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dbtrtu | how does the ice machine in the fridge make ice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dbtrtu/eli5_how_does_the_ice_machine_in_the_fridge_make/ | {
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"A water supply line fills an internal ice mold and when the water has frozen into cubes a mechanism flips out the cubes into the ice bin. If there's an in-door ice dispenser, there is a flapper in the bottom of the bin and an auger to pull ice forward toward the opening when the dispenser is activated."
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3f06ga | when a game says i have 500 ping, why is it insanely laggy instead of just a half second input delay? | An example being Diablo 3, where my ping might spike up to 500 ms but my game will be unresponsive for multiple seconds. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f06ga/eli5_when_a_game_says_i_have_500_ping_why_is_it/ | {
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"There can be qualities other than ping that are making the connection bad. For instance, dropped packets. If your connection is dropping packets, it may take extra time for the server to \"realize\" you've made a move, and sync up with your current state. Or vice-versa, the server may send packets that you never receive, and it takes extra time for your game client to register a change that happened earlier. Ping is the average time taken by packets that make it through, but it usually doesn't account for packet loss. \n\nIf you think of sound, the ping is like the time an echo takes to come back to you, while packet loss is more like how unclear the echo sounds compared to the original sound.\n\nTo get even more technical, there's also \"jitter\", which is the variation in the ping of individual packets. Excessive jitter can even cause packets to arrive in a different order than they started out in, which can have a similar effect as dropped packets. \n\nNutshell: You can have one game connection with 500 ping but low jitter and no dropped packets, and another connection with 500 ping and lots of dropped packets and jitter, and the first one will be a lot easier to use than the second.",
"Ping or latency can only be measured if your messages to the server actually goes through and server is able to reply. If messages get lost because your connection to the server is unstable or the server is overloaded then the latency for those messages is unknown. \n\nIn general terms, in cases where the ping is high and it vary a lot between readings it's typically an indication of messages being dropped. This leads to the unresponsiveness you mention. \n\nBut if the ping is high but consistent then its likely because of distance to the server and the game shouldn't be unresponsive just \"laggy\".\n\nI should mention that different games handle lag and package drop differently and some games are just better at handling a poor connection than others. There can be a lot of black magic in good multiplayer code."
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emjzqb | how do sea creatures eat without their stomachs being filled with copius amounts of water? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emjzqb/eli5_how_do_sea_creatures_eat_without_their/ | {
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"The water to them is like air to us... when they close their mouths the water is squeezed out again or passed through their gills and food is kept in by the structure of the mouth, teeth, or baleen in the case of whales.",
"It varies but generally, they have a way of expelling most of the water before swallowing it. For instance, filter-feeding whales will gulp in a big mouthful of water and then use their enormous tongue to push the water back out. The water flows back out of their mouths but all of the krill and other assorted biomass they gulped in will get filtered out by their baleens. What remains gets swallowed by the whale. [You can see in this picture how the baleens line the side of its mouth. When water is pushed through, all solid matter, in other words, it's prey, remain in its mouth.](_URL_0_)\n\nFish breathe by inhaling water and expelling it through the gills on their heads. When they swallow food, they can expel most of the water through their gills instead of swallowing the water as well.\n\nOther animals adapted by benefiting from swallowing water. Turtles, for instance, don't produce saliva but use the water they ingest when eating underwater to help their food go down. Sea turtles excrete extremely salty tears to get rid of the excess of salt from ingesting seawater.\n\nAnd lots of lower life forms intentionally take in as much seawater as possible so they can filter it for anything edible. Many sponges and similar creatures have body plans that are basically big pumps that suck in the water on one end so they can filter it and expel the filtered water out the other end. [Here's a neat video of a diver using harmless dye to demonstrate just how fast a sponge pumps water through its body.](_URL_1_)\n\nAnyway, the short of it is that different organisms deal with water in different ways. But yeah, ingesting water is part of life in the ocean and generally speaking, animals have adapted to use that to their advantage."
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abbim1 | why do some important memories disappear quickly, while completely mundane memories last forever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abbim1/eli5_why_do_some_important_memories_disappear/ | {
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"I want to know too! The mind is a strange thing! I remember one day in highschool me and my friend were walking to class together and she asked me how my day was. And I said \"eh just another day I will forget.\" But ironically I've remembered that conversation lol.",
"With the right stimuli, you might be able to remember that first one. Our memories are Squishy Squashy rather than straightforward like a book or a computer. With a book, you would be able to remember your first date, then just flip some pages back to find out how you met. But we don't remember that way. To remember how you met, you would likely need to get some kind of reminder. That can something like entering the room where you first met her, or smelling something that you had smelled at that same time, or listening to a song that was playing when you met her. Just something that could re-link that memory for you.\n\nHowever, to answer your question more directly. It's because you can remember the times something important is forgotten and you pay zero attention to the times something mundane is forgotten. 2018 April 16, what did you eat? 2017 January 30th, how did you sleep? What was the person who sat behind you on the bus wearing last week?\n\nThose memories are just plain gone. And you would not even wonder about having forgotten them because we don't even try to remember those kinds of things. \n\nThe more important the memory, the more connections it has. The more connections a memory has, the easier it is to remember it in the future. ",
"Long term memory does not operate like we think it does, it only stores the most relevant information possible which usually has to do with stuff like danger and pain. Everything else gets compartmentalized in other types of memories and \"pointed\" to. Around one to two times per year the brain goes through your long time memories and tries to remove further stuff that is no longer necessary. Everything that gets removed is filled in by your imagination. \n\nIt means you most likely only remember something specific about that dinner, the rest is just your imagination filling in the blanks.\n\nFor example, I remember clearly I watched a music video of an old artist back in around 1985, and the reason I know it must be around that was that I was in a kindergarten at the time. The problem is that I later figured out that that video did not come out until 1994 or so, long after I quit the kindergarten in question. The only explanation I can think of is that my memory has stacked the 1994 videos into the same compartment as the 1985 videos.",
"Someone will explain it far better than I but essentially your memories are memories of memories. The more you access a memory the more it becomes embedded. For example, I broke my leg when I was younger, i was pushed off a slide - I remember who did it. Except that was a nightmare, that has been accessed time and time again, embedded as an actual memory.\n\nThus the stories people tell grow arms and legs because the memory is of the last times they told it rather than the actual event itself. "
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9pif2t | what's the difference between megabit download speed and megabyte download speed? and a modem and a router? | Can someone explain what the difference between my megabit speed of 25mbps and a megabyte download speed? And the difference between a router and a modem? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9pif2t/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_megabit/ | {
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"1 8-bit byte is 8 bits. So an ISP advertising 24 megabits per second is equivalent to saying 3 megabytes per second. \n\nA modem describes a device that carries communication between different transmission modes, a router is a device that acts as a central hub for a network, although there are many devices that do both.",
"A router is the bit that handles the networking aspect of your internet connection. It lets all your computers talk to each other, and to the internet. A modem is the bit which deals with the beeps and whistles on the phone line. \n\n\nIf you have internet supplied via the phone line using ADSL, then you need both a modem and a router. Commonly these are packaged in a single device. But if you have your internet delivered via cable, then you don't need the modem part because the stuff that comes down the line is already in the form of internet data (ethernet) rather than beeps and whistles.\n\n & #x200B;",
"A bit is a binary 0 or 1. A byte has 8 bits in it, meaning it is 8 times the size. In computers, Mega/Giga aren't 1000 multipliers but 1024 multipliers (power of 2 in maths, since it is binary code). Therefore, an example :\n\n1 Megabyte = 8 Megabit \n\n1 Megabyte = 1024 KiloBytes = 8096 Kilobits\n\n1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes = 8096 bits\n\n25 Megabits = 3.125 Megabytes\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMegabit is Mb while Megabyte is MB.\n\nSo it's the same principle, they just use Mb/s rather than MB/s for marketing purposes, for it's a larger number :)"
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9ibqtl | what is so special about the thermal conductivity of water? | I get that it's reluctant to temperature change but is that it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ibqtl/eli5_what_is_so_special_about_the_thermal/ | {
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"Water has so many amazing applications and it’s really one of the most complex compounds in the whole universe. Regarding thermal conductivity, water is known to have a fairly high heat capacity. This means that it takes a lot more energy to change the temperature of water. This benefits itself perfectly for biological systems. Think about it, our body has to maintain a certain temperature 24/7. Since our bodies are 70% water it really helps us to maintain our body temperature. This is directly influential to homeostasis! \n\nBut since we’re talking about water, let me talk about some other properties that benefit life...\nHave you ever noticed that water freezes from the top down? This is because water is one of the few compounds that actually become less dense when it freezes. Due to the way water molecules create a tetrahedral shape through hydrogen bonding, when it freezes, the matrix that is produced actually forces the water molecules to push away from each other making ice less dense than liquid water. This is huge because if this didn’t happen our oceans would freeze over really easily. \n\nIn addition to that, water is a biological solvent. In many of the reactions in our body, water is an active reagent that is used to undergo essential chemical reactions. Water is so useful that it can even be used as an acid or base catalyzing reactions that require either. Water is just that damn useful. Sorry to get off on a tangent but water is just so damn cool"
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36ozo1 | the difference between a tesla dealer and a ford dealer? | I read these articles that keep explaining it like Tesla is selling direct to consumer and people like Ford or Chrysler don't? What is the difference if Tesla built a dealership next a Ford dealership? Wouldn't it be just like the ford dealership receiving vehicles from the manufacturing plant?? Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36ozo1/eli5_the_difference_between_a_tesla_dealer_and_a/ | {
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"There are independent dealerships which sell Fords, there are not \"Ford dealerships\", that's the main difference.\n\nThe legal issue with Tesla is that they're selling directly to consumers, not using a dealership.",
"Let's say that I want to open a Ford dealership in a week. I don't work for Ford. But I can work out a deal with Ford, and say \"Hey, I'll buy X number of cars from you every month!\" Ford sells them to me, and then I turn around and resell them to whoever wants a Ford. That's how dealerships work (in a nutshell).\n\nRight now, the only way that Tesla sells cars is directly. Someone who works for Tesla sells you a Tesla, with no middle man. Due to the current laws, this is illegal in some places. Some people support that, some don't.",
"It's like the difference between an Apple Store and Best Buy. \n\nI must admit I don't really understand why there are legal protections for the car dealership model. Who does this benefit, except for car dealers and the politicians whom they have in their pocket??"
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14vx4o | consumption-induced tolerance. why do you have to consume more of a substance (alcohol, drugs, etc) to achieve the same high or buzz after continued use. | I've found myself drinking more lately, due to many factors. Job-related social functions are the biggest contributors. I've become quite the regular drinker.
Why does it take more alcohol to get a buzz than it once did. Will it "start over" if I take a break, or is there a physical and irreversible change in my body.
As a bonus ELI5: What causes blackout drinking, and why does it seem that once you've blacked out from drinking, it's easier to do so again in the future.
(This question doesn't make me look very good, does it!)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14vx4o/eli5_consumptioninduced_tolerance_why_do_you_have/ | {
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"The way tolerance works is different for different drugs, but ultimately it is due to the body's realization that it needs to do more work. Think of it in the same way you think of exercising. You can gradually train to improve your bench press from 135 to 225 pounds. If you stop lifting for a month, you might have to pick back up at 185. \n\nAs far as physical change goes, chronic alcohol consumption will lead to a fatty liver. This is entirely reversible (while it may be immensely difficult for psychological reasons). Even more long term drinking leads to scarring of the liver. This is called cirrhosis, and it's is completely irreversible. \n\nThere are various hypotheses about blacking out. Many believe it to be related to high volume in a short amount of time. Anecdotally, I've had nights where I barely had 5 or 6 drinks and blacked out, and other times where I drink enough for 5 people and remain completely aware the next day.\n\nedit: One thing I should add about tolerance: A lot of drugs have an upper lethal limit, where building tolerance does not change that limit. So for example, let's say the buzzed threshold is 2 beers, and the lethal beer dosage is 10 units. Over time, you might not feel buzzed until you drink 8 beers, but 10 beers will still kill you. The closer the effective dose and the lethal dose, the more risk there is involved. This is also true for medication, and that's known as the therapeutic window.",
"Simply put, your brain adapts to it and adjusts it's own production of several chemicals to balance out the drug you're taking.\n\nIt appears to affect you less because you could imagine that usually, you'd add the drugs affects to your brains naturally produced effects. However, if the production drops, then the sum will drop. Thus, you need more to get to the same level.\n\nI don't know if this applies to drinking, but I'd take a shot in the dark and say it does. \n\nOf course, it doesn't work in your brain so simply, by the way. ;)\n\nIn cannabis' case, the THC bonds to anandamide receptors in the brain. These receptors have been known to play a role in eating, sleeping, pain relief, and memory.",
"Interesting to note: Salvia divinorum creates a reverse tolerance in the user, meaning you experience effects at lower doses the more you use it."
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3s3wuj | why do almost every modern houses i visit have a crawl attic, as in an insulation floor, as opposed to a full attic where you can store stuff and walk around? | CONTEXT: I live in Alberta, so building codes might be different for me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s3wuj/eli5_why_do_almost_every_modern_houses_i_visit/ | {
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"Modern building codes require them to be well ventilated, sans floor, so then an accumulation of heat and moisture won't build-up leading to mode and decay of wood.",
"Most of the ones that had an attic were not well ventilated or insulated. They had a floor over the ceiling joists for the floor below. If you pulled those up they had nothing in the space in the way of insulation. The house was constructed with a mostly load bearing floor/ceiling (the ceiling between the attic and the room below was probably NOT 2x4s) and the roof was built one-off with a ridge line and a lot of birdsmouth cutting to make the roof it self. If you go into one of these homes and look, the roof is going to be at least 2X6 for the pieces that go from the ridge line to the sides of the house. There will be fewer supports in the center of the spans as well.\n\nNew homes are built using pre-built truss for the roof. It is smaller dimensional lumber that is pre-made into triangles. The roof and the ceiling are actually one constructed piece vice two stick built pieces. They are not designed to have much load between the top (the roof) and the bottom (ceiling). They also have a lot more ties that go from the roof to the ceiling to tie the structure together. These keep the area between the roof and the ceiling cluttered and hard to have a floor. \n\nInsulation. The old homes probably had very little. Heat rises so having insulation in the attic is big deal for heating. Attics get solar heating in the summer and will generate a lot of heat, if not insulated it makes the house hotter. So to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer you insulate. Truss ceilings are usually only 2x4 for the ceiling joists. R-30 is recommended in attics now. That is between 8 and 11 inches of insulation thickness. So the insulation should be way thicker than the joists. So to put in a floor you need to buildup the floor surface which adds cost and weight or you need less insulation which will increase your heating/cooling costs.\n\nAlso with insulation most houses are now built with vapor barriers for insulated to not insulted space. They want the attic to ventilate to get the hot air out in the summer and to prevent moisture build up in the winter. (The attic is NOT inside the vapor barrier.)\n\nThis means the things you put in it would be exposed to temps that hit 130-140 easily in the summer and as cold as it gets in the winter. It may be exposed to higher levels of humidity than what exists outside. It is bad for whatever you are storing, and is not encouraged. (Basically an attic today is only really keeping the rain off.) \n\n",
"A lot of what was said is accurate but another factor is cost. I live in an area where there are little building restrictions. (As long as it's built to code you build just about whatever you want.) \n\nIt just costs more to build out a full attic. The framing has to go higher, you need proper ventilation, insulation, etc\n\nSame reason you see a lot of unfinished garages."
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2kfscm | why do musicians/bands normally lay down persian rugs when recording an album or playing a gig? | Here is a good [example](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kfscm/eli5why_do_musiciansbands_normally_lay_down/ | {
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"I'm not sure how that in any way is a \"Persian\" rug. It's just a regular rug.\n\nAs for why, it helps prevent echoing from coming off the floor, and it also provides a surface for the drum set that it won't slip around on.",
"It doesn't have to be persian, it just has to be soft.\n\nIt absorbs sound so it reduces any possible echo and stops things like footsteps, scuffing your feet on the floor, etc. from being too loud and getting recorded.",
"In addition to stopping reflections, oftentimes stages are hollow which allows them to act as acoustic amplifiers (like a guitar body) which helps with some ensembles and hurts others, a carpet helps deaden that by decoupling the band from the stage (which can happen in concert halls designed for classical ensembles). \n\nThe other big thing is with drum kits, the drummer will tend to kick the shit out of his kick drum which makes it skooch forward on smooth surfaces, a carpet helps keep it in place. ",
"Sound absorption and to help \"decouple\" the kit from the stage. "
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fjoezd | how do telephone wires carry multiple messages at once? how do messages not interrupt each other? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fjoezd/eli5_how_do_telephone_wires_carry_multiple/ | {
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"There are very, very few \"telephone wires\" in the US. They exist in other parts of the world, but almost all telephones in the US are digital.\n\nWhen you have analog copper wire telephones (what's sometimes called POTS, for plain old telephone service) the wires only carry one call at a time.\n\nIn modern systems, the phone calls are just packets, like the Internet, with headers that say what call they are part of. The packets are all poured into a super-fast pipe and sorted out at the other end.",
"The analogy is to consider listening to music say from a band or orchestra. All the instruments send their sound messages through the air. It is still possible for us to discern between a drum and a guitar and a piano - and very likely hear the different notes they are playing even though they sound at the same time. In a similar way, multiple messages can be encoded on a single wire and with the proper filtering at the receiving end, these messages can be \"heard\" separately. \n\nThis happens all the time with analog radio (for example). All the radio signals from all the stations are present everywhere and the radio is designed so that you can \"tune in\" to a particular station and ignore the others. \n\nWith digital, there is even more ability to interleave messages and use digital processing to de-interleave the received digital data into various streams which is why one internet cable can simultaneously support multiple devices browsing, streaming, gaming etc."
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44xo9m | why can republican presidential candidates ask for donations from everyone and their mother, but hate social programs like welfare? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44xo9m/eli5_why_can_republican_presidential_candidates/ | {
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"Rather different to have people giving you money in support of your campaign and ideas, instead of arbitrarily taking money from person a and giving it to person b, whether person a wanted to give it or not. Therein is one important distinction. "
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748i8i | how do these “combined faces of ____” work? | Is it simply a stack with transparency? Or is it something more advanced? If it’s more advanced how does it do something like skin color? What are the images controlled for? eye location? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/748i8i/eli5_how_do_these_combined_faces_of_work/ | {
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"I assume you're talking about [mathematically averaged faces](_URL_0_). \n\nThe idea is to take a bunch of pictures of people, line up a main feature (like eye position), and turn the opacity down really low on every image. The faint stuff you see around the face are pictures of individuals who deviate from the average.\n\nWe don't control for skin color or anything like that. The whole point is to average the skin colors of everyone involved. Instead we control for whatever we're trying to get an average for. The image above is done by country and sex, but I've seen averages done for all sorts of things from political leanings to lifestyle choices."
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jtmjq | what does "frozen assets" mean? | I hear all this talk about Libya's some $80 nillion assets being frozen all around the world, and the countries are refusing to "release" it. What do they mean by "frozen assets" and why aren't they "releasing" it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jtmjq/eli5_what_does_frozen_assets_mean/ | {
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"Imagine you have a big stack of quarters and toys split between piggy banks and toy shelves in each of your friends houses. You want to trade them all for a dirt bike, but mum says no. She tells all your friends to not let you into their rooms.\n\nIn your example, the quarters are Millions, the toys are military equipment and instead of a dirt bike, you want to equip an army to massacre people and/or steal your country's wealth for personal gain.",
"It's like having a buck that your mother says you can't spend.\n",
"Imagine you have a big stack of quarters and toys split between piggy banks and toy shelves in each of your friends houses. You want to trade them all for a dirt bike, but mum says no. She tells all your friends to not let you into their rooms.\n\nIn your example, the quarters are Millions, the toys are military equipment and instead of a dirt bike, you want to equip an army to massacre people and/or steal your country's wealth for personal gain.",
"It's like having a buck that your mother says you can't spend.\n"
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17qm12 | what is that horrible feeling you get on your fingers when you feel a microfiber blanket/cloth? feels like its going to rip your skin off or something... | Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Certain microfiber materials that are advertised as super plush and comfortable actually make my spine tingle when I feel them... it's a nails on chalkboard type of feeling. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17qm12/eli5_what_is_that_horrible_feeling_you_get_on/ | {
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"it's like velvet sandpaper",
"I'm guessing the micro fibers snag on your skin flakes and other imperfections. If you look at your hands under a microscope it probably looks like sandpaper.",
"Hotels have started using that stuff for balnkets. Its horrifying. ",
"You be ashy and in need of some lotion. ",
"The big Costco bundle of yellow microfiber clothes have this effect on me.",
"This is so weird. I've never had that experience, and I've touched lots of microfiber materials. Am I special? ",
"I don't know, but how come I never get those types of feelings? I always hear redditors talking about \"cringing\" at different types of materials or sounds or words (moist, anyone?) but I never get these types of feelings. They're just harmless...objects to me. Is this common? Am I weird? ",
"I thought I was the only one that reacts that way to the material. It's the way the feel on my nails. Pure horror.",
"I always assumed it is because they are so good at absorbing water that when you touch it it absorbs any moisture on your skin so there is no lubrication thus a horrible friction feeling.",
"I have this same experience with certain types of paper too, like the stuff that was used for faxes a long time ago. Oh, and the way glass feels when it comes out of dishwasher. Makes the hairs on my neck stand up. ",
"Maybe I don't know what microfiber you are talking about. I'm thinking of those super soft ones that are irresistable to me when I see them in the store. I can't imagine being horrified by them. Is this what you mean? _URL_0_",
"OP, what you are describing is likely a texture intolerance common in those with OCD, autism, and several other psychological abnormalities. Personally, I get that feeling when \nA. I rub against rough denim/mesh shirts and \nB. I handle paper right after washing hands. Hope this helps!",
"uuuuugghhhhhh, it's a horrible feeling, and I get it, too. Those ultra soft socks they sell at Bed bath & Beyond, Snuggies, all of that stuff: it feels simultaneously greasy and hell-dry at the same time. \n\nAnd I am a well moisturized, skin-snag-free person. I know people who hate the feel of cotton balls, and I think there's a similar reaction going on here. "
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6okwzq | product placement in movies/shows. | I've always wondered how movies or shows pick what cars or motorcycles to have in them. For instant,Tom Cruise always seems to ride a motorcycle, does he get to pick it? Is it a bidding system, do they approach the car/motorcycle companies and vice versa?
