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64wpup | how does a computer virus get its own code to infect new files? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64wpup/eli5_how_does_a_computer_virus_get_its_own_code/ | {
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"The code is loaded into memory during execution. So the virus can just read the code that is currently executing. Or the virus might get to read from the hard drive to get the code. A common programming exercise is also the quine which is code that outputs its own source code. The simplest way to do this is to include the source code in a string but with a placeholder to avoid recursion. The code can thus replace the placeholder with the source code again when it is printing it."
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1r1eos | what are those random blurry circles on some pictures? | Always wondered what they were when I was younger | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r1eos/eli5_what_are_those_random_blurry_circles_on_some/ | {
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"unfocused reflections of light, usually bits of dust or other small particles floating in the air.",
"If it's in lower light and a flash is used, it most likely dust. Like what you see in a sunbeam. The camera is just not as good at focusing as your eye is. \n\nSource: I'm a professional photographer"
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6m66zu | why can you not take multiple doses of medicine and be fine for an extended amount time? | Why do we get damaged from overdose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m66zu/eli5_why_can_you_not_take_multiple_doses_of/ | {
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"Imagine a sink, you can pour a bucket of water in every five minutes and the pipes are well and capable enough so that there is no overflow. The sink is not capable of handling six buckets at once to account for a half hour break.\n\nYou've probably heard the dose makes the poison. A high enough concentration of dang near every substance will be fatal within the body."
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2cfqs8 | how does an employee owned company come to be and operate? | A competitor of the company I work for recently announced that it was becoming entirely employee owned.
What distinguishes a company as "employee owned?" What takes place in this instance when a privately owned company becomes employee owned? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cfqs8/eli5_how_does_an_employee_owned_company_come_to/ | {
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"It means they are organized as a corporation and the stock is held by the employees. The employees can appoint a board of directors who can then appoint a CEO/President."
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fzo8ee | why can't corporations keep the economy afloat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fzo8ee/eli5_why_cant_corporations_keep_the_economy_afloat/ | {
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"Large corporation dont usually sit on a pile of cash like Apple. A pile of cash is king in any recession. Assets does you no good if you cant liquidate them and make payroll so a lot of these places need cash injections to stay afloat. Also they leverage their debt to so when gains are made its magnified and the same goes with losses.",
"A lot of business don’t have enough money just standing around to pay all their employees. \n\nThey reinvest the extra money they have and use it elsewhere.",
"It is usually a disadvantage for a company to sit on large piles of cash 'just in case'. The money is better reinvested into the business or returned to shareholders. \n\nIt is also a disadvantage to pay for services you aren't receiving. \n\n\nStill there are many companies giving their workers at least some paid leave.",
"Business typically comes down to a cost benefit analysis. \n\nDoes paid leave exceed the cost of hiring and training new employees? If yes, the company will probably to just let them go. If no, they'll figure out how much is the minimum they can pay to ensure the people they need to stick around will.\n\nThis particular climate has all kinds of weird intricacies you have to factor in, and they're unique to every company's situation. For instance, my dad works for a coffee company. While they were allowed to stay open, almost none of the people they sell to stayed open or were in different states that wouldn't let the trucks come in. So now you have a situation where millions of dollars of inventory has been found in the warehouse, packaged, and shipped. You've paid people to do all of that. Now you're not getting paid for it, have to transport it back to your warehouse, have to re-enter all of it into your auditing spreadsheet, go through it and figure out what all still meets the standards to even come back into the warehouse, etc etc. All while running on a skeleton crew who are already overwhelmed trying to get the people who can take your orders their stuff. So there's a huge cost to the company, that was not factored into their forecasts, and a time when they're making significantly less money than they were planning on.",
"In addition to what the other three commenters said, there's also just plain greed.\n\nBefore this, the economy was nowhere near as strong as it looked. The reason the stock market was so high is because most corporations took the money they were given by Trump's tax cuts and, instead of using it to strengthen the company, they instead used them to buy their stock back from investors, which artificially inflated the price, which in turn made the shareholders very rich.\n\nNow, they have no cash on hand and their stock prices are plummeting, so they're essentially broke, since they gave all their money to their shareholders.",
"Most corporations are like most people.\nThey buy everything on credit and then pay it back over overtime.\nIf the economy collapses they have to cut costs like everyone just to survive.\nThe annoying part is the people at the corporations making those decisions are not like most people they have a enough money to survive any economic downturn."
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be0o8s | regarding notre dame...how does a stone building burn down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/be0o8s/eli5_regarding_notre_damehow_does_a_stone/ | {
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"[Here's](_URL_0_) a bunch of pictures of the frames of the Notre Dame, including the roof frames.\n\nThe entire structure wasn't built of stone.",
"And while the stone may not have burned, investigators will be checking to see if the invertebrates heat managed to weaken the stone through chipping and cracking as it expands for to heat and then subsequent cooling (sometimes suddenly from water used to douse the fire)\n\nLast report I heard in NPR says the firefighters believe they were about half an hour or even 15 minutes away from a critical temperature point for the type of stone used on the edifices of Notre Dame."
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2mu2u7 | is it possible that the local presence of significantly more negatively charged ions could affect a persons mood or the probability of predictable variances in effects? | Do negatively charged ions affect the magnetic field, and could that change affect our physical surroundings enough to alter the probability of an event occurring in a more predictable manner?
Is negative energy the same thing as negative energy, dude?
Also, I might be high, and I need help with this one. Maybe I should post a 10 guy over in that other sub. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mu2u7/eli5_is_it_possible_that_the_local_presence_of/ | {
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"Yeah, you are high. If you had more Chloride ions (the predominant negatively charged ion in human physiology) at the neural membrane, the only change would really be a decreased likelihood of depolarization of neural membranes due to the increase in difference between the resting charge of the membrane and the threshold required for depolarization. This may have the effect of either reducing the risk of seizure, anxiety and/or may have depressive effects. One method of altering this resting potential is through use of medications that affect GABA receptors, such as benzodiazepines and/or certain anti-epileptics. "
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935xbq | there are buildings in europe, asia, africa, and south america which have been around for centuries or millennia. why can't build those kind of quality, time lasting structures today in the usa? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/935xbq/eli5_there_are_buildings_in_europe_asia_africa/ | {
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"* They would cost a fortune in materials and labor\n* They aren't well insulated\n* They make it very difficult and expensive to use modern technology (heating, cooling, electricity, networking, plumbing, Wi-Fi)\n* They have limits on size (you can't create a highrise/skyscraper)\n* They are difficult to change/remodel once created",
"We could, we don't. We cut corners on materials. Also, to be fair, most are very simple structures made of stone blocks. Not exactly made to include a lot of modern stuff.\n\nWe don't view it as cost effective. The culture also puts emphasis on the self so less care about if it'll last two hundred years if you're dead.\n\nThat said large structures, sky scrapers and office buildings, are built to last. We just don't put the same care into our homes.",
"Most skyscrapers will last as long as the monuments of old, the hoover damn will still be setting by the time its the same age as the old buildings you're thinking of "
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1305x4 | how does the quaker religion work? | I have been looking at my Genealogy/Ancestry and it turns out that my grandparents were Quakers. I was not raised in this fashion, but told i was allowed to explore whatever religion/s i should choose and if i wanted to join a church, i could do so. Religious freedom at it's best. However i never explored the Quakers, in fact i know very little about them/their morals/belief systems/etc and would love to know a bit more to help me with my Ancestry research, and also i think a little bit of knowledge is just good to have! Some of my googling has led me astray a bit, so if anyone would be so kind :-) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1305x4/eli5_how_does_the_quaker_religion_work/ | {
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"They are opposed to violence. Their services are kind of odd they just pray quietly. They wear regular clothes and go to school and uni like everybody else",
"You have to sit still for about an hour on a hard bench with a bunch of people doing nothing and and being quiet. If it's a good Sunday, everybody gets a shiver and sees god or something at the same time. Every once in a great while somebody stands up and says something from their heart. Not often. After a long long while some guy starts shaking hands and everyone gets up, goes out, and chit-chats for a spell, talking about anything but about what just happened. definitely not a scene for a newbie 5 year old,except that there's cookies at the end. my 2c from a terrifying exposure at 5, i'm sure it's better than that for the grownups."
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3anoub | why does an album of music cost as much as a movie? | Despite such differences in production costs, length, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3anoub/eli5_why_does_an_album_of_music_cost_as_much_as_a/ | {
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"A lot less people buy albums than go to the movies. Taylor Swift's 1989 was a hugely successful album, and sold around 5 million copies (5 million x $15 = $75 million). Take Avengers: AoU, it has made over $1.35 billion.",
"Prices are not based on how much time, money, or effort it takes to produce a good. Prices are set at the highest possible amount the seller thinks people will pay."
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262xq6 | why do groups like boko haram and al qaeda think that killing random civillians will help achieve their goals? | I understand that there are tons of political and religious reasons behind the existance of these groups but their actions still make no sense to me.
It seems every week in Iraq there are still bombings that kill dozens. Just now I read that at least 118 have been killed in random bombings in Nigeria. Who do these groups think they are hurting by doing this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/262xq6/eli5why_do_groups_like_boko_haram_and_al_qaeda/ | {
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"They're terrorists. Their goal is to instill terror. They know that if people fear them, they'll be more willing to obey them. They're really just out to make people do what they want, they don't really care if they like it.\n\nThe funny thing is that al-Qaeda is actually realizing how pointless this strategy is and is moving towards a more \"winning hearts and minds\" approach, especially in places like Yemen. They provide services that the government can't, and bring people into their cause that way.",
"If they're attempting to found a state\n\n1. Kill citizens weakening sense of security\n2. Government fails to stop killing\n3. Population eventually looses faith in government; violence begins to spread\n4. Offer security and benefits to local population to win support\n5.????\n6. Founding an Islamic Caliphate.\n\nMany attacks on targets frequented by Westerners (for instance a club or something) are done as punishment for their military involvement in areas that they perceive as Muslim holy lands. \n\nIraq is also fighting an insurgency against the largely Shia government. Maliki has essentially alienated the Sunni population of Iraq and many no longer support the government. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an unrecognized state, currently controls or contests several major cities within Iraq with territory stretching into Syria. \n\n",
"Its meant to be a deterrent, to instill terror among the citizens of enemy nations or factions, to prevent war.\n\nSort of like Countries having nuclear deterrents, but instead of the threat of nuclear war, they use the threat of random hijackings or gas attacks in subways...\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"These terrorist groups are simply opposed to *any* people or nations that don't believe in what they do. It is about their ideology of a pure Islamic state and targeting any other beliefs, cultures or ways of life as the enemy. It is the most oppressive and ugliest form of organized religion. By the nature of their beliefs, they do actually achieve their goals by the random killings, bombings, kidnappings and so on. Westerners view them as terrorists because they randomly execute terrible, inhumane things. These are extremist Muslims and they view themselves as vindicated and doing Gods' work guided by the teachings of the profit Mohammad. Westerners see them as evil, they see westerners as evil. It's a loose-loose tragedy. Know that these are only the extreme, very conservative Muslims and they actually represent an extremely small percent of the nation of Islam globally. Most other Muslims are average citizens and, just like any other religious believers, can range from somewhat conservative (yet nonviolent) to progressive, open and accepting."
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56gmqj | what is happening with your muscles when you get a cramp while doing nothing (such as sleeping)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56gmqj/eli5_what_is_happening_with_your_muscles_when_you/ | {
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"The cause of muscle cramps is not always known however they might be brought on by activities or conditions such as excersizing, overusing or too much pressure on a muscle ex. Sleeping on a muscle with too much pressure. Other causes include but are not limited to pregnancy, exposure suddenly to cold air or water. Blood flow problems, thyroid disease. Even standing on a hard surface for a long time or sleeping in odd positions, even just being dehydrated. So theres no real know overall cause for cramps, all we know is they are strong painful contraction or tightening of a muscle that comes on quickly and lasts seconds to minutes and most commonly happens in the legs. Hope that answered some questions",
"Cramping, and the little weird random twitches you get when doing nothing (like in your leg) is usually indicative of a potassium deficiency. Potatoes, spinach, maybe a banana or two are good sources of potassium. Add them regularly to your diet if you can.\n\nEdit: also could be mild dehydration. Lots of stuff causes it.",
"I burst my C5 vertebrae five years ago and have been in physical therapy since then. My most recent PT here was at some neurological symposium recently and he was telling me latest research suggests it's a neuro problem nothing to do with nutrients and that by eating something with very strong or pungent taste can help awaken the nerves that aren't communicating. I called shenanigans but he's much more intelligent than I am so who knows? Said the guy was reputable and getting big awards but I don't have more info",
"When you use the muscles, for example in your leg,s that can voluntarily be controlled, they alternately contract and relax as we move the limbs. A muscle (or even a few fibers of a muscle) that involuntarily (without consciously intending it) contracts is called a \"spasm.\" If the spasm is forceful and sustained, it becomes a cramp.\n\nSo in cramp muscle fibers suddenly contract with force without intention, then the spasm does not allow the muscle fibers to relax so it remains contracted and temporarily paralyzed until it passes, The contracting results in shortening of the fibers which is why the muscle feels hard, tight and dense, knots are from different muscle fires contracting together within the muscle\n",
"When you're awake and alert, your brain controls your muscles through nerve fibers.\n\nWhen an electrical signal is sent along a nerve, it releases a chemical signal at the end that triggers a bunch of processes inside your muscle cells to make the muscle move. One of the things that happens inside the muscle when it moves is that calcium (the chalky mineral) ions (a form of calcium that can happen when it's dissolved) are released inside the cell, which triggers the process by which parts of the muscle get shorter. Notice that I said \"get shorter\"- muscles only work in one direction, so around your body, you have two muscles for every joint- so to move your leg, you have one muscle to make it straighter, and one muscle to make it bent.\n\nOK, so a cramp is a contraction of a muscle that wasn't \"voluntary\", that is, that you consciously told it to do. That means that one of two types of things are happening; either your brain is sending a signal to the muscle that you aren't aware of, or the muscle is contracting without the brain telling it to. I should say now that this is actually not a very well understood subject- scientists don't really agree on why cramps happen, so I'll talk about some possible causes and leave out which are more likely or not.\n\nSo why would a muscle contract without a signal from the brain? Remember how calcium is released inside a muscle cell to make it contract? Well, you also have calcium circulating in your blood. One possible reason for a cramp occurring is that too much of the water, calcium, and sodium in your blood is lost when you sweat. This results in the muscle cells getting smaller because the fluid inside them has more salts than the fluid outside them, which causes the ions to flow out of the cell. When this happens, it's theorized, the muscle starts contracting because of this movement of calcium. It's pretty common for people to wake up dehydrated, so for leg cramps that happen when you are asleep, this could be one cause.\n\nAnother reason a muscle can contract spontaneously is that lactic acid (a result of using the muscle) builds up in the cell faster than it can be cleared away. Some scientists believe that this can cause the muscle to be unable to relax.\n\nThere are lots of reasons why your brain might send a signal to a muscle that isn't voluntary.\n\nAs an example, hold your arm out straight in front of you, then bend your elbow. In order for that to happen, you had to contract your bicep muscle (the one on the inside of the elbow) while simultaneously relaxing your tricep muscle (the one on the outside of the elbow). Even though you wanted to bend your arm or contract your bicep, you didn't think about the signal you didn't sent to your tricep. In fact, your brain prevents you from contracting both the bicep and the tricep at the same time- if you try to consciously contract both, you won't be able to. Your brain is doing a bunch of stuff to turn a motion you imagine into the real signals that get sent to muscles. Most of the time, these systems work regardless of what you're thinking about doing. But while you're asleep, many of the parts of the brain that control movement are turned off. That's so that you don't get up and start walking around while you are asleep.\n\nSometimes, though, these parts don't get entirely shut down. This means you might move around a lot while sleeping. One possible reason that you might get cramps while asleep or just waking up is that you have been using your muscles a lot while you were unconscious. Because of the mechanisms we talked about above, that might cause involuntary contractions.\n\nAnother possibility is if you have been exercising a lot during the day, your brain is sending bad signals to your muscles while you are sleeping. Like learning anything, when you exercise you are causing new connections in your brain. It is possible that as you sleep, you are \"practicing\" a movement, but the signal gets garbled or incorrectly sent. You might also have a very bad kind of brain injury or disease that results in your brain cells sending bad signals to your body. These kinds of sicknesses are very rare, and you always have other symptoms. Assuming you are otherwise healthy, don't worry about this possibility.",
"The truth is that in the majority of cases we don't know! It is group of muscle fibers independently contracting, but why this happens is usually unknown. Some people will have electrolyte disturbances (hypomagnesemia, hypocalcemia), some have metabolic problems (hypothyroidism, low B12), some will be hypovolemic (dehydrated or overuse of diuretics), some have structural problems (flat feet!) but again the majority of people with recurrent leg cramps DONT have any identifiable cause of their cramping.\n\nLooking a little deeper, it seems as though before the cramping there is a period of increased motor neuron hyperactivity, this depletes muscular ATP, which in turn causes the cytosol to become overloaded with calcium. When a muscle cell has too much calcium the actin myosin bridges can't unlock (I think - it has been a LONG time since I learned about muscular physiology) and this causes the cramp!\n\nSource: primary care doctor, have sent labs on many patients with leg cramps and never found an identifiable cause...",
"IIRC cramps in general are caused by an absence of Na (sodium) or K (potassium). Nerves which control muscles being stimulated on or off use a pump system that channels electrons (similar to how copper wire transports electrons). When the body isn't getting enough potassium or sodium these channels can have disruptions and not work properly, resulting in a cramp which is essentially it firing on repeatedly without it being able to fire off.\n\nSource: my faint memory of college biology.\n\nFor a much more complex explanation:\n_URL_0_\n\nImportant excerpt from the wikipedia article:\n\"The sodium-potassium pump was discovered in the 1950s by a Danish scientist, Jens Christian Skou, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1997. It marked an important step forward in the understanding of how ions get into and out of cells, and it has a particular significance for excitable cells such as nervous cells, which depend on this pump for responding to stimuli and transmitting impulses.\"",
"I know this one! Essentially, your muscle is suffocating/starving. So, imagine your muscle as a bundle of long fibers running next to each other. In order for it to get shorter and wider the individual fibers grab onto each other and kind of \"choke up\" like you would with a baseball bat. They grab up and pull, making the whole group of them shorter but also wider. Then when they release, the whole bundle gets longer and thins back out. Right? Ok, so, the funny thing about muscle contraction that the contraction is automatic and the release takes energy - which sounds opposite of what most of us would assume. But it's true. Rigamortis is a perfect example of this. When the body dies and your cells stop receiving oxygen/nutrients (cellular respiration) then the muscles contract and become very rigid. There is a very complicated explanation for this if anyone's interested. But the bottom line is that muscle contraction is automatic and it takes fuel for the muscle to release and stay that way. So if you're at rest but have a violent and involuntary muscle contraction, that's because of a chain reaction deep inside those muscle fibers where the cells haven't been getting enough fuel to release and that area of tension might have blocked off or slowed down the rate of cellular respiration to other clusters of fibers within the same muscle. This snow balls into full on muscle spasm/cramp. This is why you instinctually grab for and massage (or beat the hell out of) that cramped up muscle. Manual manipulation will help open up the kinks and allow fluidity so your cells can get the fuel they need to do their job and make the fibers release their grip. So treatment would be anything that will increase circulation like hot/cold therapy, massage, cupping, stretching, etc. Making sure you're well hydrated is also a good way to support circulation.",
"Not many people have given an adequate answer, so I'll give you my opinion here. I've done alot of research on the human body in general and speaking from a postural perspective the spasms when waking up could be because the muscle is never allowed to truly relax due to muscles being overly tight and/or weak so the natural response for a humans brain is to tighten the muscle to prevent overstretch and harm to the muscle. I kinda haphazardly answered this but I hope it helps. Side note: I'm sure I'm wrong on some fronts, feel free to correct me, I would love to learn why I'm wrong!",
"I know this is not an explanation of what is happening. However, this will help people that get severe leg cramps like OP. I get excruciating leg cramps. The cramps occur when resting after overexerting my legs while SCUBA diving or excessively walking. It usually also takes some dehydration to trigger the leg cramps. What gives me total relief is to drink tonic water with quinine. I keep two liters of tonic water around the house for emergency. It only takes a few ounces in a glass with ice to relive the cramps in less than five minutes. In my case, I never know when that right combination of exercise and dehydration will trigger the leg cramps. Sometimes they appear in my thigh or feet. The tonic water also works for these cramp locations too. It was ruff going for me before finding out about the relief from tonic water. I don't know why this is not more well known. Tonic water with quinine should help OP and others that get severe leg cramps. Sorry I can't go into the specifics what is happening. Maybe someone with this problem will not have to go as long with the pain without knowing about drinking tonic water with quinine as I had to. ",
"It is currently believed that the source of cramps is from an electrolyte imbalance in the nervous system, causing unwanted signals to be sent from the neurons to the muscles. Unfortunately not much is known about cramps, but I believe the current thinking in the field of muscular physiology is that it has something to do with the neurons in the brain stem (taking my professor's word from this week in lecture)\n\nGoing further into the chemistry and physiology, and correcting the common misconception that cramping is due to ATP depletion in the muscles or too much calcium in the muscles as someone mentioned previously in the thread. To start, muscles contract because of the interaction between two proteins, myosin and f-actin. The myosin pulls the actin filaments and scrunches up the unit of skeletal contraction known as a sarcomere through a process known as cross bridge cycling. ATP is used to detach the proteins so they can continually reattach and pull. Depletion of ATP in a muscle cell would lead to rigor (basically where your muscles lock in place) and cause damage to the fibers due to the myosin heads being permanently attached onto the thin filament, f-actin (this typically only happens when people die and their muscles are depleted of ATP, and is called rigor mortis).\n\nCalcium flowing into the sarcomere is used to allow the attachment of the two proteins that pull on each other in the first place and signal to the muscle that it needs to contract. SERCA is a pump that moves calcium out of the sarcomeres back into its holding place in the sarcoplasmic reticulum (this allows for muscle relaxation) and it uses an insignificant amount of ATP compared to the cross bridge cycle. Muscles will simply stop working when they reach exhaustion (no more cross bridge cycling) if there is a relatively low amount of ATP (but not depleted) present. This is due to chemistry rules like L'chatelier's principle which has to do with how much products vs reactants must be present during a reaction, or if the ion concentration is too high in the t-tubules (little tubes that carry action potentials deep into the muscles) preventing any more signals from traveling into the cells. \n\nSo, the pain from cramps is not due to any depletion in the muscles themselves because they just will stop working (like how you feel weak after doing a set of weights). Neurotoxins like sarin cause pain and uncontrolled contractions (somewhat like cramps, but to a much more serious degree) by forcing the muscles to contract to a tension much stronger than your body can handle, causing tears. \n\nSource: major in biochemistry and many courses in human physiology",
"I'm not entirely sure, but here's something that happened to me and how I tried to figure out why it happened. In a short story.\n\nSo my neighbor had a baby shower and they invited our family to a park baby shower gathering. It was fun, good food, lots of people, and they had rented a bouncy house. Well, my nephews went in and I followed them for a bit. So, I'm 33, haven't done much to stretch or to do exercises that target my legs, let alone my feet. Now I knew that I was hurting as I was bouncing around and trying to balance and walk in the bouncy house floor. It wasn't a floor at all, it was just tent filled with air. Not solid, worse off the bouncy houses are designed to have ridges all over the house floor. So I stay in the bouncy house for around 1o minutes, my legs are hurting so I get out. The rest of the day nothing happens and it's all fun.\n\nCome the night and I'm asleep, I suddenly wake up knowing that my leg is going to cramp. The pain is right on the calf and to the side. Like it's trying to go up, and I'm just trying to stay calm because I have had them before and I know it's going to hurt. So I'm trying to counter the effect with remaining calm and holding my leg so as to try not to move it. Eventually the pain subsides but it still feels like a knot. I know I'm going to walk slowly and painfully for the next couple of days. \n\nLater on, the knot is still there but going away. All that time I'm thinking about what caused it. Eventually I figure, maybe it's from balancing on the bouncy house. So I look up the ligaments of the foot and leg. Turns out, there's a ligament muscle that runs from your four outside toes and wraps around the bottom of your foot and travels upwards towards your calf. The ligament that controls how you grip with your toes and keeps your balance is called Flexor Digitorum Longus. It was exactly where the pain was, and I remember trying to \"grip\" the floor of the bouncy house while trying to balance. \n\nThere's a lot of exercises that you can do to flex and strengthen this ligament, like walking on hot sand on the beach, gripping towels on the floor while you're sitting down and trying to fold the towel. But I guess once you are of age, once your feet get damaged it happens more often even if you exercise it. So things like standing in the shower for too long while you're trying to balance and grip the wet floor start to take their toll.\n\nOverall, I was amazed that there's ligaments and tendons in your legs that you honestly don't know about, that can be strengthen from exercises like swimming that normally you don't target anywhere else. \n\nHope that helped.",
"Resonance. As you sleep, your muscles tighten and loosen with micro-movements that sometimes turn into larger movements (hence why you wake up in a different position than you slept).\n\nYou may have noticed that when you're sitting up, if you lift your heel off the ground at just the right point your leg begins to shake. This is because your muscle has a hard time holding itself in that spot, but your brain is saying \"hey muscle! stay right there!\" and your muscle says \"aah i'm trying but I can't because its weird, let me just resonate (shake) back and forth around that spot because that's close enough!\"\n\nWhen you're asleep, if one muscle is particularly tight, it may begin to \"resonate\", meaning that its little micro-twitches start to expand and contract more and more (just like shaking your leg but on a smaller scale). When you're asleep, you can't consciously decide to move to a different position to stop that shaking, so your muscle starts freaking out and goes \"aaah I'm trying to stay here but this is exhausting and doesn't feel right but brain hasn't said stop so guess I'll keep going\", and it keeps going until that spot in your muscle tightens so much from holding itself there that it basically ties itself into a knot (not literally, but ELI5) and goes \"aaah fuck, I'm still trying but this is all the juice I have left :(\" causing you to feel pain, called a cramp. then you wake up. \n\nSauce: am sleep apnea therapist and work with ppl with chronic muscle pain that troubles them as they sleep"
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8tzckh | looking through our eyes, why is there a motion stutter if under a certain light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tzckh/eli5_looking_through_our_eyes_why_is_there_a/ | {
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"Some lights, especially fluorescent tube ones, don’t emit a constant wave of light. Instead they produce pulses of light but the pulses are so frequent that to the naked eye it just seems like a steady flow. Coupled together with moving around, under some lights things can seem to stutter.\n\nThis is because the pulses of light that are reflecting off the objects that are moving are only hitting the object in certain space. It works best by waving you hand in front of you back and forth at a good speed. \n\nThe light only bounces of your hand when the bulb is emitting light so in the small space where the bulb isn’t emitting light your hand moves a very small amount. Then when the bulb comes back on you see your hand again, and so on. \n\nThis is why this trick doesn’t work in sunlight as the sun emits a constant stream of light. "
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3pbrq3 | does our conversion of solar radiation to electrical energy reduce the heat in the system of the earth? | I would think, because of the minuscule portion of the earth's surface that is actually solar panels or other methods to do this that it would not be significant, but in theory does the conversion of this energy reduce heat in the system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pbrq3/eli5_does_our_conversion_of_solar_radiation_to/ | {
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"In theory, no. The electricity generated will eventually be turned into heat when it is used. But it is true that the area with the panels will be less hot than if the panels weren't there, and that can have consequences to the local environment."
