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189edd | aes, how does it work? how does it compare to serpent and twofish? | Also, with the new processors that support AES-NI, will they provide hardware acceleration for Serpent and Twofish? I would guess they wouldn't but making sure.
Edit: I found [this thread](_URL_0_) on /r/programming and I *kind* of get it, but what's this talk about diffusion and all of that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/189edd/eli5_aes_how_does_it_work_how_does_it_compare_to/ | {
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"In cryptography, confusion and diffusion are two properties of the operation of a secure cipher which were identified by Claude Shannon in his paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, published in 1949.\n\nDiffusion means that the output bits should depend on the input bits in a very complex way. In a cipher with good diffusion, if one bit of the plaintext (input) is changed, then the ciphertext (output) should change completely, in an unpredictable manner.\n\n(Thanks, Wikipedia!)\n\n"
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7lwv0j | if apple slows down older iphone models when the battery can’t keep up with the processor, then why are they still slow when plugged in? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lwv0j/eli5_if_apple_slows_down_older_iphone_models_when/ | {
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"Whilst its true that switching the iPhone to 100% mains power would alleviate any power stability concerns, allowing the processor to switch to full power, in practise, the mains power charges the battery, and then the processor draws from the battery. This arrangement allows for the phone to be unplugged suddenly without the risk of power issues whilst the battery switches to outputting current instead of inputting current. Plus, it forces people who keep a spare phone around and use it to play games (I assume these people exist) to buy a new battery to play their games at full speed"
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36gi93 | this quote by neil degrasse tyson: "if you fall into a black hole, you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into." | Wouldn't you get ripped to shreds passing through the event horizon? Does this propose the idea that black holes are essentially portals into other universes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36gi93/eli5_this_quote_by_neil_degrasse_tyson_if_you/ | {
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"That theory exists, yes. But that's really the end of the ELI5 version. If I were to try and express my (very rudimentary) understanding of the theory, it would go like this:\n\nWhen scientists were analyzing the behavior of black holes, they realized that they did something weird. They destroyed stuff. Now, I don't mean just tear it up. I mean that black holes literally *erase* things from existence itself. Now, there is a theorem in physics that says that that cannot happen, so the obvious question arises: \"Where the hell does it go?\" One of the potential answers is that everything that goes into a black hole becomes the matter from which a new big bang (of another universe) occurs.\n\nTo be honest, I'm not sure if this theory is very widely accepted at this point."
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4v532d | the difference between sievert, gray, rem, roentgen, curie etc? | Reading books about nuclear power, incidents, accidents etc and these units seem to be used arbitrarily, if not interchangeably. Very confusing... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v532d/eli5_the_difference_between_sievert_gray_rem/ | {
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"Okay, so you've got a bunch of different terms all pertaining to radiation. A few are redundant (as in one is the older term, now replaced with a newer unit), but most are just used to measure radiation at different points or situations.\n\nThe *Curie* measures radioactivity, that is the amount of particles being outputted from the source. It's a measure of decays per second, meaning how often an unstable atom breaks apart, releasing energy in the form of a photon or particle. It's an old unit and has been replaced with the *Becquerel*\n\nThe *Roentgen* is a measure of exposure, or how much energy has the individual or object been exposed to. It's measured in Coulomb per Kilogram of air, with coulomb being a measure of amount of energy per second. The use of this unit is discouraged due to its limitations since it's measurement is linked to 'air' and, you might guess, we are not made of air.\n\nThe *Gray* is a measure of absorbed dose, specifically the amount of energy per kilogram of matter, measured in Joules per kilogram of mass. Unlike the roentgen, the matter doing the absorption does not factor into the equation, making it easier to apply to practical terms. The gray supplanted the *rad* (you might recognize that term from Fallout) as the standard unit for absorbed dose.\n\nThe *rem* (acronym of Roentgen equivalent man) and the *sievert* measure absorbed dose equivalent, also measured in Joules per kilogram of mass. It's closely related to the gray and rad, but it has been adjusted to take into consideration the nature of the biological tissue that is absorbing the radiation, as some types of tissue are more sensitive than others. This unit is used primarily when dealing with living things absorbing radiation. The sievert is the modern, standard unit with the rem being the outdated term that is rarely used nowadays. Edit: Another thing I forgot to mention is that sieverts also take into consideration the specific kind of radiation that the person is absorbing, as certain exposures, such as alpha particles and neutrons, are more damaging to biological tissue. There's a nice little graphic [here](_URL_0_) that helps show the relation between sieverts and grays. The radiation and tissue weighting factors are those considerations I mentioned.\n\nHope this clears things up."
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6b5ryk | what's the difference between a powerful (semi truck) and fast (racecar) engine? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b5ryk/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_powerful_semi/ | {
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"Racecar gearboxes have gear ratios for high speed. Race engines are lighter and more fuel efficient because weight is major while still generating many horsepowers. ",
"Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall, torque is how far you move that wall.\n\nSemi's have to move a lot of load, so they're built to supply torque. Race cars just have to go fast, so they're built for more horsepower.",
"They might have equal power ratings, but the car spends less time shifting so it can accelerate better. It generates less drag, so the top speed can be higher.\n\nIf they were pumping water out of a mine (the first thing horsepower was advertised for) the higher rating would win.\n\n",
"The difference all boils down to torque. That is how much turning force an engine can put out. Torque is arguably a more important number in determining engine performance than horsepower. \n\nNow there's two ways to increase torque: raise the pressure inside the engine, or increase the number of cylinders. \n\nIn the case of a truck, you're dealing with a heavy object that needs a lot of torque to get moving. So you want your peak torque to all be at the low end of your RPM band. To do this, we turn up the pressure, aka the compression ratio. The piston will squeeze the air/fuel mixture more before it ignites. When you compress the mixture, it generates heat. If you compress it enough, that heat will cause the fuel to spontaneously ignite, slamming the piston back down with a lot of force. That force is transferred to the wheels, which helps get that heavy load moving. \n\nThis is why trucks use diesel engines. Diesel fuel stands up to high pressures without igniting too quickly. So you can get pressures in the cylinders really high, meaning lots of low end torque. The downside is that due to the high pressures, diesel engines have to be built strong. That makes them heavy. A heavier engine can't spin around as fast. Nor does it like to change its rotational speed very quickly. Gearing can help, but you're ultimately limited how fast you can go, and how quickly you can accelerate. \n\nNow gasoline/top fuel engines use lower compression. They can be built much lighter since they don't have to hold up to very high pressures. So the engine can run faster. If you want more power, you just dump more air/fuel into the system. So they produce more torque the faster you rev them. Great for racing, because you're going to be running high RPM at full throttle. But even if you dump more fuel in, you're ultimately limited to how big the engine's volume is. So we need to go bigger. Now you could make one big cylinder, but that's going to require more momentum to get it moving. It's also less compact. So instead you work with several smaller cylinders. To increase torque, just increase the number of cylinders. You can increase power without having to increase the mass or work done by one piston. And you can just keep adding pistons. Petrol aviation engines will have 12, 24, even 36 cylinders and run at thousands or horsepower. A diesel can do the same with far fewer cylinders, but it'll run slower. \n\nThink of it like dragging a cart with a rope. You could get one big dude (think The Mountain) and he'll be able to efficiently pull it by himself without getting too tired, all be it slowly. But if you have four skinny guys, they can each share the work and move it faster, but they're going to tire out faster because they have less endurance.\n\nOf course there are gasoline engines that can run at higher pressures to increase torque. But these are more complex than a diesel, and also require specially formulated fuel. That is because gasoline self ignites more readily at lower temperatures. If it ignites prematurely, it can severely damage the engine in a phenomenon known as \"detonation\" or \"knocking\". They will use these more complex engines in race cars to help improve low end acceleration while keeping high end torque. However, it's not that common in road cars except high end ones. \n\nSo what if you need the best of both worlds without increasing complexity, or making the vehicle prohibitively expensive? \n\nThat's where electric come in. An electric motor produces consistently strong torque at all RPM bands, in a lightweight package. You'll see them used in vehicles like trains, which need to pull very heavy loads, but also need to go fast. Or Formula E race cars, which can accelerate very quickly.",
"Most of the answers so far have mentioned only torque vs horsepower. Just to be complete, HP is calculated from torque...so it is a derived unit based on RPM. There are a lot of other differences that you might be interested in. A racecar engine is designed to have the highest possible power-to-weight ratio... it needs to be as light as possible to keep the weight of the car down. It's also important to keep the moving parts very light, as heavy parts have more *momentum* once they are moving, and more *inertia* if they are stopped. This is important in race engines (especially F1) because the engines are required to run very fast, then slow down quickly, then speed up again... thousands of times in a race. Because these moving parts are so light, they need to spin *very* fast to have as much power as a heavier motor spinning slowly. This is the main reason race engines need to spin at very high RPM to generate a lot of power. All the parts are optimized to be light, and very well balanced. Only the very finest materials are used. The *tolerances* (spaces between moving parts) are extremely small. An F1 engine can cost between 8 - 10 million dollars. Each. That semi-truck engine? Lots of torque...but it does not spin very fast. Compared to a race engine, they are quite crudely made. Many thousands are built...and they are designed to be easy to assemble, and last a reasonable time, with minimum maintenance. "
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5jgdg3 | why are morals thrown out the window when hiding behind anonymity? | Like in online video games when people can mess around and do what they want, or on reddit when people say whatever they want to? Why do some people lose their morals when they get to hide behind a mask? I'm mainly looking for a psychological reason, and not the "they didn't have morals in the first place" answer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jgdg3/eli5_why_are_morals_thrown_out_the_window_when/ | {
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"I don't think there's a detailed psychological explanation. It's just there aren't any negative repercussions from being an ass when you're anonymous. There's no personal reputation at stake. You can piss people off, watch the community freak out, and then delete your account like it never happened.",
"They do it to exert control over some part of their life. Often these people are bullied in school, have a poor relationship with parents, stuck in a job they don't like, single, etc. Making people feel bad on the internet is the only method they have of making anyone else do anything."
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c5k4to | how does a computer destroy data? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c5k4to/eli5_how_does_a_computer_destroy_data/ | {
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"Usually, it doesn't remove the data, it just 'forgets' what's there. So deleted files could be recovered. \n\nIf you use a wiper, it'll go in and overwrite the actual data on the drive.",
"Not an expert, but I think is gets overwritten with new data rather than its being thrown away. The data is still there just it would be corrupted and written over with new data."
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6xl145 | do animals of the same species use different methods for bringing up their offsprings, just like humans do? | I've always wondered if animals of the same species have something like personalities that seep into their upbringing methods. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xl145/eli5_do_animals_of_the_same_species_use_different/ | {
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"I'm sure they do to a degree. Animals are more driven by instinct than humans, at least as far as we know, so they will conform a bit more. But upbringing has a lot to do with the environment the animals are in as well. Animals in thriving conditions will likely raise their young in a very different manner than those in an environment that is harsher.",
"Im a farmer and have noticed if you have a cow that's more flighty then the calf will be more flighty, and cows that are more chill will have more chill calves. \n\nAlso most all animals have different personalities.",
"Nearly every animal that raises its young will have its own take on the matter, even if the changes might be relatively small sometimes.\n\nTake cats, for example: One cat may decide the best hiding place to give birth is under the stairs, while another hides under the guest-room bed. One will let them fight it out, while another will make sure the runt at least gets a bit of milk. One will pretty much freak out when where all the extra food was going is discovered (as if we didn't know) while another brings the furballs to meet her masters as soon as they can safely move about.\n\n Even what to chase, whether it's lethally cold to sleep outside, and what to idiotically chew on that they shouldn't will be taught to these kittens by example. Some of it is by necessity (if there's lots of mice and no rats, they'll learn on mice) and some of it by choice: licking the salt off chips and then pushing them back into the bag is not something every kitten learns to do, but one or two of them may learn and keep the habit from mother!\n\nThese may be small changes, but they make the upbringing increasingly different especially once the kitten's own inclinations and experiences (they don't *all* fall in the toilet that one time) are tossed in: you'll get different preferences as to whom they'd rather sleep on, the ones that eat cheese, the ones that vomit up grass every other day, the skittish ones, the one that jumps into the shower with you, the ultra-social one that quickly learns it can get pats and treats from everyone that comes into the house, the ones that completely ignore their job of chasing down flies, and so on and so forth.\n\nAnd that's just cats!"
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708prn | the united states of america has had several different political parties throughout it's history. what caused the rise and fall between the various parties, and is it a pattern that could be repeated in modern times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/708prn/eli5_the_united_states_of_america_has_had_several/ | {
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"The current two-party system has persisted since the Civil War. The major fault line that broke up parties prior to that point was slavery - although this could be also be viewed as the struggle from pre-industrial agrarian economies and industrial economies.\n\nIn terms of being repeated in the modern day, this isn't very likely but it is possible. The two-party system tends to act like 'fixed coalitions' where their positions drift over time because there aren't really very strong 'line in the sand' positions that define the two parties. Ultimately, the people running the parties aren't ideologues but rather pragmatists whose primary interest isn't in promoting any particular agenda but remaining in office.",
"In the US winner take all voting system, there is an equilibrium point at 50% support. If a party falls much below that, the with have no representatives in congress and risk being overtaken by another party. If a party has much more support than that, they risk being split from within. \n\nThis has happened twice in US history. The Federalists withered after losing four elections in a row, and in 1920, James Monroe was elected unopposed. But in 1824 it suffered a four way split, whose factions eventually become the Democrats and the Whigs.\n\nBy the 1850's, the Whig party, with an internal rift over slavery, was unable to field stong candidates, and was eventually overtaken by the Republicans.\n\n",
"The current two-party system has persisted since the Civil War. The major fault line that broke up parties prior to that point was slavery - although this could be also be viewed as the struggle from pre-industrial agrarian economies and industrial economies.\n\nIn terms of being repeated in the modern day, this isn't very likely but it is possible. The two-party system tends to act like 'fixed coalitions' where their positions drift over time because there aren't really very strong 'line in the sand' positions that define the two parties. Ultimately, the people running the parties aren't ideologues but rather pragmatists whose primary interest isn't in promoting any particular agenda but remaining in office.",
"In the US winner take all voting system, there is an equilibrium point at 50% support. If a party falls much below that, the with have no representatives in congress and risk being overtaken by another party. If a party has much more support than that, they risk being split from within. \n\nThis has happened twice in US history. The Federalists withered after losing four elections in a row, and in 1920, James Monroe was elected unopposed. But in 1824 it suffered a four way split, whose factions eventually become the Democrats and the Whigs.\n\nBy the 1850's, the Whig party, with an internal rift over slavery, was unable to field stong candidates, and was eventually overtaken by the Republicans.\n\n"
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5bmw1a | why do home toilets have tanks on the back but public toilets do not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bmw1a/eli5_why_do_home_toilets_have_tanks_on_the_back/ | {
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"because public toilets use thick 1\" piping with sufficient water pressure/capacity to initiate a flush. Your little 1/2\" plumbing in your house would have the worst flush ever, just turning on a faucet and expecting it to take care of your business.",
"Why do public toilet bowls have that middle part missing? Whats the point of that? Why can't I get that for my home?",
"Architect here. A few reasons. \n1. Maintenance. Tanks are easy to tamper with, and require maintenance to keep the tower operating and water from running. \n2. Cleanliness. Tankless water closets are easier to wipe down. No nooks and crannies like between the Tank and Bowl on a traditional toilet. \n3. Stronger flush. This keeps it from being clogged and has the added benefit of being able to be flushed more frequently (you have to wait for the bowl to fill in order to get pressure to flush). \n\nTankless toilets are also loud and you don't want that in a residence. And like someone said, a tank type guarantees a flush no matter what the water pressure is (its generally less in a home than it is in a commercial development but that's not always true). Last item is cost. Tankless cost more initially (flat cost and installation) but you save that on service calls and cleaning personnel over time.",
"Being a plumber, the tankless toilets use larger water lines for more water pressure to handle whatever is thrown at them. They are also pretty loud so that's why it's uncommon for them to be found in residential settings. Another reason tankless toilets are used in commercial settings is the vandalism aspect. I remember friends pulling pranks back in the day and removing the water line from the tank and wedging it under the lid so the person flushing the toilet would get sprayed with water once they flushed. \n\nEdit: Never thought my plumbing experience would earn me fake internet points. My plumbing memories are fading as I pursue a degree in computer science. ",
"Bar owner here.\n\nYou don't want anywhere people can hide drugs or a convenient surface upon which to take drugs.\n\nAlso, drunk people love to break stuff. If they break a toilet, the pub can flood disrupting business.\n\nDepends how rough your pub is though, mind.",
"In the UK they do have cisterns (tanks) just concealed behind a panel. See here: _URL_0_ ",
"In public systems, you need a reliable mechanism that can serve many people, a public toilet uses a flush valve water closet where you don't store water in a tank behind the toilet. \n\nFor private or home systems, we usually use a private water closet system where we know that the rate of usage of that toilet is far less than that of a public toilet.\n\nKnowing those facts, mechanical engineers have created a set of numbers called fixture units (FU) so they can represent the likelihood of a system to use water, you can take an idea of them from such a [website](_URL_1_).\nYou can realize that the public systems have higher FU, and adding the multiple FUs in your system, you can get the water demand in that toilet by checking such [graph.](_URL_0_\n)\n\nAll in all, both private and public systems have a tank, but the public system has a bigger tank on the roof with more flow and a bigger pipe.",
"I live in a prewar apartment building and we don't have tanks, just massive pipes and some serious water pressure. I never made the connection that I've otherwise only seen them in public toilets",
"Plumber here. \n\nThe mechanical function of the toilet is a siphon. Sort of like when you take a hose to a tank of gas. You create a suction (using a pump or your mouth) which pulls the rest of the gas out of the gas tank. The same concept applies to both tank and no tank toilets.\n\nThe toilet in your home has a tank of that has about 1.28 gallons and when you push the lever it floods the bowl. There is enough water to fill the waste line to create the suction and pull the #1/#2 down the drain. On cheaper toilets the siphon breaks early and you are left with remnants of said #1 & #2.\n\nThe toilet at the local Wallie world works the same way, but, instead of holding the water in the tank, the valve has the ability to let 1.28 gallons in a couple seconds and shuts off.\n\nSide note (Not ELI5)- the pressure of the water in your house and the pressure in commercial buildings wont vary too much (in the city) the reason the toilet takes so long to fill is because of the 3/8\" line connected to 2 outlets (fills bowl and tank simultaneously).",
"Are toilets with tanks common in american houses? In my country, Italy, most of the time the tank is inside the wall and not accesible",
"Because people will poop in the top tank of a public toilet if available. It is called the \"Upper Decker\".",
"[Serous]\n\nHaving worked as a cleaner in an airport I can tell you... They do.\n\nI once subbed for a guy who worked a major UK city airport. I did it one day and never went back. \n\nWhy? The space between the gents and the ladies has the cisterns... And porn... And brewing tackle.\n\nThat was one fucked up experience.",
"In Australia, there are usually service ducts (spaces) on the other side of the wall where the toilets are located. \n\nToilet cisterns are installed in here, plumbers can easily access them for maintenance and also reduces vandalism",
"Because people will steal the innards of the toilet to fix their own!\n\nUsed to be a Duty Manager for a retail store, had a customer complain a toilet would not flush, checked it out, turns out someone stole the arm and ball...\n\nIt is a sad world we live in.\n",
"They are called sloan valves or [\"flushometers\"](_URL_0_).\n\nIt provides a better and more reliable flush (and it can be immediately flushed again by another guest, rather than waiting for a tank to fill), but it requires a larger water line than most single family home bathrooms possess.\n\nThey are also more resistant to vandalism and require less maintenance and cleaning effort.",
"Whether you have a flush-valve toilet or tank-type toilet depends on the diameter of the water pipe that feeds the toilet.\n\nI have 1\" water pipe feeding all three of the flush-valve toilets in my house from a large booster tank. \n\nMost houses have 1/2\" water pipes feeding the toilets and not enough water can flow through those pipes to flush a flush-valve toilet. But, it's more than enough to fill up a tank.\n\nToilets of both types work by throwing a lot of water at your poo. The real difference is how the water gets there: stored in a tank above your poo, or stored in the water pipes. ",
"To make sure people don't do \"upper deckers\", which are when you shit in the tank so the water stays brown and gives whoever has to clean it a headache and e. Coli",
"The most common answer seems to be the pipe size, but that doesn't really answer the question of \"why\". If there were a valid reason to want a tankless toilet in your house, you could put a 1\" line in and have one.\n\nThe reason *why* that isn't done has to do with frequency of use. Flush valves provide water immediately, without having to wait for the tank to fill up first. In a commercial building you might have a line at the bathroom, and whoever is second in line isn't expecting to wait for the tank to fill up. \n\nMore importantly, if the first flush didn't work to clean the bowl and you're at home, you're not going to leave the bowl dirty, you're going to wait for the tank to fill up and then flush again. In a public restroom however, a lot of people would just walk away and leave the bowl dirty if it isn't easy to give it the second flush. ",
"Commercial toilets are pressure assisted, meaning the toilet has a pump built in. At home we generally use gravity fed toilets, you push the handle to make water fill bowl a certain amount until a valve opens and whamo poop gone",
" So you don't leave an upper decker. An upper decker is where you take the lid off of the toilet tank and drop a deuce in the back. ",
"There are a few good reasons to this. Some public toilets simply have the \"tank\" aka the cistern inside the wall cavity, these have a few advantages such as hygiene because there is less corners and nooks and crannies to clean around. Also they are not as prone to vandalism and some think it looks better. \n\nThe other type is the mains pressure flush which is the one you see with a lever and sometimes you can see a big 1inch pipe coming down the wall. these valves reslease a set amount of water from the mains to flush away your effluent (as apposed to mains filling the cistern, then the water from the cistern being dumped to flush away effluent). This type is often installed in stadiums concert halls ect where there is a large volume of people using the toilents at once. The advantage being that they can be operated continuiosly, no down time waiting for a cistern to fill before it can be reflushed.",
"It's because in a commercial building the theory is that there will be multiple people waiting to use the toilets so they use flush valves for immediate water to flush with. Where as tank type closets take 30-45 seconds to refill before being able to flush again. If you used tank type toilets in say a movie theatre, they'd be plugged up all the dang time because people would use them but there'd be no water to flush with ",
"Tangent to OP's question, why do public toilets in some provinces/states/areas not have a fully connected seat like they do in homes?\n\nThe seat is in the shape of a C rather than a full and connected oval.",
"People will break anything when they're drunk and with their friends.\n\nI worked at a Pita Pit in the busiest college drinking area in town. Some drunk bro's walked by and one casually grabbed the metal guard railing by the stairs and TORE A SECTION OF IT OUT OF THE CONCRETE.\n\nI also went into a bar bathroom for the 2nd time in a night and in that hour or so someone had SMASHED the sink, there was sharp porcelain all over the floor.",
"The public toilets use something called a Flushometer...like was already mentioned it uses a larger pipe size and pressure and the handle on a flushometer opens the valve for only so long and then shuts off when the pressure differential hits a level set by the plumber.\n\nSource: I'm a plumber ",
"You ever watch The Godfather? People can hide guns in the tank and kill the leader of an opposing crime family. The real mob took note of this and had their contractors install tankless toilets in their Sicilian restaurants. Then other businesses followed suit.",
"I'm going to tack on a related question: why do toilets in Europe (I'm assuming all of Europe, I've only been in germany) have buttons on the wall, no tanks and why are they flat on the bottom? Our anatomy is the same but I don't understand why their toilets are so strange",
"Toilet here.\n\nIt's really a safety issue for us toilets. Most of us who work in public locations are so durable with so few moving parts that it'd be hard to break or clog if you tried. And that's a good thing.\n\nIf there were tanks in public settings you'd have people filling us with God knows what, breaking the tanks, hiding things in tanks, sitting on the tanks.. \n\nThis used to be an issue back in the 70s and 80s, now all public sector tanks are out of a job and relegated to private residences. It's for the better.",
"Flushing power and being able to flush back to back with no delay. That's the 2 main reasons for having flushometer valves on commercial toilets. ",
"The house me and my roommates rent has 1\" piping with no tank. We fear no bowel movement because of the original owner's vendetta against clogged toilets",
"I have built cavity walls to support toilets in a commercial environment. We built the cisterns inside the wall to stop vandalism and to prevent people from hiding syringes and drugs in the exposed cisterns. These builds were for pubs and clubs. ",
"Spin off question that isn't likely to be seen. Why don't toilets have a flap that closes so they can fire a high pressure stream straight through the u-bend.",
"Plus it could be used to store a weapon for someone to use in a negotiation\nSOURCE : The Godfather.",
"I've always felt that toilets are well overdue for a redesign. And I'm not talking about the Japanese \"load it with tech\" approach either. Surely there's a better way than ceramic which cracks and leaks, is easier to clean, mitigates Neptune's kiss and bowl smearing, and can easily convert for male urination without being prone to missing the bowl issues that you sometimes get with a horizontal surface.\n\nI also feel like he internal mechanisms are over complicated and prone to breaking, but some designs I've seen in newer toilets seems to address some of those issues with simple water dumping systems and soft/hard flushes to conserve water based on need. I've also seen soft close lids which I love because they aren't freaking loud as hell when you close them, meaning you don't need to carefully lower the lid like you're setting down a premature baby.",
"I used to be an architect some years ago... \n\nThe primary reason is noise. \n\nThere really is no reason why a residential toilet couldn't use a pressurized flush system - however they are extremely noisy. \n\nSize of main/drain isn't usually an issue since most pressurized systems can be calibrated. \n\nCommercial environments are less worried about noise than they are about clogs. Pressurized systems have fewer problems with non-deliberate clogs - but are really noisy (and in some solutions- use a ton of water). \n\nHomeowners usually don't want the whole house knowing you flushed - and are more sensitive to water use. \n\nMost pressurized systems use less water than standard toilets, but not usually lower than ultra low-flow systems. Those that use less water are much noisier as they require more pressure to flush debris away. ",
"It is because of vandal resistance and reliability. Bullet Points!\n\n* can't be held open (no wasted water)\n* can be set up to auto-flush (no nasty surprises)\n* little to no maintenance \n* can't hide things inside the tank\n* flushes with less water than a tank type toilet (usually)\n\nIt has nothing to do with cost or plumbing size. Most flush valve toilets (that I know of) only have 3/4\" connections and are significantly more expensive thank tank toilets. Designing for flush valves actually requires you to run larger piping than you would normally, adding even more cost.\n\nSource: I am the guy that picks what plumbing fixtures go in a building (mechanical consultant)",
"Because home toilets are domesticated and have evolved to have the back so that it's easier to sit on them. The front of their seat also fused and most have even grown a second, solid lid on top of the first, features virtually unheard of for a wild thunderthrone ",
"Why do American toilets have water levels that are only just below the seat? Here in Australia, the water is only in the very bottom.\nDo boys sometimes find their penis hits the water??",
"Toilet user here.\n\nHere's the assembled list of the Top Ten Reasons why home toilets have tanks on the back but public toilets don't.\n\n\n1. Prevents someone from taking an upper decker.\n\n2. Prevents someone stashing shit (literal fecal matter) behind the tank.\n\n3. Prevents someone stashing shit (metaphorical fecal matter) behind the tank.\n\n4. Lowers maintenance costs.\n\n5. Lowers staff cleaning costs.\n\n6. Flushes wif mo' powa, which...\n\n7. Reduces the chances that a plunger is needed, which\n\n8. Also reduces the chances a plumber is needed.\n\n9. Prevents people from stealing the tank bowl's bowels.\n\n10. It's better than having the tanks on the front.\n\nEdit: typo.",
"Not American here.\n\nOverseas this happens (especially here in Australia). The tank is still there, it's just either in the ceiling or in the wall.\n\nIt stops people fiddling with it and causing maintenance bills. Or using it as a drug drop.",
"Don't let them fool you with all this water pressure and flow rate nonsense, it's because of people shitting in the tanks, it's called an upper decker fyi.",
"Hi there toilet fans! Toilet salesman here! :)\n\nHere in the UK, toilets come in several varieties, these are:\n\n* Close coupled\n* Back to wall\n* Wall hung\n* Low level\n\nFor the purposes of this question, we are going to look at the differences between close coupled and back to wall.\n\nClose coupled toilets are those that have a visible china pan and cistern (yup, we call the thing you shit in a pan), while back to wall units have a cistern hidden in the wall or a small furniture unit behind the pan (if installed in a home).\n\nToilets work by holding an amount of water in the cistern as a sort of capacitor. When you flush, the water in the cistern is drained into the pan, removing all the... stuff in the pan. Regardless of whether you use back to wall or close coupled, the amount of the flush is *supposed* to be the same (maximum 6 litre flush as dictated by cistern capacity) because our government likes to get up people's arses. Why is it the same? Well, in an ideal world you're not going to shit twice as much just because you're out in public. Remember, this is in the UK, so US toilets work in a different manner - sometimes without a cistern.\n\nIn people's homes, it's completely up to the customer what kind of toilet they have, though a lot of brochures sell sanitaryware as four-piece sets (pan, cistern, basin and pedestal) as it's easier for customers to match the toilet to their basin so the bathroom doesn't look like a mismatched mess. This means that closed-coupled pans and cisterns are marketed towards people who just want a set of sanitaryware they like the look of. Back to wall options are available for homeowners, but it's a lot simpler to just look at a four-piece picture and say: \"I want that.\"\n\nRemember that this is all visible china that is marketed as a luxury product (Rule #1 in toilet sales: Don't remind the customer what it's going to be used for). So to this end, cisterns and pans are made to look nice and add a certain feel to a bathroom, be it a rounded feel, square feel, or maybe just to create more space. This is why home toilets have cisterns: They add something to the bathroom. There is a trend towards furniture-based bathrooms growing, but that's beside the point for today.\n\nNow, back to wall in public is a different kettle of fish, namely because you're dealing with the public. The public like ruining things, you see. Either because they're drunk, stupid, young or a combination of any of the above. Companies don't like spending money on people to repair cisterns (which are easier to wreck because of all the moving parts inside, and the potential to cause floods) so they just hide the bloody things instead.\n\nNormally this is done via a cubicle system, which allows for a cistern to be hidden behind a pretty looking wall, while still being accessible to someone who knows what they're doing. The upshot of this is twofold. One, the cistern is hidden so the public can't get smashy-smashing. Second, there are no tempting horizontal surfaces. \n\nHorizontal surfaces in public toilets mean one thing and one thing only: Somewhere to stuff half of King's Cross up your hooter (translation: cocaine abuse). Police officers sometimes test public toilets for cocaine residue in places like pubs and clubs. OK, sure, some junkies will snort it off the seat or the ceramic of the pan where people might have been pissing or shitting earlier (eurgh), but your more upmarket cocaine abuser would prefer the top of a cistern where no-one's arse has been. No cistern = nowhere to do a line = happier landlords.\n\nFor more information on toilets... Don't bother. I wish I didn't know half this stuff.",
"This whole time I thought they removed the tank on public toilets to stop the dreaded upper decker."
