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1npf9y | why is the night sky so static? when people look through telescopes do they ever see things moving in real time, like a spinning galaxy for instance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1npf9y/eli5_why_is_the_night_sky_so_static_when_people/ | {
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"Its all about your perspective. Say your friend was standing right in front of you and he held up a certain number of fingers, it'd be very easy to count how many. Now imagine him holding up the number of his fingers from across a football field. The distance makes it more difficult to see details from far away. Now imagine the field was slightly foggy. \n\nThat's partially why we can't see galaxies spinning and stuff appears static. We're so far away, it looks just like a star. We receive so little light from the galaxy compared to other stars that are much closer.\n\nThen there's also the fact that galaxies don't spin that fast. When people look through telescopes, they could see a galaxy spinning, but it's just like the number of fingers. There's so much information and the distance is so far that the details that would let us noticeably see the spinning is lost. Our telescope technology is not advanced enough. Like I said, there is so little light coming from the galaxy and so much more \"interference\" light, that the camera basically has to take an extremely long exposure shot in order to get any details. At the same time, the galaxy spun so slowly in the amount of time it took to take the shot, it appears to be a still.\n\nWhenever you see images of galaxies spinning, then it's a series of long exposure shots strung together similar to cartoons.",
"How far away they are, or how long it takes their light to arrive, has no bearing on whether we can see a galaxy spinning.\n\nThe reason we don't see a galaxy spinning like a spinning top is because galaxies are huge. The Milky Way Galaxy is 100k light years across. The means it takes 100k years for light to travel from one side to the other. \n\nThe Sun, which is about 30k light years from the centre, takes about 1/4 of a BILLION years to orbit once. That's why we don't see it. ",
"Galaxies take hundreds of billions of years to make a single rotation. That sort of length of time is about the same whether it's the Milky Way (which we're inside), the Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest neighbour), or a distant galaxy viewed through our most powerful telescopes. It still takes (say) 200 billion years to turn once, so unless you can stare it for millions and millions of years, you won't notice any rotation.",
"For the most part things are moving too slowly to see any change, but that's not to say that we just see everything as static. Most notably: Pulsars. These are highly magnetic collapsed stars (neutron stars) that spin *very* quickly. For example, the first one discovered spins once per 1.33 seconds. We don't see it moving, but we *do* see it pulsing (not in visible light, but in radio waves; still cool!)\n\nAlso, we are able to watch stars \"wobble\" as their planets orbit them. We like to approximate the orbit of a planet around a star as the star staying put while the planet goes around it, but they actually both orbit their mutual center of gravity (which is often either inside of or very close to the star). For some close stars we can see this wobble (over the course of many months, of course) and have used this to discover many planets.",
"Unfortunately because they are so far away they have to moving very fast for us to be able to observe it - think how on a moonlit night when travelling in car, the moon seems to follow the car but the nearby lamp posts and bushes move quickly past. However - that doesn't mean to say it can't be done - this [Link](_URL_0_) has one of the most amazing movies - the motion of stars obesrved orbiting the galactic centre where it is thought a large black hole holds everything together. Actual observations over a period of years."
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3e5y4r | is it possible to kill a mosquito or a cockroach by dropping it? | Hello, this question came up to me when I tried to drop an already incapacitated mosquito from my arm height (about 160cm) and it still survived.
So is it possible to kill a mosquito or a cockroach by dropping it from certain height? Assuming that said mosquito or cockroach cannot use its wings to fly.
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e5y4r/eli5is_it_possible_to_kill_a_mosquito_or_a/ | {
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"Not really. Because insects have such a small mass, their terminal velocity is often very low. More often than not, their exoskeleton provides enough protection from the force of the impact for them to survive. Unlike my childhood friend who fell off that bridge.",
"No. Two reasons: 1. They are very very small. The amount of gravitational force on an object is directly proportional to that object's mass. Since insects have such a small mass they literally cannot hit the ground with enough force to die, or even be injured. 2. Being small, air is viscous for them. Thick, like syrup or deep water. The air slows their fall quite a bit and again prevents them from being injured."
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ejf2bp | why do pipes attached to hoses and nozzles tend to rupture close to the end where they are attached to the hose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejf2bp/eli5_why_do_pipes_attached_to_hoses_and_nozzles/ | {
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"Because whatever is bonding the pipe and fixture together is weaker than the integrity of the piping itself."
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52u24p | why can't linux run windows programs | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52u24p/elif_why_cant_linux_run_windows_programs/ | {
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"Basically for the same reason you can't wander up to someone who doesn't speak English and have a conversation with them in English.\n\nThe vast, vast majority of programs rely on the operating system to mediate between the hardware and the program itself. Part of this is interacting with components of the operating system, calling functions from the operating system, etc. \n\nWhen you change the operating system, none of that stuff works anymore. \n\nIt's like... Imagine that it takes you exactly 100 steps in a specific pattern to walk from your front door to your bed. You can do it blindfolded, because you're following that specific pattern. But then some asshole decides to blindfold you and then put you at *someone else's* front door. You go to do the pattern, and end up with your face in the toilet when you try to lay on the bed. Sure, there's a bed there (just like most operating systems have similar components that perform similar functions), but you have no clue where anything is because it's not your house."
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1udm54 | can i identify a body's sex by examining its bare skeleton? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1udm54/eli5_can_i_identify_a_bodys_sex_by_examining_its/ | {
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"Yes.\n\nOne notable difference is that the female pelvis is a lot wider than the male by proportion since it has to support pregnancy.",
"About 80 gajillion years ago, I took a human osteology class and this was something we learned to do. IIRC, it wasn't that hard once we learned it, though I doubt I could do it without a refresher these days. \n\nAs Kavaeric said, the pelvis is the key, but it should be noted that you can't determine sex in children. Girls' pelvises don't start to widen until puberty, so depending on age, it may be impossible. But if you have an adult skeleton, I believe a trained person can be about 90% accurate based on the pelvis. \n\nI seem to recall that there are other things you can look at as well if you don't have an intact pelvis, but I don't recall what they are (though I do remember that they aren't as accurate).",
"The key areas to look on skeletons to determine sex is (1) the pelvis and (2) the skull. The pelvis is by far the best area of the body to determine sex. If the pelvis leaves you with questions, the skull can help further determine sex. (Note: prior to puberty, male and female pelvises have more male characteristics and will require more support from other areas of the body. In many cases, it will be nearly impossible to determine sex with 100% certainty on a prepubescent skeleton. At best only degrees of certainty can be determined.) A female's pelvis is wider to support a baby and flatter. Females also have a wider sciatic notch and their pelvic inlet is round while the male pelvic inlet is heart shaped. The female sacrum is also wide and short while the male sacrum is long and narrow. The subpubic angle of males is V-shaped while the female has a less steep U-shaped angel. If the pelvis still leaves you with questions, the skull is an excellent place to reaffirm or deny your hypothesis. Male skulls tend to be bigger and more rugged while females have smaller, smoother skulls. Next look at the brow ridge. The male brow ridge is rounded and pronounced while the female is less pronounced or even none existent. The male jaw is typically larger and angular with a wider chin. The female jaw has less pronounced angles and a more pointed chin. The mastoid process of the male is more pronounced while female is less so. Many men also possess a nuchal crest at the base of the occipital bone of the skull while females do not. \nOther areas to further determine sex (but with a much smaller degree of certainty) are the length of long bones, joint size, and intercoastal ribs. Again, one would not typically use these to positively identify sex and these should only be used as the supporting evidence, not definitive evidence."
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8v4vz1 | what is opengl and directx and what's the difference? | What are these things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v4vz1/eli5_what_is_opengl_and_directx_and_whats_the/ | {
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"OpenGL is a graphics library, hence GL. It's made to run on just about every system, and processes your graphics to put them on the screen.\n\nDirectX also does this, but it can also do input, sound, I think physics... It does more, but it's a Windows exclusive. Fun fact, too, that's what the X in the Xbox is for. Its original name was the directx box.",
"Think of graphics cards like countries, maybe the GeForce TI 10 series cards all speak some form of Spanish. AMD Radeon cards all speak a flavor of Russian. And so on and so forth for every graphics card type.\n\nAs a developer this would be a nightmare to write games against. I'd have to have special code for each graphics card that I want to support and that means I'd have to learn many different languages.\n\nInstead, OpenGL and DirectX have done that for you. They let you speak in a single language and they handle the translations to the various languages of the graphics cards.\n\nThe difference between the two was, at first, OpenGL was an open standard that worked on multiple platforms, while DirectX is a Microsoft technology and was primarily Windows only. I think that DirectX has kind of supplanted OpenGL for the most part. But in essence, they're the same thing. Just like AMD vs GeForce.\n\n",
"Designing a game engine is a lot of work and will usually take years for a graphically intensive game. In these years things such as physics and shaders are modelled and implemented, what isnt implemented though is the really low-level stuff (e.g. How the GPU - I will pretend that consoles use a GPU, even though they really use an APU which is a combination of a CPU and a GPU - handles buffers, actually produces 3D objects from vertices, etc.). These things generally don't vary much between games since they are common data structures and considering ways to implement them so different GPUs from AMD and Nvidia can use them efficiently is loads of work by itself.\nSo instead these things are supplied in their own libraries so engine designers can use these things and safely assume they work. OpenGL and DirectX are two such libraries. As a side note, historically DirectX is a lot more but it doesn't really matter nowadays and I don't think it's what you're asking for.\nThe difference between them is that DirectX is owned and developed by Microsoft whereas OpenGL is, as implied by the name, open-source. They will differ in performance here and there but I don't know how specifically.",
"DirectX is a suite of APIs designed by Microsoft for their Windows operating systems. These APIs are intended for use by multimedia and game software developers and enable consistent and reliable access to the computer's hardware in a semi-abstract fashion.\n\nPerhaps the most well known component of DirectX is Direct3D.\n\nDirect3D is an API that enables programs to draw and render 3D graphics. Using the API allows developers to write a program without paying close attention to the nature or capabilities of the underlying hardware. Microsoft specifies various DirectX and Direct3D feature levels, and hardware manufacturers design hardware compliant with those feature levels.\n\nDevelopers design their programs around one or more major Direct3D versions and one or more feature levels and use the best one that is supported. For example, most modern graphics cards support the Direct3D 12 feature set. Direct3D 12 is supported only by Windows 10 and has been updated with every major Windows 10 update. Ergo, a game that is written purely for Direct3D 12 will run only on Windows 10 with only a Direct3D 12 GPU and will not be supported on Windows 8.1 or older, or on any GPU lacking Direct3D 12 support.\n\nHowever, a game programmed for Direct3D 11 will run fine on Windows 7,8,8.1, and 10 as long as the GPU supports at least Direct3D 11. The bulk of the games on the market right now fall into this category.\n\nOpenGL is a high level specification for an API that performs drawing on a virtual graphics card. OpenGL is not an API itself and there is no reference implementation of OpenGL. Rather, OS vendors can choose to ship OpenGL libraries that work with their graphics subsystem and graphics card vendors design their drivers to tie into this system. As a result, OpenGL is entirely independent of any OS, programming language, hardware vendor, or software vendor.\n\nDevelopers that use OpenGL design their programs to draw to the virtual graphics card in the fashion described by the OpenGL specification and the OS provided OpenGL library, graphics driver, and GPU take care of the rest.\n\nOne major difference between Direct3D and OpenGL is that the OpenGL API specification itself does not change with the addition of new features. Graphics cards support varying levels of OpenGL and optional extensions as do the graphics drivers, but the OS and its OpenGL library are just a middle man. When developers build around a certain Direct3D feature set they're guaranteed certain functionality as long as that feature set is supported. However, when a developer builds around OpenGL they have to probe the real graphics card at run time through the OpenGL API to determine what features are supported because they will not know ahead of time. A benefit of this approach is that OpenGL is fairly immune to OS obsolescence; OpenGL 4.6 features (the newest at this time) can still work on games running on Windows XP if there's a compatible GPU installed with drivers that support the newest features.\n\nMicrosoft provides a C++ implementation of OpenGL with every version of Windows and most Linux distributions use Mesa3D. GPU vendors have to perform the rest of the work in the drivers."
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9fa4lg | why do video game leaks still happen despite confidential agreements and threat of lawsuits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9fa4lg/eli5_why_do_video_game_leaks_still_happen_despite/ | {
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"Sometimes these companies leak the information themselves. This way it becomes more attractive to those that are seeking information. And they want it more.",
"yoshi game was unintentionally leaked by a retailer which was supposed to list the game live during a Nintendo game presentation last week (that got delayed due to natural disaster). They were supposed to coincide the reveal with the listing but its not that easy to just cancel it with limited notice.\n\nsimon belmont was unintentionally leaked by the Nintendo youtube account accidentally uploading a Castlevania music track a few hours before he was revealed to be in the game during a Nintendno game presentation.\n\nWhile there are legitimate leakers in many fields, not just the game industry, (had a look at the U.S. news lately?) the stuff you are describing is all accidental or basically not anyone's fault but Nintendo's for backing out of the game presentation.\n\nWhile you don't hear about it too often, [apparently very intentional leaking can result in lawsuits](_URL_0_)"
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b1zk3k | why is the citizenship question on the census so controversial? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b1zk3k/eli5_why_is_the_citizenship_question_on_the/ | {
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"The Census determines the proportion of House seats, if people refuse to fill out the census because they are afraid that the data will be used to discriminate against them, then the results are inaccurate.\n\n\"That clause requires an \"actual enumeration\" of the population to apportion seats in the House of Representatives; a lower court ruled recently in another case that adding the citizenship question would lead to an inaccurate count, violating that requirement\".\n\nThe Enumeration Clause is also known as the “Census Clause”, Article 1, sections 1 & 2 of the Constitution:\n\n\"Representatives…shall be apportioned among several states…according to their respective numbers…the actual enumeration shall be made within three years and the first meeting of the Congress of the United States of America, and within every subsequent term of ten years in such manner as they shall by law direct.\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"If you're an immigrant, you may fear that a question about citizenship may be used to harm you. If you're not a legal immigrant, you may worry it will be used to identify you and deport you; if you're legal, it might be used to deport your friends and family. So immigrants -- even legal ones -- may hide from the census-takers because of this question.\n\nBut the Constitution says that Congressional representatives should be assigned based on the number of people in the area, citizens or not. If immigrants hide from the census-takers, the census will count too few people in the area, and they will be assigned fewer representatives than they should.\n\nThis also matters for state legislatures, and also for various kinds of government assistance, which are available to non-citizens, but which is divided up around the country based on census numbers: areas where many immigrants hide from the census will get less money than they deserve."
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1pftq4 | why are some major media outlets speculating a ted cruz presidential run, ignoring that he was born in canada? | Am I missing something or are they? Here's an example: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pftq4/eli5_why_are_some_major_media_outlets_speculating/ | {
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"His father was a Cuban who moved to the US in the 1950s (and was probably a US citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970), his mother was born in US. You don't have to be born in the US to be eligible.",
"The term the Constitution uses for presidential eligibility is \"natural born citizen\".\n\nThat term is not defined in the Constitution, nor has it ever been clarified by a court. Some people have taken a very narrow view that you have to be physically born in a US state, thus making Cruz (and McCain and Goldwater) ineligible.\n\nMost legal scholars take the view it means you have to be born in circumstances that grant you US citizenship, either on US soil or to a US citizen, making Cruz eligible. But until it is tested by the courts, no one will no for sure."
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3hv7gb | why is putting your coat over a puddle a thing? wouldn't your coat just saturate, sink, and your date would have wet feet anyways? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hv7gb/eli5_why_is_putting_your_coat_over_a_puddle_a/ | {
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"\nIt refers to a legend regarding Sir Walter Raleigh, which probably never happened:\n\nBy 1581, after a number of military and naval engagements in France, Ireland and elsewhere, he had become established as a courtier and as Elizabeth's favourite. The story that he once took off an expensive cloak and threw it over a mud puddle for Queen Elizabeth to walk across illustrates Raleigh's flamboyant manner—the event probably never happened, but everyone had come to expect that sort of thing from Raleigh, and Elizabeth always favoured that kind of showmanship. ",
"It isn't something people did regularly, perhaps ever.\n\nIt is more of a tall tale...this guy (Sir Walter Raleigh) is so gallant, he let his coat get soiled rather than the Queen's shoes get dirty. \n\nIt isn't that different than, say, Lady Godiva's famous naked ride. It is a story to illustrate how much she cared about her subjects, and not a suggestion this is what noblewomen typically did in the 11th Century.",
"I think the idea is that it's a wet or muddy patch of ground, not that it's a large puddle that would quickly saturate the cloak. \n\nImagine a delicate lady wanting to keep her silk stockings and dancing slippers nice. Not, like, a couple on a trek through a swamp during a monsoon.\n\nEither way, I don't think this is so much a \"thing\" as a common trope in cartoons. I mean, why is a date rapey French skunk a \"thing\"?"
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2ze66q | why do all underwater foods have that characteristically 'fishy' taste? | Crab, fish, seaweed, scallops etc all have a distinct 'fishy' flavour whereas cows, pigs and carrots don't all taste like they've been sucking air, do they? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ze66q/eli5_why_do_all_underwater_foods_have_that/ | {
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"The 'fishy' taste is only present in not-quite-fresh-yet-not-bad-yet seafood. Really fresh seafood lacks it.",
"_URL_0_\n\n > Trimethylamine is a product of decomposition of plants and animals. It is the substance mainly responsible for the odor often associated with rotting fish, some infections, bad breath and can be a cause of vaginal odor due to bacterial vaginosis.\n\n\nThey have a different type of bacteria on them than land-dwelling animals, possibly simply due to proximity on fishing boats, processing factories, but possibly also from seawater.\n\n"
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26xbfb | what are the specific evolutionary/environmental pressures that caused differences in skin color, hair texture, and facial features? | My first thought about it is how hot and sunny Africa is. So since black attracts/absorbs heat, wouldn't it seem to follow that "black" people should be white, IE reflective. So i am obviously way off base about that, so why then? and why do other ethnicities have their differences? hair, lips, eyes, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26xbfb/eli5what_are_the_specific/ | {
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"I bet you will get good answers, but keep in mind that it's easy to use evolutionary biology for junk science.",
"Here's what I remember from anthropology back in college -\n\nMelanin absorbs UV light to prevent it from going deeper into tissues and damaging what's down there. So, sunnier places (like Africa, Polynesia, southern India) tend to develop darker skin. Darker eyes also help with sunlight. \n\nColder places with less intense sunlight (think Northern Europe) didn't need protection against tons of light, so skin lightened. This provided an advantage, because sunlight helps in vitamin D production - so people with darker skin in areas with less sunlight are more prone to vitamin d deficiency. Those who had lighter skin had more sunlight permeating, and had healthy vitamin D levels.\n\nIn addition, lighter-colored eyes (blue, green, etc.) provided an advantage in places with longer, darker nights, like Scandinavia.\n\nI remember my professor talking about nose shapes also potentially being affected by climate. [This](_URL_0_) is an interesting article explaining nose evolution - long story short, smaller, thinner noses warm air more rapidly than larger, wider noses.\n\nBecause sunlight stimulates melanin production, presumably less sunny areas had less melanin produced in their hair, which allowed more sunlight to penetrate the scalp, allowing for more vitamin D synthesis.\n\nNo idea about lips or cheekbones. That's all I remember about this from anthro 101. Hope you found it as interesting as I did!",
"People are roughly correct, though its a bit more complex because not only do people near the equator have to worry about higher UV radiation, but people near the poles have to worry about not recieving *enough* UV radiation - UVB is important in producing vitamin D beneath the skin. So there is a selective pressure to get the skin as pigment-free as possible to let light in when you spend many months of the year in darkness, and aren't getting a good dose.\n\nA good paper to look at if you have access to a library is \"Human skin pigmentation as an adaptation to UV radiation\", published in 2010, by Nina Jablonski and George Chaplin, in *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, volume 207 pages 8962-8968 (you can read the summary here: _URL_0_). They make the argument very convincingly.\n\nHowever you should also remember that not every feature of our appearance necessarily has anything to do with evolution. I am convinced by the skin pigmentation argument because good evidence has been presented for it, but there is no reason to expect other racially-varying features - nose shape, brow shape, eyelids, hair colours, etc - to have anything to do with adaptation. Evolution produces a lot of features that have no adaptive purpose - they could go one way or another, and its just by chance that they happened to go a particular way."
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17q31s | why do slick, "bald" tires have less traction than tires that are new? | The thing I have trouble with, is that generally more surface area=more traction. So, if a tire is bald, and has more of a contact patch with the road than if it were independent tread blocks, why am I spinning in 1st gear when my tires are nearly bald, whereas with new tires I can't break traction?
I understand that racing slicks and drag radials are different, they're run at a lower PSI and they flex under torque in addition to having a different rubber compound. I understand how that works, i'm not asking about racing tires. Just regular street tires with tread blocks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17q31s/eli5_why_do_slick_bald_tires_have_less_traction/ | {
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"When you use a tire it heats up. Heating the tire multiple times will change the chemical structure and make it harder. Which will decrease traction. \n\nAt least that's the common explanation among drag racers. ",
"Tread is mostly there to help with rough, loose, or wet surfaces. On a sunny day with cleanly swept, paved roads, new slicks work fantastically.\n\nThe problem is that modern tires are not just made of rubber. There are dozens of different materials, giving each part of the tire different properties. The tread, the part that is most often in contact with the road, is designed for maximum friction, and as a result, wears down faster. On new slicks, the entire tire is covered in that material.\n\nThe part underneath (which is exposed in the grooves) is designed for durability, so that nothing can puncture it, not for gripping the road. As a result, even though there is more surface area, that area has worse grip."
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431qaq | how do we get sick of the songs after a certain amount of time (which also varies depending on the song)? how does the brain determine this, and dictate it on us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/431qaq/eli5_how_do_we_get_sick_of_the_songs_after_a/ | {
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"Really depends on the song and person.\n\nThere's a certain amount of things that can make you like a song.\n\n-Lyrical content\n\n-Melodies\n\n-Sonical Aspect (it's extremely hard to determine this unless you're a youtube song reviewer that has neurological reception research done on every album they review... apparently...)\n\n-Rhythm\n\nSo if there's a song with just good lyrical content you'd get bored more easily by it than a song with a great melody, rhythm and melodies.\n\nThe sonical aspect is quite hard to explain but here's an example of something that improves sonical niceness of a song\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe sonical aspect and variety are probably the most important things for listenability.\n\nHaving a new vocal chant at 2:00, and a new instrument kick in at 1:30, and having a drumline with a randomized shuffle and organic harmonics throughout the track will improve the listenability a lot.\n\nAnd more importantly changing volumes of different instruments will create a constant varied sound in every second so it's hard to get used to every sound in the track.\n\nIdk if this sounds like a mess but nobody else tried."
]
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4r3dp8 | how did rockets like the v2 and their targeting work, before the invention of the computer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4r3dp8/eli5_how_did_rockets_like_the_v2_and_their/ | {
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"From what I understand the V1 was essentially filled with enough fuel to reach a designated area within tolerances such as wind resistance etc. They were basically self propelled bombs just aimed in the right direction.\nV2's had gyroscopes and that not sure what they used all together "
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e2zdhj | the doppler effect | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e2zdhj/eli5_the_doppler_effect/ | {
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"Say a tennis ball shooting machine is directed at you and it's shooting one ball every second. It will hit you every second. Now say you're running towards the machine while it's shooting. As time passes while you run, each ball will have to travel less distance to hit you. So you get hit by balls more often, more than one per second. Now say you're running away from the machine in the opposite direction of the balls traveling, you will get hit less frequently than once per second. Now repeat the above scenario but assume the machine is moving towards you or away from you. If you run away at the speed the balls are travelling (assuming constant speed and no gravity), you will never get hit by the balls. \n\nWaves, like sound or light, have peaks and troughs (ups and downs, low pressure high pressure, etc) and they travel at a certain frequency (like 5 peaks per second pass a given point in space, or five balls in the above example). If you or the wave source are moving toward or away from each other, the frequency with which you, the receiver, perceive the wave will change. That's why ambulance and police sirens seem to have varying frequency as the car passes by (first getting closer then getting further). There are many examples of this, you can also look up the red shift and so on.",
"Imagine a tennis ball hanging on a string. \n\nNow imagine a line of tennis balls each hanging on their own string. \n\nNow imagine swinging a bat to hit the tennis balls. With your regular swing you hit 4 or 5 balls. Those balls then bounce into balls in front of them, and so on creating a wave travelling down the line.\n\nNow imagine while swinging you are on a treadmill. That treadmill is moving you towards the tennis balls. So with the same swing you are now able to hit 6 or 7 balls. This creates a bigger wave.\n\nNow imagine while swinging you are on a treadmill that is moving you away from the tennis balls. So with the same swing you are only able to hit 2 or 3 balls. This creates a smaller wave.\n\nEach time the swing of the bat is exactly the same. But the impact on the tennis balls is different based on which direction you are moving.",
"You're standing by the road and a really loud race car whizzes by. The sound starts high, zooms past, and sounds low as it drives away. That is the Doppler effect.\n\n\nIn the brief moment that the race car was at its closest to you, you were hearing the true sound frequency of its engine. It was a higher frequency coming toward you, true frequency at its its closest point of approach, and lowest frequency driving away from you. The same principle applies in sound, radio frequency (Radar), and so on.",
"If you're standing still emitting waves, say sound, the peaks emanating out look like a target. A person to your left and right get hit with wave peaks at the same frequency.\n\nIf you're moving to the right while emitting waves, the centers of the circle get pushed together toward the right and are further apart toward the left. The waves hit someone standing to your right at a higher frequency than a person on the left.\n\nThis is why cars sound higher pitched as they approach you than as they drive away from you.",
"Sound waves are a certain \"wavelength\", meaning they are literally a fixed distance between peaks of the wave.\n\nWhen you and the source of the sound are stationary, the peaks of the wave hit you at a constant rate, and you hear a constant tone.\n\nWhen you or the source are moving, the peaks (which are still a fixed distance from each other in the wave) no longer reach you at a fixed rate due to the relative motion, so the tone changes as the source moves."
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5cwpsu | why does oil prices etc freely go up when the value of the currency drops but there are no changes in our wage to reflect this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cwpsu/eli5_why_does_oil_prices_etc_freely_go_up_when/ | {
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"the fluctuations of a currency on a day to day basis can't be translated to wage because wage isn't measured on a daily basis. people sign contracts for jobs. an individual's wage changes annually or bi-annually doesn't change daily. if the currency drops a lot consistently over a period of time, that's inflation. "
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3xd25v | why is congress allowed to throw in unrelated parts of a bill just to force legislation through? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xd25v/eli5_why_is_congress_allowed_to_throw_in/ | {
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"Because Congress writes its own rules for how it operates, and it clearly sees value in being able to include bills together.\n\nAlso, an omnibus bill, *by definition*, covers a whole lot of things.",
"There's nothing preventing it. I'm not sure how that could even be codified. You can't just have a generic law saying \"All items in a piece of legislation must be related,\" you'd have to actually write out a detailed explanation of what counts as related. \n\nFor a brief time, presidents had the ability to use a line item veto (by which I mean that President Clinton had the ability from 1996 to 1998). But the Supreme Court ruled that it gave too much power to the executive branch. \n\nWe could pass an amendment to the Constitution giving the President that right, which I think is a good idea. Any item that was vetoed could still be passed by Congress as a separate bill.",
"Democrats agreed to include a bill the Republicans wanted, in exchange for the Republicans agreeing to include a bill that the Democrats wanted. Everyone in Congress knew exactly what was going on. The Democrats didn't vote for CISA because they had to, they voted for it because they traded it for something they wanted more.\n\nBlaming the dysfunction and corruption in congress on the ability to pass bills with riders doesn't make sense. It's a symptom of corrupt politics, not the cause of it. If we fixed Gerrymandering and Citizens United and voter apathy (some of the actual causes of dysfunction), Congress would still pass Omnibus bills and bills with riders as a means of compromise, but what they'd accomplish by doing so wouldn't be so corrupt.\n",
"They do it so certain people will vote for it making it eventually pass, for example the bill a few years ago about giving cash for broken down cars had a clause that allowed anyone who bought a golf cart, no matter how extravagant to completely right it off in taxes.",
"Because they are not not allowed. They can do whatever they want except for the things they can't. They aren't about to write that law because they'd have to take twenty votes per day to get everything they want to do done, and it would the result would be similar anyway with people negotiating programs.",
"In contrast, the Pennsylvania constitution (Article III, Section 3) explicitly prohibits this.\n\n Form of Bills\nSection 3.\nNo bill shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title, except a general appropriation bill or a bill codifying or compiling the law or a part thereof. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: 30 million dollars of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.",
"If you don't like it, call your local representatives and make a complaint *every week* about not allowing rider bills to be attached to a larger bill. Please be nice though, the people on the other side of the phone don't deserve it (unless it's the actual representative/senator), lends you credibility, and your complaint (if well thought out) some weight.\n\nI called my three reps yesterday about CISA and it took me less than 15 minutes to either talk to someone or leave a voicemail with my complaint about 1) removing CISA 2) knock it off with rider bills 3) I want my data packets to be federally protected like USPS mail.\n\nI'll be calling them once a week to air those complaints and anything else I hear of through EPI, EFF, FreePress, and other groups.\n\n**[[Free Press](_URL_0_)]** - the issues under \"Take Action\" have a nice feature where you can enter in your zipcode to find the numbers of your representatives. It's easy peasy and there are *no* excuses for not contacting your reps and being a thorn in their side as a citizen.\n\nSeriously, please call them. No one speaks for you and your concerns but you.",
"How would you legislate against it? How can you define \"related\", when it comes to something as broad as a budget. ",
"Because you sit on your ass making a post on reddit about it instead of actually doing something about it. That's the real answer, whether you like it or not.",
"The way my 8th grade history teacher explained it to 13 year old me is that in congress there is a lot of deal making and favors. Senator A will say to Senator B\n\"Hey I'll vote for this bill if I can add in this new bridge for my state\"",
"DownsizeDC has been trying to pass the [One Subject at a Time Act](_URL_0_). It's understandably unpopular with most politicians.",
"Because there's nothing that says they can't.\n\nIf you really want to defeat bills like CISA, look up which federal elected officials near you support it, and volunteer for someone challenging them who does not support it."
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5thdjx | how can devices like ipods and computers detect when something is plugged into a headphone/microphone jack? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5thdjx/eli5_how_can_devices_like_ipods_and_computers/ | {
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"In most cases it's really simple:\n\nThere is just a mechanical switch in the receptable which is pressed when you put the plug in. \n\nThose switches aren't an exactly new invention, they have been there for decades. Back then, they were \"normally closed\" and used to physically disconnect the internal loudspeakers of your radio/TV or similar if you plugged in your headphones. \n\nNewer ones often have a separate, isolated contact which closes if you put the plug in and tells your computer, that a plug has been inserted. There is a lot of other ways to do it, but it call comes down to a switch which is activated when you stuff something of (approximately) the right dimensions in there. "
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||
70ll2b | how does a single microphone pick up sounds to send to a surround sound speaker system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70ll2b/eli5how_does_a_single_microphone_pick_up_sounds/ | {
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"That isn't how it usually works. There are usually a bunch of microphones that are recorded onto many tracks then mixed down for your surround sound system.",
"Most sounds are either recorded Mono or Stereo, and with computers, positioned within that 5.1 space. Dialogue is almost always mono and placed in the center channel. \n\nMusic is recorded multitrack and mixed into 5.1. ",
"There are devices that look like a single microphone, but internally they have multiple microphone elements."
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3b0xof | why almost no 7-footers are good at shooting free-throws? | Big men in basketball have historically been bad jump shooters, yet a select few of them (Dirk Nowitzki) figure out how to shoot the basketball, why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b0xof/eli5_why_almost_no_7footers_are_good_at_shooting/ | {
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"They're usually taller than anyone covering them, and they can dunk. There's no pressing need for them to get good at a distance shot when the team mostly uses them to drive straight for the basket. ",
"I think it's mostly a matter of bothering to practice their free-throw-shooting motion, because there are/have been plenty of 7-footers who are good or at least decent at free throws. But there's commonality with hand size too - large-handed players like Shaq and Rajon Rondo seem to struggle with shooting in general.",
"there isn't good data on it, but many people and some limited data analysis indicates very large hands may make it harder to shoot jump shots and free throws. as for why some are good, well, that can just be attributed statistical distribution. "
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1nkvyr | how can interest groups influence american politics without being found guilty of bribery? | It's obvious that money equals power in the states, but I've never really understood how that money is used to win political favor without being a clear example of corruption- a crime that would punish and remove our so-despised politicians from office. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nkvyr/eli5_how_can_interest_groups_influence_american/ | {
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"It's called political financing, they never actually make a direct monetary payment to a politician, they take them on \"relationship\" trips and meals, because there is no law that says the politicians can't require them to pay for these if they are outside of the office meeting areas. Also, campaigns don't pay for themselves, if some of that campaign money ends up in the politician's pocket, it's not the contributors fault, it's the campaign's fault.",
"If I want to influence the way a congressman votes, I am not allowed to say if you vote for this bill I will give you a large amount of money for your personal use. That would be bribery.\n\nI am allowed to say if you vote for this bill I will vote for you in the next election, and I will tell other people to vote for you. I can also say I will donate money to to their reelection campaign, so that they can tell other people to vote for them. This is just political speech, because you are telling representatives what you want and that you will support them politically if what they do matches what you want from a politician.\n\nEssentially the same rules apply to groups of individuals with some special interest, the lobbyists they can hire, and the money they can come up with."
