give me something to work with here.... Which one and what about it",
"Nobody knows because he refuses to give the details out.",
"He's gonna cut everybody's taxes by 20% and cut some loopholes. How and which ones? He's not going to tell us. Why? Because he can't do those things and balance the budget. \n\nOtherwords he's telling everybody that they can have their cake and eat it too. And sadly many people believe that. "
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5170o3 | do crabs in the bucket really try to prevent other crabs from escaping or they are just trying to escape themselves and hence are involuntarily dragging other crabs down ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5170o3/eli5_do_crabs_in_the_bucket_really_try_to_prevent/ | {
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"The latter. There is no reason to think that crabs understand the concept of escape, jealousy, or whatever would motivate them to keep other crabs in a bucket with them. They might try to climb out though and a crab is an easier thing to climb than a bucket wall."
]
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3bha4d | why does netflix make everything else lag, instead of netflix itself loading slower? | As soon as anyone in my house goes onto Netflix, everything else lags. Online games, any other downloads, even spotify starts to lag it's sad. Why doesn't Netflix just load a little bit slower? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bha4d/eli5_why_does_netflix_make_everything_else_lag/ | {
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"Netflix, along with other HD sources of video streaming such as Youtube, are HUGE bandwidth hogs. Basically whatever you have available, it will use. So when you are trying to do both streaming HD and playing a game, you are going to be pushing more data through your connection. The higher the demand, the more latency there will be as services and devices fight for access to the available traffic. This increases your ping.\n\nThere are a few things you can do to help this. First, have a good quality router. The one you linked to should be a good quality router, so you are covered there. Second, run wired instead of wireless. Wireless connections always suffer from less quality, higher interference and possible packet loss, which overall will really increase your latency and ping rates. Wired connections have far less contention for bandwidth or other interferences, plus greater throughput except in extremely rare configurations. With some routers you can also set up quality of service, which will prioritize your game traffic above Netflix, but the quality of your netflix stream will suffer as a result. ",
"It isn't Netflix's job to determine Quality of Service (QoS) stuff on your network, it's the router's. Netflix not only isn't responsible for that, it couldn't do it even if it wanted to: from the perspective of Netflix's computers all it sees is that you're willing and able to download at some rate and Netflix obliges.\n\nTheoretically you can configure the router to give Netflix the least priority so that, at least to a certain degree, Netflix has little adverse affect on anything else but no matter what Netflix is a bandwidth hog and it'll eat up a lot of resources and will cause at least a small spike in latency for something like online games. How to do that depends on your router, and many routers have crappy firmware that doesn't really let you do it, it just has some hardwired defaults that you have to live with.\n\n"
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15niyg | what's the purpose of vote obfuscation on reddit? | Most of us know about it after lurking for a few months, but I really don't get the purpose of it. The Reddit FAQ mentions preventing users from cheating the system by making it unclear how many upvotes a post really got.... but it still doesn't really make sense to me. Thanks. If it's been asked before or discussed in depth in another sub please provide the link and then downvote me into oblivion. I tried to search but got nothing.
ANSWERED - Thanks to Aragorn18 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15niyg/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_vote_obfuscation_on/ | {
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"Vote spammers will create dummy accounts to upvote or downvote whatever they want. When the system detects these fake accounts it doesn't delete them, it simply doesn't count their vote. To the account holder it looks like the vote worked, but on the backend it gets discarded. If the vote count was always 100% accurate then the dummy account owner would know right away which accounts had been disabled."
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4jlezy | what is going on in nevada primaries and why are people so mad? | Been trying to read on it but a lot of bias articles. Just looking for a good explanation | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jlezy/eli5_what_is_going_on_in_nevada_primaries_and_why/ | {
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"Basing this on an article in the Washington Post _URL_0_\n\nNevada seems to commit some delegates in February and some in May. Hillary Clinton won more delegates in the February process, but Bernie Sanders gained a lot of support since February and actually ended up with more support than Hillary for the May process. Some yelling and apparent shady behavior later, and Hillary ended up with more delegate in the May process as well.\n\nSome more detail: Bernie supporters thought the rules for committing the May delegates needed some tuning up to avoid gaming by the pro-Hillary bosses, with fights over rule changes going right up into the weekend. The end result is that the new Bernie rules didn't get passed. Videos show what appears to be some pretty shameful abuse of Robert's Rules of Order. Also a bunch of Bernie delegates didn't get to be pledged because of apparent procedural issues (that some Bernie supporters claim are shenanigans). \n\nThe upshot is that Hillary gets something like 4 delegates that could have been Bernie delegates. Hillary appears to have gotten more votes nationally than Bernie, and her national delegate lead is in the ~250+ range, but still. If both of those are based on the kind of dirty dirt displayed here, how do we know that's really true?",
"Here's an accounting of what happened from an Imgur poster. It's biased, but it's still a starting point for understanding.\n\nAfter 1725 duely elected Bernie Delegates showed up to the Nevada State Convention, at least 64 of them were barred from participating...with no explanation. \n \n*A motion was brought to the floor by the DNC chairwoman to retroactively change the nevada primary rules...to give a victory to Hillary instead of to Bernie (who had stood as the winner by all counts when the day began).\n\nTo \"democratically\" enact this, the chairwoman called for a voice-vote...and although the NAYS far-outweighed the YEAS, she declared it a 'YEA'...and the rules retroactively changed. \n\nWhen a motion was brought to the floor to unseat the chairwoman...and it looked like it would succeed...she adjourned the meeting without following the rules and declared Hillary the victor. Then she ran off the stage behind a wall of state police, just moments before this picture was taken...\n\nBernie delgates stuck it out until after midnight, despite having started at 10 am yesterday morning. They were sustained by 275 pizzas ordered for them from people tuned-in to the meeting on Live Stream.\n\nIt is only because The People are stepping into their own power and raising their voice, that the charade (that is the democratic party primary) has had its undemocratic mechanisms and corruption exposed. \n\nBe Aware that Bernie is actually only down a couple hundred delegates nationally. Several states will soon vote...and polls indicate that Bernie will win most of them...and California (alone) has more than 500 delegates up for grabs in the next couple weeks (June 7th).\n\nBe Aware that Hillary is currently under investigation, under the espionage act by the FBI.\n\nRemember that several earlier presidents of the US were elected in a dramatic upset at a contested convention.\n\n_URL_0_",
