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26oqag | why do i feel so awful after a 4 hour flight, but feel fine after 4 hours at my desk? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26oqag/eli5_why_do_i_feel_so_awful_after_a_4_hour_flight/ | {
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"A lot of reason,s actually. In an airplane, the pressure is lower than you're likely used to (in most, it's normalized at the pressure roughly equivalent to ~7,000 feet above sea level). Unless you live that high up (and there are only 14 states that even *have* peaks much above 7k feet) then you're going to feel a difference, and you ascend to that pressure so fast that you don't have much time to adjust. So there's some just basic pressure shock involved. \n\nAirplane air is also generally *very* low humidity, and that can dry you out and require additional water intake to offset, which most people don't get on the plane. It's recirculated, too, so any bad smells will often find their way back to you throughout the flight, albeit at lower levels. Then there's just the additional stress of travel -- crowds, security, etc.",
"Real answer- flying is stressful. \n\nLike asking \"why do I feel so worn out talking to my ex for 4 hours but feel fine talking to a friend for the same amount of time\" ",
"For me, at 6'4\", it's that once I sit I basically can't move at all for the whole duration. At my desk I can swing around on my chair, lean forward or to the side, and switch seating positions to get more comfortable as needed. On a plane, you just sit in this horrible midget chair waiting for it all to be over. ",
"Or the population of plane travelers that always fall asleep before take off. I don't know what it is but even during the day I conk out the second I take my seat. Good thing I don't have a desk job..",
"Another thing that may be a factor is a 4 hour flight probably means an 8-10 hour day. You got up early, walked a half marathon through the airport, ate like crap all day, and crossed a time zone in the process. I don't know how airline pilots and flight attendants do that all the time. "
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b5p1bq | how does it work when one person on a trampoline boosts the others up, and barely gets any lift themselves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5p1bq/eli5_how_does_it_work_when_one_person_on_a/ | {
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"A trampoline normally works by capturing the kinetic energy you have as you fall and converting it into elastic potential energy, which is stored temporarily in the springs. This is then converted again back into kinetic energy to lift you back into the air.\n\nWhen you do the double bounce correctly, your energy gets stored in the springs, and then before you can get it back, someone else does the same process, except on much tighter springs. Their process happens a lot faster because the springs are tighter, so they get all of the energy that they put in plus your energy, and go sky high. By the time you're ready to claim your energy back from the springs there's nothing left. "
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3w0vcx | how can some dominant genes (like polydactyly) be less common than the "norm" (like 10 fingers)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w0vcx/eli5_how_can_some_dominant_genes_like_polydactyly/ | {
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"Even if the allele is dominant, it does not mean the allele is common. For example, the brown eye color is dominant over the not brown eye color allele. In some countries, everyone has brown eyes. In others, like Northern Europe, barely anyone does. The brown allele just isn't common there. It's mostly not brown eyed people meeting not brown eyed people.\n\nAs for why a dominant allele is not common, it could be that it just hasn't been introduced to that area. Or it could be that it has been bred out of the area - if it's an unattractive trait, no one will mate with that person and the dominant allele and trait won't be passed on.",
"Because not many people have the dominant gene. It doesn't matter if literally everyone who has the gene has polydactyly, if \"literally everyone\" boils down to six people. Only six people will have polydactyly. In the case of polydactyly specifically, being dominant is actually somewhat detrimental because generally speaking it's not considered an attractive trait and in fact is found somewhat repulsive by many people. So unlike recessive genes the trait can't be hidden and only crop up once in a while, since everyone who has the gene has polydactyly everyone who has the gene has a reduced chance of reproducing, which strongly selects against many people having polydactyly.",
"While the other responses about common are true, there is also the \"passed on\" factor.\n\nFor example many diseases are dominant, but because they make the person less likely to reproduce (or live to the age of reproduction), their genes are not passed on. Meaning the \"norm\" is common because it is the most likely genes to be successfully passed down."
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8otmve | why do some games only release on consoles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8otmve/eli5_why_do_some_games_only_release_on_consoles/ | {
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"Two reasons:\n\n1) It takes a lot of effort to design a game in such a way that it works for console and PC. Normally a fair bit of tweaking is involved in making sure it's cross-platform.\n\n2) Often the game development pipeline will be funded by a producers/companies who want the game to be strictly tied to one console. They'll fund the making of the game, and in return the developers will make sure that game's only accessible on one platform. That's why you rarely see games that are available on the Wii/Switch also available on on PC.",
"In many cases it's because the game is being published by one of the console companies.\n\nIn Detroit's case it's published by Sony, so it's PS4 only.\n\nThey could sell more copies of the game if they released it on PC, but the game was made to sell PS4s. Or at least keep people playing, and therefore spending money on the PS4.\n\nMicrosoft's tactic is a bit different. Their games usually come out on PC too. But that's because Microsoft is trying to push the Windows store in an attempt to compete with Steam."
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3h7yb9 | how come my cat sleeps 18 hours per day and it can make crazy ninja jumps when it's awake while my body gets awfully stiff after 8 hours at the computer? | Why animals' muscles don't atrophy? Animals don't put any extra effort into being fit. I can understand that animals who live in the wild have much more active live style which keeps their muscles in a very good shape. But most domestic cats spend most of their day sleeping or just being lazy and yet their muscles don't get stiff as those in the human body. What prevents that from happening? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h7yb9/eli5_how_come_my_cat_sleeps_18_hours_per_day_and/ | {
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"Cats are often restless sleepers. They're smaller with less blood needing to circulate to complete one cycle so they can drain those chemicals faster that make your muscles tired or sore. Biology follows physics in this case. Objects of greater mass require more force to change momentum. Also, if that cat is staying thin and still eating a lot. Then it's probably playing and hunting when you're not looking. Cats can get pretty fat and useless if they don't."
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2i36ne | if the people that went over to treat ebola victims were wearing air tight suits to prevent them from getting the virus, how did they get ebola? | Haven't heard anyone explain this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i36ne/eli5_if_the_people_that_went_over_to_treat_ebola/ | {
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"They weren't, as a rule. The countries we're dealing with don't have anywhere near that good of containment procedures; in some places you're lucky to have gloves and a mask.",
"It is not airborne, it's fluid-borne. So all it would take is a simple mistake.",
"The suits are helpful to keep away infection. But, they can't be worn 24/7 so all it takes is contamination when they eat, go to the restroom, or anytime not in the suit. \nBecause Ebola takes several days to show symptoms, people can get it before they know anyone near them is sick.",
"The Ebola Virus is NOT airborne, so airtight suits are not need to prevent the spread of the disease. [This](_URL_0_) is how you need to dress to avoid contracting the virus. It is spread through direct contact with broken skin (ie a cut or scrape) or a mucus membrane (mouth, nose, eyes etc) and an infected body or bodily fluids. There are many reasons so many health care workers contracted EVD. One of the main ones is a lack of resources. For example, the African hospitals did not have thousands of nitrile or latex gloves needed stockpiled, so many nurses and doctors went without. Another reason is that many of the initial symptoms mimicked malaria, which is very common in those parts of Africa. Malaria is transmitted via mosquitos, not bodily fluids, so even if they had the necessary PPE (personal protective equipment), many healthcare workers didn't realize that that the PPE was needed. "
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3fwxlh | why do drivers need updates to work for w10, while most software doesn't? | Most software just seems to work on newer versions of windows, but drivers need updates before they function again. What is the difference that makes driver updates really necessary? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fwxlh/eli5_why_do_drivers_need_updates_to_work_for_w10/ | {
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"Drivers are the special pieces of software that sit between your operating system and the hardware. Changes in the operating system will almost always require a change in the drivers.\n\nBut this is why nothing else had to change. The other software keeps talking to the OS the same way it always did, and it was just the behind-the-scenes stuff of how the OS talks to the drivers that needed to change."
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262amp | how does someone survive a fall from significant height (i.e. skydiving accident, fall from plane, etc..) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/262amp/eli5_how_does_someone_survive_a_fall_from/ | {
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"People who have survived really long falls had cushioned landings, typically. A stewardess who [survived a 33,000ft](_URL_0_) fall from an exploding airplane was pinned in the tail section which cushioned her landing.\n\nBetty Lou Oliver, an elevator attendant, was badly burned when a [B-25 bomber blundered into the Empire State Building](_URL_1_). Rescuers decided to lower her in the elevator, and the cable snapped and brakes failed, and she dropped 75 floors and lived-- air trapped in the shaft as well as the piles of cable that preceded the car in the bottom of the shaft saved her life. (That linked podcast has actual audio of the airplane crash.) Call it something in her case, but don't call it luck.\n\nIf you have a fall, you need to distribute the impact over your body-- legs, then thighs, butt, then arms and shoulder. Protect your head and spine, and .. you might not walk away, or walk again, but you'll live for the important things, such as your AMA on reddit. "
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61z9sj | why james joyce is considered the best author in the 20th c? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61z9sj/eli5_why_james_joyce_is_considered_the_best/ | {
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"His work is technically very solid. Stephen Fry once stated that he feels Ulysses is the most perfectly written English book, a sentiment held by many college professors and highly educated people who look at more than story and character when reading. In my own sentiment a fair amount of pretension factors in.",
"One of my literature teachers in school said James Joyce was her favourite author because of the reasons others have mentioned. But I secretly think it's because her surname was also Joyce"
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an05mg | is there any way to gather up the 'rubbish' floating around the orbit around the earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/an05mg/eli5_is_there_any_way_to_gather_up_the_rubbish/ | {
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"This is an area of active research. The issue is that most of the rubbish in orbit is fragments of satellites, specifically three different satellites. And it is going too fast to be captured by something physical like a net. So you need some other way to collect it or at least slow it down so it burns up in the atmosphere. There are several proposal. For example electromagnetic nets that will slow the objects down as they pass through without impacting the net itself, lasers that can target the objects and heat them up and vaporize them, etc. None of these have been proven to work and is mostly theoretical. The other issue is the disused satellites which are bigger and have the potential of becoming debris field. There have been proposals to how you can build a spacecraft that can visit each of them and deorbit them in various ways.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe big issue is that cleaning up the orbits will cost money. And nobody is interested in having to pay this money. If the US pay then Russia, China, Japan and India will get a free service, similar if any other is paying. Even if you manage to get together and all decide to pay you end up in discussions of who should pay the most.",
"Not easily.\n\nMostly because the rubbish is often very small and very fast and in a region that is larger than Earth itself.\n\nIt is not just floating around but shooting a several dozen times what would be the speed of sound down here.\n\nThe ISS for example orbits at speed like 7.66 km/s while guns and rifles shoot bullet at 1.2 km/s to 1.7 km/s\n\nAlso because space is huge.\n\nSo you are essentially try to catch a bullet in a region much greater than earth itself. (while hopefully not producing more trash than you collect). This is not trivial.\n\nthankfully much of the space debris that are orbiting close to earth will eventually come down by themselves (and burn up in the atmosphere in the process).\n\nStuff further out is more of a problem.\n\nThere is also the worry that eventually some debris impacting some satellite or other object in orbit will cause that to break and create more debris and that will create a chain reaction where each impact cause more debris to cause even more impacts. This would be the sort of worst case scenario of a catastrophe movie, but it is not entirely far-fetched that this might happen."
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6q01p4 | why do nails grow at the "root", instead of at the tips and what are the white circle things at the base? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q01p4/eli5_why_do_nails_grow_at_the_root_instead_of_at/ | {
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"Your fingernail is made up of dead, compacted keratinized cells. These cells grow and develop in the nail matrix, at the \"root\" of the nail, but they eventually die and are pushed out over the nail bed by new cells. This means that the tips of your nails are dead. In fact, the entire nail that you can see is dead. The white circle things are called lunula, unless you are talking about something different. The lunula is most visible on the thumb nail. It is the visible portion of the matrix, where the living nail cells are formed."
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4cof26 | do you need to eat if you aren't hungry? | I've checked the sub and Googled but can't seem to find a clear answer or anything with any scientific backing.
If I did not eat yet, and I'm not hungry, do I need to eat anything? This is a big point of argument between me and several of my friends who get ticked off if I don't want to eat anything. I feel like my body should know when it needs food, and make me feel hungry, and then I will eat. Some people seem to think you should just eat at certain times/a certain amount every single day without fail even if you aren't hungry at all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cof26/eli5_do_you_need_to_eat_if_you_arent_hungry/ | {
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"Hunger levels naturally fluctuate with metabolism. Generally it is healthy to eat regularly (even if you only eat a small amount), as starve and binge cycles are hard on your body. Bingeing and starving causes large spikes and drops in blood sugar, this can lead to liver damage and in severe cases comas. \n\nAlso if you have not eaten for a while you will no longer feel hungry. This is a physiological coping mechanism, it will usually kick out after you begin eating or are reminded of food (ie a pleasant smell). \n\nHave a great day! :-) ",
"The answer is both yes and no. Frankly the answer depends on your level of health. For the average person that is mostly healthy, no. It's not the end of the world to skip the occasional meal. \n\nBased on the fact that this is a point of contention between you and your friends, I'm going to take a wager that you might not be of perfect health, possibly under weight. In that case the answer is yes, you should eat regularly. A body that is constantly starving will give up telling you it's hungry so in fact you are out of touch with what your body needs. \n\nThe person to tell you exactly what you need is your doctor. Make an appointment for a check up and let them tell you about your health. Is your weight appropriate for your height and age. Maybe some blood tests will highlight iron levels or any missing vitamins or minerals. The main question is, \"Are you healthy?\" If yes, then go on with life, if no, address the problem because it will only get worse."
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1qhqn6 | the difference between tactically and strategically. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qhqn6/eli5the_difference_between_tactically_and/ | {
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"Strategy is the overarching plan. The movement towards a goal.\n\nTactics is how you carry out the plan.\n\nAn example, and I'll use military since that's where the term is most likely to be heard, is that your strategy might be to capture a city and the tactics is what the soldiers do to take the city.\n\n",
"Strategy is \"do we attack, if so, what do we attack\"\nTactics is \"where do we put the guns and when do we start shooting?\"\n\n"
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1d2ipf | rechargeable batteries | As if regular batteries aren't weird enough, how do rechargeable work? What allows them to charge/what is the process behind it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d2ipf/eli5_rechargeable_batteries/ | {
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"A battery is really just a way to store chemical energy in a form that's easy to draw that energy back out. Some chemical reactions require outside energy before they will occur, others release energy as part of the reaction. Rechargeable batteries basically just switch back and forth between the two. They use energy to create a chemical reaction that requires that energy, but that energy is then stored and it's easy to force it to reverse back to it's early form and release the energy it was storing as part of that process."
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7pflg6 | why does a paste like mix of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar remove red wine stains? | On Christmas Day I spilled a full glass of red wine onto my mother’s newly upholstered fabric dining chairs, fearing for my life I quickly googled good ways to remove the wine and stains, and bicarbonate of soda and vinegar was the only one that worked (for me). I am curious as to why this technique works so effectively? (There is absolutely no trace that any wine was spilled on the chair) Thanks Reddit! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pflg6/eli5_why_does_a_paste_like_mix_of_bicarbonate_of/ | {
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"Baking soda itself is sort of magic. It deodorizes, reacts smoothly with heavy acids, buffers well. Works as toothpaste, Hydrophilic, If there is a major chemical spill the first thing the government does is dump a literal ton baking soda on it.\n\nVinegar is acidic and colorless, also polar. The way you remove something from a surface is by either goving the spill something better to stick to, of the carpet something better to stick to it. Thermodynamically speaking you need to give it somewhere nice to go.\n\nThe powdered, water absorbing base, buffer salts created, and aqueous acid cover most of the bases and are all colorless. So the whine jumped at the vinegar/baking soda mix and jumped to it, then it was off the carpet and good to go.\n\nBaking soda is magic."
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76jxgh | i keep reading that greeks didn’t have a word for blue and humans couldn’t see it until modern times. how is it possible that our ancestors didn’t see the color blue? what did the sky look like to them? the ocean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76jxgh/eli5_i_keep_reading_that_greeks_didnt_have_a_word/ | {
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" > I keep reading that Greeks didn’t have a word for blue and humans couldn’t see it until modern times.\n\nThe Greeks didn't have a *word* for blue but they certainly could see that color. They just lumped it in with \"bronze\", something they would use to describe the sky and ocean.\n\nThink about how you consider colors now. If you go to a paint store they will have a huge number of additional color names which you don't know and don't use, just considering them another shade of a color you already have a word for. This is the same sort of thing they did before the word \"blue\".",
"The greeks had a word for dark blue and word for light blue. They could see the color blue.\n\nThat being said color is a pretty relative concept, you can make colors disappear by going deep enough underwater (red first) and you just see other colors instead, usually yellow, then shifting down the color wheel, or grey if there isn't another being emitted.",
"The ancient Greeks did not classify colors by hue, but instead by whether it was light or dark. κυάνεος (kyaneos), was used for dark blue, also dark green or violet. While Γλαῦκος (glaukos) was used for light blue, also light green and yellow. Why they did this, no idea. In modern Greek we do have a word for blue, it is μπλε, pronounced ble. ",
"Why do we have separate words for blue and indigo? They're essentially the same thing, only darker and lighter. \n\nWhat we refer to as 'blue' is a colour that was always there, there just culturally wasn't a seperate name for it.\n\nIn the same way that we Brits talk about rain in terms of drizzle, sleet, spitting, raining cats and dogs, mizzling, pelting down etc. It's not that other countries haven't seen these kinds of rain before, they just haven't chosen to differentiate in that level of detail.",
"The distinction between different colours is often more cultural than anything. For instance, there used to be no word for the colour orange (it was later named after the fruit). Instead, orange things were lumped in as being red. Hence redheads, robin red breasts (the bird), and probably other things too. Now we have a word for orange and it seems crazy that it could be called red.",
"Haven't listen to it in years, but RadioLab has a great episode that touches this\n_URL_0_\nIf I remember correctly, some person never taught their child that the sky was blue and the kid just didn't see the sky as having a color, he thought it was like clear or white or something. For sure worth a listen!"
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6ecv60 | why has it become the "normal" way to eat food with fork in your left and knife in your right hand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ecv60/eli5_why_has_it_become_the_normal_way_to_eat_food/ | {
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"The knife was invented first.. it wasnt until a few hundred years ago that people started using forks for eating.\n\nBut if only one utensil is used, (fork, spoon, or knife) it is usually used with the dominant hand. And that is the right for most people. Even those when eating with chop sticks, it is usually done with the right hand.\n\nBut it ultimately comes from biology. Though I'm not sure I buy into the dexterity (literally righthandedness) argument. As the left hand (sinister) is often doing the delicate actions, when playing an instrument, for example. But on the other hand (excuse the pun) there are ways of playing instruments that require the right hand to be the nimble one..",
"Because the majority of the people are right-handed. First, forks didn't exist until 150 years ago (give or take, that's when they found widespread use) so people would just stab the steak with the knife (in the right) and bite off it. Or use their hands for smaller pieces. With the introduction of the fork, the knife remained in the right hand (most people are right-handed) and the fork in the left. Cutting requires strength, whereas holding the steak still doesn't. So, knife in the right, fork in the left.\n\nAs a left-handed I also do that. It's not that steaks require a lot of strength that I don't possess in my right hand, and I find it easier to bring food to my mouth with my left hand (I'm very clumsy with the right). So, that's probably the reason why I do it the right-handed way."