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6a0xcg | how body organs know what's their job? | Every organ is built up with millions of cells. Say we would build organic heart. How that heart will know it has to beating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a0xcg/eli5_how_body_organs_know_whats_their_job/ | {
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"I'm currently getting my PhD in genetics and just finished developmental biology. All of the cells in a single organism (single plant, animal, etc.) have the exact same DNA sequences even though they have different structures and functions. The reason a nerve cell knows it's a nerve cell and not a red blood cell is in the way their genes are regulated. This is called 'epigenetics' ('epi' = 'above/upon') and refers to the way cells are able to turn up, down, on, or off genes depending on signals they get from the environment or other cells around it. This is mostly done by changing the way the DNA is stored so that useful genes for that cell are available to be expressed while non-useful genes are stored in tightly packed DNA banks. The reason every cell contains a full copy of the genome (complete set of chromosomes) even though they will only each use about 1% of the genes is because cells can rearrange the way the DNA is packed in the event that the cell needs to change because of its environment. \n\nOne of the most well studied examples of this was a famous study in which mice were fed different foods to see how it changed their gene expression. The species of mice used are known as Agouti mice, called so because they have an extra copy of the Agouti gene (name not important). These mice are prone to a disease in which they give birth to fat, yellow furred pups that were obese and prone to cancers. While pregnant, a mouse with the Agouti defect was fed rat pellets with high amounts of Vitamin B. She gave birth to healthy, small brown pups. They found that the Agouti gene is turned off in the presence of Vitamin B because it blocks the DNA. The DNA sequence is still there, in every cell of the baby, but Vitamin B prevents enzymes from transcribing it (turning DNA to RNA to make proteins) and that by feeding the pregnant mother Vitamin B, the Agouti gene had been turned off when the cells began dividing.\n\nThe reason organs know what they are is because when cells begin dividing in the womb they are stem cells. Stem cells have DNA which has not yet been packaged and therefore they have the capability of becoming any type of cell. This happens when signals from the mothers body help tell the embryos (baby) cells what they're going to be. Once one stem cell receives a signal it will package it's DNA accordingly so that only the necessary genes for that cell type are active and from then on all cell types that divide from that will have their DNA regulated in the same way. After a few of these cells build up they are capable of relaying much more specific and complex signals between them so they they can change their DNA more specifically between them (so it may start as a clump of cells that will all turn into the heart and then after a few cell divisions some will signal to become muscle tissue or blood vessels).\n\nCheck out the Agouti mice study: _URL_0_\n"
]
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1kao4k | why can't we sneeze and pee at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kao4k/why_cant_we_sneeze_and_pee_at_the_same_time/ | {
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"**Fun Fact:**\n\nSneezing is the closest thing your body does to having an orgasm. Similarly, many of my muscles contract.",
"Said no one who knows any older woman who has previously had kids",
"i pee when i sneeze",
"Not to get too gross (my standards, not Reddit's), but I've done it. In fact, once, I sneezed and farted at the same time while peeing. I believe physicists refer to this as a \"singularity\".",
"My second kid weighed 9 and a half pounds with a head like a bowling ball. Sixteen years later, yeah, I pee when I sneeze sometimes. Or cough really hard. It sucks but is by no means unusual.",
"Sneezing while peeing feels like your dick is going to explode. Would not recommend.",
"A couple times I've had a sneeze sneak up on me undetected while in mid-stream. Piss **everywhere**",
"\"Because your brain knows... you might blow your asshole out.\" -George Carlin",
"Sneezing causes many muscles and many of the body's voluntary sphincters to contract. This includes sphincters in the urethra and anus. The contraction of the sphincter in the urethra causes momentary loss of flow.",
"You are obviously not a 60-ish female. I personally hold the world record.",
"I just pee harder.\n\n...maybe I'm an alien.",
"I once sneezed while I was peeing.. I made the force so much more powerful that it should have been.",
"I can totally do this. And being very pregnant at the moment (with my second kid), this happens even when I don't want it to. "
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2ne9c2 | if a stationary bee is flying in a moving car, then why doesn't the bee hit the back of the car? | If the bee isn't touching anything in the car, then why does the bee move along with the car instead of hitting the back window when the car moves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ne9c2/eli5_if_a_stationary_bee_is_flying_in_a_moving/ | {
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"Everything inside the car– seats, passengers, *air, bees,–* is moving at approximately the same speed (relative to the ground) as the car itself.",
"It would initially, the same as when your head will get forced back under acceleration. But the air in the car is moving as well. \n\nThink of it like a scaled down version of our planet, its spinning at an astonishing rate yet everything on the land in the air and the sea aren't all left to play catch up. ",
" > If the bee isn't touching anything in the car\n\nIt is touching the contained volume of air in the car, which is accelerated by the vehicle, which is why you do not feel a X mph wind at all times."
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4gbatb | why is it so hard to say you’re wrong? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gbatb/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_say_youre_wrong/ | {
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"Aside from pride? Well, laziness for one. Ideally, when you hold a belief, that belief is a foundation for the actions you make. Changing a belief means you need to change actions and that takes effort.",
"People are emotionally invested in their ideas. We feel as though because we believe in something, it must be right or we would be stupid for having believed in it.\n\nSo when something comes along and gives us evidence that we are wrong, our brain's first reaction is often to push to reject it because it's a direct affront to our own intelligence.\n\n\"This can't possibly be the case because I believe in X and this says Y - and I'm no idiot!\"\n\nIt's mentally painful to change our mind on something because it requires us to admit that we believed in something that was incorrect. We have natural defense mechanisms to prevent this kind of change in heart.\n\nThink of anti-vaxxers. Science based evidence bounces off of them likes bullets off Superman. Their brains are working over time to make sure that the opinions that they have invested much of their brainpower on does not change - because admitting that you were wrong about an opinion you hold so intensely would be a very taxing process."
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32zunw | why do we need to send a satellite (new horizon) to photograph color pluton when we have telescopes that see galaxies much farther? | New Horizons NASA: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32zunw/eli5why_do_we_need_to_send_a_satellite_new/ | {
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"The ability to see so far in space is based solely on light. Pluto does not give off light itself and is too distant to reflect visible light from the Sun. When we are looking at distant galaxies through a telescope we are looking at the stars in the galaxy. We have not yet been able to visually see an exoplanet (planets outside of our solar system). We have however confirmed the existence of exoplanets by [other means](_URL_0_)."
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bb7sx4 | the difference of imessage and other messaging apps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bb7sx4/eli5_the_difference_of_imessage_and_other/ | {
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"The advantage of iMessage is that it is an integrated messaging app and SMS client installed by default. If the person you are messaging also has iMessage, the app automatically detects it (via the phone number or email) and uses the iMessage format by default. If they do not (or for some reason it can not send the message via iMessage) it will default automatically to SMS and send the message that way.\n\nSince it doesn't require a user to install a new app or juggle SMS vs. message app, it is highly adopted by iPhone users."
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1b689q | this bitcoin mining thing again. | Every post I saw explained Bitcoin mining simply by saying "computers do math (hurr durr)".
Can someone please give me a concrete example of such a mathematical problem?
If this has been answered somewhere else and I didn't find it (and I tried hard!), please feel free to just post a link to that comment.
Thank you :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b689q/eli5_this_bitcoin_mining_thing_again/ | {
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"From a bitcoin forum. This will not be simple, but maybe someone else can rephrase it if necessary, as I'm not sure how to make it simpler.\n\n > Imagine you have a hat with 100 pieces of paper in it, numbered 1 to 100. You pull out a piece of paper every minute and look at what you got (then put it back and shake up the hat). If it is lower than 20, you win, and you would win on average every five minutes. If you started checking numbers faster than every minute, I could slow down how often you win by making the highest winning number 15 instead of 20.\n\n > Bitcoin mining is kind of like that, but instead of 1 to 100 numbers, there are 1 to 1.1579E+77 possible numbers that you get when you take the hash of some data, and Bitcoin awards you 50 BTC if you find a hash of the current transaction block that is 1.7248E+61 or smaller.\n\n > A SHA hash is a complex mathematical formula that original data is put through, and the formula creates a number on the other side, like a 'signature' of the original data. Other hashes you might be familiar with in computers are MD5 or CRC. Since hashing the same transaction block over and over would always give you the same SHA hash, your computer adds some more random data to the end of a transaction block (called a nonce), to change the hash that comes out. SHA is cryptographically secure, in that it is impossible to tell what the hash will be from the nonce you add, so there is no shortcut around just trying billions of different nonces and checking the hash that is generated.\n\n > From: _URL_0_",
"[Most clear explanation I know of, plus some nice additional info on currency] (_URL_0_)",
"So basically i can make money just by leaving my PC working 24/7 ?",
"See [this picture](_URL_0_) on how a bitcoin transaction works.\n\nFor a more detailed explanation of mining, see the Bitcoin wiki on [Mining](_URL_1_), and other articles.",
"Its important to know that Bitcoins exist only as annotations on a very big ledger called the \"blockchain\". Every time someone sends and receives Bitcoin, the transaction is \"verified\" and added to the blockchain. It is this verification process that is commonly called \"mining\".\n\nThe verification process keeps the system running, safe, and honest by performing calculations for history checking, consensus, updating, and summarizing. Miners are rewarded for their efforts since this the entire thing requires computers, electricity and know-how. \n\nLearn more: _URL_0_",
"So, who's paying out these bitcoins? From what I've managed to gather is that you're being \"rewarded\" for your computer doing some computational work, or something? \n\nWho's problems is your computer solving?\n\n",
"It looks like there's still a bit of misinformation here, so I'll try to clear it up.\n\n**The Big Picture**\n\nMining increases the bitcoin network's security and fights fraud by calculating what's effectively a checksum for transactions. By contributing their computing power to the bitcoin network for mining, individuals are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins by the community. This also provides a way to distribute new bitcoins in a fair manner.\n\n**The Details**\n\nHash functions are at the heart of mining. A hash function is basically a complicated math formula that takes in some arbitrary input and gives a reproducible output. However, changing the input even slightly will completely alter the output. For example, using the SHA-256 hash function:\n\n SHA-256 of \"Test\" always outputs a hash of \"532eaabd9574880dbf76b9b8cc00832c20a6ec113d682299550d7a6e0f345e25\"\n SHA-256 of \"test\" (lowercase t) is \"9f86d081884c7d659a2feaa0c55ad015a3bf4f1b2b0b822cd15d6c15b0f00a08\"\n\nNow, let's say Alice decides to pay Bob 10BTC. The bitcoin network basically records that in the public ledger of transactions as \"Alice - > 10 - > Bob\". However, right now someone could change that 10 to a 20 without consequence. The network has to have some way of checking if the recorded transaction is valid or fraudulent. That's where mining comes in.\n\nWhen Alice pays Bob those 10BTC, miners in the bitcoin network will try to hash the transaction \"Alice - > 10 - > Bob\", resulting in \"aa314e08a642f5be3857276ecb4a4085a33b916f84aebef32a077df9c29949b3\". However, mining has a requirement that the resulting hash must start with a certain number of 0's (depending on the network's hash speed). Thus, miners will slightly alter the transaction by adding a random number to the end like so: \"Alice - > 10 - > Bob 12345\". The miners will then hash it again and see if it has the required number of 0's. If not, it'll change the random number and hash it again. This is repeated until an acceptable hash is found.\n\nOnce the correct hash is found, the transaction and the hash are permanently stored in the public ledger of transactions, and if anyone tries to change the transaction (i.e. changing the 10 to a 20), the hash will naturally mismatch and the network will know that that transaction is fake and will reject it. The miner who calculated the correct hash is rewarded a certain number of newly minted bitcoins and transaction fees for his contributions to the security of the network.\n\nThus, \"bitcoin mining\" is actually a slight misnomer. Its other equally important purpose is \"bitcoin transaction securing.\"\n\nHope that answered some questions!\n\nEdit: Thanks for the Gold! \\^_^\n\nEdit: mappum clarifies a few intricate details below.",
"Now, lots of people are talking about the 21mil hard limit on BTC. Now, I wonder how it would work out if people misplace their wallets.\n\nOr if they drop dead with an encrypted wallet with a fortune. Wouldn't all that BTC be taken out of circulation? What happens over multiple generations? Unlike normal currency which would be inherited by the heir, BTC would be under personal lock & key.",
"i'm going to take a risk here and sound like an idiot by saying\n\n+bitcoin clean my room verify!",
"For a decentralized currency we need to reach consensus between unkown and probably adverse distributed systems. Bitcoin mining is a brilliant solution to the Byzantine Generals' Problem:\n\n > The Byzantine Generals' Problem roughly goes as follows: N Generals have their armies camped outside a city they want to invade. They know their numbers are strong enough that if at least 1/2 of them attack at the same time they'll be victorious. But if they don't coordinate the time of attack, they'll be spread too thin and all die. They also suspect that some of the Generals might be disloyal and send fake messages. Since they can only communicate by messenger, they have no means to verify the authenticity of a message. How can such a large group reach consensus on the time of attack without trust or a central authority, especially when faced with adversaries intent on confusing them?\n\n > Bitcoin's solution is this: All of the Generals start working on a mathematical problem that statistically should take 10 minutes to solve if all of them worked on it. Once one of them finds the solution, she broadcasts that solution to all the other Generals. Everyone then proceeds to extending that solution - which again should take another ten minutes. Every General always starts working on extending the longest solution he's seen. After a solution has been extended 12 times, every General can be certain that no attacker controlling less than half the computational resources could have created another chain of similar length. The existence of the 12-block chain is proof that a majority of them has participated in its creation. We call this a proof-of-work scheme.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"Imagine you are in school and the teacher writes this word problem on the board: \"Find x where x^2 = \\*42\\*\"\n\n\"What number when multiplied by itself yields a result with the digits '42' next to each other like that somewhere in the result? The first person to find it gets an extra credit point!\"\n\nSo you start furiously pounding numbers into your calculator.\n\n1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144... crap, this is not gonna be easy. But you keep going.\n\nFinally at 57 you see it! Yay! But just as you see it somebody else shouts \"57!\" \n\n\"Great job, Billy! You get an extra credit point, and you also get to distribute 5 other extra credit points however you want! Just tell me tomorrow morning who you want to give those points to.\"\n\nThe rest of the day you hear the stories of what people are offering to give to Billy for one of the extra credit points. You are so jealous!\n\nThe next morning, the teacher writes down the names of the people who Billy decided to give the points to. And then she says, \"Ok, so what is the *next* number that will give you a '42' somewhere in it?\"\n\nThe class immediately starts pounding on their calculators again! 58? No. 59? No. 60? No.\n\nMoments later somebody shouts \"64!\" Same deal. Extra credit points that somebody gets to give out however they want.\n\nYou sense a pattern. Being a bright kid you write a little program in your calculator to figure out the next one. All your program does is take the last result and add one, then check to see if it works, over and over and over. Once it finds an answer, it's easy to check to make sure it works, but finding that answer is a boring process of checking every number against the formula. There simply is no better way!\n\nThe next morning, you finally get the next number first! Your ingenuity paid off! But every kid in the class has the same calculator, and they all start writing their own programs. The teacher sees this and says, \"Aha! I see that you've started automating the search! Well the rules are changing a little!\"\n\nYou watch as the teacher erases the simple equation on the board and writes down a huge long equation. \"Find x where x to the power of x divided by 57 plus the square root ...\" It goes on and on!\n\n\"Your little calculators might not be enough for this!\"\n\nWhen you get home you program the formula on your desktop computer. But it's still just a matter of trying a number, running it through the formula to see if you end up with a result that matches the teacher's requirement. This time the goal is get as close to zero as possible. \"0.09 or less, but not negative\".\n\nYour computer starts running the calculations. It checks a number, then adds 1 and checks that number. Then adds 1 and checks that number. It runs for an hour, and nothing works! You give up and go to bed.\n\nThe next morning, one of the other students proudly claims the prize! \"How did you do it? I ran the calculations for an hour and nothing worked!\"\n\nAnd Sarah says \"I just left it running all night! There was an answer when I woke up.\"\n\n...\n\nSo that's how it works. Computer experts have worked hard building better computers, but in the end all they can do is add 1 and check again. And the difficulty is adjusted so that with all the people running their programs all over the world, a new answer is found every ten minutes or so, and a small reward is given out.",
"I've heard about Bitcoins for quite some time now. This post finally informed me of what I needed to know, and motivated me to set up a wallet and mining operation. \n\nI'm just mining on a laptop and won't make any reasonable amount of Bitcoins, but there is something profoundly interesting about Bitcoins so I feel like I need to be a part of it.\n\nI could foresee a future where global currency is something similar to Bitcoins.",
"I am afraid of this collapsing like the old tulip market. \nI understand that it is fairly secure because of < math > . I understand that currency is really anything that people want to trade, and stick a value on.\n\nIm just... Ive heard about bitcoins from the very beginning, when people were first starting to find the hashes and using them as currency was a distant dream.\n\nTo hear that they are now going for $90 each.. All of it seems like a really elaborate pyramid scheme. \n\nI can understand the value, as long as people are creating them using computing. Once it hits the point of people buying them with real money.. I dunno, I am expecting a crash.",
"Better question: what's a Bitcoin?\n\nHahaha, just kidding."
]
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"https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27878.0"
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"https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining"
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"http://alvarofeito.com/articles/the-big-book-of-bitcoin/"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance"
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1j276t | why is the standard four chord progression so pleasing to the human ear? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j276t/eli5_why_is_the_standard_four_chord_progression/ | {
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"We like patterns in music. Popular music (\"popular\" meaning as opposed to classical/jazz, not the Pop genre, and not talking about popularity) is based on the idea of short repeating sections that are catchy. Patterns that are powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, etc.) have a nice symmetry, but 2 is too short to be interesting and 8 or more is too long to be catchy. So that's the \"4\" part of it.\n\nAs for the chords, there are actually several different 4 chord progressions. I V vi IV is very common in modern pop/rock, I vi IV V is the quintessential do-wop pattern, I vi ii V is common in several genres. They're just easy answers to the question \"what 4 chords sound good in order and loop naturally?\"",
"A standard chord progression is predictable, and your mind enjoys predicting things! \n\nWhen your brain picks up on a musical pattern, be it rhyming lyrics or a chord progression or whatever, you have a pretty good idea of whats going to come next. \n\nPart of your brain is dedicated to rewarding you when you accomplish things. When you do something correctly, the \"nucleus accumbens\" rewards you with chemicals called endorphins that make you feel happy. \n\nOne of the accomplishments that this part of your brain responds to is predicting things correctly. It helps you learn through repetition. This part of your brain also handles your sense of rhythm, which when you think about it, is really just your ability to predict when the next beat is going to happen. \n\nWhen music plays that has a simple or common chord progression, every note that your brain sees coming causes a little of that happy-making chemical to be released.\n\n[Source 1](_URL_1_)\n[Source 2](_URL_0_)\n[Source 3](_URL_2_)",
"People have already mentioned the biological side, but something no one's mentioned yet is how conditioned we are to these progressions historically. These progressions have been in Western music since before Bach because we like to hear leading tones resolved. So we've grown super accustomed to hearing these in music because it's been a staple of music for over 5 centuries.",
"Again, not really any type of scientific explanation, but an interesting video that is somewhat related. [Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale.](_URL_0_)"
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"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/216.abstract"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ne6tB2KiZuk"
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295ylr | how come every time i call a customer service help line the answering robot asks me to type in all of my account/personal information prior to speaking to a representative to "speed up the process", but then the customer service rep who answers asks for all the same information again anyway? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/295ylr/eli5_how_come_every_time_i_call_a_customer/ | {
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"I know a little bit about these systems. It's probably one of two things:\n\n1. The company had grand ideas about how their voice over IP (VOIP) project would work. Then they ran out of money before they got to the point where your information pops up on the rep's computer screen.\n\n2. The information that you enter is designed to get you to the appropriate rep.",
"Because the auto attendant (robot) isn't actually recording the information but is using it to route your call to the correct department. When you get to the representative for that department they have to get your correct information to help you out.",
"When I worked at Comcast, when people correctly followed the IVR instructions, their account automatically popped up in the billing system and troubleshooting tools. However, we still have to verify 3 points of information on the account to verify the caller for security. \n \nIt's still faster because it takes 5 seconds to verbally verify name address and last four digits of ssn, but it would take a good 2 minutes to get an account up loaded since people rarely know their account number and I have to search by address; which is annoying because the primary billing system was really intolerant if you typed in anything wrong..",
"Where I work it's done to verify that we're working on the correct account. If the IVR populates the wrong account for whatever reason ( our error or yours) then it would waste more time than just asking in the first place. As someone else stated, this is still all faster than us manually searching for the account once you get on the phone. ",
"So I'm a engineer at a company that designs and builds these systems for mid-to-large size organizations. Keeping to the ELI5... basically for us, when a person calls into the phone system there is software that needs to figure out where the call goes. The easiest way to do that is by first having a person hit an auto attendant (the robot that directs your call) which will then get the Caller to the correct department.\n\nHere's where what you're talking about happens: most times for larger businesses the group that you want to talk to handles thousands of calls every hour. To regulate, record and direct all of those calls they use some form of Call Center (IVR) software. This software delegates what calls go where and can also record information that's input, either by a voice-to-text or direct translation of the tones from a keypad being pressed.\n\nThis Call Center software, if it's good enough, can then run that information that gets input against another database (of Calling Parties' information) before sending it down to the person actually taking the call. In the event that you enter that information, and it's correct, the person already knows exactly who they're talking to, and likely (through a few menus into an integrated ticketing system if they're lucky) can see any information that you've ever had entered into the database whether that's other calls you've made, bills or your personal info. But! Generally speaking, due to laws and more often just common sense security practices places that handle your money will still want to verify that information on the line, which is why they'll ask you to just *confirm* parts of your information. If they're recording the calls, they want this out loud doubly so for legal reasons that are generally overly complex and vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - but that's another question (call recording laws are insane.)\n\nYou've probably noticed when you call some companies (banks come to mind) even if the system recognizes the number that you're calling from and gets your information automatically, they still ask you to confirm.\n\nThere's also the less obvious reasons, it's faster for the rep you actually speak to to load the information before the call is connected most of the time, some companies just want to occupy the callers on hold. We've created dummy \"surveys on hold\" just for that reason. Sometimes companies have a legal requirement (collection agencies), they could want to make sure that you just didn't hit random buttons and get lucky entering information... etc etc.\n\n**TLDR;** Companies want to be sure that you're not just someone else, and there's still a mistrust of automated systems. And from working on the things for a living (avoiding working on them at this exact moment actually) I can tell you - I don't trust the things either. Business is good.",
"The are many different reasons why this happens, but they fall into two general categories:\n\n1. Poor system design/implementation.\n2. Legal/Security policies\n\nIn the first case, someone may have designed the complete system, but only got the budget to implement part of it. So there is no connection between the PBX and the ERP/CMS system. Or the the two systems have not kept up with each other, etc. This is purely a failure of the company you are calling. I worked on Apple's very first system back in 1990, or so, and the phone system not only had your info on the phone's digital display, it could also connect to the HyperCard front end to our 4th Dimension database. The technology is not new or interesting. Failure to implement it properly is purely the failure of management to either improperly budget for it, or support it.\n\nIn the second instance, legal regulations exist around who can read/edit customer data. So sometimes some groups have to exist in a separate silo from each other. Duplicate systems, duplicate data, etc. Purely for stupid regulatory reasons.\n\nOr, in some cases, it is a security measure. Keep all the customer-facing systems over in that data center over there, and keep all of our financial systems in this data center over here. A physical separation between the systems makes it harder for hackers to gain access to both.\n\nI hope that answers your question!",
"Many times this is done to ensure that the customer has these things available and does not have to go looking for them. You are then asked what your information is to confirm you dialed the information in correctly.",
"I just keep pressing 0 or # a million times until I get someone. All of my problems can never be solved by the annoying fucking useless robots that you have to deal with on automated systems.\n\nIf 0 or # doesn't work then I usually hit up the GetHuman website and use their instructions for whoever I'm calling to get a human to speak to.",
"It is not their job to solve your problem. Their job is to make you so frustrated you give up. Problem solved - on their end.",
"ELI5 really has just become a general questions sub.",
"Keep pressing any key until you get the operator anyway.",
"I worked in a call center for years. We don't know.",
"This escalated quickly...",
"I actually manage a phone switch and deal with an IVR (answering robot) on a daily basis.\n\nThe IVR asks for all your personal information to record it and store it in a database. Analysts use this information to form reports on things such as:\n\n* First call resolution (e.g. How many times has this phone number called? Are they choosing the same options as before indicating the problem wasn't resolved the first time?) The agents who handled this call may be coached for not resolving the issue causing the customer to call again.\n\n* Caller trends (e.g. We got a thousand calls from area code 425 in the last hour and they're choosing the option on the IVR that says they're having internet connection issues). This would indicate a market outage.\n\n* Pass the data through to a CTI (computer telephony integration) application (e.g. You call in and give the answering robot your phone number, date of birth, and last 4 of social. This information is passed through to a CTI app which can automatically pre-populate fields when you reach an agent. In our setup, we use \"screen pops\" where all of the customer's information automatically pops up on the screen when the agent receives the call. \n\nWith all that being said, the agents who answer these calls generally verify the information is correct because people's phone numbers sometimes change and we sometimes need to verify that it's you calling (e.g. Customer calls in to change credit card on file. We can't just have anyone call in an alter someone's account). \n\nHopefully this helps! I love my job which allows me to design these interactions with callers. \n ",
"I can answer this! IVR (Interactive Voice Response) developer here!\n\nWhen you call into an organization, the voice robot asks you pertinent questions where based on your responses, routes your call to the correct department who will have the capability to respond to your call. I've seen it possible where this voice system will correctly route your call, but not pass along the information you have keyed in to your touch tone keypad to appear on the screen of the operator who is taking your call.\n\nSome companies have legacy IVR systems in place that used a hardware based design (Dialogic/Pika/Brooktrout) which are really expensive on a per line basis. They probably bought an out of the box solution that did a whole bunch of things, but did not interface with the CRM software that the agents use to interact with the customers that are calling in. *edit: They are probably still paying for this expensive hardware, and don't want to justify upgrading to a newer system that will pass along data until they have milked this system for all it's got - or - until it becomes EOL (end of life) and it's broken so much that they can't buy replacements/upgrades or get any support which will force them to move to another system.\n\nThe newer call center/IVR phone system software have connectors to allow to connect with the major customer service/relationship software that is out there - which will allow for data to be properly passed through onto the agents screen.\n\nHope this answers your question :)\n\n",
"I used to work for Capital One, the credit card company. (I was an outsourced agent working for a contracted company)\n\nBasically if you put the information in correctly, the software will load your account. However in order for me to continue with the call, we have to verify at least one point of private information. Like your SSN, Mother's maiden, etc. It's basically to assure us that you are who you say you are. As the service agent, we're technically only allowed to provide service to the account holder. Verbally confirming that information on the line records it with the phone call, giving the service agent protection in the event someone else called in and made changes to the account. Because they verified that information with the caller, VERBALLY, they can assume the speaker is the account holder and be protected that way.\n\nThis is why if you switch phones to someone else, we have to let them know that this call may be recorded... and why we can't speak to them about the account unless we verify that person's identity. \n\nNow if you don't put this information in when the IVR asks you for it, the account does not display. Hopefully in this situation you're comfortable giving your full SSN to a real person, or full account number. If not, I have to search for your account by address, name, and phone. Then I have to verify that private information anyway. \n\nThe problem is that when I have to find you using that information, and you have a shitty connection (Hardly ever on our side, we're on the phones all day. It's important they sound good to our customers.) it's hard to get that information right the first time. The software's searching ability is shit in a nutshell. (It's so fucking bad.) \n\nThe real joke in this, is that after I finally get into your account after whatever pain in the fucking ass ride we've had to go through to get there (Because you're scared of giving out that information to me, or your phone sucks balls) I SEE ALL OF YOUR ACCOUNT INFORMATION ANYWAY. It's not blocked out for me. It's all there, plain for me to read.\n\nSSN, DOB, Full Name, Address, Transactions (ILF Inc., CC Bill, EPOCH for starters if you think your life is private, and yes, we know) If you provided it to the company in some way, it's there for me to see. Because of that, we usually work in secured buildings that require badged access. I'm the absolute last person that will be stealing your identity, I assure you. I'd be caught almost instantly.\n\n\nI never started my calls hating my customers. By the end of the call they wouldn't have ever guessed that I was capable of being angry. But god damn people are fucking retarded sometimes.",
"Because companies are fucking stupid & horribly inefficient, in general.",
"b/c fuck you, that is why "
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2dfvqi | what is isis and why does their flag look like a child made it? | [Flag](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dfvqi/eli5_what_is_isis_and_why_does_their_flag_look/ | {
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"The flag is known as the \"Black Standard\", and is part of Islamic tradition.\n\nThe text at the top of the flag is known as the \"Shahada\", and is a transliteration of \"There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet\"\n\nThe symbol at the bottom of the flag is the Seal of Muhammad - this was a symbol that Muhammad inscribed into letters he wrote to leaders of Byzantium, Persia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and Kashmir during Islam's earliest days.\n\nThe flag as a whole has been around for about as long as Islam itself: Muhammad used a similar flag as a symbol of his conquests, specifically to contrast himself to the Roman traditions regarding flags and standards of their own legions.",
"The link you posted was to a Wikipedia article about them. I would read that to answer your initial question. \n\n_URL_0_",
"ISIS is an extremist Muslim group that believes that anyone that doesn't adhere to their version of Islam should die. They have captured territories in Iraq and Syria.\n\nThey are Sunni. If they catch a Shi'ite Muslim ( not Sunni ), they behead the Muslim. If they capture a non-Muslim, they behead the person or sells them as slaves.\n\nISIS is much worse than any Islamic Terrorist group so far, they make Al-Qaeda look like pansies.\n\nIf you look at a map that shows different religious groups in Iraq and Syria and compare it with ISIS' territories, you'll notice they haven't really made any conquests outside of mainly Sunni areas. They differ from Al-Qaeda in that they only attack people near their territories. Al-Qaeda attacked people from all over the world.\n\nThe difference between Sunnis and Shi'ite is a bit like the difference between Catholics and Protestants. They believe basically the same thing, but have a few differences that are blown out of proportion.\n\n[See Wikipedia for the differences between the two groups.](_URL_0_)\n",
" > why does their flag look like a child made it\n\nPrepare for a fatwa in your name!",
"Alright, I know we're not supposed to post links, but ISIS is complicated and I find it's easier to understand something with pretty moving pictures.\n\nBut first a little bit of background information. ISIS is a terrorist group that used to be tied with Al Qaeda in Iraq and was funded by Saudi Arabia. A number of factors came together allowing them to rapidly gain influence, and they began setting up a brutal Islamic state in parts of Iraq and Syria (thus ISIS or **I**slamic **S**tate of **I**raq and **S**yria). They were so brutal that even Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda cut off tied with them.\n\n[This](_URL_1_) is a nicely animated summary of ISIS and does a pretty good job of explaining the crisis in an easy to understand way. This is really all you need, but if you want more information I have a few more videos.\n\n[This](_URL_5_) is another simple video explanation, but without as much pretty animation, and a little more detailed.\n\n[This](_URL_2_) is a slightly more complicated in-depth version of events by an editor of Vox Media.\n\n[This](_URL_6_) explains the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims is you're curious. You don't really need to know any of this to understand ISIS, but it's kinda interesting.\n\nObama has recently authorized airstrikes against ISIS if they cross into the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq.\n\n[This](_URL_3_) explains that in a little more detail what this means for Iraq and Obama's motivation for doing it.\n\n[This](_URL_0_) is a short explaination of who the Kurds are. Again not strictly necessary knowledge, but it does help provide some background.\n\nFinally I have no more fancy videos, but I'll leave you with a (admittedly long and boring) [article](_URL_4_) on the prospect of Kurdistan, and how it might bring some stability to the region (hopefully).\n\nHope this helps!",
"Upside down, the letters on the flag spell \"nimimimp\""
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"http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-stars-have-aligned-for-kurdistan/193654/",
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23xal7 | this online post that i don't understand. help me out if you are feeling generous! | A 4chan thing that read:
> screencap desktop > use the image as wallpaper > delete shortcuts > "Anon I have a virus again I can't click anything" > Get $50 everytime > Do this few times a year
I do not understand how someone can get money from this? Maybe I am missing from whose perspective this is all happening, but could some nice person explain it real quick? Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23xal7/eli5_this_online_post_that_i_dont_understand_help/ | {
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"You create a problem, and then get paid to fix it. If you make them think they have a virus by making everything unclickable and they know that you're good with computers, they will ask you to fix it. You can then fix the problem you created with ease, and charge them $50 for fixing it. Profit!"
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arh80h | why does music give so many people pleasure? is there a dopamine release in there somewhere, and if so how does a purely auditory input cause it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arh80h/eli5_why_does_music_give_so_many_people_pleasure/ | {
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"There is a theory that it’s not just music (the sound), but the human emotion/presence that gives us our cue to feel a certain way. We can recognize a “sad” voice and also feel sad. \n\nBut if this is true it doesn’t explain why we feel emotion for instrumental music...unless we’re smart enough to realize without visual proof that there is a human touching piano keys or plucking a string. Unless the sounds are also replicating the sounds a person makes...mournful cries or happy shrieks...and we continue to reflect the intended emotion interpreting the instrument as the voice of a human. ",
"Composers use special mayor/ minor harmonic tones/strains to instill “happy, obscure, bright or melancholic” feelings in melodies. I am not a composer, but my son is, and I am a psychologist. When you listen attentively to music -different genres- you can feel the different moods music can provoke. It is a very sophisticated yet basic, biochemical, semiotic, and cognitive language. So it can provoke, evoke, carry and provide an open path to all sorts of meanings and feelings in our personal web of memories and associations. A very uniquely private process of “reading and interpretation”, which you can share. Sheer magic!"
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62y3gw | how/why do dryer balls work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62y3gw/eli5_howwhy_do_dryer_balls_work/ | {
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"Theoretically, the dryer ball stops the fabric from sticking to itself, so when you run it through the dryer, it fluffs up instead of just flopping around stuck together. Whether it actually does lead to softer clothes is still under debate.\n\nPopular Mechanics ran an article on this that you can read here: _URL_0_"
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52hhc5 | why did microsoft decide to skip windows 9? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52hhc5/eli5_why_did_microsoft_decide_to_skip_windows_9/ | {
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"Windows 95 and 98 were DOS-based, unlike all Windows versions released since(with the exception of ME). Much of the old software that supports older windows versions checks if it needs to enable legacy DOS support mode by checking if windows version string starts with \"Windows 9\". Releasing Windows 9 would then be a massive pain in the butt because it could throw many programs into legacy mode, many of those being closed source(so others can't patch them), and author may have abandoned them as well.\n\nI don't think anyone knows for sure though, MS has not officially commented on this afaik"
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2js7ot | why is the recent drop in gas prices a bad indicator for the overall economy? | I tried to read several news articles about this, but none of them actually explain it.