I was not able to find anything on reddit to see if this question was already asked! Still new to the reddit game.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6okwzq/eli5product_placement_in_moviesshows/ | {
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"The movie studio will contact a media placement company - these companies have relationships with a bunch of brands and they will negotiate a price. ",
"On the other hand, when there is no money/permission for product placement, production assistants will \"greek\" product names and logos. Basically, use colored tape to cover it up. Keep an eye open on TV shows and you'll see it. Especially reality TV where there is no budget for spending time to do a great job hiding it.",
"This is specific to the Fast and Furious movie franchise.\nVarious automotive manufacturers will donate or sell cars(at a significantly reduced price) to the production company because they will be featured in the F & F movie. This is mutually beneficial because the cars are a central plot line, and the production staff could use as many as ten or more of one specific car for various purposes and to quickly resume filming after a planned or unplanned crash. \n\nTo look at the most recent Fast and Furious movies (5-8,) a significant proportion of the vehicles are produced by manufacturers under the Fiat-Chrysler umbrella (Dodge & Fiat in particular.)\n\nIn other instances, companies may reach out to production teams and say \"hey if you can script (insert item) in, we're willing to pay X amount of dollars.\" or a production team will bid out opportunities and say \"hey we have a scene where our character needs to use a (insert item), who's gonna pay the most\"\n",
"The TL;DR version is that just like there are ad agencies that focus on print media, or TV spots, or whatever, there are ad agencies that do product placement. Sometimes product placement is one service among many that an ad agency will provide, but there are also boutique agencies that do just product placement.\n\nAs to who calls who first, it depends, but it rarely involves manufacturers directly. Manufacturers are the ad agencies' clients. They usually don't get involved until a few steps into negotiations, once both studio and ad agency think there's a deal to be had. Sometimes the ad agency will contact a studio with an offer of free/discounted product(s) and/or cash for getting that product in whatever the studio is working on. The studio will then consult its own projects and producers to see if there is a fit to be had. But sometimes a producer/studio will contact an ad agency and say \"Hey, I need product I don't have to pay for,\" or \"Hey, we're trying to patch a funding hole,\" and the agency will consult its portfolio of clients to see what deals can be struck. \n\nYeah, this is part of what that \"Produced by\" credit is about. "
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4f9o7q | is it possible to find out the secret ingredients in consumer products by looking at the ingredients list on the back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f9o7q/eli5_is_it_possible_to_find_out_the_secret/ | {
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"No, it isnt. For one, you dont know the proper proportions of the ingredients. The ingredients have to be in order from greatest to smallest, but that doesnt tell you how much sugar or salt to put in, or the process in making it. Not sure how important it is, but usually the ingredients list includes 'natural and artificial flavoring.'\n\nRegarding why they would list their ingredients, the fda or similar agency mandates that the ingredients list and nutritiom facts appear on the package. If they are not, the product cant be sold. "
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61rlr6 | why ships are not removed from the water once they sink. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61rlr6/eli5_why_ships_are_not_removed_from_the_water/ | {
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"Do you mean why are ships not removed from the bottom of the ocean when they sink?\n\nTypically, if the cost of recovering a sunken ship is less than the benefit of selling off its parts and cargo, it *will* be recovered. If not, it won't.",
"It costs time, money, effort and a certain amount of risk. Nobody wants to do it unless there is a good reason. Such as:-\n\nThe scrap value is more than the cost of salvage.\n\nIt's an obstruction to other shipping.\n\nIt's an environmental hazard.\n\nThere is historical significance.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nSome reasons not to:-\n\nIt's too deep to be possible.\n\nIt's broken up.\n\nThe waters it's in are too dangerous for salvage operation or the salvage vessels would obstruct shipping.\n\nThere are hazards in the cargo that are better left where they are. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\nJust off Sheerness in SE England there is the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery, a WW2 Liberty ship wrecked in 1944. It's only 1.5 miles off the coast and in just 50 ft of water. Trouble is it contains some 1400 tons of explosives! Nobody has yet taken the risk of triggering what could be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
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16rb98 | what is the haarp, what does it do, and why do conspiracy theorists talk about it so much during disasters like earthquakes? | Someone told me that the HAARP was the cause for disasters like the earthquake in Japan and stuff. I can't really figure out what it is. I have seen pictures of it but it just looks like a giant array of poles. Can anyone clear up what it is exactly and why people don't seem to like it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16rb98/eli5_what_is_the_haarp_what_does_it_do_and_why_do/ | {
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"HAARP stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It involves using big radio arrays to send high powered, high frequency radio waves up into a part of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, and then studying the waves as they bounce back off it. One purpose of this is to allow scientists to study the ionosphere, which requires this big array to do so because you can't use balloons (too high up) or satellites (because they would burn up in the atmosphere). Other purposes include looking to see if the ionosphere can be used to boost the range of radio communications or provide methods of surveying the Earths surface for stuff like mineral deposits.\n\nThe main reason that it has so many conspiracy theories flying around it is that it is (or at least was) much more closed off and mysterious than other research projects. This is because it was never really talked about or explained a great deal, because those in charge of it thought it was too complex and uninteresting to tell people about it. This made project HAARP look like a shady government research program to some people, who dreamed up all kinds of whacky theories surrounding it. In reality they do let people visit and look around and they have made their data available to view, so a lot you hear about it is a load of hot air from conspiracy theorists."
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cw9o7w | what is the difference between an rn and a cna? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cw9o7w/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_an_rn_and_a/ | {
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"A CNA is basically \"You are certified to help assist a RN with basic tasks around the hospital (bathing/dressing patients, serve meals, etc)\". A LPN is more of a \"You can perform some medical tasks, but mostly under the supervision of the RN (take vitals, provide medications, change wound dressings, etc)\". An RN is in charge of CNAs and LPNs but also can perform all the medical stuff (assist doctors, evaluate patients, teach self-care, etc) and has a much higher level of responsibility. \n\nIn short, from a job-progression standpoint, you go from being a CNA, to being a LPN, to being an RN. CNA is like the entry-level job, LPN would sit between entry-level and senior-level, and RN would be senior-level.",
"A Certified Nurse's Assistant (CNA) has several months of training that certifies them- quite literally- to assist nurses in a variety of tasks, just like the title implies. A Registered Nurse (RN) typically has a bachelor's degree, and has gone through much more training and education than a CNA. They carry vastly more responsibility and liability toward their patients, and they can perform far more intrusive procedures. (E.G.- A CNA, can take your blood; an RN can place a catheter in your urethra). RNs can help with heavy stuff like surgery prep and med disbursement. A CNA can give shots (I think), take vitals, and assist with other less critical tasks. \n\nThere is also sort of a middle ground between the two- Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN). They can do more than a CNA, but less than an RN.",
"A CNA can take vital signs, assist patients with activities of daily living, document intake and output, sometimes start IVs and draw blood with additional training, and assist RNs. An RN can do all of those things and in addition, give medications, start IVs, assess patients, interpret vitals and intake-output, provide patient education. They can also handle much more high risk medical equipment like arterial lines, central lines, balloon pumps, PA catheters, etc. and even ECMO if provided additional training.",
"A CNA requires 75 hours of training and a RN takes 4 years of college. A RN can do all that tasks a CNA can.",
"RN = state licensed medical professional, college degree, lots of science classes, in charge of patient care \n \nCNA = certified by a 1-month class to do basic physical patient care under the direction and supervision of the RN. \nMay not even be allowed / expected to know how to take a blood pressure. \nMay not require graduating high school. \nCan have additional training to give medication in some cases."
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cvynzw | how does my brain know which sounds to listen for and which sounds to ignore while i’m sleeping? i regularly ignore a train that goes by within 200ft of my house but if someone starts walking towards my room i snap right up. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvynzw/eli5_how_does_my_brain_know_which_sounds_to/ | {
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"Probably for the same reason that my cat knows when I’m opening his food cupboard and not just any other cupboard: instincts. \nWe’re still wild animals in many regards.",
"Our brains are good at filtering out and ignoring background noise, for many reasons. But out brains are also good at picking up *change*. When someone approaches you, that's a change in the environment and we are wired to react to that while we are sleeping because it could be a predator or anything really. Its how we survived"
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5lic6o | how does fake snow work? | How is it made? Is there a reason we don't produce it year round to keep ski slopes open? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lic6o/eli5_how_does_fake_snow_work/ | {
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"Snow machines work by blasting water and air through super chillers that turn to water into tiny droplets and freeze it before it's shot out and sprayed onto ski slopes. Because it's actually frozen water, it can only be used when the temps are low enough for snow, but there hasn't been enough snowfall for skiing.",
"The comments I see seem to be confused about what you're talking about. \n\n\nFirst things first, Ski slope snow is not *fake* snow, it is *man-made* snow. Have you ever seen a video where people will take a pot of water and then throw it in the air, and it quickly turns to snow? That is sort of like an extreme version of what the snow blowers at ski resorts do. \n\n\nWater turns to ice at 32f. Though, if you took a hose, and sprayed it in 30f weather, the water wouldn't freeze in the time it takes for it to go from the hose to the ground. It takes the molecules in water a while to slow down, the bigger the amount of water, the longer it would take. \n\n\nWell, if that is true, the opposite would make sense, too. The smaller the amount of water, the quicker it would be. \n\n\nThink of snow blowers like those nozzles you put on the end of your hose that make mist. Add that to a 30 degree day in the shade, hoist it up really high so it has enough time to freeze on the way down to the ground, and voila. You've got yourself *man made* snow.\n\n\nWe can't do this all year because it has to be below a certain temperature or else it would just be really rainy and nasty. Also, ski slope snow, according to Google, is made to supplement real snow. I think there would be a pretty noticeable difference between a slope that was covered in man made snow versus the real deal. Hope this helps!\n"
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arxzk0 | why do people smash a bottle against the ship exterior before it sets sail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arxzk0/eli5_why_do_people_smash_a_bottle_against_the/ | {
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"The act of christening a ship has its roots in pre-history. It's a tradition that's endured until today. As for the bottle of champagne - that's a relatively new thing. They use Champagne because it's an expensive wine, and makes the whole event that little bit more special for the onlookers - that's about it.",
"This only happens the first time, it's called christening the ship. It's a naming ceremony, much like christening an infant, with a religious history that's mostly in the distant past. But, any excuse to celebrate and drink some Champagne will be popular."
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1t8bff | how come i can tell you the numbers that come before and after 7 right away but have to go through the alphabet in my head to tell you the letters that come before and after h? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t8bff/eli5_how_come_i_can_tell_you_the_numbers_that/ | {
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"You do addition and subtraction on numbers when you are a little kid all the time. So, 7-1 and 7+1 are intuitive. You don't do the same for letters. H+1 and H-1 aren't drilled into your head as a little kids, so many people have to recite the alphabet to know the position of letters.",
"Think about how often you depend on the order of numbers (counting, adding, basic equalities, telling time). Now how often do you need to know what letter comes before \"W?\" Big difference for most. It's all about familiarity."
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dgae8m | censorship of content on the internet | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgae8m/eli5_censorship_of_content_on_the_internet/ | {
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"A country can't really control what gets posted online, but it can control whether citizens and corporations inside its borders are allowed to access or transmit the information.\n\nChina, for example, strictly controls all internet traffic in and out of the country, and heavily censors anything critical of the government.\n\nThe United States, by virtue of being a massive economic power, wields huge amounts of influence over business globally. US rules (like the Iran sanctions) can be enforced on companies anywhere in the world by simply denying them access to US finance.",
"It isn't very different from saying that a country wants to prevent \"speeding on the highway\". It can threaten fines and other punishments to people that they catch speeding. This might be sufficient to reduce the prevalence of speeding. (So imagine if they issued the death penalty if someone is caught speeding - it might reduce speeding dramatically) But when someone is driving on the highway, it is still their decision to speed or not - the government may have no means to prevent every occurrence. \n\nYour other question alludes to jurisdiction. Yes, so a country might outlaw a certain action but it cannot prosecute someone outside their country for doing that action. In the case of content censorship on the internet, certain countries have tighter controls on the flow of information within their country as well as tight controls on information entering and leaving their country through electronic means. It may not be watertight or 100% effective but nonetheless can be very effective."
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90t5aa | if stars constantly convert mass to energy in the form of light, wouldn't the universe eventually run out of matter? | Or in other words, where does light go once it is expelled? I understand that light can dissipate as heat once it hits another body (like the Earth), but can new stars be eventually created through these processes? Or is the universe destined to dissipate into nothingness / disorder as per the second law of thermodynamics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90t5aa/eli5_if_stars_constantly_convert_mass_to_energy/ | {
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"Because energy isn't always \"light\" - it's also motion as well.\n\nThe fusion in a star releases energy in the form of light - but also in the form of new elements (helium or other elements created from fusing hydrogen, helium, etc.) moving pretty darn quick.",
"Yes. That is what's called the \"heat death\" of the universe. That is, light energy from stars ends up a lot of places. For instance, on Earth plants use that energy for photosynthesis, which binds that energy into chemical bonds. That energy is later released by mitochondria to perform cellular functions. Other energy from the Sun is used in photoelectric cells (solar panels).\n\nLight also has a pressure, so it can push on matter *very* slightly, converting the light into kinetic energy. Those particles sometimes smash together.\n\nLight also ends up in black holes. It will eventually be released as Hawking radiation.\n\nHowever, no matter how much the light gets recycled into *work* (that is, a force applied to something, more or less), some energy is \"lost\" to heat. Heat isn't really useful unless it's concentrated in one place and then allowed to flow to somewhere with less heat. For example, in a [stirling engine](_URL_0_), you provide a heat source (fire) and it expands the air inside a piston. The piston is pushed, and as it does it cools the air, dissipating heat into the air *outside* of the piston. The air inside contracts, pulling the piston back, where the air is heated, etc.\n\nThat can't work if the outside air is hotter than the air inside the piston. The heat has nowhere to go, so the air inside the piston stays hot, and stays expanded. That's how energy throughout the universe works: it only does work when it's flowing from a high concentration to a low concentration. Eventually, regardless of what that energy started as, it ends up as *heat*, and low-energy photons like super long wavelength radio waves that no longer have enough energy to affect matter in a meaningful way.\n\nEven outside of stars, particles decay. *All* elements have a half-life, some of them are just such a long half-life that it might as well never decay...except that the universe goes on forever\\*, so eventually they will. There is energy bound in the atoms. That energy becomes heat and low-energy photons, too.\n\nEven the most fundamental particles like protons *might* decay, although that's contentious. If they can, the universe can have meaningful interactions for a lot longer because the decaying protons will release energy, which can do work - although, by that point nothing else except protons and other simple particles will be left so take \"meaningful\" with a grain of salt.\n\nOtherwise, all energy ends up as heat. The energy in the universe will be so evenly distributed, so random, that nothing else can happen. Nothing *will* happen. Particles will float aimlessly in the void, never interacting because there's no ~~energy left~~ edit: no concentrations of energy left to cause an interaction, because it's all evenly distributed. And, as you suggested, there won't be any *matter* left (assuming protons do decay; if they don't, there will be matter, but it'll just be protons and nothing else).\n\n\\* Maybe.",
"There is a YouTube channel called *Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell* that does a wonderful job explaining \"heat death\" or the \"big freeze\" in one of their videos. [Three Ways to Destroy the Universe](_URL_0_). Link will take you to where it begins."
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joa5d | how do parallel mirrors produce infinite mirrors? | I don't get the 'infinite feedback loop' bit either. Also, why are there delays from the infinite mirrors when, say, you wave your hand? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/joa5d/eli5_how_do_parallel_mirrors_produce_infinite/ | {
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"Well it really wont go on forever. Mirrors are not 100% effective. \n\nFor your second question, there is a delay because when you look in a mirror, you are not seeing yourself as you are, but rather as you were. Things reflect at the speed of light (I would assume), so the delay happens because each reflection adds to that delay until it is noticeable.",
"light hits you and your body and reflects out and hits the first mirror. some of that light reflects back to your eyes, some goes past you and hits the second mirror and then reflects back to the first mirror which reflects some to your eyes and the rest goes past to the second mirror. the back and forth is a feedback loop. the infinity(it isn't really infinite) comes because light in theory could bounce back and forth forever",
"Well it really wont go on forever. Mirrors are not 100% effective. \n\nFor your second question, there is a delay because when you look in a mirror, you are not seeing yourself as you are, but rather as you were. Things reflect at the speed of light (I would assume), so the delay happens because each reflection adds to that delay until it is noticeable.",
"light hits you and your body and reflects out and hits the first mirror. some of that light reflects back to your eyes, some goes past you and hits the second mirror and then reflects back to the first mirror which reflects some to your eyes and the rest goes past to the second mirror. the back and forth is a feedback loop. the infinity(it isn't really infinite) comes because light in theory could bounce back and forth forever"
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1h8hl8 | how is quantum entanglement different from a coin cut in half and put in two envelopes? | Even though you have a 50% chance of getting either outcome, and when you know the outcome, you know the other half's outcome, I still can't understand how it is any different than just blindfolding yourself to something that has already taken place and opening your eyes to become enlightened? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h8hl8/eli5_how_is_quantum_entanglement_different_from_a/ | {
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"The difference is that, until an envelope has been opened, it isn't correct for a quantum \"coin\" to say \"either the blue envelope has the left half with 100% probability, or the red envelope has the left half with 100% probability\".\n\nWhich is weird, because it's still *true* that one of those two envelopes will be observed to contain the left half, once they are opened. That's what people mean when they say quantum mechanics is weird."
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2m9dm7 | what is the science behind desensitizing lubrication? | Bluntly put, how does desensitizing lubricant numb the penis and vagina? Seriously, I want to know. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m9dm7/eli5_what_is_the_science_behind_desensitizing/ | {
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"You know that stuff dentists use to numb the pain, novocaine? Its a similar, though less powerful agent, usually benzocaine or lidocaine. They all work similarly, temporarily blocking the ability of your nerves to feel pain, and as a side effect, pretty much anything else."
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69zran | how do supermarkets create seemingly impossible foods? | As the title says - supermarkets increasingly sell foods that don't seem possible.
For example, Tesco sell frozen raw salmon fillets you can cook in the microwave in 3 minutes. How is this possible? If you were to buy a fresh salmon fillet and then freeze it, in order to safely cook it you have to defrost it totally first (in a fridge for at least 12 hours) then oven cook it for around 20 minutes.
Similar in Asda - they sell cook from frozen chicken breasts. Same story - normally cooking a frozen chicken breast would result in tough rubbery chicken, burnt on the outside and raw and cold in the middle. So you have to throughly defrost it first. Weirdly, both Tesco and Sainsbury's also sell frozen chicken breasts, but without the option to cook from frozen - you have to defrost them first and can't cook straight from the freezer.
Same goes for microwaveable rice. It's cooked, but normally you can't keep cooked rice for more than 12 hours then reheat it. Yet supermarkets sell cooked rice you can keep for months in a cupboard then reheat in a few minutes. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69zran/eli5_how_do_supermarkets_create_seemingly/ | {
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"Products that cook \"impossibly fast\" from frozen are not raw but *par-cooked.* In other words, they cook them halfway at the factory, then freeze them. \n\n",
"For your salmon vs chicken example: it has to do with the density of the product and the preparation. Take the fish and chicken breast and put them on the counter, frozen. The salmon will defrost faster because it contains more natural oils and less protein structure (flaky vs dense). Something that has less density tends to have more space for other things to enter such as water and air. Additionally, something higher in fat tends to not freeze as much.\nNow you microwave. Since the salmon, while freezing, has more water trapped inside and had natural oils that prevent solid freezing, it will cook faster than a chicken breast and be more palatable. \n \nMicrowaving is just radiative cooking. The molecules inside the food vibrates and creates heat. The downside is that microwaves are notoriously uneven. In order to ensure even cooking, the producer will require thawing to cook the protein more evenly. This will prevent you from microwaving until one side finally cooks and the other becoming dry. \n \nFrozen foods that cook quickly are normally treated to ensure faster cooking: increase surface area, increase water content, increase fat content. First, surface area and water content can be increased by one simple trick: brining. Salt and water are pulled into the product. Salt is a very sharp molecule and tends to tear the protein as it passes into the protein. The result is tenderness and increased water content and flavor. Addition of fat can include old techniques such as larding. Again, high fat products freeze at lower temperatures and easily absorb heat. That cook from frozen chicken is probably a salted, brined piece of meat. Brining isn't a bad thing, but overconsumption of salt is. \n \nAs for minute rice, the rice is essentially precooked. It is then dried again. This allows the rice to be tender from cooking and dry for storage. All you do is add water and you have rice. "
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5yj70b | weed vs alcohol | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yj70b/eli5_weed_vs_alcohol/ | {
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" > but looking at our state's brutal murders and violence (ex: 16 yo brutally tortured and shot in the face, brothers shot and left for dead in their underwear) they are all marijuana related\n\nHaha, what? Weed doesn't turn you into a kooky murderer. None of these things are even remotely \"marijuana related\".\n\nWeed is generally considered safer than alcohol because it *is* safer than alcohol. You don't \"black out\" if you smoke too much (at most, you pass out into a harmless nap). You don't lose inhibitions like alcohol, and your motor skills don't turn to shit. You don't get nasty hangovers. It doesn't kill your liver. If you vape, it (as far as we know) won't even be a detriment to your lungs.\n\nIt also has many benefits for people with glaucoma, cancer, anxiety, depression, OCD, etc.",
"First of all, you should provide links rather than expect us to take your word for it that \"our state's brutal murders and violence are all marijuana related\" which is a unbelievable statement. \n\nAlso, by \"marijuana-related\" do you mean that these were gang-related and the gangs sold marijuana? Because one of the main issues with pot prohibition is that it puts the whole market in the hands of organized criminals who then profit and kill each other over turf and distribution. That's not an issue with marijuana. That's an issue with marijuana *legislation*. \n\n"
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7njsz7 | why do things like books or games need a publisher? can't game devs publish their own game or authors publish their own book? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7njsz7/eli5_why_do_things_like_books_or_games_need_a/ | {
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"If you want to make money you need people who know how to get your product out. You can spend $9/month and make your book or whatever available to download for whatever price you want but if nobody knows where to look and nobody whose opinion matters has reviewed it you won't be making any money.\n\nPublishers know how to market. Publishers know reviewers and how to get said reviews published in widely read publications. You don't. ",
"Developers and authors don't *need* a publisher per se, but publishers do serve several useful purposes.\n\nFirst, they finance and underwrite creative endeavours. Creative minds that are working on a work of art need to eat while that work of art is being produced.\n\nSecond, they bring the finished product to market. This includes production, marketing, and distribution of the end product. Publishers own the printing presses, the CD/DVD/BluRay burners, the content delivery networks, access to cheap freight, and have the economy of scale to make efficient use of them far better than individuals.\n\nWith that said, the legal relationship between a developer/author and a publisher/distributor varies dramatically. Many large publishing companies own outright several in-house developers. For example, *Microsoft Game Studios* owned *Bungie, Inc.* and as a result all business decisions between them were inextricably linked. There are also a number of development studios that publish their products with *Microsoft Game Studios* under publishing contracts rather than ownership.\n\nOwnership of the intellectual property, creative control of the intellectual property, financing, cost burdens, distribution of revenue, etc... are all assessed on a case by case basis. "
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2xdjz4 | the definitions of socialism, communism, fascism, etc and other political terms (outlined in text) | Can anyone explain to me (as I've searched through reddit and Googled a lot of this and it's all worded in very confusing ways that my addled, post-work brain can't comprehend right now) the difference between:
* bureaucracy
* communism, fascism, socialism, anarchy and any other political systems that might fit into this group
* democracy, republicanism, right wing, left wing, liberalism, conservatism, monarchism, patriotism, totalitarianism etc.
* libertarian, authoritarian
And any other social/political/economic systems/terms that you can think of that would be useful to know with examples if possible.
I've never really been interested in politics or sociology, however I've recently found myself being surrounded by some of these terms more often and it's made me think that perhaps I should learn more, however I do find myself getting more and more confused with this sort of thing.
