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4d83un | how do you fight or eliminate an idea like terrorism from society? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d83un/eli5how_do_you_fight_or_eliminate_an_idea_like/ | {
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"Well terrorism isn't an idea, it's strategy some people use in pursuit of an idea - a means to an end. In the case of most terrorism today, that idea is Islamic supremacy (the notion that Islam should dominate the world, as preached by Muhammad). And the only cure for religion is education. You'd have to convince these people that their beliefs are dumb and make no sense. Easier said than done. De-programming people who've been brainwashed by religion is an especially difficult task. Difficult enough that at present, just exterminating them as best we can and shoring up our defenses at home is the more feasible approach."
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9wjhsm | why does cooked food offer more calories than its raw counterpart? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wjhsm/eli5_why_does_cooked_food_offer_more_calories/ | {
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"The heat from cooking partially breaks down the food making it easier to extract the calories of the food. So since you use less energy to get the energy from the food you net more calories. \n\nAlso cooking methods often involve adding things like butter that give them more calories. ",
"How significant is the difference? Like if I eat a raw potato vs a cooked potato, how many fewer net calories would it be in % terms?",
"When you cook food, water tends to evaporate. The cooked weight and raw weight of the same portion is therefore different. The amount of macronutrients and therefore energy content of the food has not changed, only the overall mass.\n\n100g of raw beef might lose enough water to end up as something like 85g for the same caloric value because it lost 15% of its mass from water evaporation.\n\nWhen you read a nutrition label, the portion sizes tend to be standardised. you might compare 100g of raw beef with 100g of cooked beef and see that the cooked portion has more calories.\n\nAlthough cooking might avail more calories in some foods, the way we calculate the energy value of a food doesn't necessarily take this into account. A Calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1L of water by 1 degree Celsius. Foods are literally burned in a device called a bomb calorimeter, which is like a large oven with water surrounding it. It measures how much the surrounding water is heated by completely burning the food in the chamber. This method does not therefore account for assimilation and utilisation of nutrients, which will vary between individuals and cooking methods to a small extent.\n\nedit: the everyday use of the term \"calorie\" is actually a kilocalorie, or Calorie with a capital C. A calorie is a smaller unit of measurement that raises 1g of water by 1 degree.\n",
"At the super-tiny level, our stomachs are better at digesting little, simple molecules. Bigger molecules require more energy and effort, and some really long molecules the body can't break down at all. Foods are made of molecules, and some foods are mostly those really long ones. \n\nCooking breaks the long molecules into shorter ones that our stomachs can digest. This effect is greater in some foods than others.",
"It has the same calories, yet it'll have more calories per gram because it now weighs less because some of the water is gone.",
"Many cooked foods lose water mass which has no calories.\n\n**Note:** Rice and pasta will have the opposite affect as they absorb the water they are cooked in making them less calorie dense",
"The system we currently use to understand calories includes but has trouble accounting for digestion itself using energy. Imagine if I ate a given amount of ice cream, which is very fast to digest, vs. eating something like raw kale, which takes a while to digest. The amount of energy you get from either one is going also include energy used in the process of breaking it down into useful energy. \n\nBack in 2001, researchers fed adorable little mice cooked vs. uncooked meat and sweet potatoes, and at the end of 40 days there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the cooked food provided more usable energy. The furry little white mice fed raw meat and sweet potatoes needed their digestive systems to work longer and harder to extract usable nutrients from their food. \n\nCooking, thus, is the beginning of the digestive process, delegating some of the work to things like an oven or a stovetop or a microwave. The energy is still expended in digesting, but it's energy from electricity or the burning of gas or the inductive heating of magnets instead of our body's biological processes. \n\nAlso, mice can sometimes sneeze, and it's every bit as high-pitched as you're imagining right now. I mention this not because it has bearing on the topic at hand, but because I think most people enjoy cute things, including 5 year olds. ",
"Cooking doesn’t add calories to food unless you add oil, butter or other lubricants to cook it. \n\nHowever, cooked food weighs less than its raw counterpart. \n\nIf you’re comparing 100g of raw chicken breast vs 100g of cooked chicken breast, you need to consider that you require more chicken breast to get to 100g cooked. This stipulation would mean that 100g cooked may be 120-130g raw. ",
"Here is a really good but short article on the matter and is a great starting point to do more deeper research after reading.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nQuick summery\n\n\\-The way we calculate calories isn't exactly right\n\n\\-Different foods get absorbed at different rates\n\n\\-We don't absorb all the energy from the food we eat by the time we excrete it (yes this means that the calorie number written on the packet isn't the calories you absorb)\n\n\\-The more broken down a food is before we eat it the more of its energy we will absorb (even chewing it more/less will have an effect)\n\n\\-Cooked food has been broken down (a lot) before we eat it so we absorb a much higher percentage of its total energy\n\n\\-Different people have better/worse rates at which they absorb/breakdown food. This is why the idea that a \"calorie is a calorie\" doesn't really hold true from person to person.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSome people have mentioned that we use energy to get energy out of food, that's true but it isn't a significant amount from raw vs cooked. Its really down to the fact that cooking it makes the body absorb a higher % of the foods total energy before you poop it out.",
"You ever play breath of the wild? \n\nSingle ingredients are easy and less healing. Adding more ingredients ads more nutrients. Especially if mixed right!",
"So... if I don't cook my food, I leave behind more nutritional dumps? ",
"ELI5: The cooking process is like unwrapping a sweet (piece of candy). If you eat a sweet with the wrapper on, your body will not digest it, but if you remove the wrapper you expose the sugar inside for your body to digest. Some sweets come with a hard outer shell which your body can digest, but it has to spend a lot of energy doing so. Cooking can help soften or break down that shell, saving your body from having to do the hard work itself.\n\n---\n\nObviously, it's correct that the amount of calories per gram increases when you remove water, as others have stated. However, that doesn't really address the question properly. The real reason why cooking food can increase the digestible calories is that cooking helps break down the food, which both makes more calories available and saves your body from spending calories digesting the food. Some things cannot be digested by humans, like cellulose, but if you cook the food you can break open the cellulose and release the nutrients inside which are digestible. This is why we cook potatoes. Also, cooking breaks nutrients down which saves your body from having to do so. This results in a net gain of calories by cutting the amount spent on digestion.",
"More calories per 100g. Cooking removes water, which has 0 calories.\n\nSay a 100g apple has 100 calories.\n\nIf I cook that apple, and drive off 50g of water, I have 50g of cooked apple left, which still has 100 calories.",
"your body dose some of the work so there is more energy profit when you eat cooked food. Go have a cookie\n",
"To take all the lovely explanations here and make them extremely eli5, cooked food is easier to digest."
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2vdhzs | how does cement work? | How does mixing water with a load of powder, sand and other materials create a solid and sturdy building material? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vdhzs/eli5_how_does_cement_work/ | {
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"The \"load of powder\" is really the kicker of cement. It's actually a carefully selected mixture of compounds that react with the water added in a series of exothermic reactions that interlock their crystal structures, providing a very useful building material.\n\nUsually the sand and other materials are added to help stabilize the crystal structure, and do also provide other desirable properties depending on what you're intending on using it for.",
"Limestone rock actually has a lot of water bound up in its crystal structure. If you finely grind it up and heat it enough that water can be driven off. The stuff is the better part of portland cement. When water is added it pretty much goes back to being limestone with the water bound into the new crystal structure. The sand and gravel is for bulk and strength.\n\nConcrete goes from a muddy liquid to a rack hard solid by binding the water used to prepare it into the structure of the new synthetic rock. It doesn't \"dry out\" to set, in fact it will set under water."
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38wso5 | how come sdd's are so expensive and small (storage wise) compared to hdd's | i'd really love to upgrade to an sdd but for me, the price of a HDD is infinitely better as 200 bucks can get you a 2-4tb HDD while the closest i saw was a 1TB SDD for 1 grand!
so my question is, why are SDD's so expensive and/or small compared to HDD's (and yes, i know they're a considerably newer technology)
A second somewhat related question is, can we expect SDD's to completely replace HDD's in the future | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38wso5/eli5_how_come_sdds_are_so_expensive_and_small/ | {
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"SSDs aren't a new technology, they've been around for decades, they simply weren't feasible till recently. SSDs will likely never replace HDDs, don't wait for this. Get a good size SSD and install your OS onto it, get an HDD and put everything else on that. Six second boot times. Six. Seconds. "
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lxxp7 | how do i buy stocks, bonds, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lxxp7/eli5_how_do_i_buy_stocks_bonds_etc/ | {
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"Sign up for a brokerage account. I have a free one through my work, so I haven't researched any, but ETrade seems to be popular.\n\nThen, fill your account with some money.\n\nThen, choose some stuff to buy.\n\nThen, buy it (your account will have a web interface.)",
"There are lots of complexities here, but we'll ignore them for sake of simplicity. We'll deal with stocks, because it's *pretty much* the same for bonds.\n\nWhat most people do is find a *brokerage*. A brokerage is a business that specializes in the buying and selling of shares of stock on behalf of their customers. The people who work for a brokerage and handle the buying and selling of stock on their customers' behalf are called *brokers.*\n\nIn some very superficial ways, a brokerage works kind of like a bank. In particular, you start by opening an *account*. Just like a bank account, a brokerage account is something into which you put money, and out of which you withdraw money. The similarities end there, though. Once you've moved money into your brokerage account, you can issue a wide variety of *buy* and *sell* orders for shares of stock.\n\nFor example, say this was last Wednesday, and Netflix stock just took a major dive. You're smart, so you know that's a good time to buy. So you move about $50,000 into your brokerage account, then place a *market buy order* for 600 shares of Netflix stock.\n\nWhat happens then is the order you placed goes to your broker — you might've placed this order over the phone, literally telling your broker to buy the shares for you, or these days you might've placed it online — who is responsible for putting that order into the stock exchange. There the order goes to a stock *trader*, who has been instructed to buy 600 shares of stock for you at *whatever* price they're currently going for at the time the order comes in. He buys the shares — let's just say for sake of argument he got them for $77.84 apiece, just to put a number on it — they get transferred to your broker, who puts them into your account.\n\nNow you have a lot less *money* in your brokerage account — you used almost all of it all to buy stock — but you do have 600 shares of Netflix. You can hold on to those shares for a week, wait for the stock price to climb to (Hapax checks the market right quick) $82.78, then you can put in a *market sell order*. The same basic process happens in reverse: the order goes to your broker, who puts it on the exchange, the trader sells your shares to whomever happens to be buying at that moment for whatever price he can get. The money from that trade is then credited to your brokerage account. Congratulations, you just cleared about $3,000 by making two trades a week apart.\n\nOf course, the brokerage firm needs to keep its lights on, so you're charged a fee every time you do anything. In your case, let's say those fees were $30 for each of your two orders: you paid an extra $30 to buy the stock in the first place, and then you paid $30 to sell the stock a week later. Different brokerages have different fee structures, but that's eh more or less typical.\n\nThere are lots of different kinds of orders you can place — market-price orders, limit orders, open and close orders, et cetera. There are also other ways of buying stock, like options — buying the option to buy or sell a stock at a future date — and short-selling — borrowing shares from somebody else to sell them on the open market, then buy them back at a later date and return them to the person you borrowed them from. But the basic process is the same: Call your broker or use an app or something, put in an order, then wait and hope for the best.\n\nBonds are similar, but they have their own set of complexities we won't bother going into here because this is already long enough.",
"Sign up for a brokerage account. I have a free one through my work, so I haven't researched any, but ETrade seems to be popular.\n\nThen, fill your account with some money.\n\nThen, choose some stuff to buy.\n\nThen, buy it (your account will have a web interface.)",
"There are lots of complexities here, but we'll ignore them for sake of simplicity. We'll deal with stocks, because it's *pretty much* the same for bonds.\n\nWhat most people do is find a *brokerage*. A brokerage is a business that specializes in the buying and selling of shares of stock on behalf of their customers. The people who work for a brokerage and handle the buying and selling of stock on their customers' behalf are called *brokers.*\n\nIn some very superficial ways, a brokerage works kind of like a bank. In particular, you start by opening an *account*. Just like a bank account, a brokerage account is something into which you put money, and out of which you withdraw money. The similarities end there, though. Once you've moved money into your brokerage account, you can issue a wide variety of *buy* and *sell* orders for shares of stock.\n\nFor example, say this was last Wednesday, and Netflix stock just took a major dive. You're smart, so you know that's a good time to buy. So you move about $50,000 into your brokerage account, then place a *market buy order* for 600 shares of Netflix stock.\n\nWhat happens then is the order you placed goes to your broker — you might've placed this order over the phone, literally telling your broker to buy the shares for you, or these days you might've placed it online — who is responsible for putting that order into the stock exchange. There the order goes to a stock *trader*, who has been instructed to buy 600 shares of stock for you at *whatever* price they're currently going for at the time the order comes in. He buys the shares — let's just say for sake of argument he got them for $77.84 apiece, just to put a number on it — they get transferred to your broker, who puts them into your account.\n\nNow you have a lot less *money* in your brokerage account — you used almost all of it all to buy stock — but you do have 600 shares of Netflix. You can hold on to those shares for a week, wait for the stock price to climb to (Hapax checks the market right quick) $82.78, then you can put in a *market sell order*. The same basic process happens in reverse: the order goes to your broker, who puts it on the exchange, the trader sells your shares to whomever happens to be buying at that moment for whatever price he can get. The money from that trade is then credited to your brokerage account. Congratulations, you just cleared about $3,000 by making two trades a week apart.\n\nOf course, the brokerage firm needs to keep its lights on, so you're charged a fee every time you do anything. In your case, let's say those fees were $30 for each of your two orders: you paid an extra $30 to buy the stock in the first place, and then you paid $30 to sell the stock a week later. Different brokerages have different fee structures, but that's eh more or less typical.\n\nThere are lots of different kinds of orders you can place — market-price orders, limit orders, open and close orders, et cetera. There are also other ways of buying stock, like options — buying the option to buy or sell a stock at a future date — and short-selling — borrowing shares from somebody else to sell them on the open market, then buy them back at a later date and return them to the person you borrowed them from. But the basic process is the same: Call your broker or use an app or something, put in an order, then wait and hope for the best.\n\nBonds are similar, but they have their own set of complexities we won't bother going into here because this is already long enough."
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506x5d | what are the tiny components on a computer's motherboard and what do they do? | I recently took apart my laptop to replace a wire, and looked closely at a motherboard for the first time and I was amazed by all the tiny things on it. What do they all do? I know there a lot of circuits on there, so I'm guessing a lot of them are switches, but are all of them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/506x5d/eli5_what_are_the_tiny_components_on_a_computers/ | {
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"Most of the switching logic happens inside silicon chips. These are covered in plastic to protect them. Most of the other components are capacitors and resistors. These are components that are much cheaper to make out of different materials. They are mostly used to regulate power levels. It is for instance very common to have a capacitor right next to a chip so that if that chip suddenly uses a lot of power as it switches on or off there is power stored in the capacitor right next to the chip. There is also resistors that works as over current protection and limits the current the chips can draw in case something goes wrong. A lot of chips like voltage regulators also require resistors to set their correct value, the same voltage regulator can be used to get several different voltages depending on the resistors that are connected.",
"That's a huge topic, and I reccomend if you're interested in electronics to do some reading as there's no way I can encompass everything here. Here's a basic breakdown, but bear in mind it is nowhere near complete: \n\nCapacitors. They store energy short-term and can rapidly discharge it. Used for a variety of purposes, like filtering noise, timing, storing memory, etc.\n\nInductors. They also store energy, but don't discharge it as fast as capacitors. However, they can also be used in filters, and can be used to build transformers, which change voltage.\n\nResistors. They resist the flow of electrical current, generating heat in the process. They can be used to control voltage or current, to warm things, and many other purposes.\n\nDiodes. They allow electricity to flow, but only one direction. Also, some kinds of diodes can convert electricity to light, and vice versa. They are used for all sorts of stuff; sometimes to hold a certian voltage constant, sometimes as lights, sometimes as sensors, sometimes as switches.\n\nTransistors. These are basically switches that can be controlled by electricity. Transistors are the building blocks of computers; by arranging them in the correct way you can start making devices that have different outputs depending on the input. Put enough of those together and you're essentially programming.\n\nIntegrated circuits. This is what you get when you build a whole bunch of the components above into one small package. This is what is usually meant when someone talks about a \"computer chip\". Anywhere from a handful to *billions* of other components (usually transistors, but many components can be manufactured this way) can be fit on a chip the size of a thumbnail.",
"They could be many different things. Most if not all of these are called surface mount components because they are attached to the surface of the PCB ( the plasticky structure of the motherboard) and the motherboard has traces of copper to connect them, usually going through several layers so there's many circuits and you can fit more components into a smaller space. Surface mount has superseded through-hole PCB manufacturing (putting components with wires through the board and soldering to the other side) because of component density and have several layers of copper traces which allows for smaller electronics.\n\n Anyway the components themselves, these could be resistors which can be used to limit electric current like a narrow pipe would limit water flow and to specify voltages at certain points (so a narrow piper would have a certain pressure at the top) they can also do other functions that arise from these. They could be capacitors that allow high frequencies to go past and block low frequencies (like bass sound travels through a building, but singing does not) or store charge like a bucket can store water. They could be inductors that do the opposite in terms of frequency and store energy as a magnetic field. The properties of these can be used to make circuits to achieve certain tasks or just store energy. They might be transistors that can work as small switches with much more reliability that a mechanical one and operate much faster (imagine turning your bedroom light on 1000 times per second!) or they can amplify current like a megaphone can take your voice and make it louder without changing how it sounds. They could be diodes which allow current to go in one direction, which I don't think can be related to things more physical tangible, but imagine taking a tray of water and tipping it one way: water flows to one end, then you tip it the opposite way and water doesn't flow to the other end, it stays where it is. This is due to the high energy requirement in a diode to make current flow the other way.\n\nThey could also be ICs (integrated circuits) which are several or hundreds or thousands of these components into one chip that someone can 'drop in' to their circuit and it operates better than if they made it themselves from all separate components thanks to modern manufacturing techniques.\n\nThere might be some more components I'm missing and might not be the most in depth explanation you wanted! \n\nEdit: diodes",
"Most of the stuff is there to support the ICs, which will look like black flat squares. The ICs will do things like manage the USB ports, ethernet, trackpad, and all the other high-level functions of the laptop. The little components on the board are mostly to provide power to the ICs and to adjust their various signals to the specifications of other ICs in order to allow them to communicate.\n\nSome ICs will also have different functions if you attach different components to their pins. Like if you put a 100 ohm resistor between pin 2 and 3, it'll do X and otherwise it'll do Y.\n\nCapacitors will be espescially common because they're hard to make small enough to fit in the IC. So a lot of ICs will require you to attach external capacitors for various functions. Capacitors also conduct changing signals and do not conduct unchanging DC current. So adding capacitors to DC power supply lines will short the noise to ground."
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36g0bx | i sometimes have dreams that i'm drowning, and after i wake up gasping for air. is this my my mind making an image for me not breathing, or my dream tricking my body into halting my breath? | Might be a long title, but is it my mind making an image for me suffocating (in a sense) or is my dream tricking my body into not breathing because the dream seems too real? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36g0bx/eli5_i_sometimes_have_dreams_that_im_drowning_and/ | {
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"Might be you rolling over face down into your pillow, covering your mouth and nose. Your subconscious interprets this as drowning and incorporates this into your dream. Once the need for air gets bad enough you wake up and violently fulfill your need for air. While it may have seemed like minutes in the dream the likelihood is that the period of time where you roll over to when you wake up is probably only around 3-5 seconds. Also could be sleep apnea, either way, don't consult reddit, talk to your doctor."
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a051nj | why don’t we have replacement cartilage? | Why are NSIADs (ibuprofen, etc) the mainstay of treatment followed by replacement? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a051nj/eli5_why_dont_we_have_replacement_cartilage/ | {
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"Cartilage exists as a cushion between bones which means it needs to be soft and firmly attached. Anything we insert into the human body has the possibility to foster infections which means that the inserted substance needs to be non-permeable (i.e. metal pins, rods, hip replacements). We don't have anything that is soft yet non-permeable to act as a replacement SAFELY. And since they also have to be firmly attached we would need a way to glue them on to a living surface without damaging that surface. Much harder than it sounds. Soft things we successfully insert into the human body like fake breasts aren't really attached to anything. ",
"Evolutionary it's probably not that important to have cartilage regenerate, as people who get osteoarthritis are generally old and past their reproductive prime. \n\nInteresting biological note (though it's not entirely answering \"why\") is that our skeleton starts out as entirely cartilage. A newborn child is still pretty much all cartilage, making their bones malleable and resistant to fracture. Once the cartilage is laid down, the chondrocytes (cartilage-forming cells) have served their purpose, and are disconnected from blood supply, and become inactive. \n\nAs children grow, each of their long/joint bones gets two centers of ossification (bone growth), one in the middle of the bone (diaphysis) and one on either end near the joint (epiphysis). In the middle of this (metaphysis) is the growth plate, there's an exception to the rule I said earlier where new cartilage ~is~ being formed by chondrocytes, pushing out the bones, and making our limbs/fingers longer (also, this is the dysfunctional part in achrondroplasiacs (dwarfs) like Peter Dinklage, and also why they have normal heads/trunks, but stunted limbs).\n\n To lay down bone over preformed cartilage, the bone-forming cells chew up the cartilage completely and lay down new proteins that will get mineralized into solid, tough bone. Like I said previously, this process originally starts at the ends of the bones and in the middle of the bone. This process extends all the way up to the very tips of the bones, leaving behind just a small layer of the original cartilage along the joint. Since there are no active chondrocytes here, this cartilage has not changed. So all this leads to the fun fact that the cartilage in your joints was originally just part of your baby skeleton!"
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1rzx9a | metallic bonding | I have a project due tomorrow and I don't understand the concept. Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rzx9a/eli5_metallic_bonding/ | {
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"A metallic bonding is a chemical bonding between the same metal or between (many) different metals.\n\nThe electrons in the metal is delocalized, you can imagine there is a cloud of electron which can move freely (eg. cables can transport \"electric energy\").\n\nThe outer electrons (valance electrons) are only weakly bound to their atom, you cannot differentiate which of these electron belongs to which atom: Due to this, metals and alloyings have these natures:\n\n-able to transport electrons (conductible)\n\n-good conduction of heat\n\n-metallic look\n\n-deformable"
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213hq4 | are you allowed to just turn off wifi/mobile data radios instead of flight mode during a flight? | On a flight, the usual instruction is to turn off any electrical devices or put them into airplane mode for the duration.