**Edit:** To clarify, I have a pretty good understanding of *why* the price is going down. Supply/demand, speculation, liberal conspiracy theories and all that jazz. My question is how does this impact the economy negatively, as so many news articles seem to indicate? In other words, what are the consequences of all this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2js7ot/eli5_why_is_the_recent_drop_in_gas_prices_a_bad/ | {
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"Saudis driving price down to make shale production not worth it, from another reddit thread about a prince bitching.",
"The recent drop in gas prices is a function of continued US production growth and the reluctance of OPEC countries to reduce oil output.\n\nI believe the recent volatility in equity markets is based on global growth concerns, not cheaper fuel.",
"Gas prices are down because oil prices are down.\n\nOil prices are down because there's less demand for oil.\n\nOil is a major input for a huge amount of bellwether economic activities (esp transportation and manufacturing). Less demand for oil strongly suggests that less of those economic activities are happening, which is bad news.",
"It's because oil prices are a fairly good indicator for how well people think the economy is doing. \n\nThe central idea is that everyone, and every business uses some form oil to conduct operations. As such, higher oil prices tend to reflect an increase in business activity and lower prices reflect a slow down. (if 1 million people lose their jobs, commutes are reduced, production is reduced, demand for oil falls and then prices fall.)\n\nNow the tricky part is that the oil price you see on TV is actually the price a few months down the road. The oil price displayed on the news is what's know as an oil future, basically someone is buying a contract to receive oil a few months from now at whatever the price is expected/predicted to be. This allows for a magnified effect on oil prices due to the effect of speculated trades.\n\nThese trades are purely based on what an investor think the price of oil will be. They reach this conclusion by looking at data from various economic sources in order to gauge the economy and then buy/sell oil based on what they think will happen next. These trades then have a huge effect as the increase/decrease in price will only encourage more speculative trade that will further fuel the price increase/decrease.\n\n**TL;DR: Overall gas prices themselves don't necessarily have a large impact on the economy, but the economy has a large impact on gas prices, that's why so many people look to it in order to gauge economic performance.** \n\n**Oil is a good indicator for how well the global economy is doing, but the \"indicator\" can be affected due to speculative trading.**",
"As it's been explained to me...global demand is falling. US production is rising. OPEC has noticed a decrease in demand and has stepped up production, reducing prices. OPEC wants us to rely on oil like we did in the 90's. \n\nI haven't heard that its a reflection of a bad economy though. Actually a positive. But then again, I follow liberal media which loves to hype how well the economy is doing when its not. So I'll be following responses closely.",
"It's all about oil futures and speculation. If people think there is going to be lower economic activity, the price of oil will go down in the future when less is needed relative to supply. Hence the price of oil is an indicator of expected demand in the overall economy.",
"Also take into consideration that gas prices always go down in election years. So it would be better to wait to see what prices do closer to the end of the year if you want to make any kind of judgment.",
"I may be too late to the party, but here's the basic logic. Oil prices have fallen. Gas is a refined product of oil, hence gas prices move in tandem with oil prices. A fall in the price of oil can be either due to a) a positive supply 'shock' or b) a negative demand 'shock' (think of 'shock' as 'change', if it sounds weird to you). Because the price of oil has fallen in a very short period of time, the fall has been interpreted as b) a negative demand shock. A negative demand shock does not only affect the price of oil, but the entire economy. Less demand translates to less economic activity, which is the definition of 'bad for the economy'. Oil happens to be one of the first signs of a negative demand shock, which is why it is an important observation. The negative impact on the economy isn't visible until the next batch of GDP data, etc. is released, and even then is subject to later revisions. So when people say, 'lower gas prices are bad for the economy', they sort of short circuit the entire argument; the result is indeed a counterintuitive statement.",
"A large portion of industry is tied to energy. Whether you're working directly for an energy company, you're a vendor to an energy company, or you're supplying components/raw materials to said vendors. When you disincentivize the energy industry to continue to spend money...everyone hurts.",
"You have the reasons backwards: it's not that high oil prices are good for the economy, it's that a good economy causes high oil prices.\n\nEverything in a modern economy uses oil. We burn oil to make electricity, and that powers everything from productive machinery in factories to computers in offices to lights in stores. Also, physical products are made in one place and then moved to other places where they are sold, and that movement happens on the backs of trucks or trains which run on gasoline (made from oil). When economies are running strong, lots of economic activity is happening, and that means they are using lots of oil. Using lots of oil means buying lots of oil. When lots of people are trying to buy lots of oil, producers can't keep up -- lots of people want the product but there isn't enough to go around, so the buyers wind up pushing its price up, Up, UP. So lots of economic activity tends to cause oil prices to rise.\n\nRight now, oil prices are low, and some people think that means the opposite of what I said is happening -- a weak economy means we're using little oil, which is causing its price to fall. It's a SYMPTOM of a bad economy, not a CAUSE of one.",
"I think a lot of people are confusing the way oil is used as an indicator. The price of oil is an indicator for the prospective trend of where the GLOBAL economy is heading. Now a lot of people are upset by people dissecting why the price of oil changed, but that's important to understand. The U.S has been drastically expanding the supply of oil produced, the middle-east is currently stabilizing trending the fact OPEC might loosen up the price of oil per barrel hence the decrease in the future price of oil per barrel.\n\nThe reduction in the price of oil I assume, hey economics is all assumptions anyway, will lead consumers to feel richer so oil isn't always the best indicator for specific domestic economies.\n\nThe indicator of the Global economy by the cost of oil shows the lessening of oil used for production. Many South American and Central American countries where their economies had done **somewhat** better than expected throughout the great recessions are now seeing their economies start to slump. Similarly with other countries in part of Europe. This shows that these countries which were once producing heavily to take advantage of the global slump by major world powers are now using less\n\n* Gasoline for transportation\n* Gasoline for energy by firms in production\n* Lowers incentive for vacationing, traveling, or the opportunity cost of hiring a worker who may need to travel reducing total gas bought\n\nThe list could continue on forever, but it shows an important piece of the global puzzle. People are not moving as quickly, which means people are not producing as quickly, which means people aren't earning as quickly, which means people are not buying as much gasoline or oil as previously.\n\nThe important thing to differentiate is the price of oil's impact on predicting the economy of the U.S domestically or predicting the state of the Global economy. \n\nTL;DR Countries which were doing well while the rest of us weren't throughout the recession are now producing far less shown by oil purchases declining globally, the U.S economy is rejoicing with the oil fall since consumers feel better purchasing gas, firms current production can equate to expected future cost of oil by investors ",
"It's not. People who don't like a carbon based economy are biased and will lie because it's politically motivated and all the blah blah talking heads are political shills. The greatest economic periods in US history have coincided with low gas prices. A bunch of recessions have coincided with higher gas prices. It's bad for Texas and North Dakota because they will not have the profits, but tough titty.",
"It's not; that's called an opinion. It's what gives economists a job.",
"OK, I've worked in energy policy for a long time and would like to address a fundamental misunderstanding that your question indicates. And this is a misunderstanding that the vast majority of people labor under. \n\n*There is no such thing as a single, unitary* **price** *of oil*. \n\nThere are many, many different grades of crude oil on the market, each of which sells for a different price based on its characteristics. For most of these grades, there isn't even a specific market available. Instead, the industry uses what is called \"formula pricing.\" There are large supplies of certain grades of crude oil which are sold in large enough quantities to be used as \"benchmark grades.\" West Texas Intermediate, Brent (now actually expanded to be an average of Brent, Forties, Oseberg, and Ekofisk, all North Sea crudes), and Dubai-Oman are the most common benchmarks. \n\nWhen an oil producer pumps non-benchmark crude, they calculate the gravity and sulfur content of the crude, and compare it to a benchmark, calculating the value of their specific grade based off the benchmark. \n\nNow the oil market, is really, really weird. You can't just walk down to the oil store and pick up a barrel. So there's no real time market for oil as we commonly conceive of it. There's no \"spot\" market in the economic parlance. Nearly all oil is sold under long-term contracts. Way back when the Seven Sisters dominated the oil market, there was no free market at all for oil, so the oligopoly sort of made prices up as they went along. Nowadays we have what's called \"market-related pricing.\" \n\nThe way the price of oil under a long-term contract is determined is... complicated. Generally an individual contract price is based off the futures market and/or the prices reported by Price Reporting Agencies (PRAs) such as Argus. Argus gets its prices from a formula taking into account futures prices and self-reporting by physical oil traders. The futures markets are places where people sign contracts agreeing to sell oil at a set price sometime in the future. Generally people do this to control their exposure to changes in the price of oil.\n\nWhen you hear about \"the price of oil\" in the news, generally they're talking about either the futures price for settlement this month or the PRA price. The problem is that these prices may not have much to do with what the actual cost of a barrel of oil to a refinery is. First of all, it's almost always a benchmark price being reported, and benchmark prices may not be representative of the price being charged for the overall mix of grades on the market. Demand for a light sweet crude like WTI may be much higher than for a heavy sour like Alberta tar sands oil because the refinery capacity for light sweet is much more developed. \n\nThe price on the futures market may also be distorted. The futures market represents a tiny fraction of the oil trade going on at any given time. Presumably market mechanisms will correct the futures price if it begins to decouple from the underlying demand too much, but there is some evidence that that might not always be the case. \n\nTLDR: The media discusses oil as if it is a unitary, homogeneous market, when in fact it is highly fragmented and complex. Everyone assumes that arbitrage perfectly smooths out this fragmentation when there is a lot of evidence that it doesn't. There is no one price of oil and it is nigh on impossible to make economic predictions based solely on a short-term swing in oil prices. ",
"I lived for a couple of years in the middle east recently and back in mid 2013 most of the countries there saw the writing on the wall as far as oil prices. for example Saudi Arabia and Kuwait most of their work force are third country nationals. both countries at that time started to lower their work force by the millions as they saw what was gonna happen with fracking way before we\n did in general in the U.S.",
"The assertion that it's a bad indicator is not necessarily true. This is, in fact, probably very good for the US which is now the largest producer of oil in the world. This is really bad for countries like Venezuela, Russia, et. al. because their government revenue largely comes from oil sales.\n\nSo, the real question is WHY are oil prices dropping? Largely because the US continues to increase supply. A secondary factor is reduced demand typical at the end of the summer. But also, Saudi Arabia (the second largest oil producer in the world) is probably NOT going to reduce supply.\n\nThen the question is WHY is Saudi Arabia not going to reduce supply? Because the last time OPEC (A group of oil producing countries) decided to cut production, Saudi Arabia was the only one that actually DID. As far as they're concerned, it's someone else's turn.\n\nFurthermore, Russia's economy and government revenue is heavily tied to its oil exports. Almost half of Russia's federal revenue comes from oil and gas sales. One could speculate that behind-the-scenes negotiations are encouraging the Saudi's and others to continue increasing production and driving down the price of oil to destabilize Russia.\n\nAs for arguments that the US will reduce production at the lower prices, this is actually quite unlikely because of the way the wells are financed. \n\nThe argument here is that $80/barrel is the cost to develop a well and extract the oil from that well. This may be true and the development of new wells may slow down over time if oil prices remain at current or lower levels. But wells can take years to develop, so any wells already approved will continue that process. \n\nFor wells already drilled, the incremental cost to extract each additional barrel of oil is WAY below $80/barrel. And, these wells are financed. Even it the incremental cost of extracting a barrel of oil is $50 and oil drops to $40, if the well stops production it will continue to pay it's permits, equipment and financing, so they will be losing a lot of money. If they continue production, they lose less money.",
"Oil prices are being driven down by America's renewed oil production. Basic supply and demand: Supply has increased, so prices go down, more is consumed.\nThis is bad for Canada because the Alberta oil, and I think the NF offshore, has higher production costs than most of these American restarts (yay frakking).\n/u/lightningbrick has an interesting point, but I don't know/think that that's the case here",
"Personally it strikes me as a great big game of \"where's the cheese?\"\n\nMeaning every time prices go up, it's a bad sign. Every time prices go down, it's a bad sign. Every time prices fail to move upwards or downwards, it's a bad sign.\n\nReality is, when prices change, someone wins and someone loses. \n\nAnd further, because prices of most commodities go through a commodities market which tends to adjust present prices based on how people feel about the future, any change in price can be seen as \"bad\": prices go up because of a belief there will be inadequate supplies in the future, they go down because people believe in the future the economy will slump.\n\nIn other words, when prices change, someone thinks someone is going to win and someone is going to lose in the future.\n\nMakes my head hurt. ",
"Honestly I know there is a more complex and thorough explanation of what is happening with our economy. But for me, its pretty obvious that it's because the people in the higher up positions have deprived hard working lower level people of a reasonable wage. I'm not talking regular retail associates or fast food workers, I'm talking about skilled workers. I went to college to turn my hobby/skill of video editing and web design into a more marketable skill and to learn how to be a videographer. I'm good at making sure things look perfect or almost perfect and thats what I generally focus on doing quality professional work. I've been employed now for over 4 years at the same company and I'm only up to just around 34k per year without benefits. The market is really competitive and I've gotten interview for better jobs with benefits but nothing amounts to anything and I mostly just pick up odd freelance jobs to make more spending money. I can generally cover my bills per month but its always paycheck to paycheck and I usually pay my minimum payment so its a vicious cycle of not being able to afford things that I need let alone want. My boss/owner is making tons of money, in other realms not just this marketing company, but there are only three people working here including him. Business is slow a lot of the times because companies are cutting costs and going in house for a lot of what we do really well for a good price. So even at our lower rates people are hesitant because of budgets. This has all come from our bad economy, I didn't work here before that but from what I've been told they used to have a constant workflow and not just one-offs or clients doing stuff for 6-12 months then being done. So theres no real way for me to advance here or to make more money because half or more than half of my time is regularly spent not working on client work. This makes it really hard for me to go out and spend any kind of money on anything other than food, gas and maybe having fun one maybe two weekends per month. Its very depressing to not be able to do what I want, especially when I see people that don't do as high of quality work just having a good 'ol time with their disposable income. \n\nTL;DR: The Higher ups have cut costs and made budgets so tight that their hard working skilled workers don't have disposable income. Some of whom have to pay credit for necessities and get into a vicious cycle of only making minimum payments or just breaking even. ",
"\"... Drop in gas prices?\" -California",
" The best quote on economists I ever read was,\" If you lay all the Economists in the word end to end , you still would not reach a conclusion\". The big reason gas prices are down is because of the increase in domestic production of oil due to new technologies-(fracking).\n",
"Gas prices as an indicator can be due to falling demand. If gas prices are going down because there is less demand for gas, that is an indication that manufacturing and transportation of consumer goods is down.\n\nGas prices being low because of an excess of supply is good for the non-oil, non-energy economy. Companies can produce things more cheaply, and transport them more cheaply.\n\nThe problem? Excess supply and low demand are basically the same thing. It's just a matter of what the driver is. This is largely up to debate, but most people seem to be of the opinion that shale oil is a large part of the cause of excess supply.\n\nSome OPEC nations want to cut production in response. Saudi Arabia's government (Oil Minister) wants to keep production levels at current levels to avoid losing market share. At least one member of Saudi Arabia's royal family (Prince al Waleed bin Talal) prefers to keep prices high in order to avoid draining reserves (both financial and oil), which the country spends on its social programs. Iran, unable to access financial markets, of course wants to cut production of a commodity it is currently having trouble selling. If more sanctions on Russia put a squeeze on energy supplies, it may become a moot point. Prices will rise anyway.",
"The Shale boom and the jobs that came with it were enough to turn the country around after the \"great recession.\" Without it, we'd be in a world of hurt right now.\n\nFolks really don't understand the economy or global politics. They don't see what's happening and don't have the patience or moderation to take the time. It's interesting to watch, but tiring to explain.\n\nHopefully it stays at or near $80 or we're heading down as a country again. The pressure will continue to rise on the middle class and you'll have a longer lost generation.\n\nThe Saudis want to know what we're willing to take right now. Most American companies want to know what the bottom is too, so these next couple of years should prove interesting.",
"It's not bad for the economy per se, it actually will stimulate more activity since oil is energy and all activities require energy. The rub is that if a particular economy or government relies on oil revenues it will make it harder for them. Since some of those economies are on the brink of default or are engines for global growth it could potentially have an overall negative effect. ",
"This article may explain the fluctuation of gas prices between seasons as well. I didn't know until recently that they have seasonal blends of gasoline and the winter blend is cheaper. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Oil prices are down because the US has been producing more oil, more recently with oil shales, and OPEC has so far decided not to raise prices. This has very little to do with the economy (at least in the US).\n\nHere is a good explanation:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Can we just agree that there are some things you can't explain to a 5 year old?",
"Hey America, fancy sending some of your freedom juice over here? The UK and (much) of Europe could *reeeeally* use a price drop I don't think downing street got this memo.\n\nLove your big brother, \n\nEngland.",
"What the news articles are hinting at is that lowering of gas prices leads to \"deflation,\" which is the opposite of inflation. In simple terms, inflation means prices going up and money worth less as time goes on. This isn't generally a problem because wages also tend to go up with these price increases. Deflation is seen as a major problem because as time goes on, money is actually worth *more* and prices *decrease*, which seems like a good thing at first, but think of the consequences: if a price is $1000 today, but $995 tomorrow, and $950 next week, wouldn't you keep waiting until the best price? Deflation discourages spending because people will hold off on purchases to get the best possible deal, which leads to loss of jobs because no one is spending money to pay for the salaries of these workers. There are other consequences (borrowing becoming more expensive instead of cheaper, etc.) but this is the primary issue. \n\nHowever, these concerns are a bit overblown; Oil is seen as a volatile commodity (it changes prices extremely often) and as such, isn't even used in the Consumer Price Index, which is one of the most cited sources of measuring inflation/deflation. The news outlets are extremely misleading in saying that a decrease in oil prices indicates deflation. Is it possible? Sure. Japan had a cycle of deflation recently that really tanked its economy. Is it likely? Hardly. Gas prices fluctuate naturally based on supply and demand, and are often bought on futures contracts (which in of itself is a different issue), so the prices were decided well ahead of time. Often, gas prices today are the result of supply/demand/other circumstances that occurred months ago. \n\n**TL;DR: News outlets imply that falling gas prices indicate deflation, which is bad, but it doesn't. Deflation means prices for everything go down so people won't spend as much to wait for the best deal, but gas prices are kind of their own thing and don't really affect the index that measures inflation/deflation.**",
"it's not and it is. Some people believe consumption is good. For others, conservation of resources is good. neither is right, neither is wrong. ",
"Economist here. I hope this helps: \n\n**Some basic background in economics**\n\nThe price of oil is determined by supply and demand. \n\nThe supply curve comes from the produces of oil. Some oil is very cheap to produce, like Texas crude oil. Some oil is more expensive, like from offshore drills. Some is very expensive, like oil that comes from tar sands (you literally boil tarry sand so that the tar melts off the sand and can be collected -- this uses a lot of energy and is very expensive). If not much oil is demanded, then all of the demanded oil can be produced with the cheap sources, and the price is low. If a lot of oil is demanded then you need to use the expensive methods as well and so the price of oil will be high. This makes the *supply curve* -- draw a line through these difference price points with quantity on the x-axis and price on the y-axis; it slopes upwards, reflecting that higher quantities requires more expensive production resulting in higher prices. \n\nOn the other hand, the demand for oil comes from consumers and industry. Oil is use for automobiles, for transporting freight (diesel trucks, trains, and tankers), for generating electricity, for making plastics, etc. Like with the supply curve, oil is more valuable for some uses than others. If the price of oil is low, it will be used for many things -- people will commute by car, people will go on long road trips, factories will produce more goods or refine more metals while it is cheap to do so. If the price is high, then firms and individuals use oil only on what is most essential -- for example, people might commute but they won't go on long road trips. This makes the *demand curve* -- this line slopes downwards, reflecting that only the most valuable applications use oil if it is scarce but many less valuable applications use oil if it is abundant. \n\nDemand and supply curves can shift. If, for example, additional cheap oil is discovered, this will shift out the supply curve -- oil will have a lower price at the same quantity demanded. Similarly, a booming economy, where consumers have lots of money to spend on travel and firms are willing to spend more to ship or produce their goods, will drive up the demand for oil -- the price of oil goes up if quantity his held constant. \n\n**Now to answer your question**\n\nIf the price of oil drops, it can be for two reasons: either the demand for oil has dropped, or the supply of cheap oil has increased. If the demand has dropped, then the quantity of oil consumed should drop as well; if supply has increased, then the quantity of oil consumed should increase as well. \n\nIf people are worried about a drop in oil price, it is because they think the demand for oil has dropped, which could easily come from a recession. Another possibility is that increase production of cheap natural gas in the US acts like an increase in production of cheap oil, because many firms can use natural gas instead (like power plants). \n\n ",
"If you are in a nation heavily invested in oil exportation: yes\nIf you are in a nation heavily invested in oil importation: no",
"It is not necessarily a bad indicator for the overall economy, is actually a good indicator because the costs of production and distribution go down along with the obvious savings at the pump. The main reason they have gone down is the worldwide demand is decreasing partially for economic reasons also decreased consumption from Japan. Remember Japan had has been buying a lot of oil after their Nuclear reactors were shut down following the Tsunami. Some of those reactors are scheduled to be restarted soon and that will reduce their demand for oil.\n\nAnother HUGE reason the prices have come down is Saudi Arabia has increased production. Despite protests from other OPEC members the Saudi are increasing output anyway. Nobody outside the Saudi government is really sure why but I read an article a few days ago that suggests the Saudi's are trying to drive the price of oil down to a level that will force the US to buy oil on the international market instead of oil produced in the US. The recent sure in US oil production is the result of new extraction techniques (hydraulic fracking) which are very expensive. When oil was cheaper it was not economically viable to extract the tight oil from the ground in the US. I believe the article quoted the cost of a barrel of oil produced in the US with the new fracking techniques is around $90 a barrel. When oil was in the $100 barrel range it was cheaper to produce domestic oil. It also created many jobs.\n\nIf the Saudi's get the international price below $90 they will gain more control over the oil market. They’ll also cripple parts of US oil production industry.\nHow the negative consequences of a depleted domestic oil production industry compare to the benefit of cheaper oil remain to be seen.",
"I have a friend who works for data-intelligence company. They're the ones that have the little solar panel on every pole in town with a box attached to it. There are similar monitors on roads, pipelines, etc. They sell info to the energy companies... anyway, she says this...\n\nFor years the supply and demand pricing has been set by weather and seasonal activity market predictions of consumer behavior. Meaning more commercial and consumer movement for pleasure/business during the warmer months lead to increase in pricing even if the supply did not fall short of the demand. What is happening now is the industry responding to market movement through actual supply and demand data to price petroleum. A few key things have forced this change:\n1. The E \"Blend Wall\" isn't as scary as some people predicted.\n2. Adoption of ethanol and biodiesel blends in certain key states like Oregon, Minnesota (during certain months), and the heating oil law in 5 Northeastern states.\n3. Increased market supply and pricing transparency demanded by key players entering the space with new renewables\n4. Standards in place by the RFS2 and solidified by final ruling Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs). It is becoming more cost effective for petroleum refiners to blend and produce renewable fuels instead of only purchasing credits as an offset to their traditional refined products.\n5. Better understanding of domestic supply which has lead to a decrease in foreign import which was sometimes habitual and not in response to S/D.. This one is crucial as it allows for more flexibility and transparency in the nature of pricing because less concern of margins.\n6. War. Fewer resources being stretched oversees.\nGet used to the industry having to use actual data to determine pricing. However, this will not always translate to lower prices. You will probably never see anything in the sub $2.00 range again simply because production costs have not decreased. You are seeing lower prices that are still within profitable margins for the industry.",
"\"growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell\" -Ed Abbey",
"Lower oil prices are great for most people and most countries, as has been discussed. For a few countries it hurts on the margins, but those countries got along fine with $10 and $20 oil as well. Supply concerns are important, but also don't lose the story that precipitously falling oil prices assuredly reflect the realized and expected slowdown in EM growth and European growth. A long-term slowdown in the world economy could be a destabilizing event in an environment of the U.S. pulling away from the role of global peace copy. May be a scary omen of shitty growth and small, frequent wars. But as long as you're isolated from that, your energy will be cheaper which will offer a prop under consumption growth. Would you trade a few bps of better consumption growth for a more dangerous world for 10 years?",
"An implicit assumption in this question is that the falling gas prices are an indicator of economic downturn. I'm not so sure about that. Fluctuations in crude oil prices and crude oil futures markets are affected by an infinite list of currents events, ephemeral public and insider opinion, and random happenings, just like any market. I mistrust most market gurus who claim any certain knowledge of the why's and how come's in global economic trends. Furthermore, I consider and there are many economists that consider falling gas prices to be an economic stimulus. When households can spend less on gas, they have more expendable income. We also know that food prices rise and fall with gas prices too. This creates more consumer spending. The great thing about the poor and much of the middle class these days, is that when they get more money in their pockets, they spend the majority of it - because they must. Most people have been cutting their unnecessary spending, but would love to regain some creature comforts, vices, or pastimes. So I'm quite happy that gas prices are dropping.",
"ISIS blue light special undermines OPEC monopoly lol",
"Oil prices are set in world markets. To repeat (because many of us Americans forget this): **Oil prices are set in world markets**.\n\nRight now two things are happening in world markets that are pushing oil prices down. First, global growth is lower than expected (esp in China and Europe); that hits demand. Second, the dollar has strengthened recently against most other currencies, and when this happens commodity prices (which are set in world markets) tend to fall in dollar terms, in order to remain closer to where they should be when expressed in other currencies.\n\nThat's it. The Fed, Obama, taxes, fracking etc have little or nothing to do with it (except their indirect effect via supply and demand on world markets).",
"How do businesses move shit around? Cars.\n\nWhat do cars need to move shit around? Gas. \n\n",
"Is not OPEC for the most part does US isn't part of OPEC they decided not to cut production to see where the bottom is This time of year it falls anyway this time around its going to fall till USA cuts back problem is when we shut wells down it takes a very long time till they can get up and running again elections just happen to be in the same time of year that we come out of summer driving \n\n\n\n",
"All Bullshit. Gas is going down because motherfuckers drive less in the goddamned winter. \n\nStop tryin to read so much Harvardism into every little fuckin thing. ",
" The best quote on economists I ever read was,\" If you lay all the Economists in the word end to end , you still would not reach a conclusion\". The big reason gas prices are down is because of the increase in domestic production of oil due to new technologies-(fracking).\n",
"Falling prices is a bad indicator because it means demand is low which is usually because of a lousy economy. It's a bit more complex than that though because high prices act as a drag on the economy. So gas prices are both an indicator and a factor affecting the economy. "
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2roo1g | why are minorities always talked about as if they are a single, homogeneous group? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2roo1g/eli5_why_are_minorities_always_talked_about_as_if/ | {
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"This subreddit has become nothing but a medium to faux-innocently pose extremely complex questions in an incredibly leading way in order to push a political viewpoint."
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uz9wb | matlab programming | I don't get programming in general, and since my school uses MATLAB, I figured it would be easier to learn through this medium. For some reason, it just doesn't click for me. I mean, I can do the basic "hello world" and whatnot, but that's pretty much it. My professors, friends, and tutors have all tried explaining it to me, but it just seems like I'm reading gibberish (I blame my brain for being a hands-on learner). Even writing simple codes on my TI 84 took me *hours* to figure out, even w the help of the interwebs. I'm pretty sure it's because I have absolutely no idea what the commands do (like manipulating for loops and all that jazz) and therefore can't seem to comprehend it.. I really would love to learn since it's a very useful skill to have, plus it gives me a sense of accomplishment every time I write a program that works because of how much work it took for me to get there. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uz9wb/eli5_matlab_programming/ | {
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"The key is that programming is all centered around logic. Let's play out a scenario. I won't use actual code because that's not the question at hand, I just want to lay the ground for logic.\n\nWhile I'm in school I need to learn. If I'm learning then leave me alone, otherwise throw a book at me.\n\n\nwhile school = true;\n\n if study;\n\n leave me alone;\n\n else;\n\n throw a book at me;\n\nend\n\n\nYou want to constantly check if you're in school, so you create a loop to ask the same question over and over. If you're not in school, then you'll end the loop. If you are in school, then you'll enter the loop and move on to the next question. If you're studying, then the program will leave you alone for a brief instance then the loop will repeat (aka, ask if you're in school). If you're not studying, then the program will immediately throw a book at you. After throwing the book, the program will ask you again if you're in school. At this point the loop repeats."
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2lnnv0 | the mathematical algorithm which optimizes an elevator system. | For example, say there are two people:
* person one: on floor 3, wants to go to floor 2
* person two: on floor 4, wants to go to floor 2
Person one on floor 3 clicks the 'down' button first. Elevator comes, person one gets in. Then person two on floor 4 clicks the 'down button'.
The elevator would go down to floor 2 to drop person 1 off first, but why doesn't the elevator go up to floor 4 to pick up person two first, and then drop both off at floor 2? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lnnv0/eli5_the_mathematical_algorithm_which_optimizes/ | {
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"You're overthinking it.\n\nElevators are usually very simplistic unless you're dealing with super-high rise buildings.\n\nWhen the elevator decides it's moving up, it keeps going up until there no more up to go. When it moves down, it keeps going down. It only needs two things in memory - which direction am I moving & which floors do I need to stop at.\n\nDoing anything else might take less movement but people don't like to feel trapped on an elevator that's going the wrong direction. Doing something else also requires you to start making a judgement call about how long you can keep somebody on the elevator before you *have* to go to their destination."
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1zh8xg | what if two nations that are in nato go to war with each other? do the other countries in nato still take a side? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zh8xg/eli5_what_if_two_nations_that_are_in_nato_go_to/ | {
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"That would assume that 2 NATO countries would go to war with each other.\n\nI believe that if that was the case, one or both would be kicked out of NATO... and then NATO will choose sides."
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e5bgdy | how does missile targeting detection works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e5bgdy/eli5_how_does_missile_targeting_detection_works/ | {
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"In order for an early missile to find the right target, the launcher illuminated the desired target with a high energy, narrow radar beam. Inside the F-16 there is a gadget called a \"Radar warning receiver\" that listens for this sort of narrow beam. When it detects one it displays an alert, indicating the brand of radar most likely sending the signal."
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1ximp1 | how poor people get large tax returns when they haven't earned much | I thought people got tax returns based on the difference between taxes owed and the amount paid in. But, I know several people (low earning, many children) who are getting like $8,000 even though they haven't made hardly anything. Do poor people get charged "negative" taxes based on their income and exemptions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ximp1/eli5_how_poor_people_get_large_tax_returns_when/ | {
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"It's called the [Child Tax Credit](_URL_0_). ",
"There's two ways to get money back. Deductions and credits. Deductions reduce your taxable income. Credits are straight cash refunds"
]
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"http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit"
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|
651irm | plagiarism scanners | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/651irm/eli5_plagiarism_scanners/ | {
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"You know how sometimes you type a quote into Google to see who said it? \n \nThose scanners basically do that a few hundred times then crunch a few numbers to spit out a rough approximation of how much of the content was likely sourced elsewhere.",
"The same as a computer finds sections of text from a webpage when you use Ctrl+F. It can search all the digitally scanned papers and those from years before. Then it will compare them to each other and resources that are available online (like model exam answers) to see if there is a significant amount of similar sentences, points or word usage. Then it will calculate the percentage of words in paragraphs which are similar to online resources or other papers, to determine if plagiarism is afoot."
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9e86tj | why do video/time-lapse images of rocket launches arch? do rockets shoot straight up into space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9e86tj/eli5_why_do_videotimelapse_images_of_rocket/ | {
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"Nope. Orbiting Earth is much more about going fast enough sideways that the speed of gravity pulling you down is the same as your sideways speed, so you effectively constantly miss the ground as you \"fall.\" Rockets do turn hard just a little bit after launch because getting high enough isn't the problem, it's going fast enough.\n\nIncidentally, this is why impacting orbiting space junk is so destructive. To orbit at the same altitude as you, the junk has to be moving the same speed. To hit you, it has to be going a different direction. That's a huge amount of force hitting you from a different direction.",
" > Why do video/time-lapse images of rocket launches arch?\n\nBecause the trajectory is an arch.\n\nThe hard part isn't actually getting into space, but going fast enough to *stay* in space at a given orbit. To get to an orbit like that, you have to nose your rocket over at a given altitude and just keep accelerating.\n\nThe only reason the rocket starts off facing straight up is because the air is too thick near ground/sea level, so you want to get above it into thinner air before you do the lion's share of your acceleration."
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1q2y2g | why are grades (elementrary, middle, hs) based on age and not knowledge? | Seems kind of stupid | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q2y2g/eli5_why_are_grades_elementrary_middle_hs_based/ | {
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"Well, this is not the reason, but I think if this were true, many high-school people would be in 3rd grade.",
"Probably just because it's easier this way. Let's face it, individualized education is a lot of work. You need separate lessons, curriculum, material, and to some extant teachers for every single person. You have to tailor school to them, which means actually paying attention to how they're doing. It's not easy. It's a lot less work to just stick 30 kids of the same age in a class, teach them all together, and give them all the same stupid test. Wait, but why stick 30 people of the same age, not the same intelligence? Because it's easy to divide people by their age; you just need some files with numbers on them. To divide kids up by intelligence, you have to not only test them properly (not just give them a paper and see if they remember a few dates you've been telling them about the past weeks), but you have to observe them and see how fast they learn, and what learning methods work best for them. Our system sucks, sure, but until we form a society where 10% of all people go into education (or only 10% of kids receive one) it's the best we can do.",
"They're based on both. They're based on the average knowledge/ability for your age/year level. ",
"Knowledge is not strictly quantitative. Age is always quantitative.",
"Part of it is socialization. If a kid skips a grade (or 2) he is with people who are older than him. This is threatening to the older kids because it is a clear indication that he is smarter than them. They generally will not treat the younger kid very well, so it is better to \"hold back\" the excelling kid. ",
"TL;DR: peer-group cohesiveness and self-esteem, testing is speculative and contentious, education involves getting all the pieces rather than merit.\n\nIt would probably be fairly disruptive if each year a good portion of your peers were no longer in your grade level. Probably would breed some animosity, depression, anxiety, as well. School creates enough on it's own without a meritocracy-based shuffling.\n\nStandardize testing has plenty of flaws and critics. It's already a barrier to graduation for some. Could you imagine the student and parent backlash if each year every student was tested and a good portion failed?\n\nA lot of knowledge, particularly math, is sequential. You may be smarter than your peers, but if you didn't learn to divide last year, it's going to be difficult to teach you long division this year. If you skipped a year of Algebra, then you'll have some problems with Calculus. If your school teaches US history in 7th grade, and you don't take 7th, when will you get the information? (I appreciate that a 7th grader doesn't care, but the educational system might).\n\nThe system we (US at least) have seems to make far better sense, with only the outliers skipped forward or held back, usually after confronting parents with concerns about maturity, self-esteem, and knowlede gaps. To account for differences in ability, AP/honors/advanced subdivisions and special education/remedial courses are often offered."