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3hpiea | the relationship between my gpu's ram and my regular pc ram. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hpiea/eli5_the_relationship_between_my_gpus_ram_and_my/ | {
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19o8da | the uefa champions league | I'm completely ignorant to soccer/football but want to learn about it, and the UEFA Champions League is currently on going so I want to understand how the league works. Can anyone explain it to me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19o8da/eli5_the_uefa_champions_league/ | {
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"Very simply, the UEFA covers the biggest football leagues in Europe. Each of those leagues plays for their respective championship titles. But in addition to that, UEFA has a tournament where each of the leagues top teams compete for an uber-champion title. That's the Champion's League. It pits teams against each other when they otherwise wouldn't compete. That's how you get games like Real Madrid (Spain) versus Arsenal (England).\n\nI got started watching pro soccer because of Champions League. The high level of play makes it that much more fun to watch.",
"Well, I commented on this just a few days ago. So I'll just post it here. It's explains the Champions league and the domestic tournaments of each country too. It's a long-ass read, but it's worth it: \n\nAlright, I'll try to explain.\n\n > I was trying to search this up and I found that there are leagues (like Primier, La Liga etc. that consist of like more than 10 teams each) within the European league. Im guessing these leagues are equivalent to the NFL divisions/conferences?\n\nYes, these are the top leagues similar to NFL we have here, but structured differently. Just like us, each country has their own leagues: Barclays Premier League (England+Wales), La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), and Bundesliga (Germany) are the top four leagues in Europe (and the world) right now. However unlike the NFL, there are no playoffs in these leagues. Let's choose the English Premier League to demonstrate how it's structured differently. In the Premier League there are 20 teams, hence each team will play all 19 other teams TWICE throughout the season...so hence each team plays 38 games a season. If they win, then they get awarded 3 points. If they tie up against the other team, both teams get 1 point. If the team loses, then no points are given. So yeah, you just do that for 38 games and the team with the most points at the end of the season, wins the league. Then there are tiers in English football. The premier league is the first, then second, third, etc. at the end of each season, the bottom 3 clubs in the premier league get relegated. That means they get sent to the second tier of english football. Simultaneously the top 3 clubs in the second tier get promoted to the premier league at the end of each season. Almost all european leagues are structured like that...and so are many soccer leagues around the world.\n\n > What about (domestic?) tournaments/cups? There's several I heard about but can someone explain them to me?\n\nYes, these are known as cup competitions. Keep in mind that they are a complete different tournament from the leagues. The prominent ones are: FA cup in england, copa del rey in spain, coppa italia in italy and the german cup in, well, germany. They exist alongside the league competitions in these countries. All these are domestic cup competitions but there are also two continental cup competitions for all of europe: the champions league, and the europa league. How do teams from each country qualify? I'll again use the english premier league for demonstration. The teams that finish from 1-4 get to go to the champions league. The teams that finish 5-7 go to the europa league. You see? The most elitist of teams from each country in europe goes to the champions league...while those who fall short from being the very best go to europa league. Keep in mind they're called ”leagues” for the hell of it, when in reality they're cup competitions. \n\nNow how are cup competitions structured? I'll use the champions league as an example. Now keep in mind that there are A LOT of leagues and teams in europe...so there are indeed qualifying rounds even before the ”round of 32” to eliminate teams from the competition, but no one cares about what happens before the round of 32 in the champions league. So as I was saying, it all starts off with 32 teams, and each are divided into groups of 4. Each team will play the 3 other teams twice, once at home and once away. This stage is like a mini-league...if you win = 3 points, tie = 1 point, lose = no points. Top 2 from each group advance to the next round. This next round is called the round of 16. Now from this round onwards it is pure knockout. Each team will face only one opponent and will face them twice: once at home and once away. At the end total number of goals scored by each teams in BOTH legs will be tallied up. So for example, chelsea scored 4 in total but their opponent arsenal scored 3. In this case chelsea advances. But if both scored 3 goals in total, however chelsea scored 2 goals at arsenal's home while arsenal only scored 1 goal when at chelsea's home...then chelsea advances. Hence away goals have more value. But if at the end the aggregate score is still 3-3 and away goals are the same for both teams, then penalty shootouts decide who advances to the next round. The next round is the quarterfinals, then semis then the final. Both quarterfinals and semis are structured the same way as the round of 16. However, there is only 1 game in the final (like the superbowl). \n\nSo now you may ask why have a domestic league competition and a separate domestic cup competition as well? Well, league shows consistency throughout the season...the team that is the most consistent wins the league (unlike here in america, where the most consistent regular season team could get knocked out in the playoffs). While the cup competition shows guts, determination, and unpredictability (and luck) in soccer. By which I mean a shitty team could, by some perseverance and luck, beat a bigger opponent and eventually win the cup competition. So you see? It's just about philosophies. League is about the most consistent team deserving to win..while cup is about the team with the most perseverance and luck (since it is a knockout competition after all) winning the competition. One last thing. FA cup, for example, lets teams from the top 4 tiers of england+wales take part, instead of just the premier league teams. It's slightly different from the champions league in the fact that it is purely knockout from the start til end (unlike champions league that has that initial league-like group stage). The italian, spanish and german cup competition formats are like the FA cup too if I'm correct. **As user streichholzschachtel pointed out below, there are indeed a slight few differences between the cup competitions in england, italy, spain and germany.**\n\nAnd HOLY SHIT wow...this reply is long enough as it is so I don't feel like I need to elaborate on the other things you asked about since they're already mentioned in this thread. If you have any other questions lemme know. Cheers! \n\n",
"The Champions League involves the teams from around Europe that were the most successful in their own country's competition the previous season. Different countries get a different number of spots available in the Champions League, eg both England and Spain get 4 spots. \n\nThe first phase of the Champions League is like NFL-style conferences: small groups of teams play each other. The top 2 teams from each group then progress to the playoff-style rounds. In the playoff rounds, 2 teams play each other twice (one at each team's home) and the scores from both games are added together, highest total score wins. If it's a tie then the highest score away from home wins. If it's still a tie you get the standard extra time/penalty shootout. So tonight/later today it is Manchester United vs Real Madrid in their second game. The first one finished 1-1, so Manchester United currently hold a slight lead in that the score is level but they have scored one goal away from home. So if there were no further scoring in tonight's game, they would win.\n\nThe final is a single game, winner takes all.\n"
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7ccoj8 | how do thermostats work? | I recently replaced the batteries in my thermostat and you have to just remove the whole thing from the wall- it wasn't even connected to the wires in the wall.. so how does it communicate with those wires? How do the wires make the furnace or whatever turn on? If you have the thermostat set to say 21C, how does it know when to turn on the fans if the house goes below 21C? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ccoj8/eli5_how_do_thermostats_work/ | {
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"Traditionally, thermostats *were* connected to those wires in the wall. Those provided power & allowed the thermostat to send control signals to the furnace to turn on or off. They worked by various, fairly simple, mechanical methods to complete a circuit that turned on the furnace.\n\nSince yours *isn't* connected to the wires & takes batteries, it's probably just a remote control for your actual thermostat - probably using radio to communicate with a base station. It might have temperature sensors, it might not. There's no real way to tell without knowing more about how your home is set up.",
"Are you SURE it wasn't connected to those wires before you pulled it off the wall? Because normally, the wires from the furnace definitely have to be connected to the thermostat. \n \nI guess you could have a wireless thermostat. I've never encountered such a thing, but it is certainly possible. If you go look at your furnace, you would see a gizmo on it that talks to the thermostat. \n \nBut a more likely scenario is that you pulled the wires loose when you removed the thermostat from the wall. That normally doesn't happen, but it could if they were poorly connected in the first place. \n \nThe key question would be: does the thermostat still work now?\n \nAs to how thermostats work, they have a temperature sensor, such as a thermistor. That allows a little microprocessor (actually a microcontroller) to turn the furnace/fans on/off as needed, by opening or closing the proper switch (called a \"relay\"). ",
"Older thermostats used a [spiral shaped bimetallic strip connected to a mercury switch](_URL_0_). Since different metals expand at different rates when heated, the bimetallic strip would make the spiral tighter or looser, tilting the switch and completing a circuit with the furnace to it would start up. Eventually the room would heat enough to make the strip curl the other way, breaking the circuit and making the furnace stop. You changed the temperature by rotating the whole mechanism so mercury switch would break the circuit at a different level of thermal expansion.\n\nModern thermostats and furnaces are electronic. The thermostat has a computer than monitors the temperature, and sends on and off signals to the furnace, often wirelessly. Since they are more responsive, to prevent the furnace from cycling too often, they are typically programmed to bracket a temperature. You set it to 21 C, it turns on when it drops to 20.5 C, and back on when it reaches 21.5 C."
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695mgm | how does taking in a deep breath allow you to stretch farther than your previous limit? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/695mgm/eli5_how_does_taking_in_a_deep_breath_allow_you/ | {
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o7336 | i have seen figures saying obama has added 6.5 trillion dollars to the u.s. debt. what have we been spending it on? | Edit: added this for clarification of my question:
There was a picture floating around on facebook from a group called 'not on our tab' which I think is part of the College Republicans. It states that Obama added 6.5 trillion to the debt while all other presidents combined added 6.4.
Don't know if its true or not, but I do know that the debt has increased a lot under Obama and want to know why? Was it fall out from Bush, which people here have suggested, or Obama specific programs? ELI5 has better, non political answers than r/politics.
Here is the link to the web site (again I did not say I believed anything they said or take it as fact)
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o7336/i_have_seen_figures_saying_obama_has_added_65/ | {
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"It isn't really fair to say the Obama is to blame for the debt. People that say he is, generally cherrypick numbers. \n\nIn the last decade or so, we've had various things add up to make our crazy debt. \n\n - Bush's prescription drug plan ~500 billion\n - Bush's taxcut *without* cutting spending, 1-2 trillion\n - Two wars - 2 trillion\n - TARP and other financial bailouts- 1-1.5 trillion\n - Stimulus - ~ 1 trillion\n\nThen you just have the fact that our government was working through an extreme recession with low tax revenues, so there was borrowing just to keep the government going. \n\nThen you have the fact that just having a shit load of debt creates even more debt. \n\nIt's irresponsible to say that most of the debt is Obama's fault. His programs, like healthcare, are either largely deficit neutral or like stimulus, were necessary. \n\nA major reason we have so much debt now is because of Bush, who drastically increased spending while cutting taxes. ",
"The public debt on Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama took office was $6.3 trillion. So \"all those other presidents combined\" were responsible for $6.3 trillion in debt. Under Obama, it has grown by $3.4 trillion to $9.7 trillion, as of May 27, 2011. \n\nI would love to add links but I'm on my phone sorry. Hopefully someone else can follow up. ",
"The initial claim is not accurate. We've passed [two](_URL_1_) [budgets](_URL_0_) under President Obama, which add up to about an additional 2.827 trillion dollars. If you give credit for [the latest](_URL_3_) one, (which is the current one) that gets us to about 3.9 trillion.\n\nWhat did we spend it on? Lots of things. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense are the big drivers, but if you want to see a more detailed breakdown for 2010 (for one example), have [fun](_URL_2_).",
"It started 20 years ago, and it was intentional. It's called [\"Starve the Beast\"](_URL_0_).\nQuoting Bush in 2001 \"so we have the tax relief plan [...] that now provides a new kind—a fiscal straightjacket for Congress. And that's good for the taxpayers, and it's incredibly positive news if you're worried about a federal government that has been growing at a dramatic pace over the past eight years and it has been.\"\n\nEssentially the idea is that you cut taxes and increase the deficit, then complain about the deficit in order to gain popular support for cutting social programs. Heartless but brilliant.",
"People know that ***Congress passes laws and the budget***, right?\n\nTo blame the executive branch for something Congress authorized is *completely* disingenuous. People on Reddit (and at large, too, I guess) seem to have this thing where they love to blame anything and everything on the sitting president as if Congress has nothing to do with it.\n\nThis is true of Bush, too, fwiw."
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28eiyd | how do soccer players curve the parabolic trajectory of the soccer sphere? | Scratch that : ELI4 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28eiyd/eli5_how_do_soccer_players_curve_the_parabolic/ | {
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"Spin. Kick left or right side of ball, like you can do with a pool ball and cue.",
"Spin. Like a curveball in baseball, spin will change how the air flows over the ball. Irregular airflow then causes the path of the ball to change, usually in a smooth curve.",
"I don't know the math, but two things to bring to light\n\n1. When the ball is kicked, it is no longer a sphere. That is why a flatter ball will bend more.\n\n2. When the ball spins, one side of the ball will have less friction against win and cause it to move slightly faster creating a bend.\n\nIt is hard to explain without using visual representation. If you want to see some explanation and the craziest goal ever, watch [this](_URL_0_)",
"Kicking the center of a ball and rotate it by going from center to left/right of the ball with the side of your foot. Causing the ball to rotate.\n\nkick the ball a little beneath the center so it can go up in the air.",
"Are you asking how the players spin the ball? Or why the trajectory will curve when the ball is spinning?",
"A ball only follows a parabolic trajectory in the absence of air resistance.\n\nA spinning ball deflects airflow around the ball, which creates a force on the ball. This is called the [Magnus effect](_URL_0_).",
"spin on a ball causes a slight difference in pressure which will create a lift force. its the same principle as the lift on an aeroplane wing, except in the case of a wing the pressure difference is created by different surface lengths on the top and bottom of the wing. say a tennis player hits a ground stroke with top spin, the ball is travelling along its trajectory towards the other side of the court but it is also rotating towards the opposing player and down. because the top surface of the ball is rotating \"forward\" and the bottom surface is rotating \"backward\", the top surface is generating more air resistance, creates a high pressure zone compared to the bottom and a force is applied to the ball moving from high to low pressure, that is the force is applied on the ball in a downwards direction because of the high pressure air flow on top of the ball, and the ball drops to the ground faster than it would with no spin or backspin\n\ne: the concept is the same in soccer, except the axis of rotation of the ball is perpendicular to the topspin example, and the force generated is also perpendicular"
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[],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nHUCyNkezI"
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[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect"
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] |
|
6a95rk | what is the difference between x86 architecture and x86 assembly language? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a95rk/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_x86/ | {
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"text": [
"Closely related. The \"assembly language\" is a human-readable form of the \"machine language,\" which is in fact the type of code that any processor chip of a specific \"architecture\" (hardware design) is able to run."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
587xqr | why do humans seem to be at such a disadvantage to survive in nature, when compared to other animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/587xqr/eli5why_do_humans_seem_to_be_at_such_a/ | {
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"text": [
"We weren't. You're just taking modern humans and putting them against beasts that only know the wild. Humans before the modern world excelled at surviving nature. They made fire for warmth, made clothing and shelterz to survive the cold/elements. In many ways we as a species conquered nature for so many centuries that now if you take average Joe and put him back where his ancestors came from.. Well he wouldn't last a week.\n\nedit: Spelt shelters with a Z.. I am now hip.",
"Humans are apex predators, nothing kills humans as well as humans kill them. Humans have a huge survival advantage in nature, when compared to all animals.\n\nHumans have a huge brain and skills to make tools that vastly exceed the killing capacity of animal weapons. Even reset to stone-age, humans are the species to put your bets on. Only humans kill humans in significant quantities.",
"We aren't. Squishy, modern, 1st world humans are. It'd be like letting your dog loose in the woods. We've been domesticated and we've forgotten how to survive, it's not that we aren't physically capable of it. Around the world, cultures still live a near iron age existence of subsistence farming and hunting.",
"To add something to the current answers, you are also probably thinking of a human being in isolation. One person versus a bear, or a toddler versus a mountain lion. \n\nBut that's not how humans role. We are highly social animal, existing in extended family and tribal groups for quite some time. Even to the extent that one human lacks the physical power of a large cat or an elephant, a clan of humans is as formidable a force as anything in the animal kingdom when it comes to team work and survival. \n\nAlso, since no one has mentioned it, we are literally the best long distance runners in the animal kingdom. ",
"There's a couple issues here and not all of them have been addressed below.\n\n1. As mentioned, most of the people you're seeing are either regular people with no wilderness skills, or skilled survivalists in extreme environments that would push any human to his limits. If you put those skilled survivalists on a team in the African savannah or a similar place where humans have historically thrived, they'd thrive. Humans don't have wilderness survival skills for the most part. Because they don't need them. Because...\n\n2. This is a ubiquitous fallacy, but it's still a fallacy. Humans still live in nature. A city or town isn't fundamentally different from another ecological environment. Humans thrive extremely well in their ecological niche because they made that niche fit them. We took our environment and we altered it until it worked for us. That doesn't make it not the environment. If you assume that anything modified by humans isn't nature, then there is no nature anywhere on Earth. Asking why humans aren't good at surviving in the jungle is like asking why jungle leopards don't thrive in Detroit. It's not their habitat.\n\n3. I'd also question the assumption that animals are great at surviving in the wilderness. I mean they obviously survive enough to not go extinct, but are they thriving in their environments the way we thrive in ours? Animals don't generally die of old age. They're extremely vulnerable to sudden (or even normal, predictable) shifts in their ecosystem. An insect species with its mating season in fall will probably be devastated if there's an early frost before they've laid their eggs.\n\nAn animal relying on that insect as a food source will likewise starve.\n\nJust because you're not tripping over their bodies in the woods doesn't mean things are easy for them. A bad week can be death for an animal.",
"On top of thing others have said, humans are excellent at sweating, which means they can exert themselves for long periods of time in really ward weather that would otherwise kill other animals. We evolved to run prey to death; basically we just chased them until they keeled over dead.\n\nWatch: _URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_to_run?language=en#t-207700"
]
] |
||
a8br1p | if visible light is just a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, can we build a camera that can "see" other frequencies on the spectrum, e.g. so we can see where certain frequencies are being transmitted from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8br1p/eli5_if_visible_light_is_just_a_small_part_of_the/ | {
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"text": [
"We can and do. This is exactly what radar, thermal imaging cameras, UV cameras, and X-ray detectors do. Space probes and telescopes are often mounted with cameras that are looking for things other than visible light",
"We do! [Here’s](_URL_0_) some images of the sun at different wavelengths, for example. And since bees can see ultraviolet light, often flowers have patterns that reflect it, so it’s always fun seeing [images that’ve shone UV on them](_URL_1_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/multiwavelength_astronomy/multiwavelength_museum/sun.html",
"https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58f4ff14e4b0b9e9848d7da6?ec_carp=6712299302539243453"
]
] |
||
f3k9k7 | how can matter collapse in itself? is there a limit in size to this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f3k9k7/eli5_how_can_matter_collapse_in_itself_is_there_a/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There's a lot of space in \"matter\".\n\nThe atoms in a solid may look [like this](_URL_2_), but for liquids and gases they are a lot more spaced apart. Gases can compress because of the spaces between the atoms.\n\nInside the atom, there is also [a lot of space](_URL_6_). If you overcome the electromagnetic forces that keep the electrons orbiting the nucleus, the reduction in size can be 10,000x or more.\n\nThe nucleus is formed of protons and neutrons, and they are formed of smaller particles called [quarks](_URL_1_), with, again, a much smaller size than the actual proton or neutron that they form. So if you could overcome the nuclear forces that give the nucleus its shape, you could again \"collapse\" to much smaller sizes.\n\nSo what happens is, gravity is usually the force that can \"concentrate\" to such intensities to override the other forces. You can see [here](_URL_0_) that these forces are much stronger than gravity, but gravity can increase if you concentrate more matter, to the point where it can overcome these forces.\n\nSo, as the atoms are squeezed closer together by gravity, at some point the electromagnetic force that keeps the electrons in place is overcome, and the star compresses to become a [neutron star](_URL_5_), sort of like one giant ball of just neutrons, like a nucleus but huge. A neutron star would be the mass (and gravity) of the Sun, compressed to the size of a city.\n\nWith more material added, gravity increases, and perhaps the neutrons inside the neutron star compress to form a [quark star](_URL_1__star).\n\nIf more material is added, and gravity increases more, we basically run out of forces to oppose it; electromagnetism and nuclear forces have already been overcome, and we don't know of any other forces with our current understanding of physics, so in theory gravity would be \"unopposed\" and would [compress the matter](_URL_4_) down to zero size. A \"singularity\", a point.\n\nWe don't know what that looks like, and this theory is considered \"correct\" because we haven't discovered any other forces that could stop the process.",
"The Schwarzchild radius of a black hole could be considered the smallest any mass could be compressed, since it's only related to the mass of the black hole."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/FundamentalForces.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark",
"https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/03/68/0b0368f4d6e909a6c0d31c4bfb07c7cc.gif",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_star",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_collapse",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star",
"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/V7rBUC1t5KWj5n2MXEshIqSUTftiEXfBEUNjp9bqPJO19GcH1PrtPGYbR9miNkqQjNxEAHIC2xg_eQQRerlI1_GcDw6-P2GizivgvK_kbnFyjW4m1wVJEpMP4_uWFZbGQkAkBI-HlA"
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||
9hsxeh | what is broadcast syndication and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hsxeh/eli5_what_is_broadcast_syndication_and_how_does/ | {
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"text": [
"Let's say you buy a TV transmitter, with plans to sell a lot of commercials and make money while serving your neighborhood with fine TV entertainment.\n\nOnce you get all your licenses, you need some stuff to transmit.\n\nYou can go to the networks, and offer to be an affiliate. However, they likely have a contract with another station to carry their network in your area.\n\nSo, you become an independent. You still need some shows, but now you go directly to the people who produced the shows, and offer to pay them to broadcast their shows. They can't sell you the current season, they probably have an exclusive deal with a network for those broadcast rights. But, they can offer you older seasons of shows through a Broadcast Syndication contract. This means you get to show them, but other people might also be doing the same thing, though typically not in the same area at the same times."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
6kodqu | how can headphones deliver decent amounts of bass when normal speakers usually require a large subwoofer to produce the same effect? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kodqu/eli5_how_can_headphones_deliver_decent_amounts_of/ | {
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"text": [
"\"Normal speakers\" are trying to make sound in a room that's many times larger than the tiny space in your ear canal where earbuds are making sound (or the small space inside the headphones where they are making the sound). Bigger spaces take more energy for the sound to be perceived as at the same \"level\".",
"The term \"decent\" is relative. Bass sound is interesting because we both hear it (with our ears) and in lower frequencies (at enough sound pressure) we *feel* it with our bodies as a whole. For our ears to detect sound, the ear drum needs to move. A loudspeaker is usually a long way away with a lot of air between in and your ear, so it needs a lot of power to move your eardrum. With headphones, there is only a few centimetres distance... and so a much smaller driver is all that is needed. What is missing though, is the large amount of moving air felt by your body...which is why immersive bass is best with large, well-powered subwoofers."
]
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[],
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||
6e9fi5 | why is it possible for weeds to thrive in so many different settings, but flowers like roses require constant nurturing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e9fi5/eli5_why_is_it_possible_for_weeds_to_thrive_in_so/ | {
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"text": [
"Weeds have developed to be able to grow under diverse settings, while flowers have been cultivated to the point they can only grow in certain conditions. Plus, you have to remember the difference between a 'weed' and a 'flower' is \"Do I want that growing there?\" So while you might mean dandelions when you say weeds, there is no monolithic 'weed' plant. This means there is some plant that is not wanted in a location that will thrive in that same location."
]
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[]
] |
||
dcsnrp | why does milk go bad if left at room temperature, but milk chocolate is perfectly fine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dcsnrp/eli5_why_does_milk_go_bad_if_left_at_room/ | {
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"text": [
"Sugar is a good preservative, and chocolate has a lot of sugar in it. Also, there is not much available moisture in a chocolate bar for microbes to thrive.",
"Microbes need water to prosper as well as nutrients.\n\n \n\n\nMilk has perfect amounts of sugars (and other nutrients) for bacteria and fungi to grow.\n\n \n\n\nIn milk chocolate, or chocolate in general for that matter, there's hardly any water. It's just the solids from the milk, cocao butter, cocao powder etc.\n\n \n\n\nSo it's a solid bar of fat and sugar, with not enough water to allow for microbial growth.\n\n \n\n\n \n\n\nThat's also why honey typically doesn't go bad: The concentration of sugar is too high for bacteria and fungi to keep their cells working. The osmotic pressure sucks the water out of those cells to dilute the honey.\n\nHowever over time, a thin layer of mostly water builds up on top of the honey. This thin layer does allow fungi to grow, which will then help out each other to be able to dig down further into the honey."