Anyway, sorry if this doesn't really make a lot of sense as I'm suffering from a huge migraine and have just finished a long, stressful day of work, however I hope someone can help! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xdjz4/eli5_the_definitions_of_socialism_communism/ | {
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"Bureaucracy: the interworking of any given government. Some bureaucracies are simple, some are complex. Bureaucracy is simply the mechanisms by which laws are executed and policies are enforced: they're the paper-pushers for our system.\n\nCommunism, fascism, socialism and anarchy are drastically different ideologies. They don't fit into one group.\n\nCommunism: You own everything and no one owns anything. A complete collective ownership of all property (I.E. no private property at all), and worker owned means of production (the people who work in the factory own it). A communist utopia lacks currency, affords the same amount of wealth to everyone and affords the exact same political and economic rights to everyone.\n\nSocialism: The transitional steps toward communism, specifically focused on creating worker owned production means.\n\nAnarchy: No one owns anything and no one has any influence over anyone else.\n\nFascism: The state owns everything including you: the state is god.\n\nDemocracy: The people vote on everything that gets enacted in their society. This is the utopian version of a republic.\n\nRepublic (not republicanism): We elect representatives who vote on stuff for us, because we decide that there's people who are smarter than us to vote on stuff.\n\nRepublicanism: The United States' right wing party- defends classical family values that are based on Christian thought processes, and champions economic ideas which practically favor the rich.\n\nDemocrat: The center-left party of the United States which favors economic ideas that appeal more to the middle class and (sometimes) the poor, with social attitudes that favor secular and progressive values (gay marriage, expanded cvil rights, etc.)\n\nRight wing: politically- they favor more authority and more defense, economically- they favor free markets and lower taxes for the rich, socially- they favor their own social/ ethnic/ gender group over others.\n\nLeft wing: politically- they favor less authority, more infrastructure and more social programs, economically- they favor higher taxes on the rich and regulated markets, or in radical cases, no markets, socially- they favor inclusion for all ethnic/gender groups.\n\nLiberalism: In the U.S., it's close to the same as democrats\n\nConservatism: In the U.S., it's close to the same as republicanism.\n\nMonarchism: A system where a king or queen, chosen by god rules the country with absolute or almost absolute power.\n\nTotalitarianism/dictatorship: Sort of the modern day incarnation of monarchism, except that it's not necessarily by divine right. Someone comes to power, normally through an election and then uses fascism to crush their enemies and makes the state subordinate to him/her.\n\nLibertarian: This is a really fucking broad term. For some, libertarian means that they want to go back the terms of the constitution. For others, libertarian means that they want absolutely no rule of law whatsoever, and can be equated to anarchist. Libertarian varies, but the general theme is that there should be less government control.\n\nAuthoritarian: The consolidation of authority in a government. Totalitarianism/dictatorship/fascism is the foremost definition of an authoritarian government, but authoritarianism is something that is generally equated with right wing philosophies. Right now, the United States could be seen as a capitalist authoritarian government. Although we have the power structures in place to call ourselves a democracy, the decisions regarding how we use our power are frequently made by high profile security organizations, and by the wealthy. Another word for our economic system/ political system would be oligarchy.",
"Bureaucracy is the process of running a government\n\nCommunism is a version of socialism in which a small party of elite control the means of production and economy. Everything is held by the state for all people. Can be branched off into Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism and Maoism. I can describe those for you if you need them.\n\nSocialism is the concept that the workers would rise up and destory the upper class taking control of the means of production. Everything would be held in unison and there would be no controlling government because everything is controlled by government, no want for anything and no excess goods created.\n \nDemocracy is a government ruled by the people. Everyone eligible to vote, vote on everything. (Only real times this happened was Ancient Athens, and some Pirates in the Carribean.)\n\nRepublicanism is an off shoot of Democracy. Instead of everyone voting on all laws and such, the people vote for representatives. The representatives then vote and control the government based on what they believe the people want. The is what the United States and most \"democratic\" governments have. \n\nRight Wing and Left Wing are ways to describe views on government. Right wing tends to be less government control and left wing more government control. Based mostly on the spectrum of government types. \n\nLiberalism and Conservatism-Im going to need more info, do you want general liberalism and conservatism or US politics version. They are very different but if you want i can give you both.\n\nMonarchism is the support of a government run by a monarch or a single entity controlling government usually but not always hereditary. Can mix with a constiutional monarch in which the monarch rules with a republican style government.\n\nI study politics and government and thoroughly enjoy it so hit me up if you need anything else let me know either here or a private message. Or if you need me to expand on anything stated above.",
" > > bureaucracy\n\nA bureaucracy is any administrative system responsible for the back-end of a large organization. It is something that all organizations end up having as they grow bigger, regardless of what the organization actually does on the front. You can sell lemonade, be a football team, start a campaign for public office, etc. essentially anything, but once your organization gets large enough, you'll need to hire/volunteer people whose entire job will be to do things like maintain rosters of members, decide how to spend revenue, make plans for the future, etc. the people who do these things are bureaucrats, as opposed to the people who do what the association was created for (selling/making lemonade, playing football, being a political candidate, etc.). Governments, businesses, charities, unions, non-profits, etc. can all have bureaucracies.\n\n***\n\nPolitical ideologies are distinguished among two axes: what they want, and how they want it. That's what you should keep in mind when learning about any political ideology, as well as the questions you should ask to anyone who advocates for a political ideology.\n\n > > communism / anarchism\n\nCommunism and anarchism are both political/economic ideologies that involves an end goal of a classless, moneyless, stateless society. What makes them different is that communists typically favor bureaucratic methods of achieving that goal, while anarchists favor non-bureaucratic methods. How this plays out in real life is that communists typically form political parties and engage in existing political systems, while anarchists don't really form political parties and instead focus on [direct action](_URL_0_), things like protests. Keep in mind that both communists and anarchists engage in direct action, but anarchists rely more heavily on it. \n\nBoth communism and anarchism are considered left-wing ideologies because they advocate for social equality.\n\n > > Anarchy\n\nis not a political ideology. It's used to describe situation/societies where there is no leader/authority.\n\n > > fascism\n\nFascism is a political ideology that involves the desire to purge society of what fascists consider undesirable elements, such as people of a particular race, ethnic group, or culture. Fascists advocate for nationalism and maintaining an aggressive foreign policy. Fascists typically reject peace/pacifism and instead support expanding militarism and the strength of militaries/paramilitaries in a society. Fascists form political parties but they also engage in violent direct action, usually directed at the aforementioned undesirable elements.\n\n > > socialism\n\nSocialism is an economic system based on democratic control of the means of production by workers. Socialists advocate for controlling/ending markets and instead using democratic planning to obtain socially desirable outcomes. Communists and anarchists are both different types of socialists.\n\n > > democracy\n\nDemocracy is any form of rule that involves people voting and electing people to do things. Like bureaucracy, democracy can be found in any type of organization (government, non-profit, business, etc.) but these organizations do not necessarily have to be democratic.\n\n > > republicanism\n\nRepublicanism is a political ideology that advocates for a *republic*. A republic is any sort of government that is not a monarchy. What this means is that republicans oppose monarchies and want to form governments based on something besides hereditary rule.\n\n > > right wing, left wing\n\nThese are terms used to classify political ideologies based on whether they promote social equality or social inequality. Left-wing ideologies favor social equality, and right-wing ideologies favor social inequality.\n\n > > liberalism\n\nLiberalism is a political ideology that advocates for liberty and equality. Liberals advocate for Rights, which are rules that provide freedom or entitlement to people which are typically seen as \"above\" the law. Liberals say that people have rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, privacy, and other rights, and that these rights must be protected by the individual and the government.\n\nLiberals can be left-wing or right-wing, based on whether they focus more on equality or liberty. As a result, liberalism is the political center.\n\n > > conservatism\n\nConservatism is a political ideology that advocates for the status quo. Conservatives want to either keep things the way they are, or change things to how they used to be. Conservatives stress the importance of traditional values. Conservatives see the ideal society as stable and unchanging, which is why they oppose changing society, because they see change as dysfunction and corruption. The are many different types of conservatives, with each type focusing on one or more the big five institutions of society: Family, Education, Politics, Religion, and Economy. Social conservatives stress the importance of traditional families, traditional religion, and traditional education. Traditional family means a family with one man and one woman, with the man working outside the home while the woman works inside the home. Traditional religion means promoting religious ideas that are more [fatalistic](_URL_2_) and [exceptionalist](_URL_1_). Traditional education means teaching children about the importance of obeying God and their parents. National conservatives stress the importance of traditional politics, such as nationalism, patriotism, and ethnocentrism. Economic (or fiscal) conservatives stress the importance of traditional economies, which depending on the region can mean pro-capitalist, pro-mercantilist, or both.\n\n > > monarchism\n\nMonarchism is a political ideology that advocates for a King/Queen/royalty/aristocracy.\n\n > > patriotism\n\nPatriotism is cultural attachment or devotion to one's country.\n\n > > totalitarianism\n\nTotalitarianism is a disparaging term used to describe societies that are not liberal democracies.\n\n > > libertarian\n\nLibertarians are people who advocate for liberty. Libertarians stress the importance of individuals being able to freely choose their associations, beliefs, and behaviors. There are two general types of libertarians: left-libertarians and right-libertarians. Left-libertarians are anti-capitalist, while right-libertarians are pro-capitalist.\n\n > > authoritarian\n\nAuthoritarian is a disparaging term used to describe people who want to regulate society."
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1hmq0f | why does bottled water have an expiration date? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hmq0f/eli5why_does_bottled_water_have_an_expiration_date/ | {
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"They expiration date is not always related to the contents of the package. In this case it could be related to the bottle or the labeling on the bottle. I work in implantable medical devices, the shelf life that we label our devices with is based on the capability of the packaging to maintain sterility of the contents. It is not based on the actual device within the packaging. ",
"New Jersey has a law that require all consumables to be marked with an expiration date, regardless of whether they actually expire or not. It's just simpler for companies to mark all of their water bottles with an expiration date than ship specially marked ones to New Jersey alone.",
"So... I can drink old water ? Like live a glass of water from a tap on a table and drink it week later?",
"Water can do something called \"leaching.\" It's a fancy word that means the water takes the bad parts out of the plastic bottle and they go in to the water. A little bit of these won't hurt anyone. But overtime too much can build up and can hurt people. This is why water bottles have expiration dates. ",
"Before being bottled, water is desinfected with Ozone (Strong desinfection) and then Chlorine (Weaker disinfection but very long lasting effect) to remove Pathogen Bacterias and viruses. The thing is that not all Bacterias and viruses can be removed effectively as some are very resistant to one treatment or the other but the two disinfection steps manage to kill all dangerous pathogens and keep the resistant ones in Check. \nOver time the bacterias and Viruses that were not completely eliminated may reproduce and make the water unsafe for human consumption which is why even water (bottled or tap) has an expiration date. ;-) hope that helped !\n\nSource: i'm an environment, water, and agriculture engineer"
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6oahq2 | how can food burn in the microwave but the plastic film covering it doesn't melt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6oahq2/eli5_how_can_food_burn_in_the_microwave_but_the/ | {
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"A microwave doesn't heat food directly. It sends out a wave at a certain frequency that causes water particles to vibrate. This vibration creates friction which turns into heat. Some types of plastic coverings allow microwaves to pass through them and reach the food. ",
"Microwaves react with molecular dipoles, creating an oscillating electromagnetic field that causes these little molecular magnets to move around. Water is a very polar molecule, but other molecules that have dipoles will also respond to the field. Plastics are generally non-polar, so they respond less to the field or not at all."
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8k7vr1 | why is it that whenever we try to speak under a certain volume, it automatically becomes a whisper? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8k7vr1/eli5_why_is_it_that_whenever_we_try_to_speak/ | {
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"Your voice cords need a certain minimum air pressure to get to vibrate and create tones. Without them vibrating you're getting a toneless whisper."
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3bvio5 | why can soft drinks, coke specifically, be so addictive, and is it a mental or physical addiction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bvio5/eli5_why_can_soft_drinks_coke_specifically_be_so/ | {
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"You left out caffeine from your discussion. Caffeine is a stimulant and it can cause dependency. There are physical withdrawal systems. Also, many people with borderline or undiagnosed ADD will self-medicate with caffeine, and be unable to function well for some of their activities without it. Even people without ADD can find caffeine necessary for their work or work schedule. ",
"The addictive quality of coke, and soda to a greater extent is more than just one thing. First of all there are two major components to coke that are physically addictive.\n\nSugar (or sweetener) and caffeine.\n\nCaffeine on it's own is a mildly addictive compound and that in itself is a whole other question and topic that we could go into that could be discussed for hours. But just accept that caffeine is physically addictive.\n\nSugar has been shown to cause physical addiction as well. But it's also got a greater mental addiction to it's properties.\n\nWhich leads me into the mental addiction relating to soda. When you have something pleasurable in your life, be it the rush of winning a contest, drinking a sugary soda, or kissing a girl for the first time your brain releases these chemicals in your brain that are known as dopamine. Dopamine creates a feeling of well being and happiness. It also trains you to repeat that task and do it again in order to get more dopamine. Basically your brain tells you \"hey good job with whatever you just did, do that again!\"\n\nBut the more you experience a specific thing, the less effective it becomes. Especially if you do it in rapid succession. So you drink more and more soda to get the same 'high' that you used too from that first icy cold sip. Now if you go a few days without drinking soda, and then have it again, your dopamine receptors in your brain have had a chance to 'cool down' in a sense and are ready for a fresh flood of that wonderful brain made pleasure juice.\n\nSo it's a vicious cyle. Drink soda, feel happy, don't drink soda, don't feel happy, drink soda, feel happy again!\n\nSoda just happens to hit you on both levels, mental and physical. Because your brain associates that one particular thing with a rush of dopamine. You might try say.... RC cola or Pepsi, and get the same amount of sugar and caffeine, but your brain goes \"hey this isn't the same thing im used too, i don't know if i like this!\" and you get a little less dopamine.\n\n\nFinally, you're not wrong about the other stuff. The human brain is a very suggestible thing. Seeing advertisements everywhere does remind you \"hey don't forget, you like this stuff, go buy it!\" But it's not that they are hiding anything from us. All of this is pretty out in the open. They know that they get people addicted to their product, and in fact their whole business banks on it. Hence the 'cola wars' of the 80s. They were fighting for the biggest share of addicts.",
"My husband had a long-running addiction to Coca Cola (he was up to six cans a day before he quit) and for him it was almost like he was trained. According to him, since that was most of his fluid intake his body would start craving it when he was thirsty. His body was basically mistaking it for water.\n\nHe ultimately broke the habit by getting an unreasonable amount of bottled water (it was like ten cents a bottle in bulk) and drinking nothing but that for a month. Every time he wanted a Coke, he would drink a bottled water. If he still wanted a Coke, he would drink another bottled water. Now he's perfectly capable of drinking one soda every two or thee days, and if he drinks any more than that he feels sick and dehydrated. Best of all, when he's thirsty now he wants water."
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22821u | what is the 'ivy league' and how do colleges become members? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22821u/eli5_what_is_the_ivy_league_and_how_do_colleges/ | {
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"The Ivy League is an unofficial term to refer to 8 specific schools (Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.) which are old and have very high academic standards. While there is a NCAA division called the Ivy League which holds these 8 schools you can't really become an Ivy League school, you have to already be one. ",
"Technically speaking, the Ivy League is an athletic conference like the Big Ten or the SEC, but it's made up of some of the most prestigious, exclusive, and historied universities in the country, so it's much better known for its academics. They haven't changed membership since they started, so it's not very likely that they'll admit another school any time soon. Because of the idea of \"Ivy\" meaning \"elite\", though, some schools are described as \"Ivies of the South,\" for instance, or \"Public Ivies\".",
"They don't.\n\nThe Ivy League is a group of 8 prestigious US Universities, and they've been the Ivies for a while now. There are other unofficial groupings that relate themselves to the Ivy League in some way (such as the public Ivies, the New Ivies, etc.). One group that comes to mind is the Committee of Institutional Cooperation (or CIC), which is another consortium of high-profile schools that is made of the Big 10 athletic conference plus University of Chicago."
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b5kz0o | when we have injuries and get salt/salt water in them, it burns. is it known if marine animals have the same issue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5kz0o/eli5_when_we_have_injuries_and_get_saltsalt_water/ | {
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"The reason it stings in humans is that the salt dehydrates the wound. humans aren’t evolved to handle salt like that. Saltwater animals have evolved to handle saltwater. ",
"So, this happens because of [tonicity.](_URL_0_)\n\nYour cells are filled with water that has about 0.9% salt. Water tends to flow towards salt. If your cells are exposed to water that has more salt than this, water will flow out of your cells into the saltier water. This causes cells to die, and thus pain.\n\nSaltwater creatures would have a higher concentration of salt in their cells. So when they get injured, their cells are already at equilibrium with the seawater and water doesn't flow in either direction.\n\nThis is also why IV solutions are salt water and not just pure water. \n\n"
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44hdaz | why doesn't an aircraft carrier tip over? | I understand why a ship floats, but aircraft carriers have so much mass extending out beyond the centerline of the hull (especially the superstructure on one side) it looks like it should tip over. [Aircraft Carrier](_URL_0_)
Edit: Thanks! Great explanations. My brain just couldn't reconcile that photo with stability. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44hdaz/eli5_why_doesnt_an_aircraft_carrier_tip_over/ | {
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"You're just not seeing the hull. This is a tip-of-the-iceberg type situation. The keel is heavy and huge and it holds things in place.\n _URL_0_\n\n",
"Remember [these things](_URL_0_)? The inflatable punching balloons that never tip over?\n\nThere's a lot going on below the waterline. Most ships have what's called a [keel](_URL_2_), which does several things, but basically it's a big weight to keep the ship upright.\n\nEdit: [carrier keel](_URL_1_)",
"The majority of the mass of the carrier is actually below the waterline. For example, the nuclear reactor, boilers, turbines, propeller shafts and all the associated pipes and machinery; rudder control, bow thrusters, and auxiliary power generators. Then there's the tanks holing large amounts of jet fuel, hold for the anchor chain, and storage for bombs, missiles, and ammunition, miscellaneous cargo holds, and a number of ballast tanks. \n\nThe hull itself is much thicker below the waterline, because underwater explosions can exert much greater force, and are of course a greater danger of sinking the ship. The structure above the waterline tends to be fairly light by comparison.\n\nAll this means that carriers are rather bottom heavy. This creates an imbalance between the force of buoyancy and the force of gravity if the ship rolls to port or starboard, which causes the ship to naturally seek a flat, level configuration.",
"Sorry to piggyback on your thread OP but my question on the picture linked is how do all those planes take off? Looks like the deck is covered in planes. Are they all VTOL?",
"Large ships have very heavy keels below the water line and also aircraft carriers have a large gyroscope to maintain balance in choppy seas to avoid tipping from lateral forces of the waves. it needs to be stable for air ops an cannot exceed an angle of more than 7º but don't quote me on that"
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3h415y | why don't we launch rockets off mountains? | Why doesn't NASA launch rockets off the Rockies or some other mountain range? Wouldn't it save a lot off fuel because there would be less gravity and less distance to travel to get into orbit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h415y/eli5_why_dont_we_launch_rockets_off_mountains/ | {
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"they're not really worried about the 2-10k feet when they calculate the cost of fuel. the effect of less gravity is also pretty negligible. they'd also have to calculate in the cost of trucking all the equipment, payload, and what not up the mountain to launch. the rockies are also covered in snow a good portion of the year, that would add some more difficulties in the form of hostile environments and delays caused by weather. ",
"The tallest mountain on Earth is about 5 miles above sea level. The ISS orbits about 250 miles above Earth.\n\nThe cost of trucking an entire space complex up Mt Everest would be enormous, and would massively outweigh any savings produced by making the trip to orbit a couple percent shorter.",
"It's not about the distance you have to travel to get to orbit, it's about the speed you have to reach. To reach low Earth orbit you need to be travelling about 8km/s. If you don't reach that speed, you won't reach orbit, you'll just fall back down again.\n\n Satellites in low Earth orbit are a few hundred kilometers up, while those in geostationary orbit are 36000 kilometers away. Very few mountains are taller than 8km above sea level, so you're not even that much closer. You have some benefit from the thinner air (though the reduction in gravity is negligible), but you now have to transport your rocket and all associated equipment up to the top of the mountain. Also, most tall mountains aren't near the equator - and you want to site a launch facility near the equator so you can get some extra velocity from the Earth's spin.",
"Height is not the determining factor in getting into orbit. The ISS is only ~410km above the surface. The big obstacle you have to over come is speed. You need to be moving tangentially 7.8km/s in order to not fall back to the ground.\n\nAnother reason why NASA as well as other space agencies launch where they do is in case of failure. NASA and ESA launch of the Atlantic, Russia over Siberia. Both are vast areas of completely uninhabited land, so if a rocket fails and crashes it doesn't destroy anything.",
"Being close to the equator is far more important, than the a few mile bump in elevation. Also, how do you propose you get all the equipment needed for a launch to the top of somewhere live Everest?",
"It would cost a lot more money to build extra roads and buildings where you need them. Missile launch pads and silos are very big. You would need to cut the top off the mountain and then tunnel into the mountain. All very expensive. Missile launching is also more about the location than the altitude. ",
"It is much more efficient to launch rockets at the equator because that is where the surface of the earth is rotating fastest, so rockets can get into orbit with less fuel spent on getting to orbital speed.\n\nMaybe there is a mountain range on the equator, but as others have said before it would be expensive to move supplies up a mountain range, and the height of a mountain is small compared to the distance a rocket travels.",
"Imagine that you are wanting to get somewhere fast. So, what would be more important -- starting a few feet closer, or already going fast when you start?\n\nThe speed is a big, big deal. You don't think about the speed that the Earth is rotating at, because it's irrelevant to you as you're stuck here by gravity. But it's very important for space travel. The closer to the equator you are, the faster you're revolving. This is why every space port is as far south as is practical for the people making the launch -- the US has theirs in Florida, Russia's is in Kazakhstan (from the USSR days), and the ESA's in in South America (French Guiana).\n\nThe closer you are to the equator, the less fuel you need to achieve orbit, because you're already moving faster.",
"People confuse astronauts weightlessness with reduced gravity. However for astronauts in orbit, gravity is actually very similar to earths; probably not even 10% less. Astronauts are essentially continuously falling back to earth, but 'miss' each time around because of their speed. Think of shooting a cannonball, it arches away and eventually comes back down. If you shot a cannon ball fast enough, it would 'fall' all the way around the earth, and that is what we call orbit. ",
"Another reason might be because of the danger of sonic shockwaves bouncing off the mountains and damaging facilities, equipment, and vehicles during liftoff. NASA had mostly built a facility in the California mountains (SLC-6) for the shuttle program, but was cutoff before it could actually be of any use. One of the major issues they identified was acoustic suppression. \n\nThe whole story of SLC-6 is really interesting. \n\n_URL_0_\n",
"As others correctly mentioned the thing you need to get to orbit is speed.\n\nBut you do get some fuel savings if you launch from high ground. Not because of weaker gravity (the difference is totally negligible) but because the air is thinner up there so it doesn't slow down your rocket that much as it does from sea level.\n\nIncreased height would also help a tiny little bit because you can launch into space in a little more flatter trajectory that is a tiny bit more fuel-efficient.\n\nThere are more factors that decide which launchsite is best:\n\n* (the most important one:) Uninhabited area eastwards (or north/south wards if you want to launch something so it eventually flies over every place on Earth) so you can drop spent stages without hurting anyone. That's why Kennedy Space Center is at east coast.\n* Being as close to equator as possible so you get some extra speed you need from earth's rotation. (or as far from equator as possible if you launch your spy sattelites north/south wards) That's why Kennedy Space Center is in Florida, the southernmost state.\n* You quite often want your space center in a remote area in case something blows up (it quite often does) and/or to keep nosy people away. That's why quite a lot of space centers are on tiny islands (Tanegashima, Satish Dhawan) or in the middle of nowhere (Baikonur, Jiuquan)\n* Being reasonably close to your military infrastructure, because space is still military business.\n* Being as high as possible because of reasons above. Also note that the gain isn't really that big. But if you're deciding between two similar places one at 500 meters the other at 1500 you choose the latter. Some space centers are actually in highland plateaus (the Chinese ones)"
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2sexzh | why do fast food chains not allow employees to eat the food at the end of the day, even though it's just getting thrown away? | At the end of the day, the fast food place throws all of the cooked food away. It seems like they always over stress the fact that employees are NOT ALLOWED to eat said food. It just seems weird to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sexzh/eli5_why_do_fast_food_chains_not_allow_employees/ | {
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"To discourage waste and planning to make more than is needed. If Employee A is 30 minutes from end of shift and puts on 20 burgers and is expecting to sell 10, you could argue the extra 10 were put on to take home to roommates/family/whatever. Source:I had a roommate in college pull stuff like this."