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4c6auc | what are negative sound waves and how do they work? | Me and a few of my buds were out looking for some ear buds when I stumbled across the noise cancellation ear buds. Now it may seem far fetched, but would it be possible create negative gravity waves or to cancel out other forces? Just curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c6auc/eli5_what_are_negative_sound_waves_and_how_do/ | {
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"Sound is a pressure wave, meaning it is created by rapid changes in pressure. When something is \"negative\" that doesn't mean it has negative air pressure, it means it has less pressure with respect to the background air pressure at rest. Positive air pressure, or the rising portion of the sound wave is when the wave is pushing the medium apart, negative or the falling part of the waveform is when it is pulling it back together. This pushing and pulling is a vibration. \n\nNoise cancellation works by flipping a sound wave. The positive portions are made negative and the negative made positive. Add it back with the original and the sound is cancelled out. \n\nSo with gravitational waves you need to do the same thing. Generate the opposite waveform. So if you wanted to cancel out the gravitational waves of spinning black holes you'd need to make two black holes spin the opposite direction. Or something similar. "
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j9x4d | what is the story of the qur'an, like i'm five? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j9x4d/what_is_the_story_of_the_quran_like_im_five/ | {
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"I'm eagerly awaiting story time. I'm posting so I'm sure I'll find my way back here.\n\nOn topic: I'm espescially curious about what makes the Quran different from the Bible.",
"I only know the very beginning, I'm commenting to remind myself to check back here later, but here is the little bit that I know. In the old testament of the bible Abraham had two sons. God had promised him a son who would lead God's chosen people, but his wife had already gone through menopause childless. So Abraham had a son by a mistress, and the child was named Ishmael. Then, seemingly miraculously, he had a son by his wife Sarah. According to Jews and Christians, it was this second \"legitimate\" son who was promised, and his people became the original Israel. According to the Quran Ishmael, as the first son period, was the promised one, and his people eventually became the muslims (though much later, and I'm not sure what happens in between).\n\nEDIT: Abraham's wife was Sarah, not Elizabeth. Thanks timdiggerm.",
"The funny thing about the 3 major religions is how close they are to each other. \n \nJews believe in the Old Testament. Pre-jesus, sorta. They call this the Torah.\n\nChristians believe in the The Old Testament and the New Testament. Jew story + Jesus. They call this The Bible.\n\nMuslims believe in the prophet Mohammad, who comes after the New Testament. Jew Story + Jesus + Mohammad. They call this Qur'an.\n\nThey're all chapters of the same book, which makes it even more silly that some people think it's okay to hate someone based just on what chapter they believe in. \n\nJews believe in chapter 1.\n\nChristians believe in Chapters 1 and 2. \n\nMuslims believe in Chapters 1, 2 and 3.\n\nWe're all people. Everyone is special in their own sort of way, but we're all very alike, too. Never hate someone based on what religion they choose or what they look like. It's what's inside that counts.",
"\nThough we haven't really got an answer yet, it's still a pretty interesting thread.",
"According to Muslims, the Qur'an is the final revelation of the same story told to the prophets preceding Mohammed, including Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. According the the Qur'an, the message given to those previous prophets had been corrupted and translated so much they were no longer what God intended the message to be, so God gave the same message, start to finish, to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel and said 'this is the last time, guys, don't screw this message up.' \n\nIf you know your bible you know the Qur'an, it has the same basic story line of Adam, Eve, Flood, Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Armageddon, but with little differences. For example, in the creation story both Adam and Eve are made from earth, instead of Eve being made from Adam's rib, and Adam and Eve eat the fruit together, instead of Eve tempting Adam. \n\nThe origin story for Jesus is also a little different. Instead of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, Mary was living in cloister, being taken care of by Zacharius, when God created Jesus in her womb. Then pregnant Mary went back to her home town, and gave birth on the way under a date tree. When she got home, her village was really mad because she had a child out of wedlock, but Jesus stood up in his crib and said that he was made by God to spread his word and to cherish his mother. The Qur'an says that Mary is blessed more than any other woman.\n\nThere are lots of other differences. Many chapters of the Qur'an start with a series of a few letters, and no one knows what they mean. There are also lots of short stories that don't seem connected to the major story.\n\nThe whole thing is available online, with multiple translations, if you're interested. \n_URL_0_",
"The Qur'an isn't a single unified narrative. Get a copy (free from the library if you can) and read it.",
"Are you asking for the story behind the creation of the Quran or the story that is in the Quran?\n\n\nThe Quran isn't so much storybook as much is it a instructions manual. It lays the basis of Islam. Almost like Star Wars : A New Hope laid the setting and universe of Star Wars. Like who are the bad guys and the good guys, what are they trying to do, that kind of stuff. \n\n\n**The Hadith**, which are the sayings of Prophet Muhammad that have been written down, are considered the concrete that fills in the cracks of the bricks placed by the Quran. The Hadith is much more strict than the Quran.\n\n\nQuran takes stories from all around, and has many, if not all, the stories from the Old Testament and some from the New Testament, from Qaum Lut (or in the Bible, the People of Lot) to prophecies of the end times (But are still very different).\n\n\nThe differences are in the stories. Seeing that Islam means peace, but also obedience to god, all of the prophets, and believers of Judaism and Christianity are also Muslims, but they have simply not been exposed to the Islam you see today.\n\n\nAlso, differences may change some things a lot, for example Muslims believe that Jesus was not God, rather a prophet. And that he never died to begin with, and that an look-alike was killed instead. He was not brought back from the dead either Jesus was still from the Virgin Mary, and that the angel of Gabriel gave her the gift of a holy son.\n\n\nIslam believes God created at least three intelligent races: **angels**,**jinns**, and **humans**. Angels have no free will, and thus cannot sin, they just carry out things for god, jinns (Genies) are made from fire and have free will, and humans are made from \"clay\" and we have free will.\n\n\nAnyway, the **Devil** (known as \"**Iblis**\" in Islam is a jinn. And when God made Adam from clay, and \"breathed\" life into him, God commanded that all of the jinn and all of the angels prostate (to bow to someone with your head on the ground and your arms to you side) to what God named the best of his creations, Adam.\n \n\nIblis saw Adam as inferior, for he was made from clay, but Iblis was made from smokeless fire. Iblis thought it was wrong to bow down to Adam, and refused. God then banished him to hell for Iblis's newly found arrogance and disobedience. But God let him rest until the Day of Judgement. But still, the Devil vowed to disrupt and cause people to disobey god.\n\n\nOr sometimes differences are very subtle, where in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was the first to bite the apple ( But they both got equal blamed for breaking), and where then sent down to Earth as punishment.\n\n\nIf you want the story of Islam, how the Quran came to be, there is a really good, unbiased 70's movie with a high production value and easy to follow storyline called \"The Message\". It follows the beginnings of Islam from the \ncave to Mecca.\n\n\nAnd if you want any other stories and how they are different from the Bible or Torah, just ask in the comments below.",
"What's hilarious is my fiance's crazy, zealot of a mother thinks the Qur'an is a terrorism handbook. I try to explain much of it is the same as the Bible, but she calls heresy on this.",
"The Qur'an is not a story. It is not like the Bible in that it tells a history.\n\nMuslims have two \"books.\" One is the Qur'an. It is a speech by God to people. It mentions stories like those of Adam, Abraham, Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, and others, but only does so in passing. The only story told from beginning to end is the story of Joseph. Instead, the Qur'an spends most of its time talking about God, Man's relationship to God, and the purpose of creation.\n\nThe \"story\" is called the Hadith. It is the series of events and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. This is very long. Jesus' mission was 1-3 years, and very little was written or memorized of his sayings in his time. Muhammad's mission was 23 years, and Arabs have always been well known for memorization. We have more sayings of Muhammad than any other human up until modern history. Muhammad also tells the full stories of other Prophets.\n\nOther people have taken the Hadith and turned it into books about Muhammad's life. These are called \"Seerah.\" All you need to know, though, is that they are very much like a biography. ",
"I'm eagerly awaiting story time. I'm posting so I'm sure I'll find my way back here.\n\nOn topic: I'm espescially curious about what makes the Quran different from the Bible.",
"I only know the very beginning, I'm commenting to remind myself to check back here later, but here is the little bit that I know. In the old testament of the bible Abraham had two sons. God had promised him a son who would lead God's chosen people, but his wife had already gone through menopause childless. So Abraham had a son by a mistress, and the child was named Ishmael. Then, seemingly miraculously, he had a son by his wife Sarah. According to Jews and Christians, it was this second \"legitimate\" son who was promised, and his people became the original Israel. According to the Quran Ishmael, as the first son period, was the promised one, and his people eventually became the muslims (though much later, and I'm not sure what happens in between).\n\nEDIT: Abraham's wife was Sarah, not Elizabeth. Thanks timdiggerm.",
"The funny thing about the 3 major religions is how close they are to each other. \n \nJews believe in the Old Testament. Pre-jesus, sorta. They call this the Torah.\n\nChristians believe in the The Old Testament and the New Testament. Jew story + Jesus. They call this The Bible.\n\nMuslims believe in the prophet Mohammad, who comes after the New Testament. Jew Story + Jesus + Mohammad. They call this Qur'an.\n\nThey're all chapters of the same book, which makes it even more silly that some people think it's okay to hate someone based just on what chapter they believe in. \n\nJews believe in chapter 1.\n\nChristians believe in Chapters 1 and 2. \n\nMuslims believe in Chapters 1, 2 and 3.\n\nWe're all people. Everyone is special in their own sort of way, but we're all very alike, too. Never hate someone based on what religion they choose or what they look like. It's what's inside that counts.",
"\nThough we haven't really got an answer yet, it's still a pretty interesting thread.",
"According to Muslims, the Qur'an is the final revelation of the same story told to the prophets preceding Mohammed, including Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. According the the Qur'an, the message given to those previous prophets had been corrupted and translated so much they were no longer what God intended the message to be, so God gave the same message, start to finish, to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel and said 'this is the last time, guys, don't screw this message up.' \n\nIf you know your bible you know the Qur'an, it has the same basic story line of Adam, Eve, Flood, Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Armageddon, but with little differences. For example, in the creation story both Adam and Eve are made from earth, instead of Eve being made from Adam's rib, and Adam and Eve eat the fruit together, instead of Eve tempting Adam. \n\nThe origin story for Jesus is also a little different. Instead of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, Mary was living in cloister, being taken care of by Zacharius, when God created Jesus in her womb. Then pregnant Mary went back to her home town, and gave birth on the way under a date tree. When she got home, her village was really mad because she had a child out of wedlock, but Jesus stood up in his crib and said that he was made by God to spread his word and to cherish his mother. The Qur'an says that Mary is blessed more than any other woman.\n\nThere are lots of other differences. Many chapters of the Qur'an start with a series of a few letters, and no one knows what they mean. There are also lots of short stories that don't seem connected to the major story.\n\nThe whole thing is available online, with multiple translations, if you're interested. \n_URL_0_",
"The Qur'an isn't a single unified narrative. Get a copy (free from the library if you can) and read it.",
"Are you asking for the story behind the creation of the Quran or the story that is in the Quran?\n\n\nThe Quran isn't so much storybook as much is it a instructions manual. It lays the basis of Islam. Almost like Star Wars : A New Hope laid the setting and universe of Star Wars. Like who are the bad guys and the good guys, what are they trying to do, that kind of stuff. \n\n\n**The Hadith**, which are the sayings of Prophet Muhammad that have been written down, are considered the concrete that fills in the cracks of the bricks placed by the Quran. The Hadith is much more strict than the Quran.\n\n\nQuran takes stories from all around, and has many, if not all, the stories from the Old Testament and some from the New Testament, from Qaum Lut (or in the Bible, the People of Lot) to prophecies of the end times (But are still very different).\n\n\nThe differences are in the stories. Seeing that Islam means peace, but also obedience to god, all of the prophets, and believers of Judaism and Christianity are also Muslims, but they have simply not been exposed to the Islam you see today.\n\n\nAlso, differences may change some things a lot, for example Muslims believe that Jesus was not God, rather a prophet. And that he never died to begin with, and that an look-alike was killed instead. He was not brought back from the dead either Jesus was still from the Virgin Mary, and that the angel of Gabriel gave her the gift of a holy son.\n\n\nIslam believes God created at least three intelligent races: **angels**,**jinns**, and **humans**. Angels have no free will, and thus cannot sin, they just carry out things for god, jinns (Genies) are made from fire and have free will, and humans are made from \"clay\" and we have free will.\n\n\nAnyway, the **Devil** (known as \"**Iblis**\" in Islam is a jinn. And when God made Adam from clay, and \"breathed\" life into him, God commanded that all of the jinn and all of the angels prostate (to bow to someone with your head on the ground and your arms to you side) to what God named the best of his creations, Adam.\n \n\nIblis saw Adam as inferior, for he was made from clay, but Iblis was made from smokeless fire. Iblis thought it was wrong to bow down to Adam, and refused. God then banished him to hell for Iblis's newly found arrogance and disobedience. But God let him rest until the Day of Judgement. But still, the Devil vowed to disrupt and cause people to disobey god.\n\n\nOr sometimes differences are very subtle, where in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was the first to bite the apple ( But they both got equal blamed for breaking), and where then sent down to Earth as punishment.\n\n\nIf you want the story of Islam, how the Quran came to be, there is a really good, unbiased 70's movie with a high production value and easy to follow storyline called \"The Message\". It follows the beginnings of Islam from the \ncave to Mecca.\n\n\nAnd if you want any other stories and how they are different from the Bible or Torah, just ask in the comments below.",
"What's hilarious is my fiance's crazy, zealot of a mother thinks the Qur'an is a terrorism handbook. I try to explain much of it is the same as the Bible, but she calls heresy on this.",
"The Qur'an is not a story. It is not like the Bible in that it tells a history.\n\nMuslims have two \"books.\" One is the Qur'an. It is a speech by God to people. It mentions stories like those of Adam, Abraham, Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, and others, but only does so in passing. The only story told from beginning to end is the story of Joseph. Instead, the Qur'an spends most of its time talking about God, Man's relationship to God, and the purpose of creation.\n\nThe \"story\" is called the Hadith. It is the series of events and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. This is very long. Jesus' mission was 1-3 years, and very little was written or memorized of his sayings in his time. Muhammad's mission was 23 years, and Arabs have always been well known for memorization. We have more sayings of Muhammad than any other human up until modern history. Muhammad also tells the full stories of other Prophets.\n\nOther people have taken the Hadith and turned it into books about Muhammad's life. These are called \"Seerah.\" All you need to know, though, is that they are very much like a biography. "
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1mb35a | why can't we have infinite propulsion in space? | My thinking is that if space is a vacuum, why couldn't we just keep the rockets on the shuttles and have them continuously propel us forward? If we do this for a full day, for instance, wouldn't it be possible to just keep accelerating until we reach light speed and beyond? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mb35a/eli5_why_cant_we_have_infinite_propulsion_in_space/ | {
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"To run an engine you need to burn fuel. It's the hot products of this burning that are vented out of the rockets and which push the spacecraft forwards. Obviously if you want to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light you have to keep the engines running so that you can accelerate. \n\nThe problem is that fuel isn't weightless. It's heavy. When a rocket launches, most of the fuel it's carrying is to lift the rest of the fuel that it'll need later. The more fuel you have the heavier your ship is and the more fuel you need to use to make it move. Most space missions are designed to minimise the amount of fuel they need because every little bit extra adds a lot of cost and size to the spacecraft. \n\nThis is why to explore the solar system more thoroughly and even get people out there we need to invent engines which are more efficient, and can thus carry much less fuel to achieve the same effect. "
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2rzqx3 | is every house key completely unique? how is this done? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rzqx3/eli5_is_every_house_key_completely_unique_how_is/ | {
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"A better place to ask this question would be /r/lockpicking . many professional locksmiths browse that sub.",
"No, somewhere there is probably be (or will be) a lock that will open with your house key but there are 5^8 possible combinations for a 8 pin lock that's 390,625 different possible keys \n\n(assuming 5 pin positions and 8 pins ) "
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3xjwkp | how did reddit catch users like unidan that has multiple accounts and manipulate votes? | My friends was telling me about the great unidan, but when I asked how, he just said maybe it's ip addresses. Is that all there is to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xjwkp/eli5_how_did_reddit_catch_users_like_unidan_that/ | {
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"Yes. The admins can see the users' IP addresses. They can see if multiple accounts all use the same IP address and all vote on the same comments.\n\nNote that this isn't detected automatically - the admins noticed it only after Unidan stirred up some trouble which caught the admins' attention."
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91rmei | what is an ip and is it assigned to device or network? | What do each of the digits mean? Is IP assigned to device [ie phone or computer] or network connection? What is a static IP and a dynamic IP? In the absence of cview3 [cookie data], can a consistent IP identify a device?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91rmei/eli5_what_is_an_ip_and_is_it_assigned_to_device/ | {
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"An IP is like a phone number. It is assigned to your router much like a phone number is assigned to a phone. A Mac address is like a serial number for each device, ie your printer,photocopier etc. A static IP never changes. A dynamic IP is automatically assigned by the network. So say you connect a laptop to the network. The network assigns an IP to it. Imagine you disconnected the laptop and connected a phone. That phone might be assigned the IP of the laptop so if you connect the laptop at the same time it will need a new IP. Hope this sort of explains a bit.",
"IP addresses are unique identifiers used to identify devices on a network and act as \"post addresses\". If you want to send a packet to a computer you will address that packet with the IP address of the computer in question. For the world wide web the IP addresses are granted in blocks to ISP's which then allocate them to the routers of their customers. For local networks the router might generate and allocate a seperate set of IP addresses that are invisible from the outside, but are used to identify the computers and devices themselves that are operating under that one router. \n\nThe digits themselves sometimes have meaning, sometimes not. Generally it's more of a phone-number type system, where the first three might be the area code, the next two some sector code, and the remainder just an incremental counter with no special meaning.\n\nA static IP means that the same router/device/network will always have the same IP. f.i the IP 8.8.8.8 is static, it will *always* point to one of google DNS servers. If the device disconnects from the service that allocated that IP address to it it will still have that IP when it reconnects, it will not expire.\n\nA dynamic IP is then just the reverse: your router will be dynamically given an IP address when it connects to the ISP and it has a set expiry date. If your router disconnects or goes offline the next time it will request an IP it might get a completely different IP address. It might get the same one if it reconnects fast enough, but the ISP won't keep it on hold for you and just hand you the next avaliable one. \n\n\nAn IP address that does not change can be used to identify a router, yes. That's part of the point of an IP, to let network traffic be able to identify a device that is in communication. A webserver could use IP to \"remember\" a client, but it is a bit shaky and should only be used for a single session and not long-term. the company I work with uses, among other more reliable things, IP to prevent a client from logging onto the server twice and appear as two players and not one. that being said most IP addresses will only identify the *router*, and not the *device*. It is fully possible that two computers on the same network will have the same external IP address and thus need to be seperated by other factors, like the port or a cookie value. "
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3nfgfb | how come coca-cola cleans toilets, but doesn't clean teeth and wrecks them instead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nfgfb/eli5_how_come_cocacola_cleans_toilets_but_doesnt/ | {
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"The same reason bleach cleans your clothes, but wrecks your intestines; different reactions with different materials",
"Coke, in fact most fizzy drinks, but particularly coke, is very acidic. So acidic that if I used it in my lab COSHH regulations would oblige me to put hazard and corrosive labels on it!\n\nAcid is very effective at dissolving quite a lot of things as it will react with them and break down the structure. Limescale and teeth being just two of them.\n\nAcid doesn't react with everything though. We store acid in glass or plastic bottles just fine. Porcelain is melted clay like glass is melted sand and doesn't react with acid either.\n\nCOSHH - Control of Substances Hazardous to Health."
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1o5wcs | how can i make an informed decision when voting if candidates can lie about anything and aren't held to their election promises? | I'm trying to research and prepare for the upcoming city election, but seriously... How do I know all of what I'm reading isn't bullshit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o5wcs/eli5_how_can_i_make_an_informed_decision_when/ | {
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"The best you can do is not look at what they SAY they've done, but look at what they've ACTUALLY done. \n\nDid they say they created a bill which helped something? Go read the bill. Do you like it? Do you think it actually helped? Was there some other factor that could've been the real helper that the bill just piggybacked on? \n\nCampaign speeches are nice and all, but you really can't use them as your entire basis for voting.\n\nGo look up their past voting record. Do you agree with how they've voted on things in the past?\n\nIf they're new to office and don't have much tangible to go on, listen to what they're promising. Is it really feasible? Does the office they're going into actually give them the power to deliver that promise? ",
"_URL_1_ will show you how a person votes on certain bills and provides context. _URL_0_ will give to unbiased review of political statements and ad campaigns circulating during an election cycle rating blatant lie to full truth. "
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5r9yj8 | could a state seperate from the rest of the united states? | I saw a post on social media where they made a joke about several Western States joining Canada. Could a state seperate from the United States and if they did how hard would but be to join canada? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r9yj8/eli5_could_a_state_seperate_from_the_rest_of_the/ | {
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"There is no legal mechanism for a state to unilaterally separate from the union.\n\nIt could separate if the rest of the country agreed.",
"No, it was tried in the 1860s.\n\nJoining Canada is another whole question.",
"Yes, a state can leave. If they can either convince the other 49 states to vote them out, or if they think they can defeat the other 49 states+federal military in battle. Because of these requirements, no they can't leave.",
"Yes and no. There is no \"I want to leave\" button that a state can push. However the only way to make a state stay when they don't want to is through force. Assuming the federal government does not want another civil war, they would have to simply let a state leave. That's pretty unlikely, most likely it would result in a small civil war.\n\nAssuming a state DID leave. They could simply ask Canada if they can join. Canada has no formal way of letting new provinces join the federation but it's not unheard of. Canada would decide if this is something that Canada would want to do and if it is they would impose conditions on the states. Likely LOTS of stuff within the states would change. \n\nIn terms of difficulty. The states that were being talked about are generally California, Washington and Oregon, combined that's about 50 million people. Canada has a population of 35.6 million. The combined country would be 85 million with the former states being 58%. Canadians would be very concerned that they would not be allowing states to join Canada, but rather giving away Canada to the former states. \n\nAs a result of those population imbalances, and many other issues, Canada would not likely look favorably on this kind of merger. In addition, while there would be some significant economic benefit, the shock of those states adopting Canadian policies on things like taxation would be a big fucking deal. Silicone valley would have problems with Canada's data privacy laws, California farmers would hate our minimum wages, Ya'll might love our healthcare but the doctors won't love their new paychecks. \n\nThe new combined country would be heavily influenced by the former states. So many of those benefits that Canadians have enjoyed would likely be changed to conform to what the states currently have. Canadians would not like this."
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670k6q | what is the difference between a medical doctor, a phd doctor in a medical related field and a specialist doctor in a specific medical field? | To my understanding:
A medical doctor knows about the human body in it's entirety and can perform surgery,
A specialist doctor has expertise on a specific field or system in medicine and can perform surgery,
A PhD doctor in a medical related field has a doctorate in that field of knowledge but can't perform medical procedures.
So if I wanted information on muscles, which doctor is the best to go see? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/670k6q/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_medical/ | {
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"A typical general practice doctor is an MD, they have received training in all of the major fields of medicine, but no specialization. They focus on being the first point of contact, know enough to know to handle the common health issues, and where to send a patient who has a more in depth issue. \n\nA specialist is an MD that has received further training and education within a certain niche field of medicine. For example an [OB/GYN](_URL_0_) is a MD that received further training in obstetrics and gynaecology.\n\nA Ph.D in medicine is often a dual MD-Ph.D type degree, meaning they are trained in practicing medicine, and in the research side of medicine. You are most likely to encounter an MD-PHD in a training hospital or university hospital where new doctors are trained or where experimental medical treatments are performed. ",
"An MD is qualified to treat patients. They may or may not have an advanced scientific knowledge or have the ability to conduct meaningful research.\n\nA Ph.D. cannot treat patients. They are scientists performing research, trying to learn new things and develop new treatments. \n\nA specialist is an MD recognized as being an expert in a specific field of medicine. In the US at least, any doctor and legally perform any medical procedure the patient consents to. In that respect, a special and an MD are \"allowed\" to do the same things. Practically speaking, most medical institutions will limit certain procedures to specialists. A hospital isn't going to allow a dermatologist to perform heart surgery, and they aren't going to let a heart surgeon prescribe chemotherapy."
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7tt02n | why does mathematics work to describe reality (physics)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tt02n/eli5_why_does_mathematics_work_to_describe/ | {
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"Cheating really. Its not a coincidence that mathematics happens to describe reality. We intentionally developed mathematics based on reality. It was quite literally tailored to do just that. \n\nWe looked at reality and found relationships , describing those relationships is what math/physics is.",
"thats like saying \"why does the word 'apple' describe an apple?\".\n\nthe answer is we invented math to describe reality. it is the language we describe it in.",
"Because physics follows consistent rules. No matter what they are, so long as they are consistent, they can be described by math. Usually, the math comes from the physics, an empirical description of what is happening. Occasionally, the math fits the physics so well that it can be used to predict previously unobserved physical events.",
"Someone once asked this in one of my undgergraduate psychology courses, and the professor answered with: \"Mathematics is the language of science\", and went on to explain that math is even more organic than language in many cases. If you reach higher levels of physics, you can see that very well.",
"This is actually addressed by the famous paper [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences](_URL_0_) by Eugine Wigner. I can recommend the Wikipedia article to learn more. ",
"Because mathematics is a tool, like language, that is developed for the purpose of describing things. It can describe real things, imaginary things, and things in between. Thinking of math as a distinct subject, as being separate from its environment, is as much a mistake as thinking of English as separate from its culture.",
"Think about all the shit we've added to math over the course of thousands of years, with all the clutter in there it's more surprising when something isn't able to be described by math",
"Math isn't some arcane aspect of the world that we discovered, it's basically a way of describing things, like language, but more precise and specialized, and with its own internal logic.",
"Mathematics is simply a model that takes real situations, and tries to abstract fundamental logical connections by removing values which aren't nessesary. If you add two apples to three apples, you have five apples. If you add two oranges to three oranges, you get five oranges. Eventually, you come to the abstract model 3+2=5.\n\nWhen you abstract physics, you describe it using an abstract model. That model matches one of the models already existing in Mathematics, which is the science of all abstracted logical models. Note that the actual mathematical models, or algebras, are infinite. Physics simply uses commonly known models, because those commonly known models put up all the time in physics, and people in physics and mathematics often work close together and bring each other good challenging questions.\n\nThere are branches of mathematics which don't really affect or apply to physics. Take number theory and cryptography. Those areas interest people that are interested in security, so they gave those logical problems to mathematicians, which were only too happy to try to come up with something good.\n\nTl/dr: Mathematics tries to study abstract models and the logical conclusions (theorems) that come up when you assume certain things (axioms). What you assume is arbitrary, but mathematicians are often asked to assume axioms which are coherent with reality. Much of mathematics can be applied to physics because physics drove a lot of the mathematical interest. Mathematics can model any logical system. That reality is a logical system is an assumption, but one that so far has worked.",
"Reality comes first, then the math.\n\nWhen a physicist or mathmatician comes up with a formula, they get it based upon having observed the same event a hundred times (or more). They measure a few variables each time, then sit down and try to figure out a formula that describes what they saw based upon the variables they collected.\n\nA formula is just a way of explaining what was observed, and it might not be perfect. Another scientist usually comes along, measure more variables, and adds to the formula to explain the event with better accuracy."
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1b92ty | how come i can't smell food coming from the oven.. until it is ready? | You know how the smell floods your house? How come that doesn't happen until it's ready? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b92ty/eli5_how_come_i_cant_smell_food_coming_from_the/ | {
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"The heating of the oven causes a chemical reaction in the food. This reaction not only excites the molecules, making them more energetic and more likely to fly around out of the oven and into your nose, but it also allows the release of more volatile chemicals and adds to the amount of flavor molecules being released.\n\nThe food isn't necessarily done once you can smell it, I can usually smell a Thanksgiving turkey long before it is actually done, but it does mean it is heating up. The more it heats up the more molecules get released and the more they fly out of the oven.\n\n",
"The chemical reaction from the oven's heat (or fry pan, etc) causes you to smell the food. One of these processes is called the [maillard reaction](_URL_0_) which causes browning of the food. \n\nThe more heat, the more reaction, the more smell. "
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e2kfx1 | - why do uterus muscles contractions hurt but stomach contractions don't? | As I understand it uterine contractions cause period cramps, so why do stomach contractions during digestion not hurt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e2kfx1/eli5_why_do_uterus_muscles_contractions_hurt_but/ | {
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"The uterus has more sense nerves because of their role in giving birth. The pain is not something that would be acceptable after every meal so the evolutionary pressure is pretty clear.",
"There's a bubble of air in the stomach that provides a cushion, but no such bubble exists in the uterus.",
"This isn't really a direct answer, but stomach contractions can absolutely hurt. That's what a stomach ache is."
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37h4ko | the north american free trade agreement | What is it for? How does it work? What are its benefits? Please eli5 or eli4
Edit: thank you all for the responses!! Im reading each one and its honestly hurting my stupid brain but they are all super helpful. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37h4ko/eli5_the_north_american_free_trade_agreement/ | {
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"When a company imports or exports a product to another country, they have to pay a tax called a tariff on that product. NAFTA was an agreement between Canada, the US, and Mexico to allow imports and exports for free. The idea is that free trade makes it cheaper and easier for companies in one country to sell products in the other countries, thus improving the economies of all three. The down side is that it also makes it cheaper for companies to move their plants to whichever country provides the cheapest labor. That was good for Mexicans but bad for the American workers who lost their jobs. ",
"NAFTA is meant to strengthen the economic ties between the US, Canada and Mexico. The goal is to eliminate trade barriers between these countries (when you want to export to another country, you normally have to pay for the customs and such). Elimination of those barriers is beneficial since the countries are dependent on each other. Mexico is the 3rd-trading partner for the US, with exports rising 444% since 1993 (the year before NAFTA came into force). A better trade position means: more investment and more jobs.\n\nSo, it became easier to trade between these countries. \n\nThe treaty is more international-oriented, so it is hard to compare it to the other major trade bloc in the western world: the EU. While the EU is in some cases rather centralised and supra-national, NAFTA is based on cooperation between the three member states. The Secretariat is very small and is only occupied with dispute settlement (_URL_0_).\n\nOf course, there have been criticism, in the US there were/are fears that companies would outsource production to Mexico, since the wages are lower there. In Mexico, people feared the entire economy would be run by Americans.",
"Canadian Immigration Consultant here. One thing I really like about NAFTA is the easing of requirements for certain professionals to gain work permits across N America. Makes for good trade of higher skilled workers. ",
"You're getting alot of fluffy light softball answers on what NAFTA is \"supposed\" to do and what \"the idea\" was. no one telling you what it is. \n\nNafta is an agreement that set specific trade rules, and set up organizations to manage those rules and disputes.\n\n Over 30 working groups and committees have been established to facilitate trade and investment and to ensure the effective implementation and administration of NAFTA.\n Key areas of work include trade in goods, rules of origin, customs, agricultural trade and subsidies, standards, government procurement, investment and services, cross-border movement of business people, and alternative dispute resolution.\n\nThere are no benefits per se. It simply offloaded trade regulations and responsibilities to an established international group. Moving them even further from the hands of voters and elected politicians.\n\nIt's probably a bad thing.\n"
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1s76pt | how are best before dates determined? | What are the processes behind determining the best-before date of a product? I've even got a water bottle here with the best before date of 07 April 15, how does that work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s76pt/eli5_how_are_best_before_dates_determined/ | {
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"The only thing to 'expire' in a water bottle is the water diffusing into the water. It'll last a long time if you keep it out of sunlight though in a cool place so you don't need to worry about the expiring date. I work more on the food science portion of things so I'll answer how we know when those will expire. \n\nThe reason that food expires is bacteria growing on it, specifically it's a type of bacteria known as a coliform that does this. This include beauties such as the infamous *Escherichia coli*. In the lab we can grow these bacteria from samples of food on plates that are designed to only allow this type of bacteria to grow (they do this with a bunch of different chemicals and dyes). From there we can count the amount of CFUs (colony forming units) which tells us how much bacteria is on something. By plotting this on a graph we can extrapolate when a food item would contain too many bacteria to be considered safe. "
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74gcir | did the holocaust have any lasting effects in the make-up of non jewish people in germany and elsewhere? | Specifically, in Germany have more blonde, blue eyed people than it would have otherwise? Obviously it had rippling effects in Jewish and Roma populations, but curious if it influenced human physical traits in the long run.