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1j3lzx | why does orgasm immediately end sexual desire in men but not women? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j3lzx/eli5_why_does_orgasm_immediately_end_sexual/ | {
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"Well for one, there's nothing stopping a woman from continuing after orgasm, although many women are hyper-sentive right after, and can't really handle it for a couple minutes. Men go flacid after orgasm, so we need at *least* 5 minutes, or more likely around 20-30 minutes, to recover and keep going.\n\nAlso, it's the man that is \"depositing\" something, and sperm isn't created super fast, so we only have so many loads to fire before we're empty (and sore).\n\nSo add that together and there's no reason to continue desire right after orgasm.",
"Evolutionarily, it's to increase chances of having a baby. If a man continues to engage in intercourse after ejaculating, he risks inadvertently pushing the semen out of the way, making pregnancy more difficult. For a woman, if she orgasms first, she needs to stay interested until the man is done in order for there to be a chance of pregnancy. Because of these evolutionary needs, men have long \"refractory periods\" (lack of sexual desire after orgasm), whereas women either don't have them or have really short ones. The exact cause of the refractory periods in terms of body chemistry is still up for debate. ",
"I'm going to take a crack at this because I read a related explanation elsewhere on the obviously always true internets.\n\nI believe it is an evolutionary thing, the shape of the penis is indicative of this. The ridge on the penis creates a suction within the vagina, which is believed to serve the function of removing competing semen from other mates from the vaginal vault. What I was reading had explained that the extreme sensitivity is a mechanism to prevent a successful deposit of semen from being pulled out by continued coitus thereby negating the initial ejaculation. \n\nI read it on the internets. Must be true. Don't have sources. Someone please correct me. \n\n:TLDR\nEvolutionary mechanisms designed to make sure you make a baby. I think.",
"Louis C K does a bit on this. That I highly agree with. If you actually get me off, I am done. Get off me. ",
"I don't think I would explain this to a five year old\n\n",
"Honestly, when men and women climax, Dopamine levels fall dramatically, more quickly in men and more gradually in women. One of the effects of this fall is a lowering of libido.\n\nLikewise, both men and women experience Prolactin increase after orgasm. Women naturally have more Prolactin than men, so the effect of this Prolactin spike (which, as you can imagine, includes a loss of libido) is more pronounced in men than in women.\n\nEDIT: Dopamine and Prolactin are hormones that are produced naturally before, during, after, and independent of sex. I don't know much about them otherwise, except to say that they are the answer to the question.",
"I might be an anomaly here as a woman but if I reach orgasm- I'm done; it starts to hurt and kills it for me. I mean if the guy still wants to finish, I could help out with other means but he's not going back in for at least an hour or so.",
"My ex girlfriend is like a guy after she cums. She just rolls over and completely leaves me hanging -_-",
"Reminds me of a Jimmy Carr joke. \"The only time a man wants sex twice, is before he's had sex once.\"",
"So we dont kill ourselves with pleasure. No lie, too much dopamine is bad, mkay?\n\nEdit: Dopamine is the chemical your brain releases when you orgasm. It gives you that high feeling if you've ever taken the time to lay down and enjoy how you feel after masterbating or having sex. The awesome feeling you have everywhere in your body is from Dopamine. \n\nEdit 2: why is this getting down voted! I speak the truth, and if it's you women out there, I'm advising guys to lay down after sex, that means you can cuddle with them. Geeze guys. Brutal, just brutal.",
"I thought the reason was that the male would never quit and die.",
"Nobody knows. Not even all women maintain arousal - a significant proportion of women lose arousal after orgasm like men.\n\nSome papers suggest that prolactin (a hormone) levels in the blood inhibits arousal after orgasm, but this response was found in both men and women, so it's not the whole story.\n\nSomething tells me the person who solves the problem may have a bit of cash on their hands.",
"I believe it has to do with the \"[Semen Displacement Theory](_URL_0_).\" Essentially what the theory says is the longer your penis and the larger your coronal ridge the more likely you are to reproduce.\n\nThe reason for this is twofold: First, the longer your penis the deeper your sperm will go into a a woman's reproductive tract making it more likely that your sperm will make it to the egg first. Second, the coronal ridge acts like a squeegee of sorts by potentially displacing any of the semen of another male in the woman's vagina. During thrusting (particularly the backwards motion) competing sperm will get trapped under the coronal ridge and be dragged backwards thus making it less likely to reach the egg before yours does.\n\nBut what about displacing your own semen? \"...[I]n your own sex life, you’ve probably noticed the “[refractory period](_URL_1_)” immediately following ejaculation, during which males almost instantly lose their tumescence (the erection deflates to half its full size within 1 min of ejaculating), their penises become rather hypersensitive and further thrusting even turns somewhat unpleasant. In fact, for anywhere between 30 minutes to 24 hours, [most] men are rendered temporarily impotent following ejaculation.\" So, since you don't want to displace your own sperm you lose your erection and are unable to have sex until your refractory period is over.\n\nEdit: Women wouldn't need to end their sexual desire from an evolutionary standpoint because they can reproduce regardless of who they have sex with (with some exceptions), whereas a male needs that refractory period to keep from displacing his own semen.\n\nThis is the best explanation I can think of, but it is by no means conclusive.",
"Because orgasm in men is the \"finale\" of the Desired outcome- release of genetic material. In women, it facilitates the desired outcome- the transport of the male's genetic material further through the vagina, past the cervix, and into the uterus where it will be more likely to make contact with the female's genetic contribution. \n\nImagine the women's muscle spasms during orgasm to operate similarly to the muscles of your esophagus. When you swallow you are pushing the food to the desired location- your stomach. Without the swallowing motion your food may eventually get there but it will take too long. If we let gravity and diffusion do all the work, the little swimmers may all be dead and no baby. \n\nThere is a cool video somewhere on the net that shows a woman orgasm from the inside. \n\nTL;DR orgasm gets the sperm to the egg. ",
"The end goal for a male is to deliver his part of biomaterial. And the end goal for a female is to gain the best biomaterial. 'He' has to deliver a much as he can, and 'she' has to get as much as 'she' can, ensuring that the strongest/best suited male, gets to deliver his 'batch' and be the father of her offspring. (In most animal mating, the 'new' male will discard the 'seamen'(hehe) before delivering his own). So to answer the question, male get done with one, to be ready for the next, and the same goes for the female. She does not tire, because there might be another male around who is stronger and better.",
"I'm not explaining this to a 5 year old",
"Im not the only one that can bust and go again either right after or after a 1-2 minute cool down am I??",
"_URL_0_\n\nI think Louis CK has figured this out for y'all.",
"Here is a list of video links collected from comments that redditors have made in response to this submission:\n\n|Source Comment|Score|Video Link|\n|:-------|:-------|:-------|\n|[AlucardSX](_URL_6_)|51|[Garfunkel & Oates - Go Kart Racing Accidentally Masturbating](_URL_22_)|\n|[SirPhobosBeaterOfAss](_URL_11_)|21|[Best Parks and Recreation Blooper, Season 4](_URL_3_)|\n|[xkcdFan1011011101111](_URL_26_)|9|[The Great Porn Experiment: Gary Wilson at TEDxGlasgow](_URL_4_)|\n|[MJ23157](_URL_15_)|5|[the comeback story of kim kardashian](_URL_10_)|\n|[mynameisflorian](_URL_1_)|2|[Samesies](_URL_19_)|\n|[ofthedappersort](_URL_24_)|1|[INXS - Don't Change](_URL_13_)|\n|[xzyfer](_URL_7_)|1|[Louis CK Saddest Handjob in America](_URL_23_)|\n|[k0Hvie](_URL_17_)|1|[Conception1](_URL_8_)|\n|[nagn](_URL_21_)|1|[Why Is the Penis Shaped LIke That? And Other Reflections on Being Human LIVE](_URL_27_)|\n|[Addisonian1](_URL_18_)|1|[Wrap it up box](_URL_2_)|\n|[lmnjello](_URL_16_)|1|[Louis CK : Masturbation](_URL_25_)|\n|[wannabefree23](_URL_0_)|1|[The Science of Orgasms](_URL_12_)|\n|[pastandcheese](_URL_9_)|1|[Sexual Perversion; Difference btwn Men and Women in Sex - Louis CK - Live at Beacon Theater 2011](_URL_5_)|\n\n* [VideoLinkBot FAQ](_URL_20_)\n* [Feedback](_URL_14_)\n* [Playlist of videos in this comment](_URL_28_)",
"Orgasm doesn't immediately end desire in men but not in women. I am a woman and I am done after I cum. I have been with men who weren't done. Basically, OP what you think is true, isn't true.",
"You see, little Timmy, daddy had an orgasm. Mommy just pretended to have one.",
"Anecdote: When my girlfriend has an orgasm she is done with sex. It's terrible, because I love going down on her, and I love making her orgasm(definite ego boost) but it's pretty much end game for our sex for at least 30 minutes, so I have to, ahem, 'work things out on my own'. We could work around this by having sex and THEN I could go down on her... but as a normal male, once I get mine I'm done. Meh, I'd rather feel awesome by getting her off and finishing myself off anyways.\n\nWelcome to the \"Dokturigs just gave you way too much information about his sex life\" club.",
"Because absence makes the dick grow fonder.",
"\"Fuck yeah, nobody is home! I'm gonna jerk off *all night long!\"*\n\n5 minutes later\n\n\"I'm bored, lets see what's on Reddit...\"",
"The scientist Louis CK had a peer-reviewed paper on this subject: \"After sex, men just want to lay there and the woman wants to cuddle. Some men like to make fun of women for that, ‘They always want to cuddle, they’re so needy. Why is she so needy?!’ She’s not needy, you idiot, she’s horny. Because you did nothing for her. You did absolutely nothing. Her pussy is on fire because it’s gone unfucked completely.”",
"Biologically speaking, sex serves the function of facilitating reproduction. A man who has had an orgasm has done everything he can by way of encouraging the creation of a fetus. A woman, on the other hand, won't necessarily become pregnant from that first ejaculation. Sex (and sexual desire) developed the way that it did to encourage a woman's receptiveness to additional efforts toward fertilization which, once upon a very, very long time ago, was necessary to encourage the survival of the human species.",
"This question is a false premise. Lots of women lose interest in sex after they orgasm (hell, lots of them lose interest before orgasming at all) and lots of men (especial young men) are able to have multiple orgasms in one sexual session.",
"Why are we explaining this to a 5 year old?",
"This is not necessarily true. I am a woman who gets a serious case of the afters. I'm very likely to shove my partner off of me and require an immediate shower or a nap.",
"does it make me weird if I'm a girl and it does? I mean sure I can make myself keep going if I go before he does but especially if its oral I'm like \"nope, back up, get off, move, I'm done, don't touch, don't look, roll the fuck over\" lol. ",
"Well, think about it from an evolutionary standpoint. A woman can cum multiple times during sexual intercourse before a guy finishes. If she lost interest with the first climax, the guy might not have time to ejaculate inside her and get her pregnant. However, once a guy cums, his job is over. \n\nHonestly though, I think it really depends. I'm a woman and after I finish I either have to take a nap or get something to eat and I usually tell my partner to give me some alone time..",
"((uh I know we aren't supposed to actually answer this question but can I point out that my guy will stay hard through at least three orgasms, though it takes longer for each one))",
"because no matter what you are told: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER TRULY PLEASE A WOMAN!",
"While the male orgasm does in a sense induce a refractory period, it's not necessarily true that it ends sexual desire. I believe this has more to do with your libido, and whether you're able to maintain an erection after ejaculation (or able to \"get it back up there\" quickly). From personal experience, I can say if none of these is an issue, you may keep going until you're both tired and/or satiated. ",
"Umm... orgasm does not end sexual desire for me at all. I almost ALWAYS wanna go again.",
"because scientifically speaking, his job is done. any energy spent after the main event is energy that would be better spent elsewhere on survival. round 2 is an energy drain that doesn't increase the chances of reproduction. evolution favors organisms that are efficient. get in, get the job done, and get out. \n\nsticking around could even be dangerous - they're vulnerable to attack.\n\nher orgasm isn't as important to the process of reproduction.",
"I believe the evolutionary pressures have been covered reasonably well by others though as a post-op transsexual I'll offer my own subjective experience.\n\nThis changed with hormones, not genitals, after I'd been on estrogen for a while I stopped having a refractory period and pretty much could continue to have sex and enjoy multiple orgasms until physical soreness got the better of me. It's the same post-op though with much stronger orgasms, I suspect due to the shifted hormone levels as I have much lower levels of testosterone.",
"Sperm competition. Once the male is done, the female moves on to the next male. The male with the most suitable genes (as opposed to fighting for a female using strength) will impregnate the female.\n\nAlso why women are so vocal. To attract other males.\n\nPromiscuity (the act of having more than one sexual encounter) happens in bonobos and chimps, our closest living relatives. We are more closely related to chimps and bonobos than African elephants are to Asian elephants.",
"because for men the job is over, but for a woman they have a long road ahead, we deserve a bit of a reward for our efforts",
"because for men the job is over, but for a woman they have a long road ahead, we deserve a bit of a reward for our efforts",
"In almost all positions except cowgirl, sex is much more physically demanding for the man. Also, during sex, all the blood flows out of the brain, into the penis. Once this happens, the man loses all ability for rational thought, and only the sexual desire remains. \nA long long time ago, there were men whose sexual desires persisted after orgasm. They never knew when to stop having sex, and as a result, died of exposure and malnutrition. They were unable to pass on their genes, because the head of the penis 'scrapes' the vagina clean of semen. After the first dozen orgasms, the balls were unable to keep up production, and the man began 'shooting blanks,' so to speak. ",
".....women can orgasm?"
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b8w47d | what does 'association bias' actually mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8w47d/eli5_what_does_association_bias_actually_mean/ | {
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"It's when you connect two things in your mind that are not actually connected at all just because they happened around the same time. The most common example is our tendency to \"shoot the messenger\". When someone brings us bad news we tend to hate that person even though they are only telling us about the problem and didn't actually create the problem. \n\nPeople believe in lucky charms because they were holding or wearing an item when their favourite team won a game. The team didn't actually win because of the lucky shirt you wore or whatever ritual you followed, they won because they played better than the other guys. ",
"Are you taking a psychology course and are having trouble with it, or are you trying to cheat at homework? You have been asking a lot of quite similar questions all about introductory psychology or philosophy, so I am wondering if there is something more fundamental you might want help with instead of answering all these very specific questions.\n\nCould you give some more insight into the sort of thing you are looking for when you are asking? That way we might be able to give you a much better answer.\n\nEspecially since the majority of your questions can be answered just by doing a google search, or even just reading the Wikipedia article."
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4e0uh1 | laser tattoo removal | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e0uh1/eli5_laser_tattoo_removal/ | {
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"The laser is a high intensity light beam, it breaks up the pigment in the ink. The laser heats up the particles and splits them into smaller particles which are absorbed by the body and allow it to fade the same way it would fade with time or exposure to sun. X amount of sessions are needed to remove it, depending on its size, age, and what the colours are. ",
"Tattooing puts droplets of ink into your skin. Of course, your body doesn't like that very much, and immediately sends white blood cells to the droplets to clean them up. \n\nThe thing is, white blood cells clean things up by engulfing them, but these droplets are way too big to engulf. That doesn't stop them from trying though, and they form sort of a wall around the droplets, continuously trying to eat them. This is what keeps the tattoo in place, by the way. It's also what causes a fresh tattoo to get a few defects at first - the smaller droplets are small enough for the white blood cells to clean up.\n\nThe laser used in tattoo removal breaks up the droplets into smaller droplets, that are small enough for your white blood cells to clean up. "
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8gfe79 | how do we know that there is an unobservable universe beyond the observable universe if we can’t see it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gfe79/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_there_is_an_unobservable/ | {
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"We can't know with 100% certainty, but all evidence points towards the universe being pretty much the same everywhere that we *can* observe, so it would make sense to be pretty much the same where we can't. \n\nIt is a simpler explanation to say that it simply is infinite and homogenous at large scales (which is consistent with what we observe) rather than having to come up with some reason there might be nothing past what we observe.",
"It comes from two observations:\n\n* There is an observable universe, it looks the same in every direction (it's homogeneous), and the further we look, the older it is.\n* We have no reason to believe earth is at the center of the universe. First it wouldn't make sense in a philosophical way. Second, the homogeneity of the universe, and the fact that it's expending *everywhere* at the same time, shows that there's no center in the universe.\n\nTake these observations together and it's obvious that there's a large part of the universe that we cannot see. If the entire universe was the observable universe, we'd have to be in the center and that's absurd.\n\nThe open question is whether the universe is finite or infinite. Both are equally plausible.",
"Here’s one reason it’s clear that there are observable and unobservable parts of the universe: we know that in the future we will be able to observe less of the universe than we can today. The universe is expanding at an *increasing* rate of speed, and some faraway parts of the observable universe will someday be moving away from us at greater than the speed of light (because space is expanding, not because those galaxies can travel faster than *c*). We can never travel fast enough to reach these places, and even light from them can’t reach us because they’re moving away too fast. In effect, they don’t exist for us - they’re outside our observable universe.\n\nAnd because the universe is expanding faster and faster, more and more of it will become inaccessible. It’s plausible that eventually, our own galaxy might be the entire universe that’s observable to us. Future generations won’t know how full the universe is, unless our current knowledge survives the eons - and even then they’ll have to take it on faith because they won’t be able to verify our claims."
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502x41 | why does water sometimes (audibly) slosh around in your stomach? | I've noticed that this happens sometimes after drinking a lot of water, sometimes not.
Why does this happen? (And is there a way to fix it? It's a really uncomfortable feeling!)
Edit: okay, yes, water goes through your stomach before your bladder. Still wondering why it sometimes sloshes around and other times doesn't... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/502x41/eli5_why_does_water_sometimes_audibly_slosh/ | {
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" > And it seems like the water’s in your stomach, not in your bladder, which is weird.\n\nWhy is that weird? It *is* in your stomach because that is where things go when you swallow them. Urine shows up in your bladder after being filtered from your blood by the kidneys; there is no direct connection to the digestive tract at all. If you could drink water and have it immediately sloshing in your bladder *that* would be very weird.\n\n > (And is there a way to fix it? It’s a really uncomfortable feeling!)\n\nEat something to soak it up and make it less fluid, or just don't jiggle so much."
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1zt8fc | what's the difference between a dead body and a live body? | can't seem to find a solid answer that doesn't flirt with spirituality or the idea of a soul, but for sake of argument: you have a cadaver and a live person next to each other. the live person has every organ, muscle, etc. as the cadaver, but one's dead. what's missing from the cadaver that the live person has? electricity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zt8fc/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_dead_body_and/ | {
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"This is a tricky question, because there are different kinds of \"dead\". For instance, someone can be brain-dead, but the rest of their body can still be alive. But for simplicity's sake, let's say that you have an unambiguous cadaver being compared to a live person.\n\nIn that case, the live person has a fully-functional metabolism. All of their individual cells are alive and engaging in constant chemical reactions to convert sugars into energy. In a cadaver, that process has stopped. The lungs are no longer oxygenating blood, and the heart is no longer pumping blood, so all the person's cells are dead or dying.",
"The body is, at the most basic level, one giant chemical reactions with a lot of ingredients being added and released all the time. If any of the things your body needs to put in and take out chemicals aren't working (heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, etc), then your body can't maintain the reaction, and it stops. In a living body, that chemical reaction is still going. In a dead body, it has reached a point where the reaction can't continue. ",
"The difference between all living things and non-living things is that a dead thing can not act to preserve it's form. A rock continues on it's path and gets acted upon. Eventually, it decays. A living thing can preserve it's form by attaining values (like energy from food) and evading destruction (self-repair, moving away from dangerous objects etc).\n\nIn the case of the human body, metabolism preserves many functions and yes, electrical pulses in the nervous system and brain preserve it's mind.\n\nShould the brain become electrically dead, the person is said to be brain-dead. However, if enough metabolic processes are still keeping the brain alive, full electric impulses can sometimes return - it's tricky! (Perhaps a scientist can explain further).",
"\"A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts.\" Dr. Manhattan.",
"i like to think it's like a car engine.\nan engine that's running is a self regulating chain of reactions.\n\n\nan engine that's stopped has broken that chain. it has a battery so some things can still function for a little while, but with the main reaction chain broken, it's functional time is known and finite.",
"What caused the dead person to dead?\n\nBad heart? Traumatic accident? Cancer? Some kind of chemical levels?\n\nLet's compare it to a car. If the starter is not there, it's dead. If the gas line is cut, it's dead. If the gas line is coated inside and gas cant get through, it is dead. If wires/fuses are messed up, the car is dead.\n\nA car and a person are remarkably similar. They are both integrated as a whole. Some parts can be lost, with no problem. But cut out vital systems or parts and that will kill the car or person. If both have working systems and parts, then neither will be dead.\n\nIt is a material, mechanistic system in either case. Do the Indiana Jones heart removal, and a person dies. Mechanics.\n\nThere is zero spirituality about it. A figment of the imagination called \"soul\" has nothing to do with it.",
"Death is much easier to determine for a piece of tissue than a complete organism, because a complex being (say, a human) is composed of so many disparate parts that work together to achieve what we understand as being fully functioning.\n\nWe have bacteria in our intestines, for example. They're separate organisms with their own life cycles, but are tied to the way we disseminate energy and dispose of waste, an important process of life.",
"consciousness, it is the invisible force that animates matter."