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379hhr | why isn't memorial day in the us a sombre holiday, like it is in most other countries? | Canadian here, though I've also lived in Israel. In both of these countries, the equivalents of Memorial Day (Remembrance Day in Canada, or Yom Hazikaron in Israel) are extremely somber holidays.
I've never heard of a "Remembrance Day Sale" or a "Yom Hazikaron barbecue."
In Canada, Remembrance Day is quite somber. It's marked by everyone wearing red poppies, usually public ceremonies, and a moment of silence at 11:11am (the time the WWI armistice was signed).
In Israel, it's even more somber. They play an air raid siren for several minutes and people get out of their cars, stopping on the highway even to stand at attention. See here for example: _URL_0_ The TV stations preempt all coverage and usually do nothing except read the names of soldiers who have died.
Yet when I see American TV or ads on American TV stations it seems like Memorial Day is just kind of another summer long weekend, like how Canadians treat Victoria Day (which is supposed to be a tribute to Queen Victoria, but is treated like just a day off and the unofficial start of summer). I realized there are some ceremonies - I saw a video of Obama laying a wreath today - but the whole tone of the day seems very different.
What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/379hhr/eli5_why_isnt_memorial_day_in_the_us_a_sombre/ | {
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"The average American really doesn't *do* somber.\n\nAlso, remember that, though we fought in both World Wars, neither of them were on our soil, and nearly zero of our civilians died in either of them. This is true in Canada too, I suppose, but as token subjects of the British Crown there was probably some cultural contamination there.",
"We have two holidays for the same thing, really.\n\nVeterans Day is the direct equivalent of Canada's Remembrance Day, and it's similarly somber.\n\nMemorial Day is usually considered the start of summer, so people often celebrate with barbecues."
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5mtjec | did the greek bailout anyhow affect germanys economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mtjec/eli5_did_the_greek_bailout_anyhow_affect_germanys/ | {
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"You are mildly mistaken. Unlike US, most European bailouts needs an underlying security. So Germany has to pawn assets in order to give the money to Greece. The European Central Bank can only buy assets and thus the quantitative easing (buying bonds). The balance sheets of the rescued banks just appear worst because of a bigger debt even though they get cash that they needed. This is why Bassel III is important as it also props up the Shareholders Equities section of the balance sheet. US banks have mostly complied but not European banks. Also without individual currencies, Euro countries cannot print money to pay off individual national debt. And with interest rates set to increase in the next few years, Euro countries would have a harder time paying off debts."
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svegj | how can a wart stay on my finger for months and then just disappear in a couple of days? | What exactly happens there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/svegj/eli5_how_can_a_wart_stay_on_my_finger_for_months/ | {
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"Warts are caused by a virus (HPV). It's not unusual for them to eventually disappear, but they can come back. BTW, try apple cider vinegar or a banana peel applied directly to the wart for a couple of weeks as an effective remedy.",
"Warts can actually grow. So if nothing is there to kill them, they will continue to live.\n\nI used to have a bunch on my hands and tried everything from freezing them to the medicated patches.. nothing worked. Then one day I went to the beach and jumped in the ocean.. a few days later I realized some of the warts were going away. So, I went out to the store and bought a bag of epsom salt and soaked my hands in it with warm water for about 15-20 minutes each night to see if the salt was the cure. Within a week or two every single one of them were gone; I was astonished.\n\nEdit: insert 'minutes'",
"The body can develop a \"cure\" to warts. The cure is short lived so you are not immune from developing them in the future.",
"Related question:\n\nI've had a wart on my left middle finger for so long I cant even remember. At least 4 years. I've been to two dermatologists about it multiple times. Each time they just cut or freeze it off and it's back in a few days. One even gave me a shot that's supposed to make my immune system attack the wart. Nothing. In fact, it's gotten bigger.\n\nThe doctors never seemed concerned but what the hell? Am I just supposed to live with this big, slightly awkward lump on my finger? I don't have insurance anymore so I've stopped seeing the doctors. They said it would go away eventually but seriously 4 years?!"
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3ndh2u | what causes the discoloration in mirrors when you do the infinite mirror thing with two mirrors? | What causes the discoloration in the mirror towards the mid-background of the picture here. _URL_1_
_URL_0_
The mirrors closest to the original cat seem to be normal but as you see the next set of "infinite" mirrors they become darker as though the light has become distorted. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ndh2u/eli5_what_causes_the_discoloration_in_mirrors/ | {
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"Some light is absorbed with each reflection, the mirrors are not perfect reflectors.\n\nThe cheap glass in the mirrors also has a slight green color to it that's usually not perceptible but becomes apparent after multiple passes."
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3klni3 | why do companies think it's necessary to change the layout of their user interface? e.g. netflix, microsoft, facebook, youtube, google, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3klni3/eli5_why_do_companies_think_its_necessary_to/ | {
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"Stuff evolves. Go actually look at how awful websites used to be. Go actually look at how clunky popular websites used to be compared to now. Websites can't just stay the same forever when the technology is changing, if everyone in 1997 said \"nope, this is good enough, keep it like this forever\" every website would be this: _URL_0_",
"Most of the time, it is a good thing.. Except we dont like change.\n\nBut sometimes some excecutive or department feels the need to stir things up to justify their existance. And that is usually bad. \n\nOr its done for security or performance reasons. But they had to use a different language or something and while they try to make it as familiar as possible, they just cant match the way it used to look and function.",
"I'm convinced Google has a team of dipshits sitting in a room looking for ways to piss off their users. \"They just got used to the new YouTube layout, how can we fuck that up and make no improvements?\"",
"As someone whose job it is to design interfaces, I'll tell you a couple reasons. \n\nThe GOOD reason: The current version of our interface is not good enough. It's causing our users to not enjoy using our product because it's difficult to achieve the things they want to do. So we redesign it to make it easier for you to do the things you want to do. This sometimes comes in the form of the company hiring an expert to evaluate the current interface and tell them how to improve it. \n\nThe BAD reason: The company is losing money, so they want to redesign the interface in a way that will either get users to spend more money in the app/game/service, or in a way to refresh the brand and get new interest in the product. \n\nThere are of course many other reasons, but those are the two main ones. ",
"I think it's because they dedicated a dude or a full-time team of people on web user interface, and you can't expect them to sit there and do nothing after releasing version 1.0\n\nLike Windows 7,8,10, they have so many programmers twiddling their thumbs on a payroll, you have to put them on something productive.",
"Because a website that works well at 800x640 on a computer monitor in the 90s won't work well on a 1080p touchscreen on a smartphone today. \n\nAs new tech and new ways of accessing data emerge, designs have to change to keep the content-consumers engaged and happy. "
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38zrrs | what are very small dogs thinking when they bark at, run away from, then bark again at animals much larger than themselves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38zrrs/eli5what_are_very_small_dogs_thinking_when_they/ | {
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"Most small dog breeds are bred to be 'ratters', meaning they hunt rats. They are meant to go down holes and into small places and kill what they find there. But anything they find in a small space, they will easily be able to kill. So they have been bred for fearlessness and ferocity but have not been bred to distinguish between large things and small things. They've just been bred to try to kill whatever they find. So they think they're tough. \n(Edit: Wording.) "
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26no3p | why does it take so long to withdraw the us' troops from the afghanistan, iraq, and the other countries they're in? | It seems to me that I've been hearing on the news, ever since the war started, that President [Bush, Obama] will have a certain amount of troops moved out of [Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, etc.] in the next x amount of years. I realize that there is a cost to moving troops out (flying a plane, boat, etc.), but why has it taken 5+ years to take everyone back to the US?
I imagine that once the president committed to the idea of bringing all of the troops home, constant round trips flights or ships between the Middle East and the US would allow for all of the soldiers to be back within a year. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26no3p/eli5_why_does_it_take_so_long_to_withdraw_the_us/ | {
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"Because we don't want to have everything fall into hell when we leave.\n\nWe could move the entire force in 24 hours if we wanted too. But if we did, the resulting power vacuum would probably send the country in question back into a hideous civil war and power grab.",
"Because you don't just walk into someone's house, break their vase, and then walk right back out. You try to fix the vase.",
"As stated there are the issues of not pulling out and leaving a power vacuum, but there is the issue of the logistics that needs to be considered. The 24 hour estimate is probably incorrect, that just isn't possible from a landlocked country. But a lot of the logistics used in Afghanistan were brought in by land, the vehicles, ammunition etc. Didn't just get brought in by air. Trying to get all of they out or disposed of isn't going to happen over night. They've had more than a decade to build it up, it won't just be done with the snap of fingers. "
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3n1hla | would it actually be scientifically possible for us to terraform another planet like mars or venus and make the atmosphere breathable and livable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n1hla/eli5_would_it_actually_be_scientifically_possible/ | {
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"Yes, it would take many resources but its definately possible. For low density atmospheric planets its quite hard though. Most of those planets cannot maintain their own atmosphere and creating this would require the gassification of a lot of materials (basically on mars it means burning rocks for the length of time lol, or a 1000x bigger scale of global warming than we do now)\n\nIf they choose to terraform mars most likely this would be done domewise with corridors as roads, as it is easier to maintain pressure and gas control in a smaller surface.\n\nFor venus, being in a state of extreme global warming this is very difficult. Nothing can land or stay at the surface due to acid rains and extreme heat. But supposedly a grid is formed blocking a lot of the sun on the planet the planet would be cooled down, if the technology is there this could actually be adjustable, if we can get the temperature down to 15 degrees celsius on planet average its roughly the same conditions on earth. Meaning the only limitations would be water and atmosphere there, being about 0.8 the mass of earth this means it could maintain atmosphere unlike mars (being almost half or even lesss than earth in mass). The only problem with venus is that its own rotation is slower than its rotation around the sun, making a day on venus longer than its year :P, this makes the growth of plants on the surface extremely difficult as the plants would require to be able to live for a year in desert states and in an arctic state afterwards with limited amounts of water (its a very dry planet)\n\n\nSo yeah, its achievable, but it would require a ton of work, making domes a much viable living option",
"With the understanding that there is a long way between scientifically possible and practically possible - yes, humanity does have the understanding and technology required for terraforming. We have become very adept at the process of turning one form of matter into another, but at the scales required to successfully terraform a planet such as Mars, it simply isn't practical using the forms of technology we have. The costs of such an effort would also be gargantuan.\n\nIn the specific case of Mars, we do lack one capability that precludes 'proper' terraforming, in that the planet does not have a magnetosphere to retain its atmosphere. Terraforming Mars would thus require the ability to restart the planet's 'dynamo'."
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25penr | do batteries wear out evenly, or are we throwing away batteries with life left? | When I have multiple batteries in a remote, flashlight, etc., will they all go dead at the same rate, or will some have life left when I replace them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25penr/eli5_do_batteries_wear_out_evenly_or_are_we/ | {
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"I don't have a sciencey answer for you, but I can tell you that in Afghanistan we're not allowed to throw away batteries because the enemy will dig them out of the trash and put together numerous \"dead\" batteries (that still have enough power) to power their IEDs.",
"You can picture batteries as a water tower full of water (charge) with a water pressure generated by the stack of water (voltage). If you were to shower, you need a fixed water pressure so that the water can actually reach the top of your shower head. As you drain the water from the tower, it will reduce the water pressure and eventually, no water will come out of the shower. However, even though there is not enough water pressure to shower, there is still water left in the tower.\n\nAs batteries drain in power, their voltages are lowered. Whatever electronics they are powering generally has a set power supply voltage range. If the batteries drains so that their voltage is below the range, the electronic item can't be powered. But the batteries still have charge and can power lower voltage electronics, but generally this is risky because you are using the batteries in a way they were not intended. This increases the risk of the batteries leaking or exploding if they drain too quickly.\n\nThis is also the reason why you should replace all the batteries if an electronic device uses multiple batteries.\n\n",
"I would also like to point out that the reason it's recommended to change all the batteries at once is because a fully charged battery connected to a less charged battery will recharge it. Most of the time that's not a problem, but sometimes it will get too hot or charge to fast and it will burst, leaking out the acid. ",
"Most electronics have a minimum voltage that they cannot operate under (to do with the science of transistors, etc; 5V or 3.3V are common voltages). As batteries lose their charge, their voltage also decreases. \n\nWhen a battery's voltage reaches a certain low, the electronics will be forced to stop running / consuming power. This is when you change batteries, but at this point, the battery does still hold a charge (like maybe 5%).\n\nEdit:\n\nAlso, in 99% of devices where you have batteries in series (connected head-to-tail, like in a TV remote or game controller), the voltage is combined, meaning that you won't have one at 0% and one at 50%. However, batteries aren't all perfectly identical and so it is common for one to perhaps be at 5% and another at 2%.",
"I'll try to take a stab at this.\n\nElectronic devices, such as a remote, usually take multiple of the same battery type (same voltage and current ratings). The voltage rating is basically how strong the battery is, and the current rating (usually measured in Amp-Hours) is how long it can power something. Think of water flowing from an elevated bucket - the gravitation potential energy is like the voltage and the rate of flow is the current. The current rating of batteries tells you how long you have at a certain flow rate until the water runs out.\n\nSo when hooking up batteries, there are 2 possibilities: 1) The batteries are in series, 2) The batteries are in parallel. In series, the battery voltages add together (two 5V batteries in series are equal to one 10V battery). When dissipating their charge across a load, the current supplied by each battery will be equal since they have the same voltage. With the same Amp-Hour rating, the batteries should discharge at the same rate.\n\nWhen in parallel, the voltage across all the batteries must remain the same. If a lower voltage battery is wired in parallel to one with higher voltage, it will begin to be charged by the higher voltage battery until both voltages are the same. As batteries begin to discharge, their voltage values drop as well, so if one were able to discharge at a faster rate, the others would charge it until all the batteries were equal. So in parallel, they should also discharge at the same rate.\n\nThis come from my understanding and experience from my electrical courses, however feel free to correct me if I am wrong (I'm still learning!). ",
"I'm not seeing that you are really getting you question answered. \n\nYes, two batteries placed in series will have the same current drawn from them and will drain at the same rate. \n\nHowever, each battery is not exactly identical and may have more or less capacity than the other. Probably not by any easily measurable method and not by a margin that will really matter.\n\nAlso, if there is a temperature variation between the batteries, they will discharge are different rates.\n\nTL;DR for all practical purposes yes, but some variation does exist."
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8725ge | can a bloody mary actually remove hangover symptoms? | To me it seems like drinking alcohol in any form after a rough night out is a bad idea. Can having one drink, possibly a Bloody Mary the next day actually help? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8725ge/eli5_can_a_bloody_mary_actually_remove_hangover/ | {
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"Yes, alcohol relieves the symptoms of a hangover.\n\nAlso, this drink contains plenty of water and some salt, both of which help with the dehydration.",
"Alcohol to relieve a hangover (the \"hair of the dog\" that bit you) doesn't get rid of a hangover so much as... stretch it out. The primary causes of the hangover symptoms is dehydration. More alcohol gets your mind off of it, but a hangover isn't the same as alcohol withdrawals: you're not feeling shitty because your body needs more alcohol.\n\nSo yeah, a Bloody Mary will probably feel good if you're hungover, but a reasonable breakfast and some water would do the same without involving more alcohol.\n\nMy hangover routine: eat some pretzels, drink a lot of water, and sleep for 30 more minutes. After that you should be in good enough shape to survive the day."
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3n92k9 | why do we say 'planet earth' but never 'planet mars, jupiter, venus etc'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n92k9/eli5_why_do_we_say_planet_earth_but_never_planet/ | {
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"Earth could also refer to actual ground or dirt, rather than the planet itself. Or it could refer to the metal band. Or it could refer to some hippie goddess of nature, etc. Mars is less confusing but one might say Planet Mars if there would be confusion with the Roman God of War.",
"Earth also means dirt. So a spacecraft leaving earth could mean either liftoff it leaving earth orbit.\n\nWe have yet to discover where the Greek and Roman gods live so there is not ambiguity in talking about sending a probe to Mars."