]
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||
8fi2ih | how does split screen in video games take more processing power? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fi2ih/eli5_how_does_split_screen_in_video_games_take/ | {
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"text": [
"The game is processing two instances of itself on one graphics interface. It's constantly updating the visual range of each player to their movements and changing the picture to match, but twice. Or four times. However many players there are. It's like running the graphics of the game multiple times at once."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9qnvkt | what's the difference between a wireless access point, a wi-fi extender and a bridge? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qnvkt/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_wireless/ | {
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"text": [
"A wireless access point is the initial generation point of a wireless network, this can either be from a wifi enabled modem, or a wifi router.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nA wifi extender is a relay, that sends the data back to the access point, but often has a different ssid. Whereas a Mesh Network (which is another kind of extender) gives you the same ssid from every extender, meaning you don't have to change network.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nA wireless bridge connects two different wired ethernet connections together over a wireless connection.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSome Wi-Fi extenders, such as those from tp-link can act in \\*all of these capacities\\*",
"An access point generates a WiFi network and connects it to a hard wired network which provides the connection to the internet\n\nA WiFi extender connects to a WiFi network and repeats some messages to extend the range. If the first WiFi network doesn't have an internet connection then the extended one won't either.\n\nA WiFi bridge connects two WiFi networks together to let devices on one communication with devices on the other. Generally networks are in bubbles and can only communicate by routing through the internet, a bridge provides a much shorter route"
]
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||
1xhm4k | why do we still use bc and ad terminologies? | First off, I typically hear mixed replies as to what AD and BC stand for. I'm pretty sure that it was switched to ADE and BCE technically in today's terminology, but why do we still need these terms to represent years that were resembling "before Christ" and "after death" time periods? Shouldn't it be switched to just years? Like just add the years together and make a total? I know it would change the things for people to immediately understand and get used to but it just seems better. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xhm4k/eli5_why_do_we_still_use_bc_and_ad_terminologies/ | {
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"text": [
"If we changed our scheme for labelling years now, imagine all the brilliant books that would be rendered more difficult to read. Everyone would have to know both the new system and they would also have to know the old system when reading older books. Is it worth the bother?",
"So, in the original terminology, AD stands for Anno Domini (Year of our Lord) and BC stands for Before Christ. The newer terminology is CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before common era). The old one is still used more just because it's the convention, and most non-Christians don't care enough to really try to change it.\n\nThe problem with \"adding\" is that, for one, where do we count from? The earth was formed billions of years ago, and even when civilization rolled around more recently, there aren't a lot of hard dates we can nail down. Also, most people don't really have a hard time understanding the difference between AD and BC. To change it, you'd basically have to rewrite every history book and change the dates to the new standard. That's a lot of effort, for really no benefit.",
"Habit and familiarity mostly, with regards to Western societies as they are predominately Christian-influenced. A lot of newer science and history books now use the 'CE' and 'BCE', which stand for 'Common Era' and 'Before Common Era' respectively (not sure where the heck 'ADE' came from. Never heard it before).\n\nAlso, AD stands for 'Anno Domini', or 'year of the lord'.",
"Add what together? BC counts backwards and doesn't have an end point. What would you add to 2014 to get the current year?"
]
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|
6ensfp | why do we have bounty hunters? isn't that the job of the police? if it is for bail skippers, why do they have powers others don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ensfp/eli5_why_do_we_have_bounty_hunters_isnt_that_the/ | {
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"text": [
"There are not enough police to do that work. Police you see out on the street are patrolling, waiting for a call, or waiting to see something happen. \n\nWith people who have skipped bail, you'd need a detective, and there aren't as many of those. Not to mention people who skip bail are probably not in that city anymore. So you need someone to find the person. Bounty hunters just take the next step and apprehend the person instead of having the police do it.",
"People who skip bail often run far, far away - this is difficult for the police to handle, as they have to work with the police of other cities/states or other law enforcement agencies. On top of that, police still have their everyday duties to do.\n\nThe bail bondsman wants his money back as soon as possible - so he's able to send someone out specifically to get back the bail skipper, so that they don't have to wait on police or depend on different agencies. Since they're only hunting people who have already been accused and imprisoned (and then skipped bail), we give them certain powers when tracking down their target, like entering their property without a warrant. Though those powers depend quite a bit by the state. ",
"Bounty hunters work for the bail bondsman, who fronted the bail money for the accused. The bounty hunter's job is to prevent the bail bondsman from having to forfeit the whole bail amount, and in return he gets a cut of the fee paid."
]
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||
5xkhkt | why are candidates' political party affiliation listed on ballots? | I've been thinking about how listing candidates' political party on ballots encourages straight down ticket voting and voter ignorance (i.e. I don't need to research these candidates I'll just vote for the one from my party). It also makes it near impossible for candidates from 3rd parties to get elected. When did this tradition begin? Is it a law? Who decides if parties should be on the ballot? How would we get this changed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xkhkt/eli5_why_are_candidates_political_party/ | {
"a_id": [
"deir51s"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"State law determines what the ballot looks like and what information is included. Because parties have platforms that the candidates associate themselves with, and voters often align themselves with parties even if they don't feel strongly about individual candidates, it's typically seen as relevant information. If you think partisanship is a problem, this is more of a symptom of that issue rather than a cause."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3gaoib | the portuguese man o' war | I'd like to think I'm reasonably intelligent, but I can't wrap my head around this thing. How does it live? How does it reproduce (especially, how does one separate animal contain all the genetic info of the whole colony)? How did it come to be?
Please help. I'm beginning to lose sleep! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gaoib/eli5_the_portuguese_man_o_war/ | {
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"text": [
"Think of it this way, your body has all sorts of different types of cells to do different jobs, but they're all *you*. A Portuguese Man o'War only has 4 different types of cells that do all the jobs it needs to keep itself, and the species alive. ",
"Stephen Jay Gould wrote a great essay about this, I think it was in The Flamingo's Smile if I remember right. But, a synopsis of the deal:\n\n\"Individual multi-celled organism\" vs \"colony of single-celled organisms\" is a very human distinction, and cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, hydra, anemones, and siphonophores like the Man o'War) really blur that line sometimes. \n\nWe have no trouble understanding, conceptually, how a colony of bacteria, for example, could exist. They're small, single-celled, and live together in a way that's somewhat beneficial, but each bacteria acquires its own food, reproduces, and would be fine on its own. They're all descended from one original bacteria usually, and are generally mostly genetically identical (minus the pseudosexual interactions bacteria have, and mutations of course). But they're clearly individuals.\n\nA multicellular organism like, say, a squirrel, is easy to understand. Each cell is specialized, does a thing, and if you, say, divide a squirrel in half, it will die. Each cell has a specific role to play in an organ necessary to survival. Some animals (ie planaria) can be divided and form clones by cutting them in half, but generally, an individual is an individual.\n\nThen you get cnidarians... [Hydra](_URL_3_) can be colonies of small, genetically identical cloned polyps, that share food (they have connections between polyp-persons, as Gould calls them) and you can divide a colony and the 2 parts can exist separately. However, the different polyps can have specialized roles (generally there's a defense polyp with the customary stinging cnidocytes, an eating polyp, and a reproductive polyp). You have dozens of each type in one colony, but they aren't really communicating in any fashion that we would recognize as an \"individual\". But each individual polyp couldn't exist on its own - they're specialized. The eating polyps have to share food with the defense and reproductive polyps, which can't eat on their own.\n\nThen there's siphonophores. Each polyp in a siphonophore is even more specialized. And they don't just grow in the semi-random structures like a hydra colony. They can have [elegant](_URL_2_), [symmetrical](_URL_1_) shapes, with each polyp having a specialized role in mobility, defense, eating, reproducing, etc. They're all clonally produced, and all genetically identical. They couldn't exist separately, but they do act cooperatively. They have to communicate well enough to make sure motor polyps end up in the right part of the \"colony\", and can coordinate well enough to move in the right direction. Man o'Wars aren't the greatest example, they're kind of a [chaotic mass](_URL_0_) with one polyp as a float at the top, and they just passively float with the winds.\n\nSo... the question really isn't how the \"colony\" can exist/reproduce. The question is more accurately \"Is it a colony, or an individual?\""
]
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"http://dunnlab.org/img/about/siphonophore.jpg",
"http://25.media.tumblr.com/596f6588ea8a38d639bfd53f94b60752/tumblr_moe5xjow9b1rxyvj1o1_500.jpg",
"http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/-/m/images/animal-guide/invertebrates/giant-siphonophore.jpg?bc=white&h=677&mh=738&mw=1312&w=1200&usecustomfunctions=1&cropx=0&cropy=83",
"http://lanwebs.lander.edu/faculty/rsfox/invertebrates/images/hydrozoa4La_x550_x_668x.gif"
]
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5hefu4 | what's happening to our atoms when we're being shocked by electricity? (e.g. small static shock vs. struck by lightning) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hefu4/eli5_whats_happening_to_our_atoms_when_were_being/ | {
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"text": [
"Their electrons are moving from atom to atom.\n\nOur bodies have natural electrical currents running through them all the time, to move our muscles (including pumping our hearts), and sending and processing brain waves. If the path that the electricity takes through your body goes through your heart, the beat is disrupted and you'll fibrillate as the natural heartbeat is disrupted.\n\nA small shock that doesn't pass the heart, like a hand buzzer, feels bad as it messes with your nerves' signalling. That's why they give that pins-and-needles (I think Americans call it charlie horse?) response.\n\n",
"You've probably played with something called a [Van de Graaff generator](_URL_0_) in a science museum or classroom before. The generator deposits excess charge on you, giving you an overall positive (or negative) charge. This charge is what makes your hair stand up, since the excess charge in your hairs want to mutually repel.\n\nShocks happen because of something called [dielectric breakdown](_URL_1_). This happens when you have a sufficiently high potential difference between two objects, such as one object having a large excess charge on it. When the potential difference becomes large enough, electrons can jump from one object to the other through the air (or other medium) to neutralize the charge difference. In the process, they can excite electrons in the air molecules, emitting light, which is why sparks light up.\n\nLightning is the exact same process - clouds accumulate excess charge and discharge it to the ground, except the potential differences are around 100 million volts, rather than about 100 volts."
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4q1vjj | can someone explain me how electronic component get old? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4q1vjj/eli5_can_someone_explain_me_how_electronic/ | {
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"One reason is due to [electromigration](_URL_1_). The diffuse metal atoms in various components in a computer experience a momentum transfer with the electrons (and holes left by electrons) that gradually cause electrical shorts to form on a nanoscopic level. (metal atoms eventually get pushed around enough to form connections they aren't supposed to)\n\nAnother more immediate reason would be the electrolytic capacitors that are commonly found in components. Because of Ohm's law, anything that isn't superconductive (basically **everything** in common practice) experiences electrical resistance, and this resistance comes about as heat. This extra average kinetic energy of the ions in the electrolyte paste found in [electrolytic capacitors](_URL_0_) actually causes the ionic conductive fluid to evaporate enough that the electrolytic capacitor stops functioning. This is one of the more common reasons electronics die.\n\nSorry I didn't further elaborate, but I saw this right before heading off to bed. Hopefully this expands your knowledge base a little bit more on the subject you are curious about. :)",
"Heat can also be a big factor in component failure. Obviously, in order to control where the electricity flows, the channels have to be insulated from each other, no matter how big or small the component is. And the nature of moving electrons along non-superconducting traces and components means that you're going to generate heat. And that heat helps to break down insulation, oxidize metal, all sorts of nasty things. Over time, the cumulative heat damage slowly degrades the components, until they reach the point of failure. "
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2ug8da | why are materials such as string, paper, or cloth easier to cut when they are pulled tighter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ug8da/eli5_why_are_materials_such_as_string_paper_or/ | {
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"When it's together, the little pieces of cloth are on top of one another but when you pull it apart, they loosen up and are much easier to cut through.\n\nImagine a bunch of people holding hands in a row but they are bunched together. Now you take the people on the end and stretch them apart. Try to visualize the difference between attempting to break them apart from the center and that's the same method.",
"It's easy to think about. When there's 'give' in the material you're trying to cut, the material can more easily fold around the cutting edge. It takes less force to simply move with the cutting surface than it does to shear on the blade. So a string that has slack will move between the blades of a pair of scissors if allowed to. \n\nThe sharper the tool, the less force you need to shear the material, so give matters less. A very sharp blade will cut string even if it's not pulled taught. "
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20irdf | the universe is flat | I was reading about the shape of the universe from this Wikipedia page:
_URL_0_ when I came across this quote: "We now know that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error", according to NASA scientists. "
I don't understand what this means. I don't feel like the layman's definition of "flat" is being used because I think of flat as a piece of paper with length and width without height. I feel like there's complex geometry going on and I'd really appreciate a simple explanation. Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20irdf/eli5_the_universe_is_flat/ | {
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"I would like to see this too. I don't really understand how the universe can be flat when we can move about in 3-dimensional space.\n???",
"The concept of \"flat\" when referring to 3D space means that for example you cannot travel straight in one direction and end up back where you started from. Or maybe you measure a triangle between three points and the angles between the points add up to 180 degrees; if they didn't space isn't flat in that area.\n\nWhile local warping of spacetime does occur, on the whole the universe is flat.",
"Here this might help you some\n_URL_0_\nand this one \n_URL_1_\n\n",
"Sorry, this isn't going to be quite ELI5 level, but the concept of flatness of space is pretty hard to explain at that level. \n\nThe idea of a piece of paper being flat is an easy one for us to conceptualize since we perceive the world as having 3 spatial dimensions (i.e. a box can have length, width, and height). A piece of paper is roughly a 2-dimensional object (you seldom care about its thickness) but you can bend or fold it to take up more space in 3 dimensions--you could, for example, fold a piece of paper into a box.\n\nFrom here it is necessary to develop an idea of curvature. The first thing necessary for this explanation is the notion of a straight line. This seems like a fairly obvious concept, but where we're going we need a formal and rigid definition, which will be \"the shortest distance between two points.\" Next, let us look at what a triangle is; once again it seems like an obvious thing but we have to be very formal here: a triangle is \"three points joined by straight lines where the points don't lie on the same line.\" The final tool I will be using is a little piece of Euclidean (i.e. \"normal\") geometry: the sum of the angles on the inside of a triangle is 180 degrees. Euclidean geometry holds true for flat surfaces--any triangle you draw on a piece of paper will have that property.\n\nNow let's look at some curved surfaces and see what happens. For the sake of helping to wrap your mind around it we'll stick with 2D surfaces in 3D space. One surface like this would be the surface of a sphere. Note that this is still a 2D surface because I can specify any point with only two numbers (say, latitude and longitude). For fun, let's assume our sphere is the Earth. \n\nWhat happens when we make a triangle on this surface? For simplicity I will choose my three points as the North Pole, the intersection of the Equator and the Prime Meridian (i.e. 0N, 0E), and a point on the equator 1/4 of the way around the planet (i.e. 0N, 90E). We make the \"straight\" lines connecting these points and find that they are the Equator, the Prime Meridian, and the line of longitude at 90E--other lines are not able to connect these three points by shorter distances. The real magic happens when you measure the angle at each of these points: it's 90 degrees in each case (e.g. if you are standing at 0N 0E then you have to go north to get to one point or east to get to the other; that's a 90 degree difference). The result is that if you sum the angles you get 270 degrees--you can see that the surface is not flat because Euclidean geometry is not maintained. You don't have to use a triangle this big to show that the surface is curved, it's just nice as an illustration.\n\nSo, you could imagine a society of people living on the surface of the earth and believing that the surface is flat. A flat surface provokes many questions--what's under it, what's at the edge, etc. They could come up with Euclidean geometry and then go out and start measuring large triangles and ultimately arrive at an inescapable conclusion: that the surface they're living on is, in fact, curved (and, as it turns out, spherical). Note that they could measure the curvature of small regions, like a hill or a valley, and come up with a different result from the amount of curvature that the whole planet has. This poses the concept of local versus global/universal curvature.\n\nThat is not too far off from what we have done. Just as a 2D object like a piece of paper can be curved through 3D space, a 3-D object can be curved through 4-D space (don't hurt your brain trying to visualize this). The curvature of a 3D object can be dealt with using the same mathematics as a curved 2D object. So we go out and we look at the universe and we take very precise measurements. We can see that locally space really is curved, which turns out to be a result of gravity. If you were to take three points around the sun and use them to construct a triangle then you would measure that the angles add up to slightly more than 180 degrees (note that light travels \"in a straight line\" according to our definition of straight. Light is affected by gravity, so if you tried to shine a laser from one point to another you have to aim slightly off of where the object is so that when the \"gravity pulls\"\\* the light it winds up hitting the target. \\*: gravity doesn't actually pull--it's literally just the light taking a straight path, but it looks like it was pulled). \n\nWhat NASA scientists have done is they have looked at all of the data they can get their hands on to try to figure out whether the universe is flat or not, and if not they want to see whether it's curved \"up\" or \"down\" (which is an additional discussion that I don't have time to go into). The result of their observations is that the universe appears to be *mostly* flat--to within 0.4% margin. If the universe is indeed flat then that means we have a different set of questions that need answers than if they universe is curved. If it's flat then you have to start asking \"what's outside of it, or why does 'outside of it' not make sense?\" whereas if it's curved you have to ask how big it is and why it is curved. Note that a curved universe acts very different from a flat universe in many cases--if you travel in one direction continuously in a flat universe then you always get farther and farther from your starting point, but if you do the same in a curved universe you wind up back where you started (think of it like traveling west on the earth or on a flat earth).\n\nWhen you look at the results from the NASA scientists it turns out that the universe is very flat (although not necessarily perfectly flat), which means that if the universe is to be curved in on itself it is larger than the observable portion.\n\nIf you want a more in-depth discussion of this topic I would recommend reading a synopsis of the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbot, which deals with thinking in four dimensions (although it spends a lot of the time just discussing misogynistic societal constructs in his imagined world, hence suggesting the synopsis instead of the full book), then Sphereland by Dionys Burger, which deals with the same characters (with a less-offensive view of women--it was written about 60 years after Flatland) learning that their 2-dimensional world is, in fact, curved through a third dimension. The two books are available bound as one off of Amazon [here](_URL_0_). It's not necessarily the most modern take on the subject--Sphereland was written in the 1960s and Flatland in the 1890s--but it offers a nice mindset for thinking about curvature of N-dimensional spaces in N+1 dimensions. ",
"If the universe is flat, like a piece of paper, then traveling infinitely in one direction means that you will move infinitely far away from your starting point. If the universe is curved, like the surface of a ball or the earth, then traveling infinitely in one direction can result in you retuning to your starting point (ie traveling east around the world until you're back where you started). The difference is that in this analogy, \"space\" is taken to be a 2 dimensional surface curved into the 3rd dimension, whereas the idea of a curved universe would mean that the 3-d world we see is actually curved into the 4th dimension. Crazy stuff right?",
"Can recommend [A Universe From Nothing](_URL_0_) (and the book by the same name) by Lawrence M. Krauss, which touches on an ever-expanding, flat space--\"the worst possible one to be in--in which future astronomers will be ignorant of the existence of other galaxies.",
"Here are a few videos explaining the concept of curved space:\n\n[The Shape of Space](_URL_4_)\n\n[Why U Topology Playlist](_URL_2_)\n\n[Topology: Mathematics of the Surface](_URL_0_)\n\n... and a great explanation of why space is flat:\n\n[Why the universe probably is \"flat\"(Lawrence Krauss)](_URL_1_)\n\n----\n\nAdditionally, here is a list I compiled of some of my favorite educational videos and educational resources (I still try to keep it up-to-date):\n\n_URL_3_",
"I found this [Youtube video](_URL_0_) to be a great explanation OP.",
"But, the universe is shaped exactly like the earth. If you go a straight long enough you end up where you were. ",
"A \"flat universe\" is just the universe you always thought you lived in. In contradiction to an open or closed universe where things get a little strange. (e.g in a \"closed universe\" if you look far enough in one direction you'll see the back of your own head)",
"I have seemed to stumble apon /r/explainlikeimscientist",
"Here it is at ELI5 Level:\n\nYou have a trampoline. On it, you place a bunch of balls like you find in a ball pit. Not enough to weigh down the trampoline, since the balls weigh almost nothing.\n\nIf you make shapes with the balls on the trampoline, they will look like shapes we know and love. Squares, circles, triangles, etc...this is a \"flat\" universe.\n\nNow, let's say you glue the balls to the trampoline in the shapes we know and love in a flat universe, the circles, triangles, and squares. If a fat guy stands in the middle, the shapes will be \"warped\" because the trampoline is being stretched. If the fat guy gets off, and starts pushing up on the trampoline from underneath, it will be \"warped\" the other way.\n\nWhen the trampoline is \"flat\", you have what we think of as \"normal\" geometry (all the angles in a triangle always add up to 180 degrees, etc...), because we live in a \"flat\" universe. If our Universe was warped one way or another, we wouldn't have triangles that always add up to 180 degrees. We would have to use \"wacky geometry\".\n\nIn this case, \"normal geometry\" is Euclidian, \"wacky geometry\" is \"Non-Euclidian\". The fact that we use Euclidian geometry in our everyday lives (plus just a buttload of astronomical data), shows us we live in a \"flat\" universe.",
"[Lawrence Krauss explains this very well](_URL_0_). The video is kind of long but if you're interested in this its great to see.",
"I'll try at ELI5 level.\n\nPaper is a good analogy, but expand it to 3 dimensions. To see what flat means, you need to know what \"not flat\" means. Imagine a really large piece of paper covering the Earth. You mark an arrow on the ground then walk off in that direction, keeping in a straight line. Eventually you circle the globe and end up back at your arrow on the ground, approaching it from the tail of the arrow. You then pick a random direction and draw another arrow and do the same thing. No matter which direction you go, you always end up coming back to the same spot.\n\nIn this case, the paper is not flat; it is curved. Specifically, it is *closed*, meaning it loops back onto itself. However, locally it might look flat from any point you are standing. Imagine it on a bigger planet like Jupiter, or around the sun, or even larger. Locally you would measure it as being very flat, within a tiny fraction of a percent. So something that looks flat could actually be curved but with a very large radius of curvature. \n\nBut this analogy is only in 2 dimensions, covering the surface of a sphere of really large size. The curvature is in the third dimension in the direction of the center of the sphere (perpendicular to the local surface of the paper). \n\nImagine it now in 3 dimensions. You are floating in space at leave a real arrow pointed in some direction. You fly off in your rocket in that direction and eventually find yourself approaching the arrow from the tail end. It doesn't matter which direction you point the arrow, that always happens. That is a *closed* universe in 3D, meaning it is curved in a fourth dimension. \n\n*A flat universe would be one where the radius of curvature is infinite, meaning you'd never end up back at your arrow from the tail end.* \n\nI think this description is important because there is some disagreement on this. The measurement of the universe being flat within 0.4% does not mean that it *is* flat; it means the radius of curvature *could* be infinite (flat) but could just be very large. In fact, if you watch theoretical cosmologist Lawrence Krauss' [talks](_URL_0_) on \"A Universe from Nothing\" or read [the book](_URL_1_), if you pay close attention you'll note a contradiction. At one point he jokes about how theorists \"knew\" that the universe must be flat because that makes it mathematically \"beautiful\", but then later describes how theorists \"knew\" the total energy of the universe must add up to zero as that is the only type of universe that can come from nothing, and yet also says that only a closed universe can have a total energy that adds up to zero. Hence is it closed or flat?\n\nI attended one of these talks in person where this was asked and he confirmed that he thinks the evidence is strong that it is actually closed, but really, really large and hence looks flat to a high degree, and that the inflationary universe model explains why it would be so large and flat looking while being closed and zero net energy (and hence could come from nothing).\n\nAfter going through all of what I know of the topic, including many other sources, I tend to agree with him that it makes the most sense that it is likely just very close to flat but is really slightly curved back onto itself at a very large radius of curvature. That also means our observable universe is only a very tiny percentage of the universe that exists.\n",
"The universe is flat because all of the air leaked out after the Big Pop"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veU6hK3jMH4",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ofJPh2yMw&list=PL09E9E697F585A58C",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1kt3x9/reddit_what_are_some_of_the_best_educational/cbsb77n",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzd484Mvm2k"
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"http://www.amazon.ca/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468"
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|
2chlcf | what makes some photos grainy, and what can i do to prevent it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2chlcf/eli5_what_makes_some_photos_grainy_and_what_can_i/ | {
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"there are many factors, one is the sensor size/pixel density. The more pixels on a smaller space, the grainier the image will become, because of that the 'super 20 megapixel smartphone cams' aren't that good, because the sensor is undersized. Also a high ISO, this is the light sensitivity of the pixels can cause noise in your image. A high ISO can be helpful in dark situations but also causes noise.",
"Photos become grainy when there is not enough light being captured so the signal to noise ratio is low, typically it happens in low-light environments like at night. You need to open the aperture more, or if that is not an option, increase the ISO (sensitivity) or lengthen the exposure time. If you have the option to bin the pixels (lower the resolution) that should help as well. Keep in mind if you lengthen the exposure time you will probably need a tripod to hold the camera still, else it would blur.\n\nIf the ISO is too high in a well lit environment it will add noise to the image, so in this case the opposite is true: you will need to lower the ISO to remove the grain (noise)."
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1pdwyg | why do new pillows smell so bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pdwyg/eli5_why_do_new_pillows_smell_so_bad/ | {
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"Maybe cause it takes in all the sweat, grease, and drool while you're sleeping.\n\nAAAAAAAAAAAAAND the post is about new pillows. never friggin mind.",
"I'm thinking it might have something to do with the plastic they're encased in at the store. Or maybe it's just that you haven't \"marked\" it with your own smells yet, so it comes off smelling bad.",
"besides the plastic bags, it could be the chemicals used in fabric manufacturing. that \"new car smell\" is also the adhesives and whatnot off-gassing, as well.\n\n_URL_0_"
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5hclec | what is the chemical compound in human urine that smells like sugar puffs? | A slightly adapted question from my 5 year old son but also a mystery I've always pondered over my sugar puffs. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hclec/eli5_what_is_the_chemical_compound_in_human_urine/ | {
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"Don't they say if your urine smells of sugar puffs you should get checked for diabetes?",
"So you enjoy eating things that smell like human urine?",
"It's common amongst people who get dehydrated. Don't know what the actual chemical is but that's the cause."
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abbchz | when you're sick what process in your body is responsible for making you feel the physical effects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abbchz/eli5_when_youre_sick_what_process_in_your_body_is/ | {
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"Your immune system is activated and uses up a lot of your energy, which makes you feel weak and tired. It also releases substances that make you feel \"bad\". Usually you will also develop a fever to aid your immune system, which doesn't help you feel better. Then depending on what specific illness you have you will additionally get different symptoms."