Btw, I hate Nazis and highly condemn all that they have done. I think diversity is very important to a healthy and lasting society. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74gcir/eli5_did_the_holocaust_have_any_lasting_effects/ | {
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"Before we say anything else here, it's important to note that there are many Jewish people who are blonde with blue eyes, and many Germans who do *not*!\n\n*That* said, here's the thing. *Tens of millions* of people died during WWII - 3% of the total population of the entire world, at the time. The holocaust is a part of that, but Germany was devastated by that war, and limiting the rippling effect to just the holocaust itself is probably not very feasible. "
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6x32my | why do semi trucks in the united states have front wheels where the lug nuts protrude past the edge of the tire while each subsequent wheel has recessed lug nuts? | Currently on a road trip from southern to Northern California and all the trucks we've passed so far have this pattern. Is this an industry standard? Or does it relate to safety in some manner? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x32my/eli5_why_do_semi_trucks_in_the_united_states_have/ | {
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"It's because the front wheels are single (like on your car), while all other wheels are dual. Because of this, the centers of the wheels extend past the edge of the rim. This means you can put two wheels face to face, and bolt them together to the hub. When you look at a set of dual wheels mounted, you see the concave side of the outer wheel, so you see the lugs as being recessed. Since the front wheels are single, they mount them the same way they do the inner wheels of each dual pair, meaning with the convex side facing out.",
"all the wheels are the same wheel. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nthe rears just have an extra set 'turned around'",
"In a regular car, you have a spare. \n\nThat spare can be used on any of your four tires. \n\nSemi's, and duelly pickup trucks have the front hub stick out farther, while keeping the tire under the vehicle for this same reason. To be able to use one spare, in any position. \n\nIt is also so they only have to carry one type of spare, which could save on weight. Which on semis is a huge deal. That's 200lbs (est) less cargo they can carry\n\nWhat happens if you blow a front (steering axle) tire, but only have a rear axle/trailer axle wheel? \nYou're hooped. ",
"Why do some of them put spikes on those tires?",
"The rear wheels are mounted in pairs. Bolts that extend as far as both tires would be too weak (and get it the way when working on the wheels. The front wheels are mounted as singles and don't need a hub that looks different from those on your car.",
"This has already been answered a few times but I'll give it a go. \n\nThe rims on a semi truck, all ten of them, are the exact same wheel. Most standard is 22.5\" overall diameter and 8.25\" wide. These wheels can be run on any position on the trucks, even the trailers. \n\nThat means, that the rear wheels on a truck (known as the drive wheels) are mounted face to face. If you take the outer most wheel on a drive axle of a semi truck, and then turn it around, you could install it to the front (or steer) axle. \n\nThe same goes for 1 ton pickup trucks, cargo vans, anything with \"duallie\" applications. ",
"I have sort of a related question. Why do some Semi trucks have spikes on their lugnuts? ",
"The front has only one tire. The rear has two together. All the rims and tires are the same. In the back the way they have two is they have the outside rim flipped around. Doing this causes the two rims to touch. They have to have all of them the same because of flats or rotating tires. So in the front they stick out because the rim needs to be able to be put in the back so the plate of the rim sticks out past the lip. So if they have to put them together (make them kiss). The tires wont touch. \n\n",
"What if you turned the front wheels around and mounted them backwards. Would it affect performance? ",
"The wheels are concave. On the drive, or rear axles are have 2 tires. Or dualies. The concave hubs face each other. On the steer, or front axel, It's a single axel. The hub faces out.",
"Hey guys, first time commenting here on ELI5. Truck mechanic here and I wanted to take a chance to clear some misconceptions up that some people have as well as confirm others. The front (Steer) wheels are singular and are turned essentially the same way that any car or truck wheel faces with its concave facing outwards. The inner rear axle dual also faces this same direction if you look closely at a set. The second rear wheel on each hub is placed there because the axle is rated to hold a higher weight than that of single rear wheels. \n\nIf a vehicle has what is called a \"super single\" (A single overly large rear axle tire) it has the same weight capabilities as a axle with duals. The benefit to this is fuel economy which tires play a factor in. While at one time they were very expensive in there early years they have drastically come down in price to actually be cheaper than replace 2 tires in some areas of Canada and the US. \n\nI was reading some of the comments about interchangeability of the Steer tires vs the rear drive tires. To say that people are wrong and you cannot interchange wheels and tires would be incorrect. But to be clear though, most Highway tractors have different steer tires vs drives. Again fuel economy is a factor. The steer tires are generally smooth grooved with more of a streamlined pattern. At the end of the day they are there for just that. Steering. there is no driving force being applied to them so they are designed to provide minimum rolling resistance with optimal steering capabilities. The drives usually have a more aggressive tread pattern for a balance of grip, wear control and you guessed it fuel economy. Also side note here, retreaded tires are illegal as steer tires here in the great white north. Not sure but it is likely the same in the US.\n\nLastly as far as wheel torque goes this is something of a myths/legends vs science question. A lot of mechanics I knew of coming up in the trade believed that torquing a lug nut on a car was as easy as listening for a the right amount of bangs coming from their impact gun when tightening a set. Some believed in the \"hit em hard with you gun and then torque em after\" approach while others swore if they did not use a torque wrench on every lug nut a wheel was sure to come off. The correct answer is the last one but with a procedure of assuring each lug actually moves when torquing. If they do not and your torque still clicks you have torqued nothing. The lug nut is already over tight which can be as dangerous as under tightening. Over tightening stretches the wheel studs which the illustrious engineers worked so hard to design. This one of the big causes to wheel coming off on trucks and cars as the studs can shear or time allowing the wheel come loose. \n\nTL:DR Amounts of tires and sizes are all put into the design of the vehicle when ordering it for maximum efficiency. In some cases the customer can go against recommendations due to cost or applications. As far as maintenance goes. If your the one working on it. Torque it. The cost and damage of a 150+ pound tire and wheel into someones windshield costs far more than the time it takes to use your torque wrench. As far as everyone else goes. choose a reputable dealer/shop for your tire needs.\n\np.s. Those shiny pointy things some drivers put on lugs are just for show. For show and for me to slice my leg on when servicing a truck... but they do look cool ;) ",
"Single wheel on the front/steer axle, dual on the rear. The rim is the same on all tires, concaved, it sticks out slightly past the edge of the tire on one side. The front and inner rear tires cup the brakes on the inside. The outer tires on the rear are facing the other way, cupping the lug nuts. The rims of each rear tire connect, but there is space so the tires don't rub against each other. The single on the front steers way better than dual would. The dual in the rear is much better at transferring power to the road and carrying weight.",
"In europe the semi's front wheel lug bolts are required to have a protective guard ring over them. In the US we add spikes to make them stick out more",
"I didn't see anyone else mention this, but maybe I just missed it. The centers stick out so much because the hubs behind the wheels are HUGE. They are massive because they are heavy duty and built to run hundreds of thousands of miles. Much like pickup trucks have different style hubs - a smaller truck, using Ford terminology - say an F-150, has smaller hubs and therefore can use car-like wheels. Go all the way up to a Heavy-Duty F-350 or more correctly a Super Duty F-450, like a Tow Truck or something - you are going to see a wheel that starts to look a little more like a full size Tractor wheel, and the hub behind it is similar. These are simply massive, with much larger, beefier bearings inside. The wheel is shaped like a \"cone\" to both provide clearance for the huge hubs, and to locate the actual tire in the right place so the steering works properly. If the wheel were flat instead of cone-shaped, the tire would be much too far outboard of the steering system, and instead of turning in place and pivoting in the center of the contact patch, it would turn in an arc sort of around the hub. Hard to explain, I guess. ",
"Follow up question. \n\nIn the uk, my tyre has \"direction of travel\" on the outside. Currently my spare will, using this advice/rule will only be able to be fitted to the left side of the car. What would happen if it was used on the right hand side?",
"Why did they stop at dual wheels.. why isnt it just wheels all the way across.?",
"the easiest explanation is that the tires that appear concave, are actually a dually axle, its 2 tires. The outer tire is concave for mounting purposes. The inner tire would look similar to the front tires. \n \n_URL_0_\n \nThe reason the inner tire, or the front tires stick out, is because they cover the braking system, similar to a passenger car",
"ELI5: what did the OP mean?",
"Nothing here has been dumbed down enough so I'll give it a try. On an axle with two tires on each side there are two different rims that are bolted to the same hub so the rims have an offset. The rim that you can't see on the inside is protruding out. It touches the side of the outside rim that is protruding in. ",
"Not a car guy, can someone ELI5 what the title means?",
"There's a lot of true info here in these comments but they are missing the salient point.\n\n\n\n\n\nThat is, the centre of the tyre tread must be in the same vertical plane as the centre of the wheel bearings assembly.\n\n\n\n\nThis is to ensure correct loading.\n\n\n\n\nTrucks must have enormous heavy-duty hubs, brakes, and bearings, so the wheel needs to provide room to accommodate these.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt's the same reason your car wheels are offset with the majority of the rim being inboard from the plane of the wheel stud holes. The hub, brakes, and bearings have to sit inside the wheel and centred. That's why the studs and nuts are on the outside.\n\n\n\n\nThe rear wheels on trucks are dual, so the outer wheel appears to the eye to be dished or concave because the hub sits inside the inner wheel. ",
"The correct term is offset. The fronts use negative offset (like fast and furious cars) which brings the rim further inside the fender and puts it directly atop the a-arm which affects how tightly it will steer. \n\nThe rears use both positive and negative offsets. They position the inner tire closer to the axle (using negative offset) which puts the lugs further out alowing the outer rim to bolt on safely and more securely. \n\nPositive offsets are what give big 4x4 trucks a wide stance. They extend the rim out well beyond the lugs to widen it, giving a lifted truck better stability.",
"Diesel mechanic here. The front and the back wheels are exactly the same. The front wheel has the concaved part of the wheel facing inside so it goes over the hub. The back has duel wheels, so the inside tire mounts just like the front and the outside tire is flipped around so the concaved part of the wheel is facing out. I hope this makes since. This is the first time I've tried to explain this. ",
"Am I the only one that drives by trucks and think one of those lugnuts are going to magically pop up and propel into my brain while I'm driving. \n\nIt's a weird anxiety... ",
"TL/DR: Front axles have a single wheel and the wheel fits around the axle hub. On the rest of the axles, the first wheel looks just like the front with the single wheel, but an additional wheel is flipped 180 degrees and placed against the single wheel, giving it an opposite dished appearance. \n\nThe \"]\" and \"[\" are the wheels, the \"o\" are the hubs, and the \"---\" are the axles.\n\nFront Axle [o---o]\n\nRear Axles ][o---o][ \n\nThis allows greater weight carrying capacity on the truck where it is needed, and single wheels on the front where steering is needed but where less weight exists. \n\nAn \"18 wheeler\" will have 2 wheels on the front axle, and 4 wheels on the other 4 axles, equaling 18 wheels.\n__",
" > If they do not and your torque still clicks you have torqued nothing. The lug nut is already over tight which can be as dangerous as under tightening. Over tightening stretches the wheel studs which the illustrious engineers worked so hard to design\n\nSo much this. Also failing to properly torque lug nuts can cause brake rotors to warp depending on their design. "
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3nxtzr | when a website/software says "checking for viruses" when handling or downloading a file, what exactly is it looking for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nxtzr/eli5_when_a_websitesoftware_says_checking_for/ | {
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"There's a database which has a big list of what malicious code looks like. It goes through that to see if there's any malicious code in the file.",
"Take every program on your computer and run it through some process that generates a \"fingerprint\" for each one. If you go to someone else's computer and recognize a program's fingerprint, you can be reasonably sure that you're looking at the same program.\n\nMany virus scans rely on a similar principle. Security researchers have found virus programs and analyzed them to produce a fingerprint, and the AV program can check any file to see if it matches a list of fingerprints. In some cases you'll be scanning entire files, or parts of files, or collections of files, but that's getting a bit beyond ELI5 territory.\n\nAs you might imagine, most of the work goes into collecting and building the list of fingerprints. If you notice your antivirus software downloading a new \"definitions\" file from time to time, it's updating that list."
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7fjnac | how does water affect the human body in a swimming pool? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fjnac/eli5_how_does_water_affect_the_human_body_in_a/ | {
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"The density of the human body is fairly close to that of fresh water (and this varies by individual as well; muscle tissue is denser than fat tissue). As a result people experience buoyancy in swimming pools. The water holds you up. Beyond that, even small muscular exertions can alter your position in the pool. The only trouble that some people have, those who never learned how to swim, happens if they become disoriented and cannot tell which way is up. Or in rare cases, if they get their hair caught in a water filter. Anyone with long hair should probably wear a bathing cap."
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anhk8c | why is there such a significant delay when streaming live content online such as sporting events as opposed to watching ota? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/anhk8c/eli5_why_is_there_such_a_significant_delay_when/ | {
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"OTA, you're looking at a continuous signal representing video. This used to be an analog signal, but DTV didn't really rethink TV, it just recoded it.\n\nStreaming is a sophisticated two-way protocol that automatically balances the packet rates so that they don't get lost or overflow queues in network devices from the ISP to you. To avoid \"glitches\" when one packet is late and then gets caught up, the stream runs and builds a buffer before it plays. This makes you happier, so that's why the delay is inserted. Actually, it's enough delay for someone with a pretty congested Internet link. Making your link better won't help, the ISP is working to the lowest common denominator.\n\nOTA = Over the air\nDTV = Digital TV"
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5m922l | what is the united states' political structure? what are 'the house", senate, and congress? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m922l/eli5_what_is_the_united_states_political/ | {
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"The house and the senate are two legislative bodies that make up congress.\n\nThe Senate has 100 members elected every six years, and the House has... shit.. 400-some members elected every two years.\n\nTogether they write and pass laws which then can be vetoed by the president or signed into law."
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2jeeik | when i take a picture of my computer screen with my phone, why does it make little ripples? example pic in the comments below. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jeeik/eli5_when_i_take_a_picture_of_my_computer_screen/ | {
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"What's happening is that you have two patterns lining up, the grid of pixels in your camera's sensor and the grid of pixels on the computer screen. When they don't line up exactly evenly, you get a Moiré pattern, which is a pattern that \"emerges\" from the interaction of the two patterns we're dealing with. It's curved because they aren't just tilted relative to each other, but rotated forwards or backwards. (your phone isn't exactly parallel to your screen when you take the photo)\n\nCheck out the diagrams on the wiki page:\n_URL_0_\n\nI don't think it has much to do with mis-matched refresh rates, that's what would cause the flickering lines on a screen when you take a video of it",
"This is a common topic, thus I've removed this post. \n\nPlease search before posting in future."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern"
],
[]
] |
||
35xp4b | what were the driving factors that caused the occupy wall street movement to fizzle out? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35xp4b/eli5_what_were_the_driving_factors_that_caused/ | {
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"I'd say it was a lot to do with their nonspecific generalist goal of \"yeah, capitalism needs to change\". How can they hope to effect such an impossibly huge change with one mere protest movement? Take the suffragettes -specific goals, achieved (broadly) their goals. ",
"Doug Stanhope on Occupy \"I’m just saying we all occupy in our own way. You occupy your fucking, filthy Portland hippie selves, because you hate the one percent. And you hate the banks, because of their predatory lending practices; it gets the people and enslaves them in a lifetime debt. What did do you do about it? You stunk up a park for almost a year. I occupy far more efficiently. Maybe you should look to me for leadership. I hate the banks as well as we all do. How did I fuck them? I spent three hours jacking up mother’s CHASE Bank visa card, after she is debt up its $10,000 limit, buying dumb shit that no one needs and sticking them with the bill, because she had no estate except for that blind fucking last cat if you want to repo that, have that.\n\nThat actually caused damaged to the bank. Not sitting around with a dog, with a kerchief and a cardboard sign. Uhh-do-do-do slapping on drums in a drum circle. Fucking occupy movement was such a let down, because you seemed like me, angry and we’re going to take to the streets and holy shit, the round the globe people have are above this, we’re going to do something. And what did you do? You fucked up a park. All you fucked up in a year is some guy’s day who wanted to throw a Frisbee for his dog, but you – he couldn’t because you’re all camped out there. You hate the banks, don’t fuck up the park, fuck up the bank.\n\nWho is in-charge of this project? Next time me. We don’t really have leadership. You needed some. You have 500 angry people in a park, go break them up into squads of twenty, you can fuck up every branch of Bank of America in a 50 mile radius, go there and not as anarchists either throwing bricks throw the windows. What are you a fucking teenager, have some ingenuity, you line up as customers at eight o’clock in the morning. They only have two desks to do actual commerce, other than cash, and checks and shit. You clog up those two desks as bogus customers, sit down, cross your legs, apply for frivolous loans all day long. That a lot of paperwork for every frivol. Yes I need a billion dollars for an ant farm.\n\nSharpen some pencils that’s a big stack of paperwork, I would love some coffee. You comb your dreadlocks over to one side, put on your $3 dollar Salvation Army Suit and you clog up all their time, or could you deny me the right to apply for the loan. And then I sue the fuck out of you for discrimination, causing even more damage to your bottom line, rather than just sitting out there in a park and getting tear gas by cops. What does that do? What are you accomplishing? I got it on tape Police abuse. Yeah police abuse people that’s how it works; you are never going to win.\"\n\n",
"Because most people knew that they were a bunch of entitled college man-children complaining about how their degree in Renaissance poetry wasn't useful in the real world and how capitalism is so bad even though most of them had iphones. Not to mention that they trashed every place they protested in while claiming to care about the environment. If you don't practice what you preach, no one will take you seriously.",
"I would say a lot of it has to do with them not having a leadership and a clear plan to obtain their goals. \n\nThey were also co-opted by larger entities, which is pretty much what happened to the Tea Party as well. \n\n",
"Market signals demonstrated to them that their message was not shared by a significant portion of the US and they realized they couldn't buy more starbucks without a job. ",
"For a movement to sustain itself it has to have objective and reachable goals to work towards tactical victories that maintain momentum and bring attention to the larger struggle. Occupy had no achievable goals, from what was communicated. It seemed they just wanted to make things fairer, which means nothing. \n\nCivil Rights for blacks did this through incrementalism, ending school segregation(on paper), bus boycotts, freedom marches to draw attention to the need for a voting rights act. This is why Civil Rights is seen as the most succesful civil sction in US history. \n\nEven the tea party, which started out with nebulous goals of, \"More Freedom, less non-freedom\", coalesced into definable goals of helping Republicans take back the Legislative branch and throw a monkey wrench in President Obamas plans, to some success. \n\n ",
"Because it was a movement for change that will never happen at least not the way they were trying to go about it. They literally just pissed people off who wanted to go about their day and mostly people who had nothing to do with what was going on. If you want to enact social change protesting in suits and ties and running for office will get you a hell of a lot farther than a drum circle in the middle of a park.",
"to quote that eminent authority, Dr. Zeppo Shemp, from when I answered this same question two years ago: \n\n > Occupy had no real plan whatsoever. it was a giant temper-tantrum that quickly burned itself out. they had a list of impossible, utopian goals like ending poverty.\n\n > in fact, in October 2011, just after the protests started, a political science professor predicted that the Occupy movement would be a failure. why? because they were repeating the same errors that led to failure for the New Left and the hippies in the 1960s and '70s. \n\nyou can read that political science professor John W. Cioffi explanation here: _URL_0_ \n\nto quote: \n > “Movements like the one we are seeing today usually arise two to three years after the beginning of a severe political economic crisis, as people realize that the situation is ‘the new normal’ and overcome their initial disorientation,” he says. “We’re right on schedule. [...] \n\n > “However, for a social movement to perpetuate itself and effect change, it must develop or affiliate with a leadership and organizational structure able to wield power, develop specific demands, and fashion them into a coherent programmatic agenda—all without losing the enthusiasm of the base. This is a transformation that few movements can manage, and it often requires some portion of the political or economic elite to ally themselves with the cause.\"\n\n > “The movement has no deep-pocketed backers as does the ‘tea party,’ nor is there any prospect that it will generate its own resources like the labor movement of the 1930s, and it has at most a tenuous connection to existing elites, unlike the abolition movement or contemporary religious right. That makes its self-organization even more important as a source of influence and power. At present, the ‘occupation’ movement appears to endorse participatory democracy and rule by consensus, threatening to repeat the mistakes of the 1960s New Left and leave it among the long list of failed movements.”\n\ntl;dr: \"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it\" ~~ George Santayana\n\nedit: Zeppo Shemp is not a real doctor, please do your own research and analysis",
"A lack of leadership, which was a primary building point for the movement (bringing about change through absolute democracy) made the movement muddled. Police clearing out the encampments and illegally arresting peaceful protesters didn't help either, finally the media helped marginalize the movement as overprivileged suburban hipsters who weren't actually trying to accomplish anything. Once that view of the movement hit mainstream media, the masses ate it up hook, line and sinker and it torpedoed the little bit of credibility that they had built. \n\nI don't think it was a perfectly executed movement by any means, but I think it's unfortunate that they were written off so quickly by everyone when it was the corporations they were protesting that turned everyone against them.",
"I know here in Denver they simply passed a law banning camping in the park. Pretty much a done deal after that. ",
"Everyone is missing a big one: weather. It got really cold, and most of the people who were \"occupying\" were doing so by choice, in the summer... Turns out \"camping downtown\" starts to feel a lot like \"being homeless\" when the rain/snow comes. ",
"The leadership: film-school majors trying to imitate their perceived version of protests and hippies from the 60s.\n\n\nThe message: not concise to begin with, but mixing identity politics with issues on economic reform really convoluted things on higher level.",
"Young people aren't very good at movements, it always turns into a party and/or shitshow and grows because of a running with the herd mentality rather than individual frustrations being channeled into an encompassing political movement that will affect change. Here's why OWS was a bust:\n\n1) No leaders.\n\n2) Too many causes.\n\n3) No plan.\n\n4) Assumption that the rest of society doesn't realize there is a problem therefore that's why nothing is getting fixed. Not realizing the possibility that everybody knows, but we are all waiting for an effective solution.\n\n5) Disregarding political mechanisms to achieving their ends and resorting to anarchy.\n\n\nOne of the greatest phenomenon that we have ever witnessed in all of the universe happens when hundreds, or thousands, or many millions of people get together and channel all of their strength, their voice, their belief, their power into one person. And that one person can walk into any negotiation, with any organization, against the mightiest and greatest of foes, and have all of the combined power of those millions behind him. If your foe doesn't agree with you, millions of people will say he is wrong. If your foe continues his oppression, millions of people will stop working. If your foe hits you, millions will hit him back. If your foe sues you, millions of people petition the court. If your foe ousts you from political power, millions of people disavow the political system. This has been proven time and time again from the beginning of human history to it's end. It's found in nature amongst animals, it's found in nature amongst human animals, it's found in our civilized societies with endless examples from the dictatorships that started our societies to kings and queens, to elected rulers, to Martin Luther King Jr., to Mahatma Gandhi, to Mao Zedong/Stalin/Hitler, to today! So what do the kids at OWS say to this? No, fuck that. We are living in the Internet age, we don't need leaders, we are ALL leaders. Sounds nice, but this is a model that has never been proven. And it's not a stretch to imagine why it hasn't worked. With individual power comes individual strength, with elected ruler power comes the strength of millions. Millions can't walk into a negotiation. Millions can't make up their minds. Millions can't decide on a dime. One person can. And one person can take the wishes of the millions and turn it into effective negotiation. They didn't cultivate this power, they let it grow organically without channeling it, and not surprisingly just like heat that isn't contained, it eventually dissipates. \n\nStudents are the worst activists, see the 60's and OWS. They are young, uneducated (going through education), inexperienced, overly ambitious, overconfident, cocky, and most of all they have nothing to lose. They're also prone to peer pressure and doing stuff just because everyone else is doing it. When the people who have everything to lose drop it all and say this is fucked up and I'm not going to till the soil anymore, I'm going to go to the landlord's house and let him hear my voice till he treats me fairly, that's when we get revolution. When the rich/middle class feel pressured enough, they petition the political system to change, and force it to change whether it wants to or not because they run society. Students don't run society, not today's, they run tomorrow's society. They are the worst voice we could have. \n\nHow do we do this then?\n- Get the rich involved, make them fear for their money and you can win them over and have powerful allies to fight against powerful foes. Strikes, property destruction, vandalism in nice neighborhoods, domestic terrorism, may all be effective, or they might tank the whole movement because they trigger an immense defensive response that the movement can't overcome. The leaders of the movement have to prove themselves with the right decisions. Always err on the side of peace, see MLK and Ghandi. \n\n- Get the middle class so unnerved that they're willing to sacrifice what they have (the car, the mortgage, the kid's college fund, your comfortable life) in the hopes of a better existence. Then you can use their massive voting power to elect a brilliant, charismatic leader of the movement, and vote in senators/representatives who are leaders of the movement, and then the movement is no longer fighting a powerful government, IT IS a powerful government. They then appoint more of their leaders into key positions, the CIA, the department of defense, NSA, EPA, etc... Now our wishes and beliefs are guiding the decisions our government makes.\n\n- Then after a few decades, we do it all over again because everything corrupts, even things that are ours, that were once virtuous or once righteous. Everything dies and has to be replaced. Luckily this formula can be reused over and over and over again, like it has in the past.\n\nTL;DR I don't know why you're reading this, I'm a 28 year old college dropout who doesn't know what he is doing. :)))))))))))\n\nEdit: added a remedy. Brought to you by Snake Oil Inc.",
"Movements need definable goals that are actually achievable. Compare and contrast:\nA) Give women the right to vote\nB) Make capitalism less oppressive. \nHow do you measure B as opposed to A?",
"Because there are people pulling the wagon and people riding in the wagon.\n\nWhen the people pulling the wagon say they're pissed off and threaten to quit, everyone gets nervous. What will happen when they quit? Are we all going to have to walk? Can we get somebody else to pull the wagon? Can somebody carry my stuff for me? Where will we all go? Scary stuff.\n\nBut when the people riding in the wagon say they're pissed off and threaten to quit, everybody else says, \"Good, get the fuck outta the wagon. It will be lighter to pull and roomier to sit in.\"",
"I recall one video where they had a speaker come up, he was completely on board with what they were doing. At the same time they had some weird shit going on where EVERYONE in the crowd would mimic what the main person in the group was saying. She would say \"We like sausage\" \"because\" \"reasons\" and 2 seconds later, a wave of \"We like sausage\" \"because\" \"reasons\". It was some really creepy shit.\n\nAnyways, the guy came up trying to speak and they literally would not let him speak. They would just chant over him, while hes trying to give a speech about how on board with them he is and what not, and they just wouldn't shut up. I think at one point they started hissing.\n\nAt that point I knew for certain if it wasn't already dead, its on its last leg. Granted I never had much hope in a bunch of politically uneducated hippies from the get go.",
"Whatever legitimate criticisms were aimed at \"Wall Street\" (which is actually a really stupid moniker for \"financial institutions\") they were lost among the hippie garbage and stupid socialist bullshit. \n\nIt's a common problem when agendas aren't clear regarding a social movement. People forget that the \"Tea Party\" movement was ANTI- republican and ANTI- democrat. It was a libertarian constitutionalist movement for about two weeks before Sarah Palin co-opted it, stole the spotlight, and turned it into a neoconservative movement.\n\nIt happens everywhere. If you're lucky, it fizzles. If you're unlucky, some steals it and it lives on with a new agenda. ",
"TL;DR: it was an unorganized movement with no real goal filled with mostly ignorant teens who don't know how economics works. Naturally it fizzled out ",
"We want change, because we know what you are doing is wrong, we know what doing it right looks like, but we don't know what needs to be done to make this happen without making things worse.",
"ITT: Lots of armchair activists but few who were actually involved or close to occupy.\n\nLet's get things straight here, occupy failed for a million tiny reasons but one primary: *no one could agree on why it existed.*\n\nHere was a movement with so much potential that it was attracting the leaders of other prominent movements to come help. But there was one main problem: the environmentalists didn't want to stop being environmentalists. The net-neutrality trolls didn't want to stop wearing Guy Fawkes masks. The nuclear disarmament/peace activists didn't want to stop doing their thing either. \n\nIn short, everyone with an agenda from here to Strawberry Hill decided that Occupy was \"their chance\", and few were willing to actually work together in common cause.\n\nMeanwhile the general assemblies really were attracting brilliant minds to come down and discuss the issues of the day, like our ancestors did in the 17/1800's.... but they expected an open Roman Forum, and arrived to a bunch of dirty fucking hippies arguing over who was going to buy the vegan hamburgers and who was going to keep the compost toilet running. \n\nSomething like occupy will come again one day, but for it to succeed activists will need to learn to take off their hat for the day and support whatever the cause actually is. Occupy was supposed to be about addressing the corruption at the core of our economic system... in the end it was just a failed attempt at a catch all.\n\nIn my opinion that failure doesn't rest on the shoulders of the people who originally took up the call to action and made occupy possible, so much as it rests on the shoulders of every activist that refused to work in common cause with people who think differently. \n\nEdit: typo",
"Reposting a previous comment I made on this subject:\n\n > A lot of people don't realize this, but the thing that really killed the OWS protests was when Darrell Issa hauled the Director of the Park Services in front of the Government Oversight Committee and basically did this exact same thing to him, except the question was about the definition of \"camping.\" Dude was trying his damndest to make it a free speech issue, but Issa was not going to let him off the hook and he finally caved. After that, the Park Service started kicking people out at night and the rest is history.\n\n > EDIT: [Here's the video if anyone's interested.](_URL_0_) I slept in McPherson Square while I was working in Congress, and it blows my mind how little anyone talks about this hearing. As far as I'm concerned, this is what ended it, more than any of the other reasons people cite.",
"People were mad at something, but they didn't really know what they were mad at or why they were mad at it.",
"Because they had absolutely no idea how a bank or the financial system worked (on the most part) and just went with the 'I hate the 1%' vitriol. You can't really protest something if you don't know what the problem with it is.",
"They ran out of places to charge their MacBooks?",
"Probably something to do with America's 5 second attention spa... What were we talking about?",
"I remember asking what a protester wanted. he went on a 5 minute speech about how we need to change capitalism. when I asked him how to do that he said we need to defund the military and abolish all student loans. when i pointed out he just fired millions of people and stopped millions more from going to college he called me a shill. \n\n",
"I was a little involved with Occupy and I see a big problem was the requirement for unanimous consensus. This means that all somebody who doesn't like Occupy has to do is go into a meeting and vote no for everything. 99 yes, 1 no. The vote fails. The meeting stalls and all the Occupy tribes begin to hate/mistrust each other. ",
"In my opinion, it was partly due to the attitudes of most middle class families towards them. Most of the people I knew regarded them as a stereotyped liberal arts graduates. Not much sympathy goes towards people who are seen as \"whiny\".\n\nI went to NYC in high school the spring after occupy became known (it was for an euro challenge, an economics competition lol). Most of the other students there thought the same thing about the occupy movement since we just learned beginner economics, and the \"big business\" adults we met reinforced that viewpoint. We saw one guy sing Uprising by Muse for the movement and then turn around to promote his music. I guess when you're desperate for money you just can't expect the movement to be \"heroic\".",
"I'd say like a lot of issues it's primarily the result of our manic, 24 hour news cycle. Occupy was never an organized movement so much as it was a media flashpoint event that people participated in. Once the media moved on, so did the people. If there were a stronger organizational hierarchy and better recruitment and retention efforts, it might have built into something bigger. You can see this again and again, beyond protest movements, where people become highly engaged in some big issue for a week - natural disaster, revolutions, wars, etc. - and by the end of the following week they're already focused on something else. \n\nI think it was Vice or some other docu show that did a piece on Haiti, for example. Remember how big of a deal that was, after the earthquake, for like, 2 weeks? Well it turns out all of our aid did fuck all, and nobody knows or cares because within a couple weeks everyone had moved on (health care legislation, Boston bomber, gulf oil spill) to the next topic that dominated the news cycle.",
"ELI5 answer is encapsulated as this entire thread. Nobody can agree on things. Nobody is willing to compromise a part of their beliefs in order to get some change going elsewhere. Everyone is upset, but nobody is taking effective action.",
"Its a problem you see in a lot of left-leaning movements. It becomes fractured so easily by identity politics and ideology. \n\nIn Milwaukee, for instance, the movement splintered into Occupy The Hood, Occupy the Barrio, etc. It splintered between the people who felt something needed to be physically occupied and those that did not. It splintered among the moderates, the labor groups, the communists and the anarchists. ",
"Because the entire movement was people whining that they have a right to other peoples' stuff. The fact is, they don't.",
"i remember reading about how the original purpose of the protest being diluted by feminism and other social justices to the point of actually alienating certain groups\n\nlike somehow it went from WE are the 99% to WE are the 99% but some of us have more say on the matter because we are MORE \"oppressed\".\n\nkinda like animal farm and those pigs",
"Media was a driving factor. It doesn't matter if they had a specific goal, they would be portrayed as not having one. It doesn't matter if many of the protestors were rather educated, productive members of society; they would be portrayed as a group of homeless people bumming off society. Want a more equitable capitalistic system? You must be a socialist. Want the financial institutions responsible for the Great Recession to be punished? Not going to happen. \n\nRich people don't want to hear about income inequality and the corruption of our Republic by financial institutions/big business...so the movement was crushed.",
"The media stopped talking about it completely. It dropped off from the minds of the general public but it continued to exist for quite a while after that. Once the attention was off it only the most enthusiastic and dedicated and as time wore them down the number of people involved just shrank. ",
"There was no galvanizing force to spur people on. You need a charismatic leader that can drive people forward when progress is slow and resistance mounts.\n\nThere was no MLK, no Gandhi of the OWS movement. \n\nThey actively resisted leadership and unity to be honest. Massive mistake.",
"Really slacktavists don't give a shit about change and just want to be part of a hashtag because they are 20somethings who haven't figured themselves out, eventually something else comes along that they latch on to and they care about that for a week or so.",
"The movement did not \"fizzle out\", the federal government coordinated local law enforcement to raid the camps in every major US city on the same day. Oakland mayor Jean Quan was the only one dumb enough to [admit it](_URL_0_). The camps in Oakland and SF were still going strong up until that day. ",
"I think it's easy to look back at old footage of the civil rights movement and think that it was just all a bunch of well-meaning people standing in the street until change occurred. That's just ignoring the 99% of the actual hard work that went on behind the scenes - politically, economically, and otherwise. And that last one involves a lot of people being willing to go to jail. ",
"Speaking as someone who originally supported the movement, I went down to Zuccotti Park once to check it out. The conspiracy nuts were out in full force with everything from \"the government is trying to slowly poison us through pizza\" to \"fluoride in the water/mind control\" to \"chemtrails\". Of course, there was the cause of banking practices, which was the main point, but which was drowned out by other causes: Monsanto, Koch Brothers, meat is murder, No Blood For Oil (still!) etc etc. It seemed like it had no fucking idea what was going on, and was so scatterbrained that there really was no point to be made.",
"I went to the first local meeting because I was REALLY SERIOUSLY INTO IT. They proceeded to stand around talking about the corporations, man, then say we should all walk downtown and protest at one of the banks.\n\nIt was a Saturday. The bank was closed. It was also a totally locally-owned and independent bank.\n\nI never went back. Those people were a joke.",
"Primarily, a full frontal attack by law enforcement and the media. Effectively, Occupy was facing the FBI, Military Intelligence, combined power of the banks, local police, state law enforcement, the legislative branch, the executive branch, Wall Street, private security firms, and the Federal Reserve all concentrating on removing them from the political discourse. Not joking - Wall Street was actually telling American law enforcement how to handle the Occupy Movement.\n\nHere's a list of things law enforcement did to undermine Occupy (paraphrased) [from the Wiki article](_URL_1_):\n\nGovernment documents released in December 2012 reveal: \n\n* FBI started monitoring the Occupy movement about a month before it really kicked off.\n\n* The FBI, DHS, local police, regional law enforcement \"counterterrorism\" groups, and private security forces of major banks formed the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) to target and to arrest Occupy protesters before any laws were broken.\n\n* Banks met with the FBI to pool information about participants of the Occupy movement collected by corporate security, and the FBI offered to bank officials its plans to prevent Occupy events that were scheduled for a month later.\n\n* FBI officials met with New York Stock Exchange, Federal Reserve, and Zions Bank to plan to break up upcoming protests.\n\n* The FBI & Military Intelligence used informants to infiltrate and monitor protests, which then gave updates to financial companies.\n\n* Surveillance of protestors was also carried out by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. \n\n* DSAC also coordinated with security firms hired by banks to target OWS leaders.\n\nMedia immediately took a much harsher view of protesters than they did of the Tea Party - one of the first national news outlets to cover it was Erin Burnett's first or second show on CNN, [where she described protesters as buffoons](_URL_0_), where as the Tea Party was viewed immediately as a \"Game Changer\" and \"A Powerful Populist Movement\". That shaped the media discourse throughout it's existence and never really changed. Media would often find the most \"out there\" person in the crowd to discredit the movement.\n\nThat being said, the Occupy Movement never went away. It shifted focus into small task forces that have made real impacts since 2011.\n\n* Occupy Sandy - Helped with the clean up after Hurricane Sandy, made up of former protesters. Initially welcomed by Mayor Bloomberg, they were suddenly ejected as volunteers for the clean up effort.\n\n* Strike Debt - A group focused on debt issues. They have published the \"Debt Resistors Handbook\", and through 'Operation Rolling Jubilee' have bought and forgiven **$31,982,455 of debt** off the debt exchanges. No strings. They just send a note to the debtor saying \"Your debt has been cancelled.\"\n\n* Occupy SEC - A group of professionals who have acted as financial watch dogs in regards to Wall Street doings. They actually made a big splash when they filed a brief on the Vocker Rule.\n\nThe biggest effect, though, might be that it helped to radicalize a large segment of the youth in this country and set the tone for young people as left-leaning and populist voters in the coming years.",