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25k4m4 | why does dark chocolate completely change in taste and texture once it has melted on a hot day and re-solidified? | I play in a band full of dark-chocolate-lovers, and this always happens when we tour in hotter climates: Our stash of dark chocolate melts in the sun, and then re-solidifies into a much lighter coloured, and chalkier version of its previous glory. It's weird because if you eat it while in its melted state, it tastes fine, but if you wait until it has re-solidified, it tastes terrible. Any insight?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25k4m4/eli5_why_does_dark_chocolate_completely_change_in/ | {
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"The simple answer is that when the chocolate liquifies, the different ingredients in it can separate.\n\nWhen they make chocolate, they are sure to emulsify it with proper mixing of ingredients or by using an emulsifier. An emulsion is a mixture of ingredients that don't traditionally mix well, so as to blend them into one consistent mixture. But once the chocolate melts and the different ingredients are no longer held firmly in place, they can start to rise and sink, splitting into different layers, like a layer of fats, a layer of sugars, a layer of cocoa, etc. Not being evenly mixed causes it to taste a lot different.\n\nThink of the difference in taste of eating thanksgiving dinner, and putting thanksgiving dinner in a blender and drinking the whole mixture of foods together."
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vytfu | why/how does printing more money cause problems/complications? | I know it shouldn't be as easy as just printing more money when a country is having financial problems, but why doesn't it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vytfu/eli5_whyhow_does_printing_more_money_cause/ | {
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"Imagine that there was only one hundred dollars in existence. Each of those dollars would be wicked important. Even the pennies would be a valuable part of the economy.\n\nNow imagine that in that same world, we all agreed that there is One hundred and one dollars. That one dollar is worth a LOT, right?\n\nNeed I go on?",
"A country in Africa printed so much money they had to make a 100 trillion dollar bill. It eventually became _URL_0_ took bags of those to buy anything. Printing more money lowers value of the money you have in circulation."
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1llif0 | why does wine age in the bottle if stored properly but whisky does not? | I knew wine aged and wanted to try "aging" a scotch, until the guy at the store told me it won't work, but why not? Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1llif0/eli5_why_does_wine_age_in_the_bottle_if_stored/ | {
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"When whisky comes out of the stills, it is basically pure ethanol, water, and a relatively small quantity of other chemicals that give it some flavor and aromas. When it sits in barrels for years, it leaches some of the chemicals from the barrel into the whisky, giving it some additional characteristics. Glass bottles are basically inert and do no such thing.\n\nWine aging is completely different. The fermentation process produces all sorts of compounds, not just ethanol and CO2. Most of the reactions are done in a matter of weeks, or months, but in certain situations there are reactions that takes years to complete. Since all of those chemicals are already in the wine, they can occur in a bottle, or anywhere really. Some wines are aged in barrels like whisky, but that's a different story. Interestingly enough, some beers can be aged like wine, and some will improve with age.",
"The goal is different. With wine, after all the chemicals are mixed, you're basically done. In fact, lots of wine is never aged in wood at all, and stainless steel barrels are used. There's no reason, in principle, why wine couldn't be aged exclusively in bottles, except that it's difficult to do in large volumes.\n\nWith whiskey, on the other hand, the purpose of aging is to add flavor. If you want to know what an un-aged whiskey is like, try vodka. Or blanco/plata tequila. That's what liquor tastes like after they've been pulled straight from the still. Because it doesn't taste particularly good, we generally stick whiskey in wooden barrels, because some of the chemicals from the wood will dissolve out of the wood, and add flavor to the whiskey. In your case, storing that scotch in a wooden container could conceivably add some extra flavor, but you'd have to be picky about the type of wood you used. Nothing in glass that dissolves in what is essentially an aqueous ethanol solution is going to do anything to the flavor. "
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79e1mg | what makes carboxyl groups acidic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79e1mg/eli5what_makes_carboxyl_groups_acidic/ | {
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"Acidity is largely determined by the stability of the conjugate base. COO- is pretty stable because it has resonance, meaning it has different versions that electrons can move around to create. \n\n[Image of said resonance](_URL_0_)"
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1x95sc | how can shareholders of a company control that said company? | I read somewhere that a shareholder with 50%+1 share of a company can control it completely. How does that work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x95sc/eli5_how_can_shareholders_of_a_company_control/ | {
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"Another word for shareholder is owner. If you own more than half of the shares of a company, you own more than half of the company itself and you generally have the right to make choices for the company. \n\nIf you entered into a partnership with your brother that you owned 75% of a small restaurant and they owned the other 25%, you would have more decision making power than them. It's the same way with shares of a corporation, just in a different form and on a much larger scale.\n\nThere are many different legal forms, which as they others have said may involve voting processes and boards of directors depending on the structure. But in the simplest terms, if you own the company then you can do what you want to it."
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5cy1aj | do our brain consume more energy during complex mental tactics similar to our muscles during a workout? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cy1aj/eli5do_our_brain_consume_more_energy_during/ | {
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"Absolutely, yes. More complex activities require more neurons firing which consumes more energy. However, this is dependent on actual complexity in brain circuitry - something that you may think is complex may be simple in the brain, or more likely, vice versa. For example, picking up a pencil is an extremely complex action that likely requires as much brainpower as doing algebra.\n\nThis is the basis for most brain imaging devices, like an MRI - brain activity corresponds directly to oxygen and glucose usage, so we can track where those are most concentrated in the brain using a variety of methods.",
"From _URL_0_ :\n\n > Unsatisfying and contradictory findings from glucose studies underscore that energy consumption in the brain is not a simple matter of greater mental effort sapping more of the body's available energy. Claude Messier of the University of Ottawa has reviewed many such studies. He remains unconvinced that any one cognitive task measurably changes glucose levels in the brain or blood. \"In theory, yes, a more difficult mental task requires more energy because there is more neural activity,\" he says, \"but when people do one mental task you won't see a large increase of glucose consumption as a significant percentage of the overall rate. The base level is quite a lot of energy—even in slow-wave sleep with very little activity there is still a high baseline consumption of glucose.\"\n\nTL;DR: the human brain uses a lot of energy no matter what it's doing. \"Complex mental tactics\" probably require a little more energy than usual, but the exact amount hasn't been conclusively measured.",
"If I could make the analogy, it's like having a supercomputer that's running a detailed simulation and taking up a lot of energy. Then, in that simulation you decide to multiply 2•4, making 8. Yeah, the energy use will increase slightly over doing nothing instead, but in this case it's negligible.",
"A lot of your brain has nothing to do with mental tasks. And even less of it has to do with *conscious* mental tasks. So yeah - you'll probably see differences, but not nearly the amount you think you would.",
"Neuroscience student here. The answer is yes. \n\nIt is basically the fundamental principle of functional brain imaging. Quick examples: fMRI and PET. In PET, a radioactive isotope is attached to 2-deoxyglucose. Once injected into the blood, it is taken into cells as a source of energy. The key point being that's the areas of the brain that are most active will take up MORE because they require more energy. This molecule is picked because it is unable to leave the neuron once it is used, and this accumulation of the radioactive isotope will show which areas of the brain had been most active. (More active area of the brain = more glucose used= more of the radioactive isotope). Computer technology then uses this information to produce an image of the brain that shows which areas have been the most active. ",
"A computer programmer I used to work with was the smartest on the large team. And the most productive. And the boss gave him the most complicated assignments. \n\nWhen he was in the zone coding, he would sweat. He would turn a little fan on himself, but until he stopped coding, he was perspiring. \n\nThe office was a steady 69 all the time. No one else coded hard enough to sweat. \n\nI am convinced that using you brain harder will burn more calories. ",
"When comparing, over an extended period of time, complex mental tasks vs. rudimentary mental tasks such as playing multiple games of chess and solving puzzles simultaneously vs. solving easy addition problems, the brain only consumes < 1% more resources. Basically, not a significant amount more \"brain power\" is required, however more working memory is needed. But to reiterate, this increase in working memory makes it more difficult to complete tasks, it does not enable to body to burn more calories, resources, etc.\n\nSource: Am neuroscientist. \n\nP.S. Just got home from 2 hour workout and am too exhausted and lazy to find and cite data. Oh the irony. (But will later after I nap if wanted)",
"As far as what I've read about and experienced, effort strain applies as much to the brain as it does to the rest of our bodies or any living thing.",
"Pretty much no. As others have stated, your brain is always doing something. Compare it to a pot of boiling soup. If you add a handful of noodles, does it take more energy to keep boiling? It does, but not by much. Not enough to make a real difference. If you add too many noodles you'll slow it down, much the same way your brain firing all at once is a seizure. ",
"I'll just chime in with personal experience.\n\nI've noticed that after a full day of intensive, focused study or learning, I can be exhausted at the end of the day.\n\nWhat I may be studying may not necessarily complex. In fact, it could be extremely basic. But I'm constantly reading, and sometimes writing, activities that I bet require decent amounts of brain power. I'm memorising numbers and information.\n\nAfter 8+ hours of constant concentration I feel exhausted. I just want to lie down. Yet I've been sitting down all day.\n\nIn my opinion, it's not so much about complexity of the task, but more about extended concentration.",
"This is about to get ELI15. Functional MRI works by measuring \"blood oxygen level dependent\" (BOLD) signal as a measure of the amount of oxygen being supplied to brain regions, which is an indicator (though it's not one-to-one) of metabolic demand in that (rough) region. The vast majority of scientific experiments have people perform two very related tasks, and then essentially \"subtract\" the BOLD signal at an area during one task from the signal at that same area during another. The idea is that, if the two tasks differentially involve that region, the metabolic demand and thus BOLD signal will come out as something non-zero after this subtraction. We've got a couple of decades worth of research now showing that almost every task imaginable creates differences in metabolic demand at localized regions. Thus, performing cognitive tasks does use more energy than not performing them.",
"does the brain use more energy for multitasking and complex mental tactics? barely. If you imagine your brain as a jug of water, multiple and complex tasks are just many, smaller cups that you have to pour water into (aka mental processing power) as opposed to one big cup when your focusing on a single task.\n\nBut the brain does consume more energy in other cases, such as when your stressed, emotional, or over exhausted. In these instances, your brain removes its own failsafes and works extra hard to just keep up with the same mental output as when its relaxed. In some cases, the brain does overheat, causing headaches and other physiological problems.",
"not really, so far as I've read it's essentially constant. there is a finite limit on how much quality thinking you can do in a day though, and it does run out when you use it. Some world leaders, businessmen, people with a lot of responsibility pace themselves and limit their decision making throughout the day as a result of the studies that have found this. \n\nIt's less about energy though, and I think more about hitting the limits of what you can hold and deal with conciously at once, and once you do you need to wait till the purge/archiving that night.",
"It's a bit like you're a PC running thousands of different background apps and someone is trying to tell the difference in power consumption between when a single one of those apps is slightly more or less active. It's not really relevant because ALL of those apps consume energy in similarly unstable amounts. ",
"I wouldn't expect the brain to need more energy when it is doing complex cognitive tasks. Honestly, since virtually every bodily function is routed through our brain, it's got an enormous task just keeping things running. From just what I've read about the brain, and from some research that I saw from a friend who was medical director of a real-time brain imaging center, conscious cognition is not a particularly taxing, nor important brain function from the perspective of the brain itself.\n\nWe only think that cognition is a big deal because it's the only brain function that we are even partially aware of. There is a whole raft of brain functions that are needed just to create the framework that allows you to be aware of any brain function.",
"My question is... do the brain of smarter people consume more calories a day than the brain of a stupid person? What about both extremes, a genius vs a retard? \n \nCome to think of it. Never heard of a genius that was fat. Coinscidence???",
"I take out the office trash for extra hours at work. I know who snacks the most, and I know who works with more paperwork. \nIt is the accountants that eat the most on the job. And they also seem to have more paper in their recycle bin . I feel that the accountants are doing so much brain work that they need to consume the extra calories in order to keep up. I encourage anyone to go look at your accounting teams garbage cans and see what kind of mountains of food they have been consuming. These accountants also seem to be thin. So I know how many calories these people are eating on the job and I am not seeing any gains in the weight . \n\nEdit. And yes us office garbage collectors do judge you secretly. ",
"What you want to know is the energy budget of the brain. A large fraction of the total glucose consumed is used just to maintain membrane potentials. Neurons have to keep charged molecules separate. Keeping charges separate requires energy. The brain is never at rest, even when you are just chilling there is a network (called the default mode network) that is active. When your eyes are open you are constantly processing motion, colors, textures and filling in gaps in your field of view (_URL_0_) performing extensive calculations as elaborate as anything involving rhyming, timing or anger. The same thing goes for auditory stimulation; processing sounds requires elaborate conversions of nervous spikes to sounds like yikes. Movement too. Picking your nose requires sophisticated calculations of the trajectory of the approach, the bend of the elbow, the texture of the boogie the instantaneous decisions of \"Should I eat it?\" \"Is anyone looking\" \"Holy crap the air is really dirty today\". None of these actions are intrinsically less energy consuming than trying to solve non-linear differential equations. \n\nAn extremely well-cited paper (a little old but still one of the best discussions) is here if you want a more sophisticated ELI85 (Attwell and Laughlin; Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 21:1133–1145 2001) :\n\n\"The energy budget confirms that brain is, by the nature of its work, “expensive tissue” (Aiello and Wheeler,1995). The signaling-related energy use of 30 micromolATP/g/min is equal to that in human leg muscle running the marathon (Hochachka, 1994). Such a high metabolic rate will limit the brain’s size (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995) and favor mechanisms that use energy efficiently (Sarpeshkar, 1998). With most of the energy being used to drive ion pumps, any factor that reduces ionic fluxes without reducing information content and processing power improves energy efficiency.\" \n\nSo basically, pumping all the ion, makes any information the brain is processing an expensive act. "
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43vsqf | what does russia gain from entering european airspace with their fighter jets and bombers? | In Denmark and Sweden (and probably a lot of other European countries I don't know about), we have a lot of Russian fighter jets and bombers that have entered our airspace.
So much, that the US and NATO have commented on it several times, and US have now upgraded the military effort in EU.
But, what does Russia gain from this provocation? They can't only be doing this to provoke? There has to be a better explanation? :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43vsqf/eli5what_does_russia_gain_from_entering_european/ | {
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"It basically challenges Europe's commitment to collective defense. The more Russia pushes the envelope and doesn't draw a united European and NATO response the more it undermines the idea that the US and the rest of Europe will back an individual country under threat.",
"It allows them to measure the speed and nature of the defenses in case of a future war.\n\nIt also reminds the European countries that Russia is a mighty military power, not to be messed with lightly.",
"Time. \"We see our Jet A took 5 minutes to get a response when entering airspace. Our new stealthier Jet B took 10 minutes to get a response\". They also notice that the response to Jet B was that of an \" unidentified small plane\" while the response to A was \"Russian bomber\""
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4k1epg | how did the us become so large and powerful while nations such as australia are still so small despite being founded at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k1epg/eli5_how_did_the_us_become_so_large_and_powerful/ | {
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"Geography: Most of Australia is uninhabitable - no water means no people. Being the oldest continent in the world meant that the cool topsoil generated by earthquakes and volcanoes etc. had blown away and now all that was left was desert.\n\nSocial: Australia was seen as a penal colony until the middle of the 19th century. Who wants to live in an open-air prison?\n\nDistance: Starving and oppressed in Europe? America's just across the Atlantic and you can get cheap fares by jumping on a ship that's just dropped off a cargo of tobacco, cotton, furs etc. Australia didn't have trade lanes until the 20th century - we were too busy trying not to starve to death/fighting off crocodiles.\n\nThe US had cities before 1776, The first white settlers landed in Australia in 1788, slept in bark huts and died of cool new diseases, snakes, spears, sharks, shipwrecks etc. The USA had a couple of hundred years' head start on Australia.\n\nAll the good agricultural land in Australia was on the other side of a mountain range from where the settlers landed. Until a route was established across the Mountains (no one knew what was on the other side), starvation was a real thing in Australia.\n\nHave you heard of Roanoke? Australia had dozens, if not hundreds of Roanokes. It's a big place, but it was very dangerous for new settlers - no arable land, no water, hostile tribes, new diseases, European farm animals couldn't digest the local plants so they all died.\n\n",
"War first off, until recently it was very profitable and America did a whooole lotta that. Second America got the luck of the draw in regards to environmental luck (such as natural gas and precious metals not to mention fertile land ect.) Slavery had a big part to do with it too. Lastly its a matter of startup money like a big ass country sized company. Convicts exiled to Australia didnt have the money the rich men who moved to America did."
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63eukl | why does the united states hate russia so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63eukl/eli5_why_does_the_united_states_hate_russia_so/ | {
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"Russia's previous incarnation (the USSR) and the US spent ~40 years competing with each other for global influence which included:\n\n* Spying\n\n* Proxy Wars\n\n* Economic fuckery\n\n* Subverting each other's political system\n\n* lots of propaganda to their people in order to justify the above.\n\nAdditionally, Russia actively practices policies seen as oppressive to American sensibilities, such as:\n\n* Murdering/intimidating the press\n\n* political and industrial corruption\n\n* Violent oppression of homosexuals and certain minorities\n\n* Outrigt invasion of neighboring countries (Ukraine). "
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5xx3le | could a military coup happen in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xx3le/eli5_could_a_military_coup_happen_in_the_us/ | {
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"Not really and that's simply because there is too many people too coup against. What I mean is since we have multiple branches of government that are clearly not all like-minded there is no one body that is leading that the military would need to coup against. If a president was doing something that the military deemed unworthy the country would most likely agree and that President would be impeached. As much as many people don't like Trump it would be easier and more likely that the American people would have him removed from office then the military would rise up and conquer the United States.",
"Sure, a military coup can happen anywhere with a standing army. I think it's unlikely in the US because the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, so to depose him military personnel would have to disobey unambiguously lawful orders. This is not the case in many countries where generals are the ultimate military authority and there are no civilians in the command structure. Also, military coups often occur in countries where the military is an older and more stable institution than the government (see: Latin America) - this is far from the situation in the US.\n\nStill, it is possible that a beloved general could command overwhelmingly more loyalty than the president and successfully depose him. That is a risk that comes with a powerful standing army, and one reason Americans opposed such an institution until the 20th century.",
"It absolutely *could*, but the probability is vanishingly small. \n\nFirst, the sheer size of the US military makes it enormously unlikely that any individual, or cabal of individuals, would be able to mobilize enough of the forces to seize power. \n\nThe US military is also compartmentalized. There are various intelligence agencies, branches of the military, national guards, and so forth. To organize a coup would be very difficult; it would require a huge amount of organization and I can't see it even forming without leaks compromising the effort before it began. \n\n"
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7e0mli | how do earphones produce adequate bass despite their size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7e0mli/eli5_how_do_earphones_produce_adequate_bass/ | {
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"Proximity to your ear. The volume of air displaced by a large subwoofer is large, but it is many feet / several hundreds of feet away from your ear. If you are too close to something of this size, you will be doing damage to your ears because the volume of sound waves hitting your eardrum is too large. \n \nSimilarly, small earbuds produce a bass sound with a very tiny volume, but that earbud is mere millimeters away from your eardrum. Change that even to a few centimeters and the bass sound waves diffuse too quickly for them to affect your eardrum.",
"It's actually easier for an earphone to produce bass than for a loudspeaker to. The reason is that the volume of a speaker drops off by the square of it's distance. In short, this means moving twice as far, results in 1/4 of the sound reaching you. While bass frequencies travel farther through the air than treble does, it requires much more power to produce them due to the physical excursion required from a driver. \n\nThe only way to produce powerful bass in a loud speaker is by moving air. This could be a very large speaker that moves just a little bit, or a smaller speaker that moves in and out very far. Either way it takes a LOT of power to do this and in order for the user to hear it, the speakers enclosure, and placement in the room is critical. \n\nHowever on a headphone, the speaker is very close to the ear, sometimes even inside of the ear canal. And since it is possible to form a sealed enclosure with the speaker on one end, and the ear drum on the other, powerful bass can be produced with very little excursion (very little air needing to move) and with very low power requirements. \n\nLarger, over the ear, headphones often have driver sizes of 50mm or more, which is a lot of surface area moving very close to the ear canal, and powerful bass can be produced. \n\nThe other thing to consider is the tonal balance of the headphone speaker between bass and treble. If you had a perfectly balanced frequency response, and changed the speakers enclosure slightly to reduce the level of treble frequencies, the perception of the user is that the bass frequencies were made louder. They would simply increase the volume control to compensate, resulting in louder bass. \n\n"
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652y3e | how would deflating the value of the us dollar impact the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/652y3e/eli5_how_would_deflating_the_value_of_the_us/ | {
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"I'm a commodities broker so I can give you a little info on how it would affect world trade. Most commodities in the Western World are priced in US dollars. All currencies do not have static price ratios in relation to other currencies. It fluctuates. A cheaper dollar means other countries can buy more commodities at a lower price. Wheat and Soybeans are some of the most used products in the world. More so than we realize. A country is not going to exist without them. \n\nI do not know exactly if a lower dollar value is beneficial for the rest of the world. Janet Yellen of FOMC of the Federal Reserve used to be hesitant to raise interest rates because a raise in interest rates will increase the value of the dollar and they did not want a higher dollar negatively affecting countries in Europe who are currently struggling. The problem is, there are always going to be countries that are struggling and a low interest rate is not good for the economy in the long run."