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62fwzh | how do "fake news" websites not get charged with libel? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62fwzh/eli5_how_do_fake_news_websites_not_get_charged/ | {
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"Is it because it is too hard to prove they are knowingly spreading false information? \n\nIt does seem like something that should be illegal though, that's for sure. ",
"First off, libel isn't a crime in most places -- it's a civil tort.\n\nAnd for a civil case. there needs to be actual damages to the person mentioned. More often than not there is little point even pursuing it, but if they do, the attorneys will start with a cease and desist letter. Generally, if the fake news site pulls the story then it's not pursued any further.",
"Libel requires 3 things:\n\n1. Something demonstrably false has to have been written.\n2. It had to be clear to the libeler that the statement was untrue.\n3. It had to be obvious that the statement would cause harm.\n\nSo it's actually pretty tough to prove libel of a news organization, because their obvious defense would be \"We got it from a reliable source, and thought it was true.\"\n\nOn top of that, lots of people don't want to call attention to those stories by bringing up lawsuits - think of celebrities who have all those fake stories in gossip magazines. Most people don't give it a second thought when they see some crazy headline like \"Jennifer Aniston cheating on husband again!\" but if Jennifer Aniston started suing over it, it'd become a much more public story. "
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bira2f | if nebulas are giant clouds of dust and gas, how do nebulas keep their shape? | For instance on the Horsehead Nebula, every picture I've seen over time looks the exact same and appears the nebula has not changed or altered shape. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bira2f/eli5_if_nebulas_are_giant_clouds_of_dust_and_gas/ | {
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"They don't. They are constantly expanding and changing shape, it is just that they are so huge, that it takes forever for the changes to be noticeable.\n\nThe Horsehead nebula is slightly different now than it was 20 years ago, and in a way that it is just barely visibly notable.",
"Two reasons. First is they keep them for the same reasons as clouds keep there shapes in Earth. A balance of pressure and attractive forces between then and the rest of the stuff out there in space. \n\nBut the big reason is sheer scale. They are changing, but most nebulae are tens or hundreds of light years across. Change over those distances takes a huge amount of time to be noticable.",
"Because they are huge beyond comprehension. The Horsehead Nebula is three and a half light years tall and two and a half wide. The structures that you see are bigger than the entire solar system.\n\nWe throw around terms like 'light-year' without truly understanding from a human perspective how big that is. It's 'only' about 4 light-years to the nearest star. But that distance would take the fastest ever man-made object over 50,000 years to traverse. The gas and dust dust that make up nebula are not moving at the speed of light, just at 'normal' interstellar speeds (say around 30km/s).\n\nSo the nebulas are changing. It's just that it will take millennia for any really noticeable changes to happen."
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a6nskj | how is tesla worth more than general motors even though they only sell around 250k cars and gm sells 4.7 million cars each year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6nskj/eli5_how_is_tesla_worth_more_than_general_motors/ | {
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"Investors are investing in the company they believe has their best interest for profits in the future. ",
"GM has boatloads of debt. Remember, in 2008 they were bailed out by the federal government. Tesla doesn't have as much debt as GM.\n\nAdditionally, Tesla makes more money per car than GM does, because GM sells a lot of inexpensive cars in addition to expensive/luxury cars, whereas Tesla only sells more-expensive cars (for now).",
"Tesla doesn't just do cars. It also handles all the other applications for their battery tech, and their battery tech is impressive. ",
"G.M. has lots of resources tied up in building the cars people are still buying now. Huge assembly plants dedicated to producing internal combustion engines. But the fuel-burning IC engine's days are numbered. G.M., like the rest of the auto industry, is faced with the prospect of writing off a large chunk of their assets, in order to pivot to the electric cars that people will want in the future. \n\nBecause this is a serious problem for G.M. to cover, their valuation is less than one might think. Tesla is setting themselves up to produce the cars people will want, so their valuation reflects that they are well set for future profits.",
"Please remember Tesla is an energy and a car company.\n\nBoth which are growing at a rapid rate.\n\nBoth with good good margins. ",
"Stocks’ value is a combination of current profitability as well as expectations of future profitability... Tesla’s have a higher selling price and much higher profit margin that most GM vehicles, so even with 1/8 the sales they may have closer total vehicle margin on the vehicle than you’d think (even if not total profits, because a Tesla is plowing money into building factories, etc). Additionally, GM isn’t growing much while Tesla is growing tremendously fast and that combined with the eventual reduction in investments in their production facilities mean potential for huge profits down the road relative to GM."
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8hn6fi | why identity of the winner isn't protected when they win a big lottery? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hn6fi/eli5_why_identity_of_the_winner_isnt_protected/ | {
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"Thay actually depends on the state in which they won. Most states require the winner to be identified as a security precaution; the winner has to be named to prove that the drawing wasn't rigged. ",
"I just looked this up yesterday. If the winner is anonymous then the public has no way to prove there was an actual winner and it wasn't rigged. 6 states allow anonymity in the USA though. \n\nI believe there were also some instances of it being rigged in some states so their concern isn't completely unwarranted",
"Sometimes it is.\n\nOther times, the winner might want the attention/fame that comes with their identity being public, often giving an interview for a newspaper, site or show.\n\nAnd sometimes, the lottery requires their identity be public as a condition of receiving the money. It “proves” to potential players that the game is winnable, and encourages them to play. The legality of this varies by area and game— an extreme example is the publisher’s clearing house which is a marketing company that makes money in other ways than selling lottery/sweepstakes entries. Giving money away is 100% for attention and public image, not directly generating revenue, for that company. Naming the winners publicly is part of that system. ",
"In the UK I believe winners are given the choice.\n\n~~Those who opt for anonymity just don't get any support or advice on what to do with their new found wealth.~~",
"It's great marketing for the lottery to show the winners, it also provides an easier to see audit (some bloke won) than the actual records. In most of the US, there hasn't been enough cases of something terrible happening to the winner to offset the benefits to the state of publicizing them. \n\nA few states allow anonymity or lottery winnings to be claimed by a trust (which protects the privacy of the winner). ",
"In some places their identities can remain secret, but in most US states they can't.\n\nThe reason is this: The state is collecting money, and then paying it out. If they don't announce the winner, how do you know it's not going to the lottery director's brother or the governor's cousin? Well, you don't, of course, which is why in most states government disbursements are, by law, public record.",
"Here in China, whoever wins wears a mask.\nEither to protect the identity from crime, or no one actually won,\nThey just bring a random guy to stage and distributes the money under table, which I believe is more of a real case",
"They do have the option to remain anonymous, its entirely up to the winner if they go public with it or not. [This link](_URL_0_) to the lotto advisory group (who deal with jackpot winners and help them through the process) clearly states the option for anonymity is available."
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546bao | what's the difference between a urinal that is water free and not water free? what's the point of having a urinal that flushes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/546bao/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_urinal_that/ | {
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"You need to flush because Urinals aren't smooth enough.\n\nThe goal of fixtures in a bathroom is to be as easy to clean and leave as little residue of waste behind as possible. This is why we make them out of smooth porcelain, which lacks any surfaces that might collect waste. \n\nBut, even porcelain isn't smooth enough at the microscopic level to totally get rid of the pee, especially when it sits near the bottom of the urinal where the drain resides. Additionally, the pipes will have a u-bend to prevent gasses from escaping out of the drain, and you need something with some momentum to get the waste over that hump. \n\nHence, the flushing, which solves both problems. It rinses the urinal, helping to keep it clean, and gets you through your plumbing. \n\nNo flush Urinals just solve those two problems different ways. They have smoother sides made out of different materials and coating (so they don't need to be rinsed or cleaned as often) and they have different plumbing so you don't need the extra oomph of the water. \n\n ",
"The point of a urinal that flushes is that it keeps odors down. As someone who has worked in a building with flushless urinals, I can attest to how more effective they are at making the restroom smell like pee than their flushing cousins.",
"Waterfree urinals are a relatively new invention. Urinals — and toilets in general — have a curved section of pipe called the U-bend; it keeps a bit of water to form a seal so that foul gasses from the sewer don't leak into the building. (Would you enter a room that smelled like an entire city's worth of sewage?) When you flush a toilet, it pushes your waste out and replaces the water in the u-bend. \n\nWater-free toilets can keep that stench out without needing a water-filled u-bend. How? Their u-bend is filled with oil instead. Your urine sinks below the odorless oil and out the u-bend. There's no need to flush; your urine pushes out the previous person's urine and the oil keeps everything pleasant. "
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49fymr | why do some people pronounce the word niche as "nitch" while others pronounce it "neesh" and which is right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49fymr/eli5_why_do_some_people_pronounce_the_word_niche/ | {
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"The word is originally French, and in French the pronunciation is more like \"neesh.\" But, as is often the case when English borrows words from other languages, the tendency is to pronounce them based on the spelling, not the original pronunciation, which is why you get English speakers saying \"nitch.\""
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4k9pep | what makes a wine bad? | Why are large, popular brands of wine (Yellowtail, Barefoot, etc.) considered bad wine? Do they have specific bad qualities in taste or production or is it an arbitrary judgement? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k9pep/eli5_what_makes_a_wine_bad/ | {
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"\"Arbitrary judgement\" may be a bit harsh, but I wouldn't say it's entirely wrong. For the most part, \"good\" and \"bad\" wines can be better categorized by how effective they are at satisfying the part of the populace that sees wine as an artistic or hobby pastime. Similar to movies where a large and successful blockbuster can be considered 'bad' by critics, wine has the same cross section of consumers and critics. The main difference is that wine critics and consumers have a lot more history to go off of.\n\nFrom a critic's perspective, a \"Good\" wine is rated based on how closely it matches the ideal state for a certain type of process. Subtlety, taste, and history are all important here and is typically how a wine receives a high ranking. Like other art, it's as much in how good the wine is as it is a popularity contest.",
"Note that there are a few things like [corking](_URL_1_) or [bacterial contamination](_URL_0_) that make wine truly bad. "
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3mbd1t | why do some people capitalise every word? | It Seems Counter Intuitive And It Took Me Forever Just To Type Out A Simple Explanation As To Why I'm Curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mbd1t/eli5_why_do_some_people_capitalise_every_word/ | {
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"OP, do you mean in titles or in normal text?\n\nSome people capitalize every word in post titles because that's traditionally how titles are formatted.\n\nIn normal text, there is no good reason. Mentally unbalanced people tend to write in strange, idiosyncratic ways. Sometimes this can mean abusing punctuation and capitalization. Perhaps some people think capitalizing every word marks what they're saying as More Important?"
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f60yvt | why are so many large passenger planes equipped with wings that tilt slightly upwards? | Why not just have the wings flat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f60yvt/eli5_why_are_so_many_large_passenger_planes/ | {
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"The angle at which the wings angle up from flat, from the root (at the fuselage) to the tip, is called the dihedral. Dihedral makes the plane fly more stable - basically by having the center of lift higher up.\n\nedit: better grammar, more detailed explanation.",
"Stability. When a plane with tilted wings tilts the now more horizontal wing creates more lift than the other one and naturally brings the plane back to horizontal. Not all planes have this some fighter jets do have flat wings. But generally speaking upwards tilted wings improve stability.",
"They're called winglets. They improve efficiency by reducing drag caused by wingtip vortices. \n\nWith a flat wing, pockets of swirling, unstable air will form at the tips. This creates turbulence that reduces lift on the tip of the wing, creating a slight drag force. Using a winglet reduces, or moves those vortexes out of the way, so they don't impact the lift generated by the main wing. \n\nSo why are they only on larger planes? Well, with small general aviation aircraft, fuel efficiency isn't as big a concern. Any savings would be pretty negligible. With commercial airlines, every bit of fuel savings counts, especially as costs rise. So eliminating drag points, even by a small amount, adds up in savings over time. That makes a huge difference when you have large fleets of aircraft each putting in thousands of flying hours over a year.",
"It can also add a bit of self-correction during turbulence. If the plane yaws (flat spin) slightly, the wing that is pushed forward has more surface area facing the incoming air (higher angle of attack), which causes more drag, which pushes it back more than the other wing and the yaw is corrected."
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390nvp | why is it when i drive my work truck around town everybody else with a work truck waves at me even if i don't know them? this doesn't happen when i drive my normal car. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/390nvp/eli5_why_is_it_when_i_drive_my_work_truck_around/ | {
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"I get the same thing in my area when I ride my motorbike.\n\nI guess it has to do with there being a small number of people doing what you do and it's nice to be nice to other people with similar interests.",
"Uk here. Bikers wave to each other, and as i drive a liveried van for a roadside assistance company all other drivers from different companies in the same industry wave to each other too. Some i know, most i don't. Think its all because we do the sane thing., camaraderie and all that."
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78h5os | when and how did people start wearing bikinis at the beach? | [Inspired by this post.](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/78h5os/eli5_when_and_how_did_people_start_wearing/ | {
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"[Ancient Rome.](_URL_0_) Of course, it went out of fashion for a while there, before coming back with a vengeance in the 1960s.\n\nBut standards for what was considered \"appropriate\" swimwear for women have changed back and forth over the years as cultural mores (and morals) changed. It's not easy to give a compelling description for *why* those changes came about in an answer suitable for ELI5. Suffice it to say that they do. The 1960s saw the loosening of cultural standards in a wide variety of areas, including what were considered acceptable standards for women's attire, on and off the beach. ",
"The bikini was designed in 1946 by Louis Réard. He named it after the Bikini Atoll, where the USA was testing hydrogen bombs - the connection being that the bikini was going to blow up like a bomb in fashion.\n\nBy the 1930s, people were wearing more revealing swimsuits, and women had started wearing two piece swimsuits (although they were more like shorts and a tank top.) Réard took this trend one step further with the creation of the bikini.\n\n",
"During WWII, there was a fabric shortage while the U.S. government required many factories across many industries to devote their resources to wartime production, including clothing factories. Two French fashion designers unveiled two-piece women's swimwear simultaneously, one of whom named the design a \"bikini.\""
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ec68f9 | why can't we use aspirin to ease pain instead of prescribing so much opioids? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ec68f9/eli5_why_cant_we_use_aspirin_to_ease_pain_instead/ | {
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"I'm not sure aspirin, in particular, can achieve the same level of pain relief that opioids can. However, several studies show that a specific regimen of ibuprofen combined with acetaminophen achieves greater pain relief than most, if not all, opioids. As many physicians are now prescribing that combination instead of opioids, I would say we're now moving forward. As to why we moved backwards to opioids in the recent past, current lawsuits and court decisions point to opioid manufacturers relentlessly lobbying physicians with inaccurate information, specifically that their opioid medications did not come with a significant risk of addiction.",
"There are a bunch of reasons opioids made such a big comeback. Drug manufacturers pushing doctors to make patients pain free and down playing addiction concerns. Customer service aspects of for profit hospitals. But also opioids work differently in treating pain thab aspirin or NSAIDs and they are very effective."
]
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[],
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||
oe44b | how does a person become the president in the
states? | How does a person become the president in the states? Are there more party's then the republican and democratic? Does that party rule the country and can they make an "alliance" with another party to make the future for the party(party's) safe?
Also, Rob Zerban that guy that made an AMA here on reddit, is he running for president? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oe44b/how_does_a_person_become_the_president_in_the/ | {
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"I'm guessing you're in a country with a parliamentary system? We have a \"presidential\" system instead: legislative elections (for Congress) and presidential elections (for President) are not linked. The President is **not** a member of Congress.\n\nThere are two main political parties - Democratic and Republican - as well as many smaller parties and also independent candidates. However, the small parties are so small as to offer nothing substantial to either party. There's no incentive to change the party platform when any minor party is too small to offer anything in return. Occasionally, independents or minor-party candidates will get elected to Congress but it is rare. Vermont is fond of electing independents (not a member of any party) to Congress and it is generally said that this representative \"caucuses with the Democrats\", but it is not an alliance in the sense you are thinking.\n\nAfter the elections for Congress and after representatives are sworn in, a vote for Speaker of the House is held. The party with the most members in Congress will select a candidate for this office and will win, having the most members/votes. The Speaker then directs the flow of legislation through Congress, but it is NOT a case of \"this party has been elected to run the country\", exactly, as it is in some systems.\n\nSo, basically, somebody decides they want to be president. S/he amasses enough popularity and financial campaign support to be seen as a credible candidate. S/he begins campaigning to win primary elections in each state. Winning primaries amasses delegates to the national party convention. The person with the most delegates at the convention wins the nomination, then goes on to face the winner of the **other** party's nomination in the general election.\n\n",
"Money. Lots of money."
]
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[],
[]
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2tl521 | on rotten tomatoes, marco polo is rated at 30% by critics and 93% by viewers. what caused this discrepancy, and are there any other examples of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tl521/eli5_on_rotten_tomatoes_marco_polo_is_rated_at_30/ | {
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"I can't speak as to why there is such a discrepancy, but [this article](_URL_0_) on movies with widely disparate scores on IMDB (primarily viewer ratings) and Rotten Tomatoes (primarily critic ratings) might be of interest to you.",
"IMHO, that means it's probably an okay movie. I find that if the critics really liked a film and the viewers really disliked it, it's too artsy-fartsy for my tastes. i don't want to think or interpret a film, I want to sit back and be entertained.",
"Critics are far more experienced in rating movies. If you ask them why they liked/disliked a movie they can write pages and pages about it because they were paying attention to every detail. The average person may give two sentences why they liked it and will be unable to elaborate or won't care to think too much about it. \n\nThink of it like a dog show. Would you know how to rate a dog? I sure as hell don't. That dog is cute because of his adorable face. I don't care about his form or ear shape. \n\nTip on which rating to look up: If you just want to sit back and watch things explode and don't care about the story (Expendables 2) look at the Audience Score. If you want to see an artsy movie with an intricate story line(Birdman) look at the Critic Rating. ",
"The real answer is Selection Bias.\nFilm/tv critics have to watch everything.\nAudiences don't. The people more likely to enjoy Marco Polo and subsequently rate it highly are the same ones more likely seek it out in the first place.",
"It has to do with how critics and viewers rate shows and how the website ranking system works. IIRC Rotten Tomatoes is binary. If the critic rates it below 50% it means \"dislikes the movie\" and so it's \"rotten\". If the critic rates it above 50% then it \"likes\" it and so it's \"fresh\". So 30% rotten can mean that 30% critics gave the film 51% and 70% gave it 49%. On the other hand people tend to give it 9 and 10 or 1 and 0. "
]
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||
3ad26u | how does the brain create new synapses? | I understand that millions of new synapses are formed in the brain every day and others dissolved as a result of memory formation, but how exactly does this happen? How are synapses formed in the "right" areas? How does this process relate to the process of developing new neurons?
How does age affect this process, and how can the process be stimulated? Are there lessons for me with regard to keeping "mentally fit" as I get older? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ad26u/eli5how_does_the_brain_create_new_synapses/ | {
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"\"Cells that fire together, wire together\"\n\nThis was the very simplistic mantra we were taught in intro physiology. I don't remember much other than that, except that as a kid you have a crazy amount of synapses which are destroyed if they are not used in a process called synaptic pruning over several years into adulthood. This is why kids learn things much more readily than adults.",
"This is one reason brain trauma is so terrible, because it can mess with the synapses and things end up firing to the wrong neuron."
]
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a3qxhq | self driving cars | I have never seen a self driving car in person yet. But all these pictures in news articles and everywhere else show that they have outside rear view mirrors (OSRVM). Do self driving cars need a rear view mirror? What's the purpose of OSRVM in self driving cars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3qxhq/eli5_self_driving_cars/ | {
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"They would need to have redundant systems if the self-drive failed and a human took control ",
"They don't \"need\" them to operate the self driving feature, but they aren't there for the computer. \n\nThey have them for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that most self driving cars are regular cars (Uber uses Volvos, Google has used Priyus and Chrystler Pacifica in the Waymo project) that have been modified to be driven by a computer. The cars came with mirrors on them already.\n\nAdditionally - if you put the cars on the street - most cities require a driver to be available to take the controls. Side view mirrors would be useful for the driver in these cases.\n\nMost importantly - every US states has minimum safety standards for cars, including having functional side view mirrors. So, even if you had a fully self-sufficient self-driving car, unless you update these laws, the side view mirrors will still be required before the car is allowed on the street. \n\nAdditionally - T[esla wanted to get rid of side view mirrors](_URL_0_) and to replace them with cameras (could reduce drag up 3 percent) but were told \"nope\" by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So, don't expect them to be going anywhere anytime soon. \n\nI for one, hope that they don't update this, and we get this little tiny vestigial mirrors on self driving cars only that only old people understand why they are there. ",
"Nobody is making 100% self-driving cars right now - they still have to be able to be driven by a human operator. Humans need mirrors to see around them because they can't be watching 12 cameras simultaneously.",
"Self driving cars are very much coming, but they’re a bit overhyped right now by tech blogs and Reddit full of 20-somethings. There are quite a few hard hurdles remaining to get there, which can threaten progress significantly.\n\nIn before article showing Waymo testing in Arizona, with fine print that its only under very certain conditions.",
"Self driving.(Their are no true level 5 autonomous cars yet, that's 20-30 years away.) Uses something called computer vision. Computer vision or CV for short, let's you find shapes, and other objects by using something to match it to. Now you can create multiple things to match it to, and those are neurons. Neurons can be connected to other neurons to make further depth. Now that we can do that, we can create a image with a scalar telling us how much is it like this thing. For our example, it will be cars. We get a image telling us how car like is this thing. We can change the value it has to be, for it to suggest it's a car. Now using that info, we can map it to depth sensors scattered around the vehicle, and now we know the cars around us, the lanes, and where others are. \n\nThe other method is using high quality GPS, and a combination of this system. That's what Cadillac does with their supercruise system."