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701wir | why do asian countries have a much smaller rate of obesity than the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/701wir/eli5_why_do_asian_countries_have_a_much_smaller/ | {
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"In addition to what others have pointed out, at least in Japan and Korea you'll find people drinking unsweetened teas during and between meals, instead of sugary drinks...",
"As a working adult and American who has spent some time in Japan, I have some ideas that are rather specific to these two locations.\n\n**Walking vs. Driving**\nIn Japan, you do a lot of walking from place to place during the work day. From residence, walk to train station. in the train station, walking from platform to platform. Now walk from train to office.\nGoing out to lunch, walk a few blocks (or more). \nAt the end of the day, again, lots of walking.\n\nEach day in Japan, I end up walking a couple miles a day.\n\nIn the US, Go from residence to car, drive to office, get out of car and head to the elevator.... almost zero walking.\n\n**Added Sugar in food**\n\nIn the US, we have sugar in everything. Bread, pasta sauce, Granola, Ketchup, pork sausage....suger is in freaking EVERYTHING. Go to Asian countries (And Europe) and you don't find this to be true.\n\nWhen I get home from traveling, the first couple days back in the US i find everything too sweet...\n\n**Smoking**\n\nSmoking generally, as a habit, seems to result in skinny people, and more people in Asia smoke now than do in the US. I have seen many a smoker kick the habit and gain weight, as they replace smoking with snacking or caffeine and calories..\n\n**Food - Portion sizes**\n\nRestuarants and meals in asia seem to me (opinion) to be more reasonable when it comes to portion sizes. Here in the US, we seem to equate value to quantity and ignore quality.\n\n**Eat Fast**\n\nMeal time in nearly every other culture in the world (Other than America) is a more drawn out, longer amount of time spent. Go out to dinner in Asia (Europe, Latin America too), and dinner time lasts as long as you want. By slowing down the meal, you end up eating less and being more satisfied with what you are eating. In the US, we are rushed to sit down, order, eat, get out so the table can be turned. \n\nBy eating fast, we ignore out body signals telling us we are full, and over eat. Slow down the meal and you will eat less.",
"[The China Study](_URL_0_)\nlinks increased meat consumption with many of the main diseases plaguing the west. As countries are becoming more wealthy their citizens tend to adopt a more western diet, mainly more meat. ",
"In addition to the factors pointed out already, here are my observations from visiting and living China, Southeast Asia and Latin America:\n\nIn China (and pretty much the rest of south Asia from what little I've seen), meals are largely rice-and-veggie-based, with meat a much smaller factor as part of any meal. So you're getting more fiber and and they're much less calorie-dense. In India and Pakistan, in addition to that, getting around still means lots and lots of walking.\n\nIn Latin America, while they consume more meat, there's still a lot of rice, root and other vegetables as part of most meals.\n\nIn all the above societies, people are much more physically active as part of their daily lives, mainly by walking. Also calorie-dense sodas aren't consumed as much. In Asia (I include India/Pakistan here for convenience) people consume gallons of tea (and coffee in growing quantities); in Latin America you've got lots of coffee, \"agua fresca\" made with various fruits, and the like. \n\nAnd sugar -- as KG7DHL points out, their food, even the fast food and manufactured stuff, there's far less sugar included. ",
"The attitude. Fat is shameful. In Asia, saying you're fat is like saying \"hello\" in the US. Will easily address familiar people and strangers as fatty. You'll hear it from you mom, your whole family. Can be affectionate, neutral, or disdainful. It's often disdain. \n\nTalked to a fat American girl. She said, \"God forbid a girl be chubby.\" So alien to me cause everyone else forbids you. Even if a little overweight, everyone notices. Family would complain about buying bigger clothes, not fitting into gifts. If I was fat, my family would not let me be seen in public. My obese classmate is the son of a high-ranking Korean electronics executive. Attending his son's graduation broke him into paying for classmate's lap band and liposuction.",
"Vegetables.\n\nThe cuisine preferred in these countries has higher levels of green vegetables and lower levels of starchy vegetables.",
"Not just vegetables, but diet in general. \n\nIn countries where sugar and carbohydrate intake is lower, but protein intake is high (comparatively), health is better. \n\nHence the reason why some Asian countries have rising obesity levels as the sugar and carb laden western foods become more popular. ",
"The USA was not an obese country until after about 1971, when government policy was changed to support the high production and low price of staple foods like corn, wheat, and soy. The government was worried about preventing hunger, but they went too far. Now we are surrounded by high-calorie food all the time, to the point where it's even cheaper than low-calorie food like veggies.\n\nWe eat too many calories.",
"There are genetic predispositions involved in obesity, but also considerable differences in diet and culture. \n\nObesity has been growing a lot in China, as its food supply industrializes and Western practices like using cheap, non-natural sugars in packaged foods increase. \n\nHowever, it doesn't seem to be an issue in Japan or South Korea, where cuisine is strongly cultural and not just based on economics. Food preparation and balance is taken very seriously, in ways that are similar to French and Italian culture, but with very small portion sizes.\n\nThere is also a cultural emphasis on shame, so an obese person is more motivated to take whatever measures may be necessary to lose weight, whereas there is more of a rationalizing and individualist view in most Western societies. \n\nShaming a fat person is unethical in Western culture while being one is ethically neutral (except in that maybe you cause people who care about you to worry for your health), whereas in Japan, being fat could be considered mildly unethical because you may be embarrassing your family and the people you're associated with.\n",
"In addition to what others have pointed out, at least in Japan and Korea you'll find people drinking unsweetened teas during and between meals, instead of sugary drinks...",
"As a working adult and American who has spent some time in Japan, I have some ideas that are rather specific to these two locations.\n\n**Walking vs. Driving**\nIn Japan, you do a lot of walking from place to place during the work day. From residence, walk to train station. in the train station, walking from platform to platform. Now walk from train to office.\nGoing out to lunch, walk a few blocks (or more). \nAt the end of the day, again, lots of walking.\n\nEach day in Japan, I end up walking a couple miles a day.\n\nIn the US, Go from residence to car, drive to office, get out of car and head to the elevator.... almost zero walking.\n\n**Added Sugar in food**\n\nIn the US, we have sugar in everything. Bread, pasta sauce, Granola, Ketchup, pork sausage....suger is in freaking EVERYTHING. Go to Asian countries (And Europe) and you don't find this to be true.\n\nWhen I get home from traveling, the first couple days back in the US i find everything too sweet...\n\n**Smoking**\n\nSmoking generally, as a habit, seems to result in skinny people, and more people in Asia smoke now than do in the US. I have seen many a smoker kick the habit and gain weight, as they replace smoking with snacking or caffeine and calories..\n\n**Food - Portion sizes**\n\nRestuarants and meals in asia seem to me (opinion) to be more reasonable when it comes to portion sizes. Here in the US, we seem to equate value to quantity and ignore quality.\n\n**Eat Fast**\n\nMeal time in nearly every other culture in the world (Other than America) is a more drawn out, longer amount of time spent. Go out to dinner in Asia (Europe, Latin America too), and dinner time lasts as long as you want. By slowing down the meal, you end up eating less and being more satisfied with what you are eating. In the US, we are rushed to sit down, order, eat, get out so the table can be turned. \n\nBy eating fast, we ignore out body signals telling us we are full, and over eat. Slow down the meal and you will eat less.",
"[The China Study](_URL_0_)\nlinks increased meat consumption with many of the main diseases plaguing the west. As countries are becoming more wealthy their citizens tend to adopt a more western diet, mainly more meat. ",
"In addition to the factors pointed out already, here are my observations from visiting and living China, Southeast Asia and Latin America:\n\nIn China (and pretty much the rest of south Asia from what little I've seen), meals are largely rice-and-veggie-based, with meat a much smaller factor as part of any meal. So you're getting more fiber and and they're much less calorie-dense. In India and Pakistan, in addition to that, getting around still means lots and lots of walking.\n\nIn Latin America, while they consume more meat, there's still a lot of rice, root and other vegetables as part of most meals.\n\nIn all the above societies, people are much more physically active as part of their daily lives, mainly by walking. Also calorie-dense sodas aren't consumed as much. In Asia (I include India/Pakistan here for convenience) people consume gallons of tea (and coffee in growing quantities); in Latin America you've got lots of coffee, \"agua fresca\" made with various fruits, and the like. \n\nAnd sugar -- as KG7DHL points out, their food, even the fast food and manufactured stuff, there's far less sugar included. ",
"The attitude. Fat is shameful. In Asia, saying you're fat is like saying \"hello\" in the US. Will easily address familiar people and strangers as fatty. You'll hear it from you mom, your whole family. Can be affectionate, neutral, or disdainful. It's often disdain. \n\nTalked to a fat American girl. She said, \"God forbid a girl be chubby.\" So alien to me cause everyone else forbids you. Even if a little overweight, everyone notices. Family would complain about buying bigger clothes, not fitting into gifts. If I was fat, my family would not let me be seen in public. My obese classmate is the son of a high-ranking Korean electronics executive. Attending his son's graduation broke him into paying for classmate's lap band and liposuction.",
"I know for a fact that there is actual legislation in place in Japan that discourages older people from becoming obese. It's called the メタボ健診 (metabo(lic) checkup), which requires citizens aged 45-74 to do an annual waist measurement conducted by the local government. According to Wikipedia, local governments are required to have at least 65% of the population of this demographic participate in this under penalty of a fine if they do not get enough people to come in or if their measurements are, on average, higher than the target. It's not illegal for people to be overweight in Japan, but people, especially the older generations, are actively being discouraged from \"letting themselves go,\" for lack of a better phrase. This legislation was put in place to combat rising obesity rates, so perhaps the key is in the timing - preventative rather than reactionary.\n\nIt's also completely socially acceptable to publicly ridicule overweight people in Japan. Just to a youtube search for \"being fat in Japan\" and you'll find plenty of anecdotal evidence of people being physically poked and prodded by friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers just for having a bit of a belly. ",
"I know for a fact that there is actual legislation in place in Japan that discourages older people from becoming obese. It's called the メタボ健診 (metabo(lic) checkup), which requires citizens aged 45-74 to do an annual waist measurement conducted by the local government. According to Wikipedia, local governments are required to have at least 65% of the population of this demographic participate in this under penalty of a fine if they do not get enough people to come in or if their measurements are, on average, higher than the target. It's not illegal for people to be overweight in Japan, but people, especially the older generations, are actively being discouraged from \"letting themselves go,\" for lack of a better phrase. This legislation was put in place to combat rising obesity rates, so perhaps the key is in the timing - preventative rather than reactionary.\n\nIt's also completely socially acceptable to publicly ridicule overweight people in Japan. Just to a youtube search for \"being fat in Japan\" and you'll find plenty of anecdotal evidence of people being physically poked and prodded by friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers just for having a bit of a belly. "
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8h0uuh | at what heights do falls become dangerous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8h0uuh/eli5_at_what_heights_do_falls_become_dangerous/ | {
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"It depends what part of your body hits first. However, falls from more than 10 feet in adults and falls from 2-3x the height of a child are considered severe.",
"There are a lot of variables in that question. People have fallen and died from a standing position.",
"People have died from falls from standing position. It depends on what part of your body hits and the shape/hardness of the thing it hits. ",
"It's not the height of the fall, it's the sudden stop at the bottom. Jump from 2000m and open your parachute in the right height, no problemo.\n\nFall from a plane and smack a bunch of branches of tall fir trees, you might live.\n\nFall from 20m and hit concrete (stop in 0m) or water (stop in 1m), and you're in trouble. Maybe with expert form and practice, think Acapulco Cliff Diver, you could be fine, but that's all about decelerating in 10m underwater."
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35hh1w | the sat and gpa(and american high school in general) | Ok so I just watched the Idea Channel episode about the SAT and I have come away with the impression(and I may be mistaken) that f the SAT(which I believe is the equivalent of final year exams elsewhere) is entirely multiple choice. I come from a socialist republic and for my final exams I am forced to write essays,write extended answers and apply concepts(depending on the subject) and so the idea that American students simply have to do a multiple choice exam is somewhat alien. Also I don't understand what the GPA is, or is used for. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35hh1w/eli5_the_sat_and_gpaand_american_high_school_in/ | {
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"The SAT (and a competing test, the ACT) are college entrance exams. They are not required for finishing mandatory education, but rather as the first step in going on to university-level studies.\n\nMany American high school tests have essay questions. But there is not a single unified test that American students take as part of graduating from high school.\n\nGPA is grade point average. It's a numerical representation of how studious you have been in school. The higher the GPA, the better you have done in school.\n\nThe simplest GPA formula is one where an A is worth 4 points, a B is worth three, a C is worth two points, and a D is worth one. So, you take the average of all the grades in each class and you get the average, the GPA. A 4.0 would indicate that someone made an A (the highest mark) in every single class they have ever taken.\n\nIt gets muddied a bit because of weighted classes, where a hard course could be worth more than four points, but that's the basic idea."
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67c6ux | how come that ships developed their own measurement systems for distance and speed (nautical miles and knots) different from the measurements for any other form of transportation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67c6ux/eli5_how_come_that_ships_developed_their_own/ | {
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"The sea is constantly shifting and has no landmarks to speak of. So the primary navigation aids naturally available are things outside the Earth like the Sun and stars. When you use these to measure your position you get *angular measurements* out - latitude and longitude, measured in degrees, minutes and seconds of arc. \nThe nautical mile is just the most convenient unit of distance (and the knot of speed) when you use such angles to get your position - moving 1 NM north will increase your latitude by 1 minute\\*.\n\n*: Assuming you're on a planet with Earth's radius, and compromising a bit to account for how Earth has a larger radius at the equator than it does across the poles. ",
"The sea was the only FAST means of travel for centuries. It needed to measure speed, not just in a few miles each hour, but more as we do today. Water is wet, messy stuff, so by sticking a fairly static floating lump in the stuff and dealing out twine with knots in it whilst counting off the time it took, gave you nautical knots. It isn't the same as miles, quite, but has it's roots in 'chains' and other olden measurement systems. The metric system using base ten is less factorable (divisible) than one with base twelve or sixteen, as the old 'imperial' systems were divided. There is considerable history to each measuring system, often with different trades using different systems, so I won't go any further off track.",
"The system of using degrees, minutes and seconds to measure angles predates the system of celestial navigation we've developed and which is still in use. There are 360 degrees in a circle, 60 minutes in a degree and 60 seconds in a minute.\n\nModern sextants (and predecessor instruments) measure the height of objects above the horizon in degrees and minutes of arc. The nautical mile is defined so that 1 minute of arc corresponds to 1 nautical mile. In this way, the angular measures can be easily equated to distances on the map. The makes the earth's circumference 360×60=21600 nautical miles. The latitude scale on the sides of mercator maps shows minutes of latitude which can be used as a scale of nautical miles. (The scale varies with latitude, so you need to use the scale at the same latitude as your location.)\n\nArc seconds are not used by navigators. Often the first decimal of seconds of arc is recorded: tenths of a nautical mile correspond to 1 cable which is close to 100 fathoms or 600 feet and which is the traditional length of anchor cables. The metric definition is 1852 metres to the nautical mile and 185.2 metres to the cable.\n\nThe term knots arose from the log line, a rope attached to a \"log\" thrown into the sea behind a ship with the rope wound on a reel. As the first knot unwinds off the reel a 30- (or 28-) second sand glass is turned and the seaman starts counting the number of additional knots which are spaced 51 (or 47.25) feet apart. The number of knots counted by the time the sand glass runs out gives the ship's speed directly in nautical miles per hour, AKA knots."
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j43xh | famine in somalia li5? | I keep hearing the situation over there is worse for the history of the area, and the lack of government. Can someone explain the history of Somalia like I'm five, so I can understand where this famine came from? Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j43xh/famine_in_somalia_li5/ | {
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"I don't know about any environmental happenings in Somalia, but I do know that NATO has been bombing non-government ports on the coast of Somalia. That is, if you build a port to import stuff like food and your port is not officially sanctioned by the government that NATO believes is the Somalian government, then NATO will bomb your brand new port.\n\nSince the NATO-recognized Somalian government controls less than 100 square miles, there are virtually no functioning ocean ports for Somalia. Somalia has a vast amount of coast-line.\n\nThere could be other factors contributing to the woes of Somalians, but it is not their lack of powerful government. NATO consists of powerful governments, and NATO is destroying Somalian ports.",
"1991: Government was over thrown. Which led to a civil war.\n\n1992: The warring factions led to extreme famine in the country. United Nations authorised a peace keeping mission. U.N. forces while delivering food were routinely attacked by the warring factions. They did this, because in Somalia having the food, meant having the power.\n\n1993: Operation Restore Hope consisting of American troops, restored some order in the country. In May most troops were sent home. It reverted back to a United Nations led mission to feed the people. In June, one warlord named Mohamed Farrah Aidid attacked and killed 24 members of the Pakistani Army(part of U.N.) They dismembering and beheading quite a few of them. Some of their heads were used as soccer balls. America then sent Delta Force and Rangers, to capture or kill Aidid. On October 3rd, a mission went terriblly wrong 19 American soldiers were killed. That mission, is what the movie Black Hawk Down is based on. President Clinton ended the quest to capture/kill Aidid. Everyone was home a month or two after. \n\nThe U.N. eventually gave up also, because they were still being attacked, Along with not with there not being a stable government.\n\n1996: Aidid was killed.\n\nEDIT: Changed the number of killed. ",
"In addition to the civil war and two decades of no real goverment, there is a drought in the region, which is almost impossible to counter with such problems with the government. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis article touches on some of the topics, though it perhaps has a slight bias (though in my opinion a fair one).\n\n"
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265yte | what's actually happening when we get high? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/265yte/eli5_whats_actually_happening_when_we_get_high/ | {
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"It depends entirely on what drug you are getting high on. For the most part, drugs either mimic or inhibit the action of normal brain chemicals, or they increase or decrease the concentration of those chemicals. This causes increased or decreased activity of one or many neurons in one or many pathways in the brain. \n\nMore specifics might help, but the question might be better suited to /r/askscience"
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7bebmq | how do such small doses of things like cocaine and heroin kill you? how do these small powders have such a big effect on your body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bebmq/eli5_how_do_such_small_doses_of_things_like/ | {
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"It just doesn't always take a lot of something to have an effect in your body. Cocaine and heroin have different effects on the body, but in general, they target receptors in your brain that then set off cascading reactions all over your body.\n\nLots of medications have an effect at a much lower dose than the same weight cocaine and heroin. For example, a standard dose of the benzodiazapine clonazapam is 0.25mg. It's just formed into larger pills to make it easier to use.\n\nThe thing is, unadulterated cocaine and heroin *aren't* super deadly in small amounts...provided you are more or less healthy and not using other substances. It's when you start mixing substances (like, cocaine and alcohol is bad news for your liver and also increases the risk of heart attack) or using while you have a health condition (it should be fairly obvious why using something like cocaine when you have a heart condition is dangerous). Body weight, how frequently you use, how you use (like snorting versus injecting)...there are lots of different variables.\n\nWhen you get into the truly hard-hitters like fentanyl, carfentanil, and other analogues, that's when things get beyond potent.",
"A small amount of drug contains millions of millions of individual molecules of that drug. They spread out when they enter your body and bind to receptors to cause their effects. Your body uses chemical signals to communicate, so it has many receptors that are designed to detect and respond to tiny amounts of chemicals. This is why drugs work in the first place. The specific effects that an individual drug causes determine a safety index, which is the ratio between what dose has some effect and what dose will kill you. For THC, this is very high. For opioids, it's much lower, meaning that the line between fun and fucked is relatively small.",
"One way to think about it:\n\nOften, the processes in our body make tiny tiny adjustment. Imagine you have a hundred switches, and your normal state is to have between 49 and 51 turned on. And, your normal activation chemicals aren't 100% accurate; if you add 100, only 2-3 switches turn on. Now, some drugs have a very much higher affinity to the receptors in your organs (e.g. The brain), i.e. If you add 5, 4 switches are turned on, and are really hard to turn off again. So, now you have gone up to 53 switches on, but this is enough for your body to send such strong signals to your body that all the effects that used to be small, e.g. You breathe slightly slower, now become extreme. Your breathing muscles stop moving, and you suffocate from it as your lungs aren't ventilating. (e.g. Fentanyl overdose). \n\n",
"Everything is poisonous at a certain dose. Water is poisonous at high enough levels. The dose makes the poison.\n\nCertain chemicals can have such disastrous impacts on the body's processes, that even small amounts are enough to disrupt major chemical or biological processes that are necessary to life. Carbon monoxide does this by preferentially binding to hemoglobin in your blood, asphyxiating your cells and preventing them from creating energy necessary for life. Botulism toxin has one of the smallest lethal doses of any chemical known to man, and several known to monkeys. It is capable of blocking your nerves from releasing chemicals needed to produce movement... Simple actions like breathing become impossible. It's all about what systems in your body these chemicals affect, and how they do so, as to what type of effect a large or small dose will have.\n\nIf you're interested in learning more: toxicology is the field of science that deals with these sorts of questions.",
"Most people are describing how the drug actually works in the system, and although this is important information, the 2 biggest reason people die from overdoses are:\n\n1. The person was clean for awhile and then relapsed. Sometimes the person will use the last dose they used before getting clean. Their body was weaned off that big dose, so Oopsie overdose. The body’s tolerance level went down and couldn’t handle that big dose.\n\n2. Drugs are often cut with all sorts of filler and crap. Sometimes it’s safe, sometimes it’s not. You would be surprised at the weird chemicals people cut drugs with. Anything to stretch the drug and be able to sell more. The more un-pure the drug, the more filler, the more risk for overdose.\n\nSource:I’m a nurse and worked with junkies.",
"Heroin blocks the neurons that tell you to breathe. This requires rather large doses -- much larger doses than any real poison does.\n\nCoke will mess up your heart by making it beat so fast that it starves. Even smallish doses repeated can mess up the conduction system, pre-disposing you to a big heart attack 40 years later, which we think is what happened to Carrie Fisher. ",
"The body is designed to keep invading molecules (like heroin and cocaine) at bay, and in particular out of the brain. We have a large variety of enzymes or lets call them security guards that are designed to stop invading molecules from getting to places they shouldn't get to. In general they do their jobs very well. \n\nCocaine and heroin are like very talented spies though, that excel at avoiding the bodies security guards and very readily get into your brain. In the brain they are on a mission to push several buttons. Buttons that 1. get you high but also 2. control important things that keep you alive. Heroin overdoses cause respiratory failure because heroin pushes a button that controls our breathing and slows it down. With enough heroin it can cause you to stop breathing altogether. Cocaine on the other hand tends to kill by heart failure by pushing the buttons in your brain that increase heart rate and blood pressure. With enough cocaine your heart can't cope and gives up. "
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32v01m | how does a homing pigeon work? can they go to more than one location and be launched from anywhere? | Saw an episode of White Collar today that used one, and just curious how they worked. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32v01m/eli5how_does_a_homing_pigeon_work_can_they_go_to/ | {
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"My dad raised pigeons for the purpose of racing them, and I can confirm what everyone said below. They just go home. In old times, pigeons would be raised at a military base or something, and when a campaigning force would go out, they would take a certain amount of pigeons. Then when they had some relevant info to send to HQ (troop movement, change of plans, casualties, etc) they would write it on a note, and tie it to the leg, and let it go, and the pigeon will just go back home to where it was raised...in this example, the military base.\n\nIn modern times, we of course don't use them to communicate, but the racing population is pretty big...you'd be surprised. And in the instance of racing, it's a little bit more modern. When the pigeons are still chicks, you usually tag their feet with a unique number, and maybe one other identifier. As they grow, those bands become permanent, as they can't be taken off anymore.\n\nSo in a race, you choose the pigeons you want to race, usually proven pigeons with a track record for speed and endurance. You take these pigeons to the race organizers. They'll be at the location you are releasing the birds. They'll either tag the pigeon w/ a removable temporary tag, or note the serial number of the participating pigeons.\n\nNow, back at the home, the owner, has a special clock. Most of them have some sort of empty slot in it, so that you can put the temporary tag in it, as soon as your pigeon makes it home. The clock will lock that slot, and log the time that it was put into the clock. Then, the race winner is determined by who had the earliest time.\n\nIt's pretty cool to see a group of birds released away from home. They fly around in circles for a while, getting their bearings, before they shoot off towards home."
]
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d6ki2z | why are bones so white when exposed in an injury? | Awhile ago I saw a post of a lady who had her leg amputated and kept the bones of her amputated leg. She had the heel of it tattooed and around the tattoo it was stained black. Considering bones are porous why are they not stained by blood in the event of a bone exposing injury? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d6ki2z/eli5_why_are_bones_so_white_when_exposed_in_an/ | {
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"I'm a little confused by the question. Do you mean when bones are immediately exposed after an injury? In that case bone is more of a ruddy (red-brown) gray color. There is blood within the bone itself, especially in the inner marrow cavity, and they are usually covered in some blood. If you mean later on after it is removed from the body, it will become whiter as it dies. Then, the white calcium remains after all of the living tissue is gone. But a lot of factors will determine how white it gets"
]
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[]
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|
p1qy4 | how do they make the different pasta shapes so uniformly and perfectly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/p1qy4/eli5_how_do_they_make_the_different_pasta_shapes/ | {
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"text": [
"Think industrial grade play-do fun factory. ",
"Did you have a [Play-Doh Fun Factory](_URL_0_) when you were a kid? \n\n(Eww I can still smell that nasty shit. Thankfully I don't remember ever putting it in my mouth, or I'm sure I'd have day-mares about the taste, too!)\n\nTechnical name for that machine is an extruder. Pasta factories have great big motorized ones that churn out miles and miles of pasta. \n\nedit: I accidentally some words."
]
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||
1tnhlk | why do we have intrusive thoughts? | Edit: More specifically the really jacked up terrible thoughts. For example the I could swerve into oncoming traffic just because I can thought. Appreciate all the responses to the latter though! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tnhlk/eli5_why_do_we_have_intrusive_thoughts/ | {
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"text": [
"Because our minds aren't some solid monolithic thing but a collection of processes. While you're aware of one, occupied with daydreaming about a giant cheeseburger, another part is churning away on another subject like worrying about being fat. Awareness and attention change constantly.",
"What's a non intrusive thought?\n\nYou never know what you're going to think next.",
"I don't know why it happens, but it's called l'appel du vide. Call of the void. ",
"I did a 10 day psychology seminar this summer and this question came up. (So I'm no expert). \n\nOur instructor pointed us towards the work of the phychologist Irvin D. Yalom and his Existential Therapy.\n\nBasically what that theory does, is attempt to map and explain human behavior and thought through existential confilcts like the fear of death.\n\nSo catching ourselves looking at a cliff and imagining briefly jumping, is like a \"dare\" to that grim sense, that can provoke a certain needed psychological reaction. Supposedly it happens to everyone at various points in time, and it musn't be confused with suicidal thoughts\n\n\nEdit: My English isn't perfect, that resulted in me originally spelling psychology wrong in this comment. Also people have pointed out that there is an actual term for what I'm describing, \"Call of the Void\". ",
"\"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.\" ~Walt Whitman",
"When I first began meditating, I was amazed and slightly alarmed at some of the crazy shit that erupts into thought. Some of it delightful, some horrific and twisted. But we are instructed to niether repress nor indulge those thoughts, but to merely observe them and let them dissipate of their own. One begins to see just how little control we actually have over our emerging thoughts. "
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1y0mb8 | why is it that when i was younger, kids that were 1 or 2 years older than me not only looked bigger but older? | I'm talking about when I was around the ages of 4-7, kids that were a few years older than me looked like they were all 18 year old teenagers. How does that work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y0mb8/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_i_was_younger_kids_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfg9u2m",
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"text": [
"Because of perspective. They lived 1.5 times longer than you have at that point. ",
"Perspective. Soon those 18 year old will look like 3-5 year olds to you.\n\nSource: I'm 30",
"Because they where bigger and older. A lot of growing happens during two years of childhood."
]
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[],
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1vyksy | why are university texts often ridiculous in price? example inside | anlpZOYYiouDpWO2npFwhjmoqqSuCIF3TLlrElN2iOE9OFnVPNeqISZE9H7GjUanlpZOYYiouDpWO2npFwhjmoqqSuCIF3TLlrElN2iOE9OFnVPNeqISZE9H7GjUanlpZOYYiouDpWO2npFwhjmoqqSuCIF3TLlrElN2iOE9OFnVPNeqISZE9H7GjUanlpZOYYiouDpWO2npFwhjmoqqSuCIF3TLlrElN2iOE9OFnVPNeqISZE9H7GjUanlpZOYYiouDpWO2npFwhjmoqqSuCIF3TLlrElN2iOE9OFnVPNeqISZE9H7G | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vyksy/eli5_why_are_university_texts_often_ridiculous_in/ | {
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"text": [
"That price is for a new hardcover version of the book, which is apparently very rare. The price for a new paperback is indeed about $30.",
"Because its conveniently located within the University and students actually *pay* the price. ",
"because university texts are made for exclusive use for academic uses. often a text edition is only valid for 1 year of publishing. \n\nthe price is so high because people are willing to pay for it. that's how market economy works. the people pay for it because they're taking the class that requires that book. \n\nout on the general book market, there's not a required demand for XYZ book, therefore prices are much lower.",
"There may also be a degree of price discrimination from the publisher. For many of my college text books(I'm in Europe) on the cover there will often be a 'For non-U.S use only' banner or a highly inflated price tag tag U.S dollars ."