However pictures taken whilst in airplane mode do not have location data recorded.
If I turn off wifi and mobile data radios, the phone should still be able to pinpoint my location using GPS, right?
Is that a hazard in any way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/213hq4/eli5_are_you_allowed_to_just_turn_off_wifimobile/ | {
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"Well, you can get latitude and longitude with GPS, but without access to the maps that the device gets over wifi or mobile data, it won't be able to render that on a map."
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1b35ox | what makes people distrust others that are different than themselves? | I grew up near San Francisco, California and maybe I just ignored it in my formative years (too busy with puberty), but it seems like people hate each other more. I live in Tennessee now, but it was getting that way in SF too. So tell me. Why? What makes straits hate gays, blacks hate whites, different cultures hate other cultures (like China and Japan, wtf is up with that!?). As long as no one is physically hurting anyone we should all be accepting, yes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b35ox/eli5_what_makes_people_distrust_others_that_are/ | {
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"The research says that it's a natural instinct. Researchers use what's called a minimal group paradigm, which is a methodology for discovering how little a difference between groups need to be for one to discriminate against the other group or for their own. The difference needed is very little. There were some very famous studies where they ran a children's camp where the kids were split into groups based on drawing out of a hat (which the kids saw). That's all it took for the children to show bias where they favoured their own group and discriminated against the other - often in very subtle ways. You can [read more here](_URL_0_).\n\nThe reason? Most suggest an evolutionary benefit. It makes sense to trust your own group and having in-built biases help you do that.\n\n"
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4mnbky | how can a food scale measure fluid ounces? | I just got a new food scale that claims to measure fluid ounces. I thought fl oz were a measure of volume, not weight. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mnbky/eli5_how_can_a_food_scale_measure_fluid_ounces/ | {
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"I would assume the scale knows how much a fluid ounce of water weighs. \n\nSome might just assume you are measuring water. If you are actually measuring water, then it will be 100% accurate. Milk will be close enough. Oils will be off quite a bit.\n\nMore advanced scales have a menu, you can tell it what you are measuring. You choose what you are measuring, and it knows how much a fluid ounce weighs."
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a6gnfb | how do some houseplants live? | Especially those always sitting on a dining room table or anything of the like, they get only a few hours of sunlight a day. Most people will water them daily; however, some are extremely leafy and green which I would imagine require a decent amount of sunlight. How do they stay alive and leafy (even all year long) for years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6gnfb/eli5_how_do_some_houseplants_live/ | {
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".....\n\nDifferent plants prefer different conditions to grow and thrive, often these are related to where they come from, as they have adapted and found their spot there., and so have ways of coping with those kinds of conditions. many plants would not do well as houseplants, that is true, but most houseplants come from one specific environment..... rainforests. in rainforests, especially on or close to the ground, you wouldn't get much sunlight, it is being filtered through layers and layers of trees above, each of which takes and uses a little bit.\n\n there is a variety of rainfall, some areas less, some more, but in most places kinda intermittent, with having more at some times and less at others. the soil doesn't necessarily have tons of nutrients in rainforests in all areas. on the other hand, rainforests can be nice in that they don't change temperatures a lot. in most parts of a world, plants used to that might have problems outside, but inside is usually kinda temperature controlled. so you can maybe see how these conditions might be similar to conditions in a house. this doesn't mean that houseplants don't need to be taken care of properly, or that they might not do better wit a little bit more or less of something. but it does mean that the basic conditions in a house are reasonable for them.\n\nhouseplants still need about the right amount of sunlight, water, nutrients, but because of where they're from the right amount matches up with the conditions in a house pretty well.",
"That is exactly the question I ask myself anytime I look at yet another withered plant in my home.",
"The majority of sunlight consists of wavelengths between 300 and 1300 nm. Which consists of UV, visible and infrared light.\n\nAn incandescent light bulb emits wavelengths between 500 and 2000 nm. \n\nIf a plant primarily gets its needed light from wavelengths an indoor light emits then it can survive off that without ever being outside."
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w7xpg | why is the universe cold? | Edit: Can I add more to the question? What would it be like if it was warm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/w7xpg/eli5_why_is_the_universe_cold/ | {
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"Because most of the universe isn't within close enough proximity to a star to \"warm\" up the space.",
"Imagine you've got a box you use for moving houses.\n\nWell here on earth, even if you don't put anything in the box, there is still something in the box - mainly air, so a bunch of Nitrogen, Oxygen, and some other stuff.\n\nWell now imagine you took that same box to outer space. And not just in orbit around the earth. Past Neptune, way outside of our solar system. (But before we get to the next one. The closes star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, a little more than 4 light years away, so lets go 1 or 2 light years away).\n\nSo, what would be in that box now?\n\nNothing. Literally nothing, or an atom or two of hydrogen. That's it.\n\nWell heat is defined as energy moving from one system to another. In this case it would be our atom of hydrogen in 1 system, and the other system would be another hydrogen atom. They are said to be cold, or lacking heat, because they never interact (or, hardly ever). They never get a chance to exchange energy, because they never bump into eachother. Those atoms are tiny tiny tiny, and that box is incredibly large in comparison. So, they never bump into each other.\n\nOr you could look at it as the average of the energy spread over the volume. So, in this case you would have the energy of 1 hydrogen atom, divided by the volume of our box. Compared to on Earth, where you've got far more than billions of atoms in that same volume of the box. So the heat ratio between the 2 would be 1/V vs. 1,000,000,000/V\n\nSo, yeah, it's cold.",
"It's only cold in relation to the climate humans are used to. Life needs energy, so life only developed on this planet because the sun provided energy. \n\nSo from the rest of the universe's perspective, humans like it really hot."
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9541ew | an observatory discovers we’re in peril as a cataclysmic sized asteroid is on a path for earth and we’ve only got a year before impact. what measures are in place to save our bacons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9541ew/eli5_an_observatory_discovers_were_in_peril_as_a/ | {
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"Absolutely none\n\nAll of our asteroid avoidance measures are for an asteroid that is a few decades out and all of them are theoretical at best\n\nIf we discovered an multi kilometer wide asteroid on course for Earth (a 7 or 10 on the Torino scale), the only thing we can currently do is pray",
"ELI5 is not for hypotheticals. Try r/askscience.",
"Personally I'd build a bunker and stock up on food, water, and medical supplies. If you're not in the vicinity of the impact site and far from the coast there's a chance you'd survive the impact. The following years would be extremely tough, though. "
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2mvvjs | where do tv shows & movies get music? | so it is obviously someone's job to add music into the film. where do they find all this music and how do they decide? is there just some guy with a bunch of music on his iphone and when he hears one he writes down what it is and the feeling it gave him? i know when i try to find a song off a show, it takes me to the depths of the internet before i can find the song. how do they find it if i can barely find it afterwards? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mvvjs/eli5_where_do_tv_shows_movies_get_music/ | {
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"A lot of shows and movies hire a composer who , often working with director, creates a majority of the background music or main themes - like John Murphy for 28 days later.\n\nAnd for the other music in the show or movie, yeah probably whatever the director/producers want.\n\nSometimes due to studio contracts requiring that something is 'plugged' ",
"Television editor here. The majority of music on \"reality\" programming and most basic cable shows comes from the libraries of a few companies: Audio Network, Jinglepunx, etc. These companies compose a shitload of music, production companies acquire the licenses to all or part of their libraries, and then the company and composers are paid depending on how much of their music makes it into the final cut. \n\nMore high budget shows like Breaking Bad or anything on HBO/Showtime, and nearly all films, have their own team of composers to produce music specifically for that show. These composers will work closely with the producers and editors on specific cues.\n\nIf you want to put, say, a Rolling Stones song in your show you must acquire the rights from whoever holds them. This is extremely expensive and rarely done for your \"average\" tv show.\n\nAs to where we actually find the music: it depends. I just finished putting together a large library of potential music for a show we are starting to work on. I found most of it by looking through the online libraries of the music production companies. Once we have a better idea of what we actually want I will get in touch with people at the companies and they will put together more specific lists. Finally, we will hire a composer at some point to create a couple unique tracks for the show, such as the show open. Generally though, I search the databases based on keywords, find tracks I like, and then similar tracks from there."
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4cmv4u | where does money go when leaving over all your money to your dog? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cmv4u/eli5_where_does_money_go_when_leaving_over_all/ | {
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"You can't leave money to a non-human animal because they can't legally own property. You can establish a trust to take care of a pet in most states. However, the trust usually can't get passed on to your pet's children. What happens to any money leftover in such a trust depends on what you put into the trust document."
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2yxbug | why does a high blood glucose (hyperglycemia) cause weakness and fatigue in a person? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yxbug/eli5why_does_a_high_blood_glucose_hyperglycemia/ | {
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"Type 1 diabetic here, that much sugar in your blood is very hard on your organs. Imagine pipes with flowing water. Now pour as much sugar possible until it becomes a slosh :-P I mean, your blood isn't a slosh, but it's too saturated and organs like your kidneys that help filter blood have to work extra hard, hence the fatigue",
"If a person has diabetes, their ability for a cell to take in sugar and turn it into energy is impaired. \n\n* For acute fatigue...Short bursts (acute) of high blood glucose are associated with poor cognitive performance and being less alert. In addition to the fact that people with diabetes lack or are resistant to insulin, the magic key that lets sugar power cells, in people with cerebral stroke, high blood glucose has been shown to exacerbate their symptoms, suggesting that potentially brain function is also impaired when blood sugar is too high beyond just the lack of efficient energy use (_URL_0_). \n\n* If a person's blood sugar gets way too high, and their body begins to panic about not being able to access the sugar, a person with diabetes can experience 'ketoacidosis'. This is because of the lack of insulin, which is like the key that lets the cells use the sugar, is missing. The body responds by breaking down fat into something called ketones, as ketones are able to keep the brain going when the body is unable to access the sugar from the blood. The reason our bodies prefer running on sugar rather than ketones (picking on just two broad reasons) is because ketones lower the blood PH, making our blood acidic, and also require a whole lot more water to be processed. Diabetic ketoacidosis often includes a serious case of lethargy as even though the blood is full of sugar, without insulin the cells can't use it. But a person in ketoacidosis is also probably very sick at this point and should be in hospital, so this isn't normal everyday lethargy.\n\n* For chronic fatigue....There is speculation, and some evidence, that swings in blood sugar induce fatigue. The theory is that high blood sugar damages cells - meaning the body is constantly dealing with 'sub clinical' (just a little bit of) inflammation. In the same way a cold makes you tired, constant inflammation may work in a similar way. (_URL_1_).",
"Type I diabetic here. I was diagnosed at 6 and have managed it successfully for almost 16 years! I've been lucky to have a great support system, though, so I can't take all the credit.\n\nWhen I have high blood sugar I get a headache and a stomach ache, usually. I tend to feel that \"sluggish\" feeling as well. I would assume it has something to do with the sugar acting as a lot of \"traffic\" on the highway that is your vascular system. Stuff can't \"enter\" or \"exit\" very easily when there is a lot of traffic. It disrupts osmosis/diffusion, etc. \n\nWhen I was diagnosed my blood sugar was 986 mg/dL. A little too high.\n\nI had major cramps in my joints, the worst headache I've ever had, and was vomiting and urinating to attempt to get rid of the excess sugar in my system.\n\nOn the other hand, when I'm low, I tend to be irritable (it's very annoying to any person with diabetes when someone says 'you must be low, go check your sugar. Sort of a pride thing), hungry, and shaky/jittery. It is extremely dangerous to not inform your friends and family that you have diabetes because like /u/A_Talking_Shoe pointed out, it looks just like someone is drunk. This can be a very dangerous situation! Always have glucose tabs/glucagon on you and make sure your friends know how to check your sugar and act in an emergency situation...for those of you with diabetes. \n\nHope this answer helps a little bit."
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2ak9bm | when something bad happens, and it seems to happen in "slow motion" what is really going on? | My dog almost fell down the stairs. When he slipped, what I *perceived* to have happened next is I moved at my normal speed, but he fell in slow motion, which enabled me to catch him, when I wouldn't have been fast enough otherwise. What really happened?
I'm sure the brain's ability to slow things down so we can react is some manor of evolutionary advantage that allowed early humans to better protect one another, but how exactly does it work? I've seen this dog fall on the stairs before; usually he trips up and doesn't get hurt. He's just a white blur when that happens. But when my brain slowed this particular scene down, I saw that he had twisted his body mid fall and was about to land on his leg at a weird angle that almost certainly would have resulted in a break. How was it that I seemingly instinctually knew this time was going to be disastrous, had my brain flip on slow-mo survival mode and somehow still had time to react?
I know other people experience this in other similar situations. This is just one example (plus, what triggered my curiosity) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ak9bm/eli5_when_something_bad_happens_and_it_seems_to/ | {
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"When something life threatening/bad/unexpected is happening, your body releases epinephrine, AKA adrenaline. This increases sensory reception, muscle movement, and reaction. It looks like things are going slower, but really you're just going faster. All animals have this, which is known as the \"fight or flight\" mechanism. ",
"Our brains perceive a threatening situation differently, and as quertyayz explains, it is the adrenaline that makes it appear that the event is happening in slow motion. \n\nNatgeo did a segment on this very topic, using volunteers to demonstrate. First they were asked to read information displayed very quickly, then recite what they could. Then they were blindfolded and placed against a wooden backdrop. They believed that a professional circus performer was throwing hatchets at them, when in reality an assistant was standing inches away merely thwacking them into the backdrop near them. Once un-blindfolded, they were asked to read a similar set of flashcard information, which they did with some 30-40% greater accuracy. Flooded with adrenaline in the face of a threat, their brains were able to retain more information immediately afterwards. Such recall may make an event seem slowed down, because we retain more of it in memory.",
"ELI5 - The faster our brains goes the slower things appear to move.\n\n\n"
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40upis | why are people predicting that the price of oil won't recover for 4-5 years, when it originally dropped in price so quickly, almost overnight? | Could it not recover in a similarly speedy fashion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40upis/eli5_why_are_people_predicting_that_the_price_of/ | {
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"OPEC started a price war because Iran was entering the world market have decades of being excluded.\n\nSaudi Arabia, OPEC, and Iran are able to extract oil at a much lower cost than elsewhere in the world. Hydraulic fracking was reinvigorating extracting in America, but is very expensive.\n\nAs the cost of oil plummeted, fracking in the USA has moved towards a marginal venture.\n\nOPEC is just trying to glut the market to hurt competitors. Mostly though OPEC is just falling apart as its members all try to sell more than they are supposed to sell.\n\nThe only way for the price to recover is for the members of the cartel to return to selling less at a higher price. The problem is that Iran has been stockpiling for years just waiting for the time they could return to market.",
"To drive the price back up, you would need some supply constraint, or some demand spike.\n\nRight now, demand is pretty solid, and there's just not a lot of room for it to get much better.\n\nSupply *could* be constrained, but there are so many factors working against this, there's basically a perfect storm of oil.\n\nOne person said it was gulf states trying to stop alternative fuel development. There's a grain of truth in that, but it's not as much an organized conspiracy as simply a group of badly-run nations discovering their books are quite lopsided, and then one of them tried to pump extra product into the market to restore their cash reserves, it triggered panic-selling at neighboring states.\n\nCombine that with a (relatively) stable political situation (stop laughing, this *is* the mideast we're talking about), no major wars.. we're just totally lacking in anything to limit supply.\n\nIf the gulf gets it's act together (not likely) there are other sources which have been idled simply for lack of customers that come right back into play, capping the \"maximum\" price well below what it was a couple years ago.\n\nTL;DR: You go through your couch and start finding millions of dollars, it's cool. If *everybody* starts finding millions of dollars, nobody shows up to work tomorrow."
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uurwj | why do advertisements in non-english speaking sports arenas still spell out in english words? | Saw a McDonald's ad today on the Spain vs. Italy match. Its definitely not the first time this question has come into my mind but just a reminder to me to figure out the answer... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uurwj/why_do_advertisements_in_nonenglish_speaking/ | {
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"At some point the brands become so big and well known that by virtue of the logo alone, which is in english, is good enough for someone to recognize a product.",
"You were watching a game in the [European Championship](_URL_0_). And since it's broadcast all over Europe the advertisers make their ads so they're accessible to the most number of viewers.",
"In some regions English is considered a \"cool\" language by marketing people ,thus not only foreign advertisments are in English. Skoda (a traditional Czech maker of cars) uses: Skoda - simply clever in all their czech advertisments.. (ok, technically it's not czech anymore as volkswagen bought it, but still for fucks sake...)",
"Don't know if this is applicable to your experience, but many of the ads that seem to be on the sidelines on sports arenas are actually digitally added to the broadcast, meaning they could presumably be tailored by different channels/broadcasters."
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yorey | how do digital certificates work? | Struggling to understand this concept..could someone please explain? :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yorey/eli5_how_do_digital_certificates_work/ | {
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"Once upon a time there was a magical land called \"cryptonia\", which was ruled by a number of kings (nobody there found anything wrong with this, as they were super trustworthy persons). Every time a merchant would send an important document they would go to one of the kings and the king would impress his seal on a piece of wax, which was placed over the flap of the envelope. So the recipient would know that the document was not altered by the messenger or some other person, since in cryptonia every person knew the king's seal from his/her birth through some magic process.\n\nThis was a very impractical solution, since the sender had to go to a king every time he wanted to send a letter, so they thought of a very clever idea: Every merchant would create his own personal seal out of a soft metal and then one of the kings would impress his seal in the merchant's seal. So if the recipient of the letter saw this, they would not have to know the merchant's seal, they had only remember the king's seal and knew that a message was signed by a trustworthy party.\n\nBut unfortunately everbody had to really take good care of their seals, especially the kings. One time, king comodo the incompetent had his seal not locked properly and some thief managed to make a lot of seals for various different merchants (including very important merchants) so it was decided that this king's seal would be forgotten by every person of cryptonia through some magical process called \"browser update\".",
"I am no security expert, but here is my explanation:\n\nBasic cryptography:\n\nIf you want to securely communicate with any person X, you need to encrypt your message such that X and only X is able to read it.\n\nYou can do this in one of 2 ways:\n\n* Private key cryptography (Encrypt data using a shared secret key)\n\n* Public key cryptography [Wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\nI am not going to discuss private key cryptography as it doesn't require digital certificates.\n\nIn public key cryptography, each party has 2 keys:\n1) Public key\n2) Private key\n\nIf you want to send a message to X, you **encrypt** the message using X's **public** key, and he **decrypts** it using his own **private** key.\n\nDigital certificates:\n\nSuppose you need to send a message to X. You will need to encrypt the message using his public key. But, how do you know that the public key that you believe belongs to X really belongs to him?\n\nAn attacker Y might make you believe that he is X and send you his public key instead (Man-in-the-middle-attack). If you encrypt the message using this public key, then Y would be able to decrypt it using his private key.\n\nThis is where digital certificates come in. Digital certificates bind the public key with the user. They basically say that, \"I have verified that this public key belongs to X, you may encrypt your messages with it\".\n\nIf you see a digital certificate, you can be sure that X is who he is claiming to be.\n\nDigital certificates are issued by trusted authorities like VeriSign. You can issue your own certificate, but then it is up to the user to trust you or not."
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2qig8v | how are military documentaries, which include deployment footage interviews, made? | For example, I just watched Korengal on Netflix.
* How are non-military people allowed to even be in those areas and interview soldiers?
* Who do documentarians talk to in order to get the green light to go?
* Do they fly to those areas with the soldiers?
* Who pays for their travel, are they compensated at all?
* Etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qig8v/eli5_how_are_military_documentaries_which_include/ | {
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"We had a military photographer attached to our unit. He was a soldier, just carried a camera (several actually) with him all the time. I remember him video taping quite a bit as well. ",
"Aside from being someone in the military with the \"Press Corp\" i.e. a *military* cameraman/reporter here for propoganda purposes, actually, there is such a thing as \"embedded war reporter\" where a typical journalist will be given permission to travel alongside combat units to run stories on them. Effectively, like civillians in combat. They are issued some basic gear to help them around e.g. kevlar vests, but no weapons and for the most part they are instructed to seek cover whenever the convoy/unit is fired upon and stay out of trouble. They travel and fly and follow everything else the unit.\n\nIn the past, they pretty much took a risk and just went ahead to war zones, courtesy of their press company. I think nowadays, the Defence Department however will give permits for these and hence issue them with basic protections, and the right to be \"embedded\" as part of the unit. Depending on the war, some funding may be given by the Department as part of PR and propoganda efforts; however for the most part the reporters are self-funded or press-funded, and draw a salary like other normal reporters from their press company."
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d996ab | how does sound have "texture"? how does a piano sound different from a clarinet when they play the same tone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d996ab/eli5_how_does_sound_have_texture_how_does_a_piano/ | {
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"When a tone is played, there are several harmonic frequencies that also play. Kinda like how a mother duck walks and her ducklings follow, the dominant frequency leads the tone (and is the one we hear and identify most) with harmonics being more subtle underneath. Different materials create different harmonic frequencies. These harmonics are what create the individual textures of the sound.",
" The difference you are describing is called [Timbre](_URL_0_). \n\nThere are a lot of other components of a sound beyond just its pitch and volume - how fast and sharply the wave begins (attack), how long it lasts (sustain), and how quickly it ends (decay), how much noise is in the signal, how many overlapping sound waves (harmonics) there are and where they fall in and out of phase with one another are just some of the things that go into giving a sound it's particular tonal uniqueness.",
"So when you play a note, you're actually playing a bunch of different frequencies (\"harmonics\") with different intensities, not just the main frequency (\"fundamental\"). The different intensities of those many frequencies give the different \"textures\" of various instruments (\"timbre\", pronounced \"tamber\").",
"Texture can be described, very simply, as many layers of notes played at once. Bass has a line, tenor has a line, soprano and so on. A piano does this, but a clarinet cannot, because only one note can be played at a time.\n\nEdit - not sure I was downvoted. Musical texture has three basic types: monophonic, homophonic and polyphonic.",
"To add to others, on Netflix watch Storybots Season 3 How Do You Make Music? They do a good job of breaking it down.",
"A waveform (musical or otherwise) can be analyzed as a sum of sine waves. The sound of a tuning fork is approximately a simple sine wave. Most sounds are far more complex than that. \n\nIn an idealized musical instrument, all of the sonic energy is in waves whose frequencies are multiples (‘harmonics’) of some fundamental. The relative strengths of these component waves give a large part of the color of the sound: if the higher components are strong, the sound is ‘brilliant’, like a trumpet; if they're weak, the sound may be called ’fat’. In a clarinet, the even multiples of the fundamental are missing.\n\nReal physical instruments have harmonics that are *not* perfect multiples of the fundamental. This is most conspicuous in a cymbal or gong, but hints of such imperfection also give a bit of spice to many other instruments."