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a4f27q | why are cartoon movies colored differently than their tv counterparts? | When comparing episodes of a cartoon TV show (ex. Spongebob or Hey Arnold) to their respective movies, the coloring (and sometimes even the art style) doesn't look quite the same. What is different about creating the artwork for movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4f27q/eli5_why_are_cartoon_movies_colored_differently/ | {
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"they have more money, for one thing. also I think it would be good to distinguish from the shoe so it's more dazzling, cause it is a movie. why make a movie, another form of entertainment, the same thing? you wanna drive to the theater to watch the exact same thing you can get on tv?",
"1. The medium: they are going to be viewed on is different. A movie screen is substantially different than a tv screen and a different aspect ratio. This requires higher quality picture\n\n2. time: they have more time and funding to complete their task. Cartoons made weekly or biweekly have a tight schedule, a lot of corners are cut to expedite production to meet deadlines. \n\n3. Funding: the source of income for a movie is ticket sales, the source of funding for a show is however much a studio appropriates depending on how much they can get for commercial time. Films in theaters tend to make money best when quality is high and quality cost money. Shows require new content, people want to ‘tune in’ to the newest episode that’s good for selling commercials. So cranking out new episodes is more important than quality.",
"I was an animator for a studio that made tv series. The colors are decided by a process known as color scripting. In a movie, a lot of attention is paid to the color script and it can take weeks and maybe months to finalize all the colors for a movie. No corners are cut, no limits for fancy lighting setups, and we take all the time we need to make it perfect and amazing. In a tv show, because there are so many episodes and so little time, the color scripting is done extremely quickly, and we have to find economical ways to get these colors without adding too much to the workload of the animators, background artists and compositors (the person who puts all the elements together in the end and does post production). If you try to do something fancy, the workload gets compounded throughout the pipeline so you really can't deviate too far from the base colors unless you can find a way to do it quickly, which really limits the techniques you can use.\n\nThis of course depends a lot on the style of the show. The last series i animated in had gorgeous colors and lighting because the style was kept simple enough that more attention could be made to the colors. But I also animated in a series where there was no color change at all, everyone was always in their base colors, and it was fine because it was more about the animation and writing. It's the choice of the director how much work he wants to put into the colors and whether or not it added enough to the show to justify the man hours it would add. Spongebob and Hey Arnold's style and writing was enough to carry the show without the need to go all fancy for the colors, so they didn't.\n\ntl;dr It takes a lot of time and a lot of skill to make great colors, and while movie productions can afford it, tv series have much more limiting time and budget constraints",
"The Digimon movie did this! The cartoon looked fine but the movie looked amazing and so clean looking! ",
"Although true, Just saying \"higher budget\" isn't really an explanation. Of course higher budget means more polish but it doesn't explain the shift in style.\n\nFrom the late 70s until the early 2000s TV animation was usually recorded digitally/on video whereas movies were on film. Many of the differences today still come from TV animators outsourcing/blending with studios/talent that specialize in feature length projects. \n\nThe goal when adapting TV to film is usually to embiggen the scale and tone of the story/characters/setting, using darker colors and atmospheric lighting does -most- of the work in doing that. \n\nThe rest of the work is done by the writing, which due to the nature of this kind of project often breaks character and asks the viewer to accept a situation that would never be warrented in the show.(if it was, why make the movie?)\n\nWhen adapting a movie into a TV series things are usually even more problematic, but that isn't the question being asked.",
"I noticed that the TV series version of Disney's *Tangled* got around this somewhat by shifting from 3D-style in the movie to a more traditional-looking 2D in the series. 3D looks awful under a smaller budget."
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drt92c | why do softer things like blankets feel warmer than things like rocks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drt92c/eli5_why_do_softer_things_like_blankets_feel/ | {
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"Fuzzier things are better at trapping air which acts as a thermal barrier, and the materials commonly used have a lower heat capacity compared to rocks which allows them to take less heat to warm up.",
"Because blankets trap a layer of air around you keeping you warm. Rocks have a lot of mass and if they are cool then they can absorb heat.",
"Fuzzy things trap air in all their fuzziness. That allows your body to heat up the trapped air, keeping you warm.",
"It has to do with the amount of air pockets in the substance and the heat capacity of air.\n\nAir has a fairly low heat capacity, meaning it doesn’t take a lot of energy to lower or raise its temperature. \n\nThings like blankets are made of materials that have lots of air pockets. The fuzz or lining or batting fibers interlock and form these pockets. The blanket starts at room temperature, but when you use it to cover yourself your body heat becomes trapped by these air pockets and then warms them up, and the blanket may begin to feel warm to the touch. \n\nRocks, on the other hand, have relatively few air pockets, if any. They are very dense, and the heat capacity for most rocks is very high, meaning that it takes a lot of energy to change their temperature. The rocks start out at room temperature, just like the blanket. If you were to cover up with them, or perhaps build a house out of the rocks, it would take a lot of energy to heat it up. However, once the rocks got warm, it would also take a lot of energy to cool them off again, so it would stay warm longer than the blankets would after you stopped adding heat through your body heat or maybe a fireplace.\n\nAdditionally, the reason that rocks feel cooler when you first touch them has to do with relative body heat. Things that are at lower temperatures than your body feel cool, things that are higher feel hot. A room temperature rock will feel cooler than your 98.6 F body. But, blankets are made of fibers and air pockets so while they also feel cool at first, the friction between your skin and the fibers generates heat quickly and heats up the air pockets, making the blanket feel warm much more quickly than the rock. This is also why fuzzy blankets get warm faster than smooth quilts or sheets—there’s more friction with the fabric.",
"the rate of heat transfer, you can transmit your skin heat to a cooler rock more effectively than you can to a fuzzy blanket that is at the same temperature. Metal objects will feel cold. Water at 70 degrees will feel very cold because it transfers heat away from you quite well. \n\nAlso, the blanket keeps wind motion at ~0, so heat is not transported away. That's probably the main mechanism going on in cold air. Probably inhibits radiative cooling of your skin as well.",
"I dunno, man... ever touched a rock after it's been in a fire or oven?",
"Thermo-conductivity. The temp of carpet and wood floor or tile in the same room feel different temps because of the thermo conductivity. The tiles feel colder than carpet but they are the same temp.",
"Rate and amount of heat transferred. The blanket warms up very quickly and takes little heat to do so. The rock requires a lot of heat to warm up, so it feels cold for a while.",
"When something feels hot or cold what you are actually feeling is the heat entering or leaving your body. So two objects at the same temperature might *feel* different against your skin depending on how easy it is for heat to flow between your body and the object. \n\nIt's very difficult for heat to flow between solids and gases. Heat moves from one object to another mostly when the hot atoms hit the cold atoms and pass some energy over. (for the science nerds: yes I'm excluding radiative transfer since it's not the differentiating mechanism between OPs examples). Since atoms are further apart in gases, there's not a lot of gas atoms colliding against the solid object's atoms. However, heat flows better between solid-to-liquids, and solids-to-solids. That's because the atoms in solids and liquids are packed together, so they hit each other and pass around energy really well. \n\nThings like blankets, coats, and the insulation builders put in your house's walls, are filled with tiny air bubbles. That means for heat to flow through them, the heat has to pass from solid to gas to solid to gas to solid... Which is really hard to do. So not much heat leaves your body through the blanket, which makes them *feel* warm. Additionally, since your body continuously generates more heat, you can actually build up too much heat between you and the blanket since so little heat is leaving (this is why you might start sweating while wearing a winter coat even if it's freezing outside).\n\nHowever, if you touch a solid or liquid, such as a rock or water, which are at the same temperature as the blanket, they will *feel* colder because more heat will leave your body because heat flows better from solid-to-solid and solid-to-liquid. \n\nOn the other hand, if the rock, water, and blanket are hotter than your skin, the rock and water will feel very hot compared to a blanket because more heat *enters* your body through the solids and liquids.\n\nThis is why it's easier to burn yourself on hot water or metal than with hot air. This is also why you can freeze your tongue to a metal pole when it's cold outside. Sticking your tongue out into freezing air doesn't freeze your tongue right away because the heat flows too slowly (your body's heat generation can keep up). But, when your tongue touches the metal, so much heat leaves the tongue that it quickly freezes tight against the pole.",
"You know how a sponge would be 'wetter' than a rock if both are dipped in water? It's because the sponge can hold more water inside it, compared to a rock.\n\nSo, it's like that, except it's heat instead of water. Some things are just good at holding heat inside them, other things are not. Doesn't matter that both are dipped in water for the same time (kept at the same temperature).",
"Because the objects like blankets trap your body heat and let you keep it. Hard objects eat your heat because they are cold and hungry.",
"* If two objects of different hotness touch, the hotter one will make the colder one hotter, and the cold one will make the hotter one colder. \n\n* Your skin cannot feel hotness or coldness. What it can really feel is if it is changing to being hotter or colder.\n\n* Your body is much hotter than things around you. When you touch things, that heat will leave your skin and you will feel it as \"cold\"\n\n* Heavy (dense) objects are able to steal heat really fast.\n\n* Soft objects do not steal much heat, and also don't really touch you much. They trick your skin into *thinking* you are touching it more than you are. Since you are not really touching it much, you do not lose heat.\n\n* There is normally air moving around like wind, even if you are inside. It is just very small. Blankets stop that wind around you, allowing your body to heat up the air between you and the blanket.",
"Veritasium did a nice [video about this](_URL_0_)\n\nIt has to do with the the ability of the material to conduct heat from your skin. Humans sense temperature as a rate of energy transfer."
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xmt4p | what is romneys appeal over obama, and vice versa? | Never really paid attention to this until recently. Honestly wondering what some (hopefully) non bias opinions are. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xmt4p/eli5_what_is_romneys_appeal_over_obama_and_vice/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nThere is no such thing as an unbiased opinion.",
"Romney is good: Republican, has business experience, white. \nRomney is evil: No real plans, fat cat, exported jobs, tax avoider, stiff. \n \nObama is good: Democrat, pro-middle class, great public speaker. \nObama is evil: Socialist, ineffectual, likes to tax and spend, secret Muslim, dark skinned. \n"
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ctuqfz | why do some cars smoke when accelerating but not when idling ? | Hi all I been wondering why some cars smoke only when accelerating but not when idling ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctuqfz/eli5_why_do_some_cars_smoke_when_accelerating_but/ | {
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"The \"smoke\" that comes out of the car is actually happening whenever the car is running, even if you don't see it. When the car accelerates, it burns more fuel and create more \"smoke\" making it easier to see.",
"Smoke coming out of the exhaust can have multiple causes:\n\n1) Condensation: That is pretty normal while the engine is still cold and the weather is cold as well. The exhaust gas cools down quickly, and water vapor will condense into small droplets.\n\n2) Cooling water leaks into cylinders, creating white clouds of engine coolant (water mixed with ethylene glycol, which is similar in composition to the stuff they use in e-cigs and fog machines)\n\n3) Excessive engine oil getting into the cylinders, resulting in partial combustion - this is nasty smelling, blue-ish smoke \n\n4) Incomplete combustion, if there's too much fuel in the cylinder to burn entirely, creating brown-black smoke. \n\nNumber 4 is very typical for diesel engines: If they inject too much fuel and / or run at too high RPM, they emit lots of unburnt fuel. Modern diesel engines rarely do this, since the smoke gunks up their filter assembly, but it's quite common with older diesel vehicles. Some douchebags modify their cars to do this intentionally (coal rolling). So I suspect this is what you're observing: Cars or trucks with diesel engines accelerating, and thus injecting too much diesel."
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2dpdnw | why was texas gov rick perry indicted instead of being impeached for a very public act? or at the very least not impeached at the same time for something he did as part of his official duties? | Gov Perry was indicted for vetoing a budget. That's part of his official duties. Why didn't the Texas legislature impeach him before or at the same time as his indictment if it was illegal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dpdnw/eli5_why_was_texas_gov_rick_perry_indicted/ | {
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"Only a grand jury has the power to indict. Only the legislature has the power to impeach. These two groups are separate and independent from each other.\n\nIf someone is indicted it doesn't mean they are guilty. It can lead to a trial, which might find the person guilty or innocent.",
"If you commit a crime, you may be indicted and go to trial. \n\nIf you are a public officer and you do not behave in accordance with the standards expected of you, you may be subject to impeachment. \n\nIf you want someone out of office, it is much easier to convict them of a crime they committed than go through the impeachment process.\n\nOnce they are in prison or a convicted felon, I don't think there is any question of them remaining in office. Nobody has balls that big. Not even Clinton could have survived that..."
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3n50m1 | why is frozen pizza's quality sub par when compared to delivery? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n50m1/eli5_why_is_frozen_pizzas_quality_sub_par_when/ | {
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"As described [here](_URL_0_), you need to get your oven as hot as possible.\n\nEven at its highest temperature, it will still be much cooler than a professional pizza oven, and your pizza won't taste as good as that yummy delivery. But it will be much closer than cooking at the lower temperatures it always gives on the box!",
"Pizza is made up of a bunch of different stuff, and many things don't behave well when frozen. Take a peach, freeze it, and then eat it. A lot of the texture and taste is changed for the worse.\n\nNow think about the separate pieces that make up pizza, and ask yourself if you ever buy them frozen. Do you buy frozen bread? Probably not. Frozen cheese? Never. Frozen tomatoes? Nope. \n\nNow part of that is canning allows for perfectly good sauce and tomatoes so why bother freezing it, but the rest remains. Freezing things changes how they ultimately end up, so having something fully cooked and frozen will almost never result in something as good as it was fresh. "
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"http://www.thekitchn.com/want-the-best-homemade-pizza-you-have-to-turn-up-the-heat-163038"
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8hgzjr | why can we be physicaly stronger (for short period of time) when we scream? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hgzjr/eli5why_can_we_be_physicaly_stronger_for_short/ | {
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"We don't really get stronger. So our brains have a cap on how much power we can use, the reason is so we don't hurt ourselves trying to lift something.\n\nHowever, if we are in danger where our brain thinks we, or someone we feel strongly about, may die it can remove those caps in an effort to survive which is why you hear about moms that lift cars off of kids. Since, it is mostly mental you can psych yourself up a little bit to move those caps."
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4an5ak | how were fdr and congress able to pass and enact all of the new deal socialist style programs in the 1930's, that would be considered no-no in today's politics? | Also can be for LBJ too with Medicare.
How was our country able to pass these things back then, but nowadays if you even consider expanding or creating something new (Universal Medicare) you get thrown in a witch hunt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4an5ak/eli5_how_were_fdr_and_congress_able_to_pass_and/ | {
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"Many of them were extremely controversial at the time. Several of FDR's programs were overturned by the Supreme Court. Having a Democrat majority in Congress certainly helped. FDR wanted to include healthcare as part of Social Security, but didn't think it would pass. Truman tried and failed to pass it. Again, it helped that LBJ had a massive Democrat majority in Congress.",
"I don't know about the political conditions back in 1930s USA, but I know why the US is so against any socialist measures in modern times - it's because of the Cold War.\n\nDuring that period the propaganda and rhetoric was all about fighting communism, so it shouldn't be that surprising that mentality still lingers. Lots of people in the US tend to see it as black and white - communism = bad, capitalism = good. Even though socialism isn't the same as communism many people lump them together and that wasn't helped by the Nazi's calling themselves socialists either (not that they were)."
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4dv83f | how come when you drive backwards, your car tends to feel like it swerves more when you turn the steering wheel then when you are driving forward? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dv83f/eli5how_come_when_you_drive_backwards_your_car/ | {
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"It has to do with your steering being at the front of your car. When you go in reverse it feels like your car is floating underneath you because you are used to having the steering in front of you. I think it's mostly about the time it takes to feel the change in steering input when you are closer to the wheels. I drive a forklift that has rear steering so when I go in reverse it feels more like a car. ",
"When you're going forwards, the back wheels follow the front wheels but a little \"inside\" of them. That tends to counteract the steering action a little. Going backwards it the opposite. The steering wheels in the back will track \"outside\" of the leading wheels, tending to intensify the turn.\n\nAlso, the same geometry in the front suspension that helps the car go straight when going forward, by \"self-centering\" the steering wheel, makes the wheels want to turn MORE when going backwards.",
"One word : caster. The weight of the car is placed on the front suspension at an angle (if viewing the car from the side) to ensure straight-line stability when moving forward. Without it, your car wouldn't track nearly as predictably when moving forward.\n\nWhen you move in reverse, the caster angle is effectively reversed and stability is greatly compromised as a result.\n\nLook up more about caster to see why it's so important with regards to steering and suspension geometry. It's an important factor in how your car feels through the steering wheel.",
"2 year car yard valet here, spent more time in reverse than driving. One aspect people haven't mentioned is the way you drive it in reverse. Centre yourself in the car looking back, rather than just looking over your shoulder, keep your hand on The wheel, and know where your pivot points are (rear wheels) and you'll be reversing like a pro.",
"The car feels more 'swervy' going backwards because you are behind the pivot point instead of in front of it. Also the inertia of rear steer is different on your body so you feel thrown around a bit too. ",
"Going forwards and backwards, the steering affects your trajectory in a different way.\n\nWhen you go forwards, the car goes in the direction of the front wheels. If you turn the front wheels 10 degrees to the right, the car drives 10 degrees to the right. \n\nWhen you go backwards, the car goes in the direction of the back wheels, which is always the direction that the car is pointing. To change direction, you need to change the direction of the car. You do this by steering the front wheels. The issue is that the front wheel steering only controls how quickly the car direction changes. \n\nIn short, when going forwards, you directly set the direction of the car. When going in reverse, you set the rate at which the direction of the car changes.\n\nWorking with a rate is more difficult than simply setting a direction. Now, setting a direction is a 2 step process. You first have to adjust the steering wheel, so that the car starts to gradually change to the correct direction. Then, as it homes in on the correct direction, you have to turn the steering wheel straight to keep on that direction. There is another problem, which is that slight errors accumulate when you control a rate. If the steering wheel is slightly off centre, then the car will continue to change direction, and you will need to correct because otherwise the error will build up and become unacceptable.\n\n"
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10v7sm | the watchmaker analogy | I stumbled upon it [on wikipedia](_URL_0_) but I read and read on it to no avail. Perhaps there there's someone with better understanding on this matter. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10v7sm/eli5_the_watchmaker_analogy/ | {
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"1) Watches are really complicated\n2) Watches have designers\n3) The universe is really complicated\n4) Therefore, the universe has a designer\n\nThat's about it. Really, the more fine-grained version of the argument says something like \"Watches are so complicated and special that only a designer could make them\" and then applies this by analogy to the universe\n\nThere are a couple of responses I think are convincing:\n1) We now know of a lot of other things that are very complicated and have no designer, such as the Milky Way or the heart of an animal or Mandelbrot sets(these are explained as the result of natural law without need for intervention)\n2) The universe is complicated and looks designed, but it also looks like a seed or bacteria that grows and matures - almost any analogy will find some traction for something as big as \"the Universe\" and that doesn't make any of them necessarily right\n\nedit:\nAs some people have pointed out, \"the clock-maker\" is a common deist analogy for a god that makes the universe and then leaves (and only stops by for occasional maintenance)"
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2gihsd | why are cashews so much more expensive then peanuts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gihsd/eli5_why_are_cashews_so_much_more_expensive_then/ | {
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"Peanuts grow in the ground, can be mass harvested by machines, and are safe to eat in their raw state. Cashews have to be hand picked from trees, are highly poisonous in their raw state, in fact one of the most toxic substances on the planet. They have to go through a process of drying out and detoxing before they can be eaten.",
"To get a container of cashews like you might find at Costco takes the fruit of one entire Tree. Cashews can be grown in the states, but labor to harvest would make cashews a delicacy only available to the super affluent if we couldn't import. Peanuts aren't an actual nut, but a legume ex. soybeans. They grow in the ground and an average per acre harvest is around 4,000 lbs. ",
"So why are pinenuts so much more expensive than cashews? ",
"Where I live, Vietnam, our delicious cashews are salted with the tears of drug addicts, prostitutes, and folks with political opinions that are just plain wrong.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo basically, cashews require torture, peanuts don't. Enjoy."
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2vuach | greek elections, current greek-euro situation, possibility of leaving, new political party, bailouts for greece | Just everything that's been happening in Greece lately, starting more or less from the elections
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vuach/eli5greek_elections_current_greekeuro_situation/ | {
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"Well if I started from the elections that just happened three weeks ago, I wouldn't cover much. We need to start further back, with the global recession of 2008.\n\nSo Greece was running very high deficits for a long time, which isn't necessarily a problem when the economy is good, which it was. But then the economy crashed and suddenly their tax base fell off and they couldn't pay their creditors anymore. This caused a budget crisis and European Union institutions and banks said they'd bail the Greek government out, but in exchange, the government would have to cut all kinds of spending, which has hurt the Greek people a lot, especially in healthcare spending. These agreements are highly unpopular, and after the center-left PASOK party agreed to them, Greek politics exploded, and masses of voters switched allegiances to the far-left SYRIZA party. After being the dominant opposition party for three years since the 2012 elections, SYRIZA finally won the highest number of votes in the 2015 elections, and formed a coalition government with the right-wing Independent Greeks party.\n\nNow, the reason SYRIZA went from being a small party to the most popular in the country is because they became the loudest voice opposing the unfair bailout conditions and the forced budget cuts. The situation in Greece has been getting worse for years, some even called it a \"humanitarian crisis\", hospital patients are told to supply their own prescription drugs, people's electricity has been shut off, youth unemployment is around 50% and total unemployment is around 25%, which is about the range it was in the US during the darkest days of the Great Depression, there's been a suicide epidemic, etc. The reason SYRIZA won is because they promised to renegotiate a fairer deal with the lending institutions and bring back some social spending to provide people healthcare and electricity. They formed a coalition with the right-wing anti-immigrant party Independent Greeks (who would normally be their natural enemies), because they're one of the only other parties that's also opposed to the bailout conditions. "
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1j9djt | the sensation of falling | Especially going down a steep hill in a car and it feels like my balls are in my throat, what causes that?! Are some of my organs actually being affected by the fall or is it just a feeling made up in my head? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j9djt/eli5_the_sensation_of_falling/ | {
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"Your body has a number of nerve endings in various parts of your body. Most of the time the nerve endings send a signal to your brain that is constant. \n\nAs soon as one of those nerves detects a difference it lights up part of your brain connected to something called [proprioception](_URL_0_). This is the part of your brain that tells you were you are in space. \n\nIt the same part that allows you to know where your mouth is so you can eat with your eyes closed. Also the part of your brain that deals with balance is affected by these signals too."
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3z5ln3 | when someone dies "peacefully in their sleep," what actually happens? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z5ln3/eli5_when_someone_dies_peacefully_in_their_sleep/ | {
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"That simply means that some vital part of their body's processes failed while they were asleep and not conscious and so it's likely (or at least hopeful) that they did not experience any pain due to their passing. Someone that woke up in agony would likely have thrashed around and displaced their sheets so there'd be evidence they didn't die \"peacefully\".\n\nAn example might be a brain aneurysm or complete heart failure that never triggered enough pain receptors to wake them up. Can also happen more gradually in the case of someone, say, with advanced Alzheimers where the body forgets how to run itself.\n\n",
"If you think about it, we really have no idea if they actually failed to wake up or not. All we know is they went to bed and we found them there in the morning. Professionally, I've had a lot of patients die, but none that weren't unconscious for a couple of days to begin with. I always put a heart monitor on end of life patients so I can keep an eye on them remotely. The last thing I'd want is for a patient to have a loved one walk in and find them dead. What I see with these patients is that for 5-45 minutes before death, their heart will start slowing down and becoming erratic. I like to call their families to give them a heads up so they can say a final prayer or say their final good byes if they're nearby. \n\nSo the answer is, it depends on the person. Maybe they woke up and we don't know or maybe their heart just stopped. "
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wpdhs | the reason the number 40 occurs so frequently in religion (the abrahamaic ones particularly) | Is it a language thing maybe? Did they just use it to mean "a lot"? If so, why forty? Did they think in base four or something? All the Internet resources I can find give me a bunch of hooey about it being a "spiritual" number that represents trial or something. That may be true, but not what I'm looking for. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wpdhs/eli5_the_reason_the_number_40_occurs_so/ | {
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"it's not a spiritual number per se... i couldn't cite a source if i wanted to but i'm fairly sure you're onto something with it being a biblical way of saying \"a lot.\"\n\npossibly an old hebrew/babylonian/aramaic/etc euphemism for \"a lot\" using a word that actually had a definite number meaning, got translated literally instead of figuratively\n\nedit: sorry for the borderline speculation. i do have a background in linguistics and this sort of thing does happen alarmingly often in very old texts and translations",
"meowtiger's right, but let me put it in simpler terms. Think of the phrase \"a couple of...\". A couple literally refers to two things. After all, when we say \"they're a cute couple,\" we're only talking about two people. But in common usage, \"a couple of\" can refer to more than two objects. Specific numbers in very old texts work the same way.\n\nA good non-religious example is Sun Tzu's *The Art of War*. If you take it at face value, it is ludicrously specific about how to structure and supply an army.",
"Perhaps crosspost to /r/askhistorians?",
"As a random point of reference, the Chinese version is 10,000. The Tao Te Ching, for example, often refers to the entirety of the universe as \"the ten thousand things.\"\n",
"I've always been told in various Bible Study classes that it was simply a way to illustrate \"a long time.\" 40 days was a long time, and 7 days was a short time. Or rather, 40 is A LOT, and 7 is A LITTLE. That's why both of these numbers show up a lot. \n\nMeowtiger's answer about it being a translation error (hundreds, maybe even 1500 years ago) seems plausible. \n\n\n**ELI5 Answer:**\nWell Timmy, do you remember last week when Grandma asked you how old you think she is? Do you remember your answer? You said she was a GAZILLION years old. She's not REALLY a gazillion years old, but she is pretty old, and that number (a gazillion) seems lot a lot, doesn't it? The people that wrote the Bible did the same thing. 40 seemed like a lot, so they just used that number whenever they wanted to make something seem like a really long time. \n\n \n\n"
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35q1i9 | how do musicians compose music for intruments they don't play? or what does it mean when someone is a composer? | I was doing a research paper for my music appreciation class in college when I read about all these famous composers. But surely they couldn't play ALL of the instruments in the piece right? Do they just tell their orchestra/band to play that sounds something like this *plays piece on piano or whatever*?
Edit: thanks everyone for your great answers :)
I mentioned below that I myself am an amateur composer and play a variety of instruments. The way I wrote my songs is well...I just played all the parts myself and if I want to record or play a little gig I get my friends to play their respective instruments. But I was honestly wondering how others do it . Don't mean to sound full of myself and a douche by the way haha | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35q1i9/eli5_how_do_musicians_compose_music_for/ | {
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"That's exactly what they do. They know what the instruments sound like, and figure that playing a certain line on that instrument would sound nice with other lines on other instruments so they tell them to do that. Most composers who study music will take orchestration classes and will learn the basics of all the instruments, but they by no means are experts on all of them. Once you learn one the others just kind of fall into place. ",
"My friend is an amateur composer and what you really need is an understanding of *music theory*. A lot of composers know how harmonies and melodies work in theory, can play them on piano, and then transpose that to a different instrument for the piece to achieve a certain effect. \n\nYou just need to know what instruments you want to come in at what times in what octave etc. \n\nComposers are like film directors, arranging a ton of moving parts to achieve a simultaneous effect. \n\nEdit: Format",
"On top of what others have said, it is immensely helpful in modern times to compose in software that will play back sampled or synthesized instruments to you.",
"Hi, college-level composer here, nearing completion of my undergrad.\nI play the classical guitar, but I've written for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, and piano. It's really more a handle on how music functions that gets you a foothold in understanding these things. There are idioms as they say to various instruments, and that takes time to learn. You run into a lot of speed bumps at first but the more you write the better you get about managing your musical expectations against performers physical capabilities. Moreover there are books, such Hector Berlioz's *Treatise on Instrumentation,* wherein he explains in vivid detail pretty much anything you could want to know about different instruments capabilities.\n\nLearning how instruments work is another in a long line of expressive seasonings with which to make musical entrees. If you're new to it, it seems an almost insurmountable amount of info, but dilligence and practice conquer all. \n\nDon't be fooled, the \"great\" composers were all beginners too. Many have very lame pieces in their catalogue before you get to the masterworks. Many times there are pieces that sound cool, but the composer didn't know the instrument very well so you end up with something fun to listen to but a nightmare to play.\n\nAs for \"playing what sounds like this piece on the piano,\" that dips into a discipline known as Orchestration. Orchestration is the act of arranging a piece for instruments,typically but not limited an orchestra. Because an orchestra is so large, what happens usually with writing for one is a composer will write their piece for piano(typically \"piano 4-hands\" to cover the range of the orchestra,) then, and only then after the piece is fully completed will they go about re-working it for the orchestra. They become very selective about which instruments play what because the instruments have their own expressive sound, or \"color,\" as they say. \n\nFor example, here's a piece called [Pictures at an Exhibition](_URL_0_) It was written by a Russian man named Modest Mussorgsky for piano. Years after his death, a French guy named Maurice Ravel, who was known for being something of a genius of orchestral color, decided it needed to be an orchestral piece. Although he wasn't the first, his is the most widely known version. [Compare this to the piano version above](_URL_1_) \n\nTL;DR: it is expected of composers to also learn the art of orchestration and how various instruments work in tandem with music theory, and history. \n\nWhat's really mind-blowing is there are some composers, (such as Richard Wagner) who played NO instruments at all, but still wrote fantastic music. O_o"
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3r02lj | what would happen to an indestructible object if it fell down a shaft that cut through the center of the earth? | Would it pass through? fall into an orbit around the core? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r02lj/eli5_what_would_happen_to_an_indestructible/ | {
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"Ignoring air and assuming the earth was a perfect circle it would have enough momentum to pop up exactly at the same height it was dropped from. It would take exactly 45 minutes. \n\nOn real earth air would slow it down and the unevenness of the earth would mean it would probably not quite make it to the surface on the other side and would oscillate back and forth till it stopped in the middle. ",
"Coriolis forces would smash it against the side of the tunnel, slowing it down, so that eventually it would get stuck in the center of the earth.\n\nAssuming you drilled through the pole's, then it would slow down due to friction with the air, and then get stuck in the center of the earth.\n\nAssuming you also removed the atmosphere, then yes it would oscillate between the two positions."