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dse58d | why do modern us infantrymen have to carry over 120ibs of gear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dse58d/eli5_why_do_modern_us_infantrymen_have_to_carry/ | {
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"Well from what I recall this also includes what they wear as well. Right off the top you add 20-30 lbs for armor. Another 15-20 for guns and ammo. Apparently they carry about 20 lbs in batteries. So just with those few items you have up to 70 lbs. Add food and water, equipment for the mission, etc. It's not that surprising actually. A lot of this stuff can't really be removed. Maybe you can lighten the armor in the future, or the batteries, but that probably won't get reduced by a while lot.",
"as a premodern (20 years ago) STA patrol we would carry the world on our backs, easily 60kg plus (and more when it inevitably gets soaking wet) because we liked to have food, water an somewhere to sleep for a few days when we went somewhere. \n\nif we then went on a recce, or were in contact, we'd drop the main pack and instantly become gazelle-like lightweight ninjas with barely 30kg to encumber us..."
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77m8we | in france, pasteurized milk can be kept for months outside of the fridge as long as you haven't opened the bottle. why in north america, pasteurized milk can only be kept refrigerated and still expire within a month? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77m8we/eli5_in_france_pasteurized_milk_can_be_kept_for/ | {
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"text": [
"More rigorous pasteurization processes (higher temperature and/or longer time) can produce a final product that is shelf stable in a sealed package at room temperature for a longer time, but has some drawbacks including a worse taste compared to milk pasturized at lesser conditions.\n\nUHT pasteurized milk is available in the US, but is not as common, and part of it is that our culture does not expect \"room temperature milk\" to be a good thing.\n",
"There are two different ways to treat milk so that bacteria die and it doesn't go bad quickly. \n\nOne method kills all, and allows you to keep milk unrefrigerated for months. \n\nThe other method doesn't kill all the bacteria, so milk lasts a bit longer than fresh out of the cow, but must be refrigerated and used within a few days. This milk can be labelled as \"fresh milk\".\n\nBoth are available in France. One is just more common than the other.",
"The milk you speak of in France is absolutely a thing in North America, and is available in ~~every~~ supermarket. It's just not as commonly purchased as fresh milk is.\n\nA parent there's a chain that doesn't carry it. But I'll stick by it is VERY, VERY commonly carried.",
"It's UHT milk, Ultra High Temperature, which is then sealed in a more airtight container. So it's like the bottles of coke or jugs of juice on shelves. This is more heavily processed than fresh milk in the cooler."
]
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[],
[],
[],
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||
1rohpf | why does my penis slant to one side? | Serious question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rohpf/why_does_my_penis_slant_to_one_side/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdpaurr",
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"score": [
5,
2,
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"text": [
"Genetics nothing really on your part sir ",
"Most dicks curve up, but some curve left, right, or down. It's genetics, unlike the idiots posting below, masturbation has zero to do with this.",
"I do sex-ed with teens, this is what I tell them about it, I sometimes use three witheboard pens to examplify:\nImagine a penis like three tubes bundled together, two on top and one on the bottom, the erectile tissue in the penis is formed like that and when you get an erection they fill with blood. In most cases these tubes are a little bit diferent in length, so the penis will bend in the direction of the shorter one, sometimes more so when erect."
]
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[],
[],
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] |
|
4ftx5a | how tmz is always almost the first to report celebrity news deaths | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ftx5a/eli5_how_tmz_is_always_almost_the_first_to_report/ | {
"a_id": [
"d2bwnes",
"d2bwo8d"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"While they are quite good at their job and have lots of insider contacts to celebrities, TMZ is not a reputable news organization. A reputable new organization must wait for word from an official source such as a medical examiner, the police, or a family member. TMZ can just rely on rumors and unofficial sources and then retract the story if they are wrong.",
"They don't really care about the accuracy of their news, and so post anything sensational *immediately* before taking the time to verify the source or facts.\n\nEdit: if it's trending on Twitter, TMZ will run with it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
7ealyc | the legality of songs being covered by labeled bands, being included in albums and making money from it? what's the procedure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ealyc/eli5_the_legality_of_songs_being_covered_by/ | {
"a_id": [
"dq3m6ow",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"To make cover songs under US copyright law, you get a mechanical license. That license is approved by the artist and/or record label. Such licensing agreements can have varied provisions with regards to royalties, but yes, you would pay a fee for the initial mechanical license. ",
"In the U.S. there's a legal rate that someone has to pay if they want to cover a song. This means that if your band went out tomorrow and started playing a cover and making money off of it, you'd know what you have to pay.\n\nFor bands with better representation, you can call up an agent for the song you want to cover and (possibly) get a deal on the cover fee. As long as you can come to an agreement, the amount can be whatever you want."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
bukled | if the earth goes around the sun,in an elliptical pattern, why does the north and south hemispheres have opposite seasons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bukled/eli5_if_the_earth_goes_around_the_sunin_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"epdhqq0",
"epdhvsp"
],
"score": [
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11
],
"text": [
"The seasons aren't caused by the elliptical orbit of the Earth, they are caused by the axial tilt. The Earth isn't perfectly parallel to the Sun, the Earth rotates on it's North/South poles tilted at 23.4 degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun.\n\nDepending on the time of year your hemisphere is either tilted towards the Sun (Summer) or away (Winter)\n\nBeing tilted towards the Sun results in a warmer season, but contrary to popular belief it's not because you are closer to the Sun. It's because more of the Earth's surface is exposed to the Suns light which makes the days longer. Longer days means we are exposed to more heat.",
"The Earth's orbit and distance from the sun actually has very little impact on the seasons (BTW, during northern summers, we're actually further from the sun than during northern winters).\n\nInstead, it's the axial tilt of the planet and the angle at which sunlight hits. You know how the air is cooler in the morning and evening, but hottest when the sun is lower in the sky? That's because the same amount of sunlight is spread over a larger area when the sun is lower in the sky. The tilt of the earth is the same: during the summer, that area of the world is tilted towards the sun, so the sun is more directly overhead and the light is concentrated more directly, warming it up. During the winter, the reverse happens; the sun is lower in the sky and the light is spread over more land. Further, this effect is so extreme at the poles that during winter, nighttime can last for weeks straight and days rarely get brighter than twilight for months, while during the summer, daylight can last for just as long, with no respite from night."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
27n34s | what exactly does someone gain from infecting a computer with malware? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27n34s/eli5_what_exactly_does_someone_gain_from/ | {
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"ci2e7dr",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Personal information and/or processing power to send spam email or whatever.",
"Multiple things. \n1:a computer that can be used to perform any tasks you require, like ddos or bit coins\n2:access to any personal information on the computer. Bank accounts and credit cards are especially valuable. \n3: access to any computer the infected computer has access to. This is how they spread far and wide",
"...or just a feeling of power that you've screwed with people and brought whole large, powerful organizations to a grinding halt until they can clean up your mess. Some people can't get their thrills any other way than to do shit like that.",
"In the 80s and 90s, they gained bragging rights. Unfortunately, as \"kiddies\" grew up, bragging didn't pay the bills. Now they're after money. Any way they can get it. Whether that's serving pop-up ads on your computer, or using your computer to \"click\" hidden items, or even data mining, other hacking/malware/virus attacks on other computers, etc. They can do whatever they want, and it usually involves profit."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
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||
3unl54 | tribal lands and the federal constitution | I was reading [this](_URL_0_) about a local gay couple who is suing a local tribe to have their marriage recognized, and read something that said tribal lands are areas where the federal constitutional rights don't apply...
I'm confused as to how this works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3unl54/eli5_tribal_lands_and_the_federal_constitution/ | {
"a_id": [
"cxga94g",
"cxgaa5x"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Tribal territory is sovereign, hence they they are allowed to sell tax free cigarettes, operate casinos in states where they were otherwise illegal, etc. Does this make sense? If not, I could give a more in depth explanation.",
"Unfortunately there isn't really a simple clear explanation. Essentially Tribal Lands are in some cases treated like foreign countries. In other cases they are treated like the USA. There is a massive complex web of treaties, laws, special circumstances, exceptions and asterisks surrounding if / how US laws apply on tribal lands. "
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/11/27/gay-marriage-is-legal-but-not-on-tribal-lands"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1y8nwq | why do the bottom of every cooking pan i've ever owned turn black after using them on the stove? | Every cooking pan I've ever owned does this, and it looks and feels like tar that doesn't come off. I've been able to scrape some off before, but that stuff is like hardened glue! Flat top stove, coil stove, doesn't matter. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y8nwq/eli5why_do_the_bottom_of_every_cooking_pan_ive/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfian98"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I hope you mean the outside?\n\nIt's generally left over soaps and oils. The direct exposure to the heating element allows the contaminants to cook into the textured surface of the metal.\n\nThe inside is normally a lot smoother (or even coated with a non-stick material), not exposed directly to the heat source, and what ever you're cooking normally has some sort of liquid to help prevent materials from sticking as bad"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
42piup | why do people say zero nouns, but also say one noun but also two nouns? | Nouns is just a word in this case. I was just confused about plural and singular, a noun described with the amount of zero is plural... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42piup/eli5why_do_people_say_zero_nouns_but_also_say_one/ | {
"a_id": [
"czc3duk"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Zero, like any other non-one value, is plural.\n\nZero horses.\n\nZero miles per hour.\n\nThe singular form of a noun is generally only used if there is one of that thing. Any other count, including zero, is pluralized."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
47db7q | why do large corporations pay any tax at all? can't they just become sovereign countries in international waters? or move the hq to imaginationistan? | Why bother with evasion at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47db7q/eli5_why_do_large_corporations_pay_any_tax_at_all/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0c1xtb",
"d0c2dwt"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"If you want to do business with people, you've got to go where they are--and nobody lives in Imaginationstan. They live in states that have the power to impose tax, and will punish you for not paying it. For example, if a company operating in the United States violates our tax laws, the government can seize its property and force it to stop doing business--it doesn't matter where it's headquartered, because it's doing business in the U.S., which leaves it both legally and practically vulnerable.\n\nThe digital economy is not really an exception. The Internet infrastructure is still under the control of states, and increased cooperation makes international tax law enforcement increasingly viable. If all else fails, products can be seized at the border.",
"Under the law of the sea treaty, a stateless corporation entirely in international waters would fall under the jurisdiction of any state. Under the prior rules (applicable to nations that are not part of the law of the sea treaty) they're pirates and they can be seized by anyone stronger than them. The US Navy is quite a bit stronger than anyone else on the seas. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
b1fmy7 | what exactly is net nuetrality? is it a law? can it expire? what does it entail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b1fmy7/eli5_what_exactly_is_net_nuetrality_is_it_a_law/ | {
"a_id": [
"eil96lt",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"In a nutshell, net neutrality is the idea that internet providers should deliver all data to their customers equally, and should not pay attention to which sites or which types of data the customers are using. Internet companies want to give preferential treatment to certain websites or data, and slow down delivery of other types, but lots of people think that should be prohibited by law.\n\nThis is a good video on the subject: _URL_0_",
"Net Neutrality is an idea. The idea is thoroughly explained already, just use search to read the best explanations.\n\nMany consumers think it should be a law, and many providers think it is a bad idea because it would prevent them from doing some things that maximize their profits.\n\nIt was a policy of the Obama FCC, which was challenged in court by some of these providers (including AT & T, the prior employer of the Trump FCC Chairman). The providers won in court, the FCC acted in excess of the authority given them by Congress in establishing the policy without a law mandating it.\n\nThey passed a law in California, but it got involved in court challenges because the Internet is intrinsically interstate, and thus a federal matter to regulate.\n\nThe Trump FCC gave up on the policy as unworkable, and not what the President wanted. That's the problem with a policy, they can be changed without notice. That's why everybody has a valid interest that important things like this are clearly defined in laws.",
"Imagine Bob owns the highway. Bob wants to make sure Bob's Pizza company is always first, so he sets a speed limit of 80 MPH for Bob's Pizza trucks and cars, and sets a speed of 40MPH for Jim's pizza business vehicles. Jim can't compete because he can't get pizza delivered as fast, and eventually goes out of business.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis, in a nutshell, is what Net Neutrality is designed to prevent. The idea that the people who own the lines of communication(Spectrum, Verizon, AT & T, Comcast) cannot increase the speed of traffic that they find desireable(either because they own it, or because they've shaken those people down for money), or that they cannot otherwise 'change the rules' based on who is sending or recieving the content. The idea is that everyone's traffic should be treated equally, and the consumer should be allowed to decide what they want without the service provider being able to put their finger on the scale to affect the outcome."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxMyTwmu_M"
],
[],
[]
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||
14gg65 | why do some sweets make us want to chew them, while others do not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14gg65/why_do_some_sweets_make_us_want_to_chew_them/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7da4sy"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I always chew werther's because simply sucking on the whole thing doesn't release enough flavor. Once chewed up, my saliva touches more surface area and more candy is melted a per unit time. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3r4bkv | why did there used to be more boobs in rated r movies than there is now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r4bkv/eli5_why_did_there_used_to_be_more_boobs_in_rated/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwkrimy",
"cwl3as4"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Are there really less? I still see a fair amount of nudity in R-rated films. One explanation might be that you're seeing more R-rated films than you used to when you were younger, so you're seeing more films that just happen to not feature topless scenes.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a thorough explanation of the phenomenon. Although I'm not sure there are actually less boobs."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://thefappening.so/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Emily-Shaw-Topless-01.jpg"
]
] |
||
2l5tsj | looking at the tires of a race car (nascar, indy, etc) they seem to have no form of grip. what keeps them from sliding around the track like they do on the dirt tracks? | Been a NASCAR fan for many years and never understood this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l5tsj/eli5_looking_at_the_tires_of_a_race_car_nascar/ | {
"a_id": [
"clrprj9",
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"score": [
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3
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"text": [
"The smoother the tire, the better its grip, *as long as the track is clean of debris, and is dry*. This is because a larger contact patch between the tire and the track results in a higher coefficient of friction.\n\nThe reason that the tires on your car have treads is because treads help provide grip in non-optimal conditions, by funneling away water (to prevent hydroplaning), and pushing aside dirt and debris.",
"The structure you see on tires actually reduces the grip they have, but it allows things like water and dirt to move away from between the tire and the ground, preventing the car to slide around on dirt and water. \n\nRacing tires have lots of grip and are usually used on clean and dry surfaces, especially when the tires are warm they have a lot more grip then a tire with a pattern.",
"If you're referring to the grooves that are found in street legal and rain tires, those don't actually create grip. Their purpose is to give rain, or snow a channel to run through in the tire, instead of aquaplanning or skidding. In a controlled environment such as a dry race track, these grooves aren't necessary so it's more beneficial to have more surface area of the tire actually touching the ground. More surface area in contact with the road = more grip.\n\nRacing tires are also usually made of special rubber compounds that are stickier than a street legal tire, but wear out quicker as a result."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
|
al2sv6 | why do minerals in water make it taste good or bad? is soft or hard water better tasting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/al2sv6/eli5_why_do_minerals_in_water_make_it_taste_good/ | {
"a_id": [
"efaoctw"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"\"Hard\" water means there are more minerals than in \"soft\". Hard water usually has high amounts of calcium and magnesium. But it might be other minerals.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDifferent minerals have different tastes. Sulfur is a big part of what makes rotten eggs smell bad - it also makes water smell and taste bad, which you may have experienced if you've stayed near a beach. Calcium makes water taste nicer, magnesium is bitter, sodium is salty.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo for typical hard water, the taste is going to depend whether it has more calcium or magnesium. But soft water that has sulfur is still going to be unpleasant."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6fqc0c | why is it so hard for me to agree with views from the other end of the political spectrum? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fqc0c/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_for_me_to_agree_with_views/ | {
"a_id": [
"dik62ef",
"dik96cz"
],
"score": [
4,
12
],
"text": [
"Mental bias is one hell of a drug. You have subconsciously made your mind and made assumptions about the other side the second you heard your own side.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"u/lateral_roll touched on the subject, but didn't actually explain the underlying issue at hand here. Confirmation and belief biases and framing are all well and good, but that isn't the crux of the issue.\n\nThe real problem here is the \"Us vs. Them mentality\" (or \"Social Identity Theory\"). Not only are we biologically hardwired into this kind of thinking, our entire lives are built on top of that structure. When you're crazy about something, everyone who doesn't understand/agree with you *is wrong*. Everyone who does agree with you is *right*.\n\nLet's take this away from politics for a moment and bring it into the realm of sports, simply because it's an easier topic to visualize.\n\nSay you're a supporter of the Dallas Cowboys football team because you grew up in and around Dallas, Texas. You decide to go to a football match with an old friend, so you both wear a Dallas Cowboys jersey (blue and white) to the game. When you get to the stadium, you see a *whole lot* of the other fans wore a jersey, painted their faces, or are holding Dallas Cowboy's signs. You're all seated in the same area of the stadium, and you're all wearing blue and white.\n\nIn come the opposing team's fans. Let's say it's the Balitmore Ravens. Their team is wearing black and gold. All of their fans are wearing black and gold jerseys. They have their faces painted black and gold. They're cheering every time the Ravens make a good play that puts your team at a disadvantage, and every time it feels like a personal slight against you and your team.\n\nIt's *so* easy to paint them as the villains, because they look, act, and sound like they're attacking you and your team. It's you and your fans (us) versus them and their fans (them). \n\nNow extend that out to politics, and the roles don't change. If you're a Republican, you wear red and go to Republican rallies and support Republican politicians, and every time they do something good you cheer and cheer... while your opponents, the Democrats, wear blue and support Democrats and when your team does something bad, they cheer and cheer. \n\nHumanity has been doing this since it first began. One tribe versus all other tribes, because you only really care about the survival of you and your friends/kin, and they only really care about them and their friends/kin. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias"
],
[]
] |
||
16xl7e | why is it torture to drop water on your forehead? | Its not painful or anything so why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16xl7e/eli5_why_is_it_torture_to_drop_water_on_your/ | {
"a_id": [
"c80a90d",
"c80cpai"
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text": [
"Maybe you should go try it out...for hours...and hours...and hours...and *then* ask how it can be torturous. I've had it done to me for no more than 10 minutes, and that shit gets annoying ***fast.***",
"The [Mythbusters](_URL_0_) tested this once. If you use ice water it gets painful really fast."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFFslAjUyj4"
]
] |
|
8s10yy | is there any advantage to using stucco over brick or siding in coastal cities? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8s10yy/eli5_is_there_any_advantage_to_using_stucco_over/ | {
"a_id": [
"e0vtg9q",
"e0w1w9a"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Brick and mortar works just fine, but it is expensive compared to using something like cinder blocks and stucco over the top. It is a cheap method of providing a more visually appealing surface, I can't see anyone putting stucco over a good brick wall.",
"In states like California, you can't have brick buildings due to earthquakes. Homes need to be wood (and a covering like stucco) or steel-reinforced concrete. You could have an approved brick-looking façade, but making your house out of brick and mortar would crumble and fall in even the smallest earthquake."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
eovlsh | why does streaming content from twitch uses more data than watching a video from youtube? | the websites are used as exemple but also because the question stems from personal experiences.