"There's no real straight answer here because the caucus process is complicated. The Bernie folks gained some pledged delegates after the caucus in Feb, and went into the convention expecting those delegates, but a large number were disqualified because of changes in registration (some of them inexplicably unregistered as Dems and then re-registered in between Feb and now) and inaccurate recorded addresses/unable to verify credentials. These aren't surprise rules or nefarious tricks; they're clearly stated pretty much everywhere. You need to be a registered Dem and you need to live where you say you live!\n\nSo then there was all of this anger and they couldn't get their stuff passed and freaked out, not following the rules of order, which only prolonged what is already guaranteed to be a very long process. I guess the hotel that they were in refused them to get pizza, which is bullshit but the rules of the property and not the party.\n\nChaos and disorganization throws everything into confusion. My experience with caucus/conventions is that it's complicated, people don't always understand what they're getting into, and that makes it hard to get info straight. \n\n",
"[Here is a very long article from an actual state delegate that explains in detail what happened, what the rules were, why things got \"crazy\" and how it all ended.](_URL_0_) It is a very long read, and since the author was a Clinton delegate, is obviously slanted in that direction. The author cites his sources regarding the actual state caucus rules though and explains things in detail, so still a worthy read if you're looking for something more than internet hearsay.",
"There were 64 Sanders delegates who were ineligible based on the information they provided the State Democratic party. Of those 64 only 8 of them showed up to the convention to dispute this and provide documentation. \n\n[Only 8 Sanders delegates were denied credentials at NV Dem State Convention; no impact on result](_URL_0_)\n\nEssentially everything you heard on reddit is false and the Sanders people spread it. Clinton won Nevada on the caucus day and the results reflected that. ",
"This video explains it best: _URL_0_\n\nThis isn't one big thing, but a bunch of little things, which makes it harder to describe. For example, there's nothing wrong with changing to a voice vote (rather than counting votes, the chair just says \"the yays/nays have it.\"). But to use a voice vote to railroad through changes you want and say \"the yays have it\" when there's a room full of angry people shouting \"Nay!\" is clearly an undermining of democracy. To ELI5: in such situations, the tradition is to abandon the voice vote and count the votes. But instead the chair reminded everyone \"her vote is final\" banged the gavel, and ran off stage. Disgusting. \n\nAnother example: 64 Sanders voters (and 8 Clinton voters) have their party affiliation mysteriously changed away from democrat, preventing them from participating. Mainstream media only mentions that they can't participate because they aren't democrats. \n\nEither of these things are enough to incite fury. Lots of other little things, like voting to change the rules half an hour before the meeting started, only add to the furor. \n\n"
]
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5ipwo6 | how would an object appear if its color is beyond that of human eye range? will it appear as a dark spot or invisible to us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ipwo6/eli5how_would_an_object_appear_if_its_color_is/ | {
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"It would appear however the other colors in the object appear. Lots of animals and plants have ultraviolet coloration, yet you just see the base coat. It ask depends what the base coat looks like. ",
"You have gotten both answers here but it could be either invisible or black. If the object only reflects light outside the visual spectrum then all other light either passes through (invisible) or is absorbed (black).",
"Did you know most flowers have stripes and patterns that are invisible to us but visible under UV light? you have seen these flowers your whole life but never noticed these extra colours or patterns. Just because you don't see the UV pattern doesn't make the flower invisible, though.\n\nIf you shine a laser light (a single pure wavelength) of a frequency we can't see, it's invisible. Even if you shine it and reflect it off of something, it's still invisible.\n\nAn object, though, wouldn't be invisible; if it absorbs *all* visible light it would look black, if it reflects a little it will be whatever colour it relfects.\n\n"
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42d385 | why did the automotive industry choose 12v systems over other voltages? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42d385/eli5_why_did_the_automotive_industry_choose_12v/ | {
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"A very long time ago automotive electrical systems were in fact 6 Volts. Someone figured out that if the voltage was doubled the current would be halved and thus allowing smaller Gage wire to be used and a significant cost savings to be realized. Wait for it...it won't be too much longer and we will be seeing 24 Volt systems to become the next standard.",
"Between the 1930s and mid 1950s, typical compression ratios for American-made engines approximately doubled. By the 1950s, consumers were complaining that their 6-volt electrical systems were having trouble cranking over their engines when they were hot. Detroit changed over to 12-volt systems in the early 1950s for the sake of cars' starters. Not so they could save ten or twelve cents on stranded copper wire.\n\nEuropean cars were shipped with lower compression ratios and displacements and saw no urgency; Volkswagen was still shipping 6-volt cars for the American market until 1967. "
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1uwmmx | how does a wood burning stove head a house without getting smoke everywhere? | I'm 30 and I still don't understand the science behind this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uwmmx/how_does_a_wood_burning_stove_head_a_house/ | {
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"Um, a chimney.",
"Let's go with a fireplace which is clearer to visualize.\n\nAs the fire burns it heats the air which rises up the chimney. The air rising up the chimney needs air to replace it which is drawn from the room. Smoke \"goes with the current\" of air rising up the chimney and out of the house. \n\nThat's why, when you're starting a fire, you can get smoke in the room until it's making enough heat to set up the flow of air up the chimney. And there's a trick where, if you're having problems getting the flow set up (and you're getting smoke in the room), you can take a crumbled up newspaper (in a pair of stove tongs), catch it on fire, and stick it up the chimney to prime it."