]
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"https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/cameras-instead-of-mirrors-not-so-fast-says-experts"
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[],
[],
[]
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|
2p753y | what is the point of the winrar trial period, does the program change at all following the end of the "trial"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p753y/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_the_winrar_trial_period/ | {
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"WinRAR is a form of software called \"nagware\". The developers created the software to be free, but implemented a \"trial\" feature that nags users. By making the software free, they can more easily get a large user base, which makes sense when you consider there are many free alternatives out there. The idea behind the \"trial\" is that (1) people will assume they have to pay for it and will do so or (2) people will pay for it to stop being annoyed. The larger the user base, the more likely these things will happen.\n\nSo the program doesn't change at all. It's just an annoying feature to try and get some people to pay for the program while keeping it free at the same time."
]
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[]
] |
||
2py9sv | how scientifically instrumental were famous scientists (e.g. einstein, feynman, oppenheimer etc.) in the development of the first nuclear/thermonuclear bombs? | Everyone knows that Einstein and Oppenheimer played parts in designing the bomb (and less-famously Feynman), but how important were these people when it came to developing the actual science behind the bomb? Also, what was day-to-day life like for the leading-scientists working on the Manhattan Project (e.g. frequent meetings of a select group to decide strategy/more independent research etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2py9sv/eli5_how_scientifically_instrumental_were_famous/ | {
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"Einstein wasn't really involved in the project, though he played a significant role in [warning the US government](_URL_1_) that it was possible and how bad an idea it would have been to let the Nazis get it first. Even though he wasn't involved, he had the name recognition that the president would read something that he sent.\n\nOppenheimer was basically in charge of all the science during the project.\n\nFeynman did work on it, but he was pretty young at the time, so he wasn't one of the senior people.\n\nThere's a [really excellent Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Rhodes](_URL_0_) that describes everything, if you're interested."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419144423&sr=8-1&keywords=rhodes+atomic+bomb",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter"
]
] |
|
15639p | why is it cheaper to fly with multiple stops? | Why is a 2-stop flight cheaper than a 1-stop or direct? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15639p/why_is_it_cheaper_to_fly_with_multiple_stops/ | {
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"The goal of getting the most money from a given flight is to put a passenger in every seat. Take 2 big cities: Chicago and San Francisco. There are non-stop flights between these cities. There are a LOT of people who want to go from one to the other. Lots of Chicagoites want to get to SF and vice versa. So airlines can charge quite a bit of money for it and always get full (and overbooked) flights.\n\nTake a third city: Salt Lake City. Some people want to go there, sure, but not as many as want to get to either Chicago or SF. The airline still needs to get people from Salt Lake to Chicago and to SF, so they will run airplanes, but those airplanes won't be full. In order to get more people on the planes, they route people through Salt Lake. Now take it one step further: You have these small airports in places like Rochester, MN that only fly to one or two other airports (from Rochester, you can get to either Chicago or Minneapolis, or this was true last time I was there 10 years ago).\n\nSo you stick people who are willing to pay more money on the flights that are more convenient to them, and the people who AREN'T willing to pay more on the flights that are going to/from the small airports, or on flights that are at inconvenient times between the big airports."
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|
1r9imh | why doesn't the prime meridian go completely around like the equator? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r9imh/eli5_why_doesnt_the_prime_meridian_go_completely/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nThe Prime Meridian is the 0 degree line. The other side of it is the 180 degree meridian or \"antimeridian\"",
"this is a bit complicated mathematically: \n\nin order to have a complete coordinate system of an area, without redundand information, you need a \"complete base\". on a plain surface with the length **A** and **B** these would be simply two coordinates with a range of **0** - **A** and **0** - **B**\n\non a spherical body a complete base of the surface area is formed, by having the radius, and 2 spherical coordinates, that range **0°** - **180°** (or as we use it on earth from **-90°** to **+90°**) and **0°** - **360°**.\n\nthe equator is the zero line of the coordinate, that goes from **-90°** to **+90°**, the Prime Meridian is the zero line of the coordinate, that goes from **0°** to **360°**. if the prime meridian went around, and you only had coordinates going from **0°** to **180°**, one set of coordinates would give you two different positions.\n"
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||
6qc390 | how does the mercator projection make navigation easier? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qc390/eli5_how_does_the_mercator_projection_make/ | {
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"This is as you can draw a straight line to where you want to go and travel in that direction on a compass and you will get there due to the projection being elongated and all rectangles representing the exact same area on earth. \n\nThough it won't be the quickest route, it's the one which will make the most sense in our minds as we are more used to (as a society) the Mercator projection. "
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3mfp81 | [us] what could happen if the executive branch just ignored the judicial branch? | I know Andrew Jackson just ignored the Supreme Court and nothing happened. What would happen if Obama did the same thing today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mfp81/eli5_us_what_could_happen_if_the_executive_branch/ | {
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" > What would happen if Obama did the same thing today?\n\nCongress would impeach him. In record time. \n\nThat's how the checks and balances works, if the president gets too out of line, congress can boot him."
]
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|
3mky7x | what is overhydration, and what are the consequences? | I mean more than just "having too much water in your body", what is happening in your body and whatnot while you are overhydrated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mky7x/eli5_what_is_overhydration_and_what_are_the/ | {
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"When cells take in too much water, they swell and burst. Lethal symptoms of overhydration are digestive failure, brain swelling, and cardiac arrest.",
"So, what happens is that an excess of water in your system dilutes your bloodstream. Because of this, your cells suddenly have a higher concentration of dissolved \"stuff\" than your blood stream, and water rushes into them to correct the imbalance (osmosis). This causes your cells to swell, and if there's enough water, to burst. The swelling is really bad in the brain because it can cut off blood flow, leading to brain damage and ultimately death."
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6do2f0 | why is it when i'm riding in the car i almost become narcoleptic and fall asleep without trying? | Edit: after a bunch of answers I feel like I should clear up it only happens when I'm in a car and the car is moving.
Edit2: a word | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6do2f0/eli5_why_is_it_when_im_riding_in_the_car_i_almost/ | {
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"Low grade motion sickness perhaps? That or the motion lulls you to sleep.",
"What type of car?\nMy entire life I didn't understand the problem, like how can you sleep while you drive??\nBut now I got a new subaru with a super comfortable seat and mannnnn...\nmaybe u need less comfortable chair that's what I say.\n",
"I dont have an answer, but its something ive been dealing with my whole driving life. I used to travel quite a bit, and id be wide awake, just drank a french press full of coffee, and it never failed, an hour in and i could NOT keep my eyes open! Roll down windows, turn on ac, crank radio and sing loud, nothing helped. Nothing still helps. \n\n I drive a boom truck now, the only thing that is my saving grace is redline energy drink. I know its a bad habit, im sure the stuff isnt great for you, but i have to drive an hour or more everyday to get to jobsites, then an hour back, and i have to drink half the bottle before driving then the other half 6 or 8 hours later before hitting the road or ill just nod.\n\nAnd its not diet, i eat healthy. I exercise. I sleep pretty well. Ive slowly controlled for all other variables and i just cant beat it.\n\nApparently, though, hypothyroidism runs in my family. I havent been tested yet, going to in a few weeks, but that could honestly be my issue. Fatigue is a huge symptom of hypothyroidism, you may have the same issue without knowing it. ",
"Let me also add that this has happened all my life in a multitude of different cars under different types of conditions such as being first thing in the morning after a nap at almost any time I'm in a car I get sleepy unless I'm pounding back coffee like it's water or other substances ",
"People with sleep apnea tend to fall asleep when passive in monotonous environment. \nDo you feel tired long after waking up? \nDo you have frequent nightly toilet trips? \nDo you snore? \nAsk your doctor. \n\nEdit: [symptom list](_URL_0_)",
"I'd imagine there are a couple factors here:\n\n1) cars produce a bit of white noise, like the engine humming and the tires rolling along the ground. white noise is usually good for trying to get sleep.\n\n2) cars also rock around a bit on the uneven pavement, kind of simulating a gentle rocking motion\n\n3) car seats are pretty comfy, and the a/c or heater will keep you at a nice temperature\n\n4) riding around is generally kinda boring. you can't move around much, and most of the scenery zooming by you is probably also kinda boring [most likely you'll just see trees and fields like 90% of the time]\n\nso ultimately, in a way, riding around in a car kinda simulates what it's like to be in your mother's womb",
"Any chance you have untreated ADHD? Many of us experience what's called a \"theta wave intrusion\" if we get really bored, it's almost like passing out vs sleep. It is annoying honestly. Adderall or mental stimulation prevents it from happening, but without that... If I'm just riding along in a car and not engaged in meaningful conversation or doing something, I will fall asleep in like 5 minutes. \n\nI usually drive and I do not have an issue falling asleep behind the wheel because I can hyperfocus on driving. ",
"I've heard that being in a car simulates a lot of the conditions of being in the womb so it is relaxing by nature",
"A side effect of motion sickness is drowsiness so you are probably experiencing a minor case of motion sickness ",
"I have the same problem but more so when I'm the passenger. My fiance makes fun of me for it as does my boss after we had to drive together to go to a training course and I slept most of the way leaving him to talk with our other coworker alone. Up until my boss established a 30 min no talking time with him that is. \nIf I'm driving longer distances the best way I've found to stay awake is actually to eat sunflower seeds. No other snacks seem to work the same. Books on tape help pass the time though.",
"Ah I was hoping for a concrete solution! I have tried many of the things mentioned here but nothing works! This has been a point of conflict with my girlfriend, as she is convinced I just choose to sleep on long trips. Ugh!",
"There are two terms I can think of that can relate to driving drowziness. The first term although not directly causing sleep is called *Highway Hypnosis*. This is where a driver can go for a long period of time driving, not remembering any or all of the trip. Also called sleeping with your eyes opened, has been related to a lot of drivers dosing off to actually falling asleep, or causing accidents, although there has been incidents where drivers have made safe decisions in this state of mind. This phenomenon is most common along highways, the view staying the same, your brain doesn't have to register much information, you stay at a steady cruise, and fail to store the short term memory of driving, although you may be thinking of other things. The second term, *Carcolepsy*. There's a few factors to sleep, and a large one is comfort. Physically and mentally. If you're a regular driver, and you have the chance to be a passenger you have a sense of relief, a comforting sense, you don't have to worry so you tend to doze off. Although I've only mentioned a few, there are alot more factors that play into this. Mental exhaustion, depression, maybe a certain medicine you use. On a personal note, I can rarely ever doze off in a car due to a bad accident I was in a few years ago, I was awake at the time but no matter who it is I have to be awake and alert, I speak for myself when I say, you can't trust any driver on the road. One blink of an eye and your whole life is gone, so OP you may get a bunch of knowledge from reddit, but I recommend just explaining to a doctor at your next checkup. Better safe then sorry because there may be some other underlying issue. If you have any more questions just ask, I have nothing to do on this long car ride from Florida to Maryland, besides stay awake ;). "
]
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2xinzl | why does it seem like more and more people these days have medical problems? | I rarely see anyone that is what I would consider "normal" (i.e. Does not have a medical condition of some kind). Why is this happening these days? Is it because modern medicine has made it so people with medical conditions can live mostly-normal life spans (that people in the past would have died from)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xinzl/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_more_and_more_people/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Living longer, more inactivity and obesity, more access to care rather than ignoring issues, more willingness to speak about health generally. ",
"You're getting older.\n\nYou're probably surrounded by older people & all your friends are older too.\n\nThat's a lot bigger of a factor than any cultural changes in the last 10-20 years.\n"
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5zie34 | why u.s. dollar is the main world currency? | I'm from Eastern Europe and every day I read news like "USD exchange rate expectations are..", " expert said that U.S. dollar will get stronger...". Why world economics depends from dollar more than from any other currency? Or - if I'm wrong - why it looks like it is?
P. S. I'm not native English speaker so I apologize for advance. Please tell me if you find any mistakes. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zie34/eli5_why_us_dollar_is_the_main_world_currency/ | {
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"The USD has became a world standard for a few reasons, one, they have been the world's biggest economy since before WW2, and the majority of western countries have very close links to US trade. As it is used as a standard, it becomes a good currency to measure the strengths of two currencies against each other as well. If the pound is buying 1.3 us dollars, and this is increasing, while the euro is buy .90c, and decreasing, you can understand that the pound is buying more euros. Makes it quite simple to show a quick snap shot of worldwide currencies in a 1 minute finance section of a news hour :)",
"There are a few reasons for this. \n\nFirst is the shear size of the US Economy. The US represents 25% of the entire would economy. There is no other country that is even close. The US economy is the size of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest economies put together (China, Japan, and Germany). \n\nThe other big thing is the stability of the US. There are no other large economies that are as stable as the US. The only comparable economy in size is China, and their future is uncertain at best. The entire EU is currently in turmoil because of things like Brexit and now other concerns about the EU even remaining a thing. Countries that you would think were very stable like Canada are in a currency crisis as their currency has fallen 30% in value in the last 4 years.\n\nThe reality is the US is very large and very stable. If you spend too much time on sites like these you would think the sky is falling over here, but really things are quite peaceful and stable. "
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24ea05 | the building i work in has a lot of people from middle-eastern decent. why are they always washing their faces in the restroom? | I know this seems like a weird question and the answer could be that it's just random, however, I'm naturally inquisitive and was wondering if this had any cultural or religious ties? Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24ea05/eli5_the_building_i_work_in_has_a_lot_of_people/ | {
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"text": [
"Have you tried asking them? You might learn a lot about their culture if you actually spoke to them.",
"They're preparing for prayer cause they're Muslim! They do it five times a day. They also wash their ears,nose,forearms and feet! "
]
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[],
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] |
|
1qicfv | why are "terms and conditions" for things so long? are we actually expected to read them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qicfv/eli5_why_are_terms_and_conditions_for_things_so/ | {
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"text": [
"The Terms of Service or Terms and Conditions are a contract that you agree to to use the product. It's long because it has to cover a lot of material regarding use and licensing of the product (eg. a lot of software now is not owned by you; you simply have a license to use it, according to ToS), as well as establishing responsibilities and liabilities.\n\nRegarding their reading, I believe that you are expected to read them, but I could be wrong. You are certainly bound by whatever it says, within reason."
]
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[]
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||
b62mki | now that article13 has been voted; what is going to change for me, a random european person on the internet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b62mki/eli5_now_that_article13_has_been_voted_what_is/ | {
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"Likely nothing. Like most laws governing the internet, it is largely unenforceable. Remember when they tried to crack down on pirate torrents? A couple people got arrested, a couple websites for shutdown, a few people got warning letters from their ISP, but in general, most people carried on as usual. ",
"First, nothing will change in close to two years, as this is just a directive - not a law. What that means is, that each EU country has to interpret the directive and make their own laws that abide by it - and they have up to two years to do that.\n\nSecond, what will change will depend on each individual law. However, as the internet doesn't stop at borders - it will most likely be more up to the strongest regulation amongst each country, as I personally doubt that plattforms will want to implement a different filter for each country, as just building one will be close to impossible and way to expensive.\n\nThird, it will be down to the individual plattforms on what they will change. They will now be liabel for copyright issues that their users cause. So depending on how they assess that risk, they will react. \nThey will try to get good deals on licences from the big rights holders - however the rightsholders will have the ball in their court.\nIf they can't get all licences (which will be impossible probably) they will have to implement upload filters. Filters, that will have to be fairly strict, so that they dont get hit by lawsuits. Since these filters wont be able to understand fair use etc. this will lead to a lot of headaches.\nThis will hit small companies especially hard. They will probably have to buy the tech from Google or similar companies, making Europe even more dependent on the Valley. \n\nThere is also the alternative, like YouTube has suggested, that User uploads could be shut down completly, giving the rights to upload only to big YouTubers, companies, media companies, MCNs etc.\n\nHowever, everything will be up to national laws and the individual plattforms reaction to the financial risk that comes from that, so all of this is just speculation.\n\nAs a random user, that doesn't upload content yourself, all this could probably change, is, that in two years you might get less content to watch or less pictures to see on plattforms like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook or Instagram.\n"
]
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[],
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||
eruton | what corona virus exactly does to our body system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eruton/eli5_what_corona_virus_exactly_does_to_our_body/ | {
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"Viruses in general latch on to the cells in your body, inject their RNA and cause the cell to replicate the virus, killing the cell in the process (usually).\n\nThink of your DNA and RNA as the software in the cell. This software tells the cell how to divide and grow, how to make certain proteins, and many other things. The virus comes in and reprograms this software for no other reason than to make more copies.\n\nThe coronavirus enters the body through the air or by food and water. If it's the air, it will attack the cells in your lungs. Your lungs become vulnerable if the infection spreads, leading to pneumonia. This can cause your lungs to be damaged, reducing the amount of oxygen your body gets and can fluid to build up in your lungs. This fluid can also hinder your ability to breathe and effectively drown you. If it enters by food or drink, the virus attacks the cells in your gut, leading to symptoms that one might call food poisoning. This leads to severe dehydration and malnutrition. Without the water and nutrients the body needs, your body starts to shut down to save the brain, leading to organ failure and potentially death.",
"Here's a good resource to help explain coronavirus:\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
]
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[],
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"https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-kids-guide.html"
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||
3gkejs | if there was no standardised spelling for english words before the 1700s, why do latin and ancient greek have standardised spelling? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gkejs/eli5_if_there_was_no_standardised_spelling_for/ | {
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"May be because these were the official languages of Europe (Latin mainly) until 16-17th century. The Church (the Papacy) had to maintain some kind of standards so all educated people (in Europe) could communicate with each other.",
"The first English dictionary wasn't written until 1755.\n\nFurthermore, up until ~1700 most legal documents were written in Latin. (There's no hard changeover of writing these in English or Latin, but more of a gradual switch.) Latin was also, until this time, the language used for international documents (treaties between countries, etc...)\n\nSo there were a large number of people reading and writing in Latin, and spellings were standardised because of the potentially large number of people who had to read these.\n\nDuring this time English wasn't used much for anything serious. Literature, plays, poetry, diaries. It was a time when much of the public was illiterate anyway. There wasn't really a \"market\" for reading English.\n\nOnce we switched to using English for legal documents (and, apparently, French for international documents) the spellings of English became standardised by consensus. Different spellings were down to fashion, pretty much, until eventually we sort-of came to an agreement. (Although there are still notable differences between US and UK spellings in places.)\n\nAlso, English is still being modified. Some of my older relatives still write \"today\" and \"tomorrow\" as \"to-day\" and \"to-morrow\". Spellings like \"programme\" and \"sceptic\" have - in my short (so far) lifetime been replaced by \"program\" and \"skeptic\". \n\nGreek followed more or less the same process, but much earlier."
]
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[],
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||
2lxdns | when modern day albums are "released on vinyl" are they the same quality vinyl sound as in the original days of analog? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lxdns/eli5_when_modern_day_albums_are_released_on_vinyl/ | {
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"Depends on what you mean by quality. Until recently, all recordings were done on analog tapes. It wasn't until the past decade that digital recording was a thing. So there's always going to be a difference between any music recording from the past compared to today. \n\nHowever, if you somehow were able to take two identical master recordings and print one back in 1980 and one today, the one today would be a better quality. Production techniques are better and the players are able to play the discs more accurately. \n\nOne more caveat, some people would not like that. One of the reasons vinyl is so loved is because the timbre of the recording is warmer and has other hard-to-describe acoustic characteristics. Even though it is less perfect, it *feels* better. By any objective measure, vinyl is a poor medium for music. ",
"\"Quality\" of vinyl is a misnomer, it's actually far worse than any digital storage from an objective viewpoint. \n\nSubjectively, the final process for an album or recording is called mastering. The process for mastering to vinyl is different than for digital. So if something is released to vinyl, and it was mastered for it specifically, it will sound different than the digital copy. If you prefer that, then yes it's the same as for old recordings. \n\nAlthough, thanks to digital recordings have gotten a lot better today than it was in the old days. The real hatred towards digital is because back when it first came out it sucked and had a lot of problems, and then the loudness war happened and people got turned off. "
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cclv5d | mobile phone game ads where you can play the advertised game in the ad. how does that work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cclv5d/eli5_mobile_phone_game_ads_where_you_can_play_the/ | {
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"It's the same as if you were playing a flash game in the browser. When the ad comes in, it loads this \"flash\" game, it's a specifically designed ad that allows you to play for 30 seconds and then it turns off to a normal static ad usually",
"Sometimes the ad is an iframe and other times the browser loads the ad's code in a sanitized environment. These are more rare probably because they are more expensive and must be screened properly; to ensure they are not using some kind of exploit to do something malicious to the end user. \n\n\nFlash was a major proponent of interactive advertisements in the 06-11 era but, as you can imagine, security flaws were way too evident to be worth the risk."
]
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[],
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||
37yasa | why does red appear to jump out of my mobile phone screen? | I have a Nexus 5 if that helps. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37yasa/eli5_why_does_red_appear_to_jump_out_of_my_mobile/ | {
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"Red is an eye catching color under normal circumstances, but maybe the Nexus' screen displays it better than other colors, so it jumps at you even more.",
"I think I know what you mean. It's kind of popping out but in a fuzzy way. It makes sense to me because I have glasses and when I don't wear them everything bright pops out in a fuzzy way. Red hurts your eyes to look at, so if there's a lot of red it gets 3d ish especially on a bright phone screen.\n\nPretty sure it's you. Not the phone.",
"Different colors actually appear to have different depths. Some fun houses use this effect. Look up \"ChromaDepth\"."
]
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|
3gbks9 | why is the color blue like in the facebook logo considered calming yet blue light in computers is known to stimulate the brain so its harder to go to sleep? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gbks9/eli5why_is_the_color_blue_like_in_the_facebook/ | {
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"It's not so much that blue light from computers stimulates your brain, it's more that it confuses your brain about what time it is. The colour of sunlight varies through the day, redder at sunrise and sunset and bluer in between. Your body clock uses that as one signal to recognise when night is coming and it's time to sleep. A computer display is typically set to produce light like the middle of the day, so it can make that bit of your brain think it's not time to sleep yet."