]
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1zt49d | why cant a dos attack be prevented? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zt49d/eli5why_cant_a_dos_attack_be_prevented/ | {
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"A server is there to serve users by providing access to a remote resource. If the DoS is from one user, this can be stopped by putting a limit on how any times one address may access the resource.\n\nDDoS is a different story, if it's a distributed denial of service attack, meaning what essentially looks like regular users trying to access the remote service of the server, turns out to be many thousands or hundreds of thousands of unique users coordinated all at once, usually through a bot net, it has no way to distinguish a malicious user from the group, becomes overwhelmed, and goes down.\n\n**TL;DR** To stop a DDoS attack, you would basically need to block all traffic to the server - which is exactly what the DDoS attacker wants - the service to become / remain unavailable to others, meaning the goal of a DDoS is achieved either way, thus it cannot be prevented.",
"network firewall engineer here\n\na DoS/DDoS attack can't be prevented because it takes advantage of normal communication, its like trying to stop somebody from speaking, i can tell you to stop talking, that doesn't mean you will, and i can't make you stop\n\nbut a DDoS attack is more like a thousand people trying to into the same walmart at the same time, the doors are only so wide (victim bandwidth) and can only let so many people through at a time, this means that legitimate customers are stuck outside in the parking lot waiting to get in\n\nthis can be mitigated however, you can make the doors wider (add bandwidth), add more doors (multiwan load balancing) and to really mitigate it, you make your walmart into a magic quantum walmart where someone enters and they are in a different walmart from everyone else who enters (anycast DNS)\n\nwhen you combine all of these, (load balancing, bandwidth, anycast) if becomes almost impossible to be DDoS'd, so why doesn't everyone do this? its expensive, very expensive, which is why very few companies do this\n\nnow there is a new kind of DDoS that uses something called NTP amplification, NTP is the system that gives you the correct time on your computer or phone, and people have figured out a way to use this to hit even an anycast target with more data than it can handle (think of that walmart again, except now you have a few billion people trying to enter, all the doors in the world won't help)\n\nthis new attack is what has been going on lately, but it can be fixed, NTP servers simply need to apply an update, and ISPs need to perform source verification to prevent people from spoofing (spoofing is like computer id theft)"
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[],
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5gwo7m | why does violet bend more than red when refracted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gwo7m/eli5_why_does_violet_bend_more_than_red_when/ | {
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"Violet has the shortest wavelength in the visible range. The shorter the wavelength the more a wave/particle is slowed down when passing through a prism. The more it is slowed down the more it is bent or refracted. Red on the other hand has the longest wavelength and is thus refracted the least. \n\nEdit: Circled back to red. And grammar. "
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[]
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||
c3hsi0 | what does the dot product mean in linear algebra? why is it used in movement equations? | While this might be a higher-level question, I am looking for an easy to grasp answer for this. I do some video game development in my free time, and it seems like the dot product of two vectors are used to calculate movement, position, light refraction, etc. My question is *why?* Like, I get the math part of it, but what I don't understand is where do these magical numbers/functions come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c3hsi0/eli5_what_does_the_dot_product_mean_in_linear/ | {
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"text": [
"The dot product takes two vectors and calculates how much they \"lie on each other\" or \"how much they align.\" Two vectors at 90 degrees from one another will have a dot product of zero since they do not lie on each other at all, while other vectors are less so.\n\nMore quantitatively, given two vectors A and B, the dot product is also a cheap way of calculating |A||B|cos(x) where x is the angle between the two vectors. Essentially calculating the value of cosine without actually calculating cosine turns out to be very useful in other aspects.\n\nIt comes up in physics often because quantities tend to be conserved in the 3 dimensions, that is say for instance momentum is conserved along the x, y, and z directions. Having to calculate these components often involves the use of trigonometric functions, at which point the dot and cross products can help due to their inherent nature.",
"the dot product is a very versatile property within linear vector algebra. It is simply a math stuff.\nYou do not only need it for angles, but also for projections, decompositions, i you like, it is basically the elemental form of \"matrix multiplication\".\n\nEven in everyday life, when you do grocery shopping, the cashier actually performs a dot product. One vectors is your basket (the number of each item within the store), the other vector is the stores price vector (price of each item in the store).\nThe result, the dot product, is the amount you need to pay.\n\nIf you ask why the dot product? Because you want to pay twice the price for double amount of items, or the price of A should not depend whether you also bought B. These are very basic properties, and they all translate to very basic mathematical structures that pop up elsewhere constantly."
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5vc18q | why does anxiety cause nausea, whuch then causes more anxiety? | For example, you're fine but something triggers your anxiety or startle response and soon after, you feel nauseated. Because you're sick, it causes more anxiety and the cycle continues. So, what causes your gut to get upset and how can you curb or prevent it from happening when you start feeling anxious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vc18q/eli5why_does_anxiety_cause_nausea_whuch_then/ | {
"a_id": [
"de0xohk"
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"It's by no means a completely accurate response but it's probably because our brain doesn't know any better, when you're anxious it thinks that you're in physical danger and triggers a \"flight or flight\" response, pumping heart rate and breathing, inhibiting digestion among other things.\n\n\nBasically, as long as you're aware that the nausea is a symptom of your panic you should just keep that in mind and not panic further because of it."
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2bdc5h | why hasn't a legit 'miracle' diet drug actually been invented? | I mean, we have antihistamines, antibiotics, antidepressants, expectorants, etc, that get the body to respond differently to things, so why haven't we been successful at developing some sort of a drug that prevents the stomach and intestines from absorbing sustenance? Or allows our body to just flush any absorbed glucose directly out in our urine instead of allowing it to be stored? Or forces the body to metabolize fat and pass all ingested food? I mean, there's a HUGE market for this, so one would think that research in this area would be profitable, right?
I mean, imagine being able to take a pill before going to a party so that you could eat a whole fucking cake and your body would either just pass the whole thing, or have your cells reject the sugar and have the kidneys just pass it in your urine! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bdc5h/eli5_why_hasnt_a_legit_miracle_diet_drug_actually/ | {
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"There was an OTC drug a few years back, not sure if it's still sold, by the name of Alli (pronounced \"ally\").\n\nIt worked, essentially, by preventing your body from absorbing most of the fat/grease in any food you ate. Only problem was, that fat/grease had to go *somewhere*.\n\nI think the informational brochure made reference to \"fatty/oily stool\", \"gas with discharge\" and \"bowel control problems\".\n\nOf course, as the brochure helpfully explained, this could all be avoided by not eating fatty/greasy food. Now, that'll be $90.",
" > why haven't we been successful at developing some sort of a drug that prevents the stomach and intestines from absorbing sustenance?\n\nWe have, but nobody takes them, because if you have unabsorbed yet partially digested materials in your gut, they'll get to your colon, suck out a lot of water through osmotic pressure, and make you shit yourself. Undigested fat is not comfortable either. And it can mess up the populations of bacteria in your body that you need to be balanced.\n\n > Or forces the body to metabolize fat and pass all ingested food?\n\nSame problem.\n\n > you could eat a whole fucking cake and your body would either just pass the whole thing\n\nTalk to somebody with a malabsorption about how smart this is. Or, even better, ingest a bottle of a sugar alcohol. I have heard people _screaming_ from the shits. You should probably go read some of the reviews of sugar free gummy bears. [Seriously, these are the kinds of thing that would happen to you.](_URL_0_)\n\n > Or allows our body to just flush any absorbed glucose directly out in our urine instead of allowing it to be stored? \n\nThis is akin to shooting insulin when you don't need it. You can induce all sorts of problems that way. Your body typically won't expect the sudden drop in glucose, so it won't recover, and you'll die. If you do a ketogenic diet slowly you can _lower_ your levels, but your brain still needs a little glucose to run on.",
"Because starving people to death will open you up to a world of lawsuits.\n\nAltering the levels of a single hormone or chemical is one thing, but to make it so people can't absorb food would be a complete and utter nightmare. Your body craves food for a reason. It will die without it. It craves fats for a reason. It will die without them. Obesity is a problem because our bodies are built with the assumption that it needs to eat these precious things while it can because it doesn't know when it will get them again. Biology doesn't just assume food is guaranteed in the future. \n\nBut, that's not really answering your question so let's play a game.\n\nLet's imagine we create a pill that stops you from being able to absorb food for 24 hours. Let's just.\n\nIn comes Bob. Bob is obese and has 100% over his ideal weight. Bob wants to go to party with his friends but doesn't want to gain weight so he takes the Magic Diet Pill.\n\nFine.\n\nFor 24 hours he receives no nutritional value. So his body isn't satisfying its needs so it keeps ramping up the demands. He's eating but his blood sugar keeps dropping so his body keeps telling him he's starving. He keeps eating long after he is full. He gets sick from stuffing himself and he's still hungry. \n\nNow, I won't even get into what a disaster he is going to face later when a bunch of undigested food snakes down his digestive track and has to be expelled. I'll let you use your imagination there but - here's a hint - it probably won't be fun.\n\nBut, let's move past that. If he somehow survives the misery of that day, he's going to be craving sugars and fats. His body is going to want him to seek out the highest concentration of fats and calories he can find. It thinks he's starving. If he eats without the pill, he may actually gain weight as a rebound effect. If he eats without the pill.\n\nPeople like to believe in miracle products. Scam artists prey upon that. People often treat drugs like they are magic potions with an easy to swallow coating. They aren't. Even the over the counter stuff can and often does kill you if you use it incorrectly. Guess what? People screw up prescription drug and over the counter drug does all the time. Read the number of deaths per year provided by [the CDC](_URL_0_) if you doubt it. Some of those are people who are trying to get high, yes, but a lot of them are just morons who think they know what they are doing.\n\nIf Bob keeps taking the pill while happily eating 16 chocolate cakes a day he's just going to kill himself. His body has a reserve of fat it can burn for energy, but it isn't just calories we get from food. We get vitamins, minerals, and proteins necessary for repairing damage to the body. \n\nOkay, fine. We don't block 100% of food absorption. We just block, say, 50% of it. Does that help?\n\nNot really. Same problem. The body is used to the blood sugar levels being at a certain level. They drop, it triggers hunger. Bob has to eat more to satisfy the body's needs. You also can't make a drug that acts like a gatekeeper. You can either shut down or at slow the absorption of everything or you don't. You can't have a drug differentiate between what is fat and what is a vitamin. In fact, some vitamins are fat soluble so blocking fat actually blocks them too.\n\nThis is all assuming you CAN block the absorption. How are you going to specifically target that without affecting other parts of the body? \n\nYou could, potentially I guess, shut down insulin production. Basically induce diabetes. The body is still eating and digesting but it can't break down sugars so it is still starving. Then you just run the risk of diabetic related illnesses like neuropathy, retinopathy, and cardiomyopathy just to name a few. \n\nYou could try blocking the diffusion process in the blood vessels along the intestines but, unfortunately, other parts of your body use diffusion along blood vessels as well. Targeting a reaction to just one area of the body is pretty tricky.\n\nOkay, so making a drug that does something that ambitious not kill you is tricky. Making it so that morons don't kill themselves by blocking all nutrition because they want to be thin is a problem. \n\nBut even given all that, your body is going to fight to try to keep its weight because it thinks any sudden loss of weight is the same thing as starvation. It will fight and people can gain weight with rebounds. So it is either almost certain death by remaining on the pills versus almost certain weight gain taking them intermittently.\n\nSo what about something that just makes you feel full faster? Can that be done? Actually, yes. [Some](_URL_1_) pills are being tested. But a much more common and permanent solution is surgery.\n\nHeard of gastric bypass surgery? Lap banding? They both work on the idea that if you shrink the stomach down you eat less. It sort of works too. But it isn't even a 100% success story there nor it is an easy one size fits all solution. You still can't eat whatever you want because there are certain foods you now must avoid. Your stomach is smaller and you have to eat slowly now. Some people have diets where it doesn't really make a big difference afterwards.\n\nSo . . . I guess the short answer is because the risk of death is too high while the odds of it actually working in a way that people want is pretty low. "
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22cwzr | how can a corporation be regulated by a government that is funded and controlled by corporations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22cwzr/eli5_how_can_a_corporation_be_regulated_by_a/ | {
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"An example of a loaded question. "
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1xfvlp | how do supermarkets decide what items go on sale? | I'll often see different supermarkets with the same items on sale and it usually seems somewhat random so any help explaining what process they use would be greatly appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xfvlp/eli5_how_do_supermarkets_decide_what_items_go_on/ | {
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"there are a bunch of factors. Some things are put on sale because of the current season, i.e. pumpkin pie mix around thanksgiving, eggnog around xmas. Other times, things can be put on sale because the store bought too much of something from a distributor and they are trying to get rid of it before it expires. Distributors sometimes have \"sales\" too, so supermarkets sometimes buy alot of that sale item and put it on sale themselves. And lastly, some things just go on sale periodically. For example, pepsi or coke usually have alternating sales. If pepsi 2L sodas arent on sale, usually coke 2L will be.\n\n\n\nTL;DR depends on current season, distributor sales, and some sales are just periodical",
"I work for a small company that owns and operates 9 different grocery stores. We have several main vendors that we use for the majority of our products. They give us rebates for putting different things for sale. And their orders/discounts come straight from the producers (Proctor & Gamble or Nestle or whoever) so that is why it's not uncommon for stores to have the same items for sale. Now, not all of our sale or ad items are decided that way, the vendor rebates probably only make up 25% of the items on sale in a given week. The rest is the seasonal stuff (Turkey Day, Valentine's Day, etc) and items at each department's manager's discretion (product they need to move faster, etc). I'm not sure how common this way of deciding sale items is because I know we try to give our different locations autonomy which is something you won't find as much in super corporate companies. ",
"I often wondered the same. Do the stores ever put stuff on sale that they have to much of. Let's say, for some reason, bananas aren't selling and they have entirely to much inventory on the floor and in the back. Will they put bananas on sale to help move inventory?"
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22cp0a | the higher the capacity of battery, the quicker it is to charge. | Higher capacity = Holds more charge.
Would it not take longer to charge because it had more to fill? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22cp0a/eli5_the_higher_the_capacity_of_battery_the/ | {
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"Batteries are usually capacity rated using Amp-Hours(Ah), or more commonly milliamp-hours (mAh). This is a measure of stored energy, and refers to the time a battery can supply a constant current. For example, a battery capable of supplying a 50 mA current for 40 hours would have a capacity of 2000 mAh. \n\nBatteries are charged by supplying a current to the battery, with the charging current determining how long it takes to charge. More modern batteries are capable of being charged at higher currents, so can be charged faster. For example, a 1500mAh battery charged at 500mA May take 3 hours to charge, but a 2000 mAh battery charged at 1000 mA (1A) might only take 2 hours.\n\nIn reality it's more complicated than that, as the device being charged will be drawing a portion of the supplied current.",
"Modern lithium-ion batteries are charged at a rate of 0.7C or 1.0C, where C means the capacity of the battery itself. For example, a 1000mAh battery charging at 1C means it's charging at 1000mA. Larger batteries still generally specify the same charge rate, so a 2000mAh battery can charge at 2A, where a 1000mAh battery can only charge at 1A. Therefore, a larger battery can acquire more charge in less time than a smaller battery.\n\nHowever, if you look at charging as a function of percent, using the same 1C charge rate will charge a small battery and a large battery just as quickly (e.g. they will both reach 50%, 80%, and 100% capacity in the same amount if time).\n\nThis whole thing also assumes your charger can deliver the correct current into the battery. For example, plugging an iPad into an iPhone charger will charge it slower than if it were plugged into an iPad charger since the iPad charger can deliver more current."
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60svq1 | how long would humans be able to live if things like cancer or other diseases didn't exist? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60svq1/eli5_how_long_would_humans_be_able_to_live_if/ | {
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"Probably 115 years. \n\nA few people would get a bit more, a few would get a bit less.\n\nBut that doesn't include super rad medical progress.\n\nHere's an article from Nature that sort of discusses both sides:\n\n_URL_0_"
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2vmz1r | what's the difference between post-karma and link-karma? | I know that one is for upvotes I have on comments, and the other one is for the links I submited that got upvoted. I'd like to know, why they are counted seperately and what the other differences may be. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vmz1r/eli5whats_the_difference_between_postkarma_and/ | {
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"They're counted separately because Reddit was originally *just* a link-sharing site. There were no comments. When they decided to add comments & self posts, they decided that those should not count towards your link-sharing score. This means comments are tallied separately & self posts yield no karma.\n\nThere's no meaningful technical reasons behind it, it's just how they wanted to design the site."
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xx2sb | - why aren't you supposed to look animals in the eye? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xx2sb/eli5_why_arent_you_supposed_to_look_animals_in/ | {
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"Some animals, like dogs, or gorillas, consider this a sign of aggression. It's how they signal a challenge to each other in the wild.",
"Because they either take it as a challenge or a threat to their well being. ",
"Any animal you can take in a fight you should look in the eye. Same with women. ",
"In the same way a well dressed gentleman considers a glove thrown to his feet a challenge, any animal worth its hide considers a stern stare in the eye a challenge. One thing an honourable gentleman and a prime beast share in common is that they never refuse a challenge. If you're not looking for a confrontation, keep your eyes down and your gloves on!"
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5uhsy0 | what does happen at the merger of two oceans ? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uhsy0/eli5_what_does_happen_at_the_merger_of_two_oceans/ | {
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"To quote u/Nevuary's explanation (which was in the post you linked).\n\n > The gradients are more likely caused by the fresh glacial water carrying glacial sediments meeting the ocean water which has a higher salt content. These two bodies of water have different densities and therefore take longer to mix. They will mix given enough time and the \"border\" is not static.\n\nIt's like oil and vinegar, but as the other ingredients mix, everything evens out. "
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1dvfer | in our world of convienience why do we no longer use milk men services? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dvfer/eli5_in_our_world_of_convienience_why_do_we_no/ | {
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"There are still services that deliver milk (and other products). They are usually pretty expensive so I'd say it's a matter of cost vs. convenience.",
"Milk keeps longer now, both because of advancements in processing and home refrigerators. It used to be that you'd have to go to the store every other day to keep milk at the home. Hence the value of delivery.",
"Milk spoils pretty quickly, so it was pretty important to deliver it as fresh as possible. However with better packaging and refrigerators in every home, daily milk delivery stopped being so important. You can now easily stock up on a weeks worth of milk.\n\nAlso cost of individual delivery has risen as a consequence.",
"Cost. It is cheaper now to have a local grocery store within a few blocks or miles of where you live instead of someone delivering.\n\nAlso, a lot of dairy processes are automated, and you have mass production now where milk is hauled to a central facility and processed enmasse then distributed out to stores. In earlier times a lot of the processing and delivery steps were done at the dairy itself, which is why a lot of towns had a local dairy. Nowadays you have large dairies that have a truck come pick up the raw product a few times a day.\n\nYou could still have a milkman in theory if you wanted home delivery, but it would cost you a lot more simply because your local dairy isn't local anymore-unless the large processing center is in your town."