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3j8jbm | how does your body process uncooked food vs cooked food? e.g. rice | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j8jbm/eli5_how_does_your_body_process_uncooked_food_vs/ | {
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"Your body handles the food the same way, it goes in your stomach and the acid and enzymes try to break it down, and then absorb the nutrients and get rid of the crap that's left over. The reason people don't consume uncooked food is because of the possibility of bad bacteria, viruses, or parasites being in/on it. These are killed after a food is cooked, making it safe",
"Heat can partially break down compounds in the food making it take less energy for your body to absorb. \n\nHeat/cooking preparations can also make it possible for your body to absorb at all. You see this with corn and a few other grains such as rice. We cannot digest uncooked rice. ",
"Your body puts all food through the same basic process: you chew it if needed, treat it with acids and enzymes to dissolve it into a more fluid, \"gloopy\" form, extract nutrients from this gloopy mess, then pass the remaining stuff out of your body at the other end.\n\nThe process is the same whether or not the food is cooked. However, cooking food makes the process work *better* in many ways. The most important of this for nutrition is that cooking \"softens up\" the food at a cellular level, making it easier to access the nutrients inside. Other benefits include sanitising food, and making it more palatable."
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ffizbm | why does dramamine makes you feel sleepy/causes tiredness? | I read something about h1 receptors but didnt get a goos explanation :( | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ffizbm/eli5_why_does_dramamine_makes_you_feel/ | {
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"One of the active ingredients of Dramamine, Diphenhydramine, blocks a receptor called Histamine H1. This is because the receptor gives a positive response when it binds to Histamine.\n\nFirstly, a receptor is a sort of detector that is on the outside of your cells. It detects specific chemicals that are in the space between the cells. When it detects that, it causes a change in the cell it's situated on.\n\nThere are thousands of different receptor types, for example Dopamine, Serotonin and Adrenaline ones to name some commonly known.\n\nHowever, these receptors don't only detect the chemical they're designed to detect. If you make a drug that is somewhat similar but not too similar to what they're designed to detect, you can make it attach to the receptor without activating it (drugs that are very similar fool the receptor into activating).\n\n\nThis is what is called a *receptor blocker* or in more technical terms an *antagonist*. Basically, Diphenhydramine attaches to the H1 receptor without activating it, meaning that Histamine *can't attach to and activate it*. This makes the net activity of all H1s decrease.\n\nNow all of this is just basic information you need to understand what Diphenhydramine does.\n\nThe Histamine H1 receptor is present in high numbers in a brain region called the *Tuberomammillary Nucleus*. This region controls the sleep-wake rhythm. Stimulant drugs like Caffeine and Amphetamine causes Histamine to be released in this brain region, activating the H1 receptors and causing wakefulness.\n\nCan you see where I'm going here? By blocking the H1 receptors in this brain region, Diphenhydramine *prevents* natural Histamine from keeping you awake, making you feel drowsy and out of it.\n\nMany other common Histamine H1 blockers like Propiomazine and Hydroxyzine also cause strong drowsiness. Additionally, many medications with drowsiness as a side effect like Mirtazapine and Quetiapine block the H1 receptor.\n\nThere are other receptors Diphenhydramine can block/activate to also cause drowsiness, such as the Muscarinic AChR receptors (Which is why it causes schizophrenic psychosis in high doses) but these are much less important compared to H1 blocking.\n\nEDIT: Outside of the brain, in your body, the Histamine receptors cause allergic reactions. This is why Histamine blockers such as Diphenhydramine/Dramamine are commonly sold as allergy pills. They are however also used as mild sleep aids because they all have the same side effect of drowsiness."
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43uyt4 | how can multiple people watch the same online video at once? | A very popular video or movie on a service like Youtube or Netflix can have thousands of people watching it at the same time, at different points in the video, but a file can't be read at thousands of points at the same time at an adequate speed for playing them. Do they store multiple "copies", in a way? If so, how many and how is this number managed?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43uyt4/eli5_how_can_multiple_people_watch_the_same/ | {
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"While the video is being played back it's read into a server computer's memory chips temporarily. From there it can easily be read many times per second to serve multiple users. If huge numbers are playing it, multiple servers are used."
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2kvuia | how can china launch massive cyberwarfare operations against the usa with no consequences? | Or, more generally, why are there no consequences for state-sponsored cyberwarfare. I was watching [this](_URL_0_) and it put things into perspective. Cyber attacks are not isolated incidents. They are massive and carefully orchestrated, and potentially very harmful to whoever they are aimed at.