]
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||
9j8ufb | how hackers are bypassing/cracking drm software in games? denuvo, vmprotect etc. | From what I can understand DRM is working by encrypting game files and when you are playing, the software decrypts some of the content to be usable in real time. But if all of that is stored on your machine, why those protections (especially Denuvo) are so hard to crack? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9j8ufb/eli5_how_hackers_are_bypassingcracking_drm/ | {
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"text": [
"So, I've never looked into Denuvo or VMProtect, but I can at least explain one method that can be used to crack DRM.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEven if a program's coding is encrypted, it must eventually be converted into machine language for the processor to understand. Enter a decompiler. The decompiler lets you see this and edit this code. Find the portion related to DRM verification, remove or alter it, and voila, DRM gone.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nJust to be clear though, this is not a simple or straight forward process. It requires extensive computer and programming knowledge to understand the coding well enough to alter it correctly without breaking it. Also, nice decompilers are really expensive.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you're interested in getting into stuff like this, I suggest getting the free version of IDA pro or Immunity Dbg and practice with some \"crack-me's\".\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"
]
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|
21io0w | the difference between nuclear fusion and fission???? | I get that fission is the separating of atoms and fusion is the joining of them. i always here that they are the "key" to are energy crisis i just don't understand how? help | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21io0w/eli5_the_difference_between_nuclear_fusion_and/ | {
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"The main component (by mass) of an atom is its nucleus, which is made from protons and neutrons. It turns out (because of nuclear physics) that protons and neutrons prefer to be together than separate; that is to say that they have lower energy together than separate so they can release energy by combining. This extends to nuclei (with a caveat that I'll get to shortly): combining small nuclei into larger ones can give off energy as well. So light atoms, like hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, etc, can combine together and release energy; this is nuclear fusion.\n\nHowever, this pattern of releasing energy when combining stops as you get to heavier elements, and eventually flips around so that combining heavy elements takes a lot of energy. Instead, if you can split a single heavy atom (like uranium, plutonium, thorium, americium, etc) into two smaller atoms this can potentially release energy. This is nuclear fission. The dividing line is around iron atoms (atomic number 26, atomic weight 56): lighter atoms release energy if you add a proton or neutron, while heavier atoms release energy if you can remove a proton or neutron. Of course, there are more detailed rules governing which nuclear reactions are possible, but this is the general property for the energy release.\n\nNuclear energy is very efficient in terms of requiring very little fuel compared to other energy sources. Fusion in particular is very attractive, because there is a large supply of light elements available (e.g., every water molecule has two hydrogen atoms). However, fusion has proven to be very challenging to make economically viable, so research is continuing.",
"Splitting atoms is relatively easy. You start with an atom with a very big nucleus, such as uranium, and then throw neutrons at it. The nucleus then becomes unstable and breaks up into smaller nuclei, releasing energy and also releasing some neutrons, which go on to smash into other uranium nuclei -- the whole thing starts to run all by itself in a chain reaction. To control the rate at which this chain reaction occurs, you have control rods made of a material that soaks up neutrons: lower these into the reactor, and you can slow down or stop the reaction.\n\nFusion sounds very simple: get some small atoms and bash them together to make bigger atoms, releasing energy in the process. You might have, for example, two deuterium atoms (deuterium is hydrogen -- with one proton in the nucleus -- plus a neutron) to make one helium atom (two protons and two neutrons). As a bonus, helium is an inert gas -- it doesn't react with anything at all, so it's not poisonous or corrosive or anything.\n\nThe problem is that while it's easy to split big atoms (very big atoms don't hold together very well, which is why these elements are radioactive -- it's caused by the atoms splitting all by themselves), bashing together two small atoms is very difficult. The nuclei are protected by electron clouds, and it takes a lot of force to break through these electron clouds. The smaller the atom, the more force it takes. It takes, pretty much, the kind of forces you would find in the centre of our sun.\n\nSo you have to find a way to concentrate all those atoms and all that energy to make fusion possible. You get far more energy out than you put in -- if you do it right -- but it's a big engineering challenge. It can be done with a few atoms in a particle accelerator, but we need to find a way to do it on an industrial scale. If that can be cracked, and if we can manufacture the deuterium and the apparatus without expending more energy than we could generate, we may well go a long way to solving our energy shortage problems.\n\n(EDIT: Embarrassing typo)",
"Fission is the breaking of one heaver element into multiple smaller elements.\n\nFusion is the joining of a lighter element with another to form a heavier element.\n\nI think the easiest way to describe the difference is to talk about a Fission Bomb vs. a Fusion Bomb.\n\nIn a Fission Bomb, a radioactive element is used to create a chain reaction of fission. Radioactive elements are used because of the way they react to neutrons. Essentially a a radioactive element is bombarded with neutrons, these neutrons cause it to eventually fission into two new atoms. In the proccess releasing some energy as well as more neutrons, these released neutrons hit other radioactive elements causing yet more fission. The key thing here though is that this proccess ONLY involved the Fission of larger atoms into smaller ones.\n\nIn a fusion bomb (thermonuclear bomb) a fission reaction, just like the one above is used to create a lot of heat and compression energy, this is basically a separate bomb and is known as the primary. This energy is directed at a completely different bomb, known as the secondary. This secondary bomb does not only fission like the primary did, it takes in the energy from the primary in and start to fusion reaction. In the fusion reaction a Hydrogen atom with three neutrons, known as Tritium, fusions with other tritium atoms into helium. This releases more energy, causing yet more fusion reactions, but also creating yet more pressure on the radioactive elements causing yet more fission, which you know causes yet more fusion etc. etc.\n\nTL;DR: Fission Splits stuff apart, fusion sticks stuff together. Larger atoms, fission, smaller atoms fusion. Fission can cause fusion and fusion can cause fission. Both fusion and fission release energy. For practical purposes fission is done with radioactive elements while fusion is not necessarily radioactive. "
]
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4mqiug | what evidence is there that supports the big bang theory? | It seems probable, but how did humanity's great minds come to the conclusion that existence was confined to one molecular area and then exploded everywhere. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mqiug/eli5_what_evidence_is_there_that_supports_the_big/ | {
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"A lot of the evidence is related to the fact that light takes time to travel, one of the core principles underlying relativity.\n\n* **Space itself is expanding**\n\nLight has wave-like properties, in particular wavelength (or frequency) which we interpret as color. When light is emitted by an object that is moving, there is a [doppler effect](_URL_0_) and the wavelength gets compressed or stretched out, changing the color of the light. When we on the earth observe a galaxy moving away from us, the light will appear \"stretched out\", or *redshifted*. Light from an object moving towards us is compressed or *blueshifted*. This terminology comes from the fact that for visible light, red is the shortest wavelength and blue is the longest wavelength. When we measure the effect with galaxies, it is more often invisible light such as x-rays or radio waves.\n\nWhen we do look at the galaxies in the sky, we something alarming: everything in the universe appears to be trying to get the hell away from the earth as fast as possible. Everything is significantly more redshifted than we would expect if galaxies were simply drifting around in space. In this post-Copernican age of science, it's considered extremely unlikely that the earth is at the center of a universe-wide explosion of galaxies. We conclude instead that the space itself is expanding, and that the redshift effect would be the same at any point in the universe, instead of only on earth. \n\nThe fact that space is expanding suggests that in the past, everything was more compressed. If space has *always* been expanding, then theoretically there was some point in the past when everything was maximally compressed.\n\n* **We can see the remnants of the big bang**\n\nBecause light takes time to travel, when we look far away into the universe we are also looking back in time. In the 20th century, technology advanced enough that we reached the limit of what we could see: the edge of the observable universe. We found that we are surrounded on all sides by [cosmic background radiation](_URL_1_), an opaque plasma \"fog\" of early-universe matter. This indicates that the universe was not always as it is now. It began as a kind of primordial soup that later cooled and condensed into stars and galaxies.\n\nBy carefully studying the properties of the cosmic background radiation, we can ascertain some facts about what the early universe was like. In part, the evidence shows that it was very hot and that stable matter (such as atoms and molecules) took time to form.\n\n* **It can be used to explain known phenomena**\n\nThis is one of the strongest tests for a theory: if it can explain a known but previously unexplained phenomenon that is not directly related to the reason the theory was created in the first place. For example, the big bang theory explains why there is vastly more hydrogen and helium in the universe than heavier elements, as the original nucleosynthesis only created the lightest elements.\n\n* **Appendix: Problems and open questions**\n\nPart of what makes studying the big bang difficult is that it is an area where relativity and quantum physics are both applicable. As you may know, these two models don't fit together well. One problem is that gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces that it's virtually impossible to observe gravitational effects on the quantum scale, and so no quantum explanation of gravity is known. \n\nThere are also the problems of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is simply \"extra\" matter that has gravitation but doesn't otherwise interact. Dark energy is much more closely tied to the big bang theory, as it is responsible for the continually accelerating expansion of space. \n\nAdditionally, there is a problem of antimatter known as the *baryon asymmetry*. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other and explode into pure energy. When the big bang occurred and subatomic particles initially formed, there was slightly more matter than antimatter, so that when all was said and done all there was left was matter. This little bit extra matter is what now makes up the galaxies. It's unknown why matter and antimatter would be created in uneven quantities.\n\nStill, the big bang theory is by far the best explanation for the history of the early universe. It is at the cutting edge of modern science, so it's important to take new discoveries with a grain of salt and understand what evidence is really being presented.\n\n*Edit: typos"
]
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background"
]
] |
|
8aw3u5 | at a distance, why do blue lights seem “blurry” or “harder to focus on” compared to red or orange lights that appear more sharp? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8aw3u5/eli5_at_a_distance_why_do_blue_lights_seem_blurry/ | {
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"According to [this](_URL_0_): \"Blue light scatters more widely within the eye and tends to be focused in front of the retina, making it appear slightly out of focus.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.assemblymag.com/blogs/14-assembly-blog/post/91320-beware-the-blue-light"
]
] |
||
1xa0cs | why can't we just make cellphone and other chargers high powered, so they can charge in a matter of minutes? | I don't know if this means increasing the voltage, or the current, but why is this not feasible? Will it overheat? What is stopping us from charging our phones faster? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xa0cs/eli5_why_cant_we_just_make_cellphone_and_other/ | {
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"Batteries will only take in so much charge at a time. Trying to force more in than it can take will cause it to overheat to possibly dangerous levels. \n\nThere's a ton of research always going on about how to make batteries more efficient, but it's a very difficult problem. Plus, I would imagine a lot more research is going into making batteries store larger charges so they last longer vs. making them charge faster. ",
"Overheat or explode basically. Imagine if I drop 50kg worth of golf balls on your head. Now imagine if I drop a single 50kg weight on your head once. You can see the difference I imagine.",
"On top of what others have said, speed charging batteries also shorten their lifespan.",
"Batteries work by means of chemical reaction that releases electrons, generating a current. Rechargable batteries have a reversable chemical reaction. Charging such a battery involves forcing the chemical reaction to go into reverse, to change the chemicals back to their original state (ready to release electrons), by forcing electrons back into the chemical mixture. \n\nYou can only safely reverse a reaction at the same rate at which it can normally flow forward (in this case it's how fast the battery can release the electrons - known as amp-hours or milliamp hours). Forcibly reversing the reaction faster than normal generates heat - this is why batteries get hot when you charge them. Too much heat will break down and destroy the chemicals needed for the battery to produce electrons. Reverse the reaction rate to the extreme and the heat generated can result in explosion. \n\nThe safe rate of charge of a battery is dependent on the maximum rate of discharge. There is technology to create capacitive batteries that can be charged within minutes or even seconds, but the nature of capacitors can make such a battery a bit dangerous and potentially lethal if safeguards to prevent instantaneous discharge should fail. ",
"Most cell phone batteries are Lithium Ion batteries. These batteries typically charge safely at 1C. That is a number of amps equal to its amp hour ratings. Really good Lion batteries can be charged faster. As cell battery size has gone up you may have noticed the amp rating of the chargers has gone up as well. That keeps them under a safe limit of charging rate. If you charge too fast it can generate excess heat due to the internal resistance of the battery. That heat can cause it lose capacity, swell, or catch fire. The other half of why you don't see them charge fast is high amperage charges are more expensive. Also as most people expect to charge their battery while it is still in the phone, this traps heat and adding circuitry that can handle a high charge rate is more expensive. Most phones I've seen limit the charge rate to around 0.5C which is really pretty low.",
"Something that most people don't know is that batteries don't store electricity they actually create it through an electrochemical reaction. So when you \"charge\" a battery the electricity isn't being stored it's actually reversing the chemical reaction that produces the power. So with that in mind you may understand that there are limits on how fast a chemical reaction can be safely reversed and also maintain reliability of output."
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sm6dh | why mobile data is so limited? | Why is it that Verizon FIOS (and other home network companies) can offer me an unlimited data plan, but carriers cannot? What's the difference? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sm6dh/eli5_why_mobile_data_is_so_limited/ | {
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"FIOS is not wireless data, and as cell phone need wireless data, it is different. \n\nThe reason it costs so much more is because they were very bad and did nothing for a very long time to upgrade their stuff. Also, because they can get away with it.",
"Mobile networks are similar to roads and railroad tracks. Data and text messages are vehicles that can change lanes and be delayed. Voice is similar to trains. When a car gets to a railroad track at nearly the same time as a train, it always has to sit and wait for the train. Since voice is used so much, the networks have to dedicate a certain amount of their network to voice, so data can't fully use what is available.\n\nVerizon FIOS is basically made up of entirely railroad tracks. It doesn't have to manage connections entering and leaving the network. It can only have a certain number of trains that use it, so they are able to physically put in the railway tracks to account for each train.\n\nNot ELI5, most all of the carriers are spending a lot of money on improving their networks, some just not so wisely(Wi-Max). Each of these networks prioritizes voice since it is time dependent rather quality dependent and as such have to dedicate so much of their network to voice calls. If a tower can handle 100 connections, the tower will try to ensure that all of the voice calls go through first. After that is used up, it will try to process the texts and data through as it comes in.\n\nFor line services like Verizon FIOS, each house has a dedicated line and VZ knows how many possible connections there can be on their lines and so they can build it up enough to ensure they can handle all of the connections, whereas Mobile can have anywhere from 1 to 100,000 connections to an individual tower.\n\nIf that justifies the price is another story, but I believe that answers your question."
]
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2hsra6 | how do you determine when a dna sequence becomes a gene? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hsra6/eli5_how_do_you_determine_when_a_dna_sequence/ | {
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"a gene is a portion of DNA that can be transcribed into RNA and some RNAs can be translated into proteins. In DNA there are specific sequences that determine the beggining of a gene (ATG) and the end (TAA; TAG and TGA)",
"It's actually pretty complex, but a gene is a sequence in DNA that is transcribed to RNA which is translated into a protein. Especially in higher-level organisms (eukaryotes), the vast majority of their DNA is non-coding DNA. All genes in eukaryotes have specific sequences call promoters, DNA binding domains and a special sequence called a TATA box. All of these sequences are necessary in order for transcription to occur, which means that all genes in eukaryotes will have some variation of these 3 things before the sequence of DNA that encodes the gene. "
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7cjs9i | why do some cell phones have area codes different from the geographical area in which they were purchased? | For example, I live in a suburb of Minneapolis where the area code is 952. But my cell phone's area code is 612 - the area code for Minneapolis city proper - even though I purchased it in the suburbs where the area code is 952. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cjs9i/eli5_why_do_some_cell_phones_have_area_codes/ | {
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"Phone carriers are assigned numbers in blocks. For example Verizon with have 612-512-0001 through 612-512-9999 to assign to accounts and AT & T will have a different set of numbers. In major metro areas there are often multiple area codes simply because one got used up. It's not really downtown v. the burbs but that's how it pans out for practical reasons. All the established numbers are on the old area code and downtown. All the new numbers area from newer areas."
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1rbvtu | what's the different between republican and democrats in american culture? what's the point being a republican and vice versa? and why republican is always negatively stigmatized in movie i watched? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rbvtu/eli5_whats_the_different_between_republican_and/ | {
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"In general, Democrats are more liberal. They want more government involvement in things like healthcare, wages, and more giving in general. Reddit is in general more democratic\n\nRepublicans are more conservative. They believe in a more traditional you get what you work for, let's help the businesses, ect. They are usually displayed as an older, more selfish demographic (not saying they are).\n\nObviously, this is very general, and there are always going to be exceptions and neither nors and alot of complexities regaurding who's who and what's what.",
"Are you asking just for how they are perceived culturally, or do you want to know the actual differences in their policy preferences and ideologies? Or both?\n\nIs your second question asking what is attractive about either party to people? Because the general answer would be that the point is that being a Republican or a Democrat is that they resemble your own ideology more closely and are thus more likely to represent your views.\n\nSorry, I'm just not clear on exactly what you are asking :) ",
"Republicans say that they are \"conservative\", which means that they prefer to have very slow changes to society, and a very hands-off approach to the economy. Democrats are \"progressive\", and desire social change and government regulation over the economy.\n\nRepublicans, in general, are less receptive towards laws that force social change. Fifty years ago, that meant laws which ended segregation and other race-related issues. Today, it means they are not receptive to gay marriage or to lessening pressure on illegal immigrants. Democrats are the opposite; they like laws that make discrimination illegal, support gay marriage, and generally support immigration reform.\n\nRepublicans believe that economies work best when the government does not regulate them or otherwise interfere. Democrats believe companies needs limits in certain areas so as to protect the workforce and the environment.\n\nRepublicans believe that people should make their own way in life, and that the best way to success is if people are motivated to better their lives. Democrats believe that those people need social safety nets to make sure they have something to work off of while they try to climb the social ladder.",
"One of them shits on the poor and tells them to dodge. The other shits on the poor while pretending it's sending gifts.",
"There are a whole host of terrible answers on this thread: either factually incorrect, or hugely politically biased.\n\nThe Republicans are considered to be more the right wing party in US politics. They would be considered extremely right wing compared to most other developed countries. On economic matters, they are generally hostile to taxation, regulations in the economy, and government programs that redistribute money from the rich to the poor. On social policy, many, although not all, tend to prefer conservative Christian morality including opposing abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality and sexuality in popular culture. On foreign policy, they typically believe in American dominance in the international system, and heavy use of military force. However, there is also significant minority that favors isolationism.\n\nThe Democrats are the more left-wing party, although would be centrist in most other developed countries. They typically favor more government involvement in regulating perceived excesses of capitalism and in more state-funding of education, healthcare and infrastructure. On social matters, they are more liberal, supporting gay rights, individual choice in abortion, and legalizing unauthorized immigrants. On foreign policy, there is a very wide variety of viewpoints: the base tends to oppose international interventions, but the political leadership tends to believe in multilateral intervention.\n\nMost movies are made in California, which is a very Democratic-leaning state. As most people involved in Hollywood tend to be highly liberal, they think well of Democrats and poorly of Republicans. The latter are thus negatively portrayed."
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4brd9a | why does an ice pack help neutralize a headache? | when you put something cold on the headache, why does it help? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4brd9a/eli5_why_does_an_ice_pack_help_neutralize_a/ | {
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"Headaches occur from the dilation of vessels in/around your brain that start pushing on the surrounding areas which causes the pain sensation.\n\nWhat I mean by that is that the vessels aren't the ones sending out pain signals, it's the stuff around the vessels that are getting compressed by these now larger than usual vessels.\n\nSo ice makes these vessels constrict. When the vessels constrict, the pain goes away because the parts that used to be compressed by these dilated vessels are no longer compressed because the vessels have returned back to normal size."
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2g52yl | why is being pro-life a position almost exclusively held by religious people? | I don't have any strong opinions one way or the other, and this isn't a question trying to start a heated debate over its merits or anything like that.
But it seems like the idea of abortion is something that people can hate or get behind for a variety of reasons (hate because you are depriving something that's almost human of life, get behind because it's empowering and safer than giving birth, etc.)
But it doesn't seem like any of these arguments on the pro-life side have much of anything to do with religion. Why then is it so associated with religion and not just conservatism in general? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g52yl/eli5_why_is_being_prolife_a_position_almost/ | {
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"It became part of the Republican platform in the US in the 1980's when the Religious Right was born and brought into politics. This was a group of people using religion as an excuse to drive social policies and to raise funds for political candidates.",
"I think it comes down to believing that an embryo has a soul, and if so, an abortion is the destroying of this soul.",
"Because, while many people think abortion is a bad thing, making it illegal doesn't work very well to reduce the number of abortions.\n\nMost 'pro-life' people who aren't religious support things like better sex education in schools and cheaper access to birth control.\n\nSome religious people don't support those things, since they aren't just against abortion but also against all pre-marital sex, and can't support anything that might involve people having sex. All that's left for them is making abortion illegal, which doesn't really work very well but, in their minds, is better than doing nothing.",
"Firstly, there are plenty of non-religious people who oppose abortion as well and this is reflective of a diversity of reasons people have for opposing abortions.\n\nDespite this, you are right to notice a link between religiosity and opposition to abortion. If we are talking about Christians, there is very little in Christian canon about abortion directly excepting for a passage instructing a situation in which an abortion should be performed by a religious leader. The Christian basis opposing abortion comes from interpretations of principles different denominations discover from scripture and tradition.\n\nThe stronger association is that people who are socially conservative are more likely to both be religious and oppose abortion. This seems, in large part, to be a reaction to more liberal views on sexuality. These are the same sorts of people who oppose sexual education, availability of controseptives, and even vaccination against genital warts all on the basis that such things promote inappropriate sexual behavior.\n\nThere are only very few in society who see abortion as unambiguously good, with most supporters of professional abortion availability seeing them as distasteful, but better than the alternative and thus is justified. Many abortion opponents feel that people need to be responsible for their sexual mis-deeds and often see the abortion as being harmful to the woman as well, which eliminates much of the counter-weight on the support side of the argument. This is evident by the much greater support for abortion availability in the event of rape.\n\nExplaiting why cultural conservatives hold these views is very much more complicated and controversial.",
"There are definitely SOME non-religious pro-life people, movements and arguments. There's a group called Feminists for Life. Iirc, they support birth control, sex education, and other common women's rights issues, but they oppose abortion. They don't oppose it for religious reasons, they just think it's murder and you don't have to be religious to think that murder is wrong. Also in my philosophy class we discussed abortion and the arguments for and against were all secular arguments. \n\nThe secular argument against abortion is that killing is wrong because you're depriving a being of a future like ours. This would include abortion being murder because generally a fetus is going to develop, be born, and grow up just like all of us, so killing a fetus is wrong because killing anyone is wrong, you've taken away their future. But the argument also stipulates the \"future like ours\" which means its also wrong to kill say a 90-year old on their deathbed, because you stole their future, which was to eventually succumb to old age.\n\nI don't like this argument or agree with it. It seems very contrived. At first glance, this same logic would also apply to killing anything, even animals and plants, but it wouldn't apply to killing a terminal patient or a fetus that's going to die anyway. But then he stipulates \"a future like ours\" basically out of nowhere. \n\nI'm pro-choice. "
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ej1lnl | what the difference between a call and a put is in stocks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ej1lnl/eli5_what_the_difference_between_a_call_and_a_put/ | {
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"So essentially you buy a contract option (the right to purchase/sell the underlying stock) at a certain price. \n\nA call is when you (the buyer) have the right to buy x amount of stocks at $x (strike price). So I can buy an option at $10 strike for abc stock and if the stock hits $12 I can buy it at $10 and sell it at $12 gaining a profit of $2. (Less any transaction fees etc.) \n\nA put is the right to sell the stock at strike price so if the stock is worth $10 but my option to sell is $12 I’ll gain that $2 profit.\n\nIt then gets more complicated with the type of option (European vs American) where European you have a specific date where you can exercise the option and American you can exercise at any time before it’s expiration date."
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||
4t12vo | what is the encrypted text that comprises a file? (editing a .jpg or .exe) | For example, when I go to edit a .jpg file, i'm met with thousands of lines of encrypted text. replacing certain characters with others alters the photo in a glitch-style fashion. But if I copy all the characters and paste them into a new .jpg file, they will not create the original photo. Why is this? Does this encrypted text describe the pixel data?
Thank you in advance :)
edit: I am using notepad++ to open this file. So this is all represented with text. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t12vo/eli5_what_is_the_encrypted_text_that_comprises_a/ | {
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"It's not encrypted, it's encoded: When you open a text file, it expects the binary data to be encoded in ASCII or ANSI (or some other text format), which has binary data organized in a predefined order which can be interpreted as text.\n\nWhen you open up a JPEG file, the text-reading program, expecting the bits to be organized like text, does its best to interpret the bits as text, even though they're nowhere near being organized as text. (see note). So you get a bunch of random text which doesn't make any sense, and if you change things, your text editor will save the bits in a text-organized way, further breaking things beyond just the bits you changed.\n\n\n(Note: the first few bytes *are* formatted as text, known as the 'magic number', which explains how those bytes are organized. Your JPEG probably says JFIF, so a photo editor should still be able to open it even if you change the extension to XLS.)",
" > i’m met with thousands of lines of encrypted text.\n\nMore properly you are seeing \"code\" not encrypted text. It is the basic data which makes up the image file and I suspect you are viewing hexadecimal values which are derived from the basic binary which comprises the file.\n\n > replacing certain characters with others alters the photo in a glitch-style fashion.\n\nAn image file contains the color values for the various pixels which make up the image. By changing the values within the file you are changing what they define the image to be. I'm not familiar enough with the .jpeg format to say exactly how it is laid out on the disk, but I do know there is some image compression going on which could make one edit alter various other areas of the image.\n\n > But if I copy all the characters and paste them into a new .jpg file, they will not create the original photo.\n\nEvidently you are missing some of the file structure. I can't say exactly what you are doing because I don't know how you are trying to edit it; perhaps you are thinking Notepad is opening the entire file? That would certainly give you access to some of the data structure but it is treating it like a text file and that doesn't get everything which is there.\n\nIn retrospect I guess you aren't using a proper hex editor and are just opening it with Notepad because you are asking this question itself, in which case what you are looking at isn't hexidecimal but rather an interpretation of the image data as if it referred to text characters. Which means it is basically unintelligible garbage.",
"JPEG files aren't encrypted and neither are executables; if you have a file that's encrypted you'd need the encryption key to decode it.\n\nI suspect you're trying to edit the file in a text editor like Notepad. If you try to do that you're going to get nonsense, because a binary file is likely to contain bytes that either don't map to characters at all, or map to very unusual characters. Text editors are not designed to work with binary files - they may not properly handle bytes that outside their character set, or they may modify the file in undesirable ways - for example, Windows text editors often insert a carriage return after every newline, which is harmless if that character is actually a newline and not just a random byte that happens to have the value 10.\n\nIf you want to edit binary files, you can use a hex editor. Hex editors are designed for working on binary files - they do not make any assumptions about what the bytes being edited represent. They are useful when the file format is unknown or the file is corrupt and you want to try and fix it."