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4947zr | why do apps vary in functionality between platforms? | I have a windows phone, my sister has an android and I sometimes use an apple tablet.
Often, I use the same app on several devices, and what confused me is that there is often differences in functionality between platforms, in ways that don't seem to be due to platform differences. For example, on android, wordfued shows you how much a word is worth as you put it down, while on windows it doesn't. When doing a test on duolingo, on windows phone you have three lives and get bonus xp for each life you have left at the end of the test, while on apple it has no lives or bonus xp.
If I were to make a cross-platform app, I would make them as identical as possible for a myriad of reasons, so it confuses me a bit. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4947zr/eli5_why_do_apps_vary_in_functionality_between/ | {
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"It's exactly as you said in your last statement. \"If I made a cross platform app I would TRY to make it the same as possible\" \n\nThis isn't always possible, you might haven't different developers doing different platforms with all the same time constraint, or might just have a hard time implementing a certain feature on a certain platform. It comes down to the fact that the human component is still there in the creation. You might have an unskilled developer for Windows phone since it's not a popular platform. \n\nSay it costs $500 for a someone to build you an iOS app, the same app on Windows might cost $1000 with all the same features because there are less people developing for it. This leads to features being cut so it takes less time to develop and therefore costs less\n\nThis is all coming from personal experience with building apps and looking for people to do them for me so it might be a little off."
]
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|
35p88d | why is it that when we have a foot or an arm hanging off the bed we sometimes get scared? | Some people even worry about being uncovered. Where do these irrational fears come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35p88d/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_we_have_a_foot_or_an_arm/ | {
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"Two words my friend: Bedroom Sharks. Huge, great white sharks that can survive outside of water and hide under a queen sized bed...just waiting, biding it's time until I let one of my precious limbs dangle off my bed."
]
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|
2vnzvc | why does drinking milk before excersizing make me throw up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vnzvc/eli5_why_does_drinking_milk_before_excersizing/ | {
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"Simply put, it is heavy and takes a long time to digest so moving around while it's sloshing around in your stomach causes gastrointestinal distress. It also has a decent amount of sodium which makes you feel dehydrated during workouts. Plus there's the psychological factor of the film coating that it leaves on your mouth or tongue which can cause coughing/spitting/gagging.\n\nIf timed correctly milk is good for you before a workout because it is high in protein and can help your exercise longer, but it has to be like 3 hours before if you don't want to feel the effects mentioned above."
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373xpe | why do win chances in poker games do not always sum up to 100%? | I have seen it alot - for instance, just two players are left: One has a win chance of 9%, the other player gets 80%. Where are the missing 11%? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/373xpe/eli5_why_do_win_chances_in_poker_games_do_not/ | {
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"The missing percentage would be in case of a tied hand. Where they have the same overall level of hand and split the pot equally. "
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a7e6j6 | whats the difference between a person with adhd and a person without adhd saying they can’t focus? | I’m asking if there’s any difference in how their inattentiveness and disability to concentrate would present themselves. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7e6j6/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_person_with/ | {
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"Some things cause people without ADD/ADHD to have trouble focusing: A noisy environment, stress, distractions, and tons of other things.\n\nThe difference is that with ADD/ADHD people, the inability to focus remains even after you correct for all of that.\n\nThere are also some other symptoms that come with ADHD. For adults, they are listed as follows from the mayo clinic:\n\nAdult ADHD symptoms may include:\n\n* Impulsiveness \n* Disorganization and problems prioritizing \n* Poor time management skills \n* Problems focusing on a task \n* Trouble multitasking \n* Excessive activity or restlessness \n* Poor planning \n* Low frustration tolerance \n* Frequent mood swings \n* Problems following through and completing tasks \n* Hot temper \n* Trouble coping with stress\n\nYou need 6 to qualify, and they have to be pretty constant.",
"I can only speak to my own experiences, but the issue with people with ADHD is that they basically have a broken filter. \n\nFor example, when I'm in a noisy cafeteria eating with a group of friends, my friends can hear what I'm saying clearly even though there's so much noise around us. They can focus on what I'm saying and filter out everyone else. \n\nOn the other hand, I have a very tough time hearing my friends. I have to watch their lips move just to have an idea of what they're saying, and I still have to ask them to repeat themselves. At the same time, I can hear the other conversations around me. I can't hear EVERYTHING because all the voices overlap, but I can tell that the table behind me is talking about their kids, the table to the right of me is talking about work, the table to the left of me is talking about video games, and someone passing by is making annoyed noises because they're having a tough time passing around me. \n\nPeople with ADD/ADHD struggle the most when they have to filter. This extends to their own behavior. That's why ADHD people can be impulsive. You might want to make a rude joke, but you stop yourself because you know you'll probably get in trouble. Someone with ADHD may not be able to resist. Or they make the joke before they even think about it.\n\nAnyway, all this is why ADD and ADHD are noticed most in school. Imagine being in a classroom with 30 other people, and you can't hear the teacher over the sound of everyone else's pencils scratching on paper when they take notes. You can't focus on the words in your textbook because the glare of the fluorescent lights is reflecting off the glossy pages and making your eyes strain. Plus, you hear everyone else turning the pages of their books. Plus, you don't understand the lesson very well ANYWAY, so now you're frustrated. You get the urge to do something--ANYTHING to get out of this super uncomfortable situation. The first thought that goes through your mind: make a funny fart noise. Before you even think that it's a bad idea, you've already got both palms against your mouth and you're making the loudest, nastiest fart noise. \n\n\"What were you THINKING?\" Your parents ask you after they pick you up from the principal's office. You don't know. You remember wanting out, but you don't know why you chose to do what you did.\n\n\"I'unno,\" you say. You could tell your parents all about how you didn't understand anything and how upset you were. But you feel like they'd just lecture you about being mature for once, and it'd just go on and on. And they'd ask you to answer a ton of other questions you know you won't know the answers to. So you just say you don't know.\n\nYou know your parents will sigh and say that you never THINK. And how disappointed they are. And as much as it hurts to think about how much of a disappointment you are, at least it's over quickly. \n\nThen you go to your room, where it's quiet. You pick up your Nintendo 3DS to play some Pokémon. The next thing you know, it's 2am and you've played Pokémon the entire time. \n\nSurprise! You just hyperfocused!\n\nYears later, you think you might have ADD or ADHD, but you remember being able to play Pokémon for hours nonstop, so you decide you can't possibly have it. \n\nExcept that hyperfocus is common to ADD/ADHD...\n\nLong story short, the lines are kind of blurry, I guess?",
"I have severe inattentive type. Most people can make themselves focus if they really try or have to. That’s not something I can do when my ADHD symptoms are high. ADHD isn’t a lack of focus in general, it’s difficulty sustaining attention. We have interest-based nervous systems and cannot simply will ourselves into focus. People who don’t experience this think we’re just lazy, and I can understand to an extent because if you haven’t experienced a total inability to do The Thing even if you really really want or need to do The Thing, it sounds implausible. Plus ADHD comes with a ton of other symptoms and positive features. There’s a debate going on about changing the name, because “attention deficit disorder” really doesn’t adequately describe what’s going on. ",
"Speaking from experience (I have ADHD):\n\nI once told someone that ADHD is like having Robin Williams running around in your brain: you're bouncing from one interesting topic to another, telling jokes, making people laugh, and (just like Robin Williams) it's often very hard for someone with ADHD to turn that off.\n\nIt's not even a 'deficit' of attention, really; I have little problem paying attention. It's just that I'm paying attention to you, and the pattern on the tiles, and the wind in the trees, and everything else around me because it's *all so cool,* and I don't know what's most important to focus on at any given moment.\n\nThat being said, when I focus, it has to be fun. If I'm bored, you'll have a hard time keeping my attention, but when it's within one of my (several hundred) spheres of interest, I will suck up every *bit* of information on a topic, then go back to the library for more. No matter how obscure or arcane the topic, *I will go for it*.\n\nThe upshot is that I'm otherwise very bad at executive function. I don't do time-management very well, I'm poorly organized (but only from a neurotypical perspective; I'll explain that more clearly in a moment), and if I don't do something the moment I think of doing it, it usually doesn't get done.\n\nNow....there are other problems with ADHD, and they're not 'our fault', as it were. We're labeled as 'disruptive', 'unmanageable', 'disorganized'...\n\nOh, yeah...I said I'd talk about being poorly organized (see that? I even distract *myself*).\n\nIf you were to walk into my house, you'd see a bit of a mess. The floor isn't properly swept, there are papers and books and chargers for my various electronic devices on the table (and the chairs, and the couch), and I have a stack of month-overdue library books that I've been intending to return every day for over two weeks.\n\nFrom a neurotypical's point of view, this place is a mess. For me, it's efficiency in action. Books on the table? More efficient than putting them back on the shelf, particularly since I'll just pull them out again in a day or so. Laundry basket piling up? That relates back to my 'do it now' mindset: I try to do all of my laundry in one long series of washes, because I'll forget about it if I do it in dribs and drabs over the course of a week.\n\nAt any rate, this is getting way too long, and I've revised it about a dozen times already, so I'm going to leave well enough alone and click the 'Comment' button XD."
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1sy58l | how do sites like gamespot, ign etc. not get sued for copyright infringement? | And could i make my own blog with game reviews and screenshots from games without getting into legal trouble? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sy58l/eli5_how_do_sites_like_gamespot_ign_etc_not_get/ | {
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"Gamespot and IGN are considered part of the Press. They profit from their coverage of games and game makers allow these sites to cover their product.\n\nIf you were to make a blog that covers games and profit off that, it wouldn't really be copyright infringement, so long as all of your articles are original, but you could get into some legal hot water since you were not given explicit permission to cover said games."
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7n7nvt | why does media audio on a phone sound distorted whilst on a call? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n7nvt/eli5_why_does_media_audio_on_a_phone_sound/ | {
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"Tom Scott did am excellent video on this topic...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nbasically, in order to make a call more economical, companies realized that they could just clip the extremities of the sound being transmitted since it isn't really necessary to a phone conversation. And thus we get amongst other things really shit sounding music. \n\nEDIT: forgot about another element in loss of quality, it is the fact that the audio of a call is also compressed... badly (it's designed to be able to transmit a single voice, but not much else) , and sometimes even the music that the companie's playing has already been compressed. So after all of that painful procedure we get our glorious hold music...",
"I'm not sure, but I think it is to use as little bandwidth as possible. High quality audio takes up more space, and poor quality audio takes up less space, meaning less data has to be sent/received. If you have a poor connection, this is a way to reduce latency."
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3hkups | how does the middle income trap work? | My understanding is that the middle income trap describes countries that have risen from extreme poverty, but not into first world status. Malaysia is often cited as a textbook example. What is the prevailing though of why this happens. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hkups/eli5how_does_the_middle_income_trap_work/ | {
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"when you have an economy that has a lot of workers that can be fairly low-paid workers (compared to more 'developed' countries), companies will start up factories there to take advantage of the lower costs. The people working there will happily do so because the pay is better than might otherwise have happened, so everybody seems happy. This influx of money creates a 'middle class', who aren't rich exactly, but have more money than the traditional working class. Wages increase (as they usually do), but eventually, another country is able to provide a workforce that is cheaper again which means the upward mobility in the original country stalls. ",
"A country like, say, South Africa or Malaysia starts off with cheap labor and low manufacturing costs. They relatively rapidly increase their GDP per capita to the point where they fall into the \"middle class\" range, usually defined as 10,000 to 15,000 USD.\n\nAt this point, if their GDP per capita gets higher, and their labor costs rise, they'll start to lose the money they're making from exports. So they need to start diversifying their labor force by automating production to free up manpower, inventing new products, etc. But their educational base and general infrastructure often can't support such a big shift, and most of these nations aren't drawing enough foreign investment to change that. ",
"Companies looking for lower skilled, low cost labor can easily pick up and move when costs get too high... so Nike makes shoes in China, and when development causes wages to get too high, it moves to Vietnam where it can pay half as much and get similar quality workers. When Vietnam gets too expensive, it shifts production to Sri Lanka.\n\nSome countries find a way to provide more value added capabilities, and move up the chain into more sophisticated manufacturing, like Korea or Taiwan. They move from making plastic toys to making hard drives and LCD screens. But that means investing in training more highly skilled workers to run more advanced factories, produce more complex/precise products, find efficiencies to improve processes. "
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3a2vz1 | why does so much commercial real estate sit empty for years? why not lower the rent to attract tenants/stores? | Hi,
Please explain why landlords/owners of commercial real estate leave properties vacant for so long?
Sometimes I see properties for least/rent for ages and I just wonder "why don't they lower the rent and get someone, ANYONE in there?? to open a business/storefront??, why let it be empty with a "For Lease" sign up for months if not years?
Obviously lowering the rent to attract a new tenant isn't ideal, but surely getting some rent is better than no rent?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a2vz1/eli5_why_does_so_much_commercial_real_estate_sit/ | {
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"Low commercial rent doesn't attract retail / storefronts nearly as much as low residential rent attracts tenants.\n\nWhat business would want to save $1000/month on rent but move from an upscale shopping plaza to a run-down strip mall a mile away? They could easily lose more than $1000/month in business.\n",
"Most commercial leases are for 10 or 20 years so sometimes it's worth a pretty long wait to get your asking price. You also don't want to have high risk businesses move in because they got lured with cheap rent. If your tenant goes bankrupt quickly, you might be out time and money. Those are pretty much the only economic reasons, assuming you don't end up making the rent so low that you can't even cover your own costs (repairs, legal fees, paying employees, and property taxes).\n\nEdit: 5 years is pretty common too. Some landlords will do 3, but it's not as common.\n",
"Commercial real estate is more long term than residential real estate. So if you lease at a low rate to someone, you will probably be stuck with that rate for years.",
"Mainly because part of what you pay in rent is for the popularity of the area. A moderately good pizza restaurant in a busy strip mall might be able to make a go of it, just because there will be people there, and some of those people will be hungry. An excellent pizza restaurant in an abandoned strip mall will fail, no matter how cheap the rent is, because no one goes there.\n\nThat's why you know a strip mall is dead when government organizations like the DMV and other non-retail businesses show up. They can afford to go wherever the rent is cheapest because their clients/employees are forced to go wherever they are.",
"If the cost of running heating/cooling/electricity in the building along with the initial cost of having to put up office walls, put in carpet, tear down existing walls or fix something up isn't covered by the lease, it's better to sit empty and have everything turned off and wait.",
"What I've found out while leasing two small offices (1500') in NC:\nMost leases were offered at 3 or 5 year terms, sometimes with minor incentives to sign for 5 years or more. If the owner does offer monies for you to upfit the location, they will be recouping it in the monthly lease payments. What was offered was never enough to complete the task. No free lunch here. The only maintenance they are responsible for is the structure and roof. Any windows, doors, electrical, HVAC, water, is the responsibility of the tennant. That's right, you're fixing anything that breaks. Large space tennants would likely have the 10 year or longer leases, but they are still responsible for their own maintenance. They need a longer commitment in order to recoup the costs of setting up their business in that location. ",
"Sometimes location is the issue. \n\nYou can set the rent to zero, but with all the other costs associated with business, you still need foot traffic to make a profit. ",
"Haven't seen this answered properly yet. I myself had always wondered so asked a neighbour the exact question a few years back -they are a commercial realtor. \n\nThe primary driver for not reducing rents is the negative impact on the value of the asset and in turn, the implications this may have for a property owner. \n\nSpecifically, if a lower rent is accepted this in turn can and often will reduce the value of the asset if/when it is valued.\n\nA lower value asset will reduce the borrowing that can be done against the asset. If a property owner is at the limit of their borrowing with respect to the property, revaluing the property downwards could be a basis for the bank to call in the loan/sell the property.",
"Good answers guys, thanks! "
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5m7kfr | if autonomous vehicles are to be the future of transportation, what steps are being taken to ensure they function in extreme weather conditions such as blizzards or black ice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m7kfr/eli5_if_autonomous_vehicles_are_to_be_the_future/ | {
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"Extensive testing of these systems on all terrain has been conducted and will continue to be conducted. \n\nThere are standard responses to certain situations that we should all do. For example if you're skidding, you turn into it to regain control. The car can do this, but faster than you can even think it. \n\nModern cars even without all of the fancy cameras of self driving models are able to determine the ground conditions; for example modern Land Rovers can auto detect sand/gravel/loose dirt etc and adjust traction and gear differential accordingly. If you throw in visual and radar sensors as well, then the car will very very quickly know what condition the road is in. \n\nSo what we have, is a car that can determine the road condition better and faster than a human, that can also respond to out of control situations faster than a human. It will also be able to respond to individual wheel traction etc automatically, which a human currently can't do anyway. \n\nBlizzards are fine as radar can see through it. ",
"at the moment, this kind of obstacle is on the fringe of consideration. Simply put, its hard enough to drive on a sunny day.\n\nThe rollout of automation will included stages of geofencing and weather restriction. Over time, they will tackle these hurdles.\n\nAt the end, simple fact is that humans have a tendency to drive in unsafe conditions, and we have accidents as a result. These are limits of physics, not the driver, sensors, or automobile. So will autonomous cars balk at 3\" of snow as humans should (but dont)? That will certainly become a huge discussion if/when lvl 5 automation becomes imminent and we talk about removing driver controls from vehicles."
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3vdqet | why do some companies seem to be judged as a whole (disney, time warner, cinemark) whereas some companies are judged by their chief officers/founders (facebook, microsoft)? | Why is it that when companies like Disney or Time Warner do something wrong we tend to respond with "I hate that company" but when companies other companies commit similar wrongdoings we pass judgement on to very high-ups in the company? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vdqet/eli5why_do_some_companies_seem_to_be_judged_as_a/ | {
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"most people dont know who the current CEOs or executive officers of old companies like Disney, Exxon Mobil, BP, Walmart. everyone knows who mark zuckerberg is and what he's done. not many people know that satya nadella is the current CEO of MS though..."
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4gdnn4 | what's happening when i'm talking on the phone and i hear my own voice with about a 1-second delay? (not on speakerphone) | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gdnn4/eli5_whats_happening_when_im_talking_on_the_phone/ | {
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"It's called \"echo\" and is in a problem in both voice over IP and POTS (plain old telephone service, \"traditional\" phone lines.)\n\nThere are several causes for it, some are physical/electrical having to do with the way POTS systems work, others can be due to latency and how VoIP works. Some cases of VoIP echo are actually due to the POTS network at the receiving phone's end. \n\nOne common cause nowadays is because of network latency. The telephone system actually feeds your voice back into your headset while you're talking because you're accustomed to hearing yourself as you talk. Your brain filters it out, so you don't notice it. But if it _isn't_ there, it's disconcerting and just sounds wrong. So, if you have latency on the VoIP circuit, that feedback may be delayed long enough that your brain doesn't filter it out as hearing yourself talk, but interprets it as hearing your voice repeated to you after the fact.\n\n[This article should be accessible for a non technical person.](_URL_0_) Just keep in mind that PSTN is \"publicly switched telephone network,\" which is jargon for the traditional phone network. And when they talk about TDMxxxx, they're talking about voice switches, nothing to really worry about. "
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4d0164 | when you're sick (e.g. with a cold) and you sleep, you feel quite a bit better than if you'd simply stayed awake for that long. what happens in say, that 1-2h of napping that makes you feel better? | Same goes for when you fall asleep at night too, I guess. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d0164/eli5_when_youre_sick_eg_with_a_cold_and_you_sleep/ | {
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"So you know how when you start off the day sick you feel ok and then by the end of the day you feel like shit. Well, that's because you body is not only getting more tired, but it's having to fight the infection harder through out the day as the virus/bacteria multiply. When you sleep your body doesn't have to devote resources to staying alert and active plus it is easier to maintain homeostasis (equalibriam within the body) while you are in a constant state such as sleep where both the outside and mental environments are constant."
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2o617j | set theory and the concept of different infinities. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o617j/eli5_set_theory_and_the_concept_of_different/ | {
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"We say two infinite sets are the same infinity if you can match up each element in one set to an element in the other (or at least define a rule to do so - obviously actually doing it would take infinitely long).\n\nSo the odd numbers and the even numbers are the same infinity - match up 1 to 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 6, and so on. But there are also the same infinity of even numbers and natural numbers - match 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 3 to 6, 4 to 8, and so on.\n\nThere are also the same infinity of natural numbers and fractions. The matching for those is more fiddly, but I'll start with 1/1, 1/2, 2/1, 1/3, 3/1, 1/4, 2/3, 3/2, 4/1, ... [This video](_URL_0_) explains another option.\n\nHowever, if you have the set of all real numbers, including irrational numbers like pi and the square root of 2, then that's a larger infinity than the natural numbers. If you think you've matched up all the real numbers to the natural numbers, I can always make a real number which you've missed. That's called Cantor's Diagonal Argument, which I can explain in more detail if you like but a search will probably find a clearer explanation than I'll give.",
"A set is simply a list of uniquely identified objects. So {Apple,Orange, Pear} is a set. In math though, we are usually dealing with sets of numbers. What you'll quickly find though is that it's possible to construct two sets that are both infinite but don't have the same values. In fact it's possible to create two sets (let's call them A and B) such that every value of A is included in B, yet B still has more values in it.\n\nFor example, take a set that includes all the positive integers {1,2,3...∞}. That's an infinite set of numbers. But if you look at the set of positive rational numbers (anything that can be represented as a fraction) there is actually an infinite number of numbers between the numbers 1 and 2 (and 2 and 3, etc). So the set of rational numbers includes the infinite number of integers, and an infinite number of numbers between each of those numbers. That's were you get in the concepts of different levels of infinity.",
"#**Bijections and Cardinality**\nA bijection is a mapping between two sets where every member of each set is matched up to exactly one member of the other set. So, if we have set A = {1,5,11} and set B = {2,6,12} we can form a bijection between the two by subtracting 1 from every member of B or adding 1 to every member of A.\n\n1 < -- > 2 \n5 < -- > 6 \n11 < -- > 12\n\nCardinality is a measure of how big a set is. We say that two sets have the same cardinality if and only if you can make a bijection between the two of them^[1]. Since you can make a bijection between A and B, they have the same cardinality. \n\n#**Natural Numbers**\nThe natural numbers are the ones you naturally learn as a child (1,2,3,...) You can always add 1 to a natural number, so they go on forever. The set of natural numbers has an infinite cardinality. If we can make a bijection between another infinite set and the natural numbers, they have the same cardinality.\n\nAs an example, consider the even numbers (2,4,6,...). You can divide them by two and you get (1,2,3,...). That's exactly the set of natural numbers. We found a bijection between the evens and the naturals, so they must have the same cardinality^[2].\n\nIn fact, anything infinite that you can make a complete list of you can map to the natural numbers by using it's position in that list. Consider the odds:\n\n1. 1\n2. 3\n3. 5\n4. 7 \n...\n\n1 is the first odd, so you map it to 1. 3 is the second odd, so you map it to 2...\n\nIf you can make a list out of it^[3], and it's infinite, it has the same cardinality as the natural numbers.\n\n#**Real Numbers**\nThe real numbers are pretty much all the numbers you deal with up until 9th grade or so. They include all the natural numbers, all the negatives, all fractions, and even infinitely long, non-repeating decimals like pi or the square root of 2. We can show that a lot of sets^[2] have the same cardinality as the natural numbers, but we can't form a bijection between the real numbers and the natural numbers.\n\nImagine if we could. All we would have to do is list out all the real numbers and then map them to their position in the list. So let's assume we have that list.\n\n0.31452... \n0.24567... \n0.46847... \n0.62481... \n0.45991... \n...\n\nI can always make a real number that isn't on this list, no matter how many numbers you add to it. All I have to do is go to the right of the decimal place and change the first digit of the first number, the second digit of the second number, the third digit of the third number...\n\nIf I increase them all by one, I get 0.45992...\nEven if you add more numbers to this list, this still works, I just need to go 6 decimal places over instead of 5. This means I can never have a complete list of the real numbers, so I can never form a bijection between them and the natural numbers, so they *must* have different cardinalities^[4].\n\n#**Footnotes**\n1. There may exist mappings between two sets that are not bijections. This does NOT show that they have different cardinalities. \n2. This holds true for all odd numbers, all prime numbers, all fractions, and [more.](_URL_0_)\n3. \"Countable\" is the usual term for \"able to make a list out of it\"\n4. This is [Cantor's Diagnolization Argument.](_URL_1_)"
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5t3pfd | what makes people enjoy scary video games and movies? doesn't it go against humanistic nature of avoiding dangerous things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t3pfd/eli5_what_makes_people_enjoy_scary_video_games/ | {
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"The thing is, people go into those knowing that it's not a dangerous thing. You get to experience the adrenaline rush of being scared but while remaining in a safe environment."