"All I know is they made it incredibly difficult for people like me who barely make any money to get to my job. They weren't just trying to screw with the 1% they screwed with a lot of the little people as well.",
"People don't take 22 year old hipsters who have degrees in gender studies seriously.\n\nThere's a reason why they're $80k in debt and make barely above minimum wage: they have no marketable skills.\n\nJust because you went to a nice state college and obtained your liberal arts degree doesn't mean you automatically qualify for at least $35,000 a year in pay. Those little shits felt so entitled to something they weren't qualified for, that they started the Occupy Wall street movement. When people who have real jobs saw this, they understood how stupid it was and moved on (eventually).\n\nThere's a reason why high school drop out roughnecks make more than someone who has a master's degree in gender studies: skill set.\n\nLevel of educational achievement != skill set. Depending on the skill set, the value you add to a company can be high. High value adding skill sets equal high pay.\n\nHipsters still don't understand this.",
"Because you occupied the parks and parking lots in front of the banks. Next time, occupy their servers, their front yards/driveways, and of course their strip clubs & Starbucks.\nStick it to rich people where it hurts.\nOtherwise, it looks like a narcissistic display of motivated college kids with tons of time and little tactical knowledge.\n\nAmirite?",
"Infiltration by undercover police & their collaborators, niche issue opportunists, anarchists with their anti-leadership fetish, loud but sadly under-read and confused undergrads, and idiots.",
"People don't seem to understand the history of the Occupy movement.\n\nThe original organizers, a group of mostly anarchists, planned the action methodologically for months. The initial idea was to physically occupy Wall Street with the goal of making the corruption of our financial system impossible to ignore.\n\nWhen they weren't able to get into Wall Street, they chose a park nearby and continued with their initial plans. They showed what a better world could look like. They offered free food, shelter, medicine, books, and a way of making decisions that would include everyone who participated. And regardless of how long they were able to keep this going, it was initially very effective. Enough so to convince close to 1000 cities around the world to try the same thing.\n\nThese cities were all autonomous; acting in solidarity with the original protestors in their goals, but acting on their own. It was never something that was intended to be managed on a global scale. But that shouldn't take away from the amazing insight of the initial organizers.\n\nThere was only one goal by the way: To get money out of politics. The fact that this affects so many different avenues -- political relationships with banks, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, etc -- is a problem with our system, not with the protestors themselves. The media muddled this very simple message, and did so quite effectively. Yes, you're going to get people at the camp who don't know what they're talking about. That's why each camp had media liaisons, even though this often was not respected by media outlets.\n\nBut regardless of what you think of the movement, I would say that we all are talking about this a lot more today than we were in early 2011. I am happy with what they were able to accomplish.",
"Wheres the proof that it fizzled out? Generalised mass media narratives don't often tell you the full story. Maybe what we know of the occupy movement was just the beginning, a sort of 'contraction' or birth pang in the conception and development of the movement?\n\nAcademics are still researching the subject anyway ",
"The police kicked the protesters out of Zucotti Park. And they patrol constantly to make sure nobody comes back. That's the only reason. ",
"I did computer work for a Wall Street bank during the height of the Occupy movement, so I got a good first hand look at what they were about.\n\nHere are some of my impressions:\n\n* they didn't have much of a message beyond \"banks suck, corporations suck, the 1% suck\", and didn't offer any solutions of their own\n* I know it is cliche, but it was really hard, after working a long and seeing people camped out all day and night, not to think \"you know, maybe if spent that time looking for a job...\"\n* there was a lot of young people in the crowd...not that young people don't have something do say, but they weren't the people who got foreclosed upon, laid off, or lost their pensions\n* they seemed to be bolstering their numbers with homeless people along for the ride...not that homelessness isn't a problem, but it seemed disingenous\n* every activist out there tried to co-opt the movement to suit their purpose...racism and sexism are important issues, but the 1%, the patriarchy, and white privilege are not the same thing, and protesting all of them dilutes the message\n* I felt a sense of hostility directed towards me because through education and hard work the system was working for me\n* on top of those things, the economy improved, Obamacare passed, and things started to get better",
"There are a lot of compelling arguments and reasons in this comment thread but the biggest reason it fizzled is it was stupid. ",
"Has anyone said time yet?",
"Seriously? People are blaming students and hippies? What happened was the police busted into Zucotti Park and stole everything. Police violence ended Occupy, not students, hippies, or a lack of coherent goals. ",
"Occupy Wall Street came to a grinding halt in NYC when they were evicted from Zuccotti Park. Without a centralized place to camp, assemble, etc., the movement lost all of the momentum it had been gaining. A ton of people had to leave NYC without the camp ground, for example. Plus, there wasn't some monolithic thing that the 24-hour news crews could count on to fill time, and I imagine that new recruits were harder to come by without all of the constant exposure. There were a few demonstrations and ad hoc camp sites afterward, but nothing gained any traction after Zuccotti Park was gone.\n\nSource: I lived about 5 blocks from Zuccotti Park during Occupy.",
"The beatings, police intimidation, destruction of private property by same said police and continued threats from police and political authorities to the well being of those involved would be a few of the factors I would think.",
"You'll see nothing but \"it had no point\" or \"no leadership\" or \"nothing but entitled youngsters\", etc etc.\n\nThe real reason it fizzled out was because it had to. Think about the powers they were up against - that we're all up against. The banking and financial sector is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Lower Manhattan is owned by these entities and the police work for them. The Mayor of NYC works for them. The governor works for them. The President and the vast majority of Congress works for them.\n\nThey own the country and *at worst* they had to do nothing but wait for it to fizzle. Instead, they made the police forcibly remove them and generally get them to go away.\n\nYou could have had the entire population of NYC crowding on those areas and it still wouldn't have done anything. These entities are some much more powerful than any protest could be.",
"The Occupy phenomenon was largely a political movement in representative democracies, such as the US, the UK, Israel, and Australia. \n\nContrary to much popular belief, public policy in modern representative democracies ultimately depends on what makes voters angry and what makes angry people vote. Occupy never successfully translated its values or objectives, such as they were, into action at the ballot box.\n\nI believe this was partly fuelled by the fact that the Occupy movement itself attracted people who were (and are) especially steeped in a particular form of despair about the failings of the political process. This is the view that the electoral process is just as \"rigged\" as the regulatory process (though the complaints about the electoral process differ from country to country). This helped Occupy slide into being a movement whose critique was so broad that it seemed almost anti-Occupy to organize around certain candidates for office or explicit policy documents. In fact, it seemed almost anti-Occupy to coalesce around anything particularly firm at all, since that could be perceived as closing down the participatory moment. \n\nThe irony, of course, is that all this took place right in the middle of a period in which right-wing popular movements were being *highly* effective at changing the policy landscape. (See: Tea Party Republicans, UKIP, the Front National, the Jewish Home...). They have often been doing this despite their views being initially located at the fringe of the political culture, despite an initial lack of broad media support, and at the expense of politicians who had entrenched themselves by spending their entire careers shilling for moneyed interests. \n\nYes, Americans can rightly point out that much of the Tea Party movement has ended up being an even more rabid lap dog for a few of the richest and most powerful corporations. And any movement that gets serious and wants to develop resources is vulnerable to various forms of co-option. But even for the Tea Party, that would almost be getting the lesson backward. Despite some early and shadowy injections of support in various places, most of the serious money -- especially the bank money -- either never switched away from old mainstream Republicans or only did so after Tea Party candidates proved they had the grassroots capacity to win primaries and survive general elections. \n\nSo to me, the irony for the US is this: you had a movement that in just a few years proved that voters really could rally around whatever issues they wanted to. And they could both (a) unseat moneyed elites' political partners and (b) move the \"middle\" to their own side by forcing every other politician to engage with their demands or face the risk of a brutal campaign. It just so happened that the participants in this movement were ideologically inclined to favor public policies that *buck* the majority sentiment that threatened elites' economic power. The Tea Party is largely a gift that fell in elites' laps via a process that could have been hugely dangerous to them. Did you ever see the movie *Hero*? [Spoiler alert]. The main character accomplishes the near-impossible feat of penetrating the supposedly-impregnable seat of power of the King, his natural enemy, and gets close enough to kill him. Then, when he finally gets there, he realizes he actually kind of *likes* what the King is doing and ends up being an enabler of it. \n\nMeanwhile, the Occupy movement -- in spite of its shitty name and hackneyed initial tactics -- rested on an ideological platform that conformed much better to majority views. It also, at least in certain key areas, could draw on better logic and research than Tea Party economics. But its most active and influential participants spent their time being inexplicably convinced that they could not meaningfully achieve any of their goals through the existing political process. And even if they were tempted to try, I think they were socially unwilling to face the inevitable consequences of transitioning from a movement \"for everybody\" to a movement \"to get these things\". That's a process that always involves painful divisions that empower some in the movement while alienating others. Maybe it seemed easier for them to allow Occupy to fade in an atmosphere of love and brotherhood than to sharpen it into a tool while scarring it with the bitter disputes that always come along with that.",
"It failed because it was started and run by a bunch of whiny-ass liberals who thought it was fun to demand that my hard earned money be given to them, the non-producers. \n\nCase in point, the guy who was interviewed who had a job but he quit it to go back to college to a get a Masters in - get this stupid fucking idea - Puppetry. No shit, a Masters in Puppetry.\n\nHe was complaining about \"the system\" because he could not find a job to repay the student loans he took out to get that Masters in Puppetry. \n\nThe movement was started and run by a whole bunch of whiny-ass fucking liberal morons like that - come to think about it, just like a large portion that post on Reddit everyday. \n\nTHAT is why it never took off. It was a bunch of stupid liberals who think the world owes them everything. ",
"I like to cite rampant police brutality and a completely unfair media representation that left the general population thinking protesters were scatterbrained unemployable degenerate losers.",
"I think two things: (1) The majority of the people involved were self entitled 20 year olds that were upset by the fact that they were not millionaires a year out of college. (2) The movement was also filled with people that were just there because it made them feel like they were important. They got to say \"I was there maaaaaan\" to all of their friends. It was just organized and nobody had a solution. It was like a little kid just sitting down in the middle of the mall refusing to get up. No logic, no alternatives, just a temper tantrum. ",
"One of the biggest issues was the progressive stack \n\n_URL_0_\n\nOne of the biggest side effects of the Progressive stack is the fact that it was leveraged by the radical left to...core out the movement. Most of the Occupy sites were cored out by infighting between the more moderate anarchy types and the more radical left wingers. Identity politics was a big cause of the movement fizzling out\n\nOh, and the police crackdown. That was another issue, but the movement was basically weakened by identity politics and dismantled by the police.",
"First: Because the Occupy movement was made up of the kind of people in society who can barely tie their own shoelaces let alone get anything major done.\n\nSecond: Because the Occupy movement focused on symptoms instead of the root problem. The root of the problem is that children are being raised on a steady diet of family violence and disrespect, therefore they easily accept a violent state solution to their problems. A population that looks to the state to violently solve problems trades their freedom for the illusion of security. Symptoms of this include crony capitalist banks, regulatory capture, centralized control of the economy, and eventually full on tyrannical socialism.",
"There's a lot of folks in this thread who weren't there saying that ows had no goals or whatever. It's just wrong and baseless.",
"The focus of Occupy shouldn't have been to rabble on about the 1%, unfair practices and sit in the park, but rather something more proactive. Start online boycott petitions for one. Educate people on alternative lending opportunities or banking institutions (like credit unions). Chip away every dollar from them you can, because that's the only thing that registers. Screaming at customers and middle management (who mostly do an honest days work) while the real responsible parties laugh at you helps no one.\n\nSome good things did come occupy. Alternative lending start-ups are more plentiful than there used to be and options have expanded. But, done the right way, so much more could have been accomplished.",
"Lack of vision and a clear goal?",
"Because people cared more about being inconvenienced by hippies than they did with the banks fucking around with money.\n",
"Because it failed to attract what I call the 98.6% aka, \"normal people\". *We are not billionaires. We are not communists. We are the 98.6%.* That's the silent rallying cry of a center-right country that sniffed the movement, decided it didn't like the smell, and moved on. We do want to perp-walk some bankers. We don't want to destroy capitalism.",
"During the OWS protests in NYC I was working for a rather large bank and effectively worked on \"Wall St.\" and as someone who is quite liberal and nowhere near the 1% I was in favor of protesting against the practices that were followed by the industry as a whole. During my lunch hours and breaks I would go down to the protest to protest a bit and see what it was all about and what I saw at the protest I did not like at all:\n\nThe bulk of the protesters appeared to be those that perhaps lived on the fringes of normal society and were perhaps looking for any excuse to \"protest\" regardless of what it was. \n\nIt was very clear to me that to the people protesting it wasn't about protesting wall st., it was simply to protest.\n\nPeople were smoking a lot of pot. While I am in favor of pot smoking and its legalization the amount of pot being smoked detracted from any message.\n\nMost people that were protesting seemed to be career protesters. \n\nMany of the people protesting were the same homeless, stinky, and filthy hippies that I had seen around NYC begging for change.\n ",
"I can't speak for the rest of the country but I know that the protests ended in Philadelphia when the protesters camping out at city hall were arrested for conspiracy, failure to disperse, and obstruction. It didn't fizzle out here, it was stomped out.",
"I've read twice in the last week (somewhere on reddit I believe) that a big reason of the failure was the \"takeover\" of the movement by (what's known to some as) SJW-type people. Any truth to that claim?",
"People realized that the world isn't black and white, and that it's childish to think you can blame one group of people for such a widespread problem?\n\n...no? Ok I'll go then.",
"Income inequality, and how to address it, is now a mainstay in our national dialogue. \n\nIn other words: Occupy Wall Street worked. ",
"There was a militarized police response. Here in Atlanta, the strong arm of the law is what shut things down. ",
"Let me introduce you to [The Progressive Stack](_URL_0_).\n\nAre you a well-educated white, straight, male? Fuck your ideas everyone else talks before you. If you a white woman, minorities talk before you. Are you a male minority? Female minorities talk before you. Are you a female minority? Homosexuals and people who don't identify as straight speak before you. Are you not straight? Well disabled people speak before you.\n\nThat's right, a movement about income inequality was derailed by SJWs. \n\nGreat job, morons. Fight the red herring, keep fighting until everyone is a disabled, sexually atypical, minority. The 1% will laugh their way into their well-supplied redoubts and watch the 99% eat each other over physical and cognitive traits that they have no control over.\n\nVictimphilic culture killed OWS.",
"IMO, it wasn't a real movement, just a mix of lazy, entitled, idealistic, naive, or bored people that didn't want to work or had their \"I can run America better\" dreams. ",
"If you want to change things, history taught me that you need either one of these: money, or a guillotine.",
"I was working as a reporter back then and went to one occupy campsite right at the start .... Asked if someone would give an interview and explain what they were doing. They said no no we don't work like that no one person could tell you... Blah blah. So I wrote the story about that and ran their audio clip saying basically they didn't know why they were there. Really heroes their cause in our city lol. \n\n",
"Because they were sitting around like homeless people and realized, ah yes this is why we are poor, because we do not work. It was one of the dumbest movements of all time.",
"I think when they started defecating in buckets, not showering for weeks on end, being drunk and harassing the public was the end of them for me.",
"i might be able to make this an even shorter TLDR: you can't go up against money without money. It's absurd to fight that which you also need. It's one thing to make a stand. It's another thing to have a plan, and nobody had a plan that was better. We still don't. \n\nYes it's unfair that the banks were too big to fail, but they are. Modern society is stuck with them. The question now is: what are we gonna do with them? ",
"Weather and lack of a purpose really. What was their end goal? ",
"The reason that the Occupy Wall Street movement failed was the anger towards the 1% did not appeal to real justice. There are many in the 1% that have come to it by honest means. This left the argument open to attack. It should have been, \"zero tolerance for financial corruption and abuse of political power\" or something direct. This is a target that is hard to wriggle out of or be manipulated by media interests. Sadly, the attack on the 1% end up being a sitting duck for distortion. People are upset with corruption & are justified in that. \n",
"Lack of focus.\n\nIf you want to protest something that's fine, but you need to focus on the specifically on the aspect you want to change. \n\nIf you don't like the 1%, then you need to identify what it is about that 1% that you don't like. There is a huge difference between someone like Rush Limbaugh and Elon Musk. \n\nDespite the gulf between their net worth, they both fall into the 1%, however they earned it very differently. So it begs the question, what exactly are you trying to change?",
"They were looking to hold the banks accountable, but they didn't use their support for anything. In history, there has never been a successful social movement that only assembles and doesn't do anything with their assembly. In essence, their plan followed the same logic as [the underpants gnomes from South Park](_URL_0_):\n\n1. Occupy an area in downtown\n2. ???\n3. Banks pay for their crimes",
"Real Answer: In some ways, I think the occupy message was successful in that it introduced the discussion of inequality into mainstream popular political discourse. \n\nChange is incremental, and they couldn't possibly hope for a true revolution, but only that things would start to change and that this important issue, of dramatically increasing inequality be a part of the public discourse. \n\nThe movement \"fizzled\" because it was decentralized and unfocused to begin with. There were not central tenets and goals, and its inclusive nature, was in part it's own undoing. Practically speaking, there were competing interests, priorities, and agendas, blending actual issues, with other unrelated issues. Too many issues in fact, and too much inclusiveness, which allowed for radical idiots to **look** like radical idiots in pictures and press. \n\nThese failings were explicitly and intentionally seized upon by right wingers to de-legitimize the individuals, and therefore [they hoped] the larger movement. They were in many ways successful.\n\nOccupy should have been strategic, and embraced nationalism [the Flag, like tea party ideologues], and should have focused on things that are practically achievable, such as a living wage, unions, workers rights, wage theft, and essentially the gains by the middle and working class of the oft recollected *golden* era of the 50s - 70s. Also, of course, wall street banking and trading reform [hence \"occupy wall street\"], particularly, responsible banking practices for banks, and perhaps a minuscule transaction fee per trade, to eliminate economies whose function is to feed entirely off transactions [without providing anything [other that wealth extraction] for the extremely rich].\n\nInstead, Occupy came across as a bunch of unemployed, homeless communists, interested in things like redistribution and reparations. Which was not the reason for their protest, but is how they were branded.\n\nI visited the Wall Street encampments a couple times, and bought groceries for encampments in other cities, at times it was a good scene, and at other times it was a shit show. ",
"SJW cultists. Who else?\n\n[See for yourself.](_URL_0_)\n\nThey were too busy with self important posturing and meaningless gestures than... you know... progress. Actually affecting reality in a productive way.\n\nTurns out in order to do that you need to engage reality. Who'da thought?",
"Just as a lot of us predicted, without **clear goals**, and more importantly the **leadership** to articulate those goals to the public via the **media**, it was doomed from the moment the first bedroll arrived. \n\nBecause even friendly media outlets like MSNBC had a hard time framing Occupy in a positive light and instead the American public simply saw a bunch of proto-hippies spouting half-baked political concepts they learned the week before. \n\nWorse, none of them wanted to listen to the advice to get more organized and to state concrete goals from folks who wanted them to succeed. *\"Nah, dude, we don't need your dying media ideas and patriarchal structure to accomplish what we want in the 21st Century. There were no leaders in Tahrir Square and they brought down the entire government.\"*",
"Because these people are fucking idiots.\n\nOh sorry, you're 5 - Those people were really really stupid.",
"they realized they were not supporting anything. They realized they were just clowns that were sheep to their master protesters. They got bored and went to their studio apartments in brooklyn paid for by their parents.",
"They had no clear objective. It got cold outside. Looking like morons marching around and living in tents outside like homeless people gets old eventually.",
"Plain and simple: Lack of results. After a while, it became clear that the rich elite don't care if a bunch of people are sitting in parks or loitering in public spaces, creating a minor inconvenience via traffic blockage. The people doing the protesting aren't huge contributors to Wall Street or political campaigns, so they got ignored.",
"Could be that while they were out in the parks protesting, willing members of the labor force were taking the jobs they all felt they were entitled to.",
"I use to lead a protest group, so I can venture a guess as to why OWS failed. They fell pray to the problem that hinders a lot of social and protest movements. They had no strong leaders who could bring the gap between their group and the rest of society. They didn't have anyone who could speak in a way that made sense to people outside the group. Anyone can pander to the OWS believers, but it takes a true leader to lead the group against the entrenched interests. They didn't have one, or more likely, the real leaders were pushed out by charlatans who just wanted attention.\n\nSo OWS was essentially a chicken running around without its head. Liberal people tend to hate power hierarchies, which is why most of their movements tend to go no where in America. The instant someone becomes a real leader they yell \"informal leadership\" or \"patriarchy\" or \"oppression.\" I know this from first hand experience. I founded and led a protest group. We went from a couple of people to over 150 members in less than a year. We were a powerful group in the community, and we got results. Then me and the other leaders were forced out of leadership roles, because it was suppose to be a \"flat non-hierarchical\" group. The group disbanded with 6 months. We went from one of the most powerful groups in the community to nothing in a matter of months. Social movements are very fragile things. Sometimes it takes a strong hands-on leader to move the group together in the right direction. Don't tell any OWSers that or they will yell \"Oppressor.\"",
"All of these answers are wrong. The real reason is because it wasn't violent. \n\nPeace is for slaves. Violence is for masters.",
"Plus it's only cool for so long and more of them were college students and people in their 20s who like the idea of making a difference without getting their hands dirty. ",
"Because it was just a bunch of poor losers with poetry degrees from DeVry wondering why they couldn't get a job lol.",
"* No defined long term achievable goals. \n \n* 101 reasons for the movement to happen but no actual plans on fixing any of them.\n \n* Plenty of leadership at each Occupy location but no leadership as a whole who could delegate or put anything into action. After the first few weeks leadership was focused on keeping the occupying of their location, cleaning, maintaining some degree of order, bringing in food, water, supplies, etc. with no forward motion or long term goals.",
"It failed because like other counter culture movements such as the hippies in the late 60s, it found fault with a society but it didn't offer a workable alternative. Yes, we all know wall street investment bankers are greedy pricks who lobby Congress to rig the game in their favor. But what better solution do you have? Piss and moan about unfairness in a tent in the freezing cold. That works about as well as hunger strikes do.The commune movement and free love of the late 60's sounded like a good idea on the surface, but what was the result of it? More bastard children on the welfare rolls because mom doesn't know who dad is and if she does identify him, he isn't holding down a job to help support the baby. If people wanted to wear hair down to the bottom of their ass cheeks, wear bell bottom pants, smoke pot all day and listen to the Greatful Dead from Friday at 5pm to Monday morning and then work a job and pay taxes like everyone else. Where do I sign up? All they did was to use weak arguments to rationalize their basic laziness and social irresponsibility.",
"The people themselves.\n\nI was initially skeptical about the movement but when I saw it in action it confirmed all doubts. These were losers. While other people were working, you had these people who were complaining about other people working. \n\nTheir objectives were also irrational. They're complaining about someone else's money. Well, it's their money. What are you complaining about?\n\nThey were ineffectual as workers and ineffectual as protesters.",
"I followed the social media stuff surrounding chicago area participants. They were frazzled about every social injustice ever. So therefore absolutely literally nothing was in focus or followed up upon.\n",
"I visited occupy OKC and everyone there seemed like a bunch of incoherent jackholes. Hackey sack was fun though. \n\nThe thing is, in retrospect, it feels like the demonstration was effective in highlighting income inequality. It's a major issue now and I think occupy helped make it that way. \n\nIt's easy to dismissive of the movement itself but it appears to have accomplished something substantial. ",
"General lack of progress/leadership/uniform goals. They all kinda wanted the same thing. Which was to not get shit on just for being millenials but beyond that answers would vary widely. There wasn't any leadership in the movement either so it fractured and splintered off really easily into smaller groups. Also they didn't really accomplish anything other than getting attention, and its hard to stay devoted to a failing cause.",
"I don't feel it died out so much as ran it's course. The message got out, the movement had no other firm objectives. I think the discussion Occupy started is still very much alive in public discourse.\n\nLocally, we have seen some big political changes recently. I'm in Alberta, Canada which had a major upset in the most recent provincial election. For context Alberta has been a major hotbed for conservatives for the last 40 years. The right wing parties have had an overwhelming majority even when they split the vote. The left has had a non-existent presence here for decades.\n\nThen this last election the NDP won a majority government. Until one month before the election all polls said maybe 1 to 3 seats would go to the NDP. This is a party who's platform contains stuff like increasing corporate taxes, and increasing taxes on the wealthy so they can increase government spending. By US standards they are a radical far left party. When they started to pull ahead in the polls it was shock and awe. One of the MLAs, a doctor said he had worked all over the world and never seen such a radical transition of power done peacefully before.\n\nOccupy was important here. The homeless, the disenfranchised, and the poor came out and really made their presence known. I don't think it's a coincidence that a movement defined by the discussion of democratic decision making and income inequality came a few years before this election.",
"1. Complete lack of leadership. \n\n2. Amorphous, non-specific goals. \n\n3. Banks don't give a shit about protests; they give a shit about money and the protests did NOTHING to undermine their money. Since many protesters weren't in the 1%, even if all of them divested, it would have had little impact on the financial sector. \n\n4. People don't back their words with actions when it comes to money. One of the wealthiest people I know was at all of the rallies here in Minnesota and never divested a dime from his bank which was the bank he was protesting outside of. Why? Because his carefree life would be less carefree. \n\n5. Add all this up and banks and the government know they can just wait it out. ",
"It helps if at least the majority of protesters know what is being protested. In this case, most didn't have a clue. ",
"No clear goals.\n\nNo leaders. \n\nDamage to public property.\n\nDamage to private property.\n\nDisruption of the lives of people who were on the fence on the issue.\n\nI've never considered protest to be a good way to involve yourself in government. The real path to changing a society is a lot of miserable hard work. It involves attending public forums, organizing, and voting. Those people didn't want to do any of that. We'll see what happens when and if they mature. I know a lot of them exchanged numbers.\n\nThe friends I had in the movement mostly got involved because they thought it would be fun. The one true believer said that it was a success due to the groups that will grow out of it, but from what I've seen he's perfectly happy to wait for other people to get on that.",
"It turns out that the stock exchange is not in Zuccoti Park, nor does occupying it prevent bankers from doing their thing, nor does playing drums there fundamentally alter the relationship between the government, the public, and the banking industry. There were also some paper mache puppets and some cardboard signs, but strangely enough, they didn't seem to help either. ",
"My town had an \"Occupy\" movement, kind of still does, but it devolved into a shit stained homeless tenement within the first month. ",
"Because they wore those stupid fucking masks. Fuck those masks. Worse then fedoras. Yeah I said it.",
"Life. Nobody is going to protest forever when there are things to enjoy and people to spend time with. Not to mention that it's pretty much pointless to protest big government in the US. ",
"They didn't know what the hell they were doing, is why. This was basically Occupy Wall Street:\n\nOWS - \"We don't like some of the things that are going on!\"\n\nEveryone else - \"Well, how could we make it better?\"\n\nOWS - \"Uhm, urm, I don't know, tax the 1%!\"\n\nEveryone else - \"... \"",
"1) They didn't do anything. The media was all over this shit trying to get them to say what they're going to do next, but they couldn't, because...\n\n2) What they were protesting was a symptom, not a problem. Not a single person actively participating in the protest could explain how it was unfair, only that it was unfair, because...\n\n3) The vast majority of the causes of the problem do not impact consumers, only fellow corporations and banks. By the time the problems trickle down to consumers it is already too late for them to do anything about it. \n\nSo you end up with a group of people in parks all over the country angry about their current situation due to indirect forces that were triggered about a decade prior. ",
"They were dirt-bag opportunists/anarchists at best, or paid protestors. When it stopped being 'fun' they went back to their parents houses.",
"Easy. Occupy had such minimal understanding of economics and finance that they couldn't put together a coherent argument between the overeducated (never lived in the real world) liberal arts professors and smelly hipsters that can't figure out why taking out 100k in loans for a degree in oil painting was a bad idea.\n**Disclaimers: I have a liberal arts degree (but work in tech) and many liberal viewpoints. That said, know-nothings are still know-nothings. ",
"Internet/armchair activism that claimed to speak for the actual occupy movement, and got laughed out of existence. ",
"I actually work on Wall St. I am far from being the 1%. I paid for my own college (still got student loans to prove it at 31yrs), my parents gave me no money besides raising me. I make a reasonable living now, in New York City it's not even anywhere close to being a top bracket. I consider myself medium (not even upper). I don't scrape along for a living but I still have to save and I can't afford a house or property.\n\n\nThat said, I consider myself fairly liberal and had a really hard time finding work and getting ahead at first. I really went through the ringer getting to where I am, got fired more than once at different jobs for dumb reasons, got laid off, worked temp jobs, etc. I now work for a bank as a support role, not trading or banking. So I consider myself fairly sympathetic to the OWS mantra. However even I couldn't connect to the OWS movement. After a while, it went from being about giving opportunities and job creation and deteriorated into a mob of hippies and hooligans spitting on people, cursing them out, and doing all sorts of obscene things as an outright display of anger. There were just NO GOALS! NO ORGANIZATION, nothing you can give to the authorities as a plausible and achievable alternative to what's happening now. Chanting \"down with capitalism\" and \"destroy the 1%\" and \"die corporate pigs\" does nothing. \n\n\n\n\nWhat these people did was just constantly harass people that work in the area. My coworkers had to change clothes during the day because for a while, anyone with work clothes would get harassed on their way to work. The people I work with are in compliance, and we work to find the Bernard Madoff guys and people committing fraud and shut down accounts. It didn't make any sense that these people harassed us over issues we didn't perpetrate and were actively trying to solve. \n\n\n\n\nThe best example of OWS not being well organized was the fact that they occupied Wall Street in the first place. Most people in the finance world knows that besides the NYSE and only a FEW banks, MOST OF THE LARGE FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS LEFT WALL STREET AGES AGO. Most of them are nestled in midtown now. Midtown is the new financial center and downtown Financial District is slowly being converted into residential space. Morgan Stanley is in Times Sq, Goldman Sachs is Jersey City and the World Trade area next to the Hudson, Citigroup is in Long Island City. They really should've been occupying midtown. Watching the OWS people argue with finance people on TV, it became quickly evident that some of these people have NO IDEA how the financial system worked and were only working off of things from headlines and popular tropes. They seemed like an angry mob that didn't understand enough to engage in intellectual discussions and were only focused on the end goals, not how to get there. What OWS needed was a leader or figurehead that could keep up with the politicians and leaders with the strength of the movement behind them. They needed a leader that could focus the movement that could gain national appeal or hurt the institutions in a way that was non-violent so they couldn't be ignored. If such a person ever existed, they never emerged into the spotlight.\n\n\nTL;DR: the Occupy movement started with nice themes about equality, fairness, but soon quickly turned into a disorganized group full of anarchists and the smart people never emerged into the spotlight.",
"well... it turned into a giant stinky bum camp in my town. That doesn't really help the legitimacy of the movement.",
"The $175m in damage and closed businesses didnt help anything. Along with drug use and rapes. I know I know, they werent with us they were just a few trouble makers. Sorry buddy. They were with you.",
"A lack of leadership and direction. You could ask 30 people why they were there and they would give you a range of answers from government corruption to income inequality, corporate corruption, corporate lobbying, and all of the above. \n\nThey were there protesting a lot of what corporate america is but if they had had the organization of a handful of MBAs they would have been much more effective. Some groups even tried this. It was pretty comical and I remember the daily show mocking the irony of that.",
"I went to the OWS in New York for the first few weeks, not staying over, but going to photograph the event, talk to people, etc. \n\nAt first it was very well focused against predatory capitalism, the corruption of our government by the bribery of the financial industry, and how the banks and financial industry crashed the economy for their own benefit. \n\nThe first person I talked to was a sixty five year old man, a grandfather of two. There were a wide variety of people who were furious about how badly fucked over the American people were by Wall Street. I think the whole \"lazy hippie\" thing was just a bullshit meme the media latched on in order to discredit the legitimate complaints people had against corruption and predatory capitalism. Not to say that the hippie contingent wasn't there- it absolutely was- but it wasn't everyone. \n\nI do have to agree with the people who point out the lack of clear organization. One thing that bothered me about OWS was how resistant it was to organization. It felt more like \"We don't want to organize, because that's what we're against, man!\" Well, I'm sorry, but that's not how things get done. Although, to be fair, the goals were definitely there- reduce the corruption of government, predatory capitalism, etc. However, as unfortunately seems to happen with any left-leaning demonstration, it slowly turns into a fucking smorgasbord of totally unrelated topics. \n\nOccupy Wall Street was a very powerful, national movement. I have never in my life seen something like that happen. It was in every major city in the US. And let's not forget that the reason it ended is because it was broken up at 3am by a nationally-coordinated response by local police departments. Was that more of a clean up thing because of loitering, or was it because it was making uncomfortable things part of the national conversation? \n\nThe American people were fucking fed up with how screwed over we've been by the banks and by Wall Street, and our completely corrupted government. Americans are still just as pissed off and fed up. The fact that income inequality, government corruption, and the crimes of Wall Street are such big talking points shows that OWS was at least somewhat effective. \n\nSorry for the wall of text. ",
"Strange that people upvoted the \"weather\" when the movement lasted well into February before running out money. Not to mention the various other occupations in more temperate climates (e.g. California).\n\nHaving been a part of the movement for a few months before it died out, I can think of 3 major reasons for it's downfall:\n\n1. It ran out of money: During one critical GA in December, the Finance Group stated exactly how much money was spent per day on food and donations to other movements, and expressed deep concerns about the way the movement was hemorrhaging money since donations were not as plentiful as they were at the start. I don't remember when they ran out of funds, but it was shortly after the Finance working group's budgeting proposal to appropriately handle funds. Which brings me to point no. 2.\n\n2. Occupy Wall Street was not one linear organization, but a sort of coalition made up of working groups, each dedicated to their own cause. As the movement grew, the amount of groups did also, dividing the cause's dedications and creating friction between groups over who deserved money and who didn't. This ties into the previous point, where many groups had an inherent distrust of how Finance handled the cash, and often accused them of being opaque in their money-handling. So Finance didn't receive the cooperation it asked for when they were making proposals to avoid financial ruin. The food thing, which was the largest of OWS' expenses, comes from how...\n\n3. Occupy Wall Street became an elaborate homeless shelter. By Occupying and offering the resources they did, they attract a lot of people who were otherwise not interested in the social cause. These people, a motley crew of homeless people, mentally ill, drug addicts, and all-around nomads, strongly influenced the direction in which money was dispersed, both because no one wanted to neglect them, and because they were always around to participate in assemblies. This further divided attention in a movement who's focus was already compromised by its many working groups.\n\nTL;DR It's not weather; the movement crashed in warm places too. It was funds for food, too many working groups with too much pride, and the need to care for its homeless and disadvantaged that crippled Occupy Wall Street from the inside out.",
"First, the movements goals and purpose became diluted by the smear campaigns conducted by the media. Everyone in the movement was painted as know-nothings that promoted anarchy, communism, socialism, etc. So the vast majority of ignorant Americans bought into this story that the movement was composed of disgruntled and disillusioned bottom dwellers that wanted handouts from the government when that simply wasn't the case. The smear campaign weakened the message of occupy wall-street, and so many Americans watching all of this unfold on their TV screens generally condemned the movement. Support from the rest of society was cutoff.\n\nSecond, lack of organization. Again this is why the smear campaign was so effective, because the message of the movement was all over the place, and no central authority existed to clearly define the moments messages and objectives.\n\nThird, you can only camp out in front of Goldman Sachs for so long before you have to deal with all the personal matters in your life.\n\nFourth, loss of hope for change. And in all honesty, the movement did not have a lasting impact on politics and our economy, as a result of all the reasons mentioned before.\n\nFifth, weather.\n\nAnd sixth, the police crackdown that forced people to camp in some really uncomfortable places.\n\nThese are all the reasons that in my mind were the most decisive factors that resulted in the dissipation of the movement itself. Of course it is these reasons working in concert to dampen the movements momentum, because just one of these reasons alone would not have been enough for the movement to disintegrate the way it did.\n\n"
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20nrya | do dogs mourn the loss of their owner or the loss of a food provider? | I always see these sensationalized stories on dogs that grieve the loss of their owner.