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8psqbr | in theory, what would happen if a woman consumed an entire 24-day pack of birth control pills at once? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8psqbr/eli5_in_theory_what_would_happen_if_a_woman/ | {
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"It would not work like a morning after pill/ emergency contraceptive pill. Someone more qualified can answer precisely what would happen but if that's where your line of thought is going please go to a pharmacy. The woman could get very ill. An overdose could result in large blood pressure changes, huge headaches, bleeding, and screwing up your hormonal cycle, as well as lots of other effects I've not thought of..\n\nTldr: I don't know other than the general side effects x100 but it doesn't equal emergency contraceptive and could make you very ill. ",
"it would throw hormones into a bit of a weird state. might not be too pleasant, breast tenderness, vaginal bleeding, nausea, drowsiness. it would pass in a few days.\n\nIts not likely to be a serious health risk, but if it did happen, probably best to call a doctor asap anyway, never know what kind of extra stuff might be in this or that BC brand that could have other effects."
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15mglj | what is a crook in your neck? | I've gotten crooks in my neck before, and never really known why I got them or what is really going on with them. Somebody please tell me what it really is.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15mglj/what_is_a_crook_in_your_neck/ | {
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"Typically, a muscle spasm. A muscle in your neck has cramped and becomes sore. "
]
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1g4yf5 | the r/atheism mod fight | wtf is going on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g4yf5/eli5_the_ratheism_mod_fight/ | {
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"Basically. /r/atheism is a default sub (you're automatically subscribed to it when you make a reddit account). The \"founder\" of the sub /u/skeen had been a very inactive mod for his entire tenure as the head moderator. This led to a lot of low quality content making it to the front page of /r/atheism and subsequently /r/all \n\n/u/jij saw that skeen had been inactive for a while, basically skeen hadn't looged onto his account or done any actual modding. So jij did what any right minded person would do, assumed skeen was away permanently and requested to become the head mod of /r/atheism \n\nThe head mod is above all the other mods i.e they can't be removed by mods unless they break the ToS. jij seeing the place /r/atheism had become with its low quality memes and facebook \"pwns\" decided that all image submissions had to be made in a self post to try and balance out the submissions so higher quality content was making it to the front page.\n\nThe drama started when the petulant teenagers, [a \"40 year old PhD graduate\" who later turned out to be a fraud](_URL_0_) and a host of other people started having a tantrum over the whole thing.\n\nThey were either not listening, or were just too enlighhtened to understand that images weren't banned they just had to be made in the form of a self post. Lots and lots of drama followed. But to be honest, the quality of /r/atheism (minus the bitching) has improved 100 fold since the new rules were brought in. I hope they stay."
]
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1fzdeh/im_a_40_year_old_academic_with_a_phd_and_i_also/caf9v2o"
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88i2zp | how did those 'magic eye' posters from the 90's work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88i2zp/eli5_how_did_those_magic_eye_posters_from_the_90s/ | {
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"Have you ever looked at a repeated pattern like a chain link fence and suddenly felt that it was too close to you? \n\nOur eyes produce 3D effects by looking for agreement between what the left and right see and assuming what looks similar is the same object from slightly different angles. Our brain then gets to work making guesses about how far away it is based on the slight changes in angles. \n\nWhen you look at a repeated pattern, it is possible for each eye to be looking at a different part and find that the pattern is shifted slightly, giving the illusion of depth. A *stereogram* (magic eye is a brand name) works by presenting a repeated pattern and cutting out a shape of a hidden object in that pattern and shifting it a few pixels to the right or left. When you're eyes see the discrepancy, your brain interprets it as the same image but from a slightly different angle due to being a little closer than the rest of the page. \n\nThis is why it helps to \"unfocus\" your eyes. ",
"Follow-up question: Why do some people (like myself) *never* see what they're supposed to in these things?"
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4t3j17 | what enables us to continually store more data on smaller components (i.e. what is the science behind moore's law)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t3j17/eli5_what_enables_us_to_continually_store_more/ | {
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"You'll find some useful replies from [previous times this was discussed here.](_URL_0_)"
]
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9omt5g | what is “safe mode?” | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9omt5g/eli5_what_is_safe_mode/ | {
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"It’s a mode that disables all third party programs and software so only pre installed stuff runs. It’s used to diagnose problems with a computer so you can see if something you installed is causing issues",
"Safe mode is trying to start or operate something in the safest manner possible, not necessarily the fastest or best way, but the way which causes the least amount of potential problems. \n\nSo for a computer, safe mode doesn't run anything unless it's absolutely necesarry to start the computer. Giving you the best chance of getting to a place where you can fix a problem. ",
"Implying you mean a windows environment booting in safe mode.\n\nWhen you start up your computer, it loads a *lot* of drivers, .dll's, and other software so it can function.\n\nWhen you use safe mode booting, it restricts the list of drivers, .dll's, and so on, to only ones that are from Microsoft (sometimes also ones from the manufacturer).\n\nThis means that the environment is considered \"safe\" without any 3rd party software that might cause conflicts, crashes, or other system instability - while still having the software it needs to launch and do generally 'basic' computer stuff. It's useful for attempting to weed-out bugs & crashes in a system where you're trying to troubleshoot whether it's a specific software issue, or a hardware issue.\n\nAnecdotal: I was able to fix a fairly frequent crash I'd get when trying to transfer data between the several hard drives I've got. Safe-mode allowed me to rule out any driver conflicts/software issues, as the crash would still happen while using safe mode. After some more digging around and replacing one of the cables, it solved my specific issue.",
"For Microsoft Windows, Safe Mode loads the operating system with the absolute minimum number of drivers (programs responsible for operating the computer's hardware) necessary. Drivers with less capability, but also fewer chances for defects, are selected. For example, a default, low-resolution VGA video driver is installed, rather than that whiz-bang GPU driver that is in it's 850th revision.\n\nNetworking is minimal, or not installed.\n\nThe purpose of all this is to avoid loading the software that was responsible for crashing the computer, leaving it in an unknown state (Windows keeps a record of clean shutdowns; if the computer restarts and finds the record 'dirty', it knows that a clean shutdown didn't occur, and that triggers Safe Mode.\n\nFrom safe mode, it should be possible to replace or remove the offending driver(s), and get the PC stable again.",
"you know when you wake up in the morning and you barely have enough strength or mind power to really do anything... that's basically safe mode. it loads just enough drivers and software to \"wake\" up the PC and keep it functioning at that level, but it can't do very much.\n"
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4bjixb | how do you prove that 1 and 1 equals 2? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bjixb/eli5_how_do_you_prove_that_1_and_1_equals_2/ | {
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"You write a 300+ page proof about it, apparently:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFirst you have to rigorously define and prove what you mean by '1', '2', '+', and '='.",
"It's often said that it took 162 pages of Principia Mathematica to prove 1+1=2, but the point of their work was to see how little we have to assume to build up all of mathematics. They'd really spent most of those pages defining what they meant by \"1\", \"2\", \"+\" and \"=\".\n\nGiven the normal axioms that we'd usually assume for natural numbers, it's almost true by definition. We've assumed that we know how to find the number after a given number, and we define \"2\" to mean \"the number after 1\". We define addition as \"a+1 = (the number after a)\" and \"a+(the number after b) = the number after (a+b)\". But then \"1+1\" is just the number after 1, which we've already decided is called 2.",
"I really don't think I could explain this to an actual five year old, but maybe I can simplify things a bit.\n\nA proof in math depends on what you start form. In a lot of math they work very hard to clearly state everything they assume, assume as few things as possible, and derive as much as possible from those assumptions. The problem is that when you do this the logic becomes difficult to follow. You can't assume that addition or multiplication has any meaning, or that digits have any meaning until defined.\n\nHowever, you can define a lot of math by starting with a [small set of assumptions](_URL_0_). In which you define a number of basic rules like:\n\n* x=x (well obviously, but as I said, we want to clearly state everything.\n* if x=y then y=x\n* if x=y and y=z then x=z\n\nYou also define a \"successor function\" which maps x to x' following the assumptions:\n\n* 0 is a natural number\n* if x is a natural number then x' is a natural number\n* the is no x such that x' = 0\n* if y isn't 0, then there is an x such that x' = y\n* if S is a subset of the natural numbers, and 0 is in S, and if x being in S means that x' is in then S = N. (I know this one seems odd.)\n\nWe need to define some other digits.\n* 1 = 0'\n* 2 = 1'\n\nI guess we could talk about 0' and 0'', but I think 1 and 2 are easier to understand. :)\n\nFinally we need to define addition (+):\n\n* If y = 1, then define x + y = x'\n* If y isn't 0, then there is a z such that z' = y, and x + y = (x + z)'\n\nSo to prove 1+1=2 what we're really doing is proving that what the successor function does is just add one, so x' = x+1. The challenge is that it despite the name \"successor\" it isn't obvious that's the only thing the function could be.\n",
"In Mathematics, you can prove things by starting with assumptions and using logic to find statements that are true, given those assumptions.\n\nSo, if you want to prove 1+1=2 (or anything, really), you have to ask, \"What are my starting points?\" These starting points are called axioms.\n\nIt turns out that there's a few different popular axiomatic systems in Mathematics:\n\n* Euclidean Geometry\n* Peano Axioms\n* PM (the axiomatic system from Principia Mathematica)\n* Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (aka, ZF). It also comes with an optional axiom, the Axiom of Choice, making it ZFC.\n\nEuclidean Geometry can be fun because you can prove things with some scratch paper, a pencil, a straight edge, and a compass. It's a very geometric set of axioms. I don't think the 1+1=2 proof would be very interesting in Euclidean geometry though.\n\nPeano Axioms are nice because they're decently simple. They cover natural numbers and their arithmetic. This is probably a good place to start if you want an approachable proof for 1+1=2. See here for a quick rundown of the Peano axioms & a 1+1=2 proof: _URL_0_\n\nPrincipia Mathematica was a comprehensive attempt to get cover all of mathematics. As such, it's pretty low level and abstract - you have to do a whole lot of proving to get to something as fancy as 1+1=2. It takes a few hundred pages of proving in Principia Mathematica to get there. You can stop when you get to this proof: _URL_1_.\n\nZFC is used heavily in modern math. It's also quite low level and abstract, but has a few modern improvements on PM.\n\nThis is by no means an exhaustive list of axiomatic systems. The key takeaway here is that if you want to prove something, you have to start somewhere and work your way towards your proof. Your path will be different depending on where you start."
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y9br1 | how does ikea get away with essentially being a non-profit? also, is this true? | Follow up questions: Do they pay taxes in Sweden? The ultimate question is: is it morally ethical to shop at Ikea? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y9br1/eli5_how_does_ikea_get_away_with_essentially/ | {
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"Ikea is -thanks to its founder- controlled by INGKA Holding., a Dutch corporation, which in turn is controlled by a tax-exempt, not-for-profit Dutch foundation.\n\nThey make large profits - €2.538 billion in 2009.\n\nThey pay various taxes in the Netherlands ( not Sweden ) but their profits are not taxed because they are non-profit. That just means the owners have to use loopholes to gain this profit.\n\n > is it morally ethical to shop at Ikea?\n\nThey are still involved in various charities, with the UNICEF for instance.\n\nHowever, they have had problems with justice: this year for instance, they have been accused to spying on its (French) employees and clients by illegally accessing French police records.\n\nSo, in short: more or less.\n\nSource : Wikipedia, Ikea (fr, en)\n\n"
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31ncan | why does reddit care so much about privacy? | I understand the slippery slope argument, but in it's current state is the government abusing the information it gathers? Am I naive for thinking the government doesn't really care about most of the illegal stuff I do (piracy, drug use, etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31ncan/eli5_why_does_reddit_care_so_much_about_privacy/ | {
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" > but in it's current state is the government abusing the information it gathers?\n\nIt's generally accepted that at the very least the NSA projects in the USA are violating legal protections Americans have about government search and seizure, so yes in that context.\n\n",
"Good question. You see a lot of people who seem to be very concerned about online privacy. But if there were some terrorist incident which was hatched and plotted on the internet a lot of these same people would be really angered if it turned out that the authorities were caught completely unaware. My feeling is that, if you want absolute privacy, don't share unencrypted information on the web, don't discuss matters openly over the telephone, and don't send uncoded messages in the mail. Otherwise just assume there's a risk but it's a rather low risk.",
"I think most people are ok with governments having the physical capability of tapping a phone, intercepting email, and other such suveillance. But they want that power to be safeguarded behind court orders for specific cases.\n\n > Am I naive for thinking the government doesn't really care about most of the illegal stuff I do (piracy, drug use, etc.)?\n\nHere in the UK we literally had local councils using anti-terrorism laws to snoop on people putting their wheelie bins out on the wrong day, and people who didn't put their dog's shit in a bag. You bet your bottom dollar that the government would just *love* to nail you for anything it possibly can."
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amxfba | what is a shell, and orbital, and a suborbital in an atom? | How are each of these structured and what do they represent? I am having a very hard time visualizing them and how they interact with each other.
& #x200B;
Please help me pass this intro chemistry class lmao | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amxfba/eli5_what_is_a_shell_and_orbital_and_a_suborbital/ | {
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"You have a nucleus with a bunch of positively charged protons. It forms an atom that wants to have the same number of negatively charged electrons. Due to some quantum mechanics stuff, the electrons don't fall all the way into the nucleus and only so many electrons can fit into a certain amount of space. This means that filling up our atom with electrons is like filling a jar with Skittles. They all fall to the bottom, but eventually the bottom layer fills up and they start to stack up above the bottom of the jar.\n\nSo if I have an atom with 1 electron (hydrogen), I get one electron sitting as close to the nucleus as possible, just like having 1 skittle in the jar. That's the first shell. The first shell can hold 2 electrons before you start stacking that next layer.\n\nNow my analogy gets a little weird. Since an atom has 3-dimensional space, the further you get from the nucleus, the more space you have to \"stack\" electrons. So to fit the analogy, it's more like our jar is cone shaped, so that each layer fits more and more Skittles.\n\nThis is what orbitals are. They're new space to stack more electron-skittles. The suborbitals are just a way of dividing up that space into smaller chunks. It's easier to describe orbital vs. suborbital with a picture [like this](_URL_0_). Look in the row for the P orbital in that diagram. Due to some more quantum mechanics, the space the electrons get to fill up are shaped like butterfly-barbell thingies. There's a vertical, sideways, and front-back one of these suborbitals. The three of them together make up the whole P orbital.\n\nSo the first layer is 2 electrons (1S orbital). Now we make a new layer a little further out with 2 more electrons (2S orbital) plus 6 electrons (2P orbital) that we now have room for on the second layer (2 + 2 + 6 = 10 between both layers). The next layer only still has S and P so we get another 8 electrons in that layer. The next one we unlock the D orbital which gives us space for 10 extra electrons per layer, and so on."
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dlydm4 | how exactly does product-placement work in movies? do the producers ask for example nike to pay them and they use their stuff? or do they just say 'we need a sport brand, who wants the spot'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlydm4/eli5_how_exactly_does_productplacement_work_in/ | {
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"Probaby both. \nThe product marketing people are looking for opportunities to make their brand visible.\nThe movie producers are looking for ways to fund the production.",
"The product manufacturer pays to have their product on the movie. I forgot the name of the movie. But the first one to do it was a black and white movie. And I believe the product was a diamond ring. Movies have marketing departments that may reach out to companies about having their product used on a movie. Or bigger movies, your Avengers of the world will have companies reaching out to them. They’ll negotiate the price and how the product is used. And the director will just have to deal it.",
"They may ask for a specific company, they may ask several companies, or companies may ask them. There is no \"exactly\" because it can happen a lot of different ways.",
"A bit of both and companies reach out to movie studios to make their intentions known, \"we want to have a product placement opportunity, let's be in contact\". Networking is important, if you have a personal relationship at some level, it is easier to just casually ask for possible interest.. Nike can make a multi-year contract with the production company that then tries to insert that product in as many movies as they can. This is the \"man\" coming to tell a the producer to add a scene with a soda can in it and the director begrudgingly agrees as that means he can make another scene more expensive. Some directors have more problem with it than others... \n\n\nSome product placement deals do allow director or producer to get access to resources that would be otherwise impossible. So it is not all bad either, common examples are vehicles. You can have latest models before they even hit sales that you can then crash thru a brickwall for our viewing pleasure. Or get access to facilities that would otherwise require massive set building and/or CGI. \n\n\nThe most obvious product placements are there solely for the bottom line.... The kind that allows for better production value are more subtle..",
"Isn’t that how reeces’s got popular after E.T.?",
"Same way they sell any ad, sometimes they chase after customers, sometimes customers chase after them. Media companies have entire divisions devoted to selling ads, and product makers have entire divisions devoted to marketing. These people work with each other all the time, there are open channels of communication in which to float ideas.\n\nAlso, contrary to popular belief, you do **not** need permission to use a product in a movie or on TV. There are many reasons why a producer might choose not to, but it is not a legal issue.",
"Most of it is preexisting relationships with the production companies, but movies like the Fast and Furious franchise have used Corona as the official drink of the series without any sort of contract or agreement with Corona. The cast just likes Corona."
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5ih5v7 | why do some people find glasses attractive, even though they are a means to repair what could be genetic, and thus bad for evoloution? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ih5v7/eli5_why_do_some_people_find_glasses_attractive/ | {
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"They cover the face and hide some irregularities about it.\n\nAlso Glasses may represent intellectual capacities and some people may find that atractive.\n\nAlso it can highlight some people eyes (or eye's make up).\n\nHuman don't procriate like animals (they mate and then they forget about each other). It's not very usual for man to live with a woman and get kids from another just because of \"better genetics for evolution\".",
"I would guess the most direct answer to your question is we never evolved the ability to distinguish the difference. We consciously know they have difficulty seeing, but our biology doesn't recognize it since it's a new \"repair\". We are only bred to be turned off by things that have been around thousands of years, like missing or malformed limbs, skin abscesses, tremors, etc.\n\nGlasses are like breast implants because they correct to a preferred genetic state and biologically we don't recognize the difference, even if our higher brain functions do. It should also be pointed out that in addition to correcting vision, they also re- frame the face, and allow the wearer to accentuate some features and deemphasize others, further allowing biological corrections.",
"Glasses act as a sort of accessory, which could be interpreted as a primal sign of wealth or security. \n\nAlso glasses can give the impression of intelligence, which many people find attractive in itself."
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5awzw7 | fetal position usefulness | A little background for those who never had to do this.
In school, during our tornado drills, we would line up in the hallways then get on our elbows and knees tucking our head beneath our hands. It was uncomfortable, cramped, and as I think about, not really useful.
If there was a real tornado that caused damage to the school, wouldn't that position just ensure injury? Anything falling would hit your spine and possibly cause paralysis.
Is there something I'm missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5awzw7/eli5_fetal_position_usefulness/ | {
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"Your spine is pretty strong and less likely to be injured by something falling than your head or neck. The purpose of the position is to protect your head. ",
" > Is there something I'm missing?\n\nYour spine is very important but also fairly well protected with bone. The belly is much more vulnerable as there is a lack of ribs or any other bone structure to protect it.\n\nThe fetal position makes the best of a poor situation. Would you rather a piece of gravel to the bounced off the back of your head or your *eyes*? Probably the boney skull is the best idea. How about being punched in the upper back vs punched just under your solar plexus? Probably the back is the best idea.\n\nIf you get hit with something that can shatter your back and paralyze you it could crush your rib cage and kill you anyway, or shatter your skull from any direction. The fetal position won't save you from being hit by a bus but if you have to be blasted by gravel and sticks it is the best way to minimize the damage."
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27tr2m | what's the difference between an argument and an explanation? | I've been attempting to understand these differences for a few days now, but I'm not coming to anything too concrete. Both are rational, but while explanations can be part of arguments, arguments are not a part of explanations? From what I seem to know:
* Argument:
-Answers "How do you know?"
~Establishing that she was murdered
-Purpose: To help understand how or why that fact occurs.
(How is this different than Explanation?)
* Explanation:
-Answers "Why is that so?"
~Why she was murdered
-Purpose: Provide a rational basis for believing the conclusion to be true.
So, is a statement like "The reason Gregory will be cold this winter is that he forgot to pay his gas bill again" an explanation or an argument?