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ka1d0 | what is the reasoning behind raising interest rates during a recession? what actually tends to happen? | Pertaining to James Surowiecki's Financial Page "Europe's Big Mistake" in the New Yorker | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ka1d0/eli5_what_is_the_reasoning_behind_raising/ | {
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"When you raise interest:\n* People have to pay more for lending money.\n > People will tend to not lend money and thus will not be able to spend money.\n* People will put their money on a savings account because they get more interest for their money.\n > People will not spend money\n\nWhen you lower interest:\n* People will borrow more money because its cheaper to do so.\n > more spending of borrowed money\n* People will withdraw money from their savings account because of low interest rates\n > People will spent more money\n\nWhat happens when people spend money?\n* The more people buy stuff, the more expensive everything gets (supply/demand rules)\n > Thus we create inflation, a rising of prices (this can be a good or bad thing)\n > The higher the prices the less you can buy.\n\n\nNow introduce 2 currencies:\n* a dollar\n* a euro\n\nPrices in dollars rise due too lower interest. What happens to the euro?\nPeople don't want to save their money in dollars anymore, and buy euro's and start saving accounts over in Europe.\nThus the euro gets more expensive and the dollar cheaper.\nIf the dollar is cheaper, it gets cheaper to buy stuff in dollars and pay in euro's.\n\nSo exporting from the USA to Europe boosts the economy of the USA.\nImporting from Europe and buying in expensive euro's will be done less, so Americans will import less from Europe.",
"When you raise interest:\n* People have to pay more for lending money.\n > People will tend to not lend money and thus will not be able to spend money.\n* People will put their money on a savings account because they get more interest for their money.\n > People will not spend money\n\nWhen you lower interest:\n* People will borrow more money because its cheaper to do so.\n > more spending of borrowed money\n* People will withdraw money from their savings account because of low interest rates\n > People will spent more money\n\nWhat happens when people spend money?\n* The more people buy stuff, the more expensive everything gets (supply/demand rules)\n > Thus we create inflation, a rising of prices (this can be a good or bad thing)\n > The higher the prices the less you can buy.\n\n\nNow introduce 2 currencies:\n* a dollar\n* a euro\n\nPrices in dollars rise due too lower interest. What happens to the euro?\nPeople don't want to save their money in dollars anymore, and buy euro's and start saving accounts over in Europe.\nThus the euro gets more expensive and the dollar cheaper.\nIf the dollar is cheaper, it gets cheaper to buy stuff in dollars and pay in euro's.\n\nSo exporting from the USA to Europe boosts the economy of the USA.\nImporting from Europe and buying in expensive euro's will be done less, so Americans will import less from Europe."
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58d3b0 | how did the polls get it so wrong in the uk about brexit, and how does the same phenomenon apply to the us for this election? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58d3b0/eli5_how_did_the_polls_get_it_so_wrong_in_the_uk/ | {
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"The BREXIT polls weren't \"so wrong.\" They pretty consistently depicted about equal amounts of support for each side and the final vote ended up being 51-49.\n\nThere is no \"phenomenon\" in play here and the BREXIT polling has nothing to do with the US election.",
"In the case of Brexit, the polls weren't far off from the values that ended up happening. This is because nearly 80% of the population voted. However, \n\nPolling CAN be inaccurate because someone might SAY they are voting for politician X, but they may not ACTUALLY vote for Politician X at a voting booth (choosing to stay home instead). This causes problems because if Politician X is in the polls leading by 60%, why do 'I' need to go and bother voting because Politician X will win anyways. If enough people do that, then Politician Y will win because their entire voting base voted and only 10% of Politicians X voter base voted. \n\nIn the case of the US elections, Clinton is building a large lead in the polls. This might cause people not to turn out because 'enough' people will be voting to put her in office. Donald Trump has an extremely dedicated base and in all likelihood a majority will be voting. If enough Clinton voters don't vote, Donald Trump could win.\n\n"
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6exmtg | how does government sanctioned marriage benefit society? why can't people who love each other just live together without meaningless vows and signed paperwork? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6exmtg/eli5_how_does_government_sanctioned_marriage/ | {
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"Government sanctioned marriage comes with certain economic benefits (tax breaks are one of them) but if we're talking \"being legally married makes people less angry\" benefits, I don't think there's any benefit to having law-based marriages as opposed to commonwealth or \"informal\" marriages. IMO as a sociologist, the government creating marriage laws is a reflection of the cultural significance that's placed on marriage as well as the increase in bureaucracy within our modern societies.\n\nIt's hard to know if governments decided to make marriage a form of law and that caused people to think getting legally married is important, or if society said getting married was important so it was made into a law when governments were formed. I think it was the latter, but I don't have any real proof of it. ",
"People who love each other can totally live together without vows and paperwork - plenty of people do so their entire lives without any legal documents needed. \n\nHowever, from a government/legal point of view, a marriage is basically a contract that gives both people certain rights, so the government does need to have it sanctioned and regulated in some way to ensure that these contracts are fair and correct. Being married has a lot of specific legal perks - joint tax filing, next of kin rights, social security and IRA benefits, inheritance without taxes (or a will), etc. Because these are really specific and the kinds of things that people can commit serious fraud over, a legal marriage has to be licensed and filed with the government - if it's not on paper, these aren't valid.\n\nHere's a classic example: let's say that a guy dies suddenly without a will, leaving behind his longtime partner (but not wife - they never married), along with 2 kids from a previous relationship. Generally, that estate will be split between his two kids, and his partner wouldn't be entitled to anything (she would need to have been in his will to get anything). If there's a marriage contract, it tells the government \"Oh, he legally wanted her to have inheritance rights\" and she would be entitled to up to half, with the rest split between the kids (in most jurisdictions).",
"First, people live together without getting married. Vows are a religious rather than a government thing, and plenty of people get married without being religious, so I'm just going to tackle the government part.\n\n\"Marriage\" is basically a way of saying \"this person makes joint decisions with me.\" It is assumed that you are closest with your spouse than any other person and that you share everything, including a home and other assets. \n\nWhy do married couples file joint taxes? Because it's assumed they pooled their money into a common account.\n\nWhy does one spouse automatically inherit if the other dies without a will? Because it's assumed that all their stuff was shared between them and so it's basically that spouse's stuff already anyway.\n\nWhy is a spouse automatically next of kin in the absence of another arrangement? Because it's assumed that you trust this person to make decisions with you, and thus *for* you if you're incapacitated.\n\nIs it possible to have these benefits without marriage? Certainly. But it would *increase* the amount of paperwork you'd do, not lessen it. Think about having to fill out a separate form for every benefit that marriage provides, including long contracts giving someone medical power of attorney and combining assets (that was the reality for gay people prior to 2015). It's easier to have the government just give you all the rights at once, in one document (the marriage certificate).\n\nIncidentally, it's also possible to do the inverse, such as legally being married but leaving everything to someone who isn't your spouse. But again, that requires more paperwork (writing a will) instead of going with the default. ",
" > Why can't people who love each other just live together without meaningless vows and signed paperwork?\n\nYou can do this. (The vows btw are the religious side). Some places have common law marriage, but many are starting to get rid of it, or don't. CL comes back from the days when poor people didn't really get officially married.\n\n > ELI5: How does government sanctioned marriage benefit society? \n\nAt the end of the day, marriage (legally) is a standardized contract. When you get married, you're entitled to certain benefits that we've decided you deserve. Similar to how if you buy stocks, you have certain protections.\n\nIt benefits society because we've decided people deserve those benefits (for example, the right to visit your SO in the hospital,next of kin, etc). Basically, marriage is saying \"yes, we are serious enough that if i get into an accident, i want them to have control over my healthcare decisions, not my parents. They know my wishes better\"\n\nYou could say people should do separate contracts, but the reality is a lot of people don't. Or it's extremely hard to verify. Just ask anyone who had an agreement, but wasn't married, you need to show the paperwork. The last thing you want is to be scrambling for paperwork when your SO is on life support and could pass at any moment.\n\nSo it benefits individuals (who are part of society), and the government from having to figure all these details out. It's a pain in the ass to figure out inheritance, or next of kin medical decisions etc, without a well laid out method.\n\n > As for inheritance, without governmental recognition, it would come down to the will, which people would necessarily be more careful about, and encouraged by their partners to have in place.\n\nI don't think you realize how messy these things can be. They can turn into slug fests, quickly. And if they aren't done, at the end of the day, the court has to make a decision anyway. It might as well have a streamlined default method.\n\nThat's why things like wills,prenups etc exist- so you can change the default if it doesn't apply to you. But it still helps to have a default instead of nothing.\n\n > In other words, if the financial benefits were removed completely,\n\nEven if you get rid of the tax deduction stuff, stuff like tax for inheritance is important. Part of marriage is that legally, they become family. For obvious reasons, we allow gifts between family members (up to an amount). People would be pretty pissed if they got taxed every time they transferred funds.\n\nYou'd also have an incentive for some creative tax dodging. A husband would have to gift it to the child (who doesn't have control of it), and then they gift it to the mother. That's convoluted and also dumb.\n\nThe ability to help out family is an extremely old tradition.\n\n\nside note:\nThere's also the ugly historical side, where it was used as a way to prevent certain types of marriage (interracial, same-sex). You couldn't prevent 2 gay people from getting married if it was just a religious ceremony. Ironically, this is starting to backfire, but the history is still there.",
"Beyond the legalities of inheritance, there is a social benefit to promoting marriage. Marriage tends to be stabilizing force within a society. A nuclear family is more likely to successfully raise children into productive members of society. Studies also show that married people live longer, healthier, and more mentally stable lives than single people do. By offering extra benefits for married couples, the government is incentivizing people to get married, and thus society as a whole benefits.",
"Vows aren't meaningless to the people who make them. They are a commitment made in front of other people who both witness and commemorate the event. Marriage is also a set of promises and a contract that government both sanctions and helps enforce. ",
"It's not about the paperwork, and it's not about the tax breaks / inheritance / etc. either. \n\nMarriage is about *family*. Kith and kin, hearth and home, all that stuff. When you marry someone, you each join each other's family, and you become a whole new one together as well. \n\nHowever, these things need to be witnessed and acknowledged by society in order to carry any weight *within* society. It's not just between two people, it's between three families and everyone around them, demanding recognition of the new structure.\n\nTime was that the church was the body to perform that function, as it was a governing body that had a hand in everyone's lives - but as society has become increasingly secular, the state has become the obvious alternative. \n\nLegal issues such as custody, inheritance, power of attorney, visitation rights, taxation and insurance arrangements, etc are secondary to those considerations - but the weight they carry isn't inconsiderable. \n\nTL;DR: we expect society to treat married people as family, so as a society, we need to acknowledge that status. And it makes sense for government to take on the process of that recognition. "
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l7a2k | fundamentals of kites. | More specifically, how to construct one and the scientific principles behind it. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l7a2k/fundamentals_of_kites/ | {
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"I'm not sure of the construction aspect, but I am an aerospace engineer, so I'll try to help\n\nKites generate lift along the same principles as wings on airplanes, by creating higher air pressure on the bottom of the wing than on the top, effectively \"pushing\" the wing, kite, etc up.\n\nThis is done in two different ways that are usually used together: \n\nThe first is by using [camber](_URL_0_), which is the curve of an airfoil. The mean camber line means that the upper surface curves more than the lower, which makes the upper surface \"longer.\" This forces air to travel further in the same time (faster) over the top than the bottom. Using Bernoulli's principle (a little more involved), this makes the pressure drop on the upper surface.\nThe second way to create lift is with pitch, or [angle of attack](_URL_1_). The more you increase the angle, the more air is pushing against the bottom of the surface, along with forcing the air to travel even further over the top of the wing, kite, etc.\n\nSo, you can have lift using camber and no angle of attack (wings) and with angle of attack and no camber (most kites)\n\nAnother principle with kites is trying to fight against the pitch-up moment (which makes the kite want to spin backwards in a loop). This is done usually by tying the string to the [top and bottom](_URL_2_) of the kite, and not just one spot.\n\nI jumped through that quickly, if you have any follow-up questions I'd be more than happy to help!",
"I'm not sure of the construction aspect, but I am an aerospace engineer, so I'll try to help\n\nKites generate lift along the same principles as wings on airplanes, by creating higher air pressure on the bottom of the wing than on the top, effectively \"pushing\" the wing, kite, etc up.\n\nThis is done in two different ways that are usually used together: \n\nThe first is by using [camber](_URL_0_), which is the curve of an airfoil. The mean camber line means that the upper surface curves more than the lower, which makes the upper surface \"longer.\" This forces air to travel further in the same time (faster) over the top than the bottom. Using Bernoulli's principle (a little more involved), this makes the pressure drop on the upper surface.\nThe second way to create lift is with pitch, or [angle of attack](_URL_1_). The more you increase the angle, the more air is pushing against the bottom of the surface, along with forcing the air to travel even further over the top of the wing, kite, etc.\n\nSo, you can have lift using camber and no angle of attack (wings) and with angle of attack and no camber (most kites)\n\nAnother principle with kites is trying to fight against the pitch-up moment (which makes the kite want to spin backwards in a loop). This is done usually by tying the string to the [top and bottom](_URL_2_) of the kite, and not just one spot.\n\nI jumped through that quickly, if you have any follow-up questions I'd be more than happy to help!"
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8yzu7n | when youre intoxicated, why do your eyes stutter back and forth when following a pen during a field sobriety test? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yzu7n/eli5_when_youre_intoxicated_why_do_your_eyes/ | {
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" I don't know exactly how much info y'all want, so I'll do a tl;dr at the end. \n\nBrain signals that initiate muscle movement start in the cerebral cortex and move through the spinal cord to the muscles. While the nerve signals pass through this system ( specifically when they're in the medulla) they are molded by signals from the cerebellum. \n\nSo basically(generalizing here) the cerebellum controls fine muscle movement. Unfortunately, drinking alcohol increases ~~production~~ (correction: uptake) of GABA (a neurotransmitter which primarily has a sedative effect) in the brain. When there is an overabundance of GABA, the cerebellum doesn't function properly, and causes jerky, shaky fine motor movement. Your eyes are controlled by fine motor movement, and thus get the same effect.\n\nThis is also why you have a hard time touching your nose when you are drunk.\n\nTL;DR\nWhen you drink, the motor control center in your brain gets too much of a specific neurotransmitter, and does not function well.\n\n\nDisclaimer: the GABA inhibitor theory is only that, a theory. Alcohol may very well affect the cerebellum via different mechanisms. However, this is a widely accepted theory and is the best one we have right now.",
"A simpler version. That is a nystagmus test. When drunk the eyes bounce horizontally to the light, especially when extended to the hard right or left. If they bounce up to down that is an indication of PCP, I believe. For what it is worth (FWIW), it was a nystagmus test that stooped me from ever drinking and driving again.",
"Simply put when intoxicated you have reduced reaction time with your muscles. This includes the muscles in your eyes. Normally you can hold your eyes to the side perfectly fine for a period of time. However, our eyes want to be looking forward because it's no strain on the muscle, like flexing vs relaxed. When not intoxicated it is not a problem to keep your eyes looking to the side for a while. However, when I intoxicated you move your eyes to the side and they want to move back to center as normal. But with the delayed reaction time your eyes begin to bounce back to center before you catch it and put it back to the side. This creates what appears to be a small vibrating effect known as nystagmus. ",
"This happens when I'm tired and want to go to sleep, without any chemical intoxication. Hate it.",
"Horizontal nystagmus, your eyes involuntarily jutting back and forth, is usually associated with middle ear pathology. In your middle ear, there are semicircular canals that are filled with fluid and tiny crystals. The crystals floating up and down in the fluid signal head movement to your brain. When you drink enough alcohol, the specific gravity of the fluids in and out of this area changes, and causes that region to suggest to the rest of the body including your eyes, that you are moving when you are actually not. The eyes are moving back and forth to try to compensate. As a finer point of distinction, the eyes are typically not simply oscillating back and forth, but they are straying in one direction and snapping back to center. Interestingly, as alcohol wears off, it is common to have nystagmus in the opposite direction for a period of time as the body continues to adjust. By this I mean nystagmus may be left to right and then as you sober up, it may go right to left. For what it's worth, vertical nystagmus, which typically does not occur with alcohol consumption, is usually associated with cerebellar pathology.",
"One thing to realize is that many of the assessments administered during the FST were created when the legal limit was much higher, and the science back then supporting their usefulness even at higher BALs ought to be considered questionable by today's standards.\n\nSo the answer is it may not be useful at all in almost all cases of roadside tests, and it's certainly not useful at BALs close to 0.08."
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1q3ofk | why, as time goes on, do video players on the internet seem to be getting worse instead of better? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q3ofk/why_as_time_goes_on_do_video_players_on_the/ | {
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"For some reason, the people responding to you seem to think you said \"video game players\", when you actually said \"video players\".\n\nAnd video players are *not* getting worse. Do you remember RealPlayer? The whole \"buffering...\" thing was a running gag for *years*.",
"So video players used to really suck - largely because the network infrastructure sucked. \n\nAs someone mentioned, realplayer as an example. \n\nBack then the primary problem was being able to build reliable software at all, and having a network connection able to handle it\n\nThen we fixed those problems, and entered into the equation a new set of players: Lawyers. \n\nNow video players have to contend with ownership of the content. In the early 1990's the people who made movies etc. didn't care about the internet because it was too hard to pirate their content. Enter the last 2000's and suddenly people can make money on this internet video stuff, and they want to make sure they're getting ad money, and you aren't getting to watch for free. \n\nAdd to that one more technical complication. Formats. Over the years people have come up with a lot of different video and audio formats (I don't mean .avi or .mpg I mean they actual underlying codec), some of these are better than others, lots of them are proprietary. Making stuff work with all those codecs is a real PITA. \n\nSo what has happened is video players have ended up trying to control your experience so that you are appropriately monetized, and 20 years of people squabbling over formats has not done anyone any favours. ",
"They really haven't. Youtube is kinda the one that's sucking right now. Take a look at Vimeo's HTML5 player...it's actually pretty nice imho",
"Transferring something from one place to the other on the internet is not very expensive, but it adds up. Lets say that each video costs .01 cents to play. Sites like youtube and vimeo don't charge the viewer or the sender the .01 cents that the video play costs. Instead, they make the money from advertisers that show you pictures on the side or another, shorter, video before the one you want. This used to work out pretty well, and software was able to improve with better quality being the only goal. \n\nToday, sometimes people run ad blocking software, so they can watch a video without an advertiser being charged the .01 cents. Other people will click a video, and decide not to watch the whole thing after only a few seconds, and then the advertisers are upset that they don't get their money's worth. Because of that, advertisers are not willing to pay as much for advertising.\n\nVideos are also getting bigger. Longer, Higher quality videos cost more to deliver. Since advertisers are not willing to pay more for advertisements, sites have to do things to save money on their end. For example, some sites will only allow you to have 1/2 of the video until you have watched close to that much, and then they give you the rest. Other sites will limit how fast they give you the video, so they don't have to pay their internet hosting or providing company as much. \n\nTactics like these allow videos to stay free, but also means that free has to come at a price. Video players, especially ones that use new formats, are already about as good as they need to be and developers aren't trying to make them better anymore. Instead, they are making them in ways that save money."
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7c3s58 | how does biomimicry work? | All I know is biomimicry is copying nature when creating structures like cars and trains. How does it work and where are the applications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7c3s58/eli5how_does_biomimicry_work/ | {
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"Man builds technology. Man sees technology doesn't work as well as man wants it to work. Man sees animal doing what the technology does but better. Man makes new technology that's modeled after the animal and it fits man's standards now.\n\nBiomimicry is literally just making designs based on things found in nature, and it can be applied in literally any situation where something naturally occurring does something that humans want to be able to do too."