It's been known for a good while that China is constantly attacking the USA digitally, but in the real world nobody seems to care of the real world consequences of what China and other countries are attempting to do. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kvuia/eli5how_can_china_launch_massive_cyberwarfare/ | {
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"I think you mistake a nation level cyberwarfare and hacker's action. If you know how ddos works you know it counld never be a government's action, but a result of a massive people who runs they PC without anit virus software protection, which is why China seems to be the biggest country attack US. ",
"You do understand the US is doing the same thing to China, correct? \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo, what do you want to happen? Do you want the two countries to declare war on each other? Neither country wants that. ",
"This is still very new territory for all nations. There's no solid rules and every country does it. ",
"Edit: There is a paper that Standford Law recently released that talks about a meeting of the “International Group of Experts\" talking about \"Law's of cyber warfare\". Where a group gathered a couple years ago to try and lay down the \"When is it ok to invade a country due to cyber attacks\". Type rules. Interesting read. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nTLDR: They couldn't really come to an agreement of anything except that there is no need to invade a country with military force UNLESS a standing army/navy/air force is literally on stand bye waiting for the cyber attack to go down is it authorized for \"kinetic\" (see bombs/soliders) necessary.",
"For starters, it's been going on for a long time. The United States is somewhat late in the game. US corporations are very late in the game. The largest groups and best in the world is our fellow friends in Russia and China. They've been doing it longer and have had more manpower behind it for longer than the US has. I'm talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of people employed by the Russia and Chinese to hack. They have teams of people like a sports team. They each have their own technical specialties. These teams have leaders. Their exploits are well thought out and planned. They have many targets and lots of experience. US politicians and corporations have been slow to realize this. The US is getting better though. \n\nNonetheless, as the US has been late comer to the game. It's difficult to track the origins of these teams. Which nation did they come from? Who do they represent? These are questions that are very difficult to give solid answers. Let alone to use as reason to send a rocket in to kill them or go in an arrest them. It's also common place for the US to not discover that they've had a breach for months even years. Let alone at all. But the US is getting better, in recent years the US has shifted a significant amount of money into cyber security where they now have a considerable force. \n\nNot to mention the US does it too on a small scale, and are doing it more on a large scale in recent years as a result of funding. The US does of course care but hasn't taken things seriously until recently and hasn't had the resources to put skin in the game until recently either. \n\n\n",
"Spying in general is technically legal in international treaties. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT) and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties (NPT) allow for the verification and monitoring of missile construction and nuclear proliferation through \"national technical means.\" \"National technical means\" essentially meant spy satellites and these treaties allowed for the legal use of spy apparatuses to make sure no one side is trying to build a giant death ray to annihilate everyone else. \n\nThe issue of cyber warfare is a bit murkier and slightly different. But since SIGINT (signal intelligence) and MASINT (measurement and signal intelligence) arose/related to national technical means, it can be argued by each side that they can be used for non-nefarious means, ie verifying no one is attempting to hide a secret death ray to annihilate everyone else. \n\nTo be fair, even though China hacks and \"attacks\" the US's cyber systems, the US does the same thing. The Chinese might hack systems, steal data, try to find weaknesses, they are not (to our knowledge) installing codes to blow up our nuclear facilities, shut down guidance systems of air flights in the sky, or issuing kill codes on our electricity grid. If something like that were to be discovered, those would be worth declaring war over. \n\nWith spying, EVERYONE does this to some manner, ESPECIALLY cyber spying since it's easier than HUMINT (Human intelligence). It is generally accepted by all governments that if you have a foreign embassy in your capital, that embassy is a hub for intelligence collection and hosts foreign spies. That said, most \"spying\" is just information gathering and clandestine reporting/analysis. Like \"US congress may approve budget for next fiscal year with 15% increase in budget for defense allocated to XYZ. We believe the US wishes to upgrade their ABC hardware within the next D years\"\n\nThe thing is, while we are not at war with China, if you work in the intelligence services, the people operate under the assumption that we are because it's their job to prepare for the worst and stay one step ahead of potential adversaries. Most people assume spying to be some James Bond/Mission Impossible business with cloaks and daggers but it's not. Many argue that effective spying aparatuses in the 20th century actually contributed to world stability in some sense because it removed doubt and ensures there's no surprises. It's very easy to become paranoid about other countries wishing to harm you when you know nothing about them. I.e. The French Ambassador declined your invitation to our State Dinner invitation last week! Death laser attack must be imminent!!! However if you have collectors in France, you can see that there's no secret funding being diverted to a skunks works project, no internet traffic pointing to a death ray, and no movement of construction materials for said death ray. Ie, the better assumption is that the French Ambassador is sick. Or he's screwing your wife... :)\n\n\nTL;DR: Spying is like a giant chess game where each player constantly maneuvers to check each other but never checkmate and end the game. War is the failure of intelligence gathering because effective intelligence would not allow an actual war to precipitate.",
"1.) Prove it's the government doing the hacking and not a citizen\n\n2.) China is a huge country, with lot's of power and influence in the world, same as the USA. You can't exactly just start a war or embargo them over something so small.\n\n3.) We probably do the same to them. Every country has spies.",
"Okay, so I read some of the rest responses and your replies. I'll answer in a list:\n\n1) Cyber presence is new. We know from history what to do when one country shoots a missile at another and we know that we broke a law (a U.N. law) if we just shot an ICBM at China or vice versa. No one knows how to establish a cyber territory and the U.N. doesn't have clear cut rules for these things. \n\n2) It's cyber warfare, which results in a loss of money essentially, versus real warfare, which results in 100x more money + lives + a dozen other problems I won't name. \n\n3) Cyber deterrence is just like nuclear deterrence. All the largest countries need to prove that they are powerful enough to remain sovereign. If they can't keep up with the latest technological advancements in warfare then they risk their country's safety. \n\n4) Which court will judge them? Taking #3 into account, why would any country ever stop testing their capabilities when there are noone to punishment if they fail? \n\n5) In an ideal world there would be no war, but ours isn't ideal. We have cyber warfare because of the same reason that we have nukes. "