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am3pn1 | to a non- native speaker when to use the word “the”. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/am3pn1/eli5_to_a_non_native_speaker_when_to_use_the_word/ | {
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"Usually when referring to a specific noun. I bet there are more rules, but I follow this and it almost always works.\n\nSpecific noun means that you're actually talking about a single specific thing. \"I'm sitting in a car. \" is when you are answering someone who asked you what you're doing without any previous conversation. \"I'm sitting in the car.\" is when you talked with someone about that specific car you're now sitting in and you're now answering them. ",
"\"The\" is used to refer to a **specific** thing. \"A/An\" is used to refer to a **category** of thing.\n\nSo \"I am going to kick the ball\" means that there is a specific ball to kick.\n\n\"I am going to kick a ball\" means that something will be kicked, and that something is a ball. ",
"Follow up question: what was your first language? "
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36aney | self-plagiarism. | If it is your own work from previously before, why can't you use your own work? Kinda mad because I lost points on an essay because the teacher's comment were "You stated this opinion before on a previous essay. You must cite your previous essay or else it is considered self-plagiarism." Like seriously?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36aney/eli5selfplagiarism/ | {
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"Self-plagiarism is a bit of a misnomer. What it is, professors/schools want to assign you an appropriate work load, and part of that is having you do assignments from scratch, rather than just rehashing previous assignments.",
"While some people would would agree with your teacher's assessment, to mark someone down for this seems excessive, especially if you are at school/college level. ",
"This is one of the basic principles of academic writing:\n\n1. Whatever you write should be primarily *original* writing.\n2. To the extent you use previous work, you are expected to give proper citations, regardless of whether the author is you or someone else.\n\nCitations within academic work isn't just about being courteous to the original author. It's also about being sure that *in this particular paper* you only take credit for what's new, and not some previous work. "
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1tbqv3 | why are one-way flights often more expensive than round trip? | To clarify I mean that a one-way ticket is literally more expensive than a round trip, not that two one-way trips add up to more than the round trip.
This is more a European thing, and is not always the case, especially on budget airlines. But for example right now a Lufthansa round-trip from Berlin to NYC is 1800 while one-way is 2600.
In other words it's cheaper or equal to buy two round-trips, which, of course, is what everyone does, and just leaves the return unused (yes it's supposedly against the rules but they obviously can't and don't penalize people for "missing a flight"), resulting in yet another no-show which is one more seat they could've sold someone else (and no need to tell me flights are always overbooked, I know, but they have to try and predict how many no-shows they're going to get to minimize empty seats while avoiding actually having to turn someone away, which would obviously be a simpler calculation if this incentive was removed).
In such a hugely competitive industry, with squat for margins, where prices are so precisely analyzed and calculated that they fluctuate in real-time and vary by time of day, how can this make sense? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tbqv3/eli5_why_are_oneway_flights_often_more_expensive/ | {
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"It makes sense *because* prices are so precisely calculated and analyzed. One-way tickets are less common than round-trips. If you buy a one-way, the airline needs to fine another one-way in the opposite direction to fill that return seat that you would have been in if it were a round-trip. This is more difficult to do, so the airline is more likely to fly an empty seat if they give you a one-way than if they give you a round trip. To make up for that possibly lost revenue, they charge you more.\n\nBooking two round-trips and cancelling half of each is possible but, as you note, against the terms of carriage. They can and do penalize people for missing the flight (by cancelling the other reservation)...they just don't do it all the time.",
"It is basically because you're doing them a favor by filling up 2 seats instead of 1.\n\nI have had instances where I could fly on Flight 654 in seat 32B from A to B and connect to C for cheaper than I could fly on Flight 654 in seat 32B from A to B. Exact same flight, seat, time, etc, and adding a connection is cheaper. Explain that.",
"As someone who works for an airline, there are a couple different reasons that this is the case. \n\nFirstly, it's mostly because of the rules of the ticket. As a general rule of thumb, the more flexible your ticket is, the more expensive it's going to cost. In the instance of a one-way ticket, a lot of the restrictions that would normally be placed on a ticket (like a minimum stay, a maximum stay, stopover restrictions, open jaw restrictions, etc) simply aren't applicable because it's only one direction, and the flexibility drives the cost up. Round trip tickets don't have that same problem, so more restrictions are added, which drives the price down. \n\nAlso sometimes, especially in the instance of international flights, certain countries won't allow you to enter without having a return trip already booked, for visa purposes. Having a fully flexible ticket gives the airline the ability to rebook (or even refund) a passenger's ticket in the instance that they don't, for whatever reason, have proper documents to get to the country they're going with a lot less hassle than if there were fees associated with the changes. This is also why you can often find one way fares on short domestic routes less expensive for the one way. For example, since you mentioned Lufthansa in your OP, a one way flight with LH from Frankfurt to Munich for January 13th is 102 EUR, but adding a return trip a week later, is 192 EUR. Not exactly half, but it's definitely not more expensive to buy the one way! \n\nFinally, a lot of it has to do with old-school pricing models based on selling round trips. Before all the mergers and airline alliances, the thought was that if you sold a one-way fare for exactly half the price of a round trip, if the plane becomes full for the return date, the passenger might consider buying a return flight with another airline instead, whereas if the whole thing is booked on a single airline as a round trip, the passenger is going to choose (or perhaps be forced to choose, depending on the rules) a return flight with the same airline or at least one of the airline's partners. So selling the one-way at a higher price discouraged passengers from doing this, and protects revenue. This school of thought has been slowly going away for many years though, with newer budget airlines basing their pricing models on a model where the earliest tickets sold are offset by the last few seats to be sold, and the break even point per flight is somewhere around operating a flight at half capacity. \n\nI suppose there are likely other reasons as well, but these are the biggest ones I've come across in my day-to-day dealings with passengers. Hope it's helpful :)\n",
"I have worked for 2 different airlines over the past 5 years in doing pricing implementation and analysis, network planning, and inventory control. This is mainly an issue when flying on a hub and spoke carrier as opposed to a point to point operator. Understanding how fare restrictions work is the first step to knowing why a one way can be more expensive.\n\nThere are 3 major categories of restrictions that apply to every fare and have the greatest impact on the cost.\n\nAdvance Purchase – How far in advance you are purchasing your ticket, for domestic US carriers they are typically 0, 7, 14, 21. International fares from some carriers have 60 or 90 day requirements\n\nMax/Min Stay – How long/short a passenger is able to stay. Max is typically 30 days, while min stays are a 3 day minimum. This also encompasses fares that have Saturday or Sunday required stays to purchase, airlines do this to segment out leisure and business passengers. \n\nDay of Week – Determines what days the fare is allowed to be used. For example some fares are only valid for travel on Tuesday and Wednesday which results in your outbound/return having to be on both those days in order for your to be eligible for this fare.\n\nThere are many other fare rules and categories but those are the most common and impactful.\n\nTo answer your question: Assuming your fare search was the exact same when looking at the one way and nonstop prices. Since you are traveling one way you are unable to purchase a significant number of the filed fares, because of round trip requirements. Due to this you are pushed into a higher fare class and charged the cheapest nonstop fare that is available based on inventory constraints. Airlines prefer to sell round trip tickets to prevent the passenger from flying a competitor on the return, thus securing the revenue for both legs of your trip. \n\nTL:DR – One way was more expensive due to fare restrictions and your selected travel requirements, thus pushing you into a higher fare class causing your price to increase.\n"
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548d5o | why do we have the letter c? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/548d5o/eli5_why_do_we_have_the_letter_c/ | {
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"From the beginning, the Roman alphabet pretty much didn't use the letter K. For Latin words with a /k/ sound, or words borrowed from Greek that had a /k/, and in that language used a kappa (κ), the Romans would use a C. And for about six hundred years, that was all fine.\n\nBut during the later parts of the Roman Empire, there was a sound shift, and the pronunciation of words with C (that is, words that had until now had a /k/ sound) changed according to this rule: if a C was followed by an I or an E in the same word, it would be pronounced with an /s/ (details omitted); otherwise, with a /k/.\n\nAnd that was still fine, if a little confusing, because- since everybody who mattered was still speaking Latin, and all Latin words with a /k/ sound before an I or an E had had their /k/'s changed to /s/'s- it wasn't like there were any words that couldn't be easily written the same way they had always been.\n\nBut then the Roman Empire fell apart and- ever so slowly- some people got the idea into their heads that it might be a good idea to write things down in languages other than Latin. But- here's the problem: sometimes languages that aren't Latin have a /k/ sound- an actual /k/ sound, not a theoretical legacy /k/ that's actually pronounced as /s/- followed by I or E. How do we write that? Everybody knows that C followed by I or E is pronounced /s/!\n\nSo scribes re-introduced K, which hadn't been used in the west in, like, a millennium, to provide the /k/ sound in situations where a C would have provided an /s/ sound. That's why a word like cake has a C representing a /k/ in the first letter, but can't use it in the third letter, because a C there would be affected by the silent E, and pronounced /s/.",
"English isn't the only language in the world, you know? For example, my first language is portuguese, and we don't use K, W or Y in any of our words, because we substituted their sounds for C, Q, U, V and I. But they're still in the alphabet because *other languages use them*.\n\nBesides, do cherry and sherry sound the same to you? ",
"Also I'm not sure the \"ch\" sound could be written without a \"c\" (the word \"chocolate\" for instance)."
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41ips0 | dank memes | What the actual fuck is a dank meme, exactly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41ips0/eli5_dank_memes/ | {
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"My parents just found out about the word \"meme\". They don't know what it means. They just say it all the time out of context.",
"/u/pseudopsud is incorrect.\n\nWhile his definition of \"dank\" is technically correct as used properly, \"dank\" in this case is used in the same way that \"dank\" is used to describe weed -- that it's high quality. Assuming you know what memes are, \"dank\" is just a modifier that means \"good\". When someone says a meme is \"dank\", that is a compliment. You might also see phrases like \"this meme isn't dank enough\", meaning that the meme isn't good enough. \n\nBasically, \"dank\" is used colloquially as a positive modifier. It's a silly internet trend that picked up only in the last year or so (the usage of the word dank, I mean). I personally love it, but then again, I'm kind of simple."
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20iyjz | why we use a pillow. surely it would be better for our neck not to have our head at an angle? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20iyjz/eli5_why_we_use_a_pillow_surely_it_would_be/ | {
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"If you sleep on your stomach or back, then probably. If you sleep on your side, a pillow keeps your neck aligned.",
"I don't know, but if I sleep without a pillow I wake up with an agonising kink in my neck.\n\nHowever I probably roll onto my side at night instead of staying on my back...",
"Why don't you try tonight and let us know how it goes?",
"You're not really supposed to have your head at an angle. That's not really what a pillows for. Also, your neck also needs support, if you just lay flat on your back your head might be straight initially, but your neck is going to want to kink.\n\n\nWhat you really want is your head flat, your neck supported, and optimally maybe even your upper back a bit. \n\n\nTry laying down and concentrating on your neck muscles. You'll find even when you're \"comfortable\" your neck muscles are doing work and supporting things. When you manage to find a way to support your head and neck where your muscles truly relax, you will sleep like a rock. ",
"a pillow is supposed to maintain roughly the same angle your head has when you are standing. ",
"Pillows are used to muffle the screams of victims in the night.\n"
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rjnde | how a flipping a coin is not a 50/50 scenario? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rjnde/eli5_how_a_flipping_a_coin_is_not_a_5050_scenario/ | {
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"If you're flipping an ideal coin, it is. In the real world, coins do not weigh exactly the same amount on each side, so the odds are not exactly 50/50.\n\nI suspect that's not what you're thinking about, though. What prompted this question?",
"It's extremely unlikely, but there's the possibility it would land on its side.",
"[This](_URL_0_) cracked article explains it. \n\nThere is a better chance that the coin will land on the side that it starts on. So let's say you put your coin heads up on your thumb and flip it.\n\n > As it turns in the air, heads will be facing up as many or more times as tails, but never less. Tails, on the other hand, will be facing up as many or fewer times as heads, but never more (since it didn't start out that way).\n\nThis actually only accounts for a two percent difference in chance: 51% for the side originally facing up and 49% for the side facing down. Still close to 50/50 but not exactly.\n\nNotice this explanation has nothing to do with the weight of the coin, as described by commenter Amarkov, but rather the bias built into the original set up of the coin flip. Now, if you were to flip the coin in a way that didn't have this bias, then Amarkov's explanation is pretty much it as it."
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5flfbo | why is it that we don't enrich our local drinking water supplies with essential nutrients like vitamin c, d, b12, and others like we already do with fluoride? | To ensure a minimum amount of nutrition for the residents to promote better health. What are the obstacles and limitations to this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5flfbo/eli5_why_is_it_that_we_dont_enrich_our_local/ | {
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"Most vitamins and minerals we get from food\n\nFluoride isn't found in food. Sometimes it's found naturally in water but not in many areas \n\nThe American dental association is the main pusher for fluoride in drinking water. \n\nA tiny amount does a lot of good \n\n\nA tiny bit of vitamins and minerals is pretty much useless. You could overdose babies if you dosed at higher levels "
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b256vs | what makes the iphone more secure than other phones and how do people still hack it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b256vs/eli5_what_makes_the_iphone_more_secure_than_other/ | {
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"Some if the security features like hard drive encryption are enabled by default on a current model iPhone. Most of the same features are available for an Android, but are not the default. Sometimes you need to use a different app altogether in order to get the best security on an Android.\nIn some cases the default apps and settings on both devices aren't the best choice out there, but a new iPhone has more security enabled by default than a typical Android.\n\nI'm not aware of any Android manufacturers who advertise security up front, that doesn't seem to be what sells (sadly)"
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cvysdr | how do we not roll off the bed while sleeping? does our brain still have depth perception without actually seeing anything (since your eyes are closed.)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvysdr/eli5_how_do_we_not_roll_off_the_bed_while/ | {
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"Ok I wanna know this as well.\n\nBut I'd like to add, those times when you wake up because your brain thinks you are about to fall of the bed even if you aren't anywhere near the edge, what causes that?",
"Your brain can still sense the position/pose of your body (called proprioception), and you still have your sense of touch, so if your arm is hanging off the side of your bed you can tell its hanging there even without sight. So even though you're asleep there's still subconscious awareness that keeps you from rolling off.\n\nThat awareness doesn't work so well in young kids which is why they're much more likely to roll off the bed than an adult."
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ndyoc | what it takes to establish a sovereign nation | Let's say that Redditors are so fed up with the way things are being governed that they'd like to establish an independently governed state somewhere in the world, be it within a pre-existing nation or on unclaimed land. What would it take to do this? What are the international laws regarding these issues? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndyoc/eli5_what_it_takes_to_establish_a_sovereign_nation/ | {
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"I don't know about international laws, but the risk is the (big) chance of a neighboring country swallowing your nation up. All land is accounted for around the world, the possibility of any group of people seceding from a nation is slim. Remember in the US it has been attempted before and the government wouldn't allow it, and that was about half of the states at the time. Having a smaller area and population try to pull it off... well, let's use the ever so popular 1 in a million.\n\nThere is the [Conch Republic](_URL_0_) in the US, and I heard once that Texas left a caveat in their constitution that they can secede at any time they please (not sure if true).",
"In theory, it's very simple: all you have to do is convince the country which owns the land to let you go, then convince most of the rest of the countries to recognize your sovereignty. Or, you can forcefully break away, but then you face an uphill battle in gaining recognition.",
"It happened recently, South Sudan is the world's newest nation. The way it worked is there was a war and \"Sudan\" agreed that if the South Sudanese voted for it, they could become their own nation and break off. They did so.",
"I don't know about international laws, but the risk is the (big) chance of a neighboring country swallowing your nation up. All land is accounted for around the world, the possibility of any group of people seceding from a nation is slim. Remember in the US it has been attempted before and the government wouldn't allow it, and that was about half of the states at the time. Having a smaller area and population try to pull it off... well, let's use the ever so popular 1 in a million.\n\nThere is the [Conch Republic](_URL_0_) in the US, and I heard once that Texas left a caveat in their constitution that they can secede at any time they please (not sure if true).",
"In theory, it's very simple: all you have to do is convince the country which owns the land to let you go, then convince most of the rest of the countries to recognize your sovereignty. Or, you can forcefully break away, but then you face an uphill battle in gaining recognition.",
"It happened recently, South Sudan is the world's newest nation. The way it worked is there was a war and \"Sudan\" agreed that if the South Sudanese voted for it, they could become their own nation and break off. They did so."
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pc5ih | how is the ozone formed? and how is it broken down due to human impact? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pc5ih/how_is_the_ozone_formed_and_how_is_it_broken_down/ | {
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"Ozone is formed in a lot of ways, mostly through situations where there is a lot of electricity in the air. This includes lightning strikes and reaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere (like the aurora borealis, the northern lights). It is broken down by various chemicals that we release into the air, most famously cholorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are found in aerosols, air conditioners, etc. CFCs have been/are being phased out in a lot of industries. Ozone can also break down by itself by reacting with normal oxygen."
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aodxk1 | why do services like discord and skype sound so much better than actually making a phone call? | If I'm using my mobile data on my phone to call on Discord, why is the sound quality so much clearer than a regular phone call? Surely we've come far enough to like, make it sound better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aodxk1/elif_why_do_services_like_discord_and_skype_sound/ | {
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"Because voicecalls use smaller bitrate.\nSkype and discord calls also lags hellalot more than regular calls. Regular calls rarely ever lags as long as your reception is a ok.",
"When you make a standard cellphone call, it gets routed from the cell tower to the closest telephone exchange, where it essentially becomes a standard telephone call. Services such as Skype and Discord use Internet Protocol-based services, where there is a significant increase in available bandwidth in order to greatly increase the number of samples per second of the audio sent to the distant end.",
"To add to what others have said, there is a sort of coconut effect with phones these days. It's not that we can't make phones more clear, but people are so used to hearing phone calls a certain way that people don't feel the need to change anymore. \n\nAs an addendum, there is such a thing a wifi calling (other names depending on your provider) where a phone call will use the extra bandwith associated with internet protocols to make a crystal clear phone connection. Many people, myself included, either don't know or don't care to use it though.",
"Standard telephone calls over landlines use 64 kbps of data to send the audio with only a tiny amount of compression. Cell phones will sometimes use as little as 9.6 kbps of data depending on which vocoder is in use. These are laughably small bitrates in today's world. But, since this standard has been in place for decades it's hard to get everyone to agree to a better sounding system. There is a push to use HD Voice which sounds a lot better than plain old telephone service but it is limited by interoperability problems between carriers.\n\nDiscord also uses 64 kbps by default but it uses compression that allows for 10:1 or 20:1 data savings. So, it sounds much better while using the same amount of data as the old standards."
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7f0oy4 | what’s the big deal about monosodium glutamate? | What’s the big deal about monosodium glutamate? Help me understand. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7f0oy4/eli5_whats_the_big_deal_about_monosodium_glutamate/ | {
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"It's just another form of salt.\n\n\nToo much salt causes blood pressure issues. Like anything you need to keep it in moderation.",
"A little MSG makes food taste better; it's a \"flavour enhancer\". There are many foods that contain MSG, glutamine, glutamates, and similar chemicals (such as good parmesan cheese, beef stock, bonito flakes, etc) that naturally do the same thing. MSG is just a purified, powdered form. Many recipes and food traditions already contain a source of glutamic acid.\n\nSome people report headaches from MSG intake, although it does NOT hold up well to scientific scrutiny. Many such people seem to only have a reaction when they *think* there is MSG, not when there is actually MSG, so YMMV hard to test for at high doses since it has a distinctive taste, so \"blind\" taste testers identify the MSG and then are open to a placebo effect headache or other syptoms _URL_0_\n\nIn small amounts MSG additives are scientifically proven to increase palatability of tomato juice at concentrations of 0.2 to 0.8%\n\nIn my opinion, skip the powdered MSG and go for food additives like an expensive cheese, beef demi-glace, soy sauce, or bonito flakes.",
"People had completely, falsely, and stupidly claimed MSG had some type of increased medical risk or caused medical issues in some people. This was an urban myth that got out of control.\n\nIts absolute nonsense that the collective world caught on to, but since has realized how stupid they were.\n\nMSG is nothing worse than other stuff. Its a \"flavor enhancer\" much in the same way salt would be used in a food to bring out flavor.\n\nIf you go to cooking stuff or chefs, MSG is a cheap way to add a punch of flavor to a dish, and used pretty often, although again because of the above mystical negative press on it, you generally don't find it in supermarket foods you buy and such."
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5tqn8f | what is a headache and what is the best way to lessen their effects without medication? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tqn8f/eli5_what_is_a_headache_and_what_is_the_best_way/ | {
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"Headaches are not actually pain in your brain because the brain does not have pain receptors. He aches are actually symptoms of other issues.\n\nMany headaches are cause by dehydration, so drinking more water consistently helps treat / \nprevent.\n\nAnother common cause is tension or stress. A good way to treat these type headaches is meditation and or breathing exercises.\n\nIn general, getting enough exercise, getting enough sleep, and eating well will prevent many headaches.\n\nUnfortunately not all headaches are easily cured and some are caused by hormone or chemical imbalances that do require medical treatment (though all this stuff helps!). If you have persistent headaches see a medical professional because it could be a symptom of a much more serious issue. \n\nThe Wikipedia article on headaches is actually really interesting is you have time to read. Much of the brain is still a mystery that we are trying to figure out:\n_URL_0_",
"Well, I have some tips for avoiding headaches, at least.\n\nMy best advice is to stay hydrated. You'd be surprised how easy it is to get a headache from dehydration. This is also the best way I know to cure a headache you already have. Chug water. The faster and more you drink, the faster the headache will go away (assuming it's caused by dehydration).\n\nFor that same reason, avoid, or limit your consumption of, alcohol and salty food. \n\nOther possible causes are lack of sleep, poor posture, and muscle stress in your head, neck, or face. So get plenty of sleep, sit up straight, and try to relax.\n\nPersonally, I sometimes get headaches if I spend too much time on my computer. It puts a lot of stress on my eyes and the muscles around them, which leads to headaches for me. Try to be aware of these kinds of factors that might lead to stress and tension on your head. ",
"Don't know specific cause but I know a technique to calm them down. Get in the shower fill the tub up hot, sit down and get your body temp up with the water. After you feel your body literally getting hot turn the water colder and colder overtime and just focus the cold on your neck and head while trying to keep the rest of your body warm and out of the cold. Don't get to the point of cold where it's icy because it can get counterintuitive. It's not a complete cure but it's guaranteed to lessen the headache.",
"As others have said headaches can be caused by a variety of factors. Depending on whats causing your headache may determine which solution is best for you. Without knowing your situation...\n\n**To avoid getting headaches...**\n\n- Get better sleep\n\n- Stay hydrated - drink lots of water if you feel a headache coming on\n\n- Avoid/Identify your triggers (e.g. loud noises, bright lights, caffeine withdrawal)\n\n- Stop smoking\n\n- Avoid drinking\n\n- Eat healthy\n\n- Exercise regularly\n\n- Fix poor vision: make sure you aren't straining your eyes\n\n- Visit your doctor and get a physical: make sure you are healthy and that the cause of the headaches isn't something more serious, especially if they are regular and severe. \n\n- Log when you get your headaches: do they coincide with particular events, for example extreme changes in air-pressure (e.g. barometric headache)\n\n- De-stress your life: meditate, organize your time...\n\n- Maintain good posture\n\n**Once you have a headache...**\n\n- Drink lots of water\n\n- Apply a cool cloth to your head\n\n- Rest in a dark quiet room\n\n- Take a nap\n\n- Get a message\n\n- Meditate/Yoga\n\n- Have a little bit of coffee or caffeinated tea\n\n- Take out your pony-tail and let your hair relax\n\n\n",
"What I am about to say is going to sound very hokey, but I will say it anyways. \n\nWhen I was a kid, I use to get headaches a lot. Somewhere along the lines I had heard that there is a pressure point between your thumb and index finger and that if you massaged that area it would make your headache go away. I started using this trick all the time. \n\nThe only problem, if I was trying to fall asleep, massaging my hand was not a way to make this happen. So I started imagining that I was massaging the area and the headache went away again. I had now discovered what I heard about in crazy science programs that were on TV while I was growing up...if you work on it, you can gain mental control over pain. The result is whenever I have a headache, I can will away the pain if I concentrate. Again, sounds hokey, but really works. \n\nThe above technique is only when I am suffering with the pain, the preventative care listed above (drink lots of water, meditate, wear sunglasses on bright days, de-stress) are your best bets for getting the headaches to stop before they start. Good luck with figuring it all out!",
"A headache can manifest in several different ways, depending on the type of headache you have. You might have pain in one side of your head, on both sides, only in the front, only in the back. They can radiate across your head from a central location or have a vise-like feel, be throbbing or dull, come on gradually or hit suddenly. They can last anywhere from less than an hour to several days. There've been cases of people having a headache for even longer. \n\nHeadaches are categorized as being either primary or secondary. Primary headaches are stand-alone illnesses, caused by an overactivity of, or problems with, structures in the head that are pain-sensitive. These include blood vessels, muscles, and nerves in your scalp and neck. They may also result from changes in chemical activity in your brain. Migrains, cluster headaches, and tension headaches are considered primary headaches. \n\nSecondary headaches come from another condition that stimulates pain sensitive nerves of the head. Some examples of secondary headaches would be: hangovers, tumors, blood clots, \"brain freeze\", carbon monoxide poisoning, dehydration, flu, panic attacks, strokes, concussions, even glaucoma and some medications. \n\nI've had headaches my entire life, primarily migraines. I don't tolerate medications well, so I avoid the typical prescription medications for migraine. If I take anything, it's excedrin migraine. But there are also other things you can do to soothe a headache: \n\n* apply heat or cold to your head or neck, or even both. For me, cold to the back of the neck and heat to the forehead, simultaneously, does wonders. \n\n* avoid stressors where possible, develop healthy coping mechanisms such as meditation, guided meditation, yoga, deep breathing exercises. \n\n* eat regular meals, maintain stable blood sugar whenever possible. \n\n* stay hydrated. \n\n* Get enough rest, and sleep in a way that keeps your airway open as much as possible to avoid hypoxia (which can trigger awful headaches). \n\n* for some people, acupuncture or acupressure helps a lot\n\nSometimes headaches may develop stemming from a nutritional deficiency, especially if you're deficient in magnesium and certain B vitamins. Medical conditions that result in malabsoption issues can also lead to headaches (for example, pernicious anemia, which causes you to be unable to absorb vitamin b12, iron, etc). Ensuring you have a balanced diet and take supplements for any deficiencies can help to prevent headaches. ",
"Interestingly, none of the comments here seem to actually explain where the pain comes from and why. I don't mean \"what causes a headache\", but specifically what causes pain to be felt in the head.\n\nWhat pain receptors are being triggered? Are they inside the skull, around the brain, or outside the skull, under the skin? What is the actual mechanism whereby dehydration, or stress, lead to pain around the head? Why does the head feel pain when the source of the problem is elsewhere?\n\nIt would be really interesting to know those particular things. Unless we just don't know yet?",
"The immediate cause of headache is excessive extracellular (outside of cells) adenosine concentration in the head. Adenosine is an endogenous (originating within the body) neurotransmitter chemical.\n\nHeadaches can be sorted into one of two categories: primary and secondary. \n\nSecondary headaches are caused by (secondary to) conditions including trauma, poisoning, infection, tumor, and vascular abnormality.\n\nPrimary headaches are, by definition, NOT caused by (not secondary to) such conditions. Rather, by definition, primary headaches are their own condition. The cause of primary headaches has not been determined.\n\nIn my view, caffeine withdrawal is the most likely cause of any case or episode of primary headache.\n\nThe best non-medicinal way to decrease the frequency and severity of future primary headaches is to gradually decrease caffeine intake."