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5qqh1j | how do video game servers differ from web servers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qqh1j/eli5_how_do_video_game_servers_differ_from_web/ | {
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"Oh boy, something I can explain!\n\nGenerally, the two are very similar. (The software is the only difference) A server's job is to serve (hence the name *server*) content to a user that is asking for it, and receive and process input from the user.\n\nWith a game server, depending on the game, the server will often act as a middle hub that all the players connect to, and the server handles the game. There are many types of game servers, such as matchmaker servers, multiplayer or world hosting servers, etc. For a matchmaker server, the server receives a request from a user logging into the game to be placed into the queue, which it will process. Then, based on the method coded into the server, it will dispatch the player to a game server, one that actually hosts the game world. Again, this may differ between games, with some games having the server do very little, and some making the server the focus of everything. The method that these servers usually use to communicate with the game client is usually UDP.\n\nA web server serves the purpose of serving web services to users, such as web apps or websites. Web servers host the content, and give it to users that request it by visiting the web site. For example, when you go to Google, Google's servers will send you the Google search page. If you then search something, it will send that search back to Google's servers to be logged and processed, and then the server will return the results to you. Web servers often use HTTP(S) or in some rare cases FTP to communicate with users.\n\nAttempting to connect to a game server with a browser will likely result in you being unable to connect. In some cases, it will launch the game and connect to the server for you. (Some valve games can launch from the browser via a steam: link.)\n\nLet me know if you have any more questions.\n",
"They both have the same general kind of interface: people send data to the servers, the servers do some stuff, and then send some data back in response.\n\nThe actual specifics of what data is being transferred is different though. Web servers get requests like \"show me the page _URL_0_\", then do work to put together the resulting webpage (e.g., getting a list of the top N posts on reddit), and returning the result.\n\nVideo game servers get requests like \"I am moving forward\" or \"I am firing my weapon\" from different players, use this information to figure out what's happening in the game overall, and then respond with the actions of other players and how those actions affected the game."
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3vc6tw | why does the american government work off an electoral system instead of a direct democracy for all large decisions? | Certain decisions throughout the country's history have obviously been controversial and consistent topics for presidential debates (Should we go to war about X? Should Net Neutrality be a thing? Should gay people be allowed to marry? etc, etc). Why do these things never get put to true democratic votes instead of the republic/electoral voting systems that instead seem to be used? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vc6tw/eli5_why_does_the_american_government_work_off_an/ | {
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"Two reasons.\n\nFirst when elections began in the 1700s is would have been super difficult to have a direct vote. Your talking the logistics of collecting and counting thousands and thousands of ballots over months if not years. It would simply be impractical. So it was easier to have a local election, and then send a member to washington to cast a vote for your state.\n\nThe second reason was that people at the time where very simple. Largely farmers trying to carve out an existence in the New World, they were not versed in politics, government, world affairs etc. Frankly they were not seen as really being fit to make these kind of decisions. So the electoral college served as a buffer. The educated and informed members of the college could override the uneducated masses if need be.\n",
"The electoral college (if that's what you mean by electoral system) is only used to select the president.\n\nFor the direct democracy bit, there are a few reasons we don't do that. First, some things we consider rights that are too important to be subject to \"the tyranny of the majority.\" That would include things like gay marriage (as of earlier this year), desegregation, free speech, etc. We don't even let congress vote on these things becuase we consider them vital to individual liberty.\n\nThe second reason is that there is just way too much stuff that requires a lot of background knowledge to vote on. I keep up with politics and there's still a ton of stuff I don't know about, like funding for HUD or the VA to pick two random examples. Even congresspeople can't keep up with every issue, which is why they have committees in Congress. Citizens can't be expected to make good decisions on topics they know absolutely nothing about and there are far too many things that need to be voted on for us to expect a normal citizen to stay informed. Congress people also have access to classified information that can't be released to the general public becuase it's classified. We elect people we think will make good decisions based on all of the available information because keeping up with that information is more than a fulltime job.\n\nThe third reason is logistical. When would votes take place? That could severely affect the outcome of a vote. What about emergency votes? Does every minor issue get its own vote or do we wait until the end of the year to vote on everything? I don't want to have to go out to vote every time a federal judge needs to be confirmed, but leaving things to the end of the year results in a lot of delays. There's also the question of what we would be voting on. Congress doesn't vote on vague ideas for the most part. They vote on the text of bills, because that text is what courts are going to be looking at. And they fight over the text a lot. Would an average citizen have to read the whole text of every bill or have any way of requesting a change to the wording?\n\nPopular referendums on some issues can be good, but running a government involves a lot of tedious work and background knowledge that the vast majority of people don't have and won't be able to acquire.",
"Most people don't know enough about any of those questions to make an intelligent choice. Frankly, some of our congressmen don't know enough about all of those issues (not to mention the hundreds of other questions that come up each year). Each member of Congress has a staff of people to help them understand issues and constituent implications of each piece of legislation. There would be no way to provide that level of research to each American. Instead, whoever had the coolest commercial jingle would win. It would be much, much worse than the current system.",
"Because the founding-fathers favored a Constitutional Republic versus a Democracy. They certainly knew of Greek and Roman history and the problems that Democracies created. There was also a fear of \"the mob.\" Not the mafia, but the populace in general, in which those in the majority might pass laws, etc. making it legal to injure, ban, expel, etc. those in the minority. That's one of the reasons why we have a Senate, which was not originally directly elected and which is intended to be a more deliberative body than the House.\n\nAs far as the Electoral College is concerned, that was a bargain between the big and small states. The smaller states wouldn't have ratified the constitution without it, as big-ol VA and PA with their large populations (at the time) could have just teamed-up and decided who'd be president without the smaller states like DE or MD having a say.",
"First, we use the republic system because we are a republic, not a democracy. Article IV section 4 of the US Constitution states that \"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...\".\n\nSecond, direct democracy is too hard for a large country now, and it was way too hard for a low-tech country when the country was founded. When your method of gathering and counting the votes and then announcing the results involves a bunch of horses and some town criers, you don't want to take a whole lot of votes."
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1uq4w8 | why does weed in uruguay cost around $1 dollar a gram but in colorado it's more expensive than illegal weed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uq4w8/why_does_weed_in_uruguay_cost_around_1_dollar_a/ | {
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"Economic disparity, then taxes.",
"As others have said, market & tax...\n\nBut the price in Colorado will probably go down over time. Right now the demand is high (because it's new and exciting) and the supply side hasn't had enough time to catch up. Once supply catches up the cost to consumers will probably drop and then hold steady.",
"Because people in Uruguay have less money than people in Colorado. Basic supply and demand.\n\nIllegal weed is cheaper because the infrastructure for legal weed hasn't been developed yet. The cartels and gangs and whatever have been selling weed for decades, so everything is already in place and they've figured out their distribution and whatnot. Anytime a new business starts, there are a lot of additional costs while they streamline.\n\nIt's also risky for legitimate investors to put too much money in legal weed, because the legality is still a bit murky. The Obama administration has said that they'll leave states that want to legalize alone, but that promise doesn't carry over to whoever is President next. It's entirely possible that in a few years, the federal government will shut everything down, and it's not smart to invest in a business that could disappear in a few years. Risky investment, fewer investors, so they have to charge more to be profitable.\n\nI believe that Colorado also has rules about minimum prices for weed, just like they do with cigarettes or alcohol."
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3f4m75 | what does the moon have to do with our oceans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f4m75/eli5what_does_the_moon_have_to_do_with_our_oceans/ | {
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"Gravity. Depending on where the moon is, there's different strengths pulling on the tides from the moon. ",
"The moon is a big ball of mass that orbits our planet. Standard physics tells us that anything with mass will pull on other things with mass. So, the moon pulls on the Earth while the Earth pulls on the moon.\n\nYou don't notice this pulling effect on land because the land is rigid enough that it doesn't move. But, the oceans are fluid and so they will respond to the gravitational pull of the moon. As the Earth rotates the part of the ocean that is closest to the moon changes and so the part that bulges out towards the moon changes. This ocean bulging is what causes the tides."
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32cc0o | how come athletic records keep on getting broken? wouldn't humans reach a point where we couldn't exceed a certain physical limitation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32cc0o/eli5_how_come_athletic_records_keep_on_getting/ | {
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"No, humans are naturally better now than ever. Then consider the diet and fitness advances that have been made over the years. \n\n",
"Because the science of athletic performance is getting better. Better training techniques, better nutrition, better medicine, better equipment.\n\nThere are also social factors. A hundred years ago, even a gold medal sprinter could barely make a living at it. You either had to have a wealthy sponsor, or try to hold down a job and train in your spare time. Talented sprinter would give up the sport to pursue more lucrative careers. Today we have professional sprinters who can afford to hire coaches and trainers and do nothing but train and compete.\n\nThere is probably a point where humans will reach their physical limits...I doubt an 8 second 100m or a 3 minute mile is possible. But we don't know exactly where those limits are, and we certainly having reached them yet.",
"What /u/kouhoutek said... plus performance enhancing drugs. Look at the statistics for any pro sport- by and large, you'll notice a significant jump forward in the past few decades that is attributable to advanced technology and sports culture- and part of that technology and culture is doping. Complicated ethics aside, the athletes have simply been made physically superior compared to how they were before. \n\nSource: ex- Phys Ed major (totally unimpressive haha)"
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v5s1m | iraq war | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v5s1m/eli5_iraq_war/ | {
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"President George Bush purposely munipulated data so it would appear that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and was connected to Al-quada. He gave Saddam to relive of claim to Iraq or he would attack. Saddam did not leave, and the war started. It turned out it was not true, Colin Powell went on national T V and lied for President Bush. ",
"Americans HATE Communism. I would personally say that americans would go to war and see death of their friend's children than think that there are other people out there who are communists. We helped South Korea to stop Communism from spreading. We fought in Vietnam to stop Communism from spreading. China isn't really Communist, but it sort of is, and we are supporting South Korea again and China is supporting North Korea. This is a \"proxy war\"-the two big guys are represented by the little Koreas bickering.\n\nWell, when the Cold War was over, there wasn't much hate on Communism, because we didn't have any obvious enemies. But we had identified a negative stereotype: Arabs. You could look at an Arab and an American would say \"Oh, he's one of *them*.\" There was just an identification of dislike towards Arabs. And then, bam, 9/11.\n\n9/11 hit people personally. Anybody can say where they were when 9/11 happened. The problem is, 9/11 was brutal. 2000+ people died, that's a lot of people. If you don't know someone who died, you most likely know someone who does! And this hit home. People were afraid. When planes dropped out of the sky and killed people, you didn't want to go to work the next day, you were afraid the next one was hitting the city closest to you. Looking back, we know there were no more attacks, but the Americans then didn't know.\n\nWell, there is a lot of bias and debate that George Bush hated Arabs as much as most other Americans did. Whether he did or did not, Americans needed someone to point a finger at. 9/11 was done by a group called Al-Quaeda. Al-Quaeda was a group of plain terrorists. Terrorist is kind of a buzzword, so let's break it down. Al-Quadea literally wanted to scare a lot of people in order to make them see their point of view. Afghanistan kind of looked a blind eye towards Al-Quaeda and their friends, the Taliban. \n\nLet's say your friend gets drunk and you let them stay in your house. In a way, you're saying it's okay to get drunk, because you are supporting a drunk person. There's a lot more to it, like you are protecting other people by not letting the drunk man wander around, but in essence people thought it meant that Afghanistan said Al-Quaeda was correct. So we went to war in Afghanistan. Our goal wasn't to eradicate the place, but to look at the problem and solve it. Say, \"Hey, the reason Afghanistani children do XXX is because they're afraid for their lives and can't go to school.\" So Americans did things like build schools and train the police there to do a good job. The \"war\" is that the rebels living in Afghanistan sometimes try and kill the Americans that are building schools and saving children's lives. So we go to \"war\" in Afghanistan to help them.\n\nNow, weapons of mass destruction are scary. The generation who hated Arabs was also afraid of WMD (Weapons of mass destruction) because Russia very nearly destroyed us with them. So when they heard that Iraq MIGHT have some, and it was the hated Arabs, and their parents or siblings were killed by Al-Quaeda, they wanted to go and kill a lot of Arabs, capture the WMDs, and fly the American flag. That being said, we did it. The controversy was that President Bush supposedly said blatantly untrue lies to convince Americans to go to war in Iraq, when the Iraqis didn't really deserve it. The Iraqi War was more of a war than the Afghanistan one. Rather than building schools (which we did a little bit) there was more asskicking and searching for terrorists and deactivating bombs and all that war movie stuff. Now, the Iraq war is over, and the troops have returned after confirming the lack of WMDs and training the Iraqis to run their own Democracy.\n\nTL;DR - We went to find WMDs, which we had some idea might be there, but we're not sure if that was a lie. The War was fueled by anguish over 9/11 and anti-Arab feelings."
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y0i2g | anthroposophy | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y0i2g/eli5_anthroposophy/ | {
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"Here is the extremely simplified version: Just like *anthropology* is the study of man, *anthroposophy* is the study of man's knowledge.\n\nI went to a Waldorf school from grade 1-8, and my parents were pretty into this stuff (my dad has read almost all of Steiner's books - I don't know how he does it). I would be very interested if someone can actually ELI5 this.",
"Now that I've had time to read the Wikipedia page, here is my attempt to ELY5:\n\nAnthroposophists believe that there is a spiritual world, and they believe that you can study this spiritual world scientifically by thinking about it. Rudolf Steiner (the founder of the Anthroposophy movement) wrote down some steps to help you get into the right state of mind to think about and observe the spiritual realm.\n\nSome neat things about it:\n\n* Steiner believed that you should take a scientific approach to spirituality. In other words, don't just believe what some guy in a church tells you - think about it for yourself. And don't just think about it lightly - really take time to meditate on it and try to come to logical conclusions.\n* This scientific approach to meditation led him to argue in favour of things like biodynamic farming (a type of renewable organic farming that is good for the environment) and ethical banking practices.\n\nSome weird stuff about it:\n\n* Steiner believed that humans existed in the spiritual realm before the Earth was even created, and gradually (through a sort of spiritual evolution that happened at the same time as our physical evolution) the human spirit became more and more physical and now mostly rests in humans. Other animals are essentially \"devolved\" humans without certain key parts of the human spirit (like self awareness), but they do share other parts of it (like ego).\n* There is an entity referred to as \"Christ\" who is not necessarily the guy some people call Jesus, but is a sort of common God to all religions. This entity essentially represents everything that is \"good\" about the universe. There are also two entities that represent \"evil\" things, but as humans we need to have both the good and the evil in our lives because without the evil, technology and society wouldn't move forward. So we must strike a balance.\n"
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5qs5kx | if i always feel mentally and physically better after exercising, why do i still avoid it like a whiny toddler? | Motivation not correlating to effect is absolutely befuddling. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qs5kx/eli5if_i_always_feel_mentally_and_physically/ | {
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"Because you feel miserable while exercising and instinctively avoid that discomfort maybe?",
"It's hard. It is uncomfortable and sometimes down right hurts. Then hurts after. I struggle with the same thing. I try to do it first thing before anything else because I know I won't after work. I also try and pray/meditate before and clear my mind of those thoughts that fight me. ",
"I think it is a matter of motivating yourself further.\n\n[At this url,](_URL_1_) _URL_0_ lists motivational factors which are not situation specific.\n\n > achievement, advancement, autonomy, personal growth, recognition, responsibility, and the work itself.\n\nMaybe you've hit some points but not enough, so it's like a chore that you will do but dislike.\n\nAre you:\n\n* Considering each individual workout a success?\n* Working your way through a plan of action?\n* Doing this yourself, as opposed to having another person drive you to it?\n* Incorporating exercise as a part of your identity, dreams, and/or aspirations?\n* Getting the chance to share your accomplishments with a support system?\n* Feeling a duty to yourself to work out, and feel accountable if you miss it?\n* Enjoying your work outs?\n\nMy own answers aren't 'yes' to all of these now and I've gotten fatter and lazy. However, a year ago when I was running regularly and enjoying it, each answer was 'yes' and I saw great results. Maybe this helps you OP! :)",
"I always need a spotter/rival. I really enjoy it when it's social, but excercising alone is boring (I sound like a girl -_-)",
"Because you have to make the sacrifice of putting effort into doing exercising before you get the reward of feeling better.\n\nIt's a bit like an adult version of the famous marshmallow experiment. We often choose to take the immediate gratification of being lazy.",
"Because exercising for the sake of exercising is completely unnatural, and our brains resist it. We evolved to have a more active lifestyle than we do now in modern times; for 99.9% of human history nobody was running on treadmills. But they were plowing fields and picking turnips and milking cows all day, and that was more than enough physical activity to keep their bodies in shape (not to mention simply not having access to the ultra-calorie dense foods that we have now).\n\nWhen you think about running on a treadmill (or around the block), your brain and body both know damn well on a primal level that that's a completely fucking pointless activity, from the point of view of your immediate survival. Of course, we know it's not pointless in a more intellectual and long-term sense, but that's irrelevant to our impulses and emotions in the here and now. It's not a natural or organic activity that we have an immediate need to do, so we understandably resist doing it.\n\nIt's only relatively very recently that we have adopted this lifestyle where we sit at a computer 8-16 hours a day and don't need to do a whole lot of physical work to meet our basic survival needs. Making exercise for the sake of exercise a thing that makes sense. But again, it's not how we evolved so it only makes sense on an intellectual level. It's always going to go against your biological impulses."
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4clfd4 | certain institutions (the catholic church, british government, subway, etc.) seem to put an incredible amount of effort into covering up pedophiles in their ranks. why? what's the logic there? is there an argument for protecting sexual predators? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4clfd4/eli5_certain_institutions_the_catholic_church/ | {
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"In what way did Subway protect Jared Fogel? I never once heard them accused of that.",
"1. Sometimes the people being protected have influence and power and can command that protection and/or threaten to drag people down with them.\n\n2. Regardless of how they handle the situation, the organization takes a hit in terms of public perception. So basically they are balancing: \"cover it up and suffer no consequences now, but risk suffering BIG consequences if the cover up is revealed later\" against \"reveal it now and suffer moderate consequences now.\"\n\nAnd the thing is, what - really - are the bad consequences they've sufferred for the coverups? Has the Catholic Church actually suffered in a meaningful way? I don't see that they have.\n\nSo if being caught in a failed cover-up doesn't really mean anything bad, and a successful cover-up means they don't suffer anything anyway, then why wouldn't they try to cover it up?",
"This is usually about high-ranking people in said institutions. Uncovering such information about officials puts black spots on the entire institution. And in these organizations, at least in the Catholic Church as far as I know, we're not talking about a handful of cases, but quite many. So, the people involved kinda know about each other's \"things\" and will rather protect each other than rat each other out, in which case they all lose. And they might protect lower-ranking people in the institution for the same reasons.\n\nOn the flip side, whenever such a scandal story appears in the media, it's hard to tell based on the news reports whether it's a genuine case or just a case of the institution punishing the person involved because of some other \"mistake\" he made. Pedophile priests are so ingrained in popular culture by now that even without solid evidence, people tend to believe a story just because.",
"They are usually defending themselves. \"We are not guilty by association\" is mistaken by folks with an axe to grind as \"We think he didn't do it.\" That's not typically what they said. There is a preference to \"handle discipline internally\" which rubs folks who want to turn everything into a federal lawsuit the wrong way. The Catholics have a long history of that for many crimes, to manage an image of infallibility.",
" > Is there an argument FOR protecting sexual predators?\n\nThere are arguments, but not very good ones:\n\n* the mission of the church is to save souls from damnation, and any steps taking towards this goal, including protecting its reputation (plus inquisitions) is justified\n* priests are specifically targeted by Satan for corruption, and the best way to \"cure\" them is prayer and contemplation, not jail\n* the confessional seal is sacred must not be broken under any circumstances...even to reveal to people a priest is a sexual predator",
"Besides what everyone else has said, you also have to take into account the fact that societal understanding of child abuse is in its infancy. Widespread study and dialogue about such issues has only been around for five, maybe six decades if you are being generous. That may sound like a lot, but compared to other fields of study which have been around for centuries, it's basically nothing. The majority of these priests were/are old men who grew up with little to no knowledge about these things, or how to deal with them. When you combine that with the triple shame of priests breaking their vows of celibacy, homophobia (many victims were boys), and priests having the divinely-ordained power to absolve sins, you get something that is profoundly embarrassing and shameful for the church. \n\nThe PBS documentary series Frontline has three great documentaries on the Catholic church and sexual abuse. They are very hard to watch, but they provide a lot of insight on how and why the decision making and accountability process within the Catholic church's administration failed parishioners so badly. \n\n[1](_URL_0_) \n\n[2](_URL_2_) \n\n[3](_URL_1_)"
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/handofgod/",
"http://www.pbs.org/video/2365187642/",
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/"
]
] |
||
1lf3hr | why don't your palms grow hair? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lf3hr/eli5_why_dont_your_palms_grow_hair/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbylclh"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Animals evolved to not have hair on palms/soles of feet in order to have better traction for movement. Dogs, cats, primates, etc - all mammals have areas of hands/feet without hair.\n\nPrimate have broader palms instead of the pads you see on the feet of other mammals, so our entire palms are hair free for practical use."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
20t6c6 | if doctors can detect cancer through a blood test for "tumor markers", why isn't that a standard yearly checkup type of test? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20t6c6/eli5_if_doctors_can_detect_cancer_through_a_blood/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg6gyb6"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"There is always a false-positive rate with a test, and these false positives can cause more problems than the test solves.\n\nA good test like this might pick up 90% of persons with the cancer, but also trigger on 10% of people who do not. If the cancer only shows up in 0.1% of the population, then for every person that you detect with cancer, you'll also misdiagnose 111 persons without it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6xhro5 | why do our phones appear as if it can read our minds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xhro5/eli5_why_do_our_phones_appear_as_if_it_can_read/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmg0qne"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Your going to hate this answer because it shows how much privacy you don't have. \n\nCompanies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, pretty much every major site you go to or nearly every site in general, collects everything you do. They sell all nonpersonally identifiable information off to advertising companies. \n\nThese companies put all the data together. Oh yeah, your email address doesn't count as \"personally identifiable\".... So everything you do under Facebook gets sold off and the company makes a nice database where they can see everything you did or liked or what groups your part of. They can parse this data to find out your interests and give you ads related to it. Now every site does that, not just Facebook. \n\nIt's pretty terrifying. Opting out of these programs is so convoluted and the companies are constantly remaking themselves so they can always get your information again even if you opted out before. \n\nThis is just a basic glimpse though. Much more goes into it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5pudl2 | how does 20th century fox, universal, sony pictures and lionsgate own rights to some of marvel's characters in film even though marvel made those characters originally? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pudl2/eli5_how_does_20th_century_fox_universal_sony/ | {
"a_id": [
"dctx1wv",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Marvel sold movie and TV rights and such to a lot of their characters (such as Spider-man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four) many years ago when they were going through some troubles in their business. It helped keep them afloat, and increased their popularity, and frankly, Marvel wasn't doing much with regards to producing film/tv anyways, they sold them to people who could actually do something with their characters. Not a bad call at all.\n\nThey still retained rights to many other characters, such as Iron Man and Captain America.\n\nWhat happens in the future, if Fox and such keep those or if Marvel tries to buy them back, or they make some other type of agreement is unknown.",
"Marvel (back when it wasn't disney) had money problems so they sold the exclusive rights to produce movies with the characters in question. The catch was that the rights go back to marvel if the other companies do not use the rights for a set amount of time. That's why spider man got a new adaption after the first 3. That is also why Spiderman wasn't in the first avengers movies. Or why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch got completely fucked up by marvel. If Scarlet Witch would have been a mutant witch and daughter of Magneto (what she is) marvel could not have used her.",
"As mentioned already, Marvel sold the rights to various studios to get them out of financial trouble before they were making movies and television. However, a lot of characters remained with Marvel because at the time they weren't classed as \"big hitters\", heck Iron Man was classed as a \"b-list character\" when Marvel Studios first ventured into filmmaking and it all rested on that; had fans not loved Iron Man, Marvel Studios may have gone away because they just didn't have the big characters due to selling them off to other studios. Many characters and properties however naturally reverted back to their originator, Marvel, after their contracts expired with various studios (Daredevil, Blade, etc) because nothing was happening with them.\n\nBut just to delve a little deeper about retaining the characters, it's difficult for Marvel to get certain properties back whilst films are still being made.\n\nThere's a lot of talk about this supposed bad blood between Marvel and FOX, hence why there hasn't been a deal between Marvel and FOX to share their respective universes like Sony and Marvel have done for Spider-Man. However, I'm not actually sure if there is any bad blood at all - it boils down to a simple fact; the X-Universe may not crush it critically but they never fail to make profit from their films, so they have no reason to share their characters and stories with Marvel.\n\nWhereas Spider-Man, despite still making a profit, saw their profits starting to dwindle and critically since Spider-Man 2 haven't really wowed anybody. I mean, nobody really hated TASM but it wasn't universally loved either, and again with TASM2 - many people viewed it as a bit of a mess and repeated the same issues as the critically panned Spider-Man 3 (particularly with being over-stuffed with villains), and it grossed less than any Spidey film to-date. Sony had good links with Marvel anyway, so they made a business decision to get ahead of the dwindling enthusiasm by scrapping their universe and put Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which most will agree has consistently made big profits and pleased fans and critics alike. Let's also not forget the creative head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, used to work for Sony as an executive producer on Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. There was already an existing relationship there, despite being considered \"rivals\". It was always a fairly friendly rivalry there, to the point where Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker in the last The Amazing Spider-Man films) actually encouraged Sony to team up with Marvel before. Sony, like FOX, at the time felt they didn't need to and could form their own Spidey-centric universe. Only when profits dwindled and critics/fans started to lose enthusiasm, they got ahead of the curve.\n\nIn this case, Sony still own the rights entirely to Spidey and his characters, but Marvel (and Sony) now produce those films in an attempt to get Spidey back on track as a character with fans so Sony can reap the rewards, especially financially, but in turn, allowed Marvel to put Spidey in any film they wish within their own current roster. It's working out wonderfully for both studios involved.\n\nIt's made a lot of people say \"why on earth wouldn't FOX want to do this as well if it's working so well with Sony/Marvel?\" - simple answer is that FOX don't think they need to share, financially at the very least it's ticking the boxes just fine without the behemoth that Marvel Studios/Disney has become. It's become a LITTLE murkier with Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver being both owned by Marvel/FOX and that's why we've seen different iterations of Quicksilver, but that's a whole other thing.\n\nPersonal opinion; I'll be interested to see what happens with Fantastic Four; on both sets of films FOX have put out have been rushed out with the aim to retain the rights and stop them reverting back to Marvel. However, now Fantastic Four utterly bombed and it's not looking likely FOX will bother overly with it in the future, a deal maybe made with Marvel to revert the rights back to Marvel at some point in the future. FOX, if at all, won't let it go back to free - but who knows, a rights deal may be worked out. I know Marvel Studios own the TV rights to the X-Men on the small screen, so maybe a deal can be worked out where FOX swap the Fantastic Four rights for the X-Men TV show rights, which would benefit everyone as Marvel aren't going to do an X-Men show given they don't own the movie rights. It would just confuse the general audiences, so it'd make sense for both FOX and Marvel to do that deal - whether it'll happen though, I couldn't say with confidence that it'd ever happen."