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old7m | america's gilded age | I'm transferring U.S. History classes. In my first class we ended with the Reconstruction Era of the Civil War. In my next class we'll be starting with Women's Suffrage. Any help filling in the gap? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/old7m/eli5_americas_gilded_age/ | {
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"AP US History? I'm right there with you.\n\nMy prof said that it boils down to \"Everything seemed to be great, but underneath the top layer, things were downright gloomy.\"\n\nGilded means that something is covered in a thin layer of metal like gold. So basically, on the surface, it looked nice. There were actually quite a few problems with poverty and such in the post-war South.\n\nThe presidents from the Gilded Era are sometimes called the \"forgettable presidents\". They are, in order of election: Hayes(1876-80), Garfield (1881; who died in the first year of his term), Arthur ('81-85; who replaced Garfield), Cleveland ('85-89;, Harrison (1889-1893), Cleveland (1893-97; elected again), and maybe McKinley (1897-1901).",
"You need to know three key aspects about the Gilded Age: industrialization, labor, and wealth. The Gilded Age officially ended with the Panic of 1893, which was one of the worst economic depressions the US has faced. This led to the Progressive Era, which addressed many of the problems of the Gilded Age. Since they're intertwined, I'll cover them both broadly. \n\n\n**Industrialization** \n\nThe latter half of the 19th Century in the US was a period of massive economic growth and industrialization. High quality steel was available, petroleum became important as a fuel source and for making other products, and railroads expanded across the nation (the Transcontinental Railroad was finished in 1869). All of these industries fueled each other and spurred other industries. It also hugely increased urbanization, as more and more people settled in places like Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh to work in factories.\n\nIt's important to note that these industries were unregulated. Monopolies were widespread and the work was wildly unsafe. *The Jungle* was a novel by Upton Sinclair exposing unsanitary conditions in a meat-packing plant (including actual people being ground into the products). He wrote it as a screed against capitalism and predatory bankers, but everyone just fixated on the \"we're eating people?!\" part. The Progressives of the early 20th century would focus on breaking up monopolies and regulating industries (the FDA is a notable achievement).\n\nAlso, towards the end of the Gilded Era is when electrification started to spread across the country.\n\n**Labor**\n\nThis was also the time of massive immigration to the US and the opening of the Western frontier to settlement. The former provided the manpower for the industrialization, while the latter helped provide a \"safety valve\" to get rid of excess workers. This not only helped the US avoid some of the class warfare that wracked Europe at the time, but also helped to keep wages relatively high.\n\nThis is not to say everything was great for workers. A man working in a factory could expect 12+ hour days, no safety considerations, no time off, no benefits, etc. This led to the development of labor unions and a strong Socialist movement in the US. There were numerous clashes, but you'll need to know about the Haymarket Riot in 1886. It started as a protest in Chicago for an 8 hour day, but ended with a bomb being thrown and the police opening fire on the crowd. Anarchists were blamed and several executed for the incident. Events like these led many workers to join more moderate labor unions (e.g. the AFL). Anti-sedition laws in WWI pretty much killed Socialism in the US.\n\nThe urban labor movements were paralleled in rural America by populist movements. While the urban workers focused on regulating working conditions, groups like the Farmer's Alliance focused on tax laws and monetary policy, particularly [bimetallism](_URL_0_). At the time the US dollar was tied directly to gold. Bimetallism was the idea to tie it to both gold and silver, which would increase the money supply and make it easier for farmers to get loans. This movement would eventually morph into the Populist Party led by Williams Jenning Bryan at the start of the Progressive Era.\n\n\n**Wealth**\n\nThis is why we call it the Gilded Age.The combination of almost no regulation of industry, no enforcement to stop monopolies, and no income tax meant that a few individuals and families managed to accumulate mind-boggling amounts of wealth while the majority of the populace lived in poverty. Since the government during the Gilded Age was generally weak and corrupt, these people were able to basically run the country to help support their business. Many of their names are still well-known today: Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers. The immense power they wielded, combined with the common use of business practices now considered unethical, led them to be called \"Robber Barons.\" Again, much of the Progressive Era was focused on limiting the power of these individuals and improving general welfare.\n\nStill, the Robber Barons weren't all bad. Many of them were famous philanthropists. There was no such thing as welfare or social security in those days; it was all handled by private charities and churches. While the super-rich funded more esoteric things like colleges, operas, and museums, they also supported hospitals, schools, and charities. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are still record holders when it comes to individual donations to charity.\n\n\n**Bonus: WTF does this have to do with Women's Suffrage?**\n\nFrom 1870 to 1920, the US urban population went from about 10 million to more than 50 million. The move to cities massively changed family life and gender roles. Notably, families got smaller and some women even entered the workforce and politics. Most women's movements at the time focused on social issues, like alcohol abolition, but it was from these movements that Women's Suffrage grew out of. The invention of household appliances also helped reduce workloads. Sewing and washing machines all helped women to be more productive, which gave them more free time for activism.\n\n\n**Other things to investigate**\n\nUrban gangs, the Spoils System and Machine politics, the Homestead Act and the screwing of Native Americans, the Pullman Strike, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, and the further screwing of Native Americans, the KKK, Social Darwinism, Chinese Immigration, the Third Great Awakening. The Gilded Age is a really interesting part time of US history. In a way it set the stage for the modern era."
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4zhy9w | how to calculate how high will the sea level rise because of global warming... | Hi Reddit, I did some calculations, rough.
If we take the earth to be a sphere with a r = 6,371km....
Then, the Everest is h = 8,848m...
To make this easy, Earth's r = 6,400km and Everest's h = 9km
so, h/r = 9/6400 = 0.00140625
That is, the height of Mount Everest is a 0.14% "bump" on Earth's surface. From a bigger perspective, the Earth is in practical terms FLAT (as a sphere).
I mention this to illustrate that if we put the whole Mount Everest under water, the effect on the sea level should be close to nothing...
I mean, just calculate the VOLUME of 1cm of water around the worlds ocean, and then we know how much mass we need to take from earth and put below water to get this increase...
Take into account that for every extra cm the water level goes higher, means a quadratic amount of land mass (I think)
needed to make this happen.....
I hope this has been so far more or less reasonable. Take into account that I am not an expert, that is why I'm asking.
So how much Ice from the North and the South do we need to put into the ocean to get 1cm, 50cms and/or 100cms increase in sea levels??
I mean, from my *innocent* perspective, knowing that the earth is a huge sphere... covered 75% (more or less) by water... how much of the rest 25% do we need to move into water to get a significant increase on sea levels????