Is something like " Since your philosophy essay is unclear and apparently trivial, you are almost certain to flunk this course" an argument, while " The reason you will almost certainly flunk this course is that your philosophy essay is unclear and apparently trivial" an explanation while they are essentially saying the same thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27tr2m/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_an_argument_and/ | {
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"They go together as part of what is called Rational Reconstruction. In an argument I use reason to support my conclusion. In an explanation I use fact or accepted fact to support my conclusion.\n\nSam ran away from the dog, therefore Sam is afraid of dogs. This is an argument because he may have ran for another reason.\n\nSam was bitten by a dog, this is why Sam is afraid of dogs. This is an explanation. It may not be the only one, but it is valid.\n\nSo for the statement \"The reason Gregory will be cold this winter is that he forgot to pay his gas bill again\". It is both. You use reason to assume Gregory will be cold. But you use explanation that he forgot to pay his bill. And you imply, by using again, that he has done so in the past. It also is a logic flaw called denial of the antecedent. You jump to the conclusion he will be cold. Then back up that conclusion with a fact that may or not be relevant. "
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29k2iz | why do people feel their rights are being taken away because of the hobby lobby decision? | I support the ACA. I voted for Obama twice and have never voted for the GOP. Generally I consider myself a liberal but on this issue I'm a little lost. Basically, I don't understand how if you still have access to birth control you have lost the right to access birth control because you cannot get it at free or reduced price. I understand there are benefits to people having birth control but not why and how they are rights. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29k2iz/eli5_why_do_people_feel_their_rights_are_being/ | {
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"Because many forms of birth control are quite expensive,making them unaffordable to someone making say 9 dollars an hour. Even b.c pills can get pricey when you're already struggling to pay rent. Part of what the aca was meant to do was to make birth control more financially accessible to lower income women.",
"For a lot of women, it is a health issue. Birth Control does a lot more that simply act as goal keeper for the womb. It also helps regulate hormones which help women (like my SO) with depression, weight issues, and (though this may just be her) migraines. \n\nThe main issue isn't the birth control or the so called \"Plan B\" pill. It's the fact that a corporation can decide that their CEO's morality is now your morality. So if you work for a company run by Jehovah's Witnesses, there is legal precedent for them to not cover blood transfusions or for a company run by Christian Scientist to refuse any medical coverage at all, other than Intercessory Prayer (which is just as useful as regular prayer, only louder). ",
"I don't mean this in an insulting way! But are you sure that you understand the ACA/PPACA/Obamacare in regard to this question?\n\n---------------\n\n\nIt's basically: (generally) businesses have to offer a healthcare plan which (generally) covers basic services at a (generally) reduced or free cost to employees. One of those services includes contraceptives. \n\nThat's the law as it stands.\n\nHobby Lobby argued:\n\n > We will provide a health insurance plan. But we have genuine religious objections to some contraceptives. So our health insurance plans that we offer should not cover said contraceptives.\n\nPeople are upset for a lot of reasons.\n\nOne reasons is that one of the basic services (female contraceptives) is now in the hands of the employer.",
"There's a lot of misinformation on this thread.\n\n*1. This was never about birth control pills. So anything that bases their argument on that is mistaken. The family (I'll get back to that) that owns Hobby Lobby claims that it was being forced to provide coverage for a different category, something called \"abortifacients\", which are used AFTER conception, and they equated to abortion. So, in their mind, they were being asked to cover something to which they had religious objections.\n\n*2. Hobby Lobby (HL) based their argument on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. The act stated that they could be compelled to go against their religious beliefs only if (among other things) it was the \"least restrictive way\" of accomplishing a goal. In this case, it was providing said contraception coverage. HL said, no, it's not the least restrictive way. There is another way that accomplishes both goals: provides their employees with the coverage, but does not force HL to be the one to do it (and so violating their religious beliefs): The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) already has such a plan, for non-profits and religious organizations. In the words of Justice Alito from yesteday's ruling:\n\n > \"In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage. The employees of these religious nonprofit corporations still have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contraceptives; and according to HHS, this system imposes no net economic burden on the insurance companies that are required to provide or secure the coverage.\"\n\nIn other words, there's already a system that allows employees the access they want. HL just wanted access to that system.\n\nWhat the US Supreme Court did yesterday was say that yes, THAT is the \"least restrictive way\" and that HL should have access to that plan.\n\nTheir ruling was very narrow, and they limited the application only to \"closely-held\" corporations. This is where we get back to the \"family-owned\" aspect of HL. This case would probably have been decided the other way if it was a public corporations, as the Justices held that in this case the beliefs of the owners were basically the beliefs of the company.\n\nTL;DR: No rights have been taken away. Court ruled that HL doesn't have to cover contraceptions since there is already a \"least restrictive way\" where employes can have the SAME coverage without HL having to provide it.\n\nAnd yes, my formatting sucks.\n\nEDIT: Thanks for the Gold. Now to figure out what to do with it. :)\n\n",
"The ruling itself is minorly grumble-worthy for those who really need Plan B or an IUD, because the latter can be really expensive. The bigger grumble is twofold:\n\n1. It further ratified the idea that corporations are people with religious rights that supersede those of their workers. That could get really hairy. It's one thing to be Amish and opt out of the system entirely, or even to be a Christian Scientist and opt out of medical care for your family. If a corporation can make moral decisions for me as a worker, does that mean I need to ask that in the interview, to make sure my and my employer's ideals on what goes into my hoo-haa are in alignment? What if the corporation finds Jesus after I've already been there for 10 years? \n\n2. It opened the door to further lawsuits from corporations with moral/ethical objections to Obamacare, dealing it a death of 1000 cuts. If Hobby Lobby can object to birth control, can a different group object to another medical treatment? Can atheists object to some part? ",
"It's also a senior issue. I'm pretty sure viagra is covered by their health plan, but birth control, which has other medical uses, is not. And it's based upon solely religious ethics. If your religion is inhibiting the lives of others, you may want to rethink your priorities. ",
"The ACA law mandates contraceptive care is covered. By allowing Hobby Lobby to \"opt out\" of covering this contraceptive care due to religious beliefs, the Supreme Court is giving a corporation people-like qualities and allowing them to bypass the law, but more importantly allowing the owners of the corporation to project their religion onto their employees. ",
"Why does the health insurance I receive need to be dictated by the morals and religious views of someone else?",
"To me, its the fact that they are cutting costs using womens health. I do not think this ruling would have happened had their objection been any other necessary medicine or medical procedure. But once again the health and.needs of women, particularly low income women, are being placed below the accounting books of corporations. In principle alone its infuriating. In practice its disgusting.",
"Because this is pretty clear. If my piece of shit cheap ass boss decides that a policy that doesn't cover things is cheaper, he'll hide behind religion. And, this is once again the Supreme Court deciding on caselaw from the fucking bible. Fuck the bible and fuck Justice Long Dong Silver, that fucking hack should be in jail.",
"I just want to respond to something that's being thrown around a lot in discussing this issue.\n\nI'm really fucking tired of birth control being treated as a luxury. People keep saying either 'what if this decision was applied to blood transfusions!?' or people are responding with 'SCOTUS was very clear this ONLY applies to birth control\".\n\nThis doesn't NEED to be applied further than contraception. The problem is tat we view these things as optional. There are situations in which birth control IS as necessary medically as a blood transfusion or setting a broken bone.\n\nI was a teenager in high school when I got my IUD. I hadn't even kissed a boy let alone had sex. The reason I got it wasn't to prevent pregnancy. I got an IUD because I was having health problems and had a family history of those same health problems. My mother was hospitalized several times in my childhood as a result and eventually had to get a hysterectomy which caused her to go through a very early and extremely difficult menopause. I was in bad shape. I felt like I was falling apart. I was miserable . this was what I had to look forward to. Because of an unrelated family illness, my doctors were reluctant to put me on birth control pills (most would be WAY too high a dosage of birth control). An IUD was the only option I had medically. I got it and within months I felt like a normal person again. I was able to go back to living my life like a normal person.\n\nFor me, an IUD wasn't a choice. I have really annoying side effects as a result of the IUD. But I keep it because I NEVER want to go back to how I felt before it. I NEEDED an IUD. I'm tired of people treating an extremely necessary field of medicine as \"optional\" just because it only affects women. This isn't about birth control. It's about a private company deciding it knows better than doctors. I don't give a shit what your moral objections are. If my doctor decides I need medcine A and the United states government has decided that A is a completely reasonable and extremely effective medicine for my problem, then my employer has no right to tell me 'Nah, actually it's not really that important that you get that.\" \n\nHobby Lobby is passing on necessary medical costs on to other people because they don't feel like paying them. They shouldn't have a right to decide they don't feel like paying my health coverage because it doesn't fit into THEIR box of what necessary health coverage is. Other people have already decided it falls under necessary. Their opinion shouldn't be able to trump the entirety of the medical community. The are not doctors. They should not be able to effectively act as the doctors of all of their female employees.\n\nAnd IUDs are EXTREMELY expensive out of pocket. Very few women are able to cover the costs themselves. However, they're actually the most cost effective birth control long term on the market (about $1000 over 5 years vs $1800 assuming $30/month for BC pills). \n\nThey are screwing over the health of women because they can. And SCOTUS has just given them permission to. A company shouldn't have the right to deny paying for what has has been determined medically necessary because they don't feel like it. This decision just further highlights that we often view women's health issues as being less valid and important than general health problems (aka, the ones that effect men too)\n\nTL;DR: SCOTUS made sure to say this couldn't be applied to things like blood transfusions. Which just proves that they view birth control as less medically necessary than blood transfusions. SCOTUS are not doctors. Doctors have determined that BC *IS* a necessary medical intervention. SCOTUS and Hobby Lobby have ranked one field of medicine as less valid than others despite the fact that no actual doctors share that view. ",
"I'll swipe the NRA's rallying cry and pull out the \"slippery slope\" argument. While this may have been a narrowly worded decision, I think it's obvious that businesses owned by religious people will continue to push this until it IS about birth control and other healthcare items they may not like.",
"This is a classic supreme court ruling. The supreme court has now officially sat on the fence and decided to let this play out in the public domain. They both approved Obama Health Care and now have said that you can weasel out of it. Now the thing that decides will be the marketplace. \n\nThis is a tactic the Supreme Court will use from time to time. Instead of making a decision, they find a way to let the issue play out in the public domain, not in a courtroom. A wise decision. ",
"For the first time, the highest court in the country has said that business owners can use their religious beliefs to deny their employees a benefit that they are guaranteed by law.",
"Men have access to Viagra, Penis Pumps and Vasectomies through health insurance yet women can't even get birth control because of company's beliefs now. ",
"Look, it has NOTHING to do with birth control. Yea that's what this particular case is about, that this decision by the Supreme court has the potential to be FAAAAR reaching. \n\nStart off by saying that hypothetically a wealthy Jehovah's Witness buys a company with say 50,000 employees. That person will be within his rights to categorically state that the company's health insurance policy will no longer cover things like blood transfusions. Under the rules outlined by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby ruling, this would be a company that was closely held by a small number of people (in this case one Jehovah's Witness) so regardless of the 50,000 employees right to not have to choose between increased risk of death while in surgery or be left with crippling debt...the single dude's religious beliefs allows him to refuse to pay for something like blood transfusions in their health insurance plan. \n\nNow I don't know about you...but as far as I'm concerned FUCK THAT. The religious beliefs held by some should have NO SWAY over the health and welfare of other people. ",
" > Basically, I don't understand how if you still have access to birth control you have lost the right to access birth control because you cannot get it at free or reduced price. I understand there are benefits to people having birth control but not why and how they are rights. \n\nThey're not. A government privilege is not a right. A right cannot be taken away. Folks misunderstand the difference between a right and a benefit.",
"Mother Jones clearly has an axe to grind, but I found this article instructive:\n\n[Hobby Lobby Retirement Investments](_URL_0_)",
"Some people clearly think women aren't smart enough to provide for themselves. ",
"Basically our government is saying corporations getting more legal rights/opinions than the government gives women rights over their bodies. ",
"Yikes, you think this is ugly, imagine what a single payer rollout will look like! ",
"So, health insurance is part of your compensation for doing your job, the same as your paycheck and other things you may or may not be receiving.\n\nIn its simplest form, the argument about individual rights boils down to \"why do *they* get to tell *me* how to use *my* earned compensation?\"\n\nThe common analogy is that we'd never let an employer say that you can't spend your paycheck on certain things, so why should your employer get to say you can't use your health insurance on certain things? Again, both of them are part of your payment for working for the employer, so by this argument both of them are yours to use as you see fit (and just as money you receive from your paycheck is yours and not your employer's anymore, so too is your health insurance yours and not your employer's).",
"Nothing regarding what goes on between you and your doctor--NOTHING--should be of any concern whatsoever to your employer (yes, the rare cases where some health issue is directly connected to the safe performance of your job aside), and they have zero moral right to claim it does.\n\nThis is a bad, bad day for society in general, and a great day for the people who want to coerce everyone else into living by their rules. This issue won't end here, I assure you.\n",
"When profit generating entities make their money based on religious arguments it tends to not go over well with the public.",
"People like free things.",
"The entire problem arises because in the US we require employers to provide health insurance. This is a stupid arrangement for many reasons. ",
"(1) birth control is *not just* preventing women from getting pregnant ...\n(2) The problem with the decision is not really about birth control but about setting the precedence that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act can be applied to (closely-held) corporations as well",
"The rights of corporations trumped the rights of people.",
"Why do employers still provide health insurance anyway? That's a side effect of World War II. Why shouldn't businesses simply pay their employees more, the employees in turn being incentivized to carry some minimum level of health insurance on their own.\n\nImagine a system where employers provide groceries. You get paid less money, and in return are allowed to choose from a pre-selected list of meal plans designed by the employer. If you want something else, you're free to buy it on your own, but you're not allowed to use the money that's already been withheld from you for that exact purpose because your employer has different ideals. It makes no sense.",
"If you get raped, and you are a hobby lobby female employee, hobby lobby will fuck you again by not paying for your healthcare. Getting double fucked isn't any fun when one of the fucks is a rape, and one of the other fucks is them fucking with your life & your body. On a side note, getting double fucked may actually be enjoyable in other circumstances.\n",
"it gives corporations more personhood and gives the religious special rights."
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59ja1s | why are corruption, poor governance and low standards of living more prominent in sub-saharan africa than in any other region in the world? | Why are other parts of the world including but not limited to South America, Europe and Asia not as affected?
Did earlier European intervention make them "grow up too fast"? Is it a cultural thing? Is it an issue of morals (greed, envy)?
What are they doing wrong that the rest of the world seem not to be doing? And WHY are they doing it?
Links.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
_URL_3_
_URL_2_
_URL_4_
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ja1s/eli5_why_are_corruption_poor_governance_and_low/ | {
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"If you've got the time and the inclination, I'd recommend [Guns, Germs and Steel](_URL_0_) which, if you search, you'll find a lot of active discussions on it.\n\n\"The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority.\"",
"The short answer? Colonialism. Some colonial masters, like the Belgians and French, exercised complete control over the colonies, not letting the citizens have any real control over their country, we see a major example of this at the Berlin Conference, where the Europeans basically partitioned Africa without any input from Africans. In addition, because of that lack of African input, borders were drawn without regard for tribal differences, so often, even once the country was free, its people would have serious, long standing differences. Going back to the mother country exerting complete control, once the colony became independent, there was nobody who had leadership experience, because nobody had been in a position of authority, as the masters often tried to sever even tribal positions from society. Hell, they often imprisoned people who could be leaders, Nelson Mandela's release was not common, many leaders like him were killed or imprisoned and never let out. The Europeans also established a sort of hierarchy in some nations, notably the Hutus and the Tutsis, who became bitter rivals after. One argument that is commonly used against the Europeans that I disagree with is that the Europeans stole the African's natural resources. They did, but as we can see, the African continent still has massive quantities of oil, gold, diamonds, and more. Furthermore, the religious differences in certain countries also play a role in the poverty. For instance, in Sudan, the Northern population is muslim, while the southern population is not, creating massive tension. Finally, without the use of equipment to extract natural resources, there isn't a great deal of opportunity for economic advancement.",
"A country with low-productivity population does not care for the wellbeing of its citizens.\n\nA ruler of a country which gets most of its income (taxes) from natural resources does not care if his people are well fed and educated. They are worhtless for him, anyway. All he needs is 1% well fed people in the military and a few rich generals to keep them in line. In fact, if the population becomes more affluent they will have both time and resources to think about his overthrowing.\n\nA ruler of a country which derives most of its income from citizens' work has to keep them well fed, educated and happy. Otherwise they'd stop working and the income would be lost.\n\nBoth extremes are stable - revolution is almost impossible in a rich, democratic state, as an emerging despot could not reliably control the wealth of the nation (as it's spread over all the citizens). A democratic movement in a very poor nation, on the other hand, is nearly as unlikely, as anybody controlling the natural resources (and there has to be *somebody*) would have enough power to become a despot. \nThe middle ground (states that aren't exactly starving, but rather poor) is unstable. There will be pushes for either despotism or democracy, but any semi-successfull push for despotism will destroy the wealth of the citizens and turn the nation towards poverty. \n\nMost of Africa was colonial. The rulers cared very little about the education and wealth potential of locals. When they gained independence they started in the poverty zone as the result, with all the despotism and corruption it entails."
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Index_of_African_Governance"
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6p7edu | why we can't we convert any object with mass into desired energy? | I recently read that 1kg of mass equates to 90 quadrillion joules, which is approximately the amount of energy consumed by the entire world in an hour. So, according to Einstein's famous equation, we should be able to convert any mass into energy. So is it possible to convert a 1kg rock into any desired form of energy? And if this is possible, is the reason this practice is not done the fact that a significant amount of energy is released in other forms that we do not need, thus reducing efficiency?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p7edu/eli5_why_we_cant_we_convert_any_object_with_mass/ | {
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"Einstein's equation is for an ideal, not for actual practice. We do get energy from mass, but it is impossible to harness all of it because we are trying to harness it with inherently imperfect systems. Burning something generates heat. That heat can be used to boil water, but some of it will just heat up the casing and some of it will fade off into the surrounding air. It is an error in logic to assume that things operate at their ideal, perfect state. ",
"It is theoretically possible, but the rock is stable as it is, to convert a rock to energy you need to spend quite a lot of energy first. \n\nImagine it like this - a bowling ball is inside a 1 km deep well on top of 8 km mountain, technically it has potential energy from being 7 km high, but practically you have to first pull it up to get anything out of it.\n\n",
"You can, but the process of doing so must not be in violation of any other physical laws. The only way we know of doing that right now is using antimatter, and we have none to use. There are just requirements that we cannot fill."
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9wozc2 | if light switches work by breaking the circuit when you switch them, how do lights that are controlled by multiple switches that change direction based on each other work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wozc2/eli5_if_light_switches_work_by_breaking_the/ | {
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"A normal light switch is either open or close\n\nA three way light switch connects hot to either wire A or wire B. If both switches are set to A then the light turns on, if they're both set to B then the light turns on. If they're in different positions then the circuit is open and the light is off. See the rough wiring diagram below\n\nHot---Switch < === > Switch----Light----Neutral",
"Two wires, from switch to switch. \nIf both switches are closed on wire a, or wire b the circuit is complete. Light on.\nIf one switch is closed on wire a, and the other is closed on wire b, the circuit is broken twice, no light."
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qlfh7 | what would it take for a computer to become "self aware"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qlfh7/eli5_what_would_it_take_for_a_computer_to_become/ | {
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"Computer scientists have been discussing what computer self awareness would even look like for 60 years so simple answer is we still don't know.",
"There are a couple of issues:\n\n1. **What does being \"self aware\" even mean?**\n\nThis is the main problem. Even today, we still have a fantastically limited understanding of just how the brain works. Sure, we understand that neuronic nerve cells build up electrical charges to a certain threshold and then fire. What we do not understand is how these billions upon billions of neurons firing simultaneously manage to somehow form what we know as our consciousness.\n\nTo understand this, let's say you wanted to prove me that you were an authentic, conscious, self-aware being. How would you do it? There is a simple answer -- \"I'd have a conversation with you.\" -- but that answer is not nearly comprehensive enough. If we could write a chat-bot to realistically hold a conversation, it would qualify as being 'self aware' even when we know it is not. (This is the basis of the Turing Test).\n\nI am of the position that it is impossible to know whether anything other than yourself truly possesses consciousness. It's possible, however unlikely, that everyone else is simply following a routine script of actions and behaviors, while you are independently living your life. You can't prove consciousness, and you can't disprove consciousness.\n\n2. **If we knew what \"awareness\" was, could we write a program for it?**\n\nMaybe. Who knows. I'd lean towards \"no\" here, however, because the brain's chemical processes are analog, where as computers are digital.\n\n3. **If we could write a program for it, could we even run it?**\n\nAt this time, almost certainly not. The computational power of our brains is magnificent. From some estimations I've heard, the brain can store 2,500,000 GB (2.5PB) of information, and can perform up to 100 Million Instructions per Second (MIpS). Some of the latest Intel processors can only perform 11,000 MIpS.",
"This is probably a better question for AskScience.",
"I'll begin by explaining that there are two major approaches to the question of synthetic intelligence, the \"neural network\" approach, and what I call the \"explicitly-typed\" or \"standard\" approach. I'm going to give an intuitive answer to the standard approach.\n\n\nThe first thing you need is a **recursive input-output loop**. You need some way of taking the state of your system and making that an input to the system. For human-level intelligence, this happens in multiple ways:\n\n* We are aware of our own thoughts. We can perceive our own thoughts and react to them. We can also describe them.\n\n* We are aware of our own actions. When we do something, we can be aware that we had a choice, and that the actions we take our not simply \"the natural behavior of reality.\" We are influential, and we can *know* this. (This is called \"agency.\")\n\n* We are aware of our capabilities. We know how to move our appendages, and we know that they are our appendages.\n\nIf you can do all that, then you are self aware. There is really no computational problem in \"knowing\" these things: Your computer \"knows\" how many disk drives it has, and it knows how to control them, for example. The problem is that it would *claim* to know anything, because we haven't figured out how to tell it what *knowing* is.\n\nSo this is the philosophical meat of the question. All of these bullets are similar manifestations of the same problem, and I would claim that we have to solve a **linguo-structural problem**. This problem is two-fold: how do we get a machine to learn a language, and how do we get a machine to use a language.\n\nThere is a historical debate about how humans learn language, and I believe that today, most researchers understand that language is meaningful due to *usage patterns*, and that it is learned by recognizing these patterns. It is a matter of debate about how hard wired we are to this identification process. Given an arbitrary input, there are nearly infinite ways to label and process different patterns in the input, but we don't really understand how to decide which ones to select and remember. You can't process them all. \n\nIn other words, we don't understand how we make decisions, so we can't make a computer make the same kinds of decisions. For us, it is rather hard-wired, and mathematically, it is impossible to generalize the process completely. (Which would fix the problem real quick.)\n\nSo that's really the crux of the problem, though it is admittedly abstract and unclear... \n",
"A computer stores information as binary bits, 1's and 0's if you will. \n\nIt is created in such a way that it will perform different manipulations of those bits depending on the pattern of bits it has in different locations.\n\nBut the computer does not know or understand any meaning to those bits, it just acts in a predetermined way with them. \n\nFor a computer to become self aware, it would have to understand what those bits mean and then understand how those bits affect it and ultimately be aware that the meaning of those bits define itself and how it understands things. \n\nAnother way of saying it is that computers only understand Syntax, which is meaning in the way symbols are combined or ordered. Computers would need to understand Semantics, which is the meaning of symbols. "
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2akkhf | what's with all the stories about uk ministers being pedophiles? | I subscribed to some top UK sub-reddits and I keep seeing lots of stories about various (seemingly right-wing, seemingly former) politicians ensnared in child sex stuff? But are they really? Wouldn't we have heard about this more broadly in the US if so? What exactly is going on here? Just muck-racking, or something real? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2akkhf/eli5_whats_with_all_the_stories_about_uk/ | {
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"There's a lot of media attention about this following the death of Jimmy Savile, a well-known celebrity; after his death, it emerged that he had been systematically abusing children when he was at the height of his fame, and his tireless work for children's charities was a way of giving him easy access to children.\n\nThe investigation into these claims found evidence of what appears to have been a culture of abuse at the BBC at the time, and only recently another popular entertainer was jailed for similar offences.\n\nWhere it gets murky is that Savile was a great friend of Margaret Thatcher. Not only that, but there is a great deal of evidence that some politicians had also committed sexual crimes of one sort or another, including child sexual abuse. Not just right-wing politicians either: the late Cyril Smith, of the Liberal Party, appears to have been a serial offender. He had often visited a place called the Elm Guest House, now the subject of a police investigation into whether it was the venue for parties at which children were groomed by members of the establishment, including politicians.\n\nThe latest story involves a former social worker who claims that he had warned people that he thought there was a paedophile network at Westminster, but his warnings were ignored. He has claimed that the authorities did nothing because there were too many people involved, but the man who at the time was minister for health has said he hadn't heard of any such thing and asked why this social worker let the matter drop there (this was in 1992) instead of taking it further. Another story is that the woman heading the government's own investigation into these allegations kept the identity of one of the alleged abusers secret because he was a bishop, and she didn't want the tabloid press to start printing stories about the church's involvement.\n\nIt's something real for definite, although of course there will be a lot of muck-raking mixed in. I suspect that the reason you're not hearing about this in the US is that it's (a) old news (this happened in the 1990s) and (b) on the other side of the Atlantic, involving people you'll have never heard of.",
"It is alleged that in the 70s and 80s that several high profile politicians and members of the Church of England were involved in child abuse. Evidence of this was supposedly presented to the Home Secretary (The minister responsible for Law and order) but no further action was taken.\n\nIn the light of evidence of widespread abuse by a now dead MP , Cyril Smith, there have been calls for a new inquiry, but it seems many of the documents have disappeared.\n",
"This is all happening following the revelations that Jimmy Saville (TV presenter and general celebrity) was a prolific paedophile and sexual predator from the 1960s onwards. Although Saville died before any of the allegations became public knowledge this has led to a police investigation called Operation Yewtree. \n\nOperation Yewtree has resulted in significant numbers of people coming forward to claim they were sexually abused in the past (some claims dating back to the 1950s) by prominent celebrities and public figures such as politicians. \n\nThe only politician that I have heard named is Cyril Smith who was a Liberal Democrat MP who died in 2010.\n\nThe biggest criticism of Yewtree is that, because of the historic nature of the claims, it relies almost entirely on the testimony of the alleged victims. \n\nThe current allegations are that a former now deceased Tory (right wing) politician passed a dossier on suspected paedophiles in the UK parliament to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan in the early to mid 1980s. Leon Brittan has stated that he handed this on to the police however it subsequently disappeared along with over 100 other papers the Home Office held on paedophile activities. \n\nAt present no living politicians have been named (although Leon Brittan has been questioned by the police) but some newspapers in the UK are claiming that over 20 former and current politicians could be implicated. "
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5wi7g4 | why do they say that "glass flows over time?" and why has this been proven false? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wi7g4/eli5_why_do_they_say_that_glass_flows_over_time/ | {
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"Some people mistakenly thought that glass would flow over time and used the fact that very old stained glass windows would have thicker glass at the bottom of the panes.\n\nThis was proven false because it is false. The glass panes are thicker at the bottom because of the manufacturing process of glass in the past, not because it flows over time.",
"Well, glass is an amorphous solid, meaning that the molecules do not form any discernible consistent structure as it transitions from liquid to solid, nor does it have a set 'freezing' or 'melting' point. If you freeze water, you can clearly see different parts freezing at different times, and any particular piece is either liquid, or solid. In glass, it starts out as a liquid, and just gets more and more viscous, eventually resembling a solid. This is one of the reasons why some say that it flows over time, even in solid form. \n\nAnother is that if you look at the windows of really old houses (100+ years), the windows are thicker at the bottom than at the top. However, they were installed that way. Back then, glass couldn't be made perfectly flat. So a pane of glass would usually have a thick side, and a thin side. They were always installed with the thick part on the bottom.\n\nAs far as I'm aware, the idea hasn't been exactly disproven, but the common evidence cited to claim that it does flow has been disproven, leaving it as an argument with no evidence to back it up."