]
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[],
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||
1l8f1t | eclipse's, and how the other side of the earth still receives light | If there is an eclipse, then the sun and the moon are on one side of the earth, but then why isn't the other side of the earth completely dark? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l8f1t/eli5_eclipses_and_how_the_other_side_of_the_earth/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbwya5l"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The other side of the earth during an eclipse IS completely dark. Due to the earth's rotation, at any one time half the planet is in daylight, half in darkness. By definition a solar eclipse can only happen during daylight hours, and therefore the other side of the world would currently be experiencing night time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1pjeym | when i transfer money to someone, the balance is immediately debited from my account, and three to five working days later it is credited to the beneficiary. where is my money during those 3-5 days? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pjeym/eli5_when_i_transfer_money_to_someone_the_balance/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd2xeda"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Working for the man. You are essentially loaning the bank the money during the interim period. They day-trade with everyone's float and keep the profits."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3metqu | why does it make sense for netflix to produce additional seasons of shows that were not continued elsewhere? ex: arrested development, black mirror, others | If it ceased to be profitable for the original producer, how is it profitable for Netflix to continue it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3metqu/eli5_why_does_it_make_sense_for_netflix_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cveenic",
"cvef1i4"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"I believe shows are not cancelled because they are not profitable necessarily, but because they are predicted to not be profitable in the future by using viewer counts. Netflix can toss some of their capitol towards continuing a show that already has a group of fans seems a much better gamble than a new show.",
"Take Arrested Development for example: while originally, it might not have been very worthwhile to continue the series, in its years off the air it developed a very large cult following, increasing the potential viewer base for new episodes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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|
4lmss3 | how does diversity enhance workplace productivity? | Diversity seems to be the craze these days at companies and colleges, but I never really understood the justification for it. I've heard that it actually makes the workplace more productive? Is this true, and if so, what ways are employees made more productive, and why?
EDIT: By diversity, I mean racial and gender diversity - what companies and colleges try to achieve through affirmative action. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lmss3/eli5_how_does_diversity_enhance_workplace/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3ojt83",
"d3ojtzt"
],
"score": [
13,
3
],
"text": [
"If everyone has the same ideas, you have a shallow pool of ideas from which to draw.\n\nIf you have people from lots of backgrounds (and I don't mean just racial) you have more chance of finding solutions your shallow pool would never have thought of.",
"It doesn't on its own. Most of the time companies are just filling hiring quotas.\n\nHow can it make te workplace more productive?\nWell you get different people working together towards one goal. Different people of different walks of life can lead to multitude of solutions and one good person in charge can blend those ideas into one working idea. It's a bit of disharmony but your hoping that it pays off in that you see all possibilities.\n\nIf everyone was the same, well it would be hard to come up with new ideas. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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|
1n3lht | how is it that cameras are so far ahead in technology when compared to televisions? | How is it that a movie like Star Wars from the 1970s or something similar can be released on Blu-Ray in such a high definition format - literally decades ahead of its time?
What is it about movie cameras in general that allow them to capture film that is years away from having anything to display it in its complete quality? Is it easier to make advances in filming that it is in display technologies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n3lht/eli5_how_is_it_that_cameras_are_so_far_ahead_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccf2efj"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Film was generally meant to be projected on a extremely large screen for wide screen performance. This allowed people to invest the time and money to create a light sensing service of appropriate quality to record the information for that display size. This was usually at great expense (Film is measure in the feet require to recorded something. 450 feet of film in 35mm is about 5 minutes. Which mean a feature film uses of a Mile of film)\n\nFilm that was used to record shows for television for instance is of inferior quality and will perform poorly when blown up to high definition. Also in certain time period video camera actually recorded superior quality Stand Definition pictures then the film Camera used for the same production (This was mostly due cost.) \n\nMonty python made fun of this in the sketch _URL_0_ ."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f-kfRREA8M&t=2m15s"
]
] |
|
2jjjpp | why was the citigroup and travelers merger allowed. even though it was illegal under the glass steagall act ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jjjpp/eli5_why_was_the_citigroup_and_travelers_merger/ | {
"a_id": [
"clcbdu4"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act was passed in late '99 and repealed the Glass-Steagall prohibitions on combinations of banks and insurance carriers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
36r2ud | why is david letterman so popular? | I never found the Late Show Funny. Am I missing something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36r2ud/eli5_why_is_david_letterman_so_popular/ | {
"a_id": [
"crgbq47"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Edit: Also try reading this:\n_URL_0_\n\nLike everything else, it's subjective. But here's my take on it, which is probably one that you'll hear from a lot of people who love him. \n\nYou have to remember the guy has been on the air for over 30 years. Google his first show from 1982 and try to put yourself there watching for the first time. And remember, in 1982 he's only 35 years old and has no idea he's taking the first step on what will be a tremendously successful and influential career. I grew up watching him and his humor and awkwardness just connected with me in a way I hadn't seen before. I didn't feel like I was watching a celebrity. I felt like I was watching a funny and talented guy who almost had no place being on TV. But here he was. Back then you'd watch Letterman and you'd have this feeling like you're watching something happen for the very first time. It's been a long time since I've watched something so original and spontaneous. I like Kimmel, Fallon, etc, but these are guys who grew up watching and emulating Dave. His influence is everywhere. To watch a modern day Letterman show and compare it to a modern day Fallon or Kimmel... You're just not doing the right math. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/david-letterman-year-one-20110929"
]
] |
|
1i3vnb | botox | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i3vnb/eli5_botox/ | {
"a_id": [
"cb156tr"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"[Botulism](_URL_0_) is a bacteria that releases a paralyzing chemical. If the bacteria grows out of control, it can cause fatal paralysis.\n\nThe paralyzing chemical takes effect for a long time - maybe a month. By killing the bacteria, they can collect this chemical and use it in a way doesn't spread to vital parts of the body. This medically-collected chemical is called Botox, and it appears to not cause any significant side-effects.\n\nA lot of people have undesirable facial features that are caused by muscle tension in the face, such as excessive squinting (think Clint Eastwood). Injecting these muscles with botox will relax the muscle and thus eliminate the visible tension.\n\nUsed appropriately, the results are a calm, relaxed look. In excess, it causes an expressionless blank look on the face.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism"
]
] |
||
5cyggi | can someone explain section 1688 of title ix in the us education amendments of 1972? | Section 1688: Neutrality with respect to abortion Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require or prohibit any person, or public or private entity, to provide or pay for any benefit or service, including the use of facilities, related to an abortion. Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit a penalty to be imposed on any person or individual because such person or individual is seeking or has received any benefit or service related to a legal abortion. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cyggi/eli5_can_someone_explain_section_1688_of_title_ix/ | {
"a_id": [
"da0cyy9"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It basically says that Title IX is unrelated to abortion. You can't use it to penalize anyone who has had an abortion, you can't use it to force a facility to allow itself to be used for performing abortions, and equally you can't use it to force a facility to not allow itself to be used for performing abortions."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
avkrzk | - why does heat help myalgia (muscular pain)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/avkrzk/eli5_why_does_heat_help_myalgia_muscular_pain/ | {
"a_id": [
"ehfvf2y"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Your nerves are bad at multitasking. If you add heat, they have to send a signal to the brain that there is something hot on your body. Temperature also have precendence over pain, hence a lot of your nerves will stop telling your brain about the pain since they are distracted telling it about the heat instead."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9xf8p7 | what happens between almost (but not fully) falling asleep that leaves you feeling rested? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xf8p7/eli5_what_happens_between_almost_but_not_fully/ | {
"a_id": [
"e9s6yyd",
"e9sx31m",
"e9t75l7"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
6
],
"text": [
"That is your body putting you directly through a sleep cycle, typically light non-rapid eye movement sleep. (NREM) Thats when the body's repair process starts to take place. The outside stimulus ",
"Your brain is attempting to enter its \"resting\" mode in which it remakes the hormones used during your waking hours. You get close enough to rest mode without falling asleep and those hormones start being produced without actual sleep",
"There's a lot of useless information your brain collects throughout the day - a random stain on a carpet, a buzzing sound coming from florescent lights, the smell of Indian food someone else is eating...\n\nDuring the first stages of sleep, your brain clears out all of this useless information and takes the important information and stores it in more permanent parts of your memory. So you wake up feeling more mentally clear and energized. \n\nIn other words, naps are awesome. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
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|
2a3x8f | why are lottery tickets not taxed? | I can buy a MegaMillions ticket for $1 and a Powerball ticket for $2. Those are the prices that are advertised, so why is the final cost not larger than that?
(Note: this question is referring to lottery tickets in the US) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a3x8f/eli5why_are_lottery_tickets_not_taxed/ | {
"a_id": [
"cir8sli",
"cir8t7o"
],
"score": [
8,
12
],
"text": [
"They are, the government is the people that sell them, most of the price is tax.",
"Because lottery tickets are all tax. The money goes to the state or states hosting the lottery. No sense to add sales tax. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4ejsgw | how can international trade be profitable for both countries? | If somebody is making money, doesn't it mean that somebody else is losing that money? I always get confused about how trading between countries can be so important for both sides. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ejsgw/eli5_how_can_international_trade_be_profitable/ | {
"a_id": [
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3,
3,
4,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"By trading goods the other doesn't have can be beneficial. One country could have resource X, while the other doesn't and has resource Y. Both trade and can then turn around and sell that if they desire. ",
"Trade is a voluntary transaction. If someone were losing money on the trade then they wouldn't have agreed to it in the first place. \n\nExample: Let's say Mary has an apple tree which can grow apples. Let's say there is also Johnny - he is very good at making wooden baskets. Mary has a lot of apples but she doesn't have anywhere to put them. Johnny is running into problems getting wood for his baskets. Marry and Johnny decide to make a deal - Mary will sell Apples and some wood to Johnny, while Johnny will sell baskets to Mary. Johnny is happy that he has apples and wood to make more baskets, while Marry is happy because she can put her apples into baskets. ",
"I'm Saudi Arabia. I have a crap ton of oil, and some sand. I want to buy wood to build with. Since no one wants the sand, I have oil, which is valuable, I'll sell that to the U.S. for dollars. Then I'll use those dollars I just earned to buy wood from Zaire. Before, I couldn't build things, which was bad for me. Now I can build things, which is better for me. I still have more oil so I can sell more the next time I need something else. \nBecause demand for oil was so high, many in the U.S. decided to do exactly what you say, they \"made it\" for themselves by fracking it. But that fracking has higher costs for me than just simple drilling costs the Saudis. They can afford to sell oil very cheaply, which makes it difficult for us to be in business. But we are good at making rap songs, so we will sell some of those to the Saudis to get some of our dollars back. We are good at creating rap songs and so we are successful in the market. We aren't as good at making oil, so the Saudis continue to sell theirs to us.",
"Trade is selling. If someone sells (or trades something) they usually do it at a price that is profitable and the buyer pays a price that is worthwhile for their needs. Countries themselves usually don't trade, the companies manufacturing goods are the ones doing the trading. Companies selling to foreign markets can represent billions in revenue and create/maintain millions of jobs. When someone makes money it doesn't mean that someone else is losing money. Wealth is not finite. Wealth and assets can be created within an economy when people produce goods and provide services as long as there is a market that has people working and producing income to spend on those same goods and services. I'm afraid that the concept that if someone makes money it means that someone is losing money comes from anti-capitalistic ideologies which believe that wealth is limited so if someone makes money or wealth that means someone else loses it. Most people without a political agenda would say that this is most definitely not the case.",
"Value is relative.\n\nYour country in on the plains and grows lots of food.\n\nMy country is in the mountains and mines lots of minerals.\n\nFood is more valuable to me than it is to you.\n\nMinerals are more valuable to you than they are to me.\n\nSo we trade food for minerals, and we both have more value than we did before.",
"The idea is that when you have free trade, each country can then specialise in making what it makes best (i.e. most efficiently) and swap some of these things for other items they are not as good at making. Since everyone is making what they are best at, there is much more of everything to go around, compared to when every country has to produce everything they need for themselves without trading."
]
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1st0pp | when we drink the juice of a fruit, what are we drinking? what does the juice do for the plant? | It must serve some kind of function other than being delicious. Is it the floral equivalent of blood? Does it contain the nutrients the flower requires to survive? How does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1st0pp/eli5_when_we_drink_the_juice_of_a_fruit_what_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"ce0xc11",
"ce0yo1b"
],
"score": [
12,
2
],
"text": [
"Fruits are usually bait. The plant puts sugar and water in it to tempt some animal to come along and eat the fruit. In exchange for this food, the animal then distributes the seeds from that fruit elsewhere allowing the plant to spread. ",
"The fruit tastes good so you eat it. The plant is trying to get you to eat the fruit with its promised goodness. Good fruit gets eaten often and the seeds survive the digestive process and are ready to grow into more fruit trees when you poo. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
d487rg | after a boil order has been lifted, how are things like a hot water heater or ice machine ever really "clean" or not contaminated again? | Just seems weird to me because contaminated water and clean water does not equal clean water | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d487rg/eli5_after_a_boil_order_has_been_lifted_how_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"f08n7wn",
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"score": [
2,
4
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"text": [
"If the lines in them are clean flushing them once or twice is really about all you need tot do to be safe. Usually a breach in a municipal water system doesn't introduce a huge amount of biological contamination, so after it's been fixed and allowed to flow any contaminants are reduced to a safe level very quickly.\n\nChlorinated municipal water isn't a very bacteria friendly environment to start with.",
"If there's been a boil water advisory, you should really toss any ice in your fridge's ice maker and at very least run it through a few cycles before using any ice, once that advisory is lifted. Though they should be cleaned out properly every now and then. There's guides online for doing this. Restaurants have a bit of a reputation for being lax on this, but they won't want to risk contamination during these events. \n\nHome hot water heaters usually run a bit too hot for pathogen growth. Again just cycle the water through. You could always do a tank flush though. Which is generally recommended anyway at least annually to extend the life of the tank. In the past though, contaminants did get into them. Which is why in Europe you see a lot of homes with separate taps for hot and cold. \n\nIt all really depends on the level of contamination. A lot of times it's just someone's struck a watermain, some soil may have got in the line, and they're just being cautious. So it's best to follow what your municipality suggests in those situations."
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39ll2n | shouldn't antibacterial soaps *reduce* the spread of resistant bacteria by reducing the likelihood that such a mutation will occur? | This is a question that has been bothering me for a long time, and while the search function gave me a LOT of questions related to antibacterial soaps and sanitizers, I didn't see an answer to this question specifically.
When we talk about the dangers of overuse of hand sanitizer and other [triclosan](_URL_0_) products, the typical ELI5 is that we're "breeding" bacteria that are resistant, and that these bacteria are mutating to not be killed by these products.
But that's not how mutation works, afaik. Mutation is a random process. It happens so quickly and frequently in bacteria simply because they reproduce so quickly and frequently. What I would figure is that if one were to take two genetically similar samples of bacteria, add triclosan to one, and let both samples grow for a while, you'd be MORE likely to see triclosan resistant bacteria in the control sample, just because of the more frequent reproduction. The triclosan in the experimental sample would have killed off much of the bacteria, and while most of what's left is probably triclosan-resistant, you're still left with less triclosan-resistant bacteria, anyway.
What about this hypothesis is incorrect, or what other factor am I missing? Thanks for the help!