I onced watched 20 minutes of a stream on my data and used about 100mo and the other day I accidentally watched 40 min of a YouTube video still on my data and it used like 28mo and I'm very confused? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eovlsh/eli5_why_does_streaming_content_from_twitch_uses/ | {
"a_id": [
"fefeekj",
"feg93cp",
"fegev7w"
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"score": [
2,
6,
10
],
"text": [
"The simplest explanation probably has to do with video quality.\n\nThe Twitch streams you were watching were likely HD - at least 1080p if not 4K definition.\n\nYouTube videos currently top out at 1080p (at least from what I've seen) with a lot of them being 720p or less.",
"Because YouTube can use stronger compression methods on offline videos than Twitch does for live streams.",
"Several reasons:\n\n* Compression is more efficient when you can see the future. When you compress a finished video, you can look at frames out of order. For example, you can send frame 1, frame 5, and then calculate that frames 2,3,4 are basically combinations of frames 1 and 5, and use the existing data from those two frames to save bandwidth. This only works if you can see what's coming ahead of time, which adds latency. For live streaming that's a bad idea, so you might only be able to use frames in the past to save bandwidth, not frames in the future.\n* For offline videos, you can use more advanced codecs like AV1 which take *forever* to encode. YouTube can afford to do this because they basically encode videos offline, and start with lower quality versions. But it's too slow to do in real time for a stream, so streams will most likely use H.264 which is an older codec that can easily be encoded in real time, but uses older technology and therefore takes up more space for the same quality.\n* Video quality varies, even at the same resolution and with the same codec. Twitch might be using higher quality settings.\n* The content of the video also changes the bandwidth considerably. People tend to stream games on Twitch, and games tend to have tons of complicated graphics with lots of detail and fast complicated motion. Those elements take a lot more space to represent than, say, talking head style videos on YouTube where almost nothing changes from frame to frame and there isn't a lot of complex detail."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6mmsvq | why do most businesses have a 1-800- number? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mmsvq/eli5_why_do_most_businesses_have_a_1800_number/ | {
"a_id": [
"dk2p7m4",
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5,
2,
2
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"text": [
"While it's much more common for long-distance calling to be inclusive in modern phone plans, this wasn't always the case. 1-800 numbers (and all other toll free numbers, like 888, 866, etc.) don't cost the person at the other end anything to call, even if the company is outside the area. The company foots the bill for the call.\n\nSo it's worth a company who sells products or services outside their local area to have a number that anyone can call for free in case of an issue, question, or want to place an order.",
"Others have mentioned the point about toll-free/free phone numbers, so I will just add that having a 1-800 number helps to make a business appear larger and their number more memorable.\n\n\nMost small and local businesses don't have a 1-800 number. Not because it's particularly costly or hard to get, just because having a local number is fine for the scale of the business they are - they don't get millions of calls, their business comes primarily for the local area.\n\n\nBig businesses on the other hand often don't want to appear to exist in a single location, they want to be easily accessible to anybody and readily recognisable as the number of a nationwide/international business. The 1-800 type number is shorthand for being a nationwide business (not perfect but a good indicator).",
"Back before cell phones, you had to pay for long distance calls, and it wasn't cheap. An 800 number allowed you to call long distance for free, with the recipient picking up the tab.\n\nThese days it is less important, all though there are still people who use landlines and pay extra for long distance. Mostly everyone is so used to 800 numbers and they are easier to remember, so business keep using them."
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4dbte5 | how do manufacturers test the quality of their products and then go on to sell them without wearing down the product? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dbte5/eli5_how_do_manufacturers_test_the_quality_of/ | {
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"Batch samples.\n\nSay you're making a dozen doughnuts. You bake thirteen, all from the same dough, same oven, same everything. You eat the extra doughnut. If everything is good with that one, you can confidently say that everything is good with the other twelve.",
"They don't test every single product... they do R & D while developing the product to determine durability, potential weak points in the product, performance in different settings, etc. Because production is standardized, the performance should be similar throughout the run. During production, they might spot test a small percentage during production and run more extensive testing to ensure uniformity/quality, but for each and ever product made it'll get a once over and checked to see that it powers on. Hence the need for warranties in case something doesn't work as expected.",
"Well, there's a lot of different types of testing. Any kind of destructive testing would be done on a sample basis (I.e., take a couple from eat batch) in the same as a baker would. He doesn't have to eat all the bread to check it tastes right.\n\nNon-destructive / functional testing isn't going to have any real impact on the life of the product. Plugging in a computer monitor to test it isn't going to have any affect whatsoever.\n\nAnd everything in between will be decided on a case by case basis, but I can't really think of an example.",
" > To elaborate, if you're testing a product to make sure it doesn't break for example, aren't you wearing it down and increasing the possibility it does break for the consumer?\n\nSometimes. \n\nYou can do nondestructive testing, which does not break it down, for example using a penetrating dye to look for cracks. \n\nSometimes you do proof loading, where you take every part and load it to some point below where you actually expect it to fail. This allows you to guarantee some level of strength with negligible damage to the product.\n\nYou almost always will pull samples from a batch and do full destructive testing. If it was made at the same time from the same materials using the same processes, you can usually be pretty confident that a few samples pulled randomly will be representative of the entire batch. Of course after you test them, the samples are garbage, but now you have some indication of the quality of the batch",
"I was a former products tester for a lawn care manufacturer.\n\nWe'd get units to test for say, 1000 hours. When that allotted time was up, we'd scrap the units as they'd more than likely be garbage at the end (we beat the piss out of things).\n\nNo test units ever left the property",
"Instead of making a toy then checking to see if works afterwards, the toy maker ensures that every process that it takes to make the toy is correct. If the process is done right, then the toy will be good. He still inspects his toys periodically, but not to make sure they work, but to make sure that the process that he is using to make the toys is happening in a predictable way.\n\nSource: I'm a mechanical engineering student",
"Some products are likely to fail in a short amount of time or a long amount of time. If you test all of them for a little longer than the short amount of time, all those that would fail do so and the remaining products are more likely to last longer once they are sold."
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7vbi1h | nfl followers, why are there so many people on the sideline while the game is being played? what is their role? novice at nfl here. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vbi1h/eli5nfl_followers_why_are_there_so_many_people_on/ | {
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"Media people, cameramen, sound people, the other 80odd players not on the field, the coaching staff, the athletic trainer staff, the medical team, NFL officiating crew, security...\n\nAdd it all up and you usually have several hundred people on the sideline of a typical NFL game.\n\nIt takes a lot of people to make that kind of televised spectacle happen."
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5bu270 | why are lines at the polls in the us that long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bu270/eli5_why_are_lines_at_the_polls_in_the_us_that/ | {
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"Polling locations are determined by the State, and normally based on where you live. They are not set by the Federal Government. ",
"Well, more polling places cost money and the US government is using the kinda 'if it ain't broke, why fix it'-approach to those things. So long as there aren't too many people complaining about it, they won't change it.\n\nI'm from germany, the most I ever had to wait was 12-15 minutes. But I think that might've been because of an issue with the ballots or something, the line actually wasn't that long.",
"When the polling places are in certain areas that are expected to vote heavily in favor of one party, when the group that creates the polling places is of the other party, they will purposefully make as few polling places as legally allowable to make lines longer and discourage their opponents from voting. ",
"It's a bit complicated.\n\nYour polling place is determined by the state based on where you live. Your house is in a district and ward and that determines your polling place. \n\nPlaces with higher turnout will have longer lines for one thing. But also if there aren't as many polling machines, polling workers, and other voting resources at that location, it takes longer and therefore the lines get longer. Those resources are allocated differently which may be caused by expected turn out and the money it takes to do that.\n\nSome states also have different laws and requirements to vote. If you register to vote at the polls (and if a lot of other people do the same) it can take longer. Some states also require voter ID laws that make voting/registering take longer. As well, some counties in some states eliminated early voting, so more people can't avoid the long election day lines and vote early. \n\nElection Day is also always on Tuesdays which means that it's a workday. You can take off to vote, but you don't need to be paid for it. So if you take off to vote, you won't get paid which some people just can't afford to do so they go in the morning before work, during their lunch/break period, or after work before polls close. Those time periods are really high traffic so it can take longer during those times. \n\nSo there are a lot of different factors that could cause the long lines. \n"
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7p6nlq | explain new study about ibuprofen | Hello People,
i understand almost nothing of the scientific stuff in the study, but what i do understand is that an undesired side effect in Ibuprofen has been found. This seems especially problematic for me since (at least in Germany) Ibuprofen is given as a standard medication to toddlers with fever. I got one of those toddlers, 2yrs old, so i am a bit worried.
So, can anyone ELI5 this thing for me:
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p6nlq/eli5_explain_new_study_about_ibuprofen/ | {
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"The study gave 31 men either 1200mg of Ibuprofen or a placebo daily for 6 weeks and found that it caused a temporary reduction in testicular function. \n\nIt's important to remember that this is just a single, very small study, and as far as I can tell it has not been replicated. It's also important to note that they gave daily doses for 6 weeks, and few people take ibuprofen daily for that long. It says absolutely nothing about taking it occasionally or even for several days in a row, and we don't know the effects on women since the study was all men.\n\nIn short, there MIGHT be a link between ADULT MEN who take ibuprofen on a regular basis and TEMPORARY testicular function. \nIf you are not an adult male who takes ibuprofen regularly, you really can't read anything into this study beyond that. In time it will likely be replicated and then there will be more data. For now, if you're concerned about using ibuprofen yourself or giving it to a toddler, you should speak to a doctor, but this study shouldn't influence your decision. \n",
"The level and duration of ibuprofen given to the trial participants was well outside of ordinary experience. Don't give your kid ibuprofen every day for six weeks and you won't have a problem."
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qn3mt | nosebleeds | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qn3mt/eli5_nosebleeds/ | {
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"Basically blood vessels in your nose breaks, usually due to outer factors. Blood then runs down, out of the nose, due to gravity.",
"A better question is, what causes the blood vessels to break when the nose has gone untouched? I assume thats what OP meant."
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3nk0pw | why is ear wax liquidy in the morning but solid throughout the rest of the day? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nk0pw/eli5_why_is_ear_wax_liquidy_in_the_morning_but/ | {
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"Not sure what you are asking about but according to [this](_URL_0_) and personal experience from me and my brother, there are only 2 kinds of earwax: either wet type or dry type and it's based on a gene to decide that. \n\nIf you are asking for the wet type (I have the wet type), it never really did become solid, just slightly more sticky? to it. Probably caught all the dust and particles that were flying around and into my ear, resulting it to be more \"solid\"",
"There are two types of earwax in humans. One that is dry, and one that is wet. Your genes determine which you have. It does not shift phases during the day. If your ear wax is the wet kind and it seems to become hard then that means you have dirt or something else trapped in it. ",
"I guess it's because the warmth inside your ears is greater when you sleep which I reckon makes the ear wax more liquid. Hey, that would mean it's like... real wax. Could we build candles out of ear wax? Outta my way, everyone, this is *my* business idea!"
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39j839 | in the theory of relativity. in two parties travelling at different speeds, both will observe the other's clocks ticking slower. who is correct? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39j839/eli5_in_the_theory_of_relativity_in_two_parties/ | {
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"When Beta lands, its clock will be \"behind\" that of the clock on Alpha.\n\nHowever: Both clocks are correct and both kept time properly *relative* to their speed within the time/space continuum",
"There are two layers to this question, so bear with me.\n\nThe first is the situation where two people, A and B, are traveling relative each other, and both say that the other person has a slower clock. To figure out whose clock is \"right,\" let's consider a third person, C, who's in between person A and person B so that \nthey say that person A and person B are both moving at the same speed away from them.\n\nIn person C's frame of reference, person A and person B's clocks tick slower, but at the same rate. So, if person A and person B both flash a light after 5 seconds have passed in their perspective, person C will say that the flashes of light are simultaneous.\n\nPerson A, however, will say that their light flashed first, and person B will say that their light flashed first. This is an example of relativity of simultaneity. Relativity forces us to abandon the idea that two events which we perceive to be simultaneous - like the flashes of light according to observer C - are simultaneous to all observers. Observer A can say that they happened in one order, observer B can say that they happened in the opposite order, and observer C can say they happened at the same time: it's all relative.\n\nThe next logical step is to ask what happens if persons A and B slow down and meet up with person C, and then they all compare notes about each other's clocks. They should all agree on how many times each person's clock has ticked. We have this massive disagreement between the three of them on how the clocks tick right up until A and B slow down, so how does this get resolved?\n\nThe tricky bit here is that persons A and B had to *slow down*. Acceleration in relativity is extremely weird, and it does crazy things that you wouldn't expect. When A, B, and C were moving at constant speeds relative to each other, none of their perspectives were \"more correct\" than any of the others. You could say that A is stationary and B and C are moving, you could say B is stationary and A and C are moving, or you could say that C is stationary and A and B are moving, all of those are fine.\n\nHowever, when A and B slow down to meet up with C, C is definitely \"staying still\" and A and B are definitely slowing down. It isn't valid to say that A is staying still and B and C are slowing down/speeding up to match it, it's *only* valid to say that C is staying still.\n\nWhat will essentially happen is that A will observe B and C's clocks ticking *extremely fast* while he decelerates. Likewise, B will see A and C's clocks ticking extremely fast as he decelerates.\n\nWhen they all meet up, all that crazy fast ticking that went on while A and B were slowing down will counteract the differences they measured from time dilation. They will both meet up and say \"your clock was way behind, but once we started slowing down it went crazy fast and caught up to mine.\""
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5pdl9b | why does a cut stop bleeding so quickly after the incident? | Does the blood go dry and create a barrier on the cut? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pdl9b/eli5_why_does_a_cut_stop_bleeding_so_quickly/ | {
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"So let's say you cut yourself. A few things will happen to stop the bleeding. \n\n1) First, the blood vessel constricts to allow less blood through. This won't stop the bleeding, but it reduces it. \n\n2) Second, your platelets will be activated and form a *platelet plug*. This is a soft, squishy plug that gets in the way of blood trying to leave the broken blood vessel. It can be formed very quickly, but it can be easily disrupted. \n\n3) Third, you will form a *fibrin clot*. There are a lot of *clotting factors* that interact with each other in complicated ways, but the bottom line is that you form a hard, proteinaceous meshwork over the damaged area--this is a scab. It will stay in place until the wound is healed and the clot is no longer needed."
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2hz3j1 | why youtube videos even with 4k resolution still have artifacts. | No matter what resolution you have chosen, you still will have huge video artifacts. How is it possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hz3j1/eli5_why_youtube_videos_even_with_4k_resolution/ | {
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"The artifacting is a result of the compression algorithm YouTube uses to store its videos. Rather than store the full content (which would take up a huge amount of space- we're talking about hundreds of megabytes per second), it approximates the data. It means the video can stream much faster but you end up with artifacts because it can't exactly recreate the original video."
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95r4hk | are all animals equally important in the ecosystem? would an extinction of some species be totally irrelevant in the big picture? | While some species like bees could make or break the entire ecosystem, I assume some species wouldn't make much of difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95r4hk/eli5_are_all_animals_equally_important_in_the/ | {
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"Anything that eats something else or is eaten by something else is important. If something is eaten as part of an ecosystem and its predator disappears, it will multiply too fast and tip the scales of its community. On the other hand, if the prey disappears, the predator will die off from losing its game.",
"The question is really which extinction event is irrelevant for humans. Remember that 99% of all species have already gone extinct. ",
"It's certainly true that some species fill a niche that can quickly have the resultant slack, so to speak, taken up by a competitor species if the other were to go extinct, so that there isn't too much consequence to the greater ecosystem once things get back to equilibrium. But still, there will still need to be some population adjustments to those other species to get everything stable again.",
"There are real-world examples we can look at, with some big and surprising effects. For example, when wolves were removed from Yellowstone a lot of things changed. More deer survived, which ate more vegetation, especially near riverbeds. The lack of shade and shelter caused rivers to warm and fish populations got smaller. And now with the re-introduction of wolves, we’re seeing reversals of some of those effects. \n\nThat’s some pretty crazy stuff, but how disastrous was it? Depends on your perspective. The deer were doing fine. There were fewer fish, but still some. The vegetation was getting eaten by deer, so that sucked if you were a tree. Humans were still able to sightsee in the park and enjoy it, but if they wanted to fish that was negatively impacted. Overall, it wasn’t something most people would consider a complete ecosystem “collapse”. ",
"Keystone species are essential for the survival of their ecosystem. Without them, the ecosystem collapses. Named for the top, middle stone in an arch. Other stones can be removed from the arch, and it will shift but remain standing. If the keystone is removed, it all comes crumbling down.\n\nAn example would be the sea otter. Otters eat purple urchins, the urchins eat the holdfast of kelp (the portion that anchors it to the bottom). Kelp forests house countless fish and invertebrates, the fish are prey upon by shore birds as well.\n\nWhen otters were hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1900's, urchin populations skyrocketed as their sole predator had been removed. Large swathes of kelp forests were completely destroyed, replaced by rocky bottoms cover with starfish and urchins (called urchin barrens). The animals that lived in the kelp were forced to find new homes or died, and same for the shore birds that relied upon the fish.\n\nNow that otter populations have rebounded, kelp forest have returned as well.",
"No. There are animals called *keystone species* that fill a unique niche that few, if any other animals presently fill. Other animals are non-keystone species, and there are many that fill that niche. Bear in mind that although we can make very informed guessed about *which* species is a keystone or not, it's very *very* difficult to know for sure. Unfortunately, usually the way for us to find out is watch what happens when the species disappears.\n\nUsually keystone species are large predators, mostly because it's hard for large predators to share the same space. Remember how [trophic levels](_URL_0_) work: each time something is consumed by something else, some energy is lost, so that there is less total energy available at the highest trophic levels. That means that there necessarily must be fewer individuals at that level, and competition is higher. There isn't a lot of room for apex predators, so they tend to push other predators out.\n\nSo, for instance, [here is a short video](_URL_1_) explaining how wolves changed the flow of rivers by existing. There are no other large predators like wolves where wolves are supposed to live. Bears generally don't eat deer, even young deer. The deer are just too fast. Mountain lions generally stay in mountainous areas. So wolves are the only things that regularly predate on deer. If you take away the wolves, *nothing* is really predating on deer. Large herbivores also tend to be keystone species, like those deer.\n\nOn the other hand, one species of mosquitoes is *not* a keystone species. There are (apparently) 176 different species of mosquitoes in North America, and probably hundreds more around the world that would readily live in North America given the chance. If North America had 175 different species, it's almost certain that no ecosystem would notice the difference. Everything that eats that species would just as easily eat another species. Even if mosquitoes left that ecosystem entirely, there are other aquatic larval insects like various midges that those predators could rely on for food. Mosquitoes are not a major predator of anything as adults. Larva *do* eat other aquatic insects and insect larva, as well as fish fry. But, so do dragonfly larva and other aquatic insects. So *probably* if we eradicated every mosquito species - or more conservatively, every disease-spreading species - probably nothing adverse would happen. Probably.\n\nThere are plenty of species like that. Freshwater aquatic turtles, for example: painted turtles, red-ear sliders, yellow belly sliders, river cooters...they're absolutely different, and my wildlife ecologist girlfriend will probably correct me on this, but they're basically interchangeable. Take away one and the other will move in and very little would change. Or the many small minnow-like fish species.\n\nAnd There are keystone species that are very small, too. Like krill, which are vital to the exchange of nutrients and energy throughout the world's oceans.\n\nAs I said, though, it's very difficult to know which are keystone species and which are not. We might lose a species only to find that in fact, it's the sole predator of something else, or the sole source of food, and we never noticed. We should protect as many species as possible to preserve the very delicate balance of most ecosystems.",
"The ecosystem is actually much more sensitive to change than we think from what i read (ex. The comment talking about the yellowstone park wolves)\n\nThe only thing i can think of where an extinction of an animal wont cause much impact is if it said animal went extinct due to natural causes and not from human interference \nLike pandas, they were on the verge of extinction because they literally stopped breeding (I only skimmed about this but it said they were just lazy :p) and the only reason they havent already was because of human interference lmao\n\nInvasive species would also be an example as they actually cause negatives to the native species\n\n\n",
"We eliminated smallpox. The ecosystem is fine.\n\nWe could greatly reduce malaria infections in certain areas by eliminating some species of mosquito. We've figured out that there's really nothing that depends on them. We could, for a pretty reasonable cost, make those species extinct, and we don't think there would be much of an impact on the environment."
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3dx891 | i just turned on my iphone in my dark bedroom, a beam of light shines from the phone. do the light photons endlessly bounce around inside my bedroom for the rest of eternity? what happens to them? where do they go? | To elaborate, I eventually open my blinds, window etc etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dx891/eli5_i_just_turned_on_my_iphone_in_my_dark/ | {
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"When a photon strikes a surface, it may reflect, or it may be absorbed, producing a tiny bit of heat in the process.\n\nSo your iPhone's light beam dissipates and raises the temperature of your dark bedroom by an infinitesimal (probably not even measurable) amount.\n",
"Most of them are absorbed by the walls straight away, and the ones that reflected or re-emitted the first time will most likely be absorbed the next. Some may bounce around many times, but with light travelling at 300,000 km per second, it will all be over very quickly.",
"Someone more qualified than me will come along later and give a more detailed answer, but as I understand it. Everything we see is essentially absorbing some light and reflecting the rest. That's what determines color. Light hits a wall and that wall absorbs whatever part of the light spectrum it needs in order to reflect back to your eyes the intended color. Even mirrors which are highly reflective do absorb some light. They reflect most visible spectrums back to you but they absorb enough to give a slight green tint. You can see this if you do the old \"endless reflection\" trick. The more repetitions the greener it gets.\n\nAs for whether the photons are there forever, the photons are highly active when they have high energy at which point they are seen as light, but in flying around and bouncing off every surface they can reach the energy is quickly used up, absorbed into all the things that the light touched, at which point for all intents and purposes the photon is \"used up\"."