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3y8u63 | why do some people's personalities completely change when they are drunk? | I am a very easy going guy but when I got blackout drunk I had the tendency to become an overly aggressive jackass. I have since quit drinking but the question remains; why do some people become different when they are drunk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y8u63/eli5_why_do_some_peoples_personalities_completely/ | {
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"Alcohol basically has an anti anxiety effect. A person's level of anxiety is a huge part of their personality. Some people (I am one of them to an extent) are extra nice because they feel if they are even a bit rude, people would stop talking to them. Now, when one gets drunk, this filter disappears, and they lose the need to try to impress people and be honest about what they feel. \n\nFor someone who has a higher anxiety level, this sudden loss of anxiety can be a new and unnatural state and causes a \"too free\" or aggressive behaviour. While someone who doesn't have huge anxiety levels in regular life will be more comfortable in this state.\n\nSimply put it depends how much anxiety you have in your sober state.",
"Alcohol F's with your judgement. If you're easy-going, and you're aware of that, then that means you know what douchy people are like and that you shouldn't do that. If you're drunk, you tend to act on what you're thinking more carelessly than you would sober. It also tend to dumb you down a bit. You basically become more primal, acting on instinct and impulse.",
"Alcohol inhibits glutamate, the general 'go' signal, and enhances gaba, the 'stop' signal. This double-edged effect inhibits your prefrontal cortex, which is the home of rational decision making and cause/effect consequences. By inhibiting this part of your brain you don't think about the results of your actions, meaning you don't feel compelled to not do something. \n \nWhy some people change more than others, is an extension of each person's ability to handle alcohol. The number or sensitivity of the alcohol receptors can affect this; so can the number or sensitivity of the receptors of the down-stream neurons; or the efficiency of your liver to break down the drug.",
"The person you are when drunk is not a different person, it's just who you are when you simply don't give a fuck. For some people, a bit of alcohol can be a good thing - for others, anything but. Depends how much you give a fuck when you're sober, I guess."
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3b1ynq | why do bullets have curved tops rather than sharp, pointy tops? | It seems like a sharp top would pierce the target better, which is usually what a gun is intended to do, so why don`t they make them like that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b1ynq/eli5_why_do_bullets_have_curved_tops_rather_than/ | {
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"Bullets with sharp points are meant for maximum speed. The power of a bullet comes from momentum, which is a product of weight and speed. A high powered rifle round doesn't weigh much, but goes *really* fast. A blunt bullet is designed for closer range. The blunt tip will have *less* ability to cut through the target, so it will impart all of the energy in its momentum into the target. More energy = more damage. Hollow points maximize that effect by mushrooming on impact and imparting all of their energy into the target. ",
"Pointed tops don't aid piercing. Not unless they're reenforced with a hardened point. Penetration is based on the mass of the bullet and it's velocity. \n\nRifle rounds tend to have pointed tips because it allows for less drag on the bullet and most rifle bullets will be traveling at much faster speeds than pistol bullets.\n\nCurved, flat, or hollow tipped bullets are intended to expand at the tip as lead is soft. Pointed bullets use a mechanism called \"yaw\" where the bullet will flip end over end. Think of a pencil standing on a sharpened tip. When a bullet travels inside of a soft target the same principle applies and all of the weight in the back wants to flip over to the front. As the bullet turns over, it's still moving forward and crushing tissue across it's length rather than it's tiny diameter. So while the bullet is only 5mm in diameter, when measured lengthwise it may be 20mm long.\n\nPistol rounds move much slower, have a much smaller casing that has to be completely dedicated to filling it with powder, and need to crush tissue by virtue of expanding their tip of by the size of the bullet itself. A .45 ACP is 10mm in diameter and a rather fat bullet. Compare that to an M16 bullet which is 5.56mm in diameter. yet the 5.56mm will do more damage as it yaws through a body.",
"But you don't want to pierce the target. You want the bullet to flatten and widen, tumble or fragment. That will cause much more damage to the body.",
"ELI5: \nIt comes down to energy. The gun fires the bullet and puts 'energy' into the bullet. Where does the energy go?\nPointy bullets do pierce better. Certainly. But the purpose of a bullet (like it or not) is to kill. A bullet going clean 'in and out' is a very impressive puncture wound, but unless it hit something vital, isn't lethal. Only *some* of the bullets energy goes into the target. \nNow get a bullet that is rounded on the top. It's harder for the bullet to 'cut through'. But there's all this energy! Where does it go? It spreads outwards in the target it hits. You don't have to hit a vital organ. You just have to hit NEAR the vital organ to damage it. Thus the bullet does it's job. \nThere is another benefit. Let's suppose you're a good guy cop. A bad guy is waving a gun around and you have only 1 option left. Shoot the bad guy. If your bullet is pointy and travels through the bad guy (Even if you killed him/her!) it might continue on and hit someone else! Someone innocent. But if the bullet STOPS inside the bad guy, only the person hit gets hurt. ",
"I might misunderstood the question, but is it possible that you mean only the tip of the bullet or the whole shape?\n\nThe bullet tips are either curved, flat/hollow or sharp, depending on their use. Bullets injure people by giving off kinetic energy to the impacted tissue, as people have mentioned. The energy is related to the mass and velocity of a bullet (E=m*v^2 / 2).\n\nIf a bullet completely stops in the target, it gave off all its energy, but if it pierced it and continued moving, it gave off only a part of it.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThe flat/hollow ones are intended to expand (or mushroom) while in the target. That way, due to the spreading it is possible to give off the most energy to the body, creating a large wound and stopping the target. Relating to it, those bullets are not able to go through a target (overpenetrating it) and potentially harming anything that is behind it.\n\nThe curved ones are similar to the flat/hollow ones, but they do posses a certain penetrating power, and because of their shape they are able to force the impacted material to the side so that way they can pierce something. Because of it, they are not stopping/shattering at the point of impact but go some length through before stopping. If the material is thin, they go through it and are able to hit something behind it. When they hit a person, they do not mushroom/shatter, but stay mostly in one piece. Such bullets do not give off all energy at a short length, but spread it out a bit. Because of this, they have less stopping power in comparison to flat/hollow ones.\n\nThe sharp ones are intended to pierce the target, but this also means that they will go through the target, with a lot of the bullets kinetic energy remaining. Their primary intent is to wound the person, even if it has some kind of armor, and by being wounded it makes them unable to continue to fight in the conflict. Also, unlike the other ones, it has a much more aerodynamic body, which means that its flightpath isnt to be offset as much as a curved/flat/hollow one. That way it is able to be accurate at a longer distance.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIf you compare them one to an another, [this may be a bit of oversimplifying and generalizing, as there is a lot of specific ammunition that doesnt fall into these categories]:\n\nThe flat/hollow ones are intended to be used at a shorter distances, where you want your target to stop as instantly as possible, even if it means that they will die. Self preservation is of main importance. When shooting, you shoot to stop and kill.\n\nCurved ones are for for short distances, where you want to prevent your target to do any other moves, but still be able to talk to that person afterwards, not place it in a casket. Shooting them is to stop, wound and incapacitate.\n\nSharp ones are primarily used for medium to long distances, as on shorter lengths there exists that they will overpenetrate and possibly damage something that wasnt intended to be damaged. Shooting them is to pierce the body armor if the target has one, and to wound and incapacitate, thereby removing it from being active in combat.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nId mention the [declaration of st. petersburg](_URL_0_) and the [hague convention](_URL_1_) which are in relation to the military use of bullets.\n\nThey explicitly forbid the use of expanding bullets for military purpose as, though they create large wounds and stop the person from fighting, the shot person is still alive. Humans are able to endure large wounds, and it isnt like in the movies/games where being hit by a bullet means death, but primarily wounding and incapacitation. Expanding ammunition makes them suffer while in locations where they do not have access to proper medical assistance, unlike in cities (as when used by law enforcement/personal protection). The military use of firearm ammunition isnt to kill, but primarily to incapacitate the combatants and remove them from combat. Similarly, it is a reason why people try to forbid the flat/hollow bullets for civilian/police use, as they create large, harder to treat wounds and are much more likely to kill someone. You could consider such things inhumane, and they do have a point.\n\nOnly curved and sharp bullets are allowed as such to be used in military applications, and that only if they are fully jacketed (which means that they have a singular outer shell, which wont expand/shatter as it impacts). There do exist some exempts, but they are questionable at best.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNow, the other thing:\n\nReferring to the whole bullet (not including the casing), it can have flat or curved sides. Such shape is in relation to the aerodynamic properties of the flying bullet. Whilst flying, the air around the bullet moves alongside it, and as such it is possible to change the flight path, and thereby reducing the accuracy.\n\nFor shorter ranges it isnt as important to have a fully aerodynamic shape, because the offset created is negligible. If you check out some pictures of bullets that are not encased, you will see that most curved/flat/hollow bullets are generally flat, or just slightly irregular (e.g. 9mm, .45, .22, ...).\n\nIn comparison, for longer ranges, the bullets are certainly to be curved, be shaped somewhat like a teardrop. That way, the interference created by the air passing the bullet will be minimized, and enable a much better accuracy. (e.g. 5.45, 5.56, 7.62, ...)\n\n & nbsp;\n\nWell, i hope this isnt a tl;dr, and explains in enough detail the asked question.\n\nIf i missed something/gave some wrong info, someone correct me.",
"Bullets come in all shapes and sizes. Some are indeed pointy, while some are completely flat (wadcutters). \n\nDifferent shapes serve different purposes, and as other posters have noted, will deposit their energy into a target in different ways. Penetration is just one metric, and organizations like the [FBI actually define an 'ideal' range of penetration](_URL_2_) that they seek in handgun ammunition: more is not always better. A round that flies right through its target not only fails to deposit all of its energy, but becomes a risk to unintended targets further downrange. \n\n*I see a huge factor being overlooked in other responses, however*: **function**. \n\nSemi-automatic firearms are extremely popular. A standard semi-automatic needs to use the energy of the fired round to extract and eject the empty case, strip a new round from the magazine, guide that round up the feed ramp, and seat it into the chamber so that the firearm is ready to fire again.\n\nThese last two steps (riding up the feed ramp and seating into the chamber) are a common source of malfunction in poorly designed, dirty, or under-lubricated firearms. Watch this [gif of a Glock's operation cycle](_URL_1_) and consider how different bullet shapes could make for more difficult feeding. Glocks actually have a reputation for great reliability with a variety of rounds, but there are other handguns on the market that will **only** reliably feed round-nosed ammo. In such handguns, a different bullet shape can 'hang' on the feed ramp or the mouth of the chamber, interrupting the feeding cycle and requiring manual intervention from the shooter.\n\nOver time, round-nosed jacketed bullets (i.e. copper or metal that is wrapped over the actual lead round) have become most popular because they are the best \"jack of all trades\" bullet. They feed most reliably, they are least likely to leave lead deposits in the barrel, they satisfy rules that some organizations have have about exposed lead*, and are relatively cheap to produce (and therefore purchase) in bulk.\n\nThe vast majority of U.S. police departments carry hollow-point ammunition in their handguns because FMJ rounds often \"over penetrate\" when hitting people. As noted earlier, this not only reduces the effectiveness of the round, but puts bystanders and others at risk of a round that passes through a suspect. Again, refer to the FBI protocol.\n\n*\"Full metal jacket\" (FMJ) rounds typically still leave the base of the lead bullet open, which sits inside the case. Some shooting ranges may go the extra mile by requiring shooters use [\"total metal jacket\" \\(TMJ\\) rounds](_URL_0_). Both FMJ and TMJ reduce the amount of airborne lead compared to exposed-lead bullets.",
"great explanations here, one point missed though. Some magazines hold the cartridges in a nose to tail form, ie. the bullet of one round is in contact with the primer of the next round in the mag. Rounded nose bullets are used to prevent an out of battery discharge.",
"In handguns, a lot of it has a lot more to do with reliable loading of the mechanism then it does ballistics. For revolvers, consider that they often shared ammunition with lever action carbines and rifles. These weapons used a tube magazine. Having cartridges stacked end to end where a bullet tip could impact the primer of the next case wasn't a good idea.",
"Generally handgun rounds are \"ball\" and rounded off while rifle rounds are more pointy. There's a couple reasons for this but most of it has to do with the compact nature of the handgun.\n\n\nWhen a handgun's slide slides backwards it ejects the spent cartridge (by throwing it out) and exposes the bullet at the top of the magazine (in the handgrip). Because of the action of throwing out the last bullet (plus some angles) the top bullet enters the barrel at an angle - tip first - and the barrel actually tilts down a little to assist this. \n\n\nRounded tips have more clearance in compact spaces, and pointed tips require a lot more \"space\" to clear. Also, point tips - depending on barrel length - could hit the walls of the barrel instead of smoothly transitioning into the barrel smoothly and damage the barrel or the bullet...which would be bad.\n\n\n\nIf you don't accommodate for tip/the speed of this action then the gun jams. You either change the tip, or change the way the bullet is presented to the barrel. In smaller firearms you only have so much space to change things in. In larger firearms like the M-16 it's less of an issue because of the extra space, but the conversion to the M-4 actually added a lot more speed to the action and increased jams. To fix this they actually changed the barrel structure of the M-4 to create a \"feed ramp\" you can check out how much a slight difference makes [here](_URL_0_)\n\n\nThere is *also* an effect on drag - pointed bullets produce less drag than round ones. But when we're talking about any relatively normal ranges there really isn't much difference. And for long distances you need more powder for power, which means larger bullets, which means rifle...so the *main* issue is still the mechanics of the weapon itself.\n\n\nedit - completely forgot to hit send for over an hour.",
"There is so much misinformation in this thread that I am going to repost this response I made to a now-deleted post.\n\nWith the exception of armor piercing ammunition, the reason for choosing a pointy vs. rounded shape for the nose of the bullet has nothing to do with penetration. (And even with armor-piercing ammunition, what really matters is the shape of the hard penetrator core, not the relatively soft bullet surrounding it, which sheds off of the penetrator when the bullet hits armor.) There are blunt-nosed bullets that do not expand at all and pointy-nosed bullets that expand or fragment violently, and vice-versa.\n\nPistols can't accommodate long cartridges (because the cartridges have to fit inside the grip). Having a blunt, rounded nose means that you can fit a heavier bullet in the available length. Heavier bullets, generally, mean more energy and more penetration. Since pistol rounds are mostly low velocity and used at short range, the increased drag is not important.\n\n\nThe reason so many rifle rounds have pointed bullets is because they are so much more aerodynamic. This is important for two reasons.\n\n1. As the bullet slows down, it loses energy. Less energy means less potential to damage the target.\n2. As the bullet slows down, it both drops more and is more affected by wind drift at a given range (because it takes longer to get to that range than a faster bullet would). This makes it more difficult to shoot accurately.\n\nAs a side note, where penetration is REALLY important, i.e., rifles for shooting large dangerous game in Africa, you will actually see blunt-nosed bullets used rather than sharp-nosed - because a very heavy bullet at a moderate speed will penetrate more deeply.\n\nThere actually are numeric values for bullet designs that you can look at that can tell you about penetration and drag.\nSectional density is basically the potential for penetration (higher = more penetration), although it doesn't take expansion into account.\n\nBallistic coefficient represents how aerodynamic the bullet is (higher = more aerodynamic = lower drag). Note that there are two types of BC in common use, G1 and G7, and you can't compare a G1 BC to a G7 BC directly. Compare G1 to G1 or G7 to G7. (The two types represent two different standard drag profiles.)",
"Also some bullets are flat on the end if they are fired in a tube fed gun where they are loaded end to end so as not to set one off accidentally ",
"Depends on what kind of bullet you ate talking about. The design of rifle bullets is for aerodynamic purposes. Handguns are generally used under 25 yards so thats not a concern. \n\nNext, bullets do damage by crushing tissue. A pointed bullet would poke a tiny hole. Tissue is tough and elastic. It moves out of the way and reforms. Ogived rifle bullets tend to tumble and flips 180 degrees, doing crush, and also momentum shock damage due to their velocity. Handguns only crush, so you want to make the largest hole.\n\nRead up on terminal ballistics. Its a very interesting topic. Shootingthebull410 and TNOutdoors9 have great youtube videos of ballistic gel tests. Remember that gel tests allow us to compare different cartridges to eachother. They are not a perfect tissue simulation.",
"\"Why a spoon, cousin?\"\n\"Because it will hurt more, you twit!\"",
"Probably going to get lost on here, but the early \"repeater\" rifles were lever actions with a tube magazine...which means that the bullets line up with the tip of one bullet close to, and at times in contact with, the back of the next bullet. Having a sharp tip on the bullet would act like a firing pin potentially causing the bullets in the tube magazine to explode while your hands are wrapped around it. That would be bad, and lead to nicknames like \"stumpy\"..... ",
"Didn't see too many people talking on the aerodynamics and fluid dynamics, and that's one big part of the reason. Cuz a well designed blunt/round-nosed head has the least drag force (friction) to help the bullet maintaining speed.\nsame kind of design can be found like bulbous bow of large vessels, underwater torpedo etc. Pointed head does NOT result in least drag force as you imagine intuitively, the round shape does.\n\nHowever, pointy bullets are more for long range rifles. Which pays more attention on spinning of the bullet the whole distance. Basically your focus of design changes from parallel friction (drag force, reducing speed/flying distance) to perpendicular spinning friction/stability. That's where the trade-off takes place, you did lose bit on drag force wise(I mean you get more drag force), but your rifle is so powerful to provide the initial momentum/kinetic energy to overcome, thus you could have the room to play with to make a more stable bullet."
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7xtfyn | what is short-selling stocks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xtfyn/eli5_what_is_shortselling_stocks/ | {
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"When you buy a stock because you think it will do well, you try to buy the shares for a low price. Then, if the company does well, the value of those shares go up and you sell it for a higher price. This means you've made money.\n\nHowever, if you think a company is going to do badly, you can short stocks. This is a little more complicated. What you do is borrow shares off someone, with the agreement you'll give them back those shares. Then you immediately sell those shares. Then, if the price does go down, you can buy those shares back for a lower price, and give the person their shares back. You've made money this way.\n\nIf I want to short a stock that has a value of $10 per share, I borrow lets say 100 shares off someone. So I immediately sell that, making me (10 x 100) = $1000. Nice! A week later, the share price drops to $5 per share. I buy back the 100 shares, now for (5x100) = $500 dollars, and give the shares back. I've made 500 dollars.\n\nEdit: Thought it'd be good to add in this extra detail: Shorting is seen as infinitely more risky than going long on a company. This is because a company's stock price can only go so low. But in theory, a company's stock price can grow infinitely large. If you short a stock, and it improves over time, you actually lose money, since you now have to buy those stocks back for a larger amount.",
"Short selling, or \"shorting\" stocks means that you are betting that a stock will lose value.\n\nSay a stock is worth $100 at the moment, but you believe that it will be worth $50 next week. You also do not own any of that stock, but you want to profit off of anticipating that it will lose value. So, you borrow 1 stock from someone who actually owns it, and then you sell it to someone else for $100. Eventually if it hits your $50 target, you buy it back for the $50 and give that stock back to the original owner. \n\nSince you earned $100 by selling it and then spent $50 buying it back, you've profited $50.",
"Short selling is borrowing shares from somebody else to sell, and making money by replacing the borrowed shares when the stock falls in price.\n\nSay you think XYZ Corp is going to drop in price from it's current $100/sh, so you want to short 100 shares of the stock. You borrow the shares and sell them for $10,000. Sure enough, XYZ has a bad quarter and their shares tumble to $80. You buy shares to cover your short position, spending $8000 to buy the shares. The $2000 spread between the $10,000 you got when you short sold the shares and the $8000 you spent to cover the position is your profit.\n\nThere are fees associated with borrowing shares, similar to interest on a loan. And there may be a margin call, if the stock keeps going up in value and there is concern you cannot buy back the shares at the higher price -- say it skyrocketed to $200/sh and now you'd need to spend $20k and lose $10k to cover the short.",
"Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Short selling ](_URL_5_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Short selling stocks ](_URL_6_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: what exactly is Short Selling? How does it work? ](_URL_8_) ^(_22 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does short selling stocks work? How can you make money if you're expecting the price to go down? ](_URL_3_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does \"Short Selling\" stocks work? ](_URL_1_) ^(_17 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is Shortselling? (Shorting a stock) How does it works? ](_URL_7_) ^(_20 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does short selling a stock work? ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does 'shorting' stocks work? ](_URL_4_) ^(_11 comments_)\n1. [Short Selling the in stock market? ](_URL_2_) ^(_13 comments_)\n",
"Let's say you think stock XYZ is going to decrease in value. You can make money from it by Short selling that stock. Here's how it works.\n\nThrough your broker you indicate you want to short sell 100 shares of a stock. Your broker finds someone who owns XYZ. They temporarily give you 100 shares of XYZ and charge a small fee. Now lets' say XYZ was $100 per share when this happened. You now have 100 shares of XYZ. \n\nYou sell those 100 shares for $10,000. Now let's say XYZ drops down to $75 per share. You then buy 100 shares of XYZ for $7500 to give back to the original owner, keeping $2500 for yourself. You have just made $2500 for short selling XYZ.\n\nThe person from whom you borrowed the stock still owns 100 shares and has received the fee. It's a little more complex than that, but this is the basic gist of how short selling works.\n\nThe problem can be if the stock increases in value. Again, you borrow 100 shares of XYZ at $10,000. But instead of going down in value, XYZ goes up to $125 per share. You then have to pay $12,500 to get those 100 shares in order to give them back to the original owner. So you lost $2500 in your endeavor because the stock did not drop in value.",
"This is easy.\n\nIt’s like borrowing your friends phone. You can borrow an iPhone X today, sell it for £1000. A year later it’s not worth that much. So you can just go buy another one for £700 and return it to your friend. \n\nYou would have made £300 by knowing the price of the iPhone will drop "
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3dblj0 | why is trickle-charging a battery better than throwing high amperage at it? | I've heard the bucket analogy but it still makes no sense to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dblj0/eli5_why_is_tricklecharging_a_battery_better_than/ | {
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"The faster you charge the battery the more heat will be released. A lot of batteries are very sensitive to heat, and if they get too hot they can be ruined.",
"Let's use you and me as an example.\n\nLet's say I want to get energy to you. Well I could just punch you in the head and you'd be getting A LOT of energy, but it would really hurt you.\n\nOtherwise I could just poke you in the head 1000 times. It takes longer, but its less damaging to you and let's you operate better. And In the end it's the same amount of energy transfered "
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1pk5uf | why do we regrow flesh, but not bones | Why is it that you can lose a fairly large chunk of flesh and it will (mostly) grow back, but once you lose something like a fingertip or toe it's gone forever?
edit. I forgot to say this to begin with, but I'm referring to the times where the bone gets lopped off, like if you lose part of a finger to a table saw. Why doesn't the usual bone regeneration process kick in. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pk5uf/eli5_why_do_we_regrow_flesh_but_not_bones/ | {
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2swkmv | how edward snowden, who ran away from the u.s. has been since in russia for about a year, able to still leak documents? | The mans been away from his source of information for about a year now. How does he know these things if they've happened recently? If he has a stockpile of "bombshell" documents, then why didn't he just reveal what he knew all at once? Is he learning of these things through Russian intelligence? Or is he leaking new drips every so often just to keep some attention to himself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2swkmv/eli5_how_edward_snowden_who_ran_away_from_the_us/ | {
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"There are multiple people that have access to the documents. It is not wise or responsible to release all of the information at once because it could end up harming someone or inspiring serious conflict. There is a ton of information that has to be analyzed before releasing it. Some of the information is time-released when relevant to current events. A lot of the information in the trove is dated, but reflects programs and methodology which are still active. Other information includes proposals and presentations for programs that may or may not have been enacted. ",
"He gave the documents to journalists. The new bombshells are because the journalists are writing about different internal documents."