In your answer, please include **some math**, but as simplified as possible... this is ELI5 after all =)
Many thanks!!
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zhy9w/eli5_how_to_calculate_how_high_will_the_sea_level/ | {
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"The Earth is a geoid, not a sphere. Bringing this up means I am telling you that the math is really beyond ELI5. Another way to say it is that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, fat at the middle.\n\nThe calculation will involve the expansion of the sea water in the oceans as the temperature rises. This is part of the volume of the oceans which fill the low places of the Earth. Ocean depth ranges from miles deep at the trenches to zero at the beach. All of this water will expand with rising temperatures.\n\nIt is simpler to look at the geological record, the old bathtub rings. The ocean has been higher before but never covering Mt. Everest. Yes Mt. Everest is old seabed. But that is another story. There is a range of sea levels depending on how much ice is frozen at the poles. The sea level will never rise above that achieved when all the polar ice is melted. This has happened in the past."
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9cz1cd | when a study says that it has controlled for factors such as weight, sex, lifestyle, how do they do that? | For example, some studies say exercise is good for you even after controlling for factors such as diet. So, someone who exercises is likely more health conscious and so eats more healthily too - how could you control for that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9cz1cd/eli5_when_a_study_says_that_it_has_controlled_for/ | {
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"Hopefully someone will be able to answer in greater detail, but the short answer is that they have used various statistical methods to account for the variations caused by different factors and or they measured the data in such a way as to make it not be an issue at all. When you read studues in oeer reviewed journals, the operational definitions, HOW a given variable was measured in THAT expetiment, are usually spelled out in great detail to facilitate repatibilty by other researchers.",
"Control refers to a control group. \n\nWhen possible, proper research will take one group doing a thing, and another group not doing the thing, and compare the end results. If both groups have people of similar weights, genders, and lifestyles, those factors are said to be controlled for.\n\nEven when both groups don't have equal numbers of each kind of people, you can still try to adjust for it statistically. If one group was 50/50 men and women, and the other 75/25, you could weigh women's results three times as heavily to give a better comparison. The isn't as good as having equal numbers, but sometimes you have to work with what data is available.",
"So take the example you have given:\n\nWe want to test the effectiveness of exercise on someone's weight. To do this we need at least two groups of people, one who will exercise and one who will not.\n\n To make sure the differences seen between the two groups at the end of the trial period are valid we need to make sure we eliminate other factors that could influence the result. In this case, diet. \n\nSo we control the variables we do not want to test like diet by ensuring that both groups eat the same amount, at the same time if possible and most likely by using a calorie per kg per day calculation rather than a set amount.\n\nIn short we are controlling for diet and testing for exercise.",
"There are a bunch of different ways to do this. Here's a quick example of one: matched pairs.\n\nEssentially what you do is take a load of people and match them by the variables you want to control. So a man in his 30s who eats mostly fast-food is matched with another man in his 30s who eats mostly fast-food. A woman in her 50s who eats a mediterranean diet is matched with the same.\n\nThen you look at each pair independently to see how the two people differ. You're always comparing men with men, so you eliminate sex as a variable, you're always comparing people of a similar age, and so-on.\n\nStick all those results together and you get a result that controls for whatever factors you've chosen.",
"You have to read the study to see how they controlled for it.\n\nOne way is by stratification. Among the people who had a good diet, the people who exercised were more healthy. Among the people with an moderate diet, the people who exercised were more healthy. Among the people with a poor diet, the people who exercised were more healthy.\n\nAnother way is just to make everyone in the study eat the same kind of diet, or to assign diets to them at random. Obviously this is hard to do for studies that take place in the community and over many years. It would be easier to do in a residential facility over a few weeks.",
"They split up the sample (people being studied) into different groups. One group eats a diet of junk food, one group eats mostly salads, one group eats average stuff in the middle, ...\n\nThen we notice that the people who eat junk food and exercise do better than the people who eat junk food and don't exercise. And the people who eat mostly salads and exercise do better than the people who eat mostly salads and don't exercise. And so on.",
"To control for a factor means that your study has taken into account that this factor could skew the results and you've taken steps to reduce the likelihood that this had happened.\n\nHere's a story that may not be true, but it's a decent example.\n\nMost of my life it was suggested that having a glass of wine at dinner has health benefits, including heart health. I believe in recent years it's been suggested that maybe they had cause and effect mixed up. Here's the part that may not be true, but what if it's not that the wine is directly beneficial? What if people who can afford to have a five-dollar drink at their dinner table every night instead of a ten-cent glass of iced tea are just under less stress? What if some cultural effect means that people who have their shit together and take care of their health are more likely to be wine drinkers?\n\nIf your study controls for these economic and behavioral differences in your examination of the effects of wine, it means you're comparing people of similar economic status and similar lifestyles to make your two population groups as identical as possible, with the *only* difference between them being that one drinks wine and the other doesn't.\n\nIf you control for economic status, it means you didn't compare a wine-drinking dentist to a non-drinking Wal-Mart cashier. When you control for lifestyle differences, it means you're not comparing a wine-drinking cyclist to a non-drinking couch potato."