EDIT: Good heavens, I leave the room to use the restroom, and when I come back there are a ton of excellent answers waiting for me! Thanks, ELI5! (Also, I probably shouldn't have used that antibacterial soap...) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39ll2n/eli5_shouldnt_antibacterial_soaps_reduce_the/ | {
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"Suppose you have a lake that has a stable population of fish. 99% of the fish are species A and only 1% are species B.\n\nYou come back next year and measure the proportions, what do you expect to find? Something very similar. The fish population isn't growing because there is no more food for them to eat... excess population dies, and does so fairly evenly across the two populations so it remains 99% A and 1% B.\n\nNow you kill every single one of the A fish, and now the lake is completely empty except for the B fish. What happens to the B fish? A population explosion. Lots of food, lots of space, no competition.\n\n------------\n\nSame thing happens with the bacteria. You kill all the innocuous bacteria on your hands and leave a vast fertile environment for the resistant bacteria to spread into.",
" > What about this hypothesis is incorrect, or what other factor am I missing? \n\nCompetition. While you are right that more mutations occur in the control sample, if there isn't triclosan, then there isn't a particular benefit to being triclosan resistant. They are competing against all their other, not-resistant cousins, who are eating up some of their food, and potentially spreading and giving non-resistant illnesses elsewhere.\n\nWhen you introduce your germ-killer, you wipe out everyone but the resistant guys. Then the resistant guys get *all* of the food to themselves, and they're going to reproduce, and quite potentially have resistant kids, who will go and make other people sick with resistant illnesses.",
"You may remember that these products tend to have labels like \"Kills 99.9% of bacteria.\" That 0.1% (which is still A LOT of bacteria) tends to be the bacteria that are more resistant to the soap. Those more resistant bacteria then divide and recolonize the space. So now you have a bunch of bacteria that are resistant to the soap whereas before you didn't. This is, basically, how bacterial resistance to things works. Anytime we use these products, particularly when we use them haphazardly (such as not taking your full regimen of antibiotics when they're prescribed) you're leaving behind a small population of bacteria that is more resistant. If the use of these products is widespread, the non-resistant bacteria will die out but the resistant ones will just colonize in their place. In order to preserve the effectiveness of these tools we must use them sparingly and carefully.",
"You might see _a_ resistant bacterium in the other sample. But in the triclosan sample, you'll see almost entirely resistant bacteria, which then multiply up to the carrying capacity of the environment again. Bacteria are typically limited by resources, not by their reproductive rates. \n\nWhat's important here is not the *occurrence* of a mutation, but its spread through the population through selection. In an environment without the selective pressure to be resistant, the pressure is to *not* be resistant: resistance has a 'cost' that isn't worth paying unless it's of some value.",
"What happens is triclosan resistance would spring up randomly. The thing is triclosan resistance confers no survival advantage to the undosed population. The dosed population on the other hand has everything *but* the triclosan resistant bacteria die. So now *only* triclosan resistance bacteria are left, they replicate and now instead of having ~1% of the population randomly be resistant, ~99% are resistant, because we applied a selection pressure that selects for triclosan resistance. In the undosed sample the resistant members have no advantage and are just as likely to die as any other. In the dosed sample *only* the resistant members survive, and they go on to reporduce.",
"Mutations are rarely all good or all bad.\n\nA mutation that makes bacteria more resistant likely also makes it worse at something...reproduces less quickly, survives for a shorter time in air, etc.\n\nThe regular bacteria out compete them, and keep their numbers low, so long as their resistance doesn't give them an advantage. But in the presence of an anti-bacteria, they thrive, then compete against each other, and have an opportunity to evolve better traits as well, including the ones they may have been deficient at.",
"First, you are right in a sense. Killing 99% of a population reduces the overall chances of mutations, since there are fewer opportunities for mutations. \n\nBut, what you're missing is two fold: First, without the tricolsan there's no selection pressure to have the mutation. Being immune to triclosan is meaningless in a no-triclosan environment. Thus, it is not conserved, and not selected for. \n\nSo, even if one out of every 10,000 bacteria will get that mutation at random, it's irrelevant. The mutation is likely to disappear in future mutations (since there's no survival advantage to having it) or, even if it does stick around, there's no reason to expect the bacteria that have it to do better or worse than other bacteria. Sure, they could just do better by chance, but that's unlikely. \n\nThe second missing factor is that evolution isn't really about the individual, it's about the change in the frequency of a gene in the population over time. Right now, say 1 out of every 10,000 (or 10,000,000,000 or whatever)of some bacteria population has---randomly---the mutation for immunity. As above, there's no particular reason to think that provides any sort of survival advantage. \n\nBut, now, say I kill 99% of the bacteria in my 10,000. I redo the calculation on the corpses of the 9900 dead bacteria and what do I find? Now, the triclosan-immunity gene has gone from 1/10,000th of the population to 1/100 (since I know that bacteria didn't die). \n\nIf I wash my hands again in a few hours, when the population has gotten back to 10,000 (but now there are ~100 immune bacteria, since we can say they roughly kept the same share of the population while growing), I kill 99% but now Almost all of the surviving 100 are going to be triclosan immune. Boom, evolution. \n\nEDIT: also, kudos for using the search and taking time to formulate a clear question. \n",
"Imagine you have a rom of puppies that can multiply exponentially and asexually (double their numbers in a day). Cute little things, can bite, but not too bad. If we leave them alone, chances are that in a week we'll have a ton of farily weak puppies to deal with. \n\nNow we go to the room and we set it on fire. of the puppies, 99% dies and we have 3 puppies left with very burned skin. They survived becasue they had a random mutation that made their skin thicker. A week goes by and we have about 200 thick skinned puppies. Now we decide to throw a grenade in there. \n\nwell darn, those puppies are tough. we killed near 99% again but left 2 puppies who had randomly mutated. They had developed a much thicker skin, sort of like an armadillo. Well we leave the room for another week and come back to about 100 of these armoured puppies. We could go on but you see that the puppies who remain are now stronger than the ones we started with. We eliminated the weak ones and only allowed the strong to reproduce, leading to a stronger population. \n\n*^no ^puppies ^were ^harmed ^in ^this ^experiment^, ^^only ^^killed*"
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ats7a2 | what is the point of wi-fi calling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ats7a2/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_wifi_calling/ | {
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"Call quality. Theoretically you’ll get better voice quality over your ISPs data network than your cell providers voice network.",
"Cost, if you’re international and don’t have a solid or free international plan you will be calling for free ",
"In addition to improved quality because of bandwidth, reduced cost because of per minute billing, there’s also better coverage as WiFi often does better in buildings than cellular might.",
"I used to live & work in a place that did not have cell service at all. It only even got internet the year I moved there, because it was in the mountains. So wifi calling came in handy."
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3w82p4 | if an anchor can keep a ship from floating away, how can the anchor be pulled back up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w82p4/eli5_if_an_anchor_can_keep_a_ship_from_floating/ | {
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"Most of the work of the anchor is actually the heavy anchor chain. It sits on the bottom for many feet as a long weight. The anchor (at the end of the chain) just adds a little extra grab on the bottom so the anchor chain doesn't drag.\n\nThe amount of chain you put out is typically measured in terms of several times the depth so you can get enough chain sitting on the bottom. In still current and air, 3:1 is ok. In bad weather, 7:1 is better. To bring up the anchor, you just pull up the chain and the ship moves to be directly above the actual anchor, which causes it to release from the bottom.",
"Imagine you're in water shallow enough to stand in, but deep enough to swim in. If you're standing, your feet keep you from drifting. But you can still pull your feet off the bottom and float.\n\nSame basic phenomenon. The entire *system* is buoyant, but part of it can still be pushed against the bottom with enough force to keep the system from drifting.\n\nEDIT because I'm being contradicted: This is obviously an ELI5 simplification. OP's basic question is \"how it is possible to lift the anchor?\" The answer is ultimately, \"because the ship is sufficiently buoyant to lift the anchor\". \n\nThe secondary question is \"given that the system is sufficiently buoyant to lift the anchor, how can the anchor possibly generate drag against the seafloor to stop the ship drifting?\" The most basic answer is \"because when the anchor is on the seafloor, its weight is not counteracted by the buoyancy of the system\".\n\nIf OP wanted a precise explanation using second-year statics, then s/he is in the wrong place.",
"/u/yes_its_him has said it already, but maybe not as clear as possible. The anchor can only hold the ship when the pull on it is horizontal. It is a common misconception that you simply drop the anchor to the seabed and as soon as it touches rock it holds the ship -- that is not true. You need to pay out enough line or chain for the pull on the anchor to be horizontal, only then will the anchor dig into the ground. When /u/Forestman88 said most of the work was done by the heavy chain, that is not true! You can even anchor with floating lines, it is still the anchor that will hold your ship. If the line is long enough it will straighten to near horizontal as soon as any pull is on it. However, using a weighted line or a chain means you need less length to force the line/chain to horizontal.\n\nIt should be clear that the more pull there is on your anchor (i.e. the more wind and/or current), the longer your line or chain needs to be for there to be enough slack in it, but a rule of thumb is you need 3 to 5 times water depth when using chain, and 7 to 10 times depths when using an anchor line.\n\n[This website](_URL_1_) has some more info and some drawings of anchors digging into the ground.\n\nNow, if you pull your line/chain back in, the angle will eventually be vertical, the anchor will literally break out of the ground and you can pull it up just like that (as in [this picture](_URL_0_)).",
"When enough of the anchor line is let out (and the boat is good distance away from the anchor), the pull on the anchor is mostly horizontal - pulling on the line would cause the anchor to slide across the floor, creating drag and friction. \n\nOnce you've pulled most of the line/chain in, the boat is above the anchor so pulling the chain just lifts the anchor straight up, no longer dragging across the bottom.",
"I worked in a shop that repaired and sold anchor chain. The biggest chain cannot hold a ship against all forces, it is limited by the drag the anchor can place on the bottom 'soil' and that may be mud, hard rock, gravel and the like. So the holding ground supplies one important limit after the scope is correct to place the anchor in the best grabbing angle. After that the design of the anchor for the ground is important. Adfmiralty standard, plough, mushroom and other patented anchors use design more than weight for holding power. \n\n(edit) Scope is the length of chain or cable let out for the anchor to allow the ship to swing freely to the tide and other stuff, usually between 3 and seven times the depth of water. Some places have very high tides like the Bay of Fundy where five fathoms (30 feet) of tide rise and fall twice daily. \"Give her enough scope.\"\n\nAt best the anchor can hold a ship against her wind resistance and drift potential under most circumstances. Which is why many ship captains would rather be far out to sea with plenty of lee way to ride out a storm rather than the risk of dragging the anchor and attached ship ashore. At the time, (1975) the strongest anchor chain we could actually test by pulling on it to stretch it was about 230,000 pounds tension. Each link was about 100 kg (220 pounds) and about three feet long.",
"Anchors are made to hold strongly when pulled sideways. The Pointy things (flukes) stick into to bottom of the sea. So that's how it keeps a ship from floating away - ship is moving sideways. \nBut anchors are also designed to hold weakly when pulled vertically - so that way it can be pulled \"up.\" ",
"There is one thing I would like to point out about anchors and that’s there are several different types. Which type of anchor you are using determines how you can remove it from the seabed. In movies and tattoos anchors are depicted as a hook type device. This is called a kedge anchor and is only used today in very limited applications. A kedge anchor is removed from the seabed by nothing more then muscle. \n\nTimes have changed and we got better at understanding how to stay put in the water. Along came the Danforth anchor. The key here is angle. When glancing at a properly anchored boat you will notice the angle of the anchor line, or as we like to call it the rode. When the boat is less then, let’s say about 60 degrees the Danforth anchor works like a farmers plow. The pulling of the rode will cause the anchor to dig deeper and deeper into the sea floor. As mentioned above, yes the chain on the end of the rode does a lot of work here. The chain gives weight to the rode and changes the angle in which it pulls on the anchor. The heaver the boat the heavier you want that chain. 30 dresses or under is ideal angle you want the chain to pull on the anchor. \n\nNow on to removing the anchor. As we said before it’s all about that angle. So to remove the anchor you position the boat on top of the anchor. You can do this one of two ways. By hand, just pull that rode until you pull to boat on top of your anchorage. Or, just motor on top of it. Then you just pull that line straight up. What will happen is not only will the anchor be unable to dig it self any deeper but it will back itself out on the path it already dug. The only force you (or your wench) will have to exert if the weight of the anchor and chain. \n\nIt is worth mentioning there are a few other types of anchors, such as a mushroom anchor. These work a little different, but I don’t want to get into it because they are almost never used. Oh and there’s also a thing called a sea anchor. That’s a fun one. \n\nedit: words\n",
"If the ship was anchored for more than 24 hours, then the eventual pull to the ship would probably be catastrophic.\n\nFun fact: it's not the anchor that keeps a ship anchored and stationary but the weight and length of the chain on the ocean floor.\n\nA ship usually lays out a length of chain 5-7 times the depth of water. So if the water is 50 feet deep at anchorage, which seems possible for a cruise ship, the length of chain let out would be 250-350 ft. Subtract around 50 feet for the travel from sea floor to ship and you have 200-300 feet of chain on the ocean floor.\n\nNow in response to the tide, current and wind, every ship slowly rotates 360 degrees around the anchor at least once every 24 hours, dragging the chain along the ocean floor in a circle as it rotates. So if the water depth is 50ft, the chain is swinging around in a 500ft-700ft diameter circle. That means there is potentially up to 8 acres of damaged to the ship's chains.\n\nand EACH link is between 200-300 pounds.\n\n........"
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3tr5r9 | what does "70mm" mean in film, and why are people excited about it? | So I saw a bunch of comments fawning over having the chance to watch *Hateful Eight* "in 70mm" when it comes out.
Does this mean a special kind of camera? What (if anything) makes it an improvement over the current standard? What even is the current standard? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tr5r9/eli5_what_does_70mm_mean_in_film_and_why_are/ | {
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"\"70mm\" means that the film on which the image was collected and later projected is itself is 70mm wide. Think of older cameras that used 35mm film as a standard, but up this to 70mm and apply it to cinema.\n\nThe reason 70mm film gets people excited is that the film allows for greater image resolution. Larger format films spread the image over a wider area, which allows for more detail to be collected by the pigments (or silver, for black and white) in the film. This gives a better final image. This is why lots of portrait studios used to use large format cameras since they generally give better images for the same film stock, and smaller size and subsequent \"movability\" was not necessary. If memory serves, 70mm can give films a really wide aspect ratio without loss of image quality. This allows you to do really epic film-making in a style along the lines of Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur and the like.",
"It's the width of the film. The 70mm film has almost 4 times the surface area of 35mm film. With film grain as the resolution limiting factor in the image, you get the equivalent of 4 times as many \"pixels\". (Which is not an excellent analogy film experts, but it's ELI5.)"
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9b91ov | nasa's parker solar probe has radiators, how do these radiators radiate heat in a vacuum? thank you. | & #x200B; | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9b91ov/eli5_nasas_parker_solar_probe_has_radiators_how/ | {
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"Well, by radiation. \n\nThere are 3 methods of heat transfer - conduction (by touch), by convection (through a moving fluid - think of a cool breeze), and radiation - by emitting light. \n\nAny object with a temperature over absolute zero emits radiation - but for most objects it’s infrared and invisible to our eyes. \n\nBut it is how thermal cameras can see you in the dark. ",
"Radiation does not require a medium. An object can radiate in space, just as light from the sun can reach the earth. "
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95xc4p | how did the conflict between saudi arabia and canada start; what is the timeline of events? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95xc4p/eli5_how_did_the_conflict_between_saudi_arabia/ | {
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"Saudi Arabian government sucks at being good to their people. They are chock full of shitty human rights violations. This has been going on for years. \n\nDemonstrators got arrested and then the Canadian government twitter account posted this on Friday August 3rd:\n\n > Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights activists in #SaudiArabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful #humanrights activists.\n\nSamar Badawi's family was given Canadian citizenship because they were escaping death threats in Saudi Arabia.\n\nThe Saudi government doesn't take kindly to any kind of criticism so they went overboard and started a pissing contest where they are the only ones playing. Throwing out shit left and right.\n\nThen they kicked the Canadian ambassador out of the country and cancelled all the visas for students enrolled at Canadian schools and Saudis getting medical treatment at Canadian hospitals. They also stopped their state airline from flying to or from Canada.\n\nIf you want to do a bit more reading for the details, [this](_URL_0_) is a great explanation of everything.\n\n"
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2z98e5 | why doesn't dubai have taxes? | You'd think that with all the billionaires/millionaires living there a 2% yearly tax can't hurt too bad, right? Am I missing something? Is there a good explanation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z98e5/eli5_why_doesnt_dubai_have_taxes/ | {
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"Because they don't need it. The government makes enough money off of selling the country's oil to do everything that they want to do.",
"Same reason Texas doesn't have a state income tax. The other income taxes for corporations and oil make up for jt"
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4l6ev0 | why is it harder to identify a song before you get the rhythm? | Whether it's playing in another room, there are machines blasting, or it's just warbled (Noise distorted), a song can sound completely different before you catch the beat. You might even confuse the words of a song you know! Afterwards though, even moving around you're more likely to follow along. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l6ev0/eli5_why_is_it_harder_to_identify_a_song_before/ | {
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"Music is nothing more than organized sound. If your mind cannot perceive the organization (i.e., the downbeat, the tonality), your mind will not perceive it as music, just noise.",
"As a musician myself, this only happens very very infrequently. The times it's happened, it's been when the music came on abruptly, or as you said if there are some distracting noises around. \n\nAs ulysses said, you have to perceive the organization of the music.\n\nIf you know anything about music, you know that every song has a \"time signature\". Most pop songs are in 4/4 time.. As in you count: 1, 2, 3, 4, over and over. \n\nIf you start listening to a song abruptly, and the first second you listen to the song is on the 3rd beat of a measure, the song is going to initially sound strange because we expect things to start on the 1st beat. So it will take a few seconds before you organize the beat in your head and figure out what is going on.\n\nA functional equivalent might be if you heard somebody talking but every 3rd word was omitted, you might not be able to understand what they were saying."
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j9o0q | why do we think we sound better when singing than we really are? | I know I suck at singing, but only after recording myself. Problem is, in my head, I think I sound good.
Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j9o0q/eli5_why_do_we_think_we_sound_better_when_singing/ | {
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"Because of how we hear our own voice is actually not like how others hear your voice. Your voice sounds different to you than to others.\n\nThe voice originates in you and the sound going out from your mouth doesn't go straight to your ears, but by bouncing a lot. Not all sound actually goes out of your mouth, it also makes your mouth vibrate, which makes your head vibrate, and then the stuff you hear with vibrates and you hear the sound.\n\nSound is actually just vibration of material, be it air or your head. Your head vibrates differently from air, because they are different materials. Water also vibrates differently, which makes sounds in water sound funny. Also, this is why there is no sound in space, because there is no material (air) which would vibrate so that the sound from place A would go to place B.",
"When you sing, the music comes from your throat, and some of it goes out of your mouth, but some of it goes into your ears instead. Have you ever talked to someone on a telephone made from two cans and a string? Their voice sounds funny, and so does yours. The same thing happens in your head when the music goes from your throat to your ears. The music bounces around, and some of it, including some bad parts, go away, and other parts change a little. It doesn't sound funny to you, though, because you are used to it. When you listen to your singing on a tape or from a computer, you hear it like other people do. It is like listening to someone who is in front of you, instead of on a can phone.",
"Because of how we hear our own voice is actually not like how others hear your voice. Your voice sounds different to you than to others.\n\nThe voice originates in you and the sound going out from your mouth doesn't go straight to your ears, but by bouncing a lot. Not all sound actually goes out of your mouth, it also makes your mouth vibrate, which makes your head vibrate, and then the stuff you hear with vibrates and you hear the sound.\n\nSound is actually just vibration of material, be it air or your head. Your head vibrates differently from air, because they are different materials. Water also vibrates differently, which makes sounds in water sound funny. Also, this is why there is no sound in space, because there is no material (air) which would vibrate so that the sound from place A would go to place B.",
"When you sing, the music comes from your throat, and some of it goes out of your mouth, but some of it goes into your ears instead. Have you ever talked to someone on a telephone made from two cans and a string? Their voice sounds funny, and so does yours. The same thing happens in your head when the music goes from your throat to your ears. The music bounces around, and some of it, including some bad parts, go away, and other parts change a little. It doesn't sound funny to you, though, because you are used to it. When you listen to your singing on a tape or from a computer, you hear it like other people do. It is like listening to someone who is in front of you, instead of on a can phone."
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39sptl | if exercise makes us healthier, why does it suck so much? | Shouldn't evolution have made exercise feeling great, since it makes us healthier and therefore more likely to survive longer? But instead I think exercise is so boring and shitty that I am neglecting it, probably leading to my downfall.. How come? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39sptl/eli5_if_exercise_makes_us_healthier_why_does_it/ | {
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"Actually exercise does have some ways in which your body encourages it. After exercising, the body releases endorphins which lift one's mood. I know that after exercise I feel great, whether it is because of endorphins or that I am improving myself.\n\nAlso, Humans may have not needed exercise long enough to create this adaptation, remember it's only been recently that humans have been eating they way they are now, and weight as been a problem. (Recently in the grand scheme of things).\n\n\n",
"Needing exericse is a new development. Formerly you'd just be forced to do it. Want to eat? Then you get to spend hours foraging bushes, running after a deer until it dies from exhaustion, or in more modern times, tilling the soil.\n\nFor that matter, it doesn't suck if you do it right. You need two things for it to stop sucking: find the right form of exercise and get good at it.\n\nI for instance never liked running much, and always hated team sports. Then I suddenly figured out I enjoy weight lifting. It's monotonous looking, but it's challenging enough, you never do the same thing for very long (unlike with running), and visible improvements come very quickly.\n\nThings typically suck until you reach the point where you're good enough to keep doing it for long enough. For instance if you start playing soccer, at the start you won't be able to keep up. You'll be in a state of constant exhaustion, and that is not fun. But once you can get through a game it will be a lot more fun, because you'll start being able to make a meaningful contribution to your team, rather than dragging it down. The problem is getting there, but once you do, things get much better."
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9elr7t | what are the odds of you being born? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9elr7t/eli5_what_are_the_odds_of_you_being_born/ | {
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"There are thousands of sperm cells and thousands of egg cells, but the chances that \"My sperm and egg cells\" ended up being the two that made me are irrelevant because if that one sperm wasn't first, it would have been a different one. Having the high numbers increases chance of reproduction, which is an evolutionary advantage, so lots of mammals do this. The exact chance that *your* two ended up together is low, but think of it like this:\n\nYou have a bag of 25 dice, each with 30 sides. One is red, one is blue, and the rest are white. Roll them all. It might take a few throws for the red and blue to roll the same number, but generally, each throw will usually have two of *any* dice that show the same number.\n\nYou being born isn't \"lucky\" because of the chances. *Someone* was going to be born. This is like going yo the beach and picking up a grain of sand. \"Wow! What are the chances that I got this *exact* grain?\" Astronomically low, but you could say the same for any grain you pick up, making the whole argument irrelevant"
]
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3s9rfr | why do cars not have fail-safes that prevent the battery draining to a point where the car won't start? | It seems like such an obvious and simple measure that doesn't exist... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s9rfr/eli5_why_do_cars_not_have_failsafes_that_prevent/ | {
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"Many modern cars do they will turn off the lights and 12V outlets some time after the AUX is turned off.\n\nOlder cars tend not to. My 2007 Focus didn't. The 12V would run all the time which is why I got a switch and just turned shit off myself.\n\nFun story, I once was on my nightly walk with the mrs and the pup and noticed a GPS on in a car that was long since off. I went up to the house and knocked on the door, took a couple of mins for someone to show up. I explained what I saw and they looked at me like I was an alien. I just said have a nice night and walked off. They came out and turned it off but the looks man ... like \"what you mean battery no run forever?\" type looks",
"Lead-acid batteries have not changed in over 80 years. They were chosen because they were cheaper than alternatives. The downsides are that they don't hold a charge as long. It does not matter that much because the car is able to recharge it while running. \n\nNow to get to your question. Batteries do not discharge linearly. You can't just measure the voltage and current and say it has xx amount of time left on it. It will drop off, and it vary from battery to battery. The best that one could do is come up with a profile for the battery after testing several battery to create an estimation. This adds cost to the design of the battery. Why bother adding extra cost if you are choosing the lead acid battery for its cheapness.\n\nHere is a model for measuring lead acid batteries: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nNow with electric cars coming out and advances in batteries, in the future this all might not matter any more. ",
"A lot of newer cars do. On my 2002 Toyota, if you turn the car off with the headlights on, the headlights go off, too. Unfortunately, the dome light and interior door lights will still drain the battery if the door isn't shut securely. Newer cars than that are better about it. It's getting harder and harder to accidentally drain your battery. Like everything else with automotive development, it's a slow process and won't happen all at once.",
"There was a car battery our a few years ago that had a fail safe built into it. There was a switch built into the top of the battery that you could flip over to the reserve, it was just enough to start the motor. Once started you flip the switch back and the alternator would re-charge it. I'm not sure why it never caught on but here is an article about it:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"Try a Peugeot Partner. You can drive a thousand kilometers and it'll not allow you to use the radio for more than 10 minutes. It'll reliably shut everything down and you need to actually start the engine to just roll the windows up or down. Saving battery alright, but there is a point where it's plain annoying and this car was way beyond it."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peukert%27s_law"
],
[],
[
"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-08-20/travel/8901050963_1_gnb-cold-cranking-battery"
],
[]
] |
|
6242nb | what does https everywhere do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6242nb/eli5_what_does_https_everywhere_do/ | {
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"The s in Https means secure, that means its encrypted before it goes over the network so that some one listening over the networks can not read it. when ever a password, credit card number, or any other private information you would not want someone to read should only be typed into a website with https",
"HTTP is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used to send web pages and their associated content (images and such).\n\n(HTTP is used in other contexts too, but that's irrelevant right now.)\n\nHTTPS is the Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Specifically, it uses a related technology called Transport Layer Security (TLS, earlier versions of which were called the Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL) to encrypt the conversation between your web browser and the web server. \n\nAssuming things are set up correctly, the encryption used means that no one other than your browser and the server can see the contents of the conversation, and also that you can be sure of the identity of the server (it's really your bank, for example, and not someone pretending to be your bank). There are plenty of ways for that to not be the case, but that's the goal. \n\n\nFor many years, if you didn't specify a protocol (if you just typed \"_URL_0_\" instead of \"http://_URL_0_\"), browsers would default to using plain old HTTP.\n\nThe simple version of the explanation is that, with HTTPS Everywhere, the browser will try HTTPS first, only then trying HTTP. The browser extension also will attempt to rewrite pages that try to send you to plain old HTTP-served pages to send you to the HTTPS-served version instead. \n\n\n"
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"www.example.com",
"http://www.example.com"
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2hls76 | which one is healthier, or better, sleeping on flat ground or sleeping on bed? and why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hls76/eli5which_one_is_healthier_or_better_sleeping_on/ | {
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"Probably the mattress. You really concentrate your mass onto points when you sleep on bare ground, especially when you sleep on your side. At least a mattress distributes your weight over a larger area.",
"The generalized answer is \"it depends on the person\" but the reason behind it and why some people think a hard surface is better is because of how each of our bodies are positioned. Our spines have a natural curvature which is vital to why we as humans are able to walk and move the way we do. However, our day to day motions and small compensations we make can shift that out of alignment. Sleep should help the body return to our normal or optimal curvatures. \n\nThe issue then is that not everyone has the ability to get back to the correct spinal curvature which is why there's such a disagreement. People with things like arthritis or scoliosis may be impeded due to pain or the severity of their issues. Other people may have less severe problems but can still affect their normal curvature in ways that make certain mattresses or positions more comfortable than others. \n \ntl:dr spines have curves, sleep to keep those curves ",
"I sleep on the ground. (wooden floor) First few weeks really sucked and I would wake up bruised but now I've learned to sleep on big muscle groups so it's like getting a shiatsu massage. Started because I was moving house and didn't have a bed. I've have had the bed for 3 months now and am still on the floor.",
"RemindMe!\n\n\nNo really, I want to be reminded!",
"I stopped sleeping on a bed in December last year since i heard it helped alleviate back pain. It sucked for a few days, but i got used to it and can sleep on my side or on my back, neither hurt when laying down anymore. My back pain used to be really bad, like hurting just from sitting still, but now its pretty much gone. Im not sure if it'd be good for everyone, but for me it was a great move."