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8glpal | - how can you get stretch marks on your bum from sitting down too much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8glpal/eli5_how_can_you_get_stretch_marks_on_your_bum/ | {
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"Your can't. You get stretch marks from rapid weight gain or growth. So if you put on a lot of weight in your hips and butt you can get stretch marks there. \n\nSomething you can get from sitting down too much are pressure sores commonly called bed sores, or hemorrhoids. "
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6aeija | what is 'ai' in video games? | My brother is big on game design and has recently begun going to university to study it - can someone give me an explanation of what constitutes an 'AI' in a video game, or how that works? It was my understanding that AI hadn't been invented yet, or is this something different? I hear it referred to as 'Enemy AI' a lot. I don't know a lot about this stuff but I'd really like to be able to keep up with my brother and still have detailed conversations with him, so I'm looking for an explanation that starts broad and gets more specific. Thank you in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6aeija/eli5_what_is_ai_in_video_games/ | {
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"A simple or complex series of statements that govern the behaviors in the game. \n\nSo let's say you have a zombie that chases players if they get too close... it can be like \n\nstate_idle (I'm just standing around)\n\nif distance.player < 10 then state_chase\n\n(A player got close to me... I'm now going to chase him!)\n\nNow think of a stealth game and how many questions each guard is constantly asking themselves... \"do I see a player? Do I see a dead body? Did I hear noise? Am I at the place where I'm traveling to? Should I be saying my catch phrase?\".",
"AI stands for artificial intelligence. But when referring to games, AI is referring to characters being controlled by a program/script. ",
"AI stands for \"artificial intelligence\" and it has many applications in video games. In a more simple form, an AI can play Chess or Checkers against you on a computer. So this AI is using data & an algorithm to determine which moves to make based on your moves.\n\nIn a more complicated form, it can be used in video games to help non-player characters (NPCs) act more human-like. So basically there are a series of algorithms that determine specific characteristics of NPCs (or AIs) from how they'll walk from point A to point B, how they will perform combat against you and against other NPCs, etc. ",
"Ai is, like mentioned, artificial intelligence. it's simply the practice of getting a computer to react to its environment and act somewhat intelligently, to pretend it is a real, intelligent agent. So, computer players playing against the humans are AI, anything that governs an NPC's behavior is AI, anything that makes the computer react to the world it is living in is AI.\n\nOutside of video games AI has many applications, such as machine learning, data mining, factory assembly, pattern recognition, Targeting ads towards you, building cute robots, and so on and so forth.\n\nWhat you are referring to when you mention \" AI hadn't been invented yet\" is *true, general AI*. It's essentially when a single AI can learn, can think, can act, in essence is truly intelligent instead of just pretending to be. This is something that we have not achieved, or at least not fully. We're always doing research on AI and we've gotten some pretty smart robots, but we're a few decades off the singularity. ",
"AI is artificial intelligence. While real artificial intelligence doesn't actually exist, in gaming it's basically how the non player controlled characters are programmed to interact with each other and the player. For example, if you walk up and punch a pedestrian in Grand Theft Auto, the AI will either have that NPC fight back or run away. In addition if you do that in front of a law enforcement NPC you will become wanted and they will go after you for it. \n \nEdit: A word",
"Former game developer here,\n\n[AI](_URL_1_), in this case, is any of a number of [algorithms](_URL_0_) that *[simulate](_URL_1__(video_games\\))* a virtual actor in a video game. That actor can be an opponent, an ally, or any sort of non-aggressor like NPCs, birds and fish, \"intelligent\" items (like Frodo's \"[Sting](_URL_4_)\" that glows blue when orcs are near), etc.\n\nThere are many basic algorithms that are the foundation of AI behavior. For example, [this flocking algorithm](_URL_5_) is used for it's namesake, for the afore mentioned birds and fish. The [A*](_URL_9_) (pronounced \"a star\") algorithm comes out of [Graph Theory](_URL_8_), but it's the base for a lot of \"pathing\", where an AI needs to traverse a map efficiently while avoiding hazardous terrain like lava. [Behavior trees](_URL_10_), also called decision trees, are structures that encode a series of questions that resolve to some action. I wrote a [Neural Network](_URL_6_) of [Perceptrons](_URL_7_) back in college that simulates neurons in your brain to learn and make decisions.\n\nMost AI in video games are very simple pathing algorithms and mere [State Machines](_URL_2_). In video games, most studios would rather spend resources on rendering and other gameplay aspects, so AI is computationally cheap. Studios are also sensitive to the user experience, they want to craft a very specific and *consistent* experience, so high variability in an exotic and unpredictable AI is typically unacceptable. So cheap, predictable, and consistent are going to be the bread and butter of AAA title AI.\n\nAI, especially for video games, is a huge, huge topic, and it runs deep. Most algorithms used to make AI *weren't invented for AI*, they came out of other disciplines and just so happened to be useful for simulating intelligence, hence the use of A*, for example. AI also tie into the game, including it's physics, so it's easy to get distracted by all sorts of ancillary components."
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51bw5j | why do churches in suburban areas seem to be clustered together? | In a sense it almost appears like they are competing with one another for followers, what's the benefit of being clustered together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51bw5j/eli5_why_do_churches_in_suburban_areas_seem_to_be/ | {
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"Every community is different, but a couple of relevant factors:\n\n* Property values. Religious institutions tend to be established on more affordable land, which tends to occur in substantial tracts, so establishments that look for affordable land may be found clustered together when built in the same time period.\n\n* Proximity to housing. Religious people regard church as a part of their lives, so they want to live near it just as they want to live near schools for their kids. When substantial new housing is developed and people move into it, religious institutions that serve them may pop up nearby.\n\n",
"Zoning laws. Churches can bring in a lot of vehicular traffic around worship time, so municipalities can only allow them to be built in certain, limited areas.",
"Churches are competing for members the same way businesses compete for customers. This video explains why they tend to cluster together well: \n_URL_0_"
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1oe7zn | elo5 the federal reserve and why in the world the u.s. doesn't own it's own money. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oe7zn/elo5_the_federal_reserve_and_why_in_the_world_the/ | {
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"The Federal Reserve is a partially private partially public entity created by an regulated by an act of congress. It's designed to be insulated from the day to day government activities but the US does definitely own it's own money."
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7z2b4g | why does our depth perception get so bad while covering one eye or wearing an eye patch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7z2b4g/eli5_why_does_our_depth_perception_get_so_bad/ | {
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"Depth perception comes as a result of seeing something from two slightly different angles-- one from your left eye and one from your right. In essence a person sort of triangulates the position of an object to estimate how far away it is. When you see something with one eye, you can't do that, so the image appears a little bit flat.",
"I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Depth perception from people with one eye ](_URL_3_) ^(_9 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: If people with one eye have no depth perception, how come I still have it with one eye closed? ](_URL_2_) ^(_25 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: how does having 2 eyes allow for depth perception? ](_URL_4_) ^(_11 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why doesnt the world appear 2D if I close one eye? ](_URL_6_) ^(_40 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do people with 1 eye develop depth perception ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)\n1. [If someone loses and eye do they lose depth perception? Is someone born with one eye ever able to gain it? Why do I still have DP when I close one of my eyes? ](_URL_1_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: If humans need two eyes for depth perception, why can I look \"through\" an object with one eye closed or covered? ](_URL_5_) ^(_4 comments_)\n",
"To my knowledge, depth perception is done in two ways-bifocal and unifocal?(don't quote me on this one). But the idea is that there are different things that the brain does to determine depth, the one in question being bifocal(2 eyes). The brain utilizes something called retinal disparity to determine depth with 2 eyes in which the difference between the images the brain receives is processed and the greater the disparity on an object, the greater the depth. Closing/blocking one eye forces the brain to use unifocal cues such as parallel lines(ya know how looking towards a distant street is two lines meeting at a point? The greater the angle, the further it is) but that isn't the only cue that the brain uses. Hope that helps.",
"What I wanna know is... if you had a third eye, how would THAT change your depth perception.",
"It is not possible to perceive depth with one eye, as it produces only a 2D image. With 2 eyes, you get 2 2D images, effectively 3D. This you perceive depth.\n\nI am no biology expert, but if you had 100 eyes, you would have an even better sense of depth.",
"It only does if you are indoors, hold your head still, and don't look at something that's moving.\n\nYou see, the brain uses the difference between what your eyes see as a way to perceive depth. \nClose your left eye, then close your right eye while opening your left. Keep switching between left and right. You'll notice your view change slightly. When both your eyes are open, your brain combines those views into one view. The differences between the views are used to work out the depth.\n\nBut the are other ways to perceive depth. \nThings in the distance look smaller. Combining that with your knowledge of the world, of what those things should look like, will tell you something about their distance. When you're outside, things in the distance will look vaguer, bluer. \nWhen something's moving towards you or away from you, its change in size and the rate at which that changes, tells you its distance. \nIf you move, even just a bit, objects closer to you shift in comparison with the background. \nAll these methods allow you to perceive depth, even using only one eye."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2keo8y/eli5_if_people_with_one_eye_have_no_depth/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21q3xb/eli5_depth_perception_from_people_with_one_eye/",
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cwdqr/eli5_if_humans_need_two_eyes_for_depth_perception/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26jmf3/eli5_why_doesnt_the_world_appear_2d_if_i_close/"
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1a8ycj | it seems that at least few times a week we find a new way to "cure cancer" in mice. it's big news and then it immediately fades into obscurity. what's happening here? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a8ycj/eli5_it_seems_that_at_least_few_times_a_week_we/ | {
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"What happens is journalism. \"New Cure For Cancer!\" gets page views.\n\nCancer, unfortunately, is not a single disease. It's hundreds of diseases. Even something as (seemingly) simple as breast cancer is actually [many different types of cancer](_URL_1_).\n\nWithin those *types* of cancer, there's also some variation which leads to different types of treatments. \n\nSo what happens is a scientist discovers a methodology of treating a specific type of cancer, or something that shows promise in a theoretical setting. Usually, they find this in a culture or in a mouse, both of which are **not** perfect human analogs. \n\nSomething can show promise in a cell culture and be ridiculously dangerous in humans or just ineffective in humans for any one of a million reasons.\n\nOn top of which, those discoveries are usually about a decade from making it to market *if* they don't run afoul of any of the other things I listed. \n\n_____\n\nEdit: To add a specific example, look at [this](_URL_0_) headline and tell me what your takeaway is.\n\nFor most people, it'll be \"CANCER/HUNDREDS OF TUMORS IN ONE MOUSE CURED.\" \n\nIn reality, the first response in the thread sums it up really well...\n\n(posted by /u/bravemountie)\n > To express their therapeutic gene the researchers used a transgenic mouse that has the gene incorporated into its genome and expression is activated by doxycycline.\n > One of the major issues with gene therapy is delivery of the therapeutic gene to a specific target. This study is fine as a proof of concept that the gene can inhibit cancer growth but does not address a way to deliver the therapeutic gene to a person with cancer.\n\nSo we have a promising idea for curing a specific type of cancer, but the headline makes it sound absolutely amazing. But we have problems with 1) the devilry mechanism, 2) making sure it actually works in humans, 3) FDA approval, etc, etc. ",
"A retired cancer researcher once told me that if you can't cure cancer in mice you're not even competent.",
"One of my research project for undergrad work was making a textile that was oleophobic and hydrophobic so that it wouldn't stain easily. I finished one of my tests and discovered that I had been quite successful with my cloth. Now if this had been picked up by news it would have been reported as an \"amazing new cloth can't be stained\" immediately before we had a chance to see that it caused the cloth to turn into dust within 24 hours."
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5sl5y6 | what causes the "singing" when you drive over bridges or certain types of asphalt at high speeds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sl5y6/eli5_what_causes_the_singing_when_you_drive_over/ | {
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"Regularly- and tightly-spaced bumps, basically. Same principle at work when you run your fingers down the teeth of a comb, strum a washboard, or something like that. This is most noticeable on bridges with road surfaces made out of some kind of metal grid (to let water through and reduce weight, mostly). With regular roads, it'd be \"rumble strips,\" either across travel lanes to warn traffic to slow down, or on shoulders to warn drivers to get back on the bloody road.\n\nEvery time the vehicle's tires hit one of these bumps (whether raised or depressed), there's an impact noise. Just like running over a stick. But do a bunch of those in tight succession, and the ear/brain starts to interpret the resulting sound as a musical \"pitch\". Musical pitch is directly related to frequency of vibration. That's all sound is, really: shock waves propagated through a medium (usually air), that are detected by organs in the ear, transmitted to the brain, and interpreted as sound. So the faster the car is going, or the closer the bumps are together, the more of these impacts there will be in a second, producing a higher frequency of vibration and thus a higher pitch. ",
"Does anyone know what the result is to the tire? Are these strips bad for the tire/wear the tire? Sometimes during construction, you are almost forced to drive on them for an extended period. "
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3t22qe | what causes the job of being a moderator on reddit to attract such power hungry people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t22qe/eli5_what_causes_the_job_of_being_a_moderator_on/ | {
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"Being a mod isn't a job, it's completely unpaid and voluntary. One type of person that would agree to spend a bunch of time doing boring work for no pay is someone that is very passionate about the topic. With that passion comes a desire to control and direct the sub in their own way.",
"It's a thankless task. The only people who get anything out of it are those who want power.",
"It's not just Reddit, it's any internet forum. You can pretend to be a tough person, when in reality you are most likely introverted and timid. \n\nIt's easier to be the person you want to be on the internet, rather than the person you are. ",
"I've never been a Mod on Reddit, but have on another large site. There are only two people who want to be Mods: Those who want the power to make things \"better\" (at least \"better\" as they see it) and those who just want power. The former get tend to get frustrated and quit after enough exposure to all the *experiences* the Internet can provide. The latter tend to stick around longer.",
"Power-hungry people tend to be attracted to positions of power. \"Moderator\" is a position of power, so it attracts power-hungry people.",
"As a former AOL Moderator in the 90s, (TOSAdvisor; we were the ones who threw you offline for cursing in chat), I can attest that many of the people in this position really enjoyed the power of being able to kick others offline. \n\nI met some life-long friends there, and some are very wonderful people absolutely decent human beings... However, while in the act of moderating, many of us, myself included, relished in squelching, banning, and kicking people offline. \n\nAt first, it was a rush to watch their name drop out of chat, knowing they'd be getting a message of their transgression. You convince yourself you're doing it to preserve the sanctity of the user experience. But then the next minute you could be going into rooms where two willing happy participants are talking about things that violate the terms of service, say a sexual act, or talking about marijuana... or even a vulgar lyric to a song, and some of us would knock them offline just for breaking the rule to the letter of the law. \n\nIn retrospect, now, toward the end of my tenure doing this, I became a whole lot more easygoing and let people get away with cursing, even if they were screaming any of the Carlin 7 right into chat. So I guess over time, that power-hungry nature can dissipate. \n\nThis may not be an explanation, but a confirmation from someone with years of experience doing this.\n\n"
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11xawz | how is there no more urine in a flushed toilet? | I never see the bowl totally void of water... So does a flushed toilet still have urine in it? Or does it get rid of it all (if so how)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11xawz/how_is_there_no_more_urine_in_a_flushed_toilet/ | {
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"There would always be some urine left in the water I guess. You're never going to get it all out. The components of urine are heavier than water, so it doesn't need much coaxing to be flushed, but toilets are more concerned with solid waste. ",
"Hi there. \n\nJust to add to the information here, I remember reading this article a long time ago about how toilets work: _URL_0_. \n\nBasically, there's this thing called siphon which is behind the whole idea of toilets. You go to the bathroom, do your thing, and flush. Clean water rushes from the tank, water level rises in the bowl, this forces the used water out of the siphon. This also helps solid waste(and its odor) from going back up. So I'm guessing this also works in fully getting rid of urine too though you can never be sure. \n"
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3v2wh5 | why has the war on drugs been so terribly ineffective? it seems to have led to an increase, not decrease, in the drug problem. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v2wh5/eli5_why_has_the_war_on_drugs_been_so_terribly/ | {
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"I can't speak for some aspects but I do know others. \n\nPrisons are basically schools for criminals. Sticking a bunch of criminals in a big box means people end up transferring knowledge, especially relating to illegal activities in this case. \n\nNow someone who has tried drugs for the first time or done a few minor crimes isn't exactly a master criminal but they get locked up with the murderers, rapists and sheep botherers.\n\nInstead of trying to correct bad behaviour it's harshly punished and tries to dissuade through fear. \n\nNow this person has a record making it very hard to integrate into society meaning that they may have to turn to crime, which they learned in prison. \n\n",
"There isn't a simple, easy answer to any of this, however:\n\n* Punishing the users, not the dealers or distributers.\n\nThe USA has the highest rate of imprisonment in the Western world, over 1% of the population is behind bars. This is largely due to the 'zero tolerance' and 'three strikes you're out' policies.\n\nA minor criminal (or just a drug user) goes to jail, falls in with criminal gangs and uses more drugs. Gets out, joins up with the gang outside of prison and the cycle repeats.\n\n* Lies, damn lies, and worse lies.\n\n'Pot is a gateway drug'\n\n'*insert evil drug of the decade here*? Not even once'\n\nHaving the drug education consisting solely of 'Drugs are bad, don't do it' is just... stupid.\n\nA hell of a lot of people will try drugs. Although it's yet to be disproven, the 'pot is a gateway drug' was entirely made up by the DEA.\n\nIf someone tries some illegal substances, finds out that they don't die, they don't get addicted, and see a whole bunch of other people in the same situation, they would start to question all of the other parts of drug education, and probably assume it's all a lie.\n\nIf your basic drug education is fundamentally flawed, how can you expect people to get on board with the rest of the policy\n\n* Making drugs illegal drives them underground. Black market == interest from organised crime\n\n* Going after drugs is not addressing the issue of drug use.\n\nJust saying 'drugs are the scourge of our city' is missing the point. Why are dealers and addicts prevalent in the poorer sections of society? Poverty, no seeming chance of escape, no programmes to improve society, no programmes to engage children and adolescents.\n\nI'm not going to start go all conspiracy theory here, stating that it's in the Federal Government's best interest to keep these groups poor and imprisoned, but a statement of fact is that more money is spent on drug enforcement than on education per year.",
"ELI5:\n\nYou like toys.\n\nI take your toys away for what seems like no reason.\n\nWhen I'm not looking, you try to get the same toy but hide it and stock pile the same toys.\n\nYour friend has a dad that took away his toy. Since you have more than one toy, you trade him for another toy.\n\nDad's all over the place think that that certain toy is dangerous. They try to stop everyone from having that toy.\n\nBut you know just because Timmy down the street hurt himself with that toy because he is an idiot doesn't mean that you are gonna hurt yourself with that toy too.\n\nEveryone really like that toy and they all know they have to hide it so nobody sees and if someone is going to tell on you for having a bunch of toys, you have to convince him not to. Usually with other toys but mostly with violence.",
"The truth is that it has been terribly effective. However, the problem is the inaccuracy of the name of the program. If it were called the 'perpetual short-term impairment and immobilization of the lower to mid retail level prohibited substances dealer' then I would say the program was a huge success. \n\nBut you're 5, so you don't know what any of those words mean.",
"One point not addressed yet is addiction. Addiction is a medical issue. Throwing drug addicts in prison is as mindless and stupid as throwing alcoholics in prison. Addiction is not solved by incarcerating people. Incarceration destroys people's ability to make a living and cuts them off from their families. All of that is directly counter-productive to treating addiction. It's of little surprise then that this strategy of criminalizing addicts has resulted in more addiction. \n\nAddiction is solved by social integration and psychological treatment, along with medical treatment. ",
"I like everything /u/PolgaTheGrate just said. I just want to add a very big consideration about the state of the mental health system in this country. It's horrible. Part of the reason drugs are so rampant is that people are self-medicating and not getting the treatment they need. People with mental problems are much more likely to end up in jail or prison than a psych-center, where they are fed into the vicious cycle of went to jail - > can't get a job - > crime - > went to jail, etc.",
"Basically the \"War on Drugs\" does absolutely nothing to actually help the drug problems. Rarely are addiction problems addressed so when the user gets out of jail they often go right back to using, then on top of it the users life is even more in shambles with a criminal background, making it harder for them to find jobs and housing.",
"There is money to be made on selling drugs and in punishing those who use it. Our law enforcement, local, state, and federal, have shown time and time again that they want their piece if the pie in selling the drugs to the streets and profiting off of the incarceration of the users from the streets. \n\nYou don't take away a profitable program like this when you win win on both sides of the law. Iran/Contra, numerous tales of the tsa allowing smuggling, the mena airstrip. All stories of the gov't using drugs and the money they generate to fund further illegal activity.",
"I'd say it's been very effective. The police have gotten lots of money, guns and personnel fighting the war on drugs. \n\nThe (privatized) prisons have gotten very full of cheap labor due to the war on drugs. \n\nThe companies doing drug testing for employment / public aid screening have succeeded because of the war on drugs. \n\nOh, you meant why hasn't there been any success in reducing drug use. For the answers to that, check out most of the rest of the responses. ",
"Laws and regulations never actually make the problem disappear, but rather just push it underground.",
"A major reason I haven't seen mentioned here is that cartels have a virtually unlimited supply of money making outspending governments an easy feat. Plus they aren't bound to follow any rules whatsoever.\n\nEverytime the DEA makes a major seizure of drugs, it's a drop in the bucket to what gets through, and it doesn't impact the Cartel's day to day operation in any significant way. In fact, those losses are already factored in.",
"Anytime we declare a \"war\" on something, that situation gets worse and worse. Perhaps we should stop delclaring wars..",
"It is a delusion by moralizers and controlling personalities who have small minds who think in black and white and think they are entitled to control others and make them be like they are. Humans don't work that way and eventually throw off the yolk of tyranny when suppressed. It was never a problem in the first place and humans have been taking mind altering substances for thousands of years. The war on drugs was a 20th century puritanical movement that is dying out. Thankfully. And I say this as someone who has never done drugs. I hate the anti-drug puritans as much as I hate religious fundamentalists. Its all the same. ",
"This video does a great job of explaining why.\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DW - The way our government treats the drug problem is based off an old, flawed theory of addiction. According to this theory, drug addiction is caused by exposure to the drug, so the only way to prevent addition is to prevent exposure, hence the war on drugs. However, we now know that drug addiction is caused by people seeking out replacements for healthy human connections (The drug is an escape from a shitty life). By locking up drug users and making sure they will never fit into society again, we make their problems worse, and prevent them from getting clean.",
"1.) People are less likely to suffer from addiction and overdoses when they are not shunned by society. If people are treated well and are happy in general, they are less likely to slip into drug abuse. By condemning and persecuting recreational drug users, we are making it more likely for them to slip into compulsory use of drugs.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n2.) Current laws punish small dealers more than criminal organizations. If a small dealer is arrested, their life and business are ruined. If a criminal organization has a dealer arrested, they just replace that dealer with another one. Criminal organizations care much less about the customers they are dealing to, and also commit other crimes that negatively impact the community.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n3.) Forcing drugs into the black market makes it impossible to regulate the purity of the drugs being distributed. Just like how alcohol during prohibition could cause blindness, drugs during prohibition carry extra dangers. The chemist who created ecstasy dosed himself over 700 times in his life. Guess what? No holes. ",
"I have seen this question come up multiple times so I am going to be a bit descriptive. If you want the actual ELI5 or only have the attention span of a 5 year old, then skip down to the TL;DR. \n\n\nSo there are many reasons why the war on drugs has been so ineffective. First and foremost is that the program focuses on punishing drug users instead of focusing primarily on drug distributors and dealers. The program is run under the idea that the stiff punishments and penalties for being busted for using or possessing drugs will be a strong enough deterrent to consumers, that they will be able to simply ignore the chemical / biological needs that addiction imposes. Seems like a good idea right? Give the drug addict / recreational user some time behind bars to deter them from messing with drugs again. But what actually happens?\n\n\nCurrent times are very different from the old days where you did your time and came out a free man with a fair second chance. Ask anybody with a criminal record what it's like trying to find steady employment or fair respectable wages. It's virtually impossible. Once you are stuck with a criminal record, you will be forever trapped in a downward cycle that few manage to escape. In most states you will NEVER be allowed to do anything that involves being licensed or bonded. So what aspirations do you have left in life? Considering how many career options can't even legally hire you with a criminal conviction (not to mention the untold number of careers that can but won't even consider a criminal), you are now faced with trying to rebuild your life with a huge handicap.\n\n\nThe United States has the [highest incarceration rate in the world](us has highest incarceration rate in the world). Higher than China, Russia, North Korea, or even almost all of Europe combined. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons [over half](_URL_0_) of the entire US prison population is in prison for drug related offenses. This combined with other programs including [mandatory minimum sentences](_URL_3_) and the [three strikes](_URL_5_) have resulted in a system that permanently entraps people into a life of crime and poverty.\n\n\nHow is this related? It is a well known fact that [poverty and crime are directly related](_URL_6_). This is common sense and is an entirely new conversation of its own. What isn't brought up as much is how prison sentences and the environment of prison itself is related to repeat offenders. American prison systems are vastly overcrowded and underfunded. This creates a competitive survival type environment where that absolutely does not favor the weak. Thanks to those mandatory minimums the only way to survive 5 to 10 years in prison is to associate yourself with more hardened / career criminals and gangs. Naturally more experienced criminals / users share information, knowledge, ideology, and views with the newer less experienced prisoners. They support an environment that fosters the criminal ideals. When it comes time for release these associations do not go away, especially those that are gang related. You are expected to serve / associate with the gangs on the outside or face retribution. Just wash rinse and repeat and before you know it you've used up your three strikes and will be spending the rest of your life behind bars.\n\n\nAnother thing to mention is that there is virtually no political motivation for reform or change. This is perpetuated by three factors: a lack of public factual awareness, political motivations, and government motivations. A politician is going to spit out what he thinks the public wants to hear. Do you think the ignorant voting public wants to hear that you are going to go 'easy' on \"hardened criminals\"? Hell no! Reforming the drug laws in any way that actually might be effective will result in a shaming by your opponents claiming that crime will increase under your policy and criminals will run free creating terror and panic everywhere they go. The ignorant public not knowing any better will nod there head in agreement and be much more in favor of the politician who wants to stiffen penalties and make criminals pay. \n\n\nPoliticians also have a HUGE financial incentive from the [prison-industrial complex](_URL_2_) to promote harsher laws and private prisons. These prisons are given money by the government based on several factors including the total number of prisoners that they take in, the level of danger each prisoner imposes (low/mid/max security), and how long each prisoner is serving for. They then try to run a system and make a profit by being more efficient than the government could. In all reality this profit comes by not spending money on healthcare or education programs that government run prisons have, or by essentially using them as indentured servants paying them pennies everyday for a full days work. This is an issue because it represents a significant conflict of interest. It motivates politicians and businessmen alike to imprison as many people as they can. The prisons get more money by taking in more people, and the politicians get their campaign donations and a nice comfy job after their term is up. There are many cases of politicians legal council [taking bribes to convict people to fill as many spaces in private prisons as they possibly can](_URL_4_) like what happened in the famous \"Kids for Cash\" Scandal. *By allowing these systems, we allow the very politicians who created and lead the war on drugs to directly profit off of its ineffectiveness*.\n\n\nNext is the government component, and this is where many people stop listening because it sounds ever so remotely like a conspiracy theory. It is a proven [FACT](_URL_1_) that the US government (specifically the CIA) was heavily involved with distributing and selling drugs since as least the 1960's. There is evidence shown in documents released to Wikileaks that indicates the United States is still smuggling through sites in Central America and the Middle East and selling them in first world countries. This would be one major conflict of interest in actually ending the war on drugs because it would destroy the black market that is so profitable for what is probably one of the largest secret black market drugs dealer in the world. Another conflict of interest is that the government likes to keep tabs on its citizens. What better way to monitor people than to label them as a criminal and subject them to warrantless searches, stripping them of their rights to bear weapons, and keeping them under tighter control. Although these are not likely to be huge motivating factors, they are still conflict of interests that need to be brought up and considered.\n\n\nThere are many branches of the government that do not want the war on drugs to end either. Billions of dollars in police grants are spent each year on police departments around the country to help fight this \"war\". The federal government has an entire agency dedicated to fighting this war. Billions more dollars worth of money is made through asset seizures made in drug related and \"suspected\" drug related cases. None of these agencies truly want the war to end because as soon as they do, so will their funding and all the fancy toys they buy with it.\n\n\n**TL;DR:** Your question is complicated. There are politicians who want to truly help, but can't because any resolve would involve lessening penalties on drug users (and that's not good for election season). Add this in with the ignorance of the general population about drug statistics and facts and you get a system you couldn't change even if you truly wanted to. There are many more people and politicians who profit both legally and illegally, directly and indirectly from this \"war\" and through this conflict of interest don't actually want it to end. As long as the people with the knowledge and power to fix things continue to be financially and politically motivated to *NOT* fix the drug problem, it never will change.",