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e16iry | how come you can get carsick in cars but not on trains? | I don’t get carsick but I take a travel tablet when I go to on holiday (7 hours in car) so I can watch Netflix etc, but when I do the same journey on a train I am a fine and I can do whatever I want. How?😂 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e16iry/eli5_how_come_you_can_get_carsick_in_cars_but_not/ | {
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3ezg46 | how can an entire stock market be "overvalued"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ezg46/eli5_how_can_an_entire_stock_market_be_overvalued/ | {
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"So I'm going to introduce you to a magic number called a PE ratio. The PE ratio is what you get if you take the value of a company (known as the market cap, it's equal to the number of shares of stock that exist times the stock price) and divide it by the company's revenue. In other words:\n\nPE = (# of stock shares * stock price) / company income \n\nThe PE ratio is, basically, how long it would take the company to buy itself. Most stocks have a PE ratio between 10 and 20; less than that means that the company is making a lot of money compared to its stock price (e.g, undervalued), so it can buy itself back very fast; above that and the company is not making very much money compared to its stock price (overvalued), so it would take a very long time to buy itself back. \n\nIf all the companies in an exchange have high PE ratios, then the whole market is overvalued. "
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50brva | how is the brain - as a physical and tactile object - capable of 'creating' intangible thoughts? | Apologies if this has already been answered, but wasn't quite sure what to search. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50brva/eli5_how_is_the_brain_as_a_physical_and_tactile/ | {
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"Thoughts are just patterns of signals between neurons. So while you think they might be intangible, they are still physically represented in the world in *some* way.",
"You, as in you experiencing the world, are the result of a lot of \"emergent\" behavior. Which is a fancy way of saying that enough simple things can create complex things. For instance, with enough water molecules, you get wet. Even if a single one doesn't. \n\n\nYou are the result of a lot of neurons sending electrical signals to one another. They all connect to each other in different ways. Those connections are created, strengthened, some weaken and some go away. \n\n\nA neuron will fire whenever it gets a jolt from another neuron. They initially get those from your senses. So one cell in your eye gets hit with light. Those signals go all the way back to your neurons, which start sending signals to each other. If some pattern of neurons gets jolted a lot, such as seeing something that looks like a cat, they become your cat neurons. \n\n\nwhenever another set of jolts activates some or all of those neurons, you get \"cat\" in your head. It could be seeing the word, hearing a meow or thinking about cute fuzzy things. You get cat because all of those neurons are connected to the neurons about cat. They become your concept of \"cat\". ",
"A book is a physical and tactile object, yet it can contain descriptions of intangible things. There is simply no reason that one prevents the other.\n\nFor a stronger parallel: a TV is a physical object, yet by using *fluctuating patterns of energy* it can give you pictures and sounds of basically anything.",
"While we do know some of how the brain works and what happens where, we don't actually know why some things happen. Similar to the ear, we know whays in it, but some things haven't had enough research (partly due to morals) to figure out why",
"If something is tangible, this means that it is able to be perceived by the sense of touch, i.e. \"felt\". This may seem obvious, but it's important to note that just because you can touch something, this doesn't mean that you can feel it. If you're in a room without any movement of air, the air molecules are still bouncing off of you and touching you, but you don't actually FEEL them. It follows that, in that moment, the air molecules are intangible, but they still exist and they are still real, physical things.\n\nI'd also like to point out that, on a very small scale, nothing really ever \"touches\" anything: physical forces cause a repulsion. When your hand touches your desk, the atoms which comprise both repel each other, and this repulsive force is what causes the desk to feel solid.\n\nPresently, the consensus is that thoughts are the result of a hell of a lot of low-level activity: electrochemical impulses sent between neurons. Thoughts can be considered as a very large group of very small, intangible, low-level processes. If a single neuron, a single atom of calcium, or a single electron somehow fell onto your hand, you wouldn't be able to feel it, but they're still real, physical things with mass.\n\nMy answer is focusing on the \"intangible\" portion of your question, but I think the real complex issue (and the one you're probably more interested in) is the \"creation\" of thoughts. Other answers here have dealt with that somewhat, but it truly is one of the most complex and incredible mysteries of modern science, and pretty hard to answer succinctly. There's a very good book called \"Godel, Escher, Bach\" that discusses at length what thoughts are, how they could be created, and so on (as well as the question of artificial intelligence, which is equally fascinating). It's a few decades old at this point, but I seriously recommend you check it out. The author does a good job explaining everything in a style not unlike what you'd find on ELI5.",
"Comments above are missing the point slightly I feel. This is actually one of the big unanswered questions of our time. Yes we have more and more detailed imaging of neutrons firing in the brain and can correlate this to certain things but we don't understand how these events add up to consciousness. I'm not sure we even really know what consciousness is. "
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1n4eja | if all things in "everyday life" fall into the 4 states of matter, solid, liquid, gas and plasma. what is wind? | Before anyone decides to correct me on how many states of matter there are, i'm aware of others occurring in extreme situations and theoretical ones. But it's something I pondered the other day and now I want an answer!
Edit: Thankyou! I was looking at it as a physical mass rather than a motion, bit stupid I know. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n4eja/eli5_if_all_things_in_everyday_life_fall_into_the/ | {
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"Wind is gas.\n\nWhen air is warm, it's less dense and rises above cold air, cooler air comes in from the sides and takes the place of this warm air, causing wind.",
"Wind is not state of matter. It is the movement of air masses, caused by various factors such as temperature fluctuations. Wind is to the air (air basically consists of gases) as current is to water (liquid)."