]
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10k8fv | what is meant by a federalist approach to europe and what would a (more) federal eu look like? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10k8fv/eli5_what_is_meant_by_a_federalist_approach_to/ | {
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"Think federalism, think the United States of America; several bodies (i.e. states, like California and Florida) are bound together under a set of (generally) broad, common rules (i.e. the US constitution) whilst being allowed freedom to legislate and act as they wish outside of the scope of the constitution. \n\nSo, a federalist approach to Europe is concerning a similar situation, which is the European Union. It's never been officially adopted by the EU, thanks mostly to the UK not agreeing to the term (it has to be unanimous), by for all intents and purposes it functions as a federalist system should do.\n\nHow could it be more federalist? Firstly, it could officially accept the term (little chance). Secondly, there could be more integration between the member states, and decisions taken at a higher level. At the moment, it is emphasised (through the principle of subsidiarity) that decisions must be taken at the lowest level possible and that the EU shouldn't interfere unless necessary. Thirdly, as has been learnt in recent years with Greece etc, there could be increased fiscal union (i.e. tax rates, spending % etc) between member states who all (could - i.e. more integrated, the UK for example doesn't have the Euro) have the same currency.\n\nAs for what that would look like, it's hard to say. There's already a European Parliament and European Council, there's also the European Court of Justice so it's not like there's anything missing up there. The European Court of Human Rights could be assimilated into the ECJ (to allow it to examine more cases, and therefore more decisions can be made at a higher level by the EU).\n\nIf there were increased fiscal union, one would imagine that Germany would have a massive say in what that union would look like, and they favour scrupulousness rather than attempting to spend one's way out of trouble (see France) - so there could be more guarded spending of public finances across Europe. But, as I said, it's hard to say.\n\nHopefully that's not too much. :)"
]
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||
11vkji | what is the evidence against lance armstrong and why did he fight it for so long? | I've heard the evidence against him is overwhelming. Why would he choose to just deny and fight? Wouldn't other strategies be better for his reputation, especially in the long run? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11vkji/eli5_what_is_the_evidence_against_lance_armstrong/ | {
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"The evidence: about 20 of his former teammates, who are mostly still in the sport (riders, but also teamleaders and such) have testified, knowing that it could be harmful for their own careers, that Armstrong has doped. Among those are George Hincapie, Armstrong's former master servant (I don't know how 'meester knecht', as the Dutch and Belgians call it, translates best into English) and Jonathan Vaughters, head of Garmin. There are also samples of his urine and blood, which contain drugs that couldn't have been found earlier, because the technology wasn't able to in those days.\n\nWhy does he fight it? Money. Reputation. As long as he keeps fighting, there will always be people believing in him. If he gives in, the 10+ years of fighting he did would become fruitless, and the people who had been supporting him through all those years would be proven wrong to do so. And money, because Armstrong sued anyone who claimed he used drugs, often getting large sums of money from these lawsuits. Also, promoters gave him large sums of money if he would win another tour. Al those people will be demanding their money back if they know he didn't win those honourably.\n\nReally, Armstrong can't win this one. He's royally screwed right now, and will probably go bankrupt.",
"A lot of riders have been able to come clean and then earn some respect back by campaigning against doping. \n\nThat option wasn't really available to Armstrong because of how much he has to lose. Titles, prize money, his charity work.\n\nHe was able to fight for so long because there isn't a great deal of concrete evidence. There's the re-tested sample but because it was in storage for so long and was moved around a lot, he was able to argue that it was contaminated (although this is highly disputed). Besides that, there's just a mountain of witnesses, but even then, a lot of them have had agendas of their own (many testified in exchange for reduced sentences). He probably thought that if he fought hard enough, he'd be able to get away with it. He almost did but then the number of witness statements became overwhelming.",
"ELI5 what is doping?",
"With this story, there are few things as annoying as \"well everyone was doin' it\" arguments. That wouldn't fly from a five year-old. Being the best cheater doesn't make you any less of a cheater, it just makes you the most determined one. And it doesn't make you right. Armstrong deserves to be remembered only for his transgressions, not his \"wins\"."
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1m162o | what are the advantages (for a company) when buying a company car? | For example in Belgium the company gets a tax exemption of 75% for an ordinary car, 90% for hybrid cars and 120% for electric.
What does this mean exactly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m162o/eli5_what_are_the_advantages_for_a_company_when/ | {
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"That means that the company can claim a portion of the price as an allowable deduction. When the company does a tax return at the end of the financial year, they calculate how much tax they need to pay.\n\nTax is payed on all income except for income used to buy allowable deductions. That means according to the laws mentioned, if a company buys a regular car then they wont have to pay tax on 75% of the income used to buy that car. In the case of an electric car the company wont have to pay tax on the income used to buy the car at all and also wont have to pay tax on 20% of the cars value of other income as a bonus (provided that there was other income in the first place)."
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3fbxg0 | is there any reason for big game hunting other than for sport? | I live in North Dakota and everyone here hunts. I don't mind hunting, I understand the benefits, I just don't do it. But with big game hunting, are there any benefits? Do people actually take any meat with them or use any part of the animal? Do the lion, leopard, rhino, etc. populations even need to be controlled? The only reason I could see for killing a large animal like that is if they have been terrorizing a village or something. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fbxg0/eli5_is_there_any_reason_for_big_game_hunting/ | {
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"Most hunters eat what they kill. There are exceptions; for example, you are not permitted to bring meat into the US from Africa, so most of the meat there goes to the staff at the hunting lodge, and to the surrounding villages. When I hunted in Africa we ate at least a few meals off everything we killed, but there is no way we could have eaten all of it. Nothing goes to waste; even the innards and bones are used. Where I was hunting, they would put the innards out for the hyenas to scavenge, which kept them from attacking the baby game animals. In poorer areas, the innards are often made into sausage and other foods for the locals.\n\nIn the US, most hunters will have the meat processed and frozen for their own personal use, or will donate it to food banks to feed the hungry (in 2013, this was over 2.8 million pounds of donated meat).\n\nHunters are also important for limiting the population of some species. For example deer, in areas where humans have removed almost all the natural predators. Other examples include destructive or nuisance species, like feral hogs, which cause millions of dollars in property and agriculture damage.\n\nAdditionally, fees from hunting 'tags' (which are government permits to hunt a specific type of animal in a specific area) along with 'sportsman's taxes' on things like ammunition provide a very large part (in most cases, the majority) of the funding for state wildlife conservation departments. \n\nIt's important also to distinguish between hunting and poaching. Hunters operate within the law, and observe things like quotas and permit systems designed to keep the population of an animal sustainable. Most hunters I know are committed to keeping the sport going for the long haul by being very ecologically conscious and responsible. Poachers, on the other hand, are outlaws who will hunt a species to extinction for money, like rhinos for their horns, or elephants for their tusks. \n\n"
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41iw4r | how is gas in michigan below $1 yet here in seattle i just paid $2.25? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41iw4r/eli5_how_is_gas_in_michigan_below_1_yet_here_in/ | {
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"Shipping routes, local taxes, state taxes, refinery locations, crude source, local competition, etc. all play a role in determining the price of gas in your particular area. The area in Michigan is taking the minimum price of a likely rural area where there's little demand, whereas you're looking at Seattle, a bustling urban centre which probably has city taxes on top of everything else. You'll notice when you drive out of the city, gas gets cheaper. Location matters.\n\nAdditionally, it's possible Michigan imports a lot of refined crude from Canada (although I do believe Canada is lacking in tar sands refineries), or there's a pipeline straight up from Louisiana where most of the refineries are, making shipping cheaper, reducing end costs.\n\nBasically, the underlying price of crude is only one of many factors that determines your local price of gas."
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1whm1q | why does the fda allow poor transparency of artificial sweeteners in u.s. nutrition labels? | How do they get away with not detailing allotments/serving the way sugar is? If the answer involves the research not being complete, why's the FDA still allowed them? It would seem to be counter-intuitive to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1whm1q/eli5_why_does_the_fda_allow_poor_transparency_of/ | {
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"They don't demand the concentrations of things like dyes, surfactants, stabilizers, etc., either. ",
"Companies want to give away as little information on their products' compositions as possible, and generally only want to give or highlight more information than is required of them if it helps reduce liability or if it will increase their sales. (e.g. a low calorie product may want to highlight that fact to draw more customers who are looking for that sort of thing.) Because of this, companies and even certain people and politicians who support limited government regulations will fight the introduction of new laws making this information mandatory.\n\nOn the flip side of the coin, concerned consumers and people representing them want more information available so that they don't have to worry about companies \"hiding\" ingredients in their products, or because they just want to be better informed about how much of certain ingredients are in their food. \n\nthe issue arises that there is a conflict of interests between the two groups, and the status quo favors the former. In order to make a change, a reasonable case has to be made, not for why it's a good idea to have the information, but for why companies should be forced to provide it. There are many reasons to potentially be concerned about how much of these ingredients we are consuming, but until there is a scientific consensus reached, the movement will get nowhere beyond generating interest for the topic and additional research. "
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6bdj72 | what does a computer's cpu do while usage is at 0%? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bdj72/eli5_what_does_a_computers_cpu_do_while_usage_is/ | {
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"In a modern computer CPU usage almost never drops to literally zero operations per second, but it can get close. When not working, the CPU will enter a power-saving state, where it either (A) executes the same \"wait for a signal or timer\" loop over and over, or (B) for low-power chips, actually stops ticking for a while until an electrical signal wakes it.",
"2 things. 1 really low activity is rounded down. You may still see a couple processes sitting at 0.1 during the time your cpu is at 0%. The second thing is that processors work in bursts, sometimes it can handle everything for a second or two and wait for more information from other parts. The entire basic needs of a processor can be done with under a couple percent of a decent processor, but programs and files will take a lot. \n"
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d4s5g6 | what exactly happens inside our body that gives us cramps around spleen level while running? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4s5g6/eli5_what_exactly_happens_inside_our_body_that/ | {
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"There’s no clear answer, but the diaphragm has generally been ruled out because swimmers get it and their muscle use doesn’t put the same pressure on the diaphragm. In walking and running, it is almost always caused by uneven pacing. If it ever strikes, try focusing on making every step the same pace. It will generally fix it. There’s a reason why it hits the less fit kids (running at the end of the line, stopping, then hurrying to catch up, then slowing, then speeding up again) more than, say, track and field athletes.",
"It's a diaphragm cramp. The diaphragm is a muscle that helps you breathe. If you're breathing hard and your diaphragm is not used to working that hard, then it can become overworked and it can get cramps. \n\n It's a dome-shaped muscle at the base of the ribcage, below the lungs, above the spleen. When you breathe in, it contracts and pulls down away from the lungs to inflate the lungs. When you breathe out, it relaxes up into the lungs to deflate them. When it cramps, it can't relax completely. Then it can't help much to inflate or deflate the lungs.\n\nBreathing doesn't stop at that point because other smaller breathing muscles will automatically take over to help you breathe (intercostals, scalenes, pec minor, SCM, and several others). If you keep on pushing your limits when your diaphragm is cramped, then you might notice that you've switched unavoidably to chest breathing instead of diaphragm breathing. You might also feel like breathing is suddenly more difficult...that's because your diaphragm can't help very much when it's cramped, and chest breathing is much less efficient than diaphragm breathing.\n\nContinuing to run past the point where your diaphragm has cramped doesn't really help your diaphragm get stronger. So that's why lots of beginner running programs include walking breaks to let you catch your breath. If you train at a level where your weakest link can keep up, then your weakest link will eventually get stronger."
]
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1ri01d | why do cheesemakers polish wheels of cheese like gruyere or beemster? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ri01d/eli5_why_do_cheesemakers_polish_wheels_of_cheese/ | {
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"Are you referring to the washing given to these cheeses during ripening, or the wax coating these cheeses are given before they ship?\n\nIn the first case, gruyere (and I think beemster) is usually \"washed\" while it's ripening by applying a solution of bacteria and other ingredients, which are rubbed into the cheese (so to speak) to promote ripening and to develop a particular flavor.\n\nIn the second, a wax coating (often accompanied with cheesecloth) may be applied for a few reasons. First, and perhaps most inportantly, it keeps moisture from escaping the cheese, and arrests the ripening to a degree. Also, different colors of wax may denote the age or style of the cheese, which may not otherwise be discernable."
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b4i7p0 | what is a think tank and what do they do? | In political news stories you often see mentions of "think tanks" that lean either left or right. I'm curious what exactly a think tank is. How are they formed? How are they funded? What do they do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b4i7p0/eli5_what_is_a_think_tank_and_what_do_they_do/ | {
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"Think tanks are a specific kind of lobbyist organizations that advocates for certain things by employing university level academics to write white papers, policy documents and model legislation. These documents are, of course, the same documents that governments themselves prepare as part of the legislative process, and think tanks contribute their documents to relevant governments free of charge in the hope that the government will adopt the think tank version in whole or in part, rather than writing their own version. \n\nObviously, as a type of lobbying organization, they may be general purpose and lean towards a broadly leftist or rightist agenda, or they may be single issue or specialist focus in which case they may not really align fully with either party. But they will almost certainly have some viewpoint that they are pushing for. \n\nLike all lobbying organizations, they get started by various people or organizations that want to lobby for a particular viewpoint and who like the think tank model. They are also funded in a whole variety of ways, some by various industries, some by various individuals or foundations, some by political parties, and some are even partly publicly funded.",
"Think tanks are corporations dedicated to research on social, economic and political topics. Put money in, get research reports out.\n\nMany think tanks are funded by and associated with a political party. The party boss himself and his staff has neither the time nor expertise to delve deep into research. It's not really their job either, because their job is running the daily affairs of the party. This why they get a think tank to do it. Think tank staff are specifically paid full time to do research, discuss, reflect, evaluate different scenarios and propose new ideas. The party pays the bill.\n\nThink tanks can add a lot of substance to the policy of party. Ideological musings and discussions within the party can be converted into concrete plans and proposed bills. A think tank can evaluate the predicted effects of changing a law. Then again, think tanks have become infamous for mixing up objective research with the ideology of their masters.\n\nThink tanks employ PhDs and other experts for conducting their research. The working day of a think tank employee consists of discussions, reading, report writing, administration and travel. In principle, anybody can gather a group of PhDs and found a think tank, if they believe they can find customers. In practice, these customers are all large organizations, which you have to have good connections to.\n\nThink tanks are not necessary party-related; they are employed by governments and intergovernmental organizations, trade unions, employer unions, agricultural interest groups, municipalities or basically any body involved in politics. Think tanks don't have to adopt a \"left\" or \"right\" agenda and don't need to be overtly ideological.\n\nCorporations that do research in hard sciences are not called think tanks, but research institutes, research centers or contract research organizations. In universities, research groups (led by a professor) also do the same sort of work.",
"I have worked at several political think tanks. They are non-profit organizations, and many are NOT lobbyists. While some (Center for American Progress, Heritage) do advocate for specific policies and have a clear ideological bent, most (Brookings, Urban, Pew) are obstensibly politically neutral and have the purpose of injecting substance and academic rigor in debates over public policy. They provide policy relevant research so that politicians can make decisions in line with the evidence. Their staff at the senior level tend to be PhD academics, but they also employ policy analysts, government affairs staff, writers, communications staff, etc.",
"As many have already mentioned they are a group or an NGO which deal with the research and analysis of issues of public importance. In many countries they are quite powerful as sometimes they tend to be politically-neutral but that's not always the case. Most of the times the think tanks receive fundings from a particular party and can be used to propagate the ideology (left, centre or right) of the parent party. It comprises of scholars and Phd in humanities. Most civil servants also join think tanks after their retirement (at least in India) which helps them to influence and gives them a platform to share their vast experience which they had working for the government."
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3types | why so many of the refugees are men | Using data from the UN, it's said that 66% of refugees from the middle east are men. I was wondering how this happens and if there was an explication. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3types/eli5_why_so_many_of_the_refugees_are_men/ | {
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"Most wives and children are in neighbouring countries.\nThe journey is dangerous, and women and children have a much bigger chance to drown, get raped/kidnapped and slow the journey down. Plus it costs a lot of money.\n\nThey stay in countries such as turkey, libanon and jordan until the men have filed for asylum and can get them in via normal routes ",
"You dont send women and children on perilous journies if you dont have to. Its common for young men to make the journey, earn refugee status and establish themselves and then begin the process of moving their families.",
"Because you can claim refugee status for your whole family. \n\nOne family member (usually the man/father/husband) makes the journey, and if their refugee status is granted, the rest of the family can join them. "
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80tl27 | why does carbon-14 not degrade until the death of the carrier? | The whole carbon-dating thing makes no sense to me... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80tl27/eli5_why_does_carbon14_not_degrade_until_the/ | {
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"It *does* degrade, but then the plant or animal gets more from the atmosphere. But once the thing dies, it doesn't eat or breathe anymore, so it's not gaining more from the atmosphere (even second-hand).",
"Carbon dating is used on things that were once alive. When something is alive, it is constantly taking in and releasing carbon to/from the atmosphere. (You do it every time you breath). So while something is alive, the percentage of carbon-14 in its body will be the same as the surrounding atmosphere. \n\nOnce something dies, the creature no longer breaths, and carbon in its body stays put. That carbon-14 begins to decay to ~~carbon-12~~ nitrogen-14 at a predictable rate. We can use the present day concentration of carbon-14, along with estimates of how much carbon-14 was in the atmosphere in the the past, to determine how long something has been dead. \n\n\n",
"It does degrade, but it is constantly replenished by new carbon that living things constantly take in while they are still alive. Once the creature dies, it can only decay, resulting in a greater net loss we can use to measure how long it has been dead.\n\nIt is kind of like figuring out how long ago someone moved out by examining how rotten the food left in the refrigerator. Sure, the food is always rotting, but while someone is there it is eaten or thrown out, then replaced with new food.\n\n",
"Even if it does vary slightly during the lifetime, the inaccuracy of C-14 dating is usually larger than the a full lifespan of the organism anyway.\n\nSo even if C-14 isn't perfectly replenished to the exact same amount as long as the organism is alive, it doesn't really matter because we can't determine the exact year of death (or birth) anyway.\n\nThe exception is trees which can life for thousands of years, while C-14 accuracy is typlically higher than that. But they only grow on the outside (and replenish their C-14 there). So each year ring can be dated separately on trees, this has also allowed for finer calibration of the C-14 method, as it can be calibrated year by year towards the other method to know the age of a tree, of simply counting it's rings (ring counting has been extended by overlapping multiple trees and their rings back over 13000 years!). ",
"Carbon 14 decays with time, wherever it is. However, it is constantly being produced in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays, and so the amount in the atmosphere is roughly constant with time.\n\nPlants photosynthesise using CO2 from the atmosphere which includes C14. Once, the plant has absorbed the C14, it decays, but it doesn't decay much while the plant is alive, and even so, the plant constantly renews its structure, breaking down old leaves and making new ones with carbon freshly obtained from the atmosphere. As a result, the proportion of C14 in plants is roughly the same as that in the atmosphere.\n\nSimilarly, animals eat plants, and animals constantly renew their body from their food - so, the amount of C14 in animals is roughly the same as the amount of C14 in plants.\n\nNote that this doesn't work for plants which get their CO2 not from the atmosphere - like sea plants/plankton which get their CO2 from sea water. In the sea, CO2 reacts with rocks and water, and gets transferred in and out of rocks and sediments; and most of the ocean is very deep and doesn't circulate much to reach the surface. As a result, the CO2 in the ocean is very old and all the C14 has decayed, so you can't carbon date sea-plants or animals which ate seafood. "
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