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9b0ed2 | why is a lottery considered a tax on the poor? | Mississippi ALMOST passed a lottery bill last night, but it failed. Some we're relieved calling it a "tax on the poor." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9b0ed2/eli5_why_is_a_lottery_considered_a_tax_on_the_poor/ | {
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"Because poor people as a demographic overwhelmingly play the lottery and as an expected value calculation the odds of you winning your initial payment back aren’t great, so it’s likely you are just donating money to the lottery system. ",
"Because poor people go to the lottery far more often than rich people, and it takes more money than it gives, on average. ",
"Because the poor are often the ones who play, seeing it as longshot opportunity to transcend their situation... however the odds are so bad that most just flush the money away to keep aglow that spark of hope. ",
"Rich people don’t buy lottery tickets, statistically they are a complete waste of money\nPoor people buy them in droves with money they don’t have and that would be better spent in other places. One poor person wins millions once a year while millions spend the rent money to chase the get rich quick scheme ",
"Lotteries exist as a way for the state to earn money, at the end of the day. No matter what money is paid out to winners, the state running the lottery has earned more money than what's going out, like a casino.\n\nThe people who buy lottery tickets, by and large, are poorer people. Comparatively very few lottery tickets are bought by middle and upper classes, with the majority being bought by people in the lowest income brackets, people living in low-income areas, and people without college or technical degrees. These are the people playing in the hopes of hitting it rich, and the vast majority of them won't win more than a few dollars in their lifetime.\n\nSo that's a big criticism of state lotteries: they're intended as a way for the state to raise money, and most of that money is coming from the people at the bottom of the income pyramid.",
"Google “lottery simulator” and see just how bad your chances are of winning. I simulated 10,000 years of biweekly drawings and never even got close to the jackpot, and by the end of the run, I had lost over $30,000. \n\nPersonally, I prefer to call the lottery a tax on people who don’t understand statistics and probability, because if you did, you’d never waste even a dollar on it",
"The poor are more prone to playing the lottery, wasting money they can less afford to part with, in hopes of winning the lottery and solving their financial problems. In reality, that's a VERY slim possibility, yet many throw away more on tickets than wealthier residents do. Since much of the money goes to schools or some other government initiative, it's basically a voluntary tax, and since it's more likely the poor pay it by buying tickets, it's often referred to as a \"tax on the poor.\"",
"There are three groups of people who buy a lot of lottery tickets:\n\n\n* people who really need money and don't have other prospects\n* people who don't understand probability and luck\n* compulsive gamblers\n\nGroup one is poor almost by definition. Group two is uneducated, which contributes to being poor. Group three will eventually become poor if they are not already.\n\nLotteries take money from these groups of people, returns about half of it as winnings, and the other half goes to government spending that otherwise would be funded by a tax on everyone. Instead, that spending is funded by demographic groups more likely to be poor.\n\n",
"Well-off people don't expect to win, so they are okay with buying a ticket every so often to dream, knowing they'll be fine even if they don't win.\n\nSome impoverished people see it as their only way out of poverty so they play it a lot, depending on a win and not being okay with losing.",
"because the poor has their rich life all planned out.\n\nThe rich do not fantasize about being poor.\n\nThe poor knows that the lottery is akin to throwing money away (logically) but yet *someone* could win the lottery. could be you. (fantasy)"
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1ua1h6 | in tonal languages like mandarin, how do you sing without changing the meaning of the individual words? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ua1h6/eli5_in_tonal_languages_like_mandarin_how_do_you/ | {
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"Although the the language is tonal, a lot of the meaning of words depend on context. Technically, though, you could be saying really ridiculous things in a song. Pronouns like he/she/it are all written differently but spoken the same, the meanings are inferred through context.",
"For Mandarin (or Chinese dialects at the very least), words are primarily single syllable words such as 庭(ting), 古(gu), et cetera. The tonal aspect of each word is really a relative difference and not an actual note, so for 庭(ting) you only really need to make sure the tone ends higher than what you started with. What note isn't actually important.\n\nThis, along with the single syllable nature of the words really means that you get a lot of leeway on what note you end the word in, though words that require an abrupt finish in its pronunciation are generally not used to carry a melody but those aren't a majority (roughly 25%).\n\nLastly, because there are so many homophones in Chinese dialects, people fluent in understanding generally infer the meaning from context if needed anyway. \n\nIt's also why rap is pretty simple in those dialects, everything basically rhymes.",
"Native Mandarin speaker here. I have some knowledge of other dialects like Cantonese as well.\n\nEven though Chinese is a tonal language these tones come secondary to the melody of the song. However, speakers will still be able to understand the exact meaning of the song by the pronunciation of the words even without the tonal information. Here, let me give you an example: \n \n\nTake a look at [this song](_URL_0_) (thanks for the help!) 没那么简单。 The first five words of the song should be pronounced Mei2 na4 me jian3 dan1 in Mandarin Chinese - but if you take a quick listen you'll realise that this isn't the case in the song!! \n\nA poster here mentioned context - I would respectfully like to clarify what this context involved means. These five words combine to form a _completely unambiguous_ meaning, even though every single word taken individually is a total homophone. For a more Anglo-centric example, imagine the song lyric \"I can't BEAR with you anymore\" - no English speaker would confuse that with the four legged furry animal!! Similarly, five very ambiguous individual words come together to provide a clear an unambiguous meaning.\n\nThat's how speakers of tonal languages distinguish meaning without tone! The first top level reply by /u/kamiyamato is Not Completely Accurate since there is no REQUIREMENT nor is it necessary for the tones to roughly approximate spoken tones or end higher than they begin in order for speakers to infer the correct and unambiguous meaning. /u/kamiyamato is also completely erroneous in claiming that most words are made up of only one character, because there are literally hundreds of thousands of words which are made up by joining two or more characters together forming a word with a completely different meaning :)\n\nHope I helped!\n\n\n\n\n",
"You don't, at least in Mandarin. It's context based. ",
"i guess this is why no body can understand Jay Chou",
"Context. Singers mangle the tones to fit the melody when singing, but you can tell what they mean by the context of the words in the sentence.\n\nSource: Mandarin speaker. Also listener of chinese music. ",
"In some tonal languages like Cantonese, you have got to match the tones with the music. For instance, if it is a transition from a higher note to a lower one, you need to fill in a syllable with a high tone and then a lower tone, otherwise it'd sound retarded.\n\nIn the early days when Christian missionaries first came to this area, they didn't know this rule. They tried to translate the hymn \"His Sheep am I\" into Cantonese using the word 主 zyu2 for the word \"Lord\", (the 2 at the end indicates a high rising tone, or \"do-so\"), but that syllable sounds really similar to 豬 zyu1 (\"pig\", the 1 indicates high level tone, or \"so-so\"). The lyrics was supposed to mean 我是主的羊 ngo5 si6 zyu2 dik1 joeng4 \"I am lord's sheep\", but it sounded like \"I am a pig's face\" because they didn't get the tones right.\n\n(Here is a link to the actual song if you're interested: _URL_0_)\n\nSo if you think carefully about it, you will know Cantonese lyricists really are geniuses. If you can't change the melody, tones for the entire line is restricted. So they are like playing crossword puzzle and writing lyrics at the same time. You will have a very limited choice of words and you need to express yourself under those constraints. Imagine that you are to fill in the lyrics for a song, and your composer friend decided the first vowels of word for you. \n\nEdit: Some languages don't do this 'tone-matching' thing. Tones can be completely distorted in Mandarin songs. You can make it out from the context. ",
"In addition to context, songs are written with tones in mind. We intuitively consider language's nuances when writing songs. It's like how, in English, the stresses in multi-syllable words will usually match the stresses in the beat. Chinese songwriters subconsciously choose pitches based on the words.",
"As a Mandarin speaker, the simple explanation is that although Mandarin outwardly appears like a completely tonal language, and to an extent, it is, it is more so a contextual language than anything else. Unless you are using obscure vocabulary that the general population isn't familiar with, most people will be able to piece together what you are saying simply by the toneless way you pronounce it. This is how Canto/Mandarin singers can get away with singing. Hopefully that helps!\n\nAdd-on: That is not to say that the study of tones if you ever pursue a tonal language is not important. Obviously the most efficient way to speak the language is correctly and not leave people guessing!"
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3xytjw | anonymous is a leaderless decentralized organization. hen the media reports that anonymous has issued a statement, where do these statements come from? | Can anyone issue a statement in the name of Anonymous?
EDIT: sorry for the typo | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xytjw/eli5_anonymous_is_a_leaderless_decentralized/ | {
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"The easiest way to answer your question is to simply rearrange it slightly: Anyone can issue a statement in the name of Anonymous.\n\nIf you want to be taken seriously as representing Anonymous you would need to find some way to make your voice louder than one random schlub saying you speak for everyone but any measure other than outing every \"member\" could still theoretically be met with \"well that's just a subset of the group and not everyone\".",
"Anyone can claim to be an \"official\" new source of Anonymous. There are several channels such as highly-followed Twitter accounts or operators of certain big IRC channels that have a lot of following, thus creating bigger attention to anything they post. But don't be fooled into thinking it was a real organization. Anonymous, at its core is a meme anyone can use. \n\n\nYou can see two general major influences/streams in what people who use the Anonymous meme do or say:\n\n1) the more \"oldschool\", \"first generation\" that was just in it for-the-lulz, think /b/\n\n2) the more politicaly motivated \"second generation\" of Anonymous that gradually formed between the Habbo Hotel Raid and Operation Chanology. \n\nBut even within the more politicaly-minded operations then did we sometimes have different \"official\" Anonymous Operations fighting against opposing targets. That's because everyone and anyone can claim to be Anonymous; it all just depends on how many people you can reach. \n\n\n",
"There's an amazing podcast called Stuff You Should Know that did an episode on how Anonymous works. I would recommend checking that out.",
"Comes from the CI's that the FBI flipped, hired and made to hack specific targets. Anonymous has been heavily infiltrated by the FBI since 2012, most the people at the top doing these 'releases' are people who were given sealed indictments/charged with cfaa violations and are given the option to hack targets on the behalf of FBI or face long jail sentences. They just have to give up a few members every once in a while, ya know, the ones that are real hacktivists. Don't get me wrong most of the people who say they are a part of anonymous are people with good intentions. If you look at their targets and releases from say 2008 - to now youll see a shift around 2011 where the movement was deliberately hijacked by state actors. Send in the down votes.\n\nEdit: To answer the question about what is considered a legitimate anonymous release. \n\nThe way it used to go, whoever had the biggest botnet or page view script got their message out to the largest audience. Whoever got the most views on their release had the eyes and ears of everyone checking the latest anonymous leaks. This is exactly how the state actors got involved and started hijacking the movement by posting releases that were intended to discredit, divide, and conquer the ranks of anonymous and turn it into an organization the FBI and others could use to fit their own agenda.",
"Generally if its something credible the larger Anonymous twitter accounts will pick up on it to spread the word. If no major Anon Twitter account is talking about it you can generally just ignore it.\n\n",
"When the frontpages of major \"news\" networks are covered in dickbutts with an enclosed message- you can probably be sure that hackers did it.\n\nHowever I'm just taking a shot in the dark, so don't believe anything I say, including that last statement.... and this one.",
"Anonymous is not your regular group of people hacking stuff. What I mean by this is they do not hold meetings or anything like that, imagine Anonymous being like Reddit, an internet community with something you might call \"a collective mind\" in which happens that its members are hackers or people with access to privileged information (in most cases not in a \"legal\" manner) and that have made more impactful activities. \n\nSo when people say \"Anonymous is not happy with ISIS attacking Paris\" its like saying \"Redditors think puppies are cute\". Them being decentralized also means some of its members may or may not agree with Anonymous' \"official\" statements, just as some redditores may think puppies are not cute.\n\ntl;dr Think of Anonymous more like a community instead of an organization, just like any other internet community (ie. Reddit)."
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18h4oz | how do animals get enough nutrition from a single food source? | Cows with grass, chickens with grain, koalas with eucalyptus, where do they get their fat + protein / other nutrients? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18h4oz/how_do_animals_get_enough_nutrition_from_a_single/ | {
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"It's all about specialization. The animals you listed have evolved to be really good at getting all the nutrition they can out of a specific type of food material. Cows have four stomach compartments and gigantic appetites, koalas have internal organs that are really good at straining out toxins in eucalyptus, and so on. \n\nHumans, on the other hand, have evolved to be able to eat practically anything. The price we pay for this is that we aren't very efficient at processing any one specific type of food. "
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10xgsp | why the chinese are building ghost cites? | Why/how do they keep them unoccupied? I mean there lot's of space people could move right in, what is preventing them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10xgsp/eli5_why_the_chinese_are_building_ghost_cites/ | {
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"I saw a documentary about this once, the ghost towns where built in an attempt to keep the chinese economy booming. But it's to expensive to live there so the people simply can't afford it. [(Link to documentary)](_URL_0_)",
"A lot of it is to do with keeping their GDP high and unemployment low - basically all of this is done to keep the Chinese economy strong.",
"The government has lots of money and building things creates lots of jobs as well as drives many other sectors. The houses ARE sold, I know they are empty but it's becauset eh people buying them are investing in one of the only real \"safe\" (debatable) investment opportunity they have, real estate. So they buy these houses with the hope that the price will go up as the area gets more developed. \n\nThe government is selling everyone on this idea by saying that there are still hundreds of millions of people in the country without houses who want to move to the city and it's true except no one is mentioning that most of them don't have the money to buy these houses and instead it's mostly the middle class who is buying second and third houses for investment or to rent out.\n\nThis all seems like a VERY terrible idea until you realize a couple things, first off these houses are being bought with cash a lot of the time. Chinese have been saving very well for a long time and they are now spending, so if the markets crash the government is hoping it wont take down too much, it will just lower the amount of savings people have, not good of course but nothing like what happened to the USA. \n\nSecondly, The country needs this building to continue so that the construction market doesn't crash as huge numbers of the impoverished have jobs in this sector and if it crashes these people all lose their jobs and there goes the countries stability ast hey'll have tens if not hundreds of millions of people out of work over night. \n\nThirdly, the country has HUGE amounts of money, they can build these cities with the hope that in the future they will become booming metropolises. If it doesn't work, it is a waste of money but that's the one thing China has to waste right now.\n\nSo yeah, it looks like a terrible idea but there is logic behind it. Whether it will work is still to be seen. According to government stats and economic predictions, it's working great, according to many who are watching, the government is hiding what's going on and a crash is coming. Either way it's an interesting time to be alive and in China!\n\nEdit: \"what is preventing them?\" - Answered this vaguely above, to be clear, the houses are empty but they aren't without owners. It's like if you have a house in Tampa and one in NY where you live, what's to stop homeless people from taking over your Tampa house. It's yours. The police wouldn't be cool with it.\n\nAs well, an interesting side note that is probably good for understanding what seems to be a complete lack of long term logic to all this. The people buying these houses are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on what amount to small appartments in the West, the prices are insane, far beyond the Western cities in terms of how much they cost VS how much they make. And what I love about this, is they don't actually own anything, it's a 70 year rental agreement they are buying, the government still owns the land so they are spending their life savings to rent three or four units at incredibly over valued prices and 70 years later they lose it all regardless. I asked a business lady I taught about this a couple years ago, she had just bought a new house (her second) and I asked what about in the future? Her answer was \"The house wont last more than 20 years anyway before it falls apart so I'm not worried\". The construction is so shit here that these buildings have a 20-30 year shelflife before they need to be rebuilt anyway, now your \"ownership\" of the house does entitle you to another in the building that is built on the spot but who knows if they'll have the money to rebuild all these houses again 30 years from now and if they do, who knows if the new houses will be big, small or anything about them. It's a truly beautiful and mind boggling insane system! I would hate to be a part of it but as someone sitting on the side watching, it's like some crazy never ending soap opera!\n\nThis may not be suitable for five year olds. If anything is unclear, just ask!",
"Basically because they have vast amounts of money and natural resources to pull it off and an enormous workforce that cannot be idle. The Chinese don't like high unemployment rates. It leads to discontent and revolt. So, they prefer to pay to keep the masses busy and they can afford to do it.\nIt will also artificially keep the economy booming.",
"It's just one of the things the Chinese to do make their economy grow artificially. Those cities are empty because they're too expensive to live in, and the government knows it. ",
"To put it simply, the government of China has a GDP growth quota that they want to fill each year. They have a fair amount of growth in their industrial and manufacturing sectors, but it's not quite where they want their total GDP growth to be.\n\nBy building 'ghost cities', they're encouraging GDP growth by creating housing and infrastructure, which in turn puts investment value into China. This would normally grow GDP in any country, and it does so in China. The problem is, it isn't 'quality GDP', GDP that actually does good. It's almost entirely housing that isn't affordable to most Chinese, and isn't in demand.",
"I'll take a shot at it, since the top comment doesn't exactly have it correct.\n\nImagine a typical pair of fairly well-off Chinese grandparents. They have one child, who is married to an only child, who has an only child, so they only have one grandchild. Who has four grandparents. So Chinese people can't really depend on their grandchildren to support them in old age.\n\nNow, they have a bunch of money. What are they going to do with it? It's all in Chinese currency, and China has some pretty strict controls on their currency. You can't just sell it all for dollars and buy US treasury funds - you have to invest it in China. And if you invest in the \"safe\" things in China, you wind up being able to buy less things later than you could now.\n\nSo you take your money and you buy an apartment that isn't going to get filled for a decade or more. If you invested your money in safe ways, the money you spent on an apartment wouldn't be able to afford that apartment. So buying an empty apartment is a good financial idea.\n\ntl;dr Chinese people have literally no better investment options than building an apartment and waiting for it to get filled.",
"Its an investment that many people think is worth waiting for to become profitable.\n\nMany areas there are developing fast, and experience has shown that this makes farmers move to cities while chaning their professions and populations growing fast and wealthy.\n\nThe problem is that this is happening too fast in some areas, and the habbits of farmers in high buildings do not fade as quickly, still herding chicken on the roof of a 10 level building.",
"Seems like china fucking it's own enviornment and people in the worst way possible \"see all this good usable land...\"lets build shitty temporary houses and sell them for 70 years at a time!\"",
"People can't afford them, but it boosts the GDP to keep building. Remember american housing crisis? Yeah... she's gonna come to china in a BIG way...",
"China has an elaborate 20 year plan to build as many interesting structure clusters as possible prior to bio-engineering a rabies like infection that effects humans exclusively. Their endgame is to have the most interesting levels to a realistic left4dead type of situation.\n",
"I don't think space people want to live in China."
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1q942r | confused anthropology syudent here... how do scientists decide the genus for a *hominid*?? | How do they choose a genus for them? What makes the scientist decide if a hominid is Australopithecus, Homo, Ardipithecus, ect, ect...
What certain traits are required for it to fall into a particular genus? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q942r/eli5_confused_anthropology_syudent_here_how_do/ | {
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"Since this wasn't enough, you have two questions here, which we tried to answer one of: the differences between the *hominins* - it sounds like you just want humanoids - and, in particular, of the subtribe Hominina; and how one defines a new species in general.\n\nThe first question, of the subtribe, is still like everything below - as each new species is recorded, we've acquired specific information on things like body range, eye orbit size, you name it. Due to the limited number of specimens there's still a fair amount of debate over some of the species, but it usually is separated by stuff like brow ridge, cranium cavity size, and how \"humanoid\" the teeth look. *Australopithecus* is far different than *Homo* (I saw Lucy when the fossil was on traveling exhibit, and it's really quite stark). As you progress in understanding fossils and anatomy you'll acquire a more distinct knowledge of the patterns and learn to recognize them. \n\nDoing an ELI5 on each species for your notes is hard because of this, though I know a few people who could do it. Ask for an AMA on Meave Leakey.\n\nStill, we tend to put larger brain sizes in *Homo*, which is up for tons of debate that I wasn't a part of even when I was a paleo student, because I liked staring at dinosaurs and fish.\n\nBack to naming a new species.\n\nWhen I was a wee thing in paleo, we had programs called Mesquite, Morphobank, and other things that I shall not speak of. And there are tons and tons of identifying morphological features for everything, from zygomatic arch variation to number of teeth in a juvenile skull.\n\nOnce you had some new fossil that doesn't match your current findings, you'd type in all the characteristics, compare them to a set, usually a known outgroup and possible relatives, and hit 'start.' If the data was strong and covered for issues like convergent evolution, you're golden. (Yes, you personally might have the families and basic traits memorized, but assuming is dangerous business and leads to drunken fights with your postdocs.)\n\nMorphological characteristics are being replaced by genetic analysis whenever possible, but we still rely on the hard data since most fossils don't exactly have soft tissue to sample.\n\nThat doesn't mean everyone will agree - that's why we see arguments for decades. Someone will find a declaration from 1904 and then it's off to the op-ed section of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology for an armchair war. I mean, a few years back it was determined that a bunch of dinosaurs - several species, in fact - were actually juvenile forms of other dinosaurs. \n\nI'm sure it's changed slightly, but that's how it was when I was still in paleontology.\n\nNow to the next step: choosing a genus.\n\nIf you've completed the steps above and find you've got a holotype like /u/Feldman742 said, you get to name it in the paper. Most of the time you choose a new *species*, not a new genus. Giving it a name comes down to what it looks like (there's a new species whose genus means 'blemish'), or if there's someone you want to honor (Eristalis gatesi for Bill Gates). Naming something after yourself, unless you're under the age of about 13, is considered ridiculously uncouth.\n\nA new genus has to have enough significant differences in order to be worth separating from everything else in the scientific record. That involves all the work described above, and you have to include enough information to prove it's significantly different than everything else on the record. The level of significance can vary somewhat, but you pretty much have to prove 1) what family it's in and 2) that it's unlike everything in that family.\n\nYou repeat that when you think you have a new family, but by comparing all related families.\n\n**TL;DR: Find a thing, decide it looks unlike ALL THE THINGS. Fight a computer program into submission with every piece of morphological data you can throw at it. Check for convergent evolution. If it's something new, name it, publish, and prepare for decades of armchair jousting/accolades. Don't name it after yourself.**\n\nEDIT: for clarification/expansion."
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2upahz | why are whites frequently condemned for practicing slavery, when slavery existed in almost every ancient civilization? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2upahz/eli5_why_are_whites_frequently_condemned_for/ | {
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"Our civilization wasn't that ancient. And abolitionists won the war and painted the losers as evil. Plus slavery is comparable to pet and animaL ownership today . The really bad owners were really bad at the care and treatment of slaves, close to nazi death camp bad.",
"Because it's our own history. I would assume people in other random countries don't care much about the history of American slavery. ",
"Because it generally wasn't about race until recently. A city declared war on another city and the losers were enslaved. It was easy to justify - I'm your master because I defeated you. It wasn't until the Transatlantic slave trade began that the justification for slavery was strictly racially based. ",
"Because American black people have to have someone else to blame for not being able to get their shit together as a culture.",
"Slavery, in ancient times, was a form of labor that could be forced to do the nasty work. \nSince the Industrial Revolution, we have machines that can do a lot of that manual labor, cheaper, easier, and faster. The REAL reason for having slaves was severely undercut. \nAlso, there are many different kinds of slavery. In ancient Rome, ANYBODY could be a slave, and a slave could win/buy his/her freedom, and even become a Roman Citizen. Under the Koran, a person could only be made a slave if they were not Muslim. In the Bible, a father could sell his children into slavery. In the colonial US, a person could \"buy\" passage to the New World with the guarantee of seven years' labor (indentured servitude). But (in general), slaves were considered humans, and had the possibility of becoming MORE than slaves. \nIn the antebellum US South, slavery was based on racism. Slaves were born into slavery, and there was (almost) zero chance of escaping that slavery. Slaves were not even considered human, and could be treated as property in every sense of the term. Bought, sold, damaged, destroyed, tortured, sexually abused, it was all okay. And, most damning of all, it was condoned by the government and society. Southern slavery was a particularly egregious form of slavery, despite being in a country that professed to be a land of freedom and opportunity. \nSlavery became immoral in the West (western Europe) in the first half of the 19th Century. \"Owning\" people became illegal, and some countries (Great Britain, for example) actively fought to eliminate the Slave Trade. That does not mean those countries were not overtly racist, and reduced entire populations to effective slavery through colonialism justified by eugenics and \"the White Man's Burden.\" \nToday, there are probably more slaves than at any time in history. But, for the most part, that slavery is underground. It is not officially sanctioned, there are laws and international treaties against it, but it is everywhere. Sex slavery is rampant in the US, countries have labor practices that are effective slavery, and there are excuses for it up and down. But it's not OWNERSHIP of a particular individual by another. Generally. "
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38k9wl | what makes rail transportation so much more energy efficient than road transportation? | Let's control for other variables - so imagine a train on steel rails and the same train on asphalt. Why is the rail road train more efficient (if it is)?
I've heard that the low friction of the steel wheels to the steel track may be the answer, but that doesn't make sense to me. Friction should be desirable or else you would lose a lot of energy to acceleration. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38k9wl/eli5_what_makes_rail_transportation_so_much_more/ | {
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"Perhaps the biggest factor that you haven't removed from the equation is traffic, stop signs, stop lights, etc. Braking kills your efficiency.\n\nOther significant factors that you've controlled for include:\n\n* grading - rail lines generally incur much less elevation change than highways\n* motor efficiency - diesel electric locomotives are essentially an infinitely variable transmission, allowing the diesel engine to run at maximum efficiency\n* aero - freight trains generally travel slower and incur less aero loss, plus \"drafting\" effects"
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225rgh | how we can be so far in debt and still giveaway so much? | Not meant for a political opinion but more or less why is it we are in such a debt but still able to offer others "aid"?