"Here is an answer that nobody wants to say: How can a war on drugs succeed in a place where drug use is glorified and encouraged by the pop culture that so deeply hypnotizes everyone? People get extremely defensive when you suggest that movies and TV have negative effects on people, but next time you think of it, just look at someone watching a movie or TV. They're just sitting there in a trance, breathing through their mouth, drinking in whatever comes through.\n\nThere are many great things about American society, but our pop culture isn't one of them. It definitely contributes to the attitudes of people that have made the war on drugs a problem.\n\nNot every country has the drug problem that America has. Why? They have a different attitude about drugs, and you can bet that their media isn't promoting drug use like ours does.\n\nYou'll notice in this thread very little blame placed on the people that are taking the drugs and willfully damaging themselves and in many cases, innocent family members.\n\nThis opinion is ripe for downvotes on Reddit, but it has to be said if all sides of this topic are to be considered.\n\nEdit: I can take downvotes, but I dare someone to tell me why I'm wrong.",
"One issue not covered already is what I call \"illicit feedback\". \n\n1. People buy drugs. \n2. Therefore someone will provide them. \n3. Drugs are illegal, so drug provides can't turn to courts and lawyers to settle disputes. \n4. Therefore they turn to violence. \n5. Violence increases stress in the community. \n6. Stressed people use more drugs. \n\n... and the cycle continues. Any attempt to break the cycle at step 1 only increases the stress, making the problem worse.",
"The root problem, as I see it, has come in the wrapping of the issue around making it a problem at all. People, the human species, has always gotten high throughout all periods of history. We just fucking love doing it. You can undo millions of years of evolutionarily advantageous* behavior with some silly laws in 50 years. Bitch please... \n\n*I don't know if is actually evolutionarily advantageous that we get high but we've doing it for a damn long time.",
"My dad posted this on facebook, _URL_0_\n It's a very good article ",
"I think it's a pretty simple problem. Drugs being illegal creates a market for illegal drugs (duh). But seriously, the mexican cartel, columbian drug lords, fucking al pacino, etc. have always exported their drugs to America and seen insane profits because of it. If the government were to supply the drugs to the addicts and help them with their addiction as opposed to locking them up, there would be no market for illegal drugs. My take on it is that a system where drugs are legal but regulated is best. It works wonderfully in the Netherlands. You can argue that they have their share of addicts, but I've talked to someone who had first hand experience in a program where giving drugs to addicts was encouraged to ease their addiction, and I can say I confidently believe it works. It just makes more sense to me. I mean the truth is people are going to drugs no matter what. It's just a question of where they get them. Personally, I'd rather have people obtaining drugs from a safe source that doesn't fuel a terrorist organization. I mean ideally we would make all hard drugs illegal and it would go away forever, but that's just not what happens when you make things illegal. History has tought us this: prohibition is a perfect example. ",
"The war on drugs is a misnomer. It is a war on addictive behaviour related to - mostly unsatisfactory living or social conditions as seen by the addict. It is an escape. \n\nThe odd thing about it is that before laws restricting drugs, about 4% of the population was freely abusing narcotics. of several types.\n\nNow after decades of war against the DRUGS (not the causes of addiction) there is still about 4% of the population using drugs to escape. (and 25% of them doing long time, plus a huge number of them doing robbery, theft, and murder in the supply chain to either buy or acquire and sell the stuff. \n\nAnd very few really thin dimes left to combat poverty, poor education, poor job prospects, poor relationships, broken families and other primary causes of addiction.\n\nBring it on - capitalists.\n\nPolitically it is better to seem strong and fight a war than to spend time and money on soft people help stuff that is hard to measure, but expensive.\n\nInvest in people, invest in education,and ask yourself what, truly, is so bad about a person deciding to spend a life drugged up because of the pain? Why not try some helping strategy instead of hitting the 'problem' with a hammer.",
"Because like all our Glorious Wars on Concepts, it starts from the bogus assumption that you can solve a problem by shooting the symptoms. Drugs are not the problem, and neither are the producers and suppliers. Rather, drug *abuse* is the problem (and honestly, not as MUCH of a problem as conservatives have made it out to be), and the War on Drugs doesn't address the underlying issues that cause that *at all.*\n\nAs to the increase in violence it's caused, back in the 1960s or so, the illegal drug trade was not that violent. Sure, there were a few goons, but mostly it was small, local operations. Maybe they paid off a local cop or two.\n\nThen our Glorious War on Drugs rolled into town. The chumps were driven out almost immediately, which left only the slightly-more-efficient/ruthless guys in charge.\n\nThis became an evolutionary process: we weeded out the (relative) chumps, the people left were the baddest of the bad. After several decades of this, and the guys left standing are only the most vicious, the richest, the most resourceful. We kept thinking--and continue to think--that if we took out Mr Big, the whole operation would collapse, just as sure as sawing the legs off a table.\n\nOnly it doesn't. Indeed, it more often has the opposite effect. When you kill the top guy, the person who frequently takes over is somebody a little younger, a little hotter under the collar, somebody with a lot to prove, and maybe the factor of getting revenge for the ex-leader thrown in. So you wind up with somebody more ruthless in charge. Lather, rinse, repeat. As long as there is demand, there will always be another guy willing to step up.\n\nThis is pretty much exactly what happened with Prohibition back in the 20s. It was easy to get rid of the amateurs, and eventually, only the really nasty guys like Al Capone were left standing.\n\nThose who do not study the past, etc....\n",
"The war on drugs is nothing more then a way for states to get funding from the government based off assumed statistics, the war is also a political platform used to convince the masses they need protection from invading cartels... it funnels other off the record activities and keeps the prison industry a revolving door business. It was used to incarcerate blacks during the 80's and still used to this day, there really are dozens of reasons you can look into that explains much more, watch a move called \"The Last White Hope\" Start you there...",
"Because there was no war on drugs. There was a war on civil rights, fought by police officers and judges against the citizenry. The actual drug lords and infrastructure was never touched, engaged by, or saw a mission executed by the United States armed forces.\n\nThe government cracked down on use and possession for certain citizens, not production.",
"History\n\n\nThe War on Drugs was declared by Richard Nixon in 1971. He deemed drug use to be America’s number one public enemy, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars to close off US borders from the drug trade. These efforts were mostly used to prevent the trade of marijuana in the United States from Mexico by combating Mexican marijuana growers and increasing border spending. This combatment resulted in the rerouting of drug-trade routes through Mexico and Columbia via land, air, and sea. Nixon responded stating “as long as there is demand, there will be those willing to take the risks of meeting the demand” suggesting that attempts to eradicate or prevent the drug trade will essentially fail. In 1977, Carter attempted to prevent drug use by doing just this: eradicating and intercepting the drug trade. Although he leaned toward more lenient punishments toward individual drug users, he attempted to focus on the supply front itself. During Carter’s presidency, 1978-1984, there was a dramatic increase in cocaine use. The consumption of cocaine went from anywhere between nineteen and twenty-five tons to between seventy-one and one hundred and thirty seven tons, an increase of as much as seven hundred percent in just six years. This was the first time the United States experienced the paradox that is the iron law of drug economics: the more focus on preventing the supply of drugs, the harder the drugs will be due to increased risk and profit as a result. Reagan saw this to be true declaring “it’s far more effective if you take the customers away than if you try to take the drugs away from people who want to be customers”. Reagan believed the prevention of supply was ineffective but the funding for supply eradication programs was still increased from $437 million to $1.2 billion during Reagan's first term while the funding for rehabilitation programs dropped from $386 million to $382 million. His initiatives to prevent the demand of drugs involved “zero tolerance” drug policies, as a result of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse program, which enforced mandatory sentencing and prosecution for possession. Reagan saw individual drug users as ultimately responsible for the US drug epidemic. Another $1 billion was added during Clinton’s presidency to both the supply and demand fronts of US drug policy making the budget $13.2 billion towards the eradication of drugs (Talesm\n\n\n\n\nDomestic Implications\n\n\n\nAlthough US drug policies have always been a controversial issue, little changes have been made in the last thirty years. Some state level drug policies have been passed and are currently in use, but virtually nothing has changed regarding any federal policies. The attempts to prevent the drug trade by fighting both suppliers and addicts has proven to have adverse effects domestically. The war drugs has significantly contributed to the excessive inmate population within the United States, a simple possession can result in as much as three years in prison. Norwich Medical School’s analysis of inpatient rehabilitation, such as prison, demonstrates that an increased amount of time supervised within an inpatient rehabilitation center has no correlation to decreasing use itself. The study analyzed six-month inpatient offenders, a sixth of the amount of time allowed punishable for a possession charge in the US, versus one month patients. The sixth month patients showed almost identical post-relapse rates as patients who had been institutionalized for only one month. The study did however reveal a drastic increase of violent tendencies with longer rates of incarceration: “Data on criminal activity also favoured unsupervised patients with 21% supervised patients committing crime versus 9% unsupervised … There was no evidence of a difference in treatment retention or opioid use rates between patients... supervised for 3 months daily ... compared with supervision for 1 month. There was some evidence that longer periods of supervised consumption were associated with higher levels of criminality (Holland). Increased supervision is not proving to be beneficial to those involved and does little but waste time and resources. These increases can only be exacerbated in the prison system where violent tendencies are encouraged within the community and inmates are supervised virtually every moment of their day. The inmate population in the US alone makes up about twenty five percent of the world’s inmate population, fifty percent of whom are incarcerated for drug related charges, costing taxpayers roughly $10 billion per year (Nicholson).\nLrosecuting drug users is effective as prosecuting self-harming individuals as they are posing no immediate threat to society yet are still treated as violent offenders. But regardless of its effectiveness, the United States is being financially burdened by its inmate population and will be unable to maintain the rising rates of incarceration if drug prosecution continues\n\n\n\nAlthough spending billions on an ineffective war is undesirable, the counter-productive nature of the war is proving to be an even more substantial side-effect. Illicit substances create a huge black market trade for criminals to gain significant capital. As Nixon said “smoke weed everyday\" .the prohibition on any substance, particularly an addictive one, results in the creation of an entire criminal market that not only generates revenue for criminals but also creates turf wars for power resulting in an increase in gang prevalence and violence towards rival gangs, as well as anyone willing to expose them, making them dangerous and more difficult to stop. Increases in gang prevalence have been seen during the prohibition of alcohol with leaders such as Al Capone. Current prohibition laws put an immense emphasis on prosecuting individual drug sales and users causing less funding for education and rehabilitation programs to be available. Harsh prohibition laws are causing more gang violence as problems cannot be solved legally in court and as a result they must resort to violence. Not only is this true inside the US, but with any countries who may be involved in the drug war as well (Mishan E).\n\n\n\n\n\nInternational Implications \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe United States drug trade is having negative implications on internationally involved countries economically, politically, and socially. In 2010 the World Drug Report reported that cocaine cultivation has dropped 28% in the last decade as a result of the US consumption of cocaine dropping by two-thirds demonstrating how susceptible to change these countries really are. But US demand is only part of the problem, the intervention of the US attempting to stop the supply of drugs has reportedly increased drug related violence and poverty in involved countries, most prominently in the Latin America and Caribbean region. The Latin American and Caribbean areas have the highest crime rate in the world at 21.8 murdered per 100,000 people on average, a figure even higher than countries in a state of war. Honduras is an extreme example of the amount of violence that can be induced by the drug war. The US Drug Enforcement Administration established an office in Honduras in 1981 and quickly came to the conclusion that a large population was heavily involved in the drug trade. US drug enforcement in the area is forcing cartels expand their empires and resort to violence due to the inability to settle dispute in a legal setting and the need to protect themselves from drug combaters. The murder rate in Honduras is currently 90.4 per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world (Francis, 2011).\n\n\n\n\nHaving such high crime rates and illegitimate means of obtaining money has detrimental effects on a country's economy. The increased amounts of drug activity in other countries is harmful as well as influential to those who try to make a legal means of living and putting money that could be taxed and used towards rebuilding their economy in the pockets of drug manufacturers. Farmers who grow coca and marijuana in Peru, Bolivia, and Columbia earn a substantial amount more than they ever could growing any other crops. With such a high incentive to make an illegitimate living growing illegal cash crops; the legal economy is stifled as a result. The Bolivian cocaine trade alone is equal to the amount of their legal GDP bringing in an estimated $600 million per year (Nadelmann, 1990). The amount of revenue the drug trade takes away from a country’s legitimate economy severely decreases their GDP. Countries with high drug manufacturing and seizure rates have a significantly lower GDP’s than those who are not involved: Jamaica, a known marijuana and cocaine exporter, has a GDP per person of $5289. The drug trade takes the integrity out of the marketplace drastically decreasing fiscal productivity in the area. It gives less money toward the infrastructure of both macroeconomic and microeconomic institutions as the money is nontaxable. When the majority of funding is made illegitimately there is no way to place funding towards programs that encourage economic growth. The nontaxable nature of the institution has been named one of the key factors behind the poverty in involved nations (Francis, 2011).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnding the drug war does not mean condoning drug use, suggesting the support of addicts to end their addictions rather than prosecuting them to get them off the streets only gives a more humane, less consequential means of fighting off the United States drug epidemic ",
"tl;dr explanation: Government is bad at getting people to stop doing things they want to do.",
"Because its not a war on drugs; its a war on freedom for the sole purpose of the few (private prisons,etc) to make money and feel powerful.",
"Because people like drugs, they like them so much they will risk ruining their lives over them, prision is not proper treatment for an addict, it just repositions them to escape even more",
"Prohibition has never worked in the history of civilization. if you believe the bible is true, Eve couldn't even do it when told directly from god not to eat the apple.\n\nRegulation is the best course.",
"Because people want to get fucked up. No law can ever stop people from doing what they want to do. Prostitution is 'the world's oldest profession', and has been largely illegal in many countries for decades. It has done very little to stop prostitution. Likewise with drugs.",
"The War on Drugs (WOD) has been ineffective for one simple reason: Enough people in the USA want drugs and are willing to pay enough for those drugs that anyone who satisfies that need stands to make enormous sums of money. The money that can be made (at many different levels of the drug supply chain) is enough to compel people all over the world to face the consequences of being caught in an illegal activity (long jail sentences, death in some countries). It's why no amount of law enforcement \"success\" has made a dent in the availability of the supply of drugs - catch one drug kingpin, shut down one source of drugs, and others are waiting with new ideas for how to make/transport/sell drugs in the USA to satisfy the demand and become rich.\n\nThe WOD, like most centrally planned government policies, has had an effect on our society that is the **exact** opposite of the policy's intent. The **intent** of the WOD is to limit the harm done to society caused by drugs (and drugs, do indeed, have some harmful effects on a society). Instead, by making the drug economy illegal, the WOD has caused all sorts of terrible harm on both the US and much of the world's population. \n\nFor example: when an industry is illegal, you don't have the option of using contracts and courts to enforce agreements. You only have violence. Someone doesn't pay a debt? They get beaten to a pulp. Someone steals from a supplier? They get executed to show everyone else to not commit the same crime. Someone sells a bad batch of drugs that kills people? There is no one to hold accountable, since the entire manufacturing process is anonymous.\n\nIn short, the WOD has had zero effect on drug supply in the US. The WOD has had minimal effect on the street price of drugs - while it's true that the price of illegal drugs is higher than it would be if they were illegal, the street price is still low enough that even poor people have ample financial opportunity to buy and consume drugs. The WOD has resulted in the USA having the highest rate of incarceration in the world (\"land of the free????\"). The WOD has crippled the lives of millions of people in the US with a drug conviction on their record (no student loans, very difficult to obtain education and gainful employment). The WOD has caused the US to go to war with another country (Panama), and has killed a total of hundreds of thousands of people in Columbia, Mexico, and many other countries.\n\nThe WOD is a perfect example what many sane economists call the \"unintended consequences\" of government policy. Moreover, it also illustrates the ratchet-effect that government policy has on our society. The WOD supports entire multibillion dollar industries that employ millions of people (prisons, law enforcement, LEO equipment providers, private contractors that support the WOD around the world, etc). All of those millions of people now have a personal stake in seeing that the WOD doesn’t end. They donate to political parties, they spend many millions of dollars on lobbyists and they produce propaganda to sway public opinion in support of the WOD. \n\nAnd we (the USA) not only continue the insane policies of the WOD, we spend more and more money each year on the WOD, increasing the harm we inflict on ourselves.",
"I'm surprised to see a bunch of people who seem to agree with what i've believed for years.\n\nDecriminalize drug use. Period. At the *very* least. I get a little more radical on it. (I'd like to see the most common drugs not only legal, but readily available and affordable as some US states have done with marijuana.)\n\nHonestly, it probably is way easier to lock up drug users than it is to even think about how to rehabilitate that many people. Too, is drug use inherently a problem that requires treatment?\n\nI like drugs. Hard drugs. However, if I took a drug test right now, i'd be completely clean other than some alcohol. I'm able to use infrequently and move on with life. I'm always open to getting things, and have gone on some week-long benders before, but it's never affected my life negatively in any way.\n\nThe biggest factor of addiction I don't understand is how people actually get addicted in the first place."
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg"
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"https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp",
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison",
"http://famm.org/the-facts-with-sources/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law",
"http://www.poverties.org/poverty-and-crime.html"
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"http://wakeup-world.com/2015/05/26/the-likely-cause-of-addiction-has-been-discovered-its-not-what-you-think/"
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pncma | how do i go about setting up a website? | I can't believe I'm even asking this, but I need to get a web presence for my new company, and I realised I don't know how to actually get a web site organised.
If I wanted, for example _URL_0_, who would I go to to register it?
Then presumably I need to get someone to host my website - would the same company I registered it with be able to host it, or would it be a different company?
I used Dreamweaver many moons ago to set out a website, but it was a university project and never actually went online. I use Photoshop and InDesign regularly, so like to think I can pick up a new program fairly easily, and was wondering what other n00bs have used?
And finally, once I've set up the site, how can I get it to go live? i.e. does the software package you use let you upload your data yourself, or what??
Please, go easy on me - I feel very thick for asking all this, and appreciate your explanations. :~/ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pncma/eli5_how_do_i_go_about_setting_up_a_website/ | {
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"First, can you remove that domain name from your post? I won't do it but someone could quickly go and register that domain name and then you're out of luck. \n\nYou have the basic process correct. First, you will buy your domain name. They are called 'domain registrars'. Head over to _URL_1_, sign up, buy one there. There are thousands of registrars to choose from. Everyone has a preference. You will be given many suggestions. I chose _URL_1_ so that's what I'm suggesting. \n\nNext, you want hosting. You want some space on some server where all your files can sit. Some registrars also sell hosting space, some don't. _URL_3_ does sell hosting space. You mentioned a software package. I suggest you use an existing one. A lot of web hosts come with preconfigured packages which get your website up and running within minutes. You can refer to them as content management systems (CMS), there are different names. Popular examples are Wordpress, Joomla, DotNetNuke, PHPNuke. There are lots of CMSs to choose from. \n\nThe reason I'm mentioning a CMS is because you will struggle to come up with a website right now if you haven't used those tools in a long time. There are many developers out there who have spent a lot of time and written configurable 'templated websites' that can be reused. \n\nSticking with the _URL_1_ example, \n\n > Install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB, Magento and much more with just one click.\n\nSo if you get web hosting space from _URL_1_, you also have the option of using their control panel to set up a website. Each of those CMSs also come with templates (skins) that let you choose the look and feel of the website. In this case, your registrar is *also* your web host. \n\nYou may decide to use some other web host because it's cheaper. In that case, your domain name needs to be pointed to your web host. Your web host will give you the server names and IP addresses to use. Your _URL_1_ control panel will contain the form where you input those addresses. You then wait a few hours and your website is ready. \n\n\nNow, to confuse you a little more - you don't *have* to pick a software package/CMS to use. There are some websites that you can simply point your domain name at. For example, _URL_4_ and _URL_0_ give you an account for you to host your pages on. If you pay a certain fee, you can take your domain _URL_5_ and point it at dougwomble._URL_0_ or _URL_2_ and that can also be 'good enough'. \n\n\n\nWhether you use an existing website or a software package is up to you. You have your needs and requirements for flexibility. \n\n\n\n",
"Hmm, I might be able to give you a hand. I've actually been writing a small article series on just this sort of stuff (setting up a web site from 0 skills/knowledge). I haven't had a lot of time to get terribly far into it, but it should definitely help you get your legs under you.\n\nSorry, it's probably too long to easily copy-paste everything here, so here are the links for now.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_",
"Looks like some scumbag just bought your domain and is asking $150 ransom.",
"I would be willing to make you a basic site. It's HTML/CSS. Nothing fancy. But something to get you going. I usually offer a Home page, a Contact page, and two basic pages to people. Just tell me what content you want. I also put the best notes I can in it so you can see what everything does. It's a good way to learn. CSS isn't hard and it will do anything you want a basic site to do.",
"From someone who built his first website when NSCA Mosaic was The Web Browser, a piece of advice: Go with WordPress and save yourself so much headache.\n\nYes, you'll give up a certain amount of control, but in the process, you can have a working site up in minutes, have a reasonable content management system at your fingertips, tons of support, a bonanza of professional templates which you can customize to your heart's content, plenty of plugins for custom features, and in the end, you'll barely need to go near HTML, CSS, let alone a scripting language.\n\nMy company has built everything from Fortune 500 websites to B2B commerce to custom CMS to on-demand printing apps and everything in between, and I heartily recommend embracing an out of the box solution. True custom web development is for deep pockets, hobbyists, or students the majority of the time. In short, anyone who has time and/or a budget to kill. :)\n\n-OY"
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4amy9w | how can a person born with no hearing, sight, or sense of touch know he/she is alive? | If a person is born with no hearing, sight, paralyzed, unable to feel any physical sensation. Is this person able to know he/she is alive? If so, then how can this person live without experiencing his/her senses? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4amy9w/eli5_how_can_a_person_born_with_no_hearing_sight/ | {
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"I think that they would know that they are alive, even if they couldn't articulate it. Classical theory says that those are the 5 senses, and various philosophers (Stoics maybe? Or is it Epicurus) say that all knowledge is derived from those 5 in one way or another, but modern scientists can do them one better, even if modern philosophers can't.\n\nThere are more than 5 senses. There is your sense of time, sense of having to go to the bathroom, sense of where your body is (close your eyes and touch your nose. How did you know?). There is debate about just how many there are, but the consensus is more than 5.\n\nSo yes, for that reason, I think that they would know that theyre alive, even if they don't understand it to the depth that we do, but do we understand it as well as someone with great vision or intelligence? Should we be killed?\n\nNow if what you really want to know is if someone had NO senses, would they know they're alive? That I don't know, but I wouldn't be the one to kill them."
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1f7c5v | when a band splits up, how is it decided who gets to keep using the band name? | I've been thinking about this question for a while, but it was brought up again recently with Stone Temple Pilots. The band kicked out Scott Weiland, and now they're playing with Linkin Park's Chester Bennington as lead singer. They also suing Weiland for misrepresenting the band.
Anyway, what determines who gets to keep using the band name when a member or many members split? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f7c5v/eli5_when_a_band_splits_up_how_is_it_decided_who/ | {
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b0ktnc | why are spam/scam calls so present in the us? | I recently read several posts from people complaining about spam and scam calls and how this changes their behavior regarding their use of phones. Some never pick up and only use text messages etc.
I'm from Germany and have very seldom been called by a random number on my mobile phone. My parents get these kind of calls every now and then but on their landline, never on mobile.