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3uf205 | why do some states, like massachusetts, prohibit the sale of alcohol on certain holidays? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uf205/eli5_why_do_some_states_like_massachusetts/ | {
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"Blue laws. The Puritan past. Religious leaders didn't want it sold. We're talking 300 years ago era laws. ",
"For the same reason that a lot of Southern states won't let you purchase alcohol before noon on Sundays. You should be in church like a good Christian instead of drinking the Devils booze. While I am being a bit sarcastic, it boils down to religious ideals writ into law when Puritanism was cool and the Temperance movement was in full rampage mode.",
"Mainly since they haven't been modernized. Though more and more states and local communities and counties, seem to be increasingly moving to get rid of them.\n\nThey still exist in some ways, though (I.e. Illinois and other Midwest states not allowing car dealers to open on Sunday)."
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eggfaf | why are collard shirts and button downs considered to be business professional and when did it start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eggfaf/eli5_why_are_collard_shirts_and_button_downs/ | {
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"Fun fact: Button-downs were invented late in the 1800's/early 1900's, and refers explicitly to the collar buttoning down onto the breast. \n\nCollared and button-up shirts have been popular for a very long time; at least since the 16th century. for several reasons, and all of them revolved around *appearing clean and higher class*. First; back in the day, even the collars and sleeves buttoned onto the breast, which meant they could be laundered separately. This is a huge advantage for the middle class, as it saved on laundering costs while still *appearing* perfectly clean. Second; it's easy to tell when a collared shirt hasn't been cleaned and pressed recently, because the collar begins to go all noodly and picks up neck sweat really easily. It's all about appearing upper class when you really aren't, something businessmen and middle-class folks have been quite fond of throughout history. The last I'll bring up is that these styles are direct descendants of old English and French styles that noblemen used to wear, which further creates the illusion that the wearer is of a higher class. Again, businessmen are all about that. Appearing wealthy and well-groomed has been shown over and over again to improve sales."
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6acqky | how does international phone calls have almost no delays(zero ping) but internet voice chat lags a lot, and wouldn't even connect if the distance was big between the called and receiver. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6acqky/eli5_how_does_international_phone_calls_have/ | {
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"Fundamentally there's not a lot of difference between the two. With a long distance call, your voice is fed into a computer are the exchange which digitizes it and breaks it up into packets (which is basically the same thing skype voice does). These packets are sent as data via a fibre optic network to the other end of your call.\n\nServices like skype differ only in that they use the regular old internet for transport and long distance calls use a purpose built network. On some level the internet adds extra layers of protocols that increase overheads and make it slightly less efficient but that probably isn't the main reason. \n\nThe deeper answer is engineering. Long distance calls certainly aren't zero ping, but the data networks they use are designed, purpose built and optimised for low latency when used with a low data rate, intermittent stream of packets. \n\nThe internet that acts as the data network for services like skype on the other had is designed and optimised for general purpose traffic, plus it tends to offer various connection speed options to every customer on the way through, all of which might not suit the kind of data that your skype call generates.",
"IP networks are packet-switched. This means that the data is broken down into packets, and each packet is individually routed. So some packets could take a different route based on congestion. This gives high reliability of the overall network traffic at the expense of latency.\n\nTelephone networks are circuit switched. This means that when the call is established, a series of connections is established from your phone all the way to the other phone, and those connections are dedicated for the exclusive use of your call for the duration of the call. The result is lower latency and high reliability for the call. It's less efficient than a packet switched network, however.\n\nOn a circuit switched call, if the network is busy, the call won't be completed -- you dial, but you get a message that the circuits are busy. Once you are able to connect, you stay connected. However, if there is a problem during the call, like a cable cut, the system doesn't reroute your call -- it just ends it, and you have to call again."
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1o1otn | what is illegal in space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o1otn/what_is_illegal_in_space/ | {
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"The detonation of nuclear weapons in space was banned through a treaty. In fact, weapons in space was banned by treaties, nuclear weapons just got their own special one.",
"Screaming, hmm or is that something else?",
"Laws must be enforceable. You can have all the hookers and blackjack you want in space simply because nobody has the capability to do a damned thing about it.\n\nYour Earth bank accounts might be seized if you really get carried away with the money laundering and the nuclear weapons, but you won't actually go to prison no matter what you do up there. Well, as long as you never land. I would really recommend not landing.\n\n",
"So if I went to space with someone, murdered their ass (I would never do this) then came back to earth, what would actually happen?",
"if you can make it all the way out there, you can do whatever the fuck you want.",
"Basically it is similar to open waters... as long as you don't cause too much harm to another (murder, stealing, laundering) you are good to go. Also there was a case where Australia fined NASA for littering when part of the [Skylab fell](_URL_0_).\n\nAlso leaving space junk is a huge problem, a bolt in space travelling the speed of a bullet is a major issue.",
"Everything and nothing...",
"Well, most countries (and most US States) have a long arm statute which gives jurisdiction over actions taken outside of their territory but causes an effect inside the territory. So that would even apply to actions taken in outer space. \n\nYou can make the analogy to crimes committed in international waters. If you murder an American Citizen in international waters, you can still be brought before a court in the US. Same with most countries. \n\nSo the short answer is, everything which is already illegal. "
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1uy2i5 | every day a post hits the front page about some incredibly effective cancer treatment. why doesn't it seem like these treatments proliferate to the real world, and how close are we really to curing cancer? | I lost my father to lung cancer a month ago, and these posts inspire and discourage me at the same time. I'm glad a cure seems near, but it seems so cruel that a cure may have been so close yet too late for him. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uy2i5/eli5_every_day_a_post_hits_the_front_page_about/ | {
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"Before 99 times out of 100 what they're actually reporting is that in one test in mice something appeared to work. You never hear about it again because in further testing it didn't actually work or they get bored of reporting it during the next 15 years of testing.\n\nThat or someone is posting about peach seeds and other bullshit treatments. ",
"Treatments can appear promising during initial trials but that doesn't mean they are effective when subjected to further testing. Basically, journalism covering medicine is very optimistic -- and journalists are not generally super well educated in pharmacology and medicine, which makes it harder for them to cover cancer treatments accurately.\n\ne: also, for example, if you hear about a supposed miracle cure entering stage I trials, all that means is that they are giving it to people in order to establish safe dosages and figure out side effects and safety. Stage II is to figure out if the treatment is effective and safe for a larger group of people.",
"What you read in the news is \"They found a cure for cancer\". \n\nWhat researchers actually found is \"We have observed that this thing can inhibit the growth of cancer cells under highly controlled conditions. We don't know if we can make this into a FDA-approved pill that's both effective and won't kill the patient.\"",
"Cancer is not one specific illness, but rather a category of illnesses. There are hundreds of completely different diseases that are categorized as a cancer. They all have different therapies; the treatment that works for one cancer often doesn't work for another one. Any statement that refers to finding a cure for cancer is illogical. It's nonsense. \n\nThe statement \"we will some day find a cure for cancer\" is logically equivalent to \"we will some day find a cure for virus.\" \n\nThere are some cancers we can cure and some we can not. There are some incredibly effective cancer cures on the market and it's already created a situation where certain cancers are considered easily curable if detected early. Breast cancer is one: the cure is a mastectomy. \n\nOf course, the cure for any cancer will always be the lesser of evils; cancer is a part of your own body. You can poison bacteria without poisoning yourself because they're a completely different organism that has little in common with a eukaryote. For eukaryotic parasites like malaria or amoebic dysentery, it's far more challenging but not impossible. Cures for malaria will likely cause side effects because the parasite has a lot in common with your own body and there's really nothing that will exclusively effect it. \n\nWith any disease, the more similar your body is to the invader, the more hard it is to find something that will damage the invader without damaging the host. That makes cancers a challenge because the cancer is not a foreign organism that has invaded your body. The cancer is actually part of you. You have to destroy part of your own body without damaging the rest of you. \n\nThis is why the oldest cures for cancer are so dangerous. The remedy for cancer in traditional Chinese medicine is called Pi Shuang. Our modern word for it is Arsenic Trioxide. Obviously, under most circumstances it would be bad to poison yourself with arsenic, but it turns out to [work rather well for leukemia.](_URL_0_)\n\nThings are getting better and new remedies are discovered all the time. But they are remedies for a specific cancer, not for every cancer."
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519hxr | mother teresa controversy | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/519hxr/eli5_mother_teresa_controversy/ | {
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"She's becoming a Catholic saint. Yet she wrote in a letter that she didn't sense god and her prayers had no meaning for her. Her charities were also super shady with funds, even refusing to refund to people who had their money stolen and donated without their consent. She told others to suffer in silence like Christ without medical help, but went to the doctor the moment she started getting sick. She rarely visited her own charities, instead chasing after any event in the world where a disaster brought cameras to further her celebrity. In short, many people are enraged that such a woman is going to be officially considered a saint.",
"Basically she used poor peoples suffering so she could get \"closer\" to god. This video sums it up pretty good:\n_URL_0_",
"Most people believe she healed the sick and the dying. That's the common belief, but it's not the correct one. \n\nIn truth, she venerated the suffering, i.e Christ suffered, so suffering is good and godly for us to-- even though there's entire debates about how he suffered/sacrificed himself for us, in order to enlighten us. ",
"Because in her mind, the best way to reach heaven and be like Jesus, was to suffer. She let all the sick sleep in one room on military field beds, they had to go to the bathroom in front of each other with no privacy, she didn't let them go to the doctor or give them any soft of pain relief. There were multiple people who died despite them being able to be easily saved.\n\nShe also witnessed the monstrosities in Haiti during the dictatorship, but told the entire world Duvalier was a man of god.",
"Copying this message from /u/be_my_plaything:\n\nShe ran hospitals (If an institution with a 40% mortality rate is actually classifiable as a hospital) like prisons, particularly cruel and unhygienic prisons at that. \n\n\nChildren in her care were tied to their beds to prevent them misbehaving. \n\n\nShe let the terminally ill (and even those with illnesses that would have been curable if her 'hospitals' were run better) die without pain relief because suffering bought them closer to Jesus\n\n\n\nMost of the money donated to her causes was filtered back into the (already exceedingly rich) Catholic Church, or used to expand her 'charities' to new regions, rather than actually helping those in her care, many of whom were starving and lacking basic medical care... Basically she didn't love the poor and hungry, she loved poverty and hunger, she saw suffering as a grace and despite being lauded as a humanitarian given the fame and donations she had at her disposal did relatively little practical good.\n\n\nShe befriended and defended a genocidal dictator, Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, and accepted donations from him of money extorted from the very poor she was supposedly helping as well as drug dealing and body part trafficking.\nShe accepted and refused to return profits of criminal activity. Including one and a quarter million US dollars in cash and use of a private jet from convicted racketeer and fraudster Charles Keating who stole over $3 Billion from US taxpayers in the 80's and 90's... Upon his conviction not only did Mother Teresa and The Catholic Church refuse to return the money they had received from him, Mother Teresa actually tried to use her influence to have him let off or at least sentenced leniently.\n\n\nShe publicly defended known pedophiles from within the clergy, including trying to use her influence to have leniency shown in sentencing of convicted child rapist Donald McGuire and campaigning to have him reinstated to the priesthood and allowing him to continue his work... even though this work would inevitably bring him into regular contact with children.\nBecause so much of the money she raised went to the church not the poor she hated waste in her hospitals, insisting staff reused needles until they were too blunt to continue using... even in known HIV high risk areas.\n\n\nShe directed a mere 7% of the money her charities raised directly those she was supposedly helping... With much of the rest ending up in secret bank accounts and as yet still unaccounted for.\n\n\nShe routinely baptised those dying under her care regardless of their own wishes or religious beliefs.\n\n\nShe opposed both abortion and contraception, even in cases of incest, abuse and rape.\n\n\nShe praised and supported Ireland's anti-divorce laws... even in cases where spousal abuse was apparent, forcing countless women to live out lives of slavery and torture.\n\n\nBasically pretty much everything about her was evil, but the churches PR machine didn't have a hard job spinning a kindly looking old women stood amongst some of the poorest people in the world to look like a saint, and once that side of the story was cemented in the press it became all most people saw of her.\n\n\nPossible sources:\n\n\n_URL_2_\n\n\nLes côtés ténébreux de Mère Teresa\n\n\n_URL_6_\n\n\nChristopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n_URL_3_\n\n\n_URL_4_\n\n\n_URL_7_\n\n\n_URL_5_\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\nMore sources in this comment by /u/BlunderLikeARicochet",
"If the things said about her here are true ( and I dont question that) why is she revered by anyone, let alone the church? Surely these accusations have been looked into by the Pope and others."
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"http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/i-dont-think-she-deserved-the-nobel/284270",
"http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/10/forbes-india-mother-teresa-charity-critical-public-review.html",
"http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html",
"http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/on-the-same-page/284274",
"http://newamericamedia.org/2013/03/city-of-doubts-kolkatas-uneasy-love-for-mother-teresa.php",
"http://www.salon.com/2016/01/03/the_wests_big_lie_about_mother_teresa_her_glorification_of_suffering_instead_of_relieving_it_has_had_little_impact_on_her_glowing_reputation/",
"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/25/why-to-many-critics-mother-teresa-is-still-no-saint/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa"
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19rq7q | why is it unsafe to be on an unsecured wifi network? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19rq7q/eli5_why_is_it_unsafe_to_be_on_an_unsecured_wifi/ | {
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"There is a chance of being caught by something called a man in the middle attack, where a hacker will basically act like a bridge between you and the internet, and will steal information from you.",
"When you are on an unsecured wireless network all your traffic is sent in plain text. As a wireless signal is sent out by your device in all directions anyone in range can see your traffic and read it. This includes logins and cookies, allowing them to login to your accounts.\n\nHTTPS helps a little to prevent this as it encrypts the data but usually cookies are sent in plain text. So as an example if Facebook requests your cookie and you send over the wireless network, I can see it in plain text and I can save. Then I can go to Facebook and when it asks for a cookie I will send yours, thus instantly logging me in as you. \n\nThere was a Firefox plugin a couple years back that did this called FireSheep. You start it up on an unsecured network and it would do all the listening and capturing and would just give you a list of everything is has managed to steal\n",
"Basically it a typical wifi network works like this:\n\n your computer -- > wifi router -- > ISP -- > internet \nthen it reverses to get the content you are looking for.\n\nIf this is on an open wifi connection it is easy for someone to insert their computer in between your computer and the router.\n\n your computer -- > attack computer -- > wifi router -- > ISP -- > internet\n\nBasically all your traffic will go through someone else's computer and they can see or log everything that you do. Also, don't assume that if a website says they are secure (using SSL, those sites that start with https:// instead of http://) that it is, SSL can be bypassed or stripped from the site and you won't see any difference. \n\nOverall don't do anything on an open connection that you aren't willing to lose, looking up movie times would be fine but shopping with credit card info would be a no-no. And if you have an open connection at home then be prepared to have it stolen. If you have someone stealing your connection, expect them to use it for piracy or child porn and you will be blamed for it.",
"Think of everything you send over the network; your banking information, your facebook page, private IM conversations. Now imagine walking out into a big room blind folded, there could be people listening could also not be, would you want to shout that information as loud as possible? Would you want to write that information on a huge banner and hang it from your house? That's what you're doing with an unsecured wifi signal.\n\nWireless networks simple throw the information out into the air, anyone with the technical know how that is within range can grab it.",
"Imagine, for a moment, that you're standing in a football field that is spotted with people. Everyone has a megaphone. You're trying to have a conversation with someone a few meters over by using your megaphone. \n\nNow you get to the part of the conversation where you have to give the person your credit card info, including the sensitive bits on the back. You don't want the other people around you to hear that. \n\nNow you and the person you're talking to could come up with a super secret code with decoder rings and all that, but that will only protect your credit card info. What it likely wont protect is that you're using your credit card to buy a 44 gallon container of lube. Maybe you don't want all your neighbors to know that. \n\nOr maybe you don't want someone else standing near you to start talking as well. From way at the other end of the football field your megaphone doesn't sound all that different from your neighbors. So instead, you and your conversation partner start talking in Mayan. No one knows Mayan except you and conversation partner. So although everyone can hear you talking no one knows what you're saying. Nor can anyone else pretend to talk for you.\n\n(there's obviously stuff missing, it's not a perfect analogy)"
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422ubz | can someone tell me what the hell i'm looking at in this link? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/422ubz/eli5_can_someone_tell_me_what_the_hell_im_looking/ | {
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"Ha that's a reference to the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer from the late 60s whose identity remains unknown. He left behind a bunch of [weird cryptic letters](_URL_0_) that no one has been able to decipher. ",
"As PP has said, those were the symbols left behind by the Zodiac killer than no one has been able to decipher. It's probably a joke photo suggesting that people can't decipher anything Ted Cruz has to say. Also possibly alluding that he's a serial killler. "
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m6ube | how the roles of html, css, php, java, xml, asp, (the ones i forgot) contribute to ux. | As a Designer, I have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. Could I get an overview of how different languages contribute to the functionality of common features online? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m6ube/eli5_how_the_roles_of_html_css_php_java_xml_asp/ | {
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"A basic way of thinking about the internet is that you have one computer asking another for pages. HTML is a way for the server (the one sending the computer) to format the page in a manner that the other computer will then know how to display it. In HTML there is a default style for most things that can be changed. It is very tedious to change them all by hand, so thats where CSS comes in. PHP is a way for the server to decide generate html based on what the other computer is/wants/other factors. The term is dynamic. While Java can be used on the web (to make applets) you probably mean Javascript. Javascript allows a webpage to change based on actions that the computer accessing it is doing. Both Javascript and php make is so two computer who view the same page can see different things. PHP is often combined with MySQL is a database meaning it stores many tables of data and is commonly used in conjunction with PHP. ASP is similar to PHP, but it is made by Microsoft. Let me know if you want any more clarification.",
"Ok, in a web development suite there's a few different components: \n\nFrom top to bottom:\n\n1. Client-side dynamic interaction (javascript)\n\n1. Client-side static rendering (html+css)\n\n1. Server-side dynamic page generation (php/java/rails/django etc)\n\n1. Databases\n\nAllow me to explain how the languages fit in.\n\n**Client-side**\n\nYou already understand the role of HTML and CSS. They are used to determine how your page looks. You can add a box here and change a background there. All of the boxes and texts and pictures you specify in HTML are \"drawn\" (called rendered) by the user's browser. \n\nNow, you as a site designer can also tell the user's browser to put up animation and interactivity. You do this by specifying it in javascript. Either before, after, or while a browser \"draws\" a page, it will read the javascript file you included and follow the instructions in there. This is typically used for stuff like \"if the user clicks this picture, then make the picture fly across the screen and then show a login window\"\n\nNow this is all fine and good, but there's a problem. With only these browser rendered things going on, the page will ALWAYS look the same every time you visit it. \nWhy? Because your html page will never change! What needs to be done are \"server processing\".\n\n \n\n------\n\n\n**Server-side**\n\nA *server* is the computer that stores the website. \n\nIn order to tell the server to do things, you need to code in a server-side language. What this enables you to do is have the server automatically generate html based on how you coded it up. \n\nFor example: \nInstead of simply writing an html that create text box, writing server side code can allow you to do something like this:\n > Fetch all the comments from a database and then for each comment print out an html div that contains its contents\n\n*Example:*\n\n < ?php \n $comments = getCommentsFromDatabase();\n if ($comments > 0)\n {\n for ($comments as $oneComment) // loop through all the comments\n {\n echo \" < div class='commentsDiv' > \" . $comments- > contents() . \" < /div > \"; //generate html\n }\n } ? > \n\n\nWith this in place your site is now \"dynamic\". As users post more comments, your page will look different. Java, php, ruby on rails, python django, etc are all different languages that can be used to accomplish this. They all have their pros and cons and it is up to the developer to choose one. \n\n**Server-Client communication**\n\nHowever, there is still a flaw in this. The thing with server-side processing is that it happens only when the user fetches the page. This means that if information changes, a user must refresh the page in order to tell the server to \"cook up some new html for this page\". What if you don't want to do that? What if you want your website to automatically update the page even without the user having to refresh?\n\nThis is when you do something tricky called AJAX. (Asynchronous javascript and xmlhttp). Asynchronous means that other things don't have to wait for it.\n\nWhat it means is that you code your javascript in such a way that it tells the browser to send off a specific message to the server asking for information. \n\nFor instance you can code it to do something like \n\n > every 5 seconds, send a message to the server asking if there's a new comment on the page. Once the server sends me the new comment, draw it on the screen as an html div\n\n**Message Formats** \n\nNow what format do we use to send this message to the server and back? Of course you can use any format you like, but there's some standard ways that developers like to send this message. Two major ones are JSON (JavaScript object notation), and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). \n\nJSON looks like a javascript array, and xml just looks like html.\n\nExample of JSON:\n \n { \"name\": \"razor_storm\", \n \"comment_content\" : \"once upon a time I ate a pig\", \n \"trophies\": [\"joined reddit\", \n \"reddit mold\", \n \"big ****\"]}\n\n\n\nExamples of XML:\n \n < comment > \n < name attr=\"username\" > \n razor_storm\n < /name > \n < content length=28 time=09/01/2013 > \n once upon a time I ate a pig\n < /content > \n < trophies > \n < li > joined reddit < /li > \n < li > reddit mold < /li > \n < li > big **** < /li > \n < /trophies > \n < /comment > \n",
"A basic way of thinking about the internet is that you have one computer asking another for pages. HTML is a way for the server (the one sending the computer) to format the page in a manner that the other computer will then know how to display it. In HTML there is a default style for most things that can be changed. It is very tedious to change them all by hand, so thats where CSS comes in. PHP is a way for the server to decide generate html based on what the other computer is/wants/other factors. The term is dynamic. While Java can be used on the web (to make applets) you probably mean Javascript. Javascript allows a webpage to change based on actions that the computer accessing it is doing. Both Javascript and php make is so two computer who view the same page can see different things. PHP is often combined with MySQL is a database meaning it stores many tables of data and is commonly used in conjunction with PHP. ASP is similar to PHP, but it is made by Microsoft. Let me know if you want any more clarification.",
"Ok, in a web development suite there's a few different components: \n\nFrom top to bottom:\n\n1. Client-side dynamic interaction (javascript)\n\n1. Client-side static rendering (html+css)\n\n1. Server-side dynamic page generation (php/java/rails/django etc)\n\n1. Databases\n\nAllow me to explain how the languages fit in.\n\n**Client-side**\n\nYou already understand the role of HTML and CSS. They are used to determine how your page looks. You can add a box here and change a background there. All of the boxes and texts and pictures you specify in HTML are \"drawn\" (called rendered) by the user's browser. \n\nNow, you as a site designer can also tell the user's browser to put up animation and interactivity. You do this by specifying it in javascript. Either before, after, or while a browser \"draws\" a page, it will read the javascript file you included and follow the instructions in there. This is typically used for stuff like \"if the user clicks this picture, then make the picture fly across the screen and then show a login window\"\n\nNow this is all fine and good, but there's a problem. With only these browser rendered things going on, the page will ALWAYS look the same every time you visit it. \nWhy? Because your html page will never change! What needs to be done are \"server processing\".\n\n \n\n------\n\n\n**Server-side**\n\nA *server* is the computer that stores the website. \n\nIn order to tell the server to do things, you need to code in a server-side language. What this enables you to do is have the server automatically generate html based on how you coded it up. \n\nFor example: \nInstead of simply writing an html that create text box, writing server side code can allow you to do something like this:\n > Fetch all the comments from a database and then for each comment print out an html div that contains its contents\n\n*Example:*\n\n < ?php \n $comments = getCommentsFromDatabase();\n if ($comments > 0)\n {\n for ($comments as $oneComment) // loop through all the comments\n {\n echo \" < div class='commentsDiv' > \" . $comments- > contents() . \" < /div > \"; //generate html\n }\n } ? > \n\n\nWith this in place your site is now \"dynamic\". As users post more comments, your page will look different. Java, php, ruby on rails, python django, etc are all different languages that can be used to accomplish this. They all have their pros and cons and it is up to the developer to choose one. \n\n**Server-Client communication**\n\nHowever, there is still a flaw in this. The thing with server-side processing is that it happens only when the user fetches the page. This means that if information changes, a user must refresh the page in order to tell the server to \"cook up some new html for this page\". What if you don't want to do that? What if you want your website to automatically update the page even without the user having to refresh?\n\nThis is when you do something tricky called AJAX. (Asynchronous javascript and xmlhttp). Asynchronous means that other things don't have to wait for it.\n\nWhat it means is that you code your javascript in such a way that it tells the browser to send off a specific message to the server asking for information. \n\nFor instance you can code it to do something like \n\n > every 5 seconds, send a message to the server asking if there's a new comment on the page. Once the server sends me the new comment, draw it on the screen as an html div\n\n**Message Formats** \n\nNow what format do we use to send this message to the server and back? Of course you can use any format you like, but there's some standard ways that developers like to send this message. Two major ones are JSON (JavaScript object notation), and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). \n\nJSON looks like a javascript array, and xml just looks like html.\n\nExample of JSON:\n \n { \"name\": \"razor_storm\", \n \"comment_content\" : \"once upon a time I ate a pig\", \n \"trophies\": [\"joined reddit\", \n \"reddit mold\", \n \"big ****\"]}\n\n\n\nExamples of XML:\n \n < comment > \n < name attr=\"username\" > \n razor_storm\n < /name > \n < content length=28 time=09/01/2013 > \n once upon a time I ate a pig\n < /content > \n < trophies > \n < li > joined reddit < /li > \n < li > reddit mold < /li > \n < li > big **** < /li > \n < /trophies > \n < /comment > \n"
]
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[],
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|
40uyl1 | why are some economies self-sustaining while others require a massive trade surplus just to function? | How does the U.S.A run a trade deficit with virtually every major country we trade with yet still retain a relatively good standard of living/employment while countries like Germany have 50% of their economy based on exports and couldn't function other-wise?