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42r5zi | how can uber, giving 1bn rides since 2009 be worth $62bn as a company? | Source for data
Uber monitoring drivers in US in attempt to flag dangerous driving
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42r5zi/eli5_how_can_uber_giving_1bn_rides_since_2009_be/ | {
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"How do tech companies, who sell nothing, obtain a value of billions? It's simply a business model that is based on establishing itself and then levergaing that foothold to expand. Currently uber is almost worthless in raw, physical terms. How much will it be worth when the Uber model refines to a point where most people don't own a car anymore because Uber is so efficient? ",
"The value of a company is not as objective to determine as looking at its sales.\n\nIt's determined by how much people are willing to pay for it. People will inspect their sales figures, their accounts, and all kinds of objective stuff. But if people think the company is going to be the next big thing, they might be willing to pay a lot more for it than the books would suggest it's wort. (And conversely if people think it's about to crash, they might not be prepared to pay much for it at all.)",
"Value of a company is not based on the value of it's physical assets, and not even it's previous profits. A company is valued according the the expectations of profits the market has on it.\n\nSo, Uber has an idea the market believes in. The market think this is going to be the next big thing and that it will outcompete taxis. The market believes that Uber WILL make huge profits in the future.\n\nWhen it comes to company value, the only thing tha matters is what you have to capacity to do next, not what you have done so far.",
"Valuation is slightly different to 'worth'.\n\nValuation is determined purely by the funding round. When someone buys a stake in the business the valuation is calculated by how much they paid for a specific percentage of the business.\n\nRegardless of the previous valuation of Uber, if someone invests $1 billion for 1% of the business, the valuation is now $100 billion (or 100 x the $1 billion investment). Effectively, their investment is the only thing that's increased the valuation. Had they bought the same percentage for twice as much money, the new valuation would be $200 billion.\n\nWith Uber, whoever bought into the company at a $62 billion valuation is confident the business will grow in value and the value of their stake will also increase.\n\nWhether Uber is worth a valuation of $62 billion is a different matter.\n\nThey are growing every year (I think 200% revenue growth last year), which is a good sign. And there is potential for much more growth as they move into new countries and cities, which is also a good sign.\n\nThey are also hedging their bets by investing into driverless technology, which will potentially safeguard them when the marketplace adapts to that new technology, which is a wise move.\n\nAs to the true worth of the business, that remains to be seen. All we know so far is what a small number of investors think they are worth.\n\nThey could go for an IPO this year and that's when we'll see what the market thinks they are worth.",
"Imagine I have a magical rabbit that shits dollar bills. \n\nStay with me here. \n\nSo this rabbit is 5 years old. When he was a baby, he only shit like once a day. As he grew he ate more and started shitting more per day. Hes now shitting about $4k per year, but since it grew over time, it's only been like $10,000 total over those 5 years. \n\nNow since this is a magic rabbit, we don't actually know for sure how long it'll live or whether it'll keep growing. We have a good idea based on existing rabbits, but we could be way off. \n\nNow, would you sell that rabbit for $10k? \n\nI wouldn't. If I hold the rabbit he might shit out hundred of thousands over the next 20 years. But he also might die next year. Magic is tricky like that. I have to weigh the option of taking money now without risks, or taking the risk that he could die and possibly making more in the long run. \n\nIt's not shady business, it's just estimating risk vs. reward. "
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3pkjd3 | do women really earn only 77% as much as what men earn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pkjd3/eli5_do_women_really_earn_only_77_as_much_as_what/ | {
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" > is this taking into account education and experience levels? Is this even talking about the pay for the same job?\n\nNo, it is not.\n\nWomen self select into lower paying fields and have less experience on average due to years spent raising families.\n\nThere is a much smaller (but non zero) wage gap for men and women with comparable resumes.",
"Yes and no.\n\n(all stats for americans)\n\nWomen, on the whole, over the course of their lives, tend to earn much less than men (the 77% figure is unfounded but it's likely close to there).\n\nHowever, women don't earn 77% of what men earn *for the same job* and the same hours. They tend to earn almost exactly what men earn for the same job/hours (though, not *quite* exactly... more like 96%-98%)\n\nSo it's not an incorrect figure, it's a misleading one.\n\nWomen tend to earn less over the course of their lives for following reasons:\n\n1) They have kids and tend to take time off their career, which not only means they're earning less/nothing during that time, but they'll also have a harder time getting back into their career and advancing\n\n2) Women are less likely to ask for raises, promotions, or negotiate well. Studies have shown women very infrequently try to negotiate salaries in job interviews, while men almost always will.\n\n3) Women are less likely to enter careers with high pay and aggressive advancement.\n\nSo, take that data as you will. You can look at it as women get the short end of the stick in their careers, or you can look at it as women choosing not to make as much money in favor of other pursuits. I'm not going to make that call.\n\nBut the important thing to remember is that there's a pay gap in genders over the course of their lives, but not for the same job (as it's often misattributed to). I promise, if businessmen could get away with paying women 77% of what they pay men for the same job, women would be universally employed in every position.",
"Yes. If you take all women and all men and average their incomes, they make that statistic. Keep in mind this statistic includes all insanely wealthy ceo's down to daycare workers regardless of profession. \n\nIt is a skewed statistic because people say it's for the same work; is not. A woman working in an operations position will make the same as me. most trades will have a scale based purely on experience.\n\nThe difference only becomes big when you get to negotiated salary positions. When is the last time you negotiated your salary at McDonald's? Do you make more at a grocery store as a male cashier vs a female cashier? No you don't. The grocery guys make more, because they stock shelves. If the cashier wants to make more money, she needs to get off her ass and go stock shelves. \n\nThe problem with negotiated and ceo salaries is that they are disgustingly high, vastly offsetting those numbers. As most of those roles are filled by men. \n\nThat said, I believe the reason a ceo often gets in their position is by being aggressive, manipulative, malicious and opportunistic. And I believe any female ceo would likely have those same traits. ",
"I'm a nurse and yes male nurses do tend to earn more. It depends on the field though. They are also just doing an average and men tend to be in higher paying fields. ",
"It is a very skewed statistic. It was gained by taking all the pay women make, and getting the average, and comparing it to all the pay men made, and comparing the difference. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nIt doesn't take into account education, experience, or even job title. It also doesn't take into account things like maternity leave, which a lot of companies offer, and a lot of women take while most men do not take much, if any, time off when a baby is born. If a women takes off the minimum an employer has to allow her by federal law (12 weeks) then she has lost 12 weeks of earning potential that her male counterpart did not. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nAll in all this is one of the many very skewed statistics used to sensationalize a non-issue, and garner support from people that would rather blindly follow than do research on their own. Much like any statistic used in politics you should always check into them because they are usually not what they seem at face value."
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