So dear beautiful people of this subreddit:
Please ELI5 why there are so many spam and scam calls in the US
Edit: Thank you guys for the answers | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0ktnc/eli5_why_are_spamscam_calls_so_present_in_the_us/ | {
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"Two reasons:\n\n1. Because they are cost-effective. Spam/scam callers make enough money making these calls that they continue to make them. There is truth to the saying that a fool and his money are soon parted. That's not to say that victims of spam/scam calls are to blame, but some are easy targets and the callers are experts at convincing people to send money. Con men can be very good at what they do, and even people who normally wouldn't fall victim to them can get taken on these spam/scam calls. The second half of this equation is that calls are cheap to make, so even if the vast majority of calls go nowhere, even a few hits make the entire operation profitable.\n2. Lack of adequate regulation/enforcement - those who can do something about it have no real incentive to do anything. And no one is in danger of losing an election because of these calls, so there's no real pressure to do anything about it.",
"The US practices a more extreme version of free market capitalism that puts very few restrictions on the actions of corporations, usually at the cost of average people. \n\nAs such, many practices that are good for the bottom line of corporations but harmful for average people are illegal in the EU but legal in the US.",
"The US is a much bigger market then Germany. So if you are going to get the infrastructure up, get people who know the language (and preferably with dialects), learn the local laws and customs and stay current on events you want to be able to reach as big of a market as possible. So more scammers are targeting the US market. They do also subscribe to directory services for the different countries that is targeted for scammers. They often have information like the gender and age of the person as well as additional information which can be good to have if you want to scam someone. This means that the scammers can target those who they find are more susceptible to the scams. And they might want to call the landline and not the cell phone. It is also possible that the source of the directory only have landline numbers.",
"It isn't an American phenomenon - spam calls are extremely common in Canada, the UK, Spain, and France. One thing that these countries have in common is that they are wealthy countries that speak the same language as large third world countries with governments that don't care.\n\nFor example, most of the spam calls coming to the US, Canada, and UK come from India. India's large English speaking population makes it easy to recruit people for spam call centers, and the Indian government doesn't really care. India is also a dirt poor country - $600 per year is a decent wage and many English speakers will work for far less, meaning that the scams don't have to be particularly successful to make \"large\" amounts of money relative to what someone could otherwise earn there.\n\nSpam calls to France tend to come from Central Africa - countries like Congo or Cameroon where most people speak French and whose governments don't care. Again, $400 a year is more than most people in the Congo or Cameroon are able to make, so it doesn't take much for the scam to be successful.\n\nSpam calls to Spain come from Venezuela, Cuba, or Honduras - all of which are Spanish speaking countries that are either in the process of falling apart, or whose governments are actively supportive of such spam calls as a way to earn hard currency.\n\nGermany is in a sort of weird position as far as spam calls go. There aren't any third world countries in which German is a first or second language. This means that despite the fact that Germany is a lucrative market for such calls, actually finding people who are able to carry them out is difficult enough that Germany isn't currently a target of them.",
"[Here's a really good article on what could be done to block robocalls.](_URL_0_) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy personal opinion on why telco doesn't bother is because they want to monetize it. When we rolled into 2019 all the sudden my cell phone started blowing up with robocalls. Like 20-50 a day, every day. It wasn't until I subscribed to the T-Mobile anti-spam service that it (mostly) stopped. Fuck you, T-Mobile. It shouldn't cost me money.",
"I would consider your country/area lucky that it hasn’t struck you yet. I have friends/family that at one time said “why do you get these calls, I never do, and if I did I would just hang up, not a problem for me!” Well they get the calls now and see why I was complaining. It will likely hit all developed countries sooner or later as long as they are making enough money to do it. Also to be quite honest I believe we in the US tend to be more gullible and will fall for things that some countries wouldn’t.\n\nI thought of a solution years ago that possibly could work. The way it works is by making the scammers pay for the millions of calls they make with real money, while both the one being called and the Telco split the fees. In theory, if you call out say 200 times a month and receive 200 calls it would only change your bill a couple of bucks. Only if you call out more would you owe a small amount more, and if you receive more calls would you receive a small amount from the calls. I receive far more calls than I ever make, so I could make a few bucks with this method.\n\nIt could work similar to this. Each call you make would cost you 2 cents, 1 cent goes to the Telco the line is associated with and 1 goes to the end user you’re calling. Both of those “incomes” can be taxed too so additional tax dollars come from this to help pay for the cost of regulating it.\n\nI’m not sure exactly if it could work, or how they would collect or charge those funds but if you make the amount small enough it won’t hurt the average home user, or average small business. Honestly even larger businesses probably wouldn’t be hurt bad since their bills are so big to begin with they may not notice the small changes. The 2 cent idea is just an example, it could be larger or smaller, even portions of a cent. The point is to hurt the ones calling millions of random numbers and not hurt normal users or businesses. Maybe they could even have exceptions for known “good” businesses or charities etc?\n\nIf these scammers are calling from out of country they would have to pay the small amount possibly millions of times over adding up to real money, which hopefully counteract the few people they get to fall for the scam pushing them out of business. They aren’t receiving calls from us so it’s a net loss for them. If they are inside the country its pretty much the same thing, they will be calling out far more than they receive calls and always be paying a large sum in fees.\n\nFood for thought… "
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2ctjl5 | how do cops arrest one armed people? | if a person with 1 arm commits a crime, what do cops do to detain them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ctjl5/eli5_how_do_cops_arrest_one_armed_people/ | {
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"*The usual method is to cuff the existing hand to the rear, and then put the other cuff through the prisoner's belt. If they don't have a belt, it's preferable to use a belly chain. In an extreme situation where you needed to immobilize someone briefly, you could cuff the existing wrist to the prisoner's ankle.*\n\n^Source: ^_URL_0_",
"They would either cuff him to his pants, or to his belt. They may also use a belly chain or chain his hand to his legs.",
"through a belt loop, usually."
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2tykyf | how do online articles end up with these ``shittily'' formatted quotation marks? | I've seen this happen more than a few times in news articles and I find it really annoying. Basically the article uses two grave accents (``) as opening quotation marks and two apostrophes ('') as closing quotation marks. Is this intentional or does it have something to do with compatibility issues between browsers/systems/fonts/editing programs/etc.?
Example: _URL_0_
Basically why does ``this'' happen where “this” (or "this") should? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tykyf/eli5_how_do_online_articles_end_up_with_these/ | {
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"I believe it is because they are originally creating the content in some sort of word processing application. Then, when they are done they will export (or simply copy and paste) into whatever they use to get the text into their database. Copy and pasting leaves a lot of room for character conversion problems (going from whatever encoding is used in the original application to whatever encoding is used on the web page or database software)",
"I could be wrong, but I'm going to go with bad quote matching. I work in the data industry and one of my jobs is cleaning up databases of human-entered data. I'll see all kinds of data that is improperly formatted (short hyphens vs long hyphens, slanted quotes/ticks vs apostrophes, etc). My job is to clean that all up and make it conform to a standard. I don't do it by hand, but rather I write code which does it for me.\n\nI see the quote thing a LOT and I've sometimes wondered about it myself. I believe it has to do with documents being written on one platform (say MS Word) and then being copy/pasted into another platform (say WordPress on a web browser). Sometimes the new platform doesn't recognize all of the characters or it may attempt to correct some of them.\n\nSometimes it's also a font issue. The font that they have chosen for the web page does not always have all the characters rendered for it so it attempts to make translations."
]
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"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=atSve88UuUmM"
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jvix3 | sumerian religion | Okay, I'm one of those people who got all interested in Sumerian religion because of Snow Crash (I know, those of you who know it are probably sick of us). But I'm sure Stephenson took liberties with it and I'm curious about other bits.
Specific questions: What are namcub and me? (Not "me" as in the personal pronoun, obviously.) Is it true that Sumerian temples had star charts on the top?
I also get the idea that the Sumerians saw afterlife in a fundamentally different way than later religions but I don't really grok how that is, or what that means. So any information on that would be neat. Any other information on Sumer would be cool if that's your area of nerdery and you feel like waxing poetic on it! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jvix3/eli5_sumerian_religion/ | {
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"Namcub are potent spells that a divine creature would cast. They are less like \"Let there be light\" ... and light turns on, and more like \"man I know stocks and i'm telling you all this stock is going to crash\" ... and then all the stockholders try to bail before the crash and the stock crashes.\n\nMe are gifts from the divine creatures that make the world and especially the human world possible. Light may very well be one, there are quite many, although it may have been taken for granted. Among the top ones are stuff like... Lamentation, many different kinds of eunuchs, basket making and sexual intercourse (not for the eunuchs though, I guess they get to make baskets instead).\n\nAs for differing from other religions: religions often differ most to the degree that they are locally intstitutionalized. A decent thread can be run through sumerian-babylonian-abrahamic beliefs. As for the afterlife the irkalla is to me at least analogous to the proto-indo-european hell found in greek Hades or nordic Hel.",
"Namcub are potent spells that a divine creature would cast. They are less like \"Let there be light\" ... and light turns on, and more like \"man I know stocks and i'm telling you all this stock is going to crash\" ... and then all the stockholders try to bail before the crash and the stock crashes.\n\nMe are gifts from the divine creatures that make the world and especially the human world possible. Light may very well be one, there are quite many, although it may have been taken for granted. Among the top ones are stuff like... Lamentation, many different kinds of eunuchs, basket making and sexual intercourse (not for the eunuchs though, I guess they get to make baskets instead).\n\nAs for differing from other religions: religions often differ most to the degree that they are locally intstitutionalized. A decent thread can be run through sumerian-babylonian-abrahamic beliefs. As for the afterlife the irkalla is to me at least analogous to the proto-indo-european hell found in greek Hades or nordic Hel."
]
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9tjb5t | how did we discover oil in the ground? and without refining it, how did we know it would be useful? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tjb5t/eli5_how_did_we_discover_oil_in_the_ground_and/ | {
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"Surface oil deposits in Babylonia were used to build roads. There are many places in the world where oil in on the surface and even forms lakes.\nFrom that, you just dig deeper as the surface supply runs out\n",
"People have known about crude oil since ancient times; there are places in Asia Minor and other spots around the world where crude oil bubbles up to the surface. The word “petroleum” literally means “rock oil”, and it was one of many kinds of flammable oils that people used to light lamps or fuel fires. \n\nIn the mid-19th century, chemists started figuring out how to distill or process crude oils, tar, and other types of petroleum into lighter oils that could be used for various purposes as lubricants or fuels. Engineers invented various forms of internal combustion engines shortly afterwards, and from then on people started to drill for oil. \n\nSo, basically, we’ve always known about oil and its flammability. Drilling for it was just a natural extension of looking for more. ",
"It used to just come out of the ground in many places. We've since exhausted most of that oil. The oil used to be used as medicine as it doesn't burn very cleanly as raw crude. In the US they discovered it in salt mines in Pennsylvania, they had so much they didn't know what to do with it. Chemistry was a big thing back in the mid 1800s so they started playing around with distilling it (similarly they had distilled coal gas). Originally they just had kerosene but gradually learned how to make other things from it.",
"The first oil deposits we have found was before human writing so we do not know how this came about. We do know about primitive refining technologies to separate oil into different types. Heavy oils were used for roads while lighter oil were burned for heat and lighting.",
"You see there was A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed, \nAnd then one day he was shootin at some food, \nAnd up through the ground come a bubblin crude.... \n\n\n & #x200B;"
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7c4fsm | what is so special about certain luthiers (i.e. stradivari or the makers of the classic les paul guitars) that makes these instruments so valuable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7c4fsm/eli5_what_is_so_special_about_certain_luthiers_ie/ | {
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"So I saw this on some Discovery Channel video, so I may be leaving out some details, but Stradavarius became the MUST HAVE instruments because of their tone. The wood they used was from one very particular forest that had seen a very particular set of natural circumstances. So the wood in those instruments is more or less one of a kind. Gibson's were all hand made with quality being a major factor, to be sure, but the biggest selling point was the electronics, since wood plays a much lesser role in sound on electric guitars. Once the word got out that guys were playing Gibsons, they became super popular. There are several lesser (to the general populace) guitar makers that make excellent instruments. PRS for example are very highly rated and made instruments, but that name recognition is decades and decades in the making.",
"They are rare, high quality, and of historic interest.\n\nHowever, in blind tests, top violinists cannot tell the difference between a Stradivarius and a top of the line modern instrument. The sound is not unreproducible."
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6nli0j | i have seen people dive under huge waves but could you dive under a tsunami? | In swimwear or maybe even a small submarine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nli0j/eli5_i_have_seen_people_dive_under_huge_waves_but/ | {
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"A tsunami is a sinusoidal wave until it approaches shore, meaning the water moves up and down and transfers the energy of the wave horizontally, but the water itself isn't driven forward. \n\nYou could be in an innertube on the water and you'd just go up and then down - nothing special or dangerous. So you could likewise go under it without any issue. Plenty of divers are underwater when historical tsunamis have passed over them out at sea, and they rarely notice anything.\n\nBut as it approaches shore, the shallow water is sucked into the wave (hence the retreating water phenomenon) and there is no more water to transfer the energy to, so the water itself is forced forward rather than just going up and down. You could not safely get under that - the entire water column is surging forward.\n\n\n"
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4iuw8o | if drugs like oxycontin are purchased illegally, why are drug companies allowed to make so many of them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iuw8o/eli5_if_drugs_like_oxycontin_are_purchased/ | {
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"Not necessarily.\nI think lot's of the black market stuff comes from theft. You also often have corrupt doctors, prescribing them for a little money and stuff like that.\nAnd, it's also likely that some of the black market supplies are produced by underworld companies, as you called them. Just like any other drug, really. Tho I imagine the illegaly produced ones, to be of a lot lower quality, than the legally produced pills.",
"Thing is, if people are addicted to oxy, the supply goes down, and the price goes up (for _everyone_), they are still going to illegally purchase oxy. That's how addiction works. The demand is pretty inelastic. Even so, pain meds are not something you want to have a small supply of (for actual pain needs), because pain sucks. Also, large pharmaceutical companies are historically resistant to regulation in any form. And they have lots of money.",
"It's kind of a Catch-22. Anyone making Oxycontin has to sell it to a pharmacy, who is then only supposed to be selling it to people with a prescription. \n\nShould the manufacturer be telling pharmacies that they're giving out too much? \n\nShould the manufacturer cancel or reduce orders to suspect pharmacies, and risk shorting people that actually need the pain killers?\n\nShould the pharmacies be denying prescriptions if they think the person is going to be selling or abusing it? \n\nShould blame fall on the doctors that are over prescribing it?\n\nYou can't really expect the manufacturer, or its order fulfillment department, to police the market and decide who gets it and who doesn't, it's just not feasible. ",
"The DEA is in charge of creating and assigning Quotas for how much each manufacturer can produce. \n\n[Example here](_URL_0_)\n",
"Alot of responses have only touched one side of the issue, so I'll give my input. There's 2 main issues:\n\n1. Culture of 'pain is a disease.' pain is part of the natural healing process and part of life. NIH directives to address pain as a disease have led doctors to vastly over-prescribe opioids. This is why below, we see that 60% of illicit opioids are obtained from family or friends who got the meds from 1 doctor. Dealers and doctor-shoppers make up < 10%. Clearly, if these pts needed opioids they wouldn't be giving them away. \n2. Revolving door between FDA and industry leading to huge conflict of interest. For example, one of the main FDA guys responsible for approval of Perdue's oxycotin left the FDA and started working at Perdue a few years later. Other example, FDA recently approving the use of oxycotin in children, despite a national opioid misuse epidemic.\n\nUnlike other recreational substances, illicit opioid use likely stems from over-prescribing of pain medications by the medical community: about 60% of illicit prescription pain killers (PPK) users reported receiving the drug from one doctor or for free from friends or family who received the drug from one doctor. Less than 6% reported a dealer or stranger and only about 4% reported their source as multiple doctors (7). Recently, a number of strategies to reduce illicit prescription opioid use have been implemented including registration of controlled substance handlers, production quotas, record keeping, and security requirements (8). However, these strategies had unintended consequences: an anonymous survey of over 15,000 opioid dependent patients showed use of only prescription opioids fell from about 70% to 50% between 2010 and 2014, but concurrent use of prescription opioids with heroin, as well as heroin use alone, effectively doubled from 2008 to 2014 (9). An analysis of the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from 2007 to 2013 also showed a similar increase in heroin users, from 373,000 to 681,000 (7)."
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||
34gwyh | do i use the same amount of energy to go up a hill on my bike using the lowest gear vs the highest? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34gwyh/eli5do_i_use_the_same_amount_of_energy_to_go_up_a/ | {
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"the same amount of energy as far as the bike and the hill are concerned.\n\nbut the human muscle system does not produce energy at a static rate. pedaling fast 80rpm will allow you to produce more energy than pedalling hard at 5rpm or attempting to pedal at 200rpm. ",
"No. In an ideal scenario you would, as the amount of energy you're putting into the bike would equal your change in potential energy (weight times elevation change) but from a biological perspective, biking on a high gear is harder, and your body has to spend more energy to get your blood pumping and all that.",
"As /u/krystar78 said, the 'Work', or amount of energy used to move an object by some distance, is the same. You are taking a certain mass, and moving it up by a certain height. You're putting the same amount of energy into the system. However, like other machines (pulleys, levers, pumps) the gears on your bike work to take \"x\" amount of force (from your legs) and put out \"y\" amount. \n\nWith low gear you can put in less force but you have to do it over a longer time, and the opposite with high gear. \n\nThus this becomes a physiology question, whether a long, low intensity exercise 'costs more' for your body than a short, high intensity exercise. \n\nI would say that the high intensity exercise involves fast-twitch muscle fibers that rely on less efficient metabolic pathways (glycolysis) to produce energy quickly. Thus I'd guess that because these pathways are less efficient, then your body would have to expend more nutrients to get the same amount of energy, as opposed to the easier low gear mode. \n",
"Essentially you're calculating work here. Work is force times distance, and it is the same in order to move a mass to a certain height. Therefore the energy expended is the same but by pedalling at a higher gear, you increase he distance (of the pedalling) so the force is lowered versus pedalling at a lower distance(lower gear) where the force is higher. In the end you're not doing less work, just easier work. Our bodies are more adapted to endurance which is why we find it easier to pedal longer but easier vs shorter but harder."
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2nmsv7 | how can websites like "teefury" sell t-shirts with copyrighted characters on them? how do t-shirt copyrights work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nmsv7/eli5_how_can_websites_like_teefury_sell_tshirts/ | {
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"T-shirts with copyrighted characters can legally be sold if the company making the shirts has purchased a license from the copyright holder to do so.",
"For the most part, they just haven't drawn the attention of the copyright holders yet. You can't legally put Mickey Mouse on a shirt. Disney can sue you if you do. But it's still really easy to put Mickey on a shirt, there's lots of people selling shirts and only so many Disney lawyers to keep track of it all.\n\nBasically, it's cheaper to just do it until Disney/whoever notices and serves a cease & desist than to do it legally.",
"I've wondered this as well. There's a lot of gym singlets going around with a DBZ character on them saying \"train insaiyan\". I know of one company that has sold tens of thousands of them. How do they get away with this? Is it just a matter of time until they get sued? ",
"I remember a while back Teefury did a Hellboy design, and Mike Mignola took them to task for it on Twitter and Facebook, even went so far as to call Teefury out on it on the On Sale post on their Facebook. In the end, he said it just wasn't worth the time and money to get into a legal spat over a shirt that was going to be on sale for only 24 hours and encouraged his fans to buy shirts off his own/Dark Horse's website. If I recall correctly he actually saw an increase in merch sales at the time.\n\nTL;DR: It's not worth the time and money to fight something that will be on sale for such a short time.\n\nEdit: spelling. Goddamn autocorrect...",
"I work for a small company designing t-shirts and I had wondered about reproducing other companies characters. I was lead to believe that it was ok as long as it was being produced as an artistic recreation or, as some said, a parody. Providing that you aren't using the original copyrighted image i.e. screenshot of a film or official released image. I probably am wrong in what I believed, but intellectual copyright law is a bit of a mind fuck at the best of times."
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bx295t | why do colors pop out so much when it's raining? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bx295t/eli5_why_do_colors_pop_out_so_much_when_its/ | {
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"Compare it to a tv/monitor. If you turn down the brightness and up the contrast the colors \"pop\" more or stand out.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLight washed out colors as you know light is all colors in one. So less is more here - as your eyes can see the individual wave lengths of light easier."
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zudre | has /r/politics always been so polarized in its political views? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zudre/has_rpolitics_always_been_so_polarized_in_its/ | {
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"For as long as I have been on here yes,\n\nReddit has a massive liberal slant to it. ",
"I'm no reddit historian, but for the most part, people who care enough about politics to argue about them with strangers on the internet are people with strong political views. They don't sell \"I think Obama did OK and Romney seems like a decent guy but I probably won't bother voting this year because I am taking my kids to soccer practice on Tuesdays\" bumper stickers, because nobody who that would apply to buys political bumper stickers."
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3j7aet | why do we elect local city employees, like judges and clerks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j7aet/eli5_why_do_we_elect_local_city_employees_like/ | {
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"Often, those people are paid from government funds (like taxes and such) because the entity they work for raises little to no income on their own. \n\nAt a business, where they raise their income from selling goods and services, it's at their discretion to fire the people who \"aren't doing their job\" or what they're paid to do. \n\nPeople that are elected into positions are chosen, by their constituents, to do a job that is paid by their taxes. \n\nThis is why it's not just as simple as \"firing\" them. If we (or they) all decided she was the right person for the job, they have to again agree that they made the wrong choice. ",
"An important distinction needs to be made about the title of \"clerk\". In this case, it's not the sort of clerk that rings up your groceries or even the government employee that sits at the window and takes the marriage applications. Here we're talking about [the office of clerk](_URL_0_) - a (usually) elected official that heads the the department in charge of issuing licenses & permits and even running the elections in some places. As you can see, the clerk has a great deal of power in deciding how to run the office. They don't even really have a boss to fire them.",
"Thanks for asking this question. As a non-American I've never understood this whole system. ",
"In Canada we don't elect so many different positions. We elect one representative at the federal level, and one at the provincial level. We then elect a mayor and councilors, as well as a school board trustee at the local level. We have separate federal, provincial, and municipal elections. So when we have a federal or provincial election, there is usually exactly 1 decision to make, with about 4-7 choices depending on how many people run in your area. \n \nVoting for judges is seen as counter productive, because they are supposed to be concerned with upholding the word of the law, and not pandering to what is popular to the public. \n \nAll those other tiny little things that Americans vote fir seem silly things to vote for, and just seem to make the voting process less inviting, with so many questions on the ballot, you can't expect the general public to be knowledgeable in that many specific areas. You elect representatives so they can make these decisions, because it's their job to worry about the specifics."
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2w6i11 | why isn't the calendar system remade to have months of equal length? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w6i11/eli5_why_isnt_the_calendar_system_remade_to_have/ | {
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"text": [
"Three main reasons: there's no compelling reason to, people would hate it, and the financial cost would be TREMENDOUS.\n\nThe first one is obvious. As for the second one, even if the imperial system sucks compared to the base-10 ease of metric, try bringing up a logical conversion to the metric system in a conversation in the United States and watch all the older generations howl. People generally prefer current inefficient systems to massive changes to more efficient ones.\n\nFinally and most importantly, almost every hardware and software system in the world that relies on any form of time would have to be completely reprogrammed and in some cases, reassembled with new components. It would cost software organizations billions (trillions?) to test all of the changes, and then cost the customers of those systems billions (trillions?) to change the way they do business to accommodate them. We had enough fun with the Y2K (year 2000) event, when switching clocks from December 31 1999 to January 1 2000 for information systems with a two-digit year would cause data to sort in the wrong order and calculate 99 years and 364 days between the two dates unless fixed first.",
"Mostly because the current calendar is mathematically close enough to being perfect, and changing at this point would be too confusing and would be a logistical nightmare to make sure all 6 billion people switch at the correct time. \n\nBy mathematically close to perfect I mean the error in our calendars are only actually noticeable (I.e. when it is actually incorrect and the error needs to be planned for to create a solution) about every 5000 years.\n\nThe problems with our current calendar create small problems, say like a leap year which would trip people up, some people might not show up to work because they think its their day off or whatever, whereas if we had more errors or if we made a logistical move to regulate the calendar, it would cause more errors and if we switched to a more aesthetically pleasing calendar it would probably cause problems for a few years.\n\nIn the end we have dates planned out for years to come which would then need to be translated to the new calendar including machinery that is inaccessible (like the mars rover) that would have to have their internal clock changed",
"There have been several attempts to make this happen. [Here](_URL_0_) is a wikipedia page about it. \n\nIn short it boils down to superstition (13 months, every month having a friday 13th every couple of years, etc) and it doesn't divide properly into quarters, shitting up the financial industry/businesses/etc.",
"Mainly because people have better things to do. I don't think anyone is bemoaning how difficult the calendar is. ",
"It's not possible because you need leap years anyway. A solar year not being a whole number of days long but 365.something is a natural fact. \n\nThen you'd need a number of days for each month that divides 365. A month would have to be 5 or 73 days long. In leap years there are more possibilities but do you want a completely different calendar for leap and common years? \n\nOthers have already mentioned that it would bring many costs. Just to illustrate that, the last time the Christian world had a (much less radical) calendar reform, the Gregorian reform, it took more than three centuries to get all countries to adopt it. There is simply no practical use. "
]
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[],
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar"
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||
a2p1t1 | why do vegetarians live longer ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2p1t1/eli5_why_do_vegetarians_live_longer/ | {
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"So there's sort of a false causation implied by your question. \n\nYes, in the West, vegetarians do in fact tend to live longer than the average person . However it likely has very little to do with them being explicitly vegetarians. There are a number of other variables that have a higher incidence among vegetarians that are major contributors to health:\n\n1. Socioeconomics - vegetarians tend to be wealthier than average, which is a huge factor in overall health. (correlated with higher education, more money to spend on quality food, more free time for exercise, etc.)\n\n2. Health-focused mentality - Though technically vegetarian, you probably wouldn't see many who eat a diet of only potato chips, Cheetos and Mountain Dew. They're often health-focused people who also invest time in exercise, etc. They're also less likely to be smokers or participate in other unhealthy behaviors, but these tendencies aren't CAUSED by them being vegetarian.\n\nIf you adjust for income level and regular exercise, the difference isn't perceptible.",
"It’s not so much that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters, it’s that the majority of people don’t eat a healthy diet and also happen to eat meat.\n\nVegetarianism is a restrictive diet, the proponents are more likely to be conscientious of nutrition than the standard population.\n\nThat doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to eat a standard diet, be healthy and live long. Just that it’s easier to do if you’re restrictive in your food choices and conscientious of nutrition. It’s totally possible to do that on any diet: vegan, vegetarian, omnivore or carnivore. Some are harder than others, it’s much easier to be a restrictive omnivore than a vegan. "
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||
ahn5xc | iphone lightning cables are sold at lots of gas stations which will sporadically decide to charge the devices or not. either apple's special chip-cable, or selling blatantly bunk cables should be fraud, no? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahn5xc/eli5_iphone_lightning_cables_are_sold_at_lots_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"eeg2cng"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"This either cables are lower quality. Smaller wire will have more voltage drop under load, which is which the iPhone thinks it’s charging initially, then rejects the cable. There’s just not enough juice. \n\nOn the other hand, go to eBay. You can get plenty of OEM cables and chargers there for cheap cheap CHEAP"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
65st48 | after a nights sleep, why do we wake up with random songs stuck in our head that we possibly haven't heard in a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65st48/eli5_after_a_nights_sleep_why_do_we_wake_up_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"dgd3qa0"
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"text": [
"First, note that sleep itself is a curious thing that isn't understood that much. It seems to be a simple thing where you simply aren't awake, but even accepting that as true we know that the brain is still operating and doing complex neurological functions such as keeping our hearts beating.\n\nI mean, hell, the human brain can \"solve\" problems in seconds that computers thousands of times faster than the human mind designed specifically to solve the problems can take hours or even days to arrive at any sort of coherent answer let alone a \"solution\".\n\nWhat I'm trying to get at is that how the brain works isn't simple even when it's doing its most primitive and basic things.\n\n-----\n\nLuckily with the comparison of a computer, we can kind of somewhat use an understandable example. When a computer goes into \"standby mode\", there are still background things running. The internet browser or files that you open keep the pages and work you are on, programs that are updating continue to update, and such.\n\nThe human mind typically starts its \"updates\" before going to sleep, where it effectively enters \"standby mode\" while the updating process happens. When you wake up, the updates should be done.\n\nBut as with normal computers, sometimes this pushes the internet into the background. To get back to the tab you want, you have to close the notifications that the updates happen and bring the internet back into the foreground.\n\nHowever, few \"webpages\" that the human mind opens are ever actually closed; and those which are, can be accessed by looking in the \"Browser History\". So you try to look at the \"what to do when you wake up\" page...and accidentally click on your brain's webpage that has, in this case, a song. Which plays the song."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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