An even worse offender would probably be China, the Chinese economy would implode if they ran a trade deficit for one year.
I want an explanation a little more in depth than just "because Americans spend while others save," I don't think that explains it all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40uyl1/eli5_why_are_some_economies_selfsustaining_while/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyxbmic"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"A lot of the value produced in the USA is by peoples brains and not their hands. If you import a ton of cheap garbage from china for pennies and export knowledge in medicine, engineering, business, finance, etc. For hundreds of dollars per hour, its hard to look at that as being BAD for the us."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
8hsega | why are ants so hard to kill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hsega/eli5_why_are_ants_so_hard_to_kill/ | {
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"dym5qpw"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Colony insects. They breed with one breeder underground and have like super human strength when factoring in size to weight ratio. Until you kill the breeder they continue to multiple and even then they have backup plans for that contingency. The queen don't get out but she gets around."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
130r9u | the contested borders | [Contested Borders](_URL_0_)
As the image above shows, there seems to be three small pieces of land that are being split up automatically by Google maps. I would just like to know a little background of the people that live there and why they are being contested. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/130r9u/eli5_the_contested_borders/ | {
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"text": [
"ITT: Explain 20th rise of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict",
"1 and 2 are basicly the same, \n\nThe golan hights are actually syrian terretory with a large druze community, the people living there were given full israely citizenship, they can vote and move about like any other isareli citizen with exception that they are not required to serve in the israeli army and they are allowed to have some contact with family members on the syrian side. \n\nIsrael conquered them from Syria during the 1967 six day war becuase of their tactical value given that their altitud makes them a perfect artillery position to bomb most of northen Israel, a secundary issue is that controlling the golan you control both coasts of the Sea of Galilee which is Israels mean water reserviour, Syria could easly cut off water to most of Israel.\n\nas for the west bank... with exception of east jerusalem, it was never annexed and its population was never given israeli citizenship, they live under milliraty occupation and are therefor subject to a different legal system then arabs citizens of israel, some people say its aparthaid but its more like a prolonged millitary occupation, the problem stems from 2 main issues, the first one being that such a prolonged millitary occupation of a civil population mixed with an ongoing low intensity millitary conflict, theres a part of the israeli goverment which wants to annex it, and other that considers that any annexation would mean that the people living in the west bank would require to give everyone living there israeli citizenship, and whats the point of defending a jewish state when you give 2-3 million people the right to vote and in 3-4 generations they can conquer the country without shooting a single shot, \n\nBut the israeli right wing wants to colonize and occupy part of the west bank with colonies which arent exactly legal becuase its annexation of a millitary occupaid area, so if they want to settle there they have to fully legaly annex the land and give all the people currently living there equal rights, something they are currently unwilling to do. \n\nThe thing that the palestinians have never been an independent nation, it went from the ottomans, to the british, to the jordanians and egyptians to the isarelies, \n\n\nNow the main problem with giving them their independence is that the israelies dont want to return east jerusalem that the palestinians want as a capital becuase east jerusalem also contains jewish holy sites which they believe should be under israeli rule,\n\nThe other problem is the right of return, there are millions of palestinian refugees which are mantained with limited rights and empovrished by their host countries around israel as a political weapon against israel, and the palestinians reclaim that they be allowed to return to their pre 1948 homes with full citizen rights even if they are inside israel, so israel is basicly saying A) why are we giving you independence if you want to live in our country, B) if we let all those people in we basicly give up our majority and you can basicly vote to change the name and flag of the country, basicly destroy israel without shooting a single shot. \n\nAnother issue is that palestinian refugees arent handled by the UNHCR like the rest of UN assisted refugees around the world, they are handled by a special UN agency created especialy for palestinian refugees. the problem with this is that refuges under UNHCR are usualy assisted by helping them resettle in host countries and basicly setting as an objective their reabosrption in to society, Children and family of refugees are no longer refugees and are considered citizens of the host country, While UNWRA basicly blocks any absorption of the refugees in their host countries and perpetuates the problem by insisting on their return to pre their 1948 homes, Children of refugees born outside the country from which they were forced out of do not lose refugee status like with UNHCR,\n\nAnd the other main problem is that the palestinians are very fragmented, you have fatah which would accept a 1967 borders peace deal, you have hamas which basicly say´s that if israel returns to 1967 borders and allows the return of all the refugees they will give them a 10 year cease fire and then continue to liberate all of palestine, and then smaller groups like islamic jihad that insist that the only solution is millitary and they will continue fighting untill the last jew is expelled from palestine, \n\nSo basicly even if you did reach a peace deal with the palestinian authority, the rest of the factions will continue to fight on, and after israel retreated from gaza as a good will gesture to the palestinians, the civilian population voted for a party that calls for the destruction of israel and the hamas goverment converted gaza in to a plataform for rocket and artillery attacks against israel which brings us to the current gaza blockade...\n\nTL;DR :\n\n- The golan is syria but israel annexed it to deny syria a artillery position over all of northen israel and to insure its water supply,\n\n- The west bank is under israely millitary occupation, they cant annex it becuase it would mean the end of jewish majority in israel and in a democracy that would mean the end of the state, and they cant give them independence becuase the palestinians would keep fighting them no matter what."
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/ZaPmS.png"
] | [
[],
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|
4drr7p | why is kasich still running for the republican candidacy? does he have a chance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4drr7p/eli5_why_is_kasich_still_running_for_the/ | {
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"Just a guess: I assume the Republican party wants him to stay in the race in order to siphon-off a sufficient number of votes such that neither Trump nor Cruz will have enough for the nomination. Then, at the brokered convention, an Establishment candidate (e.g., Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, etc.) will be selected.\n\nThe Establishment hates both Cruz and Trump and this is their last best chance to get what they consider to be an acceptable candidate.",
"Here's a good reason: in General Election matchup polls, Kasich *beats* Clinton by several points:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn contrast, Clinton easily beats Trump or Cruz in those same polls.\n\nKasich's best hope is that neither Trump or Cruz wins enough delegates to get a majority. Then the next ballot, those delegates can vote for whomever they want - and many may choose to support the candidate who has the best chance to win. Others argue that going for anyone other than the frontrunner (even if they don't have a majority) goes against the will of the voters.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_kasich_vs_clinton-5162.html"
]
] |
||
15ijz1 | how can a material be lighter than air but not float? | Since there is air around us and it is lighter than air why won't it float on air? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15ijz1/how_can_a_material_be_lighter_than_air_but_not/ | {
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"text": [
"Things float because they are less dense than the surrounding stuff. Density means the amount of weight you can pack into an area. Think of a suitcase. If you throw it empty into a river, it will likely float. If you pack it full of lead bars it most certainly will not, even though the suitcase is still the same size. \n\nI am afraid you may have seen a recent frontpage article that was horribly written and deceptive, which may have confused you. ",
"Imagine you have a cardboard box of 1 cubic metre. You put it on a scale and it weighs 1kg. You then invite a journalist to report about your cardboard box, which is awesome. You tell the journaliast that it weighs 1kg and measures 1 meter in every direction. The journalist then writes an article titled \"Cardboard box discovered that is lighter than air\", because the cardboard box only weighs 1kg, and a cubic metre of air weighs 1,3kg. \n\nThe headline ignores the fact that the cardboard box is itself filled with air, that also weighs something. However, air normally does not show up on a scale so the air in the cardboard box is ignored. The headline thus comes from comparing apples to oranges: a weight on a scale while ignoring any air is compared to the weight of air, which does not even show up on a scale.",
"Maybe I'm missing something, but what material are you talking about?"
]
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[],
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|
1cl6xb | why are chocolate and vanilla seen as "opposites"? | Is it because they correspond to black and white? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cl6xb/eli5_why_are_chocolate_and_vanilla_seen_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9hk0fc"
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"text": [
"I think it really is as simple as that. Though at one time chocolate was seen as rich and exotic and vanilla is seen as sort of safe and plain so it might extend to a little more than just \"black and white.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
b6uodp | northern ireland backstop in relation to brexot | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6uodp/eli5_northern_ireland_backstop_in_relation_to/ | {
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"Northen ireland is a complex issue. \n\nIm not irish or from the Ulster so my understanding might be lacking but i will try. \n\nThe thing is that Ireland was a British colony for a long time, and one thing you have to understand is that when Henry the 8th declared independence from the Catholic church to fund the church of England basically turning protestant alienated Catholics.\n\nAnd when Ireland was part of the UK it was mostly catholic, There were laws against Catholics and wide discrimination apart from the Irish independence movement and resentment towards the crown, from wars fraught to the British policies that lead to and during the Irish potato famine. \n\nThe thing is that while Ireland gained its independence the Ulster which had a Protestant majority due to converts and English immigrants remained part of the UK and that has lead to years of terrorism and social infighting between Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland. \n\nNow with the good Friday accords in which most unionist and nationalist militias handed over their weapons and agreed to a political solution combined with the UK and Ireland both being in the UE which meant that the border between the UK and Ireland was basically non existent for practical terms.\n\nIreland was \"united\" but still the Catholics were under Catholic rule and the protestants were under the rule of the UK and the Ulster was self governed. \n\nNow with brexit the problem is that all political and economic borders with the UK and EU member states will be restored, meaning that the northern Ireland border with Ireland will be enforced again and will require travel visas meaning Ireland will be divided again.\n\nSo part of the Brexit deals which were negotiated were to leave Northern Ireland as a open border for irish citizens so brexit would have a lesser impact on the political stability of northern Ireland, but since all brexit deals have been rejected that seems unlikely and its probable that Brexit will bring more conflict to northern Ireland. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bfksvt | - when you eat food that makes you sick, how/why is able to travel so fast through your intestines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfksvt/eli5_when_you_eat_food_that_makes_you_sick_howwhy/ | {
"a_id": [
"eleh79f"
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"score": [
8
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"text": [
"Your body sees that you've eaten something you shouldn't have and gives it a one-way express ticket to get out of there as fast as possible. Instead of passing things along slowly and letting them digest, it dumps everything out as quickly as possible at the expense of all the good stuff it might have absorbed.\n\nYour body would rather be hungry than sick."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3qipan | why are atm receipts printed on a paper such that the print vanishes after a few days | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qipan/eli5_why_are_atm_receipts_printed_on_a_paper_such/ | {
"a_id": [
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2,
8
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"text": [
"ATM receipts are printed on thermal paper, similar to what's used in most cash registers and even the Game Boy Printer. It's meant to vanish so sensitive information has less of a chance of getting out. ",
"It is thermal paper. It is used in ATMs and various other places primarily because of reliability. There is no ink or toner to run out, and it needs the fewest possible moving parts. (You still need a motor to move the paper.) "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
aavag8 | what do the silver,gold and platinum things even do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aavag8/eli5_what_do_the_silvergold_and_platinum_things/ | {
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"text": [
"They give you access to reddit's premium features.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Silver and gold conduct heat and electricity very well silver is currently the best conductor. But silver will tarnish and the tarnish does not conduct very well. Gold will not tarnish or rust. Gold is soft enough to easily work with.\n\nPlatinum is a very hard durable metal. And it is also a good chemical catilyst. Basically it can be very helpful. in making chemical reactions happen.\n\nAll 3 are used electronics and manufacturing. ",
"Silver, gold, and platinum bullion (and collector's coins) are unusual as investments in that their value is not dependent on any particular company or country (unlike stocks, bonds, and currency). They're valued internationally and by many companies. So they're kind of a safety investment in terms of specific financial problems. They are still volatile, and their return does vary and is typically lower than other options. But while a company can collapse and its stock and bonds become worthless, or a country can collapse and its bonds and currency become worthless, precious metals could still be valuable, because they're not tied to the company/country and somebody somewhere will still want them.\n\nDuring normal times, their growth rate tends to be low. But when people start expecting impending collapses, they speculate and precious metals prices increase. If those collapses don't occur, the prices drop again. So it's both a way for investors to hedge against catastrophe and also for analysts to judge sentiment as to whether investors are expecting economic collapses in the near future."
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2dbpmh | considering there are no pain receptors in the brain what causes my head to hurt (illness, loud noises, exhaustion, etc)? | I gues this should have been asked before but I couldn't find it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dbpmh/eli5_considering_there_are_no_pain_receptors_in/ | {
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"text": [
"It's the stuff around your brain that is actually hurting (nerves and muscles of the head & back). The brain cannot feel pain you are correct but a headache/'head pain' is a pain caused around your head picked up by nerve endings in your head\n\n_URL_0_",
"There is a thin layer of muscle and nerves outside your skull but under your skin that creates the sensation in question. ",
"In addition to the answers here: the brain can project pain to an area where the pain isn't actually coming from. For instance, nonspecific low back pain (the kind we all have once in a while) can give a feeling of radiating pain towards the knee. Or when you have an inflammation of the liver, this can cause feelings of pain in your lower back. This happens when the source of pain isn't very clear. A clear source is a cut or a bruise. But with a headache the pain comes from different structures and is diffuse. It's harder for the brain to project the pain to a specific area and therefore projects it to a general area.",
"the blood vesels, of which there are many in the head, have pain receptors. The Meninges also has pain receptors, its a connective tissue that surrounds and encases your brain and spinal cord. The bone in your head also has pain receptors. It could also be migraines, which is not well understood, but during attacks some peoples brains interpret sound or light as painful. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/headache/question648.htm"
],
[],
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|
7sn27n | why were straws invented? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7sn27n/eli5_why_were_straws_invented/ | {
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"text": [
"From what I'm aware of, straws were invented in order to avoid the residue at the bottom. They were first invented to drink beer (by the Sumerians I believe) - and used so that the consumer would not end up drinking the byproducts as well (which would accumulate at the bottom).\n\nThe more modern straw was invented because prior to it, straws made out of grass were used and coming into contact with a liquid would make them soft/pulp-like thereby rendering it useless.\n\nThere's an article on The Atlantic that traces the origins of the straw that might fit your question more. Im on the mobile for now, will link it once I'm on the PC. ",
"Drinking glasses and cups are designed to be, among other things, easy to manufacture, easy to clean, and structurally sturdy. Unfortunately the confluence of those design parameters makes them not quite optimum as a means of delivery of liquids into the human mouth. They're not that bad, but not perfect. They need to be held up to your mouth and tilted when you drink. The flow is not completely controllable. It's difficult if not impossible to get a clean seal along your bottom lip because of the curve. \n\nA drinking straw is a specialized add-on device that provides a more optimized drinking process. It provides a clean, completely airtight seal which makes the liquid delivery more efficient and less prone to spilling. You can just leave the glass sitting on the table as you drink from it. You can get at the liquid somewhere besides the top. And it allows two or more people to drink from the same vessel simultaneously. In return, a straw is (usually) disposable (wasteful) and difficult to clean if the liquid is viscous. ",
"Also there are disabled people who may not have full use of their hands, sick people who are bedridden have an easier time drinking from a straw "
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2xv89b | how does 2g and 3g network work ? | I have a little idea that analog to digital is done, waves are converted to 1s and 0s but I don't understand why they have 900MHz 1800MHz etc as frequencies. Also, how do they manage millions on mobile connections on such frequency. Also what is bandwidth's role ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xv89b/eli5_how_does_2g_and_3g_network_work/ | {
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"Bandwidth, within the context of wireless spectrum, is essentially a measure of the range of radio frequencies used by a specific application to carry data transmissions. The more bandwidth (i.e. the larger the frequency range), the more data you can transfer in a given period of time. The range 900 Mhz to 901 Mhz provides only a small amount of bandwidth, but the range between 900 Mhz and 950 Mhz provides a much larger amount of bandwidth.\n\nRadio waves and microwaves are just other forms of light. They operate at frequencies much lower than visible light (and with wavelengths much longer than visible light). You can further divide up radio and microwave wireless spectrum into small frequency blocks. Each block constitutes a specific range of frequencies (e.g. 800 Mhz to 820 Mhz [random example]).\n\nData communications carried over one frequency block should not interfere with communications that are carried over a different frequency block. There are, however, limited number of blocks available because the total range of frequencies that are suitable for wireless mobile data communications is limited (by the laws of physics).\n\nSo what happens is different mobile network carriers (e.g. AT & T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.) go to auction and bid on different blocks of spectrum that they will earn the exclusive right to use (in a particular country/region). That way, their subscribers' communications don't suffer from interference from the communications on other mobile networks and vice versa.\n\nCarriers with more money can bid on more spectrum and earn the rights to use more (or larger) blocks of frequencies. This provides more bandwidth and allows them to provide subscribers with higher speed data services (e.g. high bandwidth 4G/LTE internet service).\n\nIn terms of managing millions of mobile connections on one frequency, it's not as bad as it sounds. If you truly had to share a million mobiles on a single block of spectrum, it would be a disaster - or at least you can forget about having any sort of high speed internet. In reality, each carrier has its own spectrum that it uses and even though the spectrum is shared across multiple subscribers to the same mobile network, it only has to be shared when multiple people are using the network in the same area at the same time. \n\nIn other words, there are cell phone towers all over the place and each covers a limited region. Your cell phone is only really competing for bandwidth against other cell phones connected to the same tower. So yes, if there are a lot of people around and they're actively using their phones, you're going to notice a slow down as the cell tower struggles to divvy up the bandwidth fairly (e.g. by repeatedly cycling through each phone connected to the tower and allocating it a tiny fraction of a second when it can send/receive data). On the other hand, if there isn't much activity on the network, you can potentially realize the full bandwidth potential of your phone and max out the connection."