I have always wondered to what extent this might be true. Are they actually mourning the loss of a leader or are they upset that their main source of food has gone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20nrya/eli5_do_dogs_mourn_the_loss_of_their_owner_or_the/ | {
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"It's the owner. As any dog owner will tell you, the dog is happy to see you even when you're not doling out food. And this makes sense. Dogs are descended from wolves, which are pack animals. They bond to their pack."
]
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[]
] |
|
7or7uy | why are property taxes the same or more than the cost of if you were simply renting the home? seems like it defeats the purpose. let's use nyc as an example. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7or7uy/eli5_why_are_property_taxes_the_same_or_more_than/ | {
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"Property taxes are merely a crude form of wealth tax, with origins in the time when only wealthy people owned land. The amount of money needed by the city or county (or school district or state) is divided by the number of property owners in that area, and then assessed to them in proportion to how valuable their real estate is.\n\nNot sure what the reference to renting has to do with anything.\n"
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3ca6fq | why do people use skipping ropes? would it not be the exact same to jump up and down and do the motions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ca6fq/eli5_why_do_people_use_skipping_ropes_would_it/ | {
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"No. Just jumping is easier than skipping ropes.. When you skip ropes, you can miss your shot. So you need coordination and it's more challenging. I don't know anyone who is bad at jumping, but I do know people who are bad at skipping ropes. "
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||
3wjph3 | why do patterns of three feel so 'right' to us? does this differ in different parts of the world? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wjph3/eli5_why_do_patterns_of_three_feel_so_right_to_us/ | {
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"My theory is this:\n\nImagine somebody on stage, speaking. He starts a list. The first item is just a thing: nothing special. The second item is like the first, but this now sets up a pattern: we've just had two very similar items, so we expect the third item to conform to it.\n\nIf the third item does conform to the pattern, it feels satisfying because it has confirmed our expectation. If it *doesn't*, then it's surprising to us, and has run counter to our expectation. In the first case, the speaker is a brilliant and inspiring speechmaker; in the second case, he's a comedian.\n\nSo, to break it down, it might go like this:\n\n1. Table. (Hmm. That's a thing.)\n2. Chair. (Oh, this looks like a list of furniture.)\n3. Couch. (It is! It's a list of furniture!)\n\nOr alternatively:\n\n1. Table. (Hmm. That's a thing.)\n2. Chair. (Oh, this looks like a list of furniture.)\n3. Armadillo. (WTF?)"
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3mue79 | how'd that mars water/ice get to the top of those hills? | There's no rain on Mars so it must be different from how Earth water gets uphill. Is this a geological thing? What are some theories? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mue79/eli5_howd_that_mars_waterice_get_to_the_top_of/ | {
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"Leading theory is that certain salts can suck enough moisture out of air that they actually dissolve in it. So take some of this \"perchlorate\" salt in the soil at the top of a cliff, and blow moist air over it, and over time it'll form a small puddle that washes downhill and leaves a trail of that salt behind."
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1jdx3y | why do some people find repetitive sounds irritating and others find them soothing? | A friend of mine recently got a 110 year old grandfather clock as a gift. He finds the ticking to be very soothing while I would sooner put the clock through a wood chipper than listen to it for more than a few minutes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jdx3y/why_do_some_people_find_repetitive_sounds/ | {
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"I remember hearing somewhere that humans' brains are hard-wired to try to locate the source of a repetitive sound. That is why things like back-up alarms and the like work. It most likely hearkens back to our primitive ancestors, where tracking a critter (herein: lunch) through the woods would eventually result in a built-in [\"passive sonar\"](_URL_0_) of sorts. The fact that an item, in your case an old clock, is making a steady, repetitive noise can be reassuring to some, perhaps because it creates a fixed point one can focus on, but drive another person mad because it... just... won't... stop... TICKING!"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_sonar#Passive_sonar"
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2b7d5k | how has japanese culture become such a big thing in western countries? | Anime/Manga, Japanese video games, J-Pop, getting Kanji tattoos, Japanese words (eg. kawaii) etc.
How has Japan's culture managed to spread over into Western Countries and become so popular? I'd also like to know how some of those things (particularly anime and manga) originated in Japan itself. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b7d5k/eli5_how_has_japanese_culture_become_such_a_big/ | {
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"Hmm... good question. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because some of their stuff is vastly different than what we normally see while still being very entertaining. It's refreshing, different and intriguing at the same time.",
"I'm not a sociologist but I did a module on Japanese society and history for my degree.\n\nI'd hazard a guess that it's actually because Japanese culture is *highly* westernized. The most popular and emulated parts of Japanese culture that we see in the US and Europe are anime and manga, jpop, some of the films produced and some tv shows. \n\nJapan underwent a rather radical cultural reinvention during the early 1900's, because it had a policy of isolationism - until the recent past (circa late 1800's) foreigners had few rights in Japan and the country was largely untouched by foreign influence. You can see this very clearly in Japan's history; it went from what was essentially a sophisticated feudal system in the 1800's to a hyper-industrialised country by the mid 1900's. This is largely due to lack of exposure to foreign influences followed by a large cultural movement aiming to 'take' parts of western culture from the primarily Dutch traders who first went over there.\n\nHence; Japanese popular culture is recent and highly influenced by western culture, and as such is accessible to people in western society.\n\nSource: I once read a book about this thing but it could be that I'm talking out of my arse.\n\nEDIT: Just to add; It's the combination of this and a completely unique and isolated culture that makes Japanese pop culture the way it is - it is inherently different from western culture yet HIGHLY influenced by it. This is because it was essentially 'accelerated' - all the influences of modern Japanese pop culture are either very old cultural Japanese beliefs or practices, or *modern* European ones.",
"probably the same reason Hollywood is a big thing elsewhere - people thirst for fresh, interesting content. animation-wise, stuff from the US used to be for children only, and Anime filled that gap. ",
"Cause they are very different from typical \"western culture\".... they have similar stuff but it has just evolved differently, like comic books vs manga, or cartoons vs anime. Especially when it comes to things like manga/anime, japan is much better at it with more detailed/stylized/mature art style.... its alot different from what we normally see which is why we are drawn to it. \n\nThey also express things differently, or uniquely.... like the \"cute\" stuff as far as facial and body language, lots of facial and hand gestures that are unique to asian countries. We are naturally attracted to things that are different or unique.\n\nAs far as how anime/manga came about.... japanese have developed their own original art style thru scrolls and woodblocks. The technical term for stuff like comics or manga is called \"sequential art\", and they had that (the woman having sex with an octopus is an example of this). When white people first came to japan, there was some guy (forgot his name) who shared his knowledge of the western style of art.... japan was fascinated with western ways and quickly absorbed alot of the western style but merged it with their own to make something unique (this includes other things like clothing or architecture). Manga came out of this as a japenese version of comic books, same with anime or movies. \n\nThe thing I personally like about manga is the very clean and simple style of drawing and line work they do, and the panels have alot more nature or enviornment depicted, along with characters. ",
"Japan became more economically successful in the late 70s and early 80s. Because of this, Japanese businesses were eager to explore international trade with American businesses. Americans doing business with the Japanese became more interested in Japanese culture. You can see an increase in interest in Japanese art, cuisine, and decor in the overall zeitgeist of American culture in the mid to late 80s. An increase in interest in anime, Manga, and music soon followed in the 90s.\n\nThe history of Japanese Manga originated through American soldiers stationed in Japanese following WWII. Soldiers would give comic books (particularly Disney comics) they were done reading to local children who loved them. The Disney style of comics that the children loved had characters with large eyes, small mouths, and large heads. This either influenced artists who created their own comics or created a demand for a particular style of comics. ",
"I don't think it's particularly a *big thing* in the West. Anime/manga are popular within a small subculture, with the exceptions of a few that are more straight forward and accessible (*Pokemon*, *Dragonball-Z*, *Sailor Moon*.) I lot of manga fans in the west are considered nerds, outcasts, etc. J-pop exists on an even smaller scale and the average westerner has probably never heard it. ",
"Japan is going for a culture victory and are becoming heavily influential to many nations.",
"Japanese culture is big here in the West?",
"It actually hasn't. Almost nobody cares about that stuff. But this is reddit, so yes they do. ",
"I don't think it's a very mainstream popular thing here...\n\nThis might be the wrong place to say this though.",
"U.S. culture has permeated the globe because we export so much of it. The United States is the largest economy by a fair bit. Until fairly recently Japan was number 2 and they also have quite an influence around the world as a result of selling so much stuff to so many different places.\n\nChina (the current #2) is culturally very isolationist, but if that policy changes expect to start seeing a lot of Chinese pop culture stuff too.",
"A lot of answers here that sound very sociological with no real sources cited.\n\n[Here's something real though.](_URL_0_). Japan is, globally, approximately the #10 exporter of culture (this report is a bit out of date - they're continuing to rise even now). They have entire national programs like Cool Japan dedicated to increasing the size of their media export industry. The two largest exporters are the US and Germany at approximately 6 times the size of Japan, but that gap is closing rapidly (Japan has a growth rate higher than every nation by China, India, Turkey, and Poland in creative goods exports - that is, no other fully developed economy has a cultural industry that maintained the level of growth held by Japan).\n\n\nSo do you want to know the real answer? The real answer is Japan is a big thing - in terms of soft culture - because they're making a concerted effort to be a big thing. They're good at soft culture exports for the same reason they're good at electronic manufacturing. Government policies and will to be good at it. ",
"You should ask on /r/askhistorians to get a good answer, all the top comments are wrong or contain tropes that have been proven untrue by historians.",
"It hasn't. That's how...",
"Dragonball Z. Duhhhh",
"teen weirdos found the internet, and the rest is history",
"Speaking from my experience as an 80's kid, Japan was fascinating because it was so exotic and different despite being a 1st world nation. There aren't many countries that are so different from the West that aren't somewhat secluded or that have same level of production value in their entertainment that Japan does. \n\nJapanese entertainment started getting bigger in the late 90's when I was in high school. For nerds and geeks like me, Japan was seen as a magical place that gave us our favorite video games, where it was mainstream to watch anime and read comic books after the age of 12. It seemed like nerd heaven there. \n\nSo, I think a lot of people who were a bit alternative and wanted to be different chose to model themselves after Japanese culture. Luckily the word 'weeaboo' wasn't around then or I would have been called that all the time. I was in the anime club, I would read Japanese manga in class, I would buy Asian snacks from the Asian grocery store and eat them for lunch, and I would regularly use Japanese words like 'baka' and 'kawaii!' in the middle of English sentences. Luckily, I'm not as awkward as I was back then, and I parlayed my interest in Japan into a legitimate translation career. \n\nSo, I think that all the people who grew up with that alternative subculture made it mainstream as they got older and continued buying Japanese entertainment in all its forms. It didn't hurt that Japanese manga and anime were modeled after American works originally, but contained much more mature stories and plot arcs compared to much of the mainstream stuff that was available at the time. \n\nWhat it comes down to is that Japan is a 1st world nation with a lot of expendable income, leading to a strong entertainment industry that captured the hearts of people who wanted an alternative to Hollywood. After all, the strength of Hollywood is the reason American culture is so popular in other nations. ",
"I think to some degree you're also overestimating how popular it is. While it certainly has managed to spread beyond japan, everything you described is still pretty niche and something most westerners are not involved in. As such, I wouldn't describe it as \"such a big thing\".",
"Japanese culture is popular? Not in my country.",
"Anime/Manga is fairly easy. They are interesting (not all of course, but enough to garner attention). They provide fresh content. Artistically, they can also portray things that are difficult/impossible to portray in live-action productions.\n\nKanji tattoos is probably because people think it looks cool. Quite a few foreigners do not even realize the actual meaning of the tattoos they get (probably for the best).\n\nJ-Pop and Japanese words like Kawaii are a niche and in no way whatsoever would I classify them as mainstream.",
"It hasn't...it is very much a fringe thing. I am the only person I know who watches Anime. Video games are video games, whereever they come from, so no one is specifically thinking \"this is a Japanese game, so I want to play it.\" No one uses Japanese words, and only tools get tattoos with Japanese letters.",
"It hasn't really. It's still more for outcasts and social misfits. And children. ",
"None of those things are big in western countries though. I think you spend a bit too much time on the internet. ",
"Why is this an ELI5 question? This sub has gone downhill. ",
"You know how the strongest presses make the tastiest juices? Well Japan's culture is like the diamond compacter of suppressing individual expression. The stuff that squeezes out is usually VERY creative.",
"\nWell, It hasn't.\nI live in Japan and the actual culture here is so profoundly different from the Japanese cultural understanding found in the west that theyre barely comparable.",
"I don't see it being a \"big thing\". I only see these themes popular in small groups of population especially the Asian community. I could be wrong, but compared to some European cultures the Japanese culture is miniscule. ",
"I think for the most part these things are only really popular thanks to the internet. Since pretty much everything is accessible with the Internet, its easier than ever to connect to a culture on the other side of the planet",
"You're thinking of weeaboos on the internet. Only main stream japanese thing is video games, and the popularity of japanese games has actually been declining ever since gaming went main stream in the west.",
"I think you have that reversed.",
"We have to remember that anime/manga, Japanese video games, J-Pop, etc. aren't necessarily representative of Japanese culture. The list that you and I mentioned are different subcultures that only reside in Japan. Like the subculture of video games and music here, these cultures spread throughout the world.\n\nNow that we have that dichotomy out in the open, anime/manga, specifically, has become a globalized culture that has spread rapidly throughout the world since the start of certain individuals bringing anime to America, the start of fansubbing, etc. The appeal of anime varies from person to person but it has definitely become a globalized culture. ",
"James Clavell's Shogun.",
"It is a subculture. It is not as big in the west as people think. In my high school of 1300 there were probably 10 people obsessed with Japanese culture and maybe 20 that were interested in Manga, but not much else. It is not mainstream to be involved in Japanese culture.",
"Forgive me if this has already been said; I'm on mobile and refuse to look at every single comment. Everybody keeps talking about the pervasiveness of anime and video games but what seems to be missing is that the influences of Japanese culture was brought to the West via art. Many of your favorite or at least most well known artists such as Monet, Toulouse lautrec, Whistler helped popularize that look of Japanese woodblock prints and an intrigue of this other. You might not even know that's what is was from which is how innate their culture has become to us. ",
"It's sort of a western country but still has that oriental/unknown interesting flair that people are looking for but may not like in let's say...Saudi Arabia",
"From my personal opinion.\n\nI read a lot of manga, mainly because it is different. American comics are either \"Sunday Funnies\" (newspaper strips), Marvel/DC/indie superheroes, or really niche Indie comics. American comics get stuck in trends and doesn't really innovate new ideas all that often.\n\nManga is really cool because of the diversity. Currently I am reading a silly romantic comedy about the mafia, an absolutely brutal medieval fantasy series, and [the most aborable motherfucker ever.](_URL_0_) They all have great production value, and could likely be published in the same magazine.\n\nTL;DR: Manga basically has or will try every conceivable plot line; there is something for everyone.",
"Has it? I thought it was a smaller subculture in western countries. I live in a major city on the west coast of the United States, and tbh those things really aren't popular at all in my area. Manga is really only read by the people who are very interested in japanese culture in the first place, and I've never actually ran into anyone listening to j-pop. Japanese words thrown around in everyday talk? I haven't really heard that either. It's not that I'm ignorant, either. I took japanese in middle and high school so it's not like I don't recognize these things.\n\nI think you might just be involved in a particular subculture tbh.",
"It's definitely still pretty niche outside of some major brands that are pretty seamlessly integrated into regular tv programming or video game releases (i.e. they don't seem out of place).\n\nHowever at least in my experience it became a pretty popular thing at the university level. A lot of people I've spoken to have heard of shows outside the big three like Attack on Titan or Sword Art Online which kind of took me by surprise. \n\nGranted I go to a school with a really diverse student body in NY with around 25,000 students and about a 30% Asian population. There's a pretty big anime club, but it's only really for those who are intensely interested and tbh is filled with mostly the outcasts/rejects/weird stereotypical kids you'd think of when trying to picture the typical westerner otaku. They're only a small portion of the people I've met here who are interested in anime/manga. Most of them are regular people who just have an interest in anime/manga (sometimes by proxy Japanese culture) among other things. It's really more individually based.",
"Japanese companies beat out western companies in the video game market in the 80s, which was dominated by Atari and clones until Nintendo and Sega came along, though their game companies already had gained ground in US arcades. Japanese exports used to be quite a bit cheaper, which may have helped as well. \n\nIn Japan, there is an element of western influence in their pop culture, but it is still very different than what is accepted here. The quality of the music tends to be much poorer and it's more about the idols. The beauty standards for the idols tends to be more what Japanese seem to idealize, which is accessible and cute instead of inaccessible, beach-tanned, fit, sexy, perfect human beings that most of us would have no chance in hell of ever dating. Japanese pop music isn't really popular in the US at all. Even people really into manga/anime and Japanese games are probably not paying close attention to their pop music (different story for Korea). \n\nAt the moment, Korean pop culture is actually more popular in the US, minus anime and the kawaii stuff. For Korea, it's definitely a case of them taking western trends and beauty standards to an extreme, like perfect pop idols and groups. In the US, the major pop idols are in their 30s now and they really haven't been pushing new ones very hard, so maybe for young people looking for something like that, K-pop groups work as a substitute. \n\nAs for the appeal of the country itself, I suppose it's the ultra-dense, well-functioning yet labyrinth-like cities that make you feel like you're in Bladerunner at night, the historical elements that are still a serious part of their life (temples/shrines, festivals, etc.), and their youth (teens to 20 somethings) fashion seems to be a lot more diverse and creative than the west, where young people are more pressured to closely follow latest trends to fit in and not look out of touch or behind. Of course, during the week days it's a different story as everyone is wearing some type of similar uniform in Japan, while the US, and probably most other western countries, allow for employees to wear a wide variety of business casual clothes.\n\nThat said, most Americans, and I'm assuming most westerners, aren't actively into Japanese pop culture in the sense they're searching it out. It's more a matter of some of the better things being picked up and shared with us, like Miyazaki films, Pokemon, Voltron, the top video games over there, etc. ",
"Well, apparently [Japanese culture owes a bit of its existence as we know it to the west](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\"Carl Barks was the most prolific writer and artist for the Disney Duck comics. He's responsible for four out of five entries on this list, and is therefore unarguably the father of the entire modern world. But possibly Bark's greatest contribution was the influence of Scrooge McDuck on one Osamu Tezuka. Don't recognize the name? Well, Tezuka has a few nicknames, like \"The Father of Manga,\" or \"The Godfather of Anime.\" \n\n\"Tezuka's work basically invented manga after World War II, which in turn inspired the cartoon form anime. Tezuka himself says that he owes absolutely all of this to none other than Scrooge McDuck. Tezuka's entire artistic style -- including such trademarks as the overly large, cutesy eyes and small mouths -- can still be seen today as defining aspects of Japanese animation. His work became the basis for all manga, ever, and Tezuka has confirmed that the basis for his work was Barks' Scrooge McDuck.\"\n\nJapanese anime was heavily influenced by American Disney cartoons and Betty Boop.\n\nDisney is still very popular in Japan, btw. Very popular.",
"I'm neither Japanese or white, but I've been exposed to Japanese and Western culture from a very early age.\n\nJapanese production of fictional film, manga, games and anime ever since the 1950's have been of very high quality, especially in the realm of fantasy, sci-fi and 'make believe'. Till this day, the most common platform for the most interesting story telling is based in an unknown world that still resembles critical aspects of our life. For example: Miyazaki's works, DragonBall, Gundam, etc. So what is this taste for an alternate universe? My guess is this:\n\nThe Japanese people live a very constrained life in terms of social norms, manner, gender roles, social hierarchy and taboo. For example, when speaking with an elder or someone of important social status, any typical Japanese will change tongue and use a respectable language for all dialogue. During the conversation, watch them turn their head to their younger or inferior counterpart and instruct him/her to run errands. The hierarchical relationship is even more defined in the workplace. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with it, but I feel that deep down in the Japanese minds, there is a craving for a different experience of life, perhaps just to getaway for a moment.\n\nThus, the demand for quality fiction stemmed an enormous bank of art and cultural gems that is just waiting to be discovered by other cultures. And of course, art is universal and can easily be appreciated by all.",
"I grew up loving Japanese culture because my mom collected Japanese dolls and had a friend in Japan. I do have a Kanji tattoo, but it's from when I was at Hiroshima Peace Park and something placed at Sadako's memorial was incredibly moving to me. I had our Japanese family friend write it down and then, years later, I tattooed it on me. But I don't like any modern Japanese culture too much (pachinko is SOOO awesome, though). I'm much more interested in Japanese culture.\n\nJust because someone has a Kanji tattoo doesn't mean it's something they picked off the wall that they thought was cool.",
"All that bullshit you mentioned is Japanese \"Pop culture.\"\n\nBasically the equivalent of our comic book/video game nerds.\n\nYour question is flawed.",
"As many have already mentioned, Japan was a country of isolation for over 260 years, which was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate. But because of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the Black Ships, Japan was forced into open their gates to the world. Because of this, Japan went through a civil war (Rurouni Kenshin anyone?) and then a industrial revolution, one of the fastest in world history. \n\nHowever, at this point in history, Japan was a \"Hard Power\" country, essentially ruling through military power. As seen during their Meiji Restoration, Japan was still a ruling Empire, not as a Democratic nation as they are today. In this time, Japan has gone to war with many Asian nations, making colonies in many of them. We all know about their involvement in Asian history (colonizing Korea, WWII, invasion of China, etc.) With the end of World War II, they were forced by the United States to demilitarize, and they adopted a Democratic government. \n\nFast forward a couple decades. Because they were forced to demilitarize, they were no longer a hard power country, and focused on \"soft power\", attracting others through different channels that is not militaristic. According to Roland Kelts, author of the book [Japanamerica](_URL_0_), the Japanese started their obsession, or becoming \"Otaku\", was because we had a little show called Star Trek. People being obsessed with this show (Trekkie's), dressing up in costumes, going to conventions, etc., Japan had learned this behavior from the US. Then the Star Wars movies came out, and that essentially laid the ground work for the Japanese media market on how to promote their works (anime, manga, j-pop, etc.). See [Transnationalism](_URL_1_) \n\nWhat we are seeing is almost like a role-reversal. Since some of us were not alive when Japan was going through their \"Otaku\" Revolution, it seems like a new phenomena to the west, in actuality the reverse is happening. They learned it from us during the 60's and 70's, developed their soft power media, and during the 80' and 90's we saw a growth in Japanese products (Sony, Nintendo) and media. And now reaching today, and the power of the internet, almost everything that is \"Japanese Culture\" is easily attainable.\n\nNOW, a brief history of anime and manga. Anime began in the early 1900's, found its stride in the 1940's and 50's, and began being a cultural staple from the 1960's to today. The 60's had shows like Astro Boy, Gigantor, and Cyborg 009. The 70's had Lupin III, Mobile Suit Gundam, Battleship Yamato, and Doraemon. You can see wher I'm going with this.\n\nManga has been documented to have originated in the 13th century with picture scrolls and paintings. There is still debate on the actual origin date, but it many scholars agree to around this time frame. Fast-forwarding a few centuries, the US Occupation of Japan had censorship laws that prohibited images of Japanese militarism or images that glorified war. Few years later, the US occupation ended, and those bans were lifted. At the forefront of the manga birth, we had the \"God Fathers of Manga\", Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa, creator of Sazae-san.\n\nThis took way longer than I was hoping for...I would recommend reading Japanamerica by Roland Kelts, which helps explain many of your questions. Many of this is also from Wikipedia. ",
"Also worth mentioning is the Japanese influence on European art from the 1860s onwards. See [Japonism](_URL_0_).",
"[Example](_URL_0_) of it spreading in Denmark.",
"The first thing you need to understand is Japan is shameless about culture importing itself, which I think is an excellent and very humble thing. If it sees something done well culturally it will monitor it, emulate it, then improve upon it. Things like American entertainment, French food, and British Queueing are all examples of Japan taking the original and running away with it. \n\nFor example, Japan has more Michelin Stars than any other country, and many of those restaurants are \"foreign\" cuisine. Japan has the second most impactful entertainment industry, where its manga and anime are imported directly from earlier American entertainment (see comic books pre comic book code, and earlier animation). They're also even better at making lines than Britain. \n\nThis take-and-improve culture was created through a few events. The first and most drastic was the Meiji Restoration of 1860's to 1910's. Japan before 1853 was completely isolated. America forced a port open for restocking with highly advanced steam ships or kurofune. After this Japan's leadership decided that it would modernize and imported hundreds of western engineers, professionals, consultants, and teachers. Japan didn't just import from a single country though. Instead it imported from a wide range of already industrialized ones. The west at this point largely came into fashion in Japan. You could see rich Japanese walking down the streets with expensive western suits, and so forth. Of course the middle or bottom of society couldnt' really afford anything like this at the time. This made the west a status symbol. The Japanese propaganda however echoed \"western knowledge with eastern values\" or something to that affect. \n\nIt wasn't until after WWII in the 1940's that Japan's state-centered culture was turned on its head and the invincible emperor was defeated that the second culture shift was embraced. Japan's government was completely rewritten by the US, and given a US like constitution (which still preserved the Japanese Emperor in the same tradition that different Japanese governments had been passing him around as a token of power for the last century) that the common man got to fully embrace westernisation. I need to be clear, since 1880 the common man HAD been slowly westernised but this was definitely the turning point. \n\nSo first Japan was isolated. Next Japan was westernising on its own terms, knowledge not values. Next Japan was westernised on the western terms, with western values. In retrospect then it is obvious that culturally Japan has for the better part of a century had a wind at its back. It saw that all it had to do was observe, adapt, and improve upon something to succeed. After WWII Japan was also \"able to\" almost completely completely cut its military funding and reinvest that sum into other eras. Additionally the US took up a very interesting policy of reinvesting into Germany and Japan and focus on rebuilding them. This was in reaction to the end of WWI where very extreme destructive policies against the loser, Germany, were what made a second war happen.\n\nSo then these factors, America's reinvestment, the take and borrow, and more free economic policies, let Japan become a giant internationally in things like video-games, electronics, and cuisine. \n\nMy opinion then, is that Japan became a little obsessed with the west. It saw what it could eclipse, not just emulate. Of course large portions of that view have fell through many came true. On the west's end you'll see that it invested very heavily into Japan as well. The west wrote its modern constitution. It helped rebuild it. It helped teach it. My answer then is the west is obsessed with Japan because Japan is obsessed with the west. Remember, Mario is an Italian plumber. ",
"I remember when I was a kid cartoons all seemed the same and because of that they were a bit boring. The hero would always win and nobody got hurt, all in twenty minutes. Every time. Then I found this weird \"cartoon\" called Naruto that didn't always follow the same pattern. (Even though it kind of did) The stories could be more adult and because of this I was drawn back to the TV every time it was on. Years later I discovered that Naruto was an anime and their were more shows like it, some were even better! That's how I got into it anyway.",
"Based on what I've observed throughout my life I would assume that Japanese culture has been seeping its way into western culture for awhile now. Specifically, United States has been experiencing Japanophilia since the 1980s. \n\nJapan has had a profound technological presence in the form of electronics. Japan has cemented a place in western culture with their innovations. Companies like Canon, Fujitsu, JVC, Mitsubishi, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, etc. have been household names for decades. One particular staple of American history was Nintendo who pretty much had a monopoly over the video gaming market for the better half of 80s. \n\nIn other arenas, like animation, japans presence was so subtle that it wasn't always noticeable. For example, alot of Japanese animation was dubbed and shown on American television in the 80's. Both memorable and long forgotten shows like Voltron, Galaxy Rangers, Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, The Adventures of the Little Prince, Astroboy, Tranzor Z, etc. have been part of American tv, buy the problem is most people didn't know they were anime. \n\nThe popular Transformers toys and cartoon series were actually based on Japanese toys called Diaclone and Microman which were produced by the Japanese Takara toy company and sold to Hasbro. \n\nThen in the 1990s Japanophilia rapidly expanded. I personally believe the Cartoon Network has played a significant role in exposing the United States to anime because of their perpetually consistent line up of anime cartoons which is largely available on cable television. ",
"Japan is extremely western, now. Just like Westerners get kanji tattoos, Japanese wear t-shirts with (mostly garbled) English.\n\nJapanese people love things that are popular and trendy. IE, Frozen is huge here right now. Anything that is limited edition, or limited to the season, it usually ends up pretty popular.\n\nJapanese people still remain very Japanese in some aspects, but not in others. Until recently, education for pre-school age children was decided by the teachers, now they give options to the children to see what it is the children want to do. This is leading to more vocal children with stronger opinions, which will eventually lead to more vocal adults. Much like Western adults. On the other side, things such as childbirth, marriage, and many Japanese holidays still remain very Japanese. IE, 30 days after a child is born they go with their grandmother to the shrine to have the priest pray for their health and wellbeing. \n\nWhile Japan looks mostly Western now, deeper into the clockwork it is still undeniably Japanese.\n\nTL;DR Japan takes what they like and incorporate it into their culture.",
"In my humble opinion - First non-white country to make it really big. Even after a war, what do they do? They actually had travel restrictions for 20 years, embraced white culture even more, taking in some of the better elements, but mixed with their peculiar ways, then unleashed their economic power and it was beautiful thing. My 2 cents.",
"In short, because it's alien enough to be interestingly removed from us, but familiar enough to not be threatening. ",
"I'm not sure if its just me, but in the UK its hardly heard of? Maybe more in the US, I'm not sure. But from what I've seen, Japanese culture isn't very big here?",
"Serious answer: A strong channel for the exchange of cultural enterprises via soft diplomacy as a result of the post-war alliance the two nations share. Examples: The Japan English Teaching Program, the Fulbright Scholarship program, anime/manga culture, etc. Japan draws as much if not more from American culture as its industries permeate other societies.\n\nIf you're unfamiliar with soft diplomacy, look up Joseph Nye, a very renowned International Relations scholar.\n\nSource: Master's student in IR at a Japanese university. This is a common topic of theses.",
"Can't speak for the rest of the Western world, but America is sort of a big cultural sponge by its very nature. And the Japanese were the first ones -- maybe still the only ones -- to really take animation as a serious art form without necessarily putting it in the \"kids only\" box. That would be my guess, anyway.",
"It is, because Japanese people often focus on detail and take their time and effort to achieve something good. People notice the difference, even though some can't tell exactly why they like it. I'm not saying they are the only ones doing so, neither all Japanese do this and some fail horribly. However, they built a culture of obsession and discipline and it's fascinating to watch or study.",
"Because everyone loves tentacle rape",
"IT'S THE JAPANESE WAY OF REVENGE FOR THE NUKES WE DROPPED ON EM. STAY AWAY FROM THEIR CULTURE. THEY'RE WHALE KILLERS YO. South park.",
"Has it? Anime/magna is still something followed in smaller groups and hardly considered 'main stream'",
"hmmm... I think it's the rise of the internet in the 90s that allowed Japanese culture to really explode. \n\nI think it's similar to what is happening to the rest of Asia's entertainment. Specifically the drama crowd. With the internet it's so much easier to access content that was only available in certain countries. Korean Drama, Taiwanese Dramas, Chinese Dramas, Hong Kong TVB dramas, and spanish dramas are starting to get huge in America. There are sites like _URL_1_, _URL_0_, kdrama (crunchyroll) \n\n",
"hmm, i guess the greatest influence might have been martial arts.\n\nbut also after japanese were brought over as slaves, and after ww2.\n\nvideo games: nintendo, taito, neogeo, square enix, etc...\n\nkanji tattoos are just a fad. i wouldn't honestly consider them a transfer of culture.\n\nand that's seriously the first time i've seen someone in the west use a japanese word other than 'sayonara/konichiwa' :\\\n\nanime? well, there are 2 theories to this one:\n\nA. hentai/ecchi/fan service - easy to see how this one works\n\nB. actual philosophical animes - harder to see how this is the cause\n\nin any case, who cares, just go watch these ;p\n\ncode geass (dub), ergo proxy (dub), fate zero (sub), ghost in the shell (+sac) (dub), princess mononoke (dub), scrapped princess (dub), steins gate (dub), suisei no gargantia (sub), sword art online (sub), tengen toppa gurren lagann (dub).\n\nthat should keep you busy for a while, so you don't have to ask questions like these ;p",
"A major economic boom in the 80s had Japan buying up American corporations during the recession, so much so there was a belief by some that Japan was doing a corporate takeover of America. You see the cultural influence of this in BTTF2 and especially in Blade Runner.\n\nSo in an effort to welcome our new Japanese overlords, we soaked in as much Japanese culture as possible. This is how Akira got on our radar. \n\nTime goes on, Japanese anime and manga has a cult following stateside, people are keeping up on what's happening. Then in the 90s, a 2nd wave: Pokemon Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z comes to America.\n\nIt becomes massively popular, especially with the kids, and as those kids grew up, they sought out other anime, manga, and other forms of Japan's popular culture and it all snowballs from there to where we are today. ",
"Actually western culture is also a big thing in eastern Counties; )\nThis's what people called \"Globalization\" ",
"America's occupation of Japan meant a lot of intermingling between Americans and Japanese. Even when the occupation came to an end, our bases there and continued business relations meant that Japan and America kept crossbreeding culture. \n\nJust as you think Japanese culture is big over here, American culture is HUGE over there. ",
"Japanese culture is a big thing in the Western Countries? How so? \n\nI really cannot think of a single aspect of Japanese culture that impacts everyday life of a person of any age in the West...other than video games and a cartoon or two. But that's it. I def. wouldn't call Japanese culture \"a big thing\" in Western Countries. \n\nedit. ah sushi, forgot about sushi. "
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"http://www.eenc.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/JStaines-CMercer-Mapping-CCI-Export-Strategies-Feb-2013.pdf"
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[],
[],
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"http://www.japanamericabook.com/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnationalism"
],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Igq9OEkz4"
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"dramafever.com"
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|
2ajwur | where did palestine come from? does israel predate palestine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ajwur/eli5_where_did_palestine_come_from_does_israel/ | {
"a_id": [
"civvgyi"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Israel was an independent state thousands of years ago, but was not a Jewish state after the diaspora in the centuries before the 1 century AD.\n\nPalestine became a state after the British and French (mostly) arbitrarily drew borders in the Middle East after WW1, despite the British promise to allow the Arabs self governance for help overthrowing the Ottomans. Even the the state was recent, the Palestinian people have a long history of the region going back hundreds of years.\n\nI'll assume you know why Israel was made after WW2.\n\nSo, basically, the Jews have a large religious and ancient connection to the region, and most of the backing of Western powers, who support it for a number of reasons. The Palestinians have a much more recent history in the region, and (I think) clearly had a better claim before the land was given to the Israelis. This is an incredibly touchy subject, for lots and lots of reasons, and really goes too deep for a comment on reddit to properly explain."