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c47rsa | why do animals sometimes just stare at nothing? | Do they actually see/hear something or are they just being weird? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c47rsa/eli5_why_do_animals_sometimes_just_stare_at/ | {
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"When an herbivore \"stares at nothing\", they are typically watching a broad swathe of territory, attempting to register any motion within that field. When a carnivore stares, it is usually because motion has already occurred and they are attempting to isolate the source.",
"Some animals, such as cats, can hear in freqeuncies humans cant. So they may be listening in on a bug or rodent that you simply cannot hear."
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2zt0h2 | if the universe is constantly expanding, is it possible to trace it all back to the 'center' of the universe? | I read somewhere (_URL_0_) that its possible to detect how old an object is by its redshift, does the higher 'redshift' value relate how close an object is/was to the Big Bang? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zt0h2/eli5_if_the_universe_is_constantly_expanding_is/ | {
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"No - because there is no \"centre\" of the universe.\n\nThe universe didn't start at a single point. It started everywhere. And everywhere in the universe is getting further away from everywhere else.",
"Light is being redshifted when the distance between light source and the observer is increasing over time. \n\nDue to the metric expansion of space, we can use this redshift to calculate the distance between us and a light source. \n\nThe metric expansion of space can be visualized by the following scenario: imagine a deflated balloon on which we have drawn dots in equidistant positions. Now we inflate the balloon. Thus the \"universe\" - the surface of the balloon - is expanding. Yet there is no center of expansion - all dots are moving away from all other dots. \n\n",
"This was the description of the universe expanding from the cosmic perspective-Bennet. Think of a loaf of raisin bread. When you put it I'm the oven the raisins are all a certain distance apart. As it bakes and the bread expands, the distance between the raisins gets larger. If you think of the raisins as galaxies, and the bread as space, this is what the expansion of the universe looks like. Based on this its easy to infer there is not center, everything is moving away from everything.",
"Yes! This actually was done using the red shift (dopler effect for light). Strangely, they found that the entire universe was expanding away from us. That's right, earth is the center of the universe!\n\nOf course after some more precise measurements, we found that the universe is expanding away from every star at the same time. Actually the distance between any point points is constantly increasing. Just at such a slow rate that it's only noticable at large distances. "
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am27og | stars/galaxies that are light years away | when we discover a new star or galaxy that is 30 million light years away (it takes 30 million years for light to travel from us to it and vice versa) how do we know that the little spec we are looking at is actually a current star/galaxy and not something that disappeared 29 million years ago and we aren't just seeing the light remnants that have been traveling to us for millions of years after its death/disappearance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/am27og/eli5_starsgalaxies_that_are_light_years_away/ | {
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"That is the case for many stars that we see. They are long gone, and we just see their light as they were millions/billions of years ago.",
"That is exactly what happens in many cases. We have no way to tell since we rely on the photons from those stars traveling through space. Likewise, if someone on a distant planet was looking at Earth, depending on their distance, they might see a planet full of dinosaurs.",
"We don't know that. It's perfectly possible, although there are limits as to how certain things can just vanish; entire galaxies will never suddenly disappear, and stars that are close to dying give us signs of their old age, so large red stars are the most likely to have died by the time their light reaches us.",
"Depends on the star.\n\n30 million years isn't a lot in celestial terms. Our Sun is some 150 times older than that, and will work pretty happily for just as long again before expanding into a red giant. Smaller stars can have lifespans in the tens or hundreds of billions of years, since they burn their fuel slowly.\n\nFor an extremely massive star, that's not the case.\n\nA great example is VY Canis Majoris (in the constellation Sirius). It's a red hypergiant, one of the largest stars we've discovered. It's about 8 million years old, and is going to die within the next hundred thousand. It's 17 times as massive as the Sun, but due to the immense heat of the fusion processes running rampant in its core and the subsequent ballooning of its outer layers, it has a volume over a billion times larger. Its size is larger than the orbit of Jupiter.\n\nIt's about 4000 light years away, so it is possible that it has gone hypernova already. When we do see it go, it would easily be visible during the day, and gently illuminate our nights more effectively than a full moon. (It probably won't irradiate us with gamma radiation, since we're too far away and too small a target for a concentrated burst to realistically hit.)\n\nA star of such magnitude at a distance of, say, 20 million light years would almost certainly be gone, leaving behind a black hole or neutron star.\n\nThough before it died, it would have given one hell of a farewell."
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244ird | why don't professional fighters' noses bleed that much? | Whenever I get a random nose bleed or I bump my nose, it bleeds for a long time. Why is it that UFC fighters seem to never get a nose bleed, despite being pummelled in the face. Furthermore, when it does bleed it's only a tiny amount.
Has conditioning got something to do with this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/244ird/eli5_why_dont_professional_fighters_noses_bleed/ | {
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"The medic swabs the inside of the fighter's nose with a chemical that greatly speeds up the clotting process.",
"Cauterization of the blood vessels in the nose may help as well. I used to have nose bleeds for the longest time. Mostly because of exposed vessels within my nose. Cauterization fixed the frequent bleeding, so I could see a professional fighter getting the same operation done. \nEdit: Spelling"
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44q4ke | how "hard" was it to develop games for the classic nintendo, nes,early sega consoles compared to game development today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44q4ke/eli5_how_hard_was_it_to_develop_games_for_the/ | {
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"To put it simply dev teams for games made on the NES and Sega genesis were rarely larger than a dozen people. Games nowadays can have dev teams in excess of 300 people. Although, I think it's more because the industry has grown a lot since those times and most, if not all studios, have people specialize in certain areas of game development. For example, you have people who only program, people who only do art, people who only write, you have QA testers, project managers, etc. Not to mention on you can fit more data on a 50gb blu ray disc than a 128 to 384 kb cart.\n\nAlthough, I think dev teams had it a little harder back in the day because of memory restrictions on the the consoles and lack of storage on the carts. They typically had get creative with their game's assets or cut stuff out of the game altogether. With the type of media tech we have now it's a non-issue and devs can put as much as they want on discs. \n\nAnother obstacle was budgeting, gaming wasn't as profitable back then and was the reason why dev teams had to be so small. For example, when Blizzard first started there was a period of time where people weren't even getting paid. Video games were such a niche market so if you were making games you had to be sure what you were making was gonna sell. \n\nI can't really think of any thing else that would have made it hard, but if anyone has stuff to add please do so.\n\nEdit: Changed 24 mb cart to 128 to 384 kb. Thanks for the correction FinalCactus.\n",
"In my opinion it's much easier now to create games. However the scope of most of todays projects are magnitudes larger. \n\nAssembly language is a bitch to program in, and most of those retro games were written in assembly.",
"The limited technology [forced](_URL_1_) [several](_URL_0_) [tricks](_URL_2_) that no-one needs today. Even if all 2 million HD pixels are specified by a separate 3 B today, that's only 6 MB of RAM, which today is nothing.",
"Games back in the 8-bit and 16-bit era had to be written in assembly. Which looks like [this](_URL_0_). It's basically telling the processor how to shift the data around, but manually. They may have used a little bit of C to work out some complicated functions, but they would have probably adjusted the assembly after compiling to squeeze more performance out of the code, because resources were limited and compilers were not as efficient as they are now.\n\nToday, most games are written in C/C++ and there are a ton of API's and other resources available for developers to make games.\n\nEssentially, the difference between making games then and now was like the difference between making a PB & J by farming for the materials versus making a PB & J by getting the resources at the supermarket.\n\nFun fact: Roller Coaster Tycoon was coded entirely in assembly...by *one* guy.",
"The games made are bigger and more complex, but the tools used to make them are much better and there's way more experience.\n\nDuring the classic Nintendo era, if you had a problem, there was a very real chance no one had encountered that problem before you. (plus internet wasn't prevalent) so you had to figure it out on your own. \n\nSo on one hand, its much easier to make a platformer than to make a 3d zombie survival game, on the other. Its a lot harder to make the very first platformer than its to make the twelfth zombie survival game this month. ",
"OP, I think you would enjoy reading this bit of PS1 history:\n\n_URL_0_"
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3za0tv | how many different health care systems are there in the world? what are the advatages and disadvantages of different health care systems? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3za0tv/eli5_how_many_different_health_care_systems_are/ | {
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"It depends on what exactly you mean by \"different healthcare system.\" No two countries are the same, although there's similarities to be found. Broadly, there's three variations: private health care and private insurance, private health care and public insurance, and fully public health care.\n\nThe United States mainly runs on private care and private insurance, though it also has public insurance in the form of Medicaid and Medicare, and a small public healthcare component in the form of veterans' hospitals. The general experience is that for such a system to work effectively, people must be required to buy insurance, and a subsidy should be available so that everyone can in fact purchase it--the groundwork of this was laid in the Affordable Care Act. The benefits are that insurers and care providers compete to provide service, and consumers have freedom as to what sort of plan they want or what doctor they see. A good example of a country where this works effectively would be the Netherlands.\n\nCanada has public insurance (also called \"single payer\") but largely private care, though it has public hospitals as well. People are guaranteed to receive care because everyone is covered by the public insurance; the downside is that they may be out of luck if they do not like the public insurer's policies or coverage. Here, the public insurer has dominance over the private health care market, so there will tend to be less variety in private care as well.\n\nThe United Kingdom has fully public care (but people buy supplemental insurance for certain coverage). The hospitals are owned by the government, and people who receive care pay a nominal fee, with the real cost ultimately being paid through everyone's taxes. Although this is the simplest way to guarantee access to everyone, it does not have the benefits of private care, such as freedom of choice and competition."
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2ps25x | why do the majority of terrorist organisations in the news seem to be muslim? | I apologise profusely if this seems racist in any way, I promise no offence was meant, but it seems that almost every time terrorism is mentioned it is Muslims committing it, why is this? Is it just that Islamic terrorists (Eg ISIS) get more publicity, or is there something, misinterpreted or otherwise, in their holy teaching that makes them more predisposed to acts of extreme violence?
EDIT: I never said Islam was a race, I'm well aware that it is a religion | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ps25x/eli5_why_do_the_majority_of_terrorist/ | {
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"Because *most* of the terrorist groups operating today *are* Muslims. Terrorism, or, more correctly, asymmetric warfare, is really the only viable military strategy for impoverished and disenfranchised small groups, particularly when facing larger nation states. Today, most of the groups who fit that box are Muslim. 70 years ago, they were Christian. 70 years from now, who knows? Zoroastrians? Don't make the mistake of thinking Islam and extremism are linked. They aren't. Disempowerment and extremism are linked.",
"Muslims are NOT A RACE, they're a religion. \n\nThere are many muslims from not arab groups.\n\nThe muslim terrorists are using their religion to justify their terrorism. Other religious groups have done not too different things in the past. Right now, \"fundamentalist\" muslims are the problem, our \"fundamentalist\" christians are much less of a problem.\n\nWhether their interpretation of their holy book is an error is as much of a question as are christians' who oppose a, b, or c right or wrong.\n\nAll \"holy books\" seem so open to interpretation.",
"First of all, terrorism isn't well defined. There are a lot of organizations which may or may not be terrorists depending on who you ask. The perhaps most obvious example is the CIA, which in parts of the world is considered a state sponsored terrorist organization (for good reasons, if you read their history!)\n\nBut if you look at the current news; Terrorism is typically closely associated with unrest. Terrorists have a much easier time to grow their networks and act in weak states with a lot of conflicts. The major open conflicts you will find today are in the middle east and Africa. These are also areas with large Muslim populations.\n\n",
"The conflict that we are now seeing between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world has many origins. There is quite a substantial lingering resentment that goes back as far as the first crusade, which was more than a millennium ago. Muslims are well aware that they have been competing with other religions for a very long time, and have not done very well in that competition. This is very offensive to Muslims who are quite certain that they are acting on behalf of truth, while members of other religions, or members of no religion are horribly mistaken and must be corrected. Why should anyone allow truth to be defeated by error? That cannot be allowed to stand.\n\nIslam once had a great empire which spanned the middle east and went well into Europe as well, including Greece and Albania, that being the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately for them, they backed the wrong side in WW I and were dismembered. European colonial powers immediately took control and began to systematically plunder the middle east as they did all over the world. Colonialism benefits the colonial power, and generally does not work out so well for the colonized nation. Middle eastern nations have been horribly abused by their own corrupt governments, but those corrupt governments were in various ways supported and usually installed by western powers for their own purposes. This has created a vast legacy of resentment. \n\nIsrael is also a special concern. Aside from the issue of land expropriated by Israel, and territory occupied, there is a much deeper issue of the symbolic significance of holy Muslim sites being part of a Jewish nation; this fundamentally offends the Muslim concept of how the world is supposed to work. Israel connects to the whole western world; it could never have survived without continual US support. And the more this conflict continues, the more grievances pile up. Muslims attack Israel and Israel retaliates vigorously and with large death tolls; this is now yet another crime which Muslims must avenge. The hatred grows year by year, and each new generation is inculcated with it virtually from birth. Three year old children already know that they hate Israel, it's a remarkable phenomenon. And even though the Arab-Israeli conflict has festered for the past 66 years, the western world allows it to continue. So, many Muslims have come to the conclusion that violence is the solution. That is why the majority of terrorist organizations you hear about are Muslim.",
"\nOne of the reasons is that the US media won't call white Americans \"terrorists\". Whether it is the unibomber or pro-life people murdering doctors, the US press won't call them \"terrorists\" even though that is what the are because it doesn't fit the news narrative of terrorists as brown, muslim men.\n\ntl;dr: In the US media if a brown muslim man shoots up innocent people he is a \"terrorist\" if a white christian man shoots up innocent people he is \"a lone wolf\", \"crazy\", \"not a real christian\"",
"I think that the ultra conservative sect of wahhabism supported by the Saudi state is a factor but not the sole one. This is not all of islam by any means.\n\nThe fall of The USSR and communism worldwide has led to a fall in the number of marxist groups worldwide.\n\nHow the middle east was carved up after world war 1.\n\nIsrael and the way it treats the palestinians is an excellent recruiting sergeant for any terrorist groups.\n\nAmerica threatening Iran and other states in the middle east has led to them fighting the USA in the only way possible to them, state sponsored terrorism.\n\nThe media will always have a bias towards regions which can have such an impact on the global economy because the middle east has all the oil under its sand. \n\nEdit: A word.",
"Because non-Muslim terrorist groups are boring and not news to reality-challenged Americans. \n\nOf course, when a white Christian American commits an act of terrorism, like the most deadly terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11, we just kinda forget about it.\n\n",
"It's really quite simple. Most of the major terrorist organizations in the world are currently Muslim. They are more prominent than perhaps others in history because they are a part of a very destabilized region at the moment. Almost the entirety of the Islamic world has been overthrown within the past decade and there is no strong arm as there was in the past to keep them in check. Saying it has nothing to do with religion is just a plain lie. Like all religions, Islam does have *many* passages of peace and beauty. However, it has **just as many** that state to go and conquer outside groups. It's why ISIS can basically pull entire verses from the Qur'an and use them as the rules for enslaving Yazidi women. (For the Christians, don't get high and mighty. The Holocaust was largely perpetrated by Christians. Your religion is no better or worse than Islam in this regard) \n\nTo put this in perspective however, we have to remember religion has **ALWAYS** been used as a catalyst for violence. The asymmetric warfare used by these groups is basically the only thing available to many. Although ISIS became so powerful it nearly overran Syria and Iraq within a period of months. "
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6j3j0w | how do scientists know that it takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth? | I've always kind of assumed that light from the sun was just a long continuous stream so is the sun sending out subtle bursts of light that scientists can measure for time? I'm a bit ignorant on how distance and time are measured between earth and stars | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6j3j0w/eli5_how_do_scientists_know_that_it_takes_8/ | {
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"Because scientists know how fast light travels, and how far the Sun is from the Earth, so they can simply figure out the time by using those numbers.",
"To add to the other answers: yes we are getting a continuous stream of photons (light) from the Sun, but the photons being generated there right now have to travel a long distance to reach us, and this takes time. If the Sun suddenly disappears out of nothing right now, we'll still spend the next 8 minutes receiving the light it already emitted to us before disappearing. Then we'll notice it's gone.\n\nSuch lag. Never play Counter-Strike in servers hosted in the Sun!",
"To know the time it takes for light to reach Earth from the Sun, it is essential to know both the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and the speed of light. To find the distance to the Sun, astronomers approximate the distance from Earth to a nearby planetary body which also orbits the Sun. Let's use Venus as an example. \n\nIf you can find the two points at which Venus is at its furthest distance from the Sun, these will correspond to an angle (as seen from the Earth sky) at which the Sun-Venus-Earth angle is 90 degrees, and are called the \"greatest elongation\". After these points, Venus will appear to come closer to the sun in its revolution. \n\nApplying trigonometry, we can use the angle of greatest elongation of Venus and the known Sun-Venus-Earth angle to determine the distance between Venus and Earth in terms of a percentage of the distance between Earth and the Sun. \n\nBy knowing the relative distance between Venus and the Sun, we can scale this to approximate the distance between the Sun and Earth. Using the known distance between the Sun and Earth along with the speed of light, we can determine how long it takes sunlight to reach Earth. ",
"By knowing how far away the Sun is from the Earth. [Aristarchus of Samos](_URL_0_) was one of the first astronomers to measure this distance by [observing the phases of the Moon](_URL_1_) and Venus, calculating that distance through geometry and trigonometry. Our measurements have gotten more precise ever since, so we can conclude the distance to the Sun from Earth.\n\nGiven that distance - 149.6 million km - we only then need to know the speed of light, which is close to 300,000 km per second. Simply divide these two figures and you get almost 500 seconds, which is a little over 8 minutes.\n\n---\n\nAs for other stars in the distance, we use the Earth's orbit around our Sun to our advantage. First we observe the position of a star in our sky, taking into account our position on Earth, the time of night, etc. We then make the same observation 6 months later, when the Earth is on the opposite end of its orbital path around the Sun.\n\nComparing the two observations, we can see the difference between the angles at which those observations took place, which will be slightly different. This is called [stellar parallax](_URL_2_): we know the distance the Earth traveled around the Sun, and combined with the angles we observe of the object in the distance, we can measure that object's distance from us.",
"We can bounce radar beams off of Mercury, and see how long it takes for the signal to return.\n\nBased on what we know about Mercury's orbit, we can compute how long it would have taken for the signal to come from the sun.\n\nTo my knowledge, we have never directly measured how long it takes for light to travel from sun to the earth, we can only compute it based on other measurements.\n\n"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax#Stellar_parallax"
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35cds9 | if mountain gorillas are an endangered species, why don't we gather them all up an put them in zoos/nature preserves in other countries that will be a lot more safer for them? | Or any other endangered species for that matter. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35cds9/eli5_if_mountain_gorillas_are_an_endangered/ | {
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"The ELI5 answer is that captivity is, on the whole, bad for animals.\n\nAnimals in captivity are usually confined to *much* smaller spaces, a tiny fraction of their natural range. They don't learn skills that they need in the wild, such as hunting or hiding from predators. Their group dynamics are screwed with. These all lead to lower reproduction rates and often poorer health. Yes, they are safer from poachers, and nobody is likely to bulldoze the gorilla compound for farmland, but captivity is bad for them."
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8gd4sg | how is that even older mmos, like wow, can handle so many players, while modern games like fortnite or pubg struggle with just 100 players | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gd4sg/eli5_how_is_that_even_older_mmos_like_wow_can/ | {
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"An MMO doesn't need to track players as frequently or precisely as with an FPS. This is because aiming isn't really a part of MMO play, meaning the relevant information is just if another player is in range of an ability or not. If the player is actually a foot to one side or the other doesn't matter in an MMO but is critical for the FPS.\n\nAnother point to be made is that while a large MMO might have thousands of players on the same server, their information isn't being shared with everyone else playing on the server. Players which are a great distance apart simply won't ever have information exchanged about their actions which reduces load on the server.",
"Good answers already, but one thing to consider is what was important when these games were released.\n\nOlder MMOs were devised in the early 2000s. Speeds were low, power was low compared to today. That means making these communications to track players and such needed to be ultra optimized to run on crappy hardware and with transmitting a minimal amount of data.\n\nDid you know you could play WoW good enough on dial up until the around 2011 or so? Seriously. Thats how different this game was made when it was released in 2004 (but started being made much before that). Plus the server hardware, and all of the points in between were terrible compared to today's options.\n\nJust think how little a new game has to worry about their user having a good internet connection or being able to support them with servers, if you need more space, you can buy it in seconds and have a new server up, in WoW that was *never* a possibility, it all had to work perfect as is, or there is no game.\n\nTricks and optimizations were used very commonly in the past, in ways that today's games (although today's games are generally FAR more complicated) don't even have a need to consider finding these solutions"
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4jy9iy | what is "zionism" | I have a rough idea, but I don't really understand whether it's a religious thing or a political thing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jy9iy/eli5_what_is_zionism/ | {
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"text": [
"A nationalist and political movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Palestine, Canaan or the Holy Land).",
"Theodor Herzl, who in this ELI5 version we're going to give the snappy title of 'Godfather of Zionism' was actually a secular Jew.\n\nHe probably did more than most in promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland, ideally located in Palestine on the site of ancient Israel, though other alternatives were considered (and offered, such as East Africa, Eastern Russia and even, apparently, Vietnam)\n\nIndeed, one of the offers was actually to allow Jews a homeland in Palestine, extended by the (Arab, obv) King of Greater Syria. However, this got kiboshed by the sneaky landgrab in which the British and French carved up the Middle East between them.\n\nIn the interim period between the founding of Zionism late 1800s and the creation of Israel, emigration/immigration was encouraged strongly, in waves of Aaliyah (ascent) known overall as the Yishuv (settlement) that saw the Jewish population increase from tens of thousands to nearly 3/4 of a million. At times the immigration was by any means necessary (ie illegal), funded and supported by foreign philanthropists, who also helped with land purchases. The influx caused much resentment, even more so when the when the new land owners decided to only employ Jews, and anti-Jewish sentiments regularly erupted into violence on a number of occasions. To try and curtail the violence and appease the Arabs, the British (who by this time were balls deep in a very messy pie) tried to restrict immigration, putting quotas on, but the very tangible threat (of death) to Jews elsewhere meant that these quotas were largely ignored.\n\nIn the aftermath of one of these occasions, a kind of 'Jewish neighbourhood watch' was set up, called the Haganah. Initially they acted purely as a defensive body against attacks, but they became more militant and proactive over time, and eventually morphed into the IDF of today. An even more militant splinter group, the Irgun, were the ones that bombed the King David Hotel.\n\nAnd then WW2 ended, Britain felt a bit guilty about y'know, being rather dreadful to those Jewish chaps and saying \"Awfully sorry, can't let you into England, just don't like you much\" the Arabs were kicking off and 1948 happened.\n\nBadaboombadabing, eh - look whose here! Somebody got themselves a brand new country.\n\nIs it a political or religious movement? Probably more political. Jewish as a concept can be confusing - it's a religion, but also an ethnicity. You can be an atheist Jew. Some of the more religious types might insist there's a religious element to it, but the secular types would insist there's not. So it's political, an independence movement.\n\nSo, TL:DR, Zionism is the desire for a Jewish homeland (ideally located where it is)\n\nAs a postscript, some mention should go to anti-Zionism, as that's so often the context within which it's talked about.\n\nTaken literally an anti-Zionist would be someone that disagrees with the existence of Israel, and undoubtedly there are many who fit that bill, who think it is illegitimate and should be wiped off the face of the planet.\n\nHowever, there is also a colloquial interpretation of anti-Zionism, in which some people that describe themselves as anti-Zionists but still believe in the continued existence of Israel, albeit in some modified form. This modified form might be allowing Palestinians to coexist alongside Jews, offered the same freedoms and rights (1 state solution), or it could be something along the lines of a return to '67 borders and recognition of an independent and autonomous Palestinian state (2 state solution)\n\nWhilst neither of these are truly anti-Zionist in a strict sense, they reflect a colloquialisation of the term to represent a general distaste for aggressive settlement activity and military operations against the Palestinians as well as the overall situation over there"
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