]
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[]
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1uz6dg | plastic explosives, and why they are called so | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uz6dg/eli5_plastic_explosives_and_why_they_are_called_so/ | {
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"Plastic means not only the material that we think of as plastic, but any substance that, when you push it out of shape, stays in the shape you push it to. As contrasted with elastic, which if pushed out of shape returns to its original shape.\n\nSo plastic explosive or C4 is a solid, but can be packed into a container or around a pillar for demolition in the shape you want with relative ease. \n"
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||
3xmm9t | why does cancer only seem to get worse once people are diagnosed? | Like sometimes there are people who have had it for a while with no real symptoms then once they are made aware of it it's like the cancer symptoms become more obvious and get worse all of a sudden why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xmm9t/eli5_why_does_cancer_only_seem_to_get_worse_once/ | {
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"Normally those people have been suffering with mild symptoms related to the cancer and never bothered to have them checked out. It's only when the serious symptoms show up do they seek a doctor, and unfortunately by then the cancer has normally hit stage 3 or 4 and they don't have much time left. ",
"Between the stress, and the placebo effect (in reverse, i.e. 'I have cancer and should be feeling like shit' rather than 'I've had a pill and I should be feeling better') that can be enough to have a detrimental effect on people.\n\nCombined with treatments like Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy, the side effects from those can really make a person tired, nauseous, etc. These treatments are generally not kind to a person, though under the circumstances are likely doing more good than harm..\n\nSource: Have known couple of people, relatives and friends, go through this sort of thing in the last few years.",
"Chemotherapy is like dousing your lawn with gasoline and hoping that the inferno kills the weeds.\n\nAdditionally, usually you get yourself checked when you notice that something is wrong. The cancer could've been growing for a long time before you notice the symptoms.",
"They often don't seek medical attention until symptoms show up. Rapid unexplained weight loss, aches and pains, etc.\n\nAlso consider the psychological trauma of a cancer diagnosis. Stress has a great impact on our physical wellbeing. \n\nPlus lots of cancer treatments themselves are incredibly taxing on the body as a whole. ",
"It only seems that way. \n\nThe reason why most people get diagnosed is because their bodies change somehow - they cough a little blood up, they're woozy, they get a recurring new stomach pain, they have a bad swelling in an odd place that wasn't there before, and so on. So they go to the doctor and he runs his tests, and wow - cancer. The cancer might have been there for years but now it's progressed to the point that it's actually interfering with the body's functioning, and that much cancer greatly increases the odds that it's gone metastatic (i.e. spreading to other organs), making it REALLY hard to beat. \n\nSo to try to beat the cancer, they slap that patient into therapies which might include chemo that causes their hair to fall out, or other robust treatments that make them look tired and unhealthy, and you're really going to notice that.\n\nThe alternate is when it's just a benign growth, meaning it's something that's not really cancerous in the tumor-growing-like-crazy way, but something goofy that caused a body feature to be a bit weird. People breathe a sigh of relief when that happens, and don't talk about it as much so other people don't hear about it, nor do they show up in the obituaries."
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6iqr0b | how do we self-induce sleep? | What happens in the body/brain when I lie down and essentially make a voluntary decision to go to sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iqr0b/eli5_how_do_we_selfinduce_sleep/ | {
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"I would love the answer to this question, as I have chronic insomnia\n\nmy guess is that most answers will say that it is involuntarily",
"I try not to think about this question too much because then I just can't get to sleep. \"What's happening now????\"",
"Contrary to popular belief-- needing it.\n\nYou have a human, sleep cycle used to be 4hrs at a time, twice per diurnal cycle, now a whole 8 hours.\n\nIf you google 'human sleep cycle', you will see for the first 4 hours or so of the sleep cycle dedicated to some rem, the normal alpha and beta, and the delta deep sleep. After that is a long period of cyclic rem sleep until you launch out of it. No delta sleep is 'normal', after the delta sleep cycle, is a period of recouping a lot of REM sleep.\n\nThis is because obviously as mammals for quite sometime we werent necessarily safe sleeping 8 whole hours in a deep enough sleep to heal up and rest up our gigantic brains. The extra rem at the end is just your brain recouping since you arent having another 4 hr sleep cycle with REM and delta wave deep sleep.\n\nFast forward to modern life and the physical strain is not much of an issue, its the mental and social strain that works through our day.\n\nRemember rest itself is /rest/, recovery.\n\nThe brain is efficient at logical tasks, social tasks, but the body and its stress from physical expendeture is an entirely different thermodynamic expendeture, and homo sapian biology, when it comes to rest, is very dependent on the body's hormonal cycling after physical work to garner enough chemicals to turn your brain off.\n\nSleep is the time you also produce Human Growth Hormone. This hormone is used everywhere, not just the brain. The biofeedback to get these mechanisms in action that correspond overall to quicker and deeper sleep requires your body to ultimately be expended through a days work. This is the endocrinological equivalent of tiring out, so you can imagine without much physical expendeture, the brain doesnt have enough 'push' to the endocrine system to initiate sleep so much. \n\nYou can do your own sleep experiment like this. Notice after a day of intense brain activity but not much body activity you sleep in a restful night. Chances are its less than 8 hours on average. Physical labor but not much mental flexing will favor the other end of the sleep spectrum, deep delta wave sleep, so maybe 6.5-8 hrs. But an intense day on both fronts will knock you out for quite some time.\n\nIf you want good sleep, go for quite a fucking jog, make those muscles hurt, do a lot of activity with your brain, then lay in bed at sundown (if you dont have a chronic sleep disorder) you will go out like a light.\n"
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9txxe2 | how "underground" betting works? | I always wondered while watching all kinds of movies, of various qualities and origins, how really betting there works.
You know what I'm talking about - some thai martial artist like in old Van Damme movies, and dude taking cash from everyone around. Is it betting at all? Or is it more "crowfunding" in todays terms, like stream donations? Becouse part of this cash goes to the winner and the loser then, I guess. And the guy have to take his cut.
So is it betting? Is it just a movie thing, or is there a method in this madness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9txxe2/eli5_how_underground_betting_works/ | {
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"There are lots of different types. The most common is a 'sweepstake', which is very common in the UK for events like the World Cup. Everyone pays £1, and picks a country out of the hat. All of the money is kept safe, then at the end of the day, all of the money collected goes to the person who is holding the name of the winning country (£32). Obviously, different people have different stakes, so sometimes the minimum stake might be £5, and the winnings are £160. This way is mostly just for fun.\n\nMore organised 'underground' betting works in the same way as traditional betting. You have a bookkeeper who publishes odds based on a bunch of factors, including the likelihood of a win and his own exposure to risk. People then bet based on the odds. What the bookie gives to the fighters is likely what's known in poker as a 'rake', a fixed percentage of the bookie's earnings which goes to the winner (say 10-20% percent), probably as a fee for being the only bookie allowed to run a book on this particular fight."
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9ew3d3 | exercising warms your body and makes you feel hot. fevers warm your body and make you feel cold. why? | Does it have to do why core and exterior temperatures in the body, or what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ew3d3/eli5_exercising_warms_your_body_and_makes_you/ | {
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"When you exercise you are constantly moving, constantly generating heat, therefore your body needs a mechanism to cool down so we begin to sweat. The sweat then evaporates away, using our body heat to change the sweat from liquid to gas, called latent heat, and therefore cooling us down.\nIn a fever, generally your body is infected with something and a physiological response to that infection is to try and kill it off by increasing your resting average body temperature, called basal temperature, which also causes us to sweat, however your body gets used to the new temperature and doesn't notice the increased temperature as much so you may not feel too hot. Again, the sweat evaporates away cooling us down.\nEssentially, both exercise and a fever are doing the same thing, increasing body temperature so we have to sweat to cool down. The only difference is that with exercise, your body does not increase the basal temperature, and generally people with a fever are too sick to be moving around so our body is not constantly generating heat above the basal level, so we do not essentially feel hot. The sweat cools us down to below what our body is \"used to\", as the fever temporarily increased basal temperature, so we feel cold.",
"When you exercise, you feel hot because you are **genuinely overheating**. Your muscles are working hard. Your body thinks you're hunting, evading a predator, surviving, etc. So it activates sweat glands to try and lift the heat off you.\n\nWhen you're sick, your body **makes you feel cold** so that you will seek warmth. It's messing with your internal thermostat. It's attempting to raise your temperature to help kill off the invader. This also has the benefit of making you seek shelter and bedrest, which can let it devote more energy towards stopping your sickness.\n\nAs for the why? Your ancestors that did it had a greater survival chance, so they lived to pass on the genes that do it. Initially in a small way, but eventually becoming a big way.",
"It is all about the temperature your body wants to be. When you are healthy, your body wants to be 37 degrees Celsius. If you work out, your temperature increases, while your body wants it to be colder, so you feel hot to signal you should cool down a bit.\n\nWhen you are sick and have a fever your body wants to be way warmer than the regular 37 degrees to fight the infection. When your fever is rising, you will feel cold as your body wants you to be even hotter than you already were. You will notice that once you start getting better, you will feel hot; your body doesn't feel the need to be as hot any more so it signals you to cool down and you start feeling hot.",
"There are longer explanations, but here’s a short one:\n\nWhile exercising: your brain has body temp set at normal (~98.6 F) when you’re healthy, so moving increases temp and you feel warm because you’re above set point. \n\nWith fever: your brain says there’s something living in here and I need to burn it out and sets the thermostat higher (say ~101 F) so now anything below 101 F feels cold because your brain says 101 is normal now. \n\n— think about it like thermostat in your home: when you set it at a certain temp and go above or below, thermostat says hey I’m too cold or too warm and tries to come back to normal. Fever just sets the room temperature higher— "
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2ipphk | why has no one created an electric vehicle with infinite range by putting large (somehow waterproofed) alternators in all 4 wheels of a car? | Edit: what if It could charge a battery which would be used to start motion and keep it running while sitting still, and fight hills. Highway speeds would use the battery to a certain speed and then switch to purely the alternator.
Combine that with friction recharging when braking? If not infinite range, impressive range?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ipphk/eli5_why_has_no_one_created_an_electric_vehicle/ | {
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"You can't get more energy out of a system then you put into it. In this case, every bit of energy you take out of the wheels and convert to energy is power that isn't used to move the car. Even assuming zero lost in conversion from movement to electricity (which is also essentially impossible), if you got exactly out what you put in then you are standing still. This would work really well right until you got to the bottom of the hill.",
"Because of conservation of energy. Energy is lost in the form of heat, so you need to \"create\" energy from somewhere. This comes from reactions in a battery or through the combustion of fuel. ",
"The concept is nice, and seems workable... But, in fact it's not. \nThe alternators themselves wouldn't be the issue, but rather the physics of the whole system.\n \nElectrical resistance keeps self-propelling generators from working indefinitely, as small amounts of the power are lost per length of wire. This factor is not the major killer of the concept, as it's a relatively small loss of energy. \nThe real problem comes in the form of converting the energy so many times, as heat is always produced. When most physical reactions take place, energy is converted from one form to another. When this happens, a percentage of the energy is converted into heat, and is extremely difficult to effectively capture. \nSo, you're converting chemical energy (assuming you're using batteries) to electrical energy, electrical energy to magnetic fields, magnetic fields to kinetic energy; now we're at the motors. \nTo get from the alternators back to the batteries, we need to convert backward all the way. Keeping in mind that energy is lost every time, this is simply not feasible.\n \nOne more small issue come into play, where the alternator and motor will apply physical resistance which will rob energy from the interactions.",
"You're talking about [perpetual motion/energy](_URL_0_), that's scientifically impossible and that is the reason no one has created an electric vehicle with infinite range."
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7sthz7 | is it actually possible for korea to 'reunite'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7sthz7/eli5_is_it_actually_possible_for_korea_to_reunite/ | {
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"Yes, it is possible. Just as it was possible for East and West Germany to go back to being Germany. \n\nThat doesn't mean it would be easy, however. There are a lot of practical problems with merging the two states. Even if you assume that the North collapses and the South just takes control (rather than trying to create a new government from scratch) what happens to, say the political prisoners in the north? the regular prisoners? people who get money from the NK government to live on? Do the poorer people in the North automatically qualify for assistance programs from the south? can they join the military? and so on, and so on.",
"It's not a realistic possibility for at least the next few decades. China would be deeply opposed to it happening; so much so, they may act to prevent it. The costs of reunification would be staggeringly high and would probably only be possible as a multinational project.\n\nUntil a more moderate regime takes power in North Korea, China becomes democratic and the United States is lead by an administration that's equipped to undertake this Herculean task, it's not going to happen.",
"Neither of them is officially North or South Korea. The North is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the South is the Republic of Korea. If they unified they would probably be some wordy political name that we just shortened to \"Korea.\" They also only have one border. So, yeah, they would just abolish that and fill both of their territories.\n\n\nIt's just not very realistic because of the politics involved. Kim Jong Un would love for SK to become his territory and just become part of the NK government. Obviously nobody is SK really wants that. SK is rapidly losing interest in reunification. The younger generations have no familial or really even cultural ties to NK and joining with the impoverished and starving country would be an economic and humanitarian nightmare.\n\n\nChina doesn't want a pro-US country with missile defense systems right on their border. Japan and SK are already problematic for them as it is. China also probably doesn't want to give up their influence over NK as a bargaining chip with the US.\n\n\n\nThe US is currently ready or able to handle the political fallout from reunification or provide aid that the new Korea would need. They also wouldn't be thrilled with increased Chinese influence in the former SK.\n\n\n\nThe only major political power I can see supporting this is Russia. Not because they have much influence on the peninsula, but because Putin generally does what he can to harass the US and doesn't seem like he'd be opposed to weakening China's position either. That said, nobody in post-Kim Korea would have much interest in Putin's support. "
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69ib49 | is there a biological or scientific reason people splash water in their faces to feel better after a stressful situation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69ib49/eli5_is_there_a_biological_or_scientific_reason/ | {
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"I'm sure whether that would be pleasant, or unpleasant is a matter of individual preference so whether that would make you \"feel\" better or not is a subjective question as everybody is different. \n\nThe objective result of that though can be explained with science. There is a reflex action called the [mammalian response](_URL_0_) that is triggered when cold water is applied to the face that triggers a change in heart rate and respiration. It is a reflex action many mammals share that allows us to hold our breath easier when diving or swimming. \n\nIt has the effect of shocking the body slightly through sensation which some people find pleasant. It is also the triggering of that reflex response that allows us to hold our breath longer under water than out of water. It slows the heart rate and causes the body to conserve blood and oxygen in the core with our organs as long as our faces are cold and wet. \n\nIt also helps some people stop hiccups by triggering that diving reflex because hiccuping under water would cause you to drown. Hence the reason that splashing cold water on your face is one of the many suggestions for stopping hiccups. ",
"The ancient Samurai codex of Hagakure recommends that when one is feeling flustered, it is best to dab your tongue and swipe a spot of saliva between the brows. It will cool even your hottest temper. "
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||
32zgmj | in celebration of the release of the batman v superman trailer. why the heck would batman want to fight superman in the first place (or vice versa)? also, what does he do to get on superman's level? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32zgmj/eli5in_celebration_of_the_release_of_the_batman_v/ | {
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" > They are both good guys \n \nThe batman in this franchise is different from Nolan's, so we will wait and see to get to know Synder's version. However, in Man of Steel, Superman's battle caused billions of dollars in property damaged, and definitely killed thousands of civilians. "
]
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||
1ld9ae | do different "fonts" exist in languages such as chinese or japanese? | I was just wondering if there are different fonts in languages such as in Chinese or Japanese. It's hard for me to imagine much stylistic variation on the symbols without changing the symbol completely. If anyone could explain this it would be greatly appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ld9ae/eli5_do_different_fonts_exist_in_languages_such/ | {
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"[Yes.]( _URL_0_ ) ",
"Yes. Here's a sample: _URL_0_",
"Yes, but in my experience it can be hard to spot the differences unless you are familiar with the script. Basically when you know the script you know which pieces are the fundamental parts that make something a letter/character, and which are embellishments or modifications. Which curves, extra lines, etc are the serifs and fancy bits and which make it a different letter.\n\nImagine for example if you are unfamiliar with english, and furthermore with our alphabet. The difference between say a P and an R is a single line, or for an even closer example a C and a G. Now look at either of these pairs in any weird script, with extra swirls, embelishments, serifs, or even just in italics *C - G P - R* You with your knowledge know what letter they are by referencing to base forms, someone without knowledge of the script has a much harder time knowing whether those modifications mean it is a different character or not.\n\nNow we have it easy, english has only 26 characters (Well 52 with capitals), its pretty easy to recognize all the basic forms even if you're foreign and dont know how they sound or what the words mean. Especially since all the dominant international languages and international cultural offerings use our script. Hurrah centuries of european global domination. Compare that to your familiarity with say, written chinese which some argue has as many as 80,000 written characters and its easy to see why you have trouble seeing which characters are the same in a different font when you look at signs in chinatown. (Though if you really look at signs in chinatown and cant see any difference just stylistically from one sign to the next you may want to get your eyes checked)\n\nIf you're curious more check out the Korean language. Its where I'm drawing most of my first hand knowledge of this. Its a similarly blocky looking language, and thus similarly weird looking to our western eyes at first glance, but is actually a phonetic alphabet with a similar number of symbols to our own. After only a week in Korea, while I couldnt read it, I could recognize characters and see clear style differences between fonts, what the government used on road signs, the bus companies used in the terminals and what shops used on signs and adverts for example.\n\nTo summarize or TL;DR to the internet type: Yes there are different fonts but dont feel bad you cant see them easily when you arent familiar with the character set."
]
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44wfxw | if i go at light speed for 20 years in any direction away from earth, and then 20 ly back, would i be jumping 40 years in the future (the earth would have continued 40 years until i came back)? did i get 40 years older? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44wfxw/eli5_if_i_go_at_light_speed_for_20_years_in_any/ | {
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"If you could break the laws of physics and reach light speed (without breaking any other laws), then effectively time would stop for you and it'd be like you just jumped 40 years in the future. You wouldn't age at all and you'd have no memory of your trip.",
" > I have maybe a wee bit more knowledge about light speed than the ordinary joe\n\nThe first rule about lightspeed is that you or any other thing with mass can't go at lightspeed.",
"You can't go at speed of light, that's impossible. But you can get reaaaaly close it. And going at that speed almost stops time for you relatively to earth. \n\nLet me give you an example. \n\nReal world: clocks in a very fast moving (not even close to light speed) plane would go slower than same clocks on earth. So difference would be like 0.02 ms (example)\n\nFiction: Try reading \"ender's game\" sequel. Character in that book flies a space ship at very high speed. He traveled like 1000 years, but it felt for him like 2 years or something. He aged accordingly (2 years). \n\n"
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