]
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[]
] |
||
1m6yp8 | market socialism | Hello.
I checked Wikipedia and I used Reddit's perfect search engine and did find a result for this type of ELI5, but I would like a more in-depth, but still simple explanation than what I saw. What is Market Socialism, and how is its effectiveness and is it employed by countries today? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m6yp8/eli5market_socialism/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc9e29m"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Frist off, market socialism is bunk from a marxist perspective. For anyone who isn't in high school, socialism is the push towards to the abolition of capitalism. This means the ending of production for exchange/commodioty production, wage-labour, etc. In short, the ending of the law of value. \n\nA market is when two independent producers, or owners of, commodities meet to exhange. A commodity is anything that is produced but it's distinguished by having two types particular qualities, it's value as an exchange-value and it's value as a useful object. You can't have a market without them. This means competition, the drive for surplus-value extraction from the direct producers through wage-labour, the production for exchange. The fact that there are markets indicates all of this, and it also shows that there is still private property.\n\nMarket socialism then is just capitalism. Some say that it might consist of co-ops but co-ops operate perfectly fine within capitalism. It doesn't even make any sense. If people are in a position to organise the economy and society as they wished, which is the whole point of socialism, then why would they keep things pretty much the same? \n\nAnd a point on wage-labour. Wage-labour is a social relation, not a method of distribution. This social relation can't be anything other that capitalistic. This is because it is a worker selling the only thing they have, their ability to labour, to someone who owns the property. It doesn't matter how much you are paid in wages, you are still subject to this social relation. The Marxist answer to this is that we are for the abolition of the entire wage-system because of this."
]
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[]
] |
|
1txg86 | how does apple get away with their proprietary charging plugs and ornery connections? | A few years ago, cell phones all switched to micro USB charge cables from company specific plugs, but Apple and iPhones didn't. Apple competes also use different connections on their computers. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1txg86/eli5_how_does_apple_get_away_with_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"cecf1rm"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Apple introduced Thunderbolt connectors on its computers because, like Firewire before it, Thunderbolt promises to enable some incredibly fast transfer rates between the computer and external hard drives. Thunderbolt also incorporates the Displayport standard, so one connector can move around data at a seriously high speed *and* send lots of data to a compatible computer monitor. The folks who do jobs that need to be able to manipulate large quantities of data, such as video editing, will happily pay for all the bandwidth Apple can give them.\n\nAs for the Lightning connector on iOS devices, the connector provides about 8 pins vs. USB's 4 pins. Those 8 pins can be reconfigured on the fly, so that licensed third-party accessories can use those 8 pins for audio, video, whatever (Apple's previous standard iPod/iOS connector had to be bigger, with 30 pins, to provide similar functionality, with some pins being redundant and others no longer in use. The Lightning connector's ability to re-configure pins should give it a healthy lifespan). The other end of the cable is USB, of course, which I believe satisfies the European Union's requirement that cell phones be capable of charging via USB without the need for proprietery chargers. It will perhaps someday become USB3 when Apple decides that the extra bandwidth is necessary (the speed of the flash memory in current iOS devices is apparently not yet high enough to keep up with the transfer rate USB2 is capable of, let alone USB3)."
]
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[]
] |
|
3tbmy5 | what makes the google website's source code so huge and complicated? | Inspired by [this XKCD comic](_URL_0_) I went to _URL_1_ and hit "View Source" on my browser.
I'm surprised that the source code for such a clean and simple page, with very few elements, is so... gigantic and messy and hard to read/understand.
I'm sure the code for the actual search engine, which will be very complicated of course, will not be in the source of the front page.
Could someone explain why this is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tbmy5/eli5_what_makes_the_google_websites_source_code/ | {
"a_id": [
"cx4r56l"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"You know how the search results load as soon as you start typing, instead of you having to hit enter and refresh the page? That's because all of the code for displaying the search results (not the backend code that generates it, just the code to format and display it) is included in the landing page. It's not in a separate page."
]
} | [] | [
"http://xkcd.com/1605/",
"google.com"
] | [
[]
] |
|
6bn4gr | why is philosophy so seemingly dead today but in previous times reveled upon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bn4gr/eli5why_is_philosophy_so_seemingly_dead_today_but/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhnzc8l",
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"text": [
"Are you sure that it is dead?\n\nThere are many modern philosophers and most every artist shares philosophical ideas through their chosen medium.\n\nWe simply don't hear about our contemporary philosophers because their ideas are diffuse that we can learn them without ever knowing the origin. The opposite of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates who we know of, but most people can't actually tell you what they argued.",
"Philosophers in ancient times were more like what we call scientists these days. Descartes was a mathematician. Locke was a doctor. Kant was an anthropologist. Hobbes was a physicist. And Sir Frances Bacon was a politician. And they wrote philosophy as well.\n\nSimilarly, most contemporary philosophers are known more as something else (usually authors) than as philosophers. Modern day philosophers do exist. But is it mostly academic work and writing responses about other philosophic works. One famous modern philosopher was John Rawls (died in 2002) and he wrote a lot of books and articles on modern day ethics. But you also have people that you might not think of as philosophers, like Ayn Rand or Martin Luther King. \n\nSecond, there was a lot of time between those people. Descartes died in 1650, Locke died in 1704 (54 years later), Kant died in 1804 (100 years later). The idea that there is only one or two great philosophers alive at any one time seems fairly true. Add to that, philosophy is much like art in that it isn't really appreciated until the artist dies.\n\nEDIT: A final thought. Philosophic works are extremely hard reads. And a lot of what people know of ancient and classical philosophy is very trivialized condensed lines. Descartes: \"I think therefor I am\", Locke: \"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Personal Possessions\", Hobbes: \"Human life is short, ugly, and brutish\""
]
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||
a874mq | how is only the end of my one strand of christmas lights, opposite the power source, lit? | I understand the concept behind one broken bulb breaking the circuit and preventing the rest of the lights in the strand from lighting up. But when I hung this strand of lights (indoors, from command hooks) all of them were lit. After two days up, I woke up to the first quarter, beginning at the plug/outlit, not being lit with everything else. Then like 3 days later, tonight, I came home to the next quarter or so unlit. What's the science behind this and is there a easy fix? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a874mq/eli5_how_is_only_the_end_of_my_one_strand_of/ | {
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"Typically better/newer ones have a bypass so a broken section won't kill the entire string, so the bypass is still working and getting to the last strand. That said, for it to go in sequence suggests that it may be a fault in the wire with your set, or multiple burnt out bulbs.",
"You'll notice a stand of light has 2 wires at the end, but somewhere in the middle to the beginning, there are 3 wires.\n\nBasically this separates it into 2 stands of lights to aid in burned bulb finding, and reduce voltage drop from having too many bulbs in a series.",
"This is actually an electrical engineering question and has to do with the way the wire is connected to each bulb and the final terminator (usually a female plug). \n\nAssuming we know or have covered the workings of electricity: \n\n(The wire is actually multiple strands of copper ran through a rubber shell, then each section is hooked into the circuit through one of the strands and daisy chaining off of that one.)\n\nEach section of bulbs is connected to a strand of wire in the outer shell running to the male plug, theres a wire that runs the full length of the wire which terminates at the final female plug and another wire runs the backside to complete the circuit. \n\nFinally: to fix it, find each bulb in the out sections to repair the entire strand. Since their daisy chained, fixing one will fix a section."
]
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[],
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|
a07avx | what is the cause of diarrhea | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a07avx/eli5_what_is_the_cause_of_diarrhea/ | {
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"text": [
"There are few different causes. What they all have in common is that too much liquid is traveling through the intestines. You can have different liquids. The 2 main culprits are water and oil/fats. If your body is not digesting or not absorbing the fat that you eat, you can get greasy, foul smelling diarrhea, because the oil just loosens everything up. If the culprit is water, your body is either not absorbing it from your intestines, or your body is actively transporting liquids into your intestines. This last one occurs during cholera, which is what makes it so deadly. You dump out all your water and die of dehydration\n\nThere are a ton of things which could give you diarrhea. So many that naming them all would take far too long. Almost all of these things, though, use one of the mechanisms that I laid out previously. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
43r1hw | why do some people have more than one credit card? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43r1hw/eli5why_do_some_people_have_more_than_one_credit/ | {
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"American Express is my most generous reward card, but isn't accepted everywhere so I keep a MasterCard that has wider acceptance. \n\nA few old ones I keep and don't use because they have no fee and a high credit limit so cancelling them could temporarily reduce my credit score. ",
"Cards generally have a credit limit and having a second card lets you continue to use a card even if you spend up to the limit on another card. This is usually a bad place to be because it likely means you can't pay off your other card, but nonetheless it's a reason some people have multiple cards.\n\nAnother reason is for rewards. American Express cards tend to have the best rewards, but also charge the most merchant fees, so quite a few merchants don't accept them. In that case AmEx holders will want a backup card. Some cards also get bonus points when you spend them on certain types of goods/services. If you're really into credit card rewards you might have a card for groceries, a card for gas, a card for restaurants, and a card for travel.",
"I regularly use 2 (and have 3). I use one for regular day-to-day expenses, like groceries, buying lunch, regular restaurant meals, clothing, trips to Target & Home Depot, etc. The other one I use primarily for big ticket items like travel, electronics/appliances, expensive special occasion meals out, car repairs, etc. I also use this card outside the U.S. because it has no foreign transaction fees. I pay them off at the end of each month, and the credit limit between the two is *way* more than I spend, even if I were to add up all I spend on the two all year long.",
"Having multiple cards with different rewards/fee structures will allow you to maximize your rewards based on your spending patterns. Lookup credit card churning if you want to get the most out of signup incentives/rewards. Every time you use a card the processor takes (~2-4%?) so they can afford to give a good chunk of it back. ",
"I have the following:\n\n1. 3% cash back at restaurants\n2. 5% cash back at gas stations\n3. 3% cash back on Amazon, 2% cash back at drugstores\n4. 2% cash back at grocery stores\n5. Rotating 5% cash back categories (sometimes 10%)\n\nAll 5 cards have 1% cash back on non-category purchases. None have annual fees.\n\nMultiple cards is also good for your credit score. Number of total accounts is a factor, with more accounts being better. Low credit utilization is a positive factor as well; more cards = higher total credit limit = lower total utilization. Age of accounts is also a positive factor. Opening new accounts may lower your credit score for a while (both from inquiries and from lowering your average account age), but once you have a bunch of accounts \"aging\" simultaneously, accounts you open in the future won't lower your average account age very much because each new account will have a proportionally smaller contribution to the average account age."
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6xeu4y | is whole foods really good for your health? they say, for example, that bread made with whole grains have less sugar and more fiber that is good for you. what truth are in the whole food thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xeu4y/eli5_is_whole_foods_really_good_for_your_health/ | {
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"Yeah it pretty much means natural foods as they are. There are three main segments to a grain, and the tiny segment in the centre contains a buttload of nutrients and all the fibre of the grain. The outside layer contains some fibre and some nutrients, And iirc a little fat (good fats that build protective layers around your cells, and help cells to communicate with each other). The middle layer is just plain energy (glucose I think, mainly). Manufacturers strip the outer layer of grains and the centre (I think it's called the germ or something), and just leave the immediately satisfying middle layer, giving you white rice, white bread etc. So you basically lose most of the fibre, which is good for a shitload of stuff - mostly digestion. And you lose almost all of the vitamins and minerals, as well. So you're pretty much left with mostly energy. Quick burn energy.\n\nWholefoods are always better for you. They have so much extra shit in them.\n\n- disclaimer: it's been fucking ages since I've studied any of this, so look it up yourself if you have to, but I know the general gist is right.",
"Whole *grain* means it hasn't been ground to remove the shell. As a result, there is significantly more fiber in whole grains. However, it is not normally better from a 'nutritional' standpoint (the entire point of fiber is that it's indigestible).\n\nIt says absolutely nothing about the sugar content.\n\nIn general, it's nearly impossible to determine nutritional value from the labels they put on the brand. Most of them are either buzzwords or irrelevant to the food product at hand (\"no trans fats\" is nice, but hardly necessary when you're not talking about crunchy friend foods). Some of them can even be superficially regarded as warnings - if you see a food with 'low fat' that almost always means 'high sugar' (and the sugar is far worse for you than the fat)."
]
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2ic58n | how can my cat sleep most of the day without losing muscle mass, or having any other side effects? | We let both our cats out every day, and around 3 times a week we'll find something dead or dying on our doorstep. They come in every morning if they've been out, and but usually stay inside all night and most of the day. Sometimes they don't go out at all, and spend what must be close to 24 hours sleeping, shifting nap spots, and sleeping more.
How is it that they can still run aound and do cat shit when they barely excercise, let alone not be morbidly (or even slightly) obese? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ic58n/eli5_how_can_my_cat_sleep_most_of_the_day_without/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl0vss6"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because losing muscles is an active process. Your body specifically makes an effort to reduce unnecessary muscles, because they are heavy and cost energy. Depending on the animal, they may do this too. It would be completely detrimental to a cat to naturally degenerate their muscles if they get slightly injured once, while humans need as little mass as possible, because we are endurance runners.\n\nAs for being fat, you feed your cat a certain type of food. This food was balanced to perfectly fit your cat, so he doesnt get fat. [The same stuff is available for humans, but it recently came out and humans only want to eat food that tastes amazing.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.soylent.me/"
]
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|
b6tiru | why don’t our internal organs get all tangled up inside of us? or does this sometimes happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6tiru/eli5_why_dont_our_internal_organs_get_all_tangled/ | {
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"text": [
"Because in general they don't really move. If a traumatic injury happens, things can get moved around and jumbled up, but in general our organs are sturdy enough and held in place by muscle, fat, tissues, and bones that they mainly stay in the right place. ",
"Our insides aren't just like a open sack with organs floating around inside. Things are held in place by a lot of connective tissue, muscle, bone, fat, and skin. It's definitely possibly for injuries or diseases to cause problems, but in an otherwise healthy person, your organs are pretty well anchored in place. ",
"You don't hear much of it in people - things in general are held in place very well by connective tissue. For example, there are webs of connective tissues between the loops of your small intestine to keep it from tying in knots. The best example of internal organs moving around enough to cause problems can be found in some deep-chested dogs - it causes the condition known a \"bloat\". Their stomach will twist over itself and fill with gas, putting pressure on other organs. It's treated surgically by untwisting the stomach and tacking it to the side of the abdominal wall to prevent it from happening again."
]
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93db8v | how do our bodies know when to grow our nails from clear to white? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/93db8v/eli5_how_do_our_bodies_know_when_to_grow_our/ | {
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"text": [
"The nail is the same color throughout. It just appears white when is isn't pressed against your skin(aka long enough to have air under it) ",
"The nail is hydrated by the nail bed until it reaches a point where it no longer has access to that environment. At that point it becomes dehydrated, making it white and more brittle. People who moisturize their nails with oils like vitamin e and other emollients often have more length before the white."
]
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[],
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||
2iioi2 | youtube's copyright policy on music. | ive seen videos that some big time youtubers have uploaded that contained music, and it wasnt removed.
ive looked and i havent been able to find anything that actually explained it in a understandable manner
how do you know what can and cant be used in videos?
where can we find music that can be used?
are there rules about certain lengths of clips of music?
what about clips from movies and tv? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iioi2/eli5_youtubes_copyright_policy_on_music/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl2i4ai"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"If a video of your contains obvious music that belongs to someone else, it *might* (but probably won't) get caught by Youtube's filters. \n\nOtherwise, Youtube doesn't care, until the intellectual property holder contacts them about your video. At that point the rights owner can choose to put ads on your video, the revenue from which will go to them, put one of those little ads with a link to the amazon or itunes music stores on your video, or have your video taken down completely. \n\nMusic that you can put in your videos: unlicensed music, public domain music, music that you have bought the licenses to, and short enough samples that it's obvious you're referencing the music, not distributing it. You can find lots of free to use music online, just search for \"royalty free music\". Public Domain music is anything that had a copyright, but that copyright expired. In the United States (and most of the developed world), copyright lasts the life of the creator, plus 70 years, which is [absurdly long and destroying creativity so that big companies can make a buck](_URL_0_). So basically, if something was made by your great, great, great grandparents' contemporaries, it's okay to use. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4"
]
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|
ebex0h | how are snaitized rooms in hospitals and scientific labs and the likes are being kept sanitized? | Im not talking about the self cleaning procedure physicians or scientists go through which is washing hands, putting on head caps etc...
Like a surgeon can sneeze in the room, doctors talk to eachother mid surgery and exhaking air filled with germs, you can have some unhygenic (is unhygenic the right term?) things on your body, when you open the sanitized room's door, the air mixes with the outaide air...
Might be a stupid question.
p.s. is the english in the title and description correct? if there are vocab / grammatical mistakes I would sure be thankful if you notified me | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebex0h/eli5_how_are_snaitized_rooms_in_hospitals_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Usually you would have high air circulation AC units with strong filtering involved so the air in the room is changed to clean fresh air many times faster than a normal room",
"Cleanrooms are normally over pressurized. This prevents unfiltered air from entering. Any open doors or other openings will have the airflow going from clean to “dirty” and the clean will stay clean.",
"In most labs there's the air conditioning with good filtration, which has already been mentioned. The air is reasonably free of particles, but it doesn't need to stay perfectly clean. Work that needs completely sterile conditions is done in a cabinet with extremely clean air. \n\nThe cabinets are a metre or 1.5 metres wide. They have a surface to work on, like a bench, closed sides, and a glass window at the front with a gap about 20cm high to put your hands through to work in the enclosed space. The cabinets have air filters and controlled airflow to prevent any particles falling onto your work. If everything in the cabinet was clean to start with, it's unlikely that you'll contaminate your work... As long as you use good technique.",
"UV lights that can kill bacteria can be used in the rooms to disinfect (sometimes you can see an eerie glow of a blue light through lab windows. \n\nAlso, [I know of a method](_URL_0_) used in school rooms, ambulances and gyms that vaporize chemicals that degrade down to inert substances to destroy bacteria and viruses. I've seen it at trade shows.",
"For a clean room:\n\n* There are filters that are HEPA-rated as sterilizing grade, their pores are typically 0.1 microns, smaller than bacteria, and the air is circulated through them at a relatively high speed.\n\n* The room is higher pressure than the outside.\n\n* The outside of the room is another \"clean\" room, used for gowning up and bringing supplies in.\n\n* Everyone who goes in has to have the full hazmat suits to prevent contaminating the room with their bacteria.\n\n* All equipment brought into the room must be sterilized. Instruments (scissors, etc.) are sterilized in autoclaves, glassware in ovens, and everything else has to be wiped down with sterilizing-grade detergents. If you look at the rating on a can of Lysol that says it eliminates 99.9% of bacteria, that's a 10^3 reduction. Sterilizing grade is 10^6 or more, so 99.9999% of bacteria killed in 10 minutes.\n\n* The room must be sterilized daily or before use, using the same detergents as above, wiping down or spraying every inch of every surface inside the room.\n\nFor hospital rooms:\n\n* Room is sterilized or disinfected with detergents, wiping down every surface (walls, floors, ceilings, etc.) and generally the bed covers and sheets are replaced with new (possibly sterile). Disinfectant detergents are not as strong as sterilizing detergents ( 10^3 vs 10^6 ).\n\nAs far as the doctors, that's what their scrubs, gloves, and masks are for. Bacteria typically spread through contact (touching), so wearing masks, gloves, and environmental suits prevents it from spreading to the patient. Any instruments they use in an operation are sterilized in autoclaves.",
"One thing that I haven't seen commented is how to actually sterilize a clean room. For an actually sterile room (not a surgery room), the method I know of that's most common is VHP, or vaporous hydrogen peroxide. Basically, you seal the room up and put hydrogen peroxide in a fog machine and let it run. This will kill *almost* anything that could be growing, and then just breaks down into water so there's no chemicals or residue, you just have high air circulation to dry everything off and you're done."
]
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[],
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ag5p3h | if a fugitive like scenario were to play out in real life, would the person have to go to jail even though their innocence was proven but they broke out of jail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ag5p3h/eli5_if_a_fugitive_like_scenario_were_to_play_out/ | {
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"text": [
"Most likely they would. If they had been found not guilty and were aware, why would they try to escape prison? The sentence would probably be reduced to a class B misdemeanor. "
]
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[]
] |
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v6dua | relating to music, what is bass and treble? also how to understand the equalizer in my audio device to get optimum effect? | ^title^
EDIT: Just woke up to see the response. This is huge. Thanks guys. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v6dua/eli5_relating_to_music_what_is_bass_and_treble/ | {
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"Bass is low pitched stuff, tubas, bass players, lower male singers, etc. Treble is higher, usually a normal woman's talking pitch and up. Flutes, higher guitar stuff, soprano singers, etc. As for equalizers, first I should say that music is already equalized before you get it, so the equalizer is mostly for people who like their music differently from how it is mixed, or to account for differences in speakers and room set up. Once you account for differences between your listening set up and the set up it was mastered on, it all comes down to taste, so \"right\" is just how you want it to sound. \n\nEqualizers break down your music into more pitch categories than just \"bass\" or \"treble\". Your equalizer probably has 8 - 12 sliders or so, each of them with a range above or below it (a number like 400-800hz), and on one side of all the sliders should be markers showing how much change the sliders make in volume. Zero should be in the middle, numbers above will be positive, numbers below will be negative. If all the sliders are set to zero, the sound will come through exactly as it was mastered (albeit your speakers and set up will change how it sounds, but there is nothing that can be done about that short of recreating the mastering studio). Each slider adjusts a pitch range, numbered in hertz, or vibrations per second. So if a slider is numbered 400-800, any audio in that pitch range will be raised or lowered in volume depending on where you set the slider. Experiment with different settings and see what you like.",
"Disclaimer: In order to make a proper ELI5 response, I will be making several generalizations that are not necessarily always true. I will be talking more about the general situations rather than the excxception. Keep that in mind when reading.\n\nBass and Treble are two of three parts that make sound that you can hear. \n\nBass is all of the low sounds. Low sounds are the ones that you can feel all through your body. When you hear low sounds you also feel them in your bones and muscles. This is the sound that, when you hear cars with loud music, shakes other windows and you can feel the impact inside of you. Bass guitat and some drums fall into this category.\n\nTreble is all of the high sounds. High sounds are the ones that you hear in your ears only. These include all of the hissing noises. High sounds are the ones that sometimes hurt your ears and make you flinch if its very loud, especially when wearing headphones. Violins, some drums and flutes fall into this category.\n\nAlong with those two there is also \"mids\" or \"midtones\". These are all the sounds in between and include all speech and melodies. You can sort of feel mids in your body, but not as much as bass. The mids are the sounds that you sing when singing along to a song. This includes pianos and guitars.\n\nAs for configuring the equalizer on a stereo, it depends on the kind of music you're listening to as well as what kinds of sounds you like. When listening to rock or metal, you would generally want to turn up the mids since theyre more melodic and have lots of guitars. When listening to hip hop, you would want to turn up the bass, since hip hop has lots of bass. Dance music you would want to turn up the bass and treble, but more so treble, since it has bass, but many melodies are higher pitched than normal.",
"Though most seem to explain it correctly. There is a part of music theory that has to do with bass and treble. They are the two main staffs that musical notation is written on. And, as others have said, bass is for lower pitched stuff while troubled is for higher pitched stuff. \n\nYou probably remembered learning the notes of the treble clef if you had to do anything with music in school. The lines are E(very) G(ood) B(oy) D(eserves) F(udge) and, the spaces spell out the word FACE.\nBass clef is different. The lines are memorized by G(ood) B(urritos) D(on't) F(all) A(part). And the spaces are memorized by A(ll) C(ows) E(at) G(rass).\n\nAnything above the bass staff starts to go into the treble staff, and vice versa.\n\nNow, the optimum affect for your audio device is subjective. It's a combination of your own personal taste, and the music you're listening to. If you're listening to dubstep, you're going to want a lot of bass. But, if you're listening to Mozart or something, you're going to want to lean more on the treble side.",
"Bass is low frequencies. For instance, a low E (the thickest string in standard tuning) on a bass guitar is 41 hertz (or Hz). Hertz is 1 per second. Meaning the wave repeats 41 times per second. The low E on a standard tuned guitar is 82 Hz. It is one octave higher (which, as you can see, is double the frequency). The next E up is 164hz, 328hz, etc. \n\nThen you can get really high frequencies (treble) up to like 10kHz (kiloHertz -- kilo meaning 1 thousand) or 10,000 times per second. I don't know at what frequencies human can't hear anymore. I know the lowest is something like 20 Hz. \n\nAnywho, your equalizer just gives you these sliders or knobs to control a certain range. It's not linearly broken up though, which makes sense, since frequency and notes do not have a linear relationship. \n\nSo, if you might have a 9 knobs/sliders on your equalizer, each controlling a range around the following values - 33Hz, 80Hz, 150Hz, 300Hz, 600Hz, 900Hz, 2kHz, 5kHz, 9kHz. \n\n33-150Hz could be your lows/bass frequencies, 300-900 could be your mids, and 2k-9kHz highs/treble frequencies. \n\nAnd then, you have what the dial/slider position means. Here we have a new term, dB or Decibels, which is like loudness or intensity. At the middle of the dial, the frequency range will be set to 0dB, which means you don't want those frequencies any louder or quieter than it was when it was originally recorded. At the lowest point of the dial/slider, you'll see a negative dB, maybe liek -15dB. This means you want this frequency band to be VERY quiet. On the other hand, +15 means you want this frequency band to be much louder. Obviously you can do anywhere in between. \n\nSo, as like everyone else said, it's all about taste. I'm a bass player, so I personally prefer the lows/bass to have high positive dB (louder), the mid frequencies to have negative dB (quieter), and the high/treble frequencies to have high positive dB (but not as loud as the bass). I believe in a smooth flow between frequency ranges, so my equalizers usually look like one period of a cosine wave ([half of this](_URL_0_)).",
"As others have said, bass is deep sounds and treble is higher pitched sounds. \n\nAs to how your equaliser should be setup, you want it so that your whole system ends up \"flat\". What this means is that your sound system doesn't introduce distortion into the audio. Even with high quality equipment, you can still get distortion due to the room.\n\nOne of the best ways to test this is with [pink noise](_URL_0_). This is made up of a sound that is equally loud across all frequncies; you may notice it sounds like the waves breaking on the beach. An easy way to setup your equaliser is to play that pink noise and just tweak the levels so that no range of frequencies sounds louder and it just sounds like waves breaking on the beach.",
"[This](_URL_0_) explains the relation between frequencies, instruments, and various notes.\n\nTreble is your higher frequency noises (certain drums, female vocals). Bass is the lower frequency noises (the boom you hear from car stereos). Humans can usually hear between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (sometimes you will see this as 20KHz). Frequencies under 20Hz are often felt instead of heard. Most musical recordings, audio equipment(amps, DACs, receivers, players, etc.), and output devices (headphones and speakers) are biased towards certain frequencies (some are more forward or recessed than others). Equalizing is just a way to personalize it further but don't forget the existing bias in your recordings and equipment.",
"I'll skip the explanation of what is bass/treble, that's been answered.\n\nAn EQ makes your stereo sound different by adjusting separately the loudness of the lowest bass, the highest treble, and at many points in between.\n\nThe thing you need to know about your EQ, is that the best use for it to fix your *speakers*, not to fix your *music*.\n\nBlind listening tests of speakers systems have shown that most people prefer a FLAT response. That means you perceive what is recorded on the CD you are playing, not something with more bass, less treble, or what have you.\n\nHowever, not all speaker systems have a flat response, especially if you have them in a bad listening room, or you have put together multiple units that were not sold together. Eg a subwoofer plus some bookshelf speakers. You you can use your EQ to make a system flat (to an extent... if you are making large changes with your EQ it suggests you should be making changes to fix the underlying problem instead of trying to cover it up with the EQ).\n\nI'll give you an example of a bad listening room. Picture a large room shaped like this:\n\n\n _________________________\n | L R |\n | | \n | |\n | |\n |_________ y |\n | |\n | |\n | | \n |_____________|\n\nListener is at Y. Speakers are L and R.\n\nThe problem here is that the adjoining area to the left is going to \"suck out\" all the mids and bass frequencies from the left speaker, because some of the sound is going to fill that space instead of going directly to the listener. The treble however, you will hear at about the same level from left to right because that travels more in a straight line.\n\nThis kind a problem, where your left speaker sounds much different that your right, sounds pretty bad. It will just destroy the realism of the music, because your brain uses subtle information between left and right to help you mentally position where each instrument is coming from (the soundstage).\n\nIf you had a stereo equalizer (set of knobs/sliders for *both* left and right) you could fix this to some degree by adjusting the left channel to boost the low and mid frequencies. Doing this well by ear takes a lot of experience but it is possible. There is also measuring equipment that can help you do it.\n\nAn EQ is a really nice feature in custom car audio, where you have a small, irregular space with many speakers pointing in different directions. Car manufacturers are now quite good at audio, compared to what we had in cassette tape days. The stereo that came with your car will have a pre-programmed, built-in EQ which you can't see or adjust, which makes your car sound as close as possible to what the recording engineer used to make your music.\n\nOne more thing. When you look at some cheap consumer EQs, they might have a bunch of presets like \"rock\", \"jazz\" etc, suggesting that you can get better sound by choosing the right preset for the kind of music you're listening to. This is a completely retarded sales gimmick. Just think, if this were true it suggest that the music of any particular genre is mastered in a *consistently* incorrect manner. That's ridiculous. "
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2ic5ca | can you get dandruff, even if you're bald? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ic5ca/eli5can_you_get_dandruff_even_if_youre_bald/ | {
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"I'm going to say yes, because, based on the wikipedia page, dandruff is the flaking of dead skin cells from the scalp, not the hair itself. Since very few people who are bald are also missing their scalp, they should still get dandruff.\n\nThat said, it would probably be much, much less noticable, because there is no dark hair to contrast the white flakes. "
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cgnph7 | why nipples are sometimes erect and sometimes not | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cgnph7/eli5_why_nipples_are_sometimes_erect_and/ | {
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"The nerves in the nipple react to stimuli, both physical and psychological. So an arousing thought, change in temperature, or something as simple as the fabric of your shirt brushing against your skin can cause one or both of your nipples to become erect.",
"Erect nipples facilitate nursing, which, afterall, is their primary purpose. They are heavily innervated to respond to the stimulus of a baby suckling. Of course, this means that they respond to just about any stimulus. Same thing applies to the penis."
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1pjhyn | why are hospitals kept so cold even though viruses such as the flu are generally transmitted at colder temperatures? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pjhyn/eli5_why_are_hospitals_kept_so_cold_even_though/ | {
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"mostly you do not want your doctor to be all wet and stinky when working on you and here have this blanket. ",
"Cold air does not promote the spread of flu viruses. It is an urban legend. In fact cold air typically prevents the spread of viruses as the cells cannot last outside of the body as long."
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bsmdx1 | how much electricity can i produce with 10000 liters of water? (hydropower) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsmdx1/eli5_how_much_electricity_can_i_produce_with/ | {
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"Depends how far the water falls.\n\nHydropower converts potential energy to electricity. Potential energy is mass X force of gravity X height. Hydropower is around 90% efficient so we multiply by 90/100.\n\n10,000 litres of water weighs 10,000 kg So for each metre it falls you'll produce 10,000*9.8*.9 joules.\n\nSo that's 88.2 kilojoules or 0.0245kwh. If you take it to the top of a 100m hill, you'll get 2.45kwh.",
"Unfortunately your question is impossible to answer. If you have 10k gallons water, you can calculate the theoretical potential energy stored in it based on how far it would fall. From there though real world issues like friction loss from the water falling in piping, efficiency of the turbine, flow rate of the water, etc all would change the answer.\n\nToo hypothetical for this sub"
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2cz9jl | if a person who didn't know they had ebola managed to get into a first world country, how much trouble are we in? what are the odds of this happening as well? | I'm thinking they'll spread it to family members, friends, and by the time the symptoms start, it'll be very difficult to contain the web. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cz9jl/eli5_if_a_person_who_didnt_know_they_had_ebola/ | {
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"The thing about Ebola is that the period in which it is contagious is the same period where it is extremely obvious that the person has Ebola. Additionally, Ebola kills very quickly so there isn't much time for it to spread.\n\nSo there is no \"by the time the symptoms start.\""
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ky3n4 | why insulin is so important. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ky3n4/eli5_why_insulin_is_so_important/ | {
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"Insulin is a hormone which regulates sugar (glucose) levels in the bloodstream. With another hormone called glucagon, it keeps sugar levels in the bloodstream at a nearly constant level by breaking down or building up glycogen stored in the liver or sometimes fat or protein stored elsewhere.\n\nHaving glucose in the bloodstream is important because cells use it to generate energy. In a process called cellular respiration, they use the energy in the sugar to make a substance called ATP, which is used to preform many functions around the cell which require energy.\n\nInsulin also functions in diabetes, which is probably what you were looking for, but I don't know very much about that.",
"Insulin is a hormone which regulates sugar (glucose) levels in the bloodstream. With another hormone called glucagon, it keeps sugar levels in the bloodstream at a nearly constant level by breaking down or building up glycogen stored in the liver or sometimes fat or protein stored elsewhere.\n\nHaving glucose in the bloodstream is important because cells use it to generate energy. In a process called cellular respiration, they use the energy in the sugar to make a substance called ATP, which is used to preform many functions around the cell which require energy.\n\nInsulin also functions in diabetes, which is probably what you were looking for, but I don't know very much about that."
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ej1pv2 | what is the financial advantage to a business when it’s possible to “get a $35 gift card for only $30?” | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ej1pv2/eli5_what_is_the_financial_advantage_to_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Giving a $5 discount to get $30 in business (and potentially more!) is actually a pretty cheap \"sale\".\n\nThats all it is, its a sale. Discounts drive more buying at many many businesses."
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2ndqi9 | the new facebook privacy policies going into effect on january 1 | Just want to make sure what they're up to, and what I need to do with the changes! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ndqi9/eli5_the_new_facebook_privacy_policies_going_into/ | {
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"[Here's a quick link I found](_URL_0_) Looks like it says they can pretty much use anything on your profile/identity in any advertising way they want.",
"Sounds like it would pretty easy to get the information to specific 3 letter agencies. ",
"I removed that shit off my phone when they started in with the use of text messaging services and all that. I have been thinking of deleting it all together, but so many great friends are on there and i don't miss the days before the internet of cards and letters and shit. Sounds so barbaric. ",
"They are not for the people, their intentions WERE for the people but then they got side tracked by corporate America :) What a shame.. also did you know they have been running for longer then 10 years now? Stale as a piece of bread heh ",
"Can someone please make an open source facebook style site. I only want pictures and friends.",
"I just always assume Facebooks policy is \"Everything on our site is ours and we can do with it what we want. We'll try not to openly piss everyone of at once but this is a business and profit will come before your privacy.\""
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