Does this aid count towards our debt? Who is collecting this debt ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/225rgh/eli5how_we_can_be_so_far_in_debt_and_still/ | {
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"1) Foreign aid is a fraction of our budge, [about 1.5%](_URL_1_)\n\n2) We are able to borrow money to pay for our budget because our assets are worth enough to justify our borrowing.\n\n3) Various groups own our debt the largest being the federal reserve with 12% and China coming in a 8% \n\nSource: _URL_0_"
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5l3nce | why can people sleep through loud noises but get woke up easily by voices? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5l3nce/eli5_why_can_people_sleep_through_loud_noises_but/ | {
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"I know I wake up for some noises and not others and some voices but not others. I believe it is because the brain doesn't actually shut all the way down when we sleep. Only parts. So the noises that matter for survival or the ones we've trained ourselves to view as important ( for me - the cats breaking things, dogs growling, or my SO talking) will trigger a wake up response. That said tone of voices matter too. I may regain a touch of consciousness because my SO spoke, but if it is calm and he doesn't sound worried or upset I'll automatically let that go and drift off again. If he sounds upset or scared or worried or sad I'll wake the rest of the way up to help. Make sense?",
"We're animals, millions of years of evolution have made our ears pretty attune to the sound of human voices. IIRC we hear the best in the frequency range that encompasses normal human speech, women's ears are more sensitive at higher frequencies so that they wake up when they hear babies crying etc, but this applies to all human hearing. (This could all be totally wrong, I'm paraphrasing something I read years ago and can't be bothered to find the source. I'm sure someone will correct me if so.)",
"I can pull my dogs tail, pinch her, smack her, pet her, she wont wake up.\n\nThey slightest crinkle of a bag and she springs up instantaneously "
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8bxzbm | what determines the planets' time of complete rotation? | I always thought smaller planets tend to rotate faster, then I looked it up online discovering pluto's complete rotation to be 6 days. That's a whole lot more against giants like uranus, neptune, or jupiter. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bxzbm/eli5_what_determines_the_planets_time_of_complete/ | {
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"It's basis is conservation of angular momentum. The old picture of the ice skater's spin increasing as she pulls her arms in towards her body and slowing when she stretches out.\n\nAs the material that went to make up the planet falls into the body its small crosswise momentum at large distance changes to a fast rotation close in. So it depends on the amount of material, the final radius of the planet and the initial speeds of the material that went to make it.\n\nOn top of that, there may be later collisions that change the speed, say by knocking out a chunk of the planet.\n\nFor gravitationally linked bodies like a planet and its moon, \"tidal locking\" is an important factor, where the drag from tides in water or rock deformation change the period. The moon's rotation has slowed due to this to match the orbital time (~28 days) and the Earth is similarly slowing (but only by a tiny amount). Pluto and Charon are mutually locked so their rotations match the period they orbit each other and the same faces of both face each other. "
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11kyol | how to drive a car with manual shift. | Just wondering how to drive a car with manual transmission. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11kyol/elif_how_to_drive_a_car_with_manual_shift/ | {
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"ELI5?\n\nThere's a third pedal on the left called a \"clutch.\" To shift gears you press down on the clutch, while lifting off the gas pedal. Then you shift gears and release the clutch while pressing down on the gas.",
"You can write pages of text explaining how to work the clutch or how to pick the right gear, but you wont learn much without actually trying it in real life. Very much like learning about riding a bicycle from a book.\n\nThere are two additional things you need to worry about while driving manual. First is picking the right gear. You start on a lower gear, which is high torque, but low speed, and slowly progress to higher gears which are lower torque but higher speed. If you come to a up-slope, you might need to lower your gear for a bit. With experience you can tell when to change gears from the pitch of the engine sound (which is pretty indicative of the current RPM). The general rule of thumb is to shift-up when RPM reaches upper limit and shift-down when RPM reaches lower limit. If the RPM falls below a certain value, the engine can turn off.\n\nThe second thing is the process of changing gears itself, which is where the clutch comes into play. The third pedal, the clutch pedal needs to be depressed whenever you're changing gears and slowly eased back in for the gears to mesh properly. Again, the only way to get this right is to practice."
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b5qrda | why do penguins collect pebbles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5qrda/eli5_why_do_penguins_collect_pebbles/ | {
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"They like the way they look, its simple as that. Even though, it has been observed that they use them as a form of currency. A female penguin was observed recieving pebbles and dancing for them, which led to a stream of funny articles about how penguin-strippers are a thing.",
"Ice, the area where they lay their eggs is frozen laying eggs directly on the ice would cause the eggs to freeze and the chick inside to die. Laying the egg on stones on the ice gives a small barrier to the contact cold of the ice and allows the egg to survive. ",
"To pay for penguin prostitutes. If there were no pebbles for currency, penguins would have nothing of value to give to other penguins to convince them to allow sex to happen and the whole race could potentially die off. _URL_0_"
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4v2o17 | why americans complain so much about their political system, but voter turnout is so low? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v2o17/eli5_why_americans_complain_so_much_about_their/ | {
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"If you don't think your vote matters or that all available choices are equally bad, why would you show up?\n\nRefusing to participate in something you don't believe suits you is a perfectly valid response imo.",
"Complaining is easy while getting to a voting booth is more difficult. Also, many people look at 319 million other potential voters and accurately predict that their personal conviction to vote in one way or another is going to have approximately zero impact on the outcome of the election. That really cuts down on the urgency to get to a poll, right?",
"It's a combination of features.\n\n1. America has a very vocal minority on both sides of the aisle. When you see a big protest or rally, it's usually the same people every time. The average American is to busy living their lives to become politically involved.\n\n2. The bystander effect causes people to not vote. \"Everyone else will be voting, so I don't need to. I'm just one vote.\"\n\n3. The news is a smaller, but noticeable influencer on voter turnout. When the news announces that a particular candidate is projected to win, many people will stay home and \"not bother\".",
"I think the two are directly related.\n\nIf you believe that the system is rigged and will only give you two viable options where both are corporate candidates fully owned by billionaires, why even bother voting? What is the point of voting for the 3rd-party candidate if they will never win? \n\nFor that matter, ever notice that the 3rd-party candidates always seem to run for national office? Note to the Greens and Libertarians: Win a few more city counsel seats and then some Congressional seats and we might take you seriously as parties! Currently, it is almost as if you don't actually want to win...you just want to create the impression of alternative for some unknown reason. Jill Stein acts like a douche by just criticizing the Democrats....but where are the viable city counsel Green candidates (as opposed to the inviable ones we sometimes see on ballots!)\n\nI am not saying that I completely believe this, but I think A LOT of people do.\n\nEspecially if you are a minority who regularly gets stopped by cops for looking suspicious. Especially if you read the news every day and find yet another corrupt politician caught for taking bribes or stealing money or fucking someone they shouldn't fuck. Especially if the politician makes campaign promises and never keeps them. Especially if neither choice is someone you would trust to valet park your car let alone represent you in Washington.",
"Low voter turnout can be explained by a bunch of different factors:\n\n* In America, voter registration is not mandatory or state-issued when you turn 18, but is a box that you check when getting a form of ID/driver's license/driving permit or a form that you have to fill out and mail in to your local town/county clerk. Because of this, people may not know where to find this information, where to mail the forms to, or how to fill out the forms properly. \n\n* There is also no country-wide date that you have to be registered by in order to vote. These vary by state and can vary from a month or more before the election to the day of the election, so many younger people register to vote thinking that they'll be able to do so in the next election only to go to the polling station on election day and find out that they can't vote.\n\n* We don't have any sort of holidays or days off for election days, so people have to go to the voting booths around their pre-existing work schedules. When those voting booths open between 6 and 9 a.m. and close between 6 and 9 p.m., with the hours being determined by each individual state, you can see how it might get tricky. Not to mention that if there are not a lot of voting places open in a highly populated area, the lines can get long and people don't want to wait for an hour or more when they have other things that they need to do.\n\n* There are a bunch of people who qualify for absentee ballots (essentially a mailed version of the paper ballot) who may not know that they qualify due to lack of easily accessible information on the subject. These include armed forces members stationed overseas, college students going to school out-of-state, the elderly, the handicapped or disabled, and anyone who is homebound.\n\n* There are some states now that require every person going to the polls to have some form of ID having a photo, stating who they are, where they live, etc. (Edit: So if you forget an ID or don't have one, you may be turned away.) Proponents of the laws say that these laws reduce voter fraud while placing as little burden on voters as possible. Opponents say that these laws blow the issue of voter fraud way out of proportion and are just a ploy to discriminate against minorities, young voters, and other groups that may be less likely to have photo IDs.\n\n* Even going voting at a polling place can be difficult, as they might not have printed out the most updated list of voters, especially if people changed their designation (Democrat, Republican, Independent, etc.) very recently. This is especially an issue with some primaries and caucuses because they are \"closed\" meaning that you have to be registered as a member of that party in order to vote with them. This posed a very particular issue this year when people of all political parties wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but weren't able to because the primary was Democrat-only in their state and they were registered as something else.\n\nI'm sure there's other reasons that I've missed, but these are the biggest ones I can think of at the moment.",
"Because there is a lot of research so say that attitudes do not correlate very strongly with behaviour (voting). And it's a lot easier to whine and bitch about local and national issues rather than actually show up and vote or participate in community meetings, and claim you did anyways.",
"I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally don't vote because it seems like wasted effort. Arguing with people regarding politics, either in person or online, provides *hours* of free entertainment!",
"If you live in rural Texas like I do, everyone here votes straight-ticket Republican. If you lean some other way, it feels like a waste of time to do anything on election day, because you already know how the election is going to turn out.\n\nI moved away from here for about 10 years and came back, and the district was still electing the same shitty congressman. Change here is glacial and it feels futile to do anything.",
"People's complaints are largely \"there is no candidate that I want as president\" in which case abstaining form voting makes perfect sense. ",
"Our options for president are:\n\n* A race-baiting demagogue with no political experience at all who has praised the leadership styles of dictators.\n* A career politician with no major accomplishments, whose major campaign contributors are Wall Street mega-banks\n\nIt's kind of hard to get excited over those choices. ",
"The nature of the electoral college works to depress turnout. The majority of the states are not in serious contention, so voters of *both sides* don't feel the need to turn out. If you live in Mississippi, what is the point of voting? The GOP has a stranglehold on the state so you are either voting against a near unbeatable wave or just throwing another one on the pile. ",
"[Diffusion of responsibility](_URL_0_). In a large group, it is natural for people to feel less individual responsibility for the outcome of the group as a whole. This same phenomenon is also why a relatively small number of people actually vote on reddit post!",
"I tend to vote in Canada because there's always something within a few minutes of my apartment and there's never been a line longer than 5 minutes. \nWhen I see hours long lines and people travelling crazy distances to the closest poll, I'm surprised anyone votes. ",
"Most people are disatisfied with the government but they like their own senator or congressman. Its the other politicians that are the problem.",
"I think a lot of people have just given up. There seems to be little point in voting because no matter the stump speeches, the outcome is the same- the corporate overlords get what they want while the voters feel like Charlie Brown after Lucy has pulled that football away again.",
"Our political system is a farce, and more and more people are waking up to the fact. Your given a choice in a lose/lose scenario and expected to be happy with it. The upper echelons in society are the only ones who have anything to benefit from any of it. The common man continues to lose rights and is subjected to ever increasing expense. Regardless of which puppet or party is in charge."
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19te2u | the difference between the muslim and catholic religions | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19te2u/eli5_the_difference_between_the_muslim_and/ | {
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"To my knowledge, Catholics believe that there's one God, who acts through the trinity, effectively three presences. Muslims believe in one God who's one being. There's no concept of the \"Spirit\" and Jesus wasn't considered to be the son of God, just a prophet (they claim that God has no wife, so cannot have a child). They consider Mohammed to be the greater prophet that has ever lived.\n\nMuslims have a holy book called the Koran and Catholics have the Bible.\n\nThere are literally loads of differences, they're extremely different religions, with many different interpretations, but these are the most significant differences. You could probably write an entire book about all of the differences between the two.\n\nNote: (I'm not religious in any way, so I may not be the best person to answer this). ",
"if you need a more detailed explanation try r/debatereligion",
"In addition to what ske105 said, Muslims believe that they worship the same god as the Jews and the Christians, but that these other people of the book aren't caught up on the latest chapters. Like many Christians, Muslims believe that Jesus will return for the second coming. But he is still a man, like the other prophets: Adam, Noah, Moses, etc. To convert to Islam, all you really have to do is affirm your belief that there is no god except God and that Muhammad is his messenger. ",
"A long time ago there was this dude Abraham. God told Abraham to kill one of his son's. Catholics and Muslims disagree about which son. "
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4calny | what is the point of "bulking" and "cutting" when getting in shape? is there an advantage to gain/lose weight like that instead of a steady progression? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4calny/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_bulking_and_cutting/ | {
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"I'll refer you here:\n\n_URL_0_"
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74s908 | why do cable cars need a cable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74s908/eli5_why_do_cable_cars_need_a_cable/ | {
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" > The bus still seems to run on gas.\n\nIt may have a backup engine, but its main power source is electricity supplied by the overhead cable.",
"That's not an actual \"cable car\". A true cable car has nothing overhead. There's a moving cable underneath the street, and the cable car moves by grasping ahold of the cable and being pulled along. \n \nIf you ever get a chance to go to the cable car museum in San Francisco, I recommend it. All of the cables for the SF cable cars go there. \n \nYou probably won't want to stay real long, though. It is rather noisy and smelly. "
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3u6v1o | how would quantum computers be immune from hacking and spying? | "Quantum supercomputers promise to be exponentially faster and more powerful than traditional computers ... and can communicate with immunity to hacking or spying."
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u6v1o/eli5_how_would_quantum_computers_be_immune_from/ | {
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"I'm not sure what level of technical detail you want to get into, but I'll let you know from now that the actual science and mathematics behind secure quantum cryptography is incredibly complex and difficult to explain.\n\nThe simplified answer to your question is that there exists technical means by which you can determine whether communications sent via quantum cryptographic channels have been intercepted by a third party.\n\nThe reason for this is basically that, at the quantum level, there is no such thing as a passive observer. Any device you build to detect or intercept particles at the quantum level will necessarily interfere with those particles and allow the receiving party to detect this interference and determine that the channel is no longer secure.\n\n[This paper](_URL_0_) discusses some of the quantum theory involved in more detail and explains why eavesdropping is so difficult / impossible.",
"Very simply put, you can't read the data without changing it. It would be against the laws of physics. \n\nYou've seen that thing in detective shows where they use a pencil to lightly rub on a notepad and see what had been written on the missing sheet of paper? It's a little like that - to be able to read the message, it absolutely has to be changed. \nSo quantum computers can't definitively *stop* someone intercepting and reading the data but it does make it impossible to do so without it being obvious that the data has been read, in the same way that the pencil marks on the notepad will make it obvious that the message has been read."
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"http://www.raysforexcellence.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Detection-of-Eavesdropping-in-Quantum-Key-Distribution-using-Bells-Theorem-and-Error-Rate-Calculations.pdf"
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1leciy | arm (risc architecture) vs. x86-64 (cisc architecture) | Is this the reason why operating systems have to be created specifically for ARM processors?
I got my first Raspberry Pi the other day and was just curious. It has an ARM processor so the Linux distro's have to be designed to run on the ARM architecture, correct? This is why I couldn't download Ubuntu and run it off of my ARM RPi, since Ubuntu does not make an ARM compatible OS?
How does the CISC and RISC architecture come into play? They process data differently?
I tried reading even wiki pages but was quickly overran by information I couldn't understand. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1leciy/eli5_arm_risc_architecture_vs_x8664_cisc/ | {
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"Computer processors work on instruction sets, which are basically commands that tell the processor what to do. An example might be a command to move a value in to memory, or a command that multiples a value in one memory address with the value in another memory address.\n\nWhen operating systems are created they are usually created in a higher level, more complex programming language (usually C). For the processor to understand these instructions, a piece of software known as a Compiler needs to take that code and translate it in to machine code that the processor will understand.\n\nThere are two main types of processor architecture as you identified - CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) used by x86 processors and RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) used by ARM processors. CISC is designed to make complex operations easy for a programmer to achieve, giving greater flexibility and more features, but requiring more transistors on the chip (and therefore physically larger processors) and more power. RISC is designed with a simple instruction set that doesn't offer the same flexibility or number of features as CISC processors, but requires less transistors, less power and physically smaller processor packages.\n\nDue to the entirely different capabilities of the two architectures, its not just a case of re-compiling an operating system for a different architecture. The difference in features usually means that an operating systems kernel will need to be re-written. For example some of the security features available in the CISC architecture are not available at all in the RISC architecture, meaning that if the Ubuntu kernel took advantage of those security features, they would need to be re-written and emulated in software on the RISC architecture.\n\nRISC based (ARM) chips tend to be used in small, low power devices such as smart phones due to their low power usage, low footprint and relatively low cost - hence their use in the Raspberry Pi.",
"While some might debate how much ARM processors live up to the RISC ideals, here is a brief RISC vs CISC understanding.\n\nFor a computer to be able to perform any calculation, it must be able to perform a minimum number of actions such as 'read from this memory space', 'add these numbers together' and the like. If you have this small subset of functions you can compute anything that is computable, but there is no guarantee that it will be done fast. It is possible to build computer actions which can perform more complicated calculations much more quickly in hardware than you could perform them using software on a purely generalist device. The list of actions that a processor has built in is its 'instruction set'.\n\nComplex instruction set computing (CISC) is the older of the two and the general idea is that anything people want to do a lot should have its own hardware optimization so it can be done faster.\n\nReduced instruction set computing (RISC) is a response to CISC which says that CISC has a problem. The more instructions available, the more time a processor has to spend sorting out which instruction it should be activating this time. If you reduce the number of instructions, you can reduce the overhead and the few things that people do all the time (very basic operations) can happen two or three times faster.\n\nRISC really took off in the server world, where they need to do a lot of simple things very fast, or where the calculations being performed are obscure enough that nobody is going to fabricate a special instruction set for them, so they need the general functions to work as quickly as possible. CISC survived in the PC market because users were demanding functions like video decoding which can see a lot of improvement with special instructions.",
"Lets forget about the terms RISC/CISC Architecture for now. All processors, from the simplest microprocessor that might control some of your home electronics, to the more complex ARM or x86 processors used to power personal computers, are controlled (aka programmed) by a specific set of commands called instructions. Instructions are essentially a string of 1's and 0's that the processor interprets - they can tell the processor to add 2 numbers together, or store a number in memory, etc. Nobody writes code in instruction sets however. Could you imagine trying to read and make sense of a bunch of 1's and 0's all strung together? That is why we use languages like C, C++, etc when writing software. The processor does not know how to interpret C code however - it must be translated or 'compiled' down to machine code (instructions) that the processor can understand.\n\nSo what about the difference between ARM and x86? ARM processors have a different instruction set than x86 processors. Still ignoring the difference between RISC and CISC Architecture, this means that any code that wants to tell an ARM processor what to do (such as an OS) must be compiled down to ARM instructions. Likewise for x86. ~~(I don't want to confuse you too much, but this compilation restriction really only applies to low-level code like a lot of the code inside of an OS. Application software doesn't need to know about processor's architecture. Think of games, for instance. They are made to run on specific operating systems. Each operating system abstracts away the details of talking to the hardware like the processor, so application software only needs to know how to talk to the operating system, not the processor and other hardware.)~~ EDIT: What I said about app code here only applies to applications for Android. I'm not sure where my head was at. Too much mobile coding lately I guess.\n\nNow, for extra credit, what the heck does RISC/CISC Architecture have to do with anything? RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing, CISC is Complex Instruction Set Computing. Right in the name we know this has to do with the instruction sets for the processors. In general terms, RISC Architecture is based on the idea that we can make a processor more efficient if all instructions are of the same length and follow the same pattern (as in the first X number of bits represent something, the next Y number of bits represent something else, etc). The term 'reduced' means that each instruction is limited in what it can do, so sometimes it takes multiple instructions to accomplish what 1 CISC instruction can do. However, since each instruction is structured the same, the parts of a RISC processor that interpret the instruction can be simpler, more efficient. \n\nCISC instructions can vary in length and in structure. This means 1 instruction can tell the processor to do more complex operations, but it also means that the processor has to do more to correctly interpret each instruction (it has to be able to handle the differences in all the instructions). This also means that we can do more with less instructions.\n\nWith that said, the difference between RISC and CISC architectures means less now than it used to, when memory for instructions was limited and we had slower, single-core processors. \n\nSource: BS in Computer Engineering",
"Just to clarify a couple of other answers. There are no pure RISC or CISC designs today. Both architectures have merit and modern processors use ideas from both. For example many complex x86 instructions are actually decoded to simpler, RISC like, instructions on the fly by the processor. On the ARM side many designs have CISC like instructions for features such as hardware accelerated video decoding. "
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3a04a9 | how can plants/vegetables repair or regrow themselves? is it similar to how animals heal? | I've seen pictures of trees that grew from stumps and plants growing back from their roots and it's always baffled me. Can anyone explain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a04a9/eli5_how_can_plantsvegetables_repair_or_regrow/ | {
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"Plants have chemicals that signal what to do. If there is a change in a ratio of chemicals the cells in the plant will respond differently. The growing point of a plant will release a chemical, if it is damaged then it can no longer release the chemical and the plant will respond with new growth (such as growing branches out of a stump).\n\nEdit: If you're interested, read up on plant hormones. Botany is a fascinating subject! _URL_0_"
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6l9h3c | why haven't we built huge trains? | I'm just watching a documentary on the Queen Mary, and it said that it contained the power of 24 or something steam trains and was as long as The Eiffel Tower is high, it made me wonder why (especially in North America), they hadn't built absolutely colossal trains?
If we can build ships, planes, or even buildings many times bigger than the original, why did we not do so with trains? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l9h3c/eli5why_havent_we_built_huge_trains/ | {
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"because we dont really need to. The existing train tracks already run cross country and can support TONS of weight.\n\nTheres no point in building new infrastructure when you already have existing stuff.\n\nWe can make trains longer, we just dont need to make them wider.",
"Building 'bigger' trains is sort of silly after a certain point. \n\nOnce you have a powerful enough engine, you're better off adding cars rather than designing bigger, more unwieldy cars. ",
"Bigger doesn't always mean better. For trains, specifically, the advancement in technology has been in making the train stronger, not physically larger.\n\nThere are three major reasons why making trains bigger is a bad thing.\n\n1) Trains run on tracks, so making a bigger train would require replacing tracks with ones of a different size. While tracks have to be replaced eventually, there is no incentive to force the change by making a larger train.\n\n2) Taller trains, which would be required to increase the size without increasing the width, would be less stable during turns, leading to more derailment and crashes.\n\n3) Trains are already modular, and can be expanded near limitlessly by adding cars onto the back of the train. The only limit is the strength of the locomotive, and even that can be augmented by having extra cars for driving force.\n\nThese trains can be collosal in their own rite, with the largest container train in the world being the 4.2 km long double-stack container operated by Canadian National Railway.\n\nThe largest test-run train was the BHP Run on June 21, 2001 comprising 682 cars and eight 6000hp locomotives in Australia.",
"Unlike boats, trains can't be made wider or taller or else they won't fit on the track and under bridges, etc. That leaves length, and it's common to operate consists that are over 2km long. CNR operates some 4k long freight lines in eastern Canada. That's huge compared to the 20 car trains in 1800s England. ",
"Modern trains are already massive. It would only require about ten trains to carry all the cargo, fuel and the hull of Queen Mary. Trains cars might not be huge but you can string a lot of them together and even have multiple locomotives on a single train. The disadvantage of trains compared to ships and aircrafts is that the cross section is rather small. So if you have physically big cargo it can be a bit of a problem to transport it on rail. But this is only a limitation for really big items. Boeing is for example shipping aircraft hulls on trains between factories.\n\nThe reason trains are so big is because of its design. The iron tracks and sleepers are designed to handle much higher weight then ordinary roads and for a lot less resources then a ship hull. And the iron wheels on iron rails provide very low friction so even a relatively low power locomotive can pull a lot of weight. From the original trains we have expanded the width of the tracks and made them a lot stronger. The couplings between the cars are also much bigger and stronger then they originally were. And the height and width of the trains have also become bigger. But these optimizations were done early on and have remained largely the same for hundred years. This can also be said about ships and buildings. If you want to see bigger trains you can go to Russia where they have even wider tracks and therefore bigger trains.",
"If you're talking about passenger capacity, you have to look at platform size. In Germany, which has a very well built-out rail system a platform in a large city will run 300 meters or so. Enough for a double-length ICE train with about 800-900 passengers on board."
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