q_id
stringlengths 5
6
| title
stringlengths 3
296
| selftext
stringlengths 0
34k
| document
stringclasses 1
value | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 4
110
| answers
dict | title_urls
sequence | selftext_urls
sequence | answers_urls
sequence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98ook3 | why do our feet get cold whenever we're scared/nervous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98ook3/eli5_why_do_our_feet_get_cold_whenever_were/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4hlkdm"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Not sure, but my guess would be blood being diverted to more critical areas (brain,heart, lungs etc) as part of the fight or flight response"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1zbozf | why do different countries measure their shoes differently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zbozf/eli5_why_do_different_countries_measure_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfs9zxh",
"cfskqgj"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"When they started measuring, we didn't have cheap, quick world trade. We didn't have giant factories in China churning out everything. Shoes were generally made locally.\n\nLocal customs determined shoe sizing & there was no need to standardize because the odds of a pair of American shoes being sold in the UK or Japan was minimal.\n\nNow that we *do* have world trade, shoe sizing is ingrained in societies. There's no reason to bother changing when you can just print 3 or 4 different sizes on a box.\n\n",
"It happens when you don't standardize everything."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
5y7vgj | how can founder of a company (like steve jobs) be voted off it? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y7vgj/eli5_how_can_founder_of_a_company_like_steve_jobs/ | {
"a_id": [
"dent6xn",
"dent965",
"dentge7"
],
"score": [
3,
10,
2
],
"text": [
"Because a company belongs to the owners, not the founder. If Steve Jobs didn't want to be voted out he shouldn't have sold his controlling interest in the company.",
"When a company is founded the owners are the initial founders. However they often need money to grow and pay out their salaries. To do this they need more investors. The new investors take part of the ownership of the company. This means they get a place on the board. The board is composed of the different owners of the company and its job is mainly to hire or fire the CEO. If the company have gone though a few rounds of selling off to investors the original founders might only own 10% of the company and such only have 10% of the votes (simplifying here). So if the board gets together they can vote to fire the CEO which usually is one of the founder of the company. This is not unique to the US. To prevent this from happening to your company you have to make sure to retain more then 50% of the ownership over the company. However this may be crippling to your company as it means you can not take on more investors to fund your expansions and you are much more likely to get bankrupt.",
"It can get super complicated, but when you have a company that is publicly traded, you create a corporation. You start it, but by process of creating this coporation you have board members that are appointed to look out for best interest in the company. You can have it created in such a way that you cannot be voted out, or over ruled, except when it comes to share holders. Almost all board members do, and should have shares in the company. If they have majority of shares, 51% then they are the majority share holder and can vote you out, regardless of any contracts, or agreements. Some company holder have this happen do to stock splits, where they had majority themselves, but when the stocks split the board members bought up majority before the owner could. Now, there is a method to protect that, but that gets more complicated. \n\nSo, to not be bumped from your own hypothetical company, make sure you agreements protect you, and have majority stock. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
49lpp8 | there is a 1 lightyear long pole. you are holding one end of this pole, you turn that end. would a person on the other end of the pole take 1 year to see the pole turn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49lpp8/eli5_there_is_a_1_lightyear_long_pole_you_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0stadb",
"d0stb6l"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It would take longer than a year. The pole would move at the speed of sound for the material that the pole is made of, which will be substantially slower than light. ",
"The \"push\" would travel at the speed of sound through the object, so it depends on what this hypothetical pole is made of. And yes, the object would compress during this."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
b8xfvf | what animals with eyes on the sides of their head see exactly? can they see both their sides at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8xfvf/eli5_what_animals_with_eyes_on_the_sides_of_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"ek0oj7i",
"ek0oo3t",
"ek0os4c",
"ek0os5g",
"ek0wixe",
"ek0yhbn",
"ek1247i",
"ek12gad",
"ek1328w",
"ek132vf",
"ek1338o",
"ek15ewb",
"ek16uma",
"ek1k23b",
"ek1sxx1",
"ek20mei",
"ek22baz",
"ek267jy",
"ek2eihb",
"ek2fm2y"
],
"score": [
6,
69,
9272,
2489,
250,
136,
13,
13,
29,
3,
2,
3,
19,
30,
5,
2,
2,
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Animals with eyes on the side of their head are usually herbivores and need to be wary of predators sneaking up on them so have virtually 360 degree vision with the eyes on the side of their head. Animals with forward facing eyes tend to be carnivores and the binocular vision enables them to judge distances better with the overlap from the forward facing eyes - _URL_0_",
"Chameleon (as far as we know it) have similar vision to us. Their lens are concave while their cornea is more convex shaped giving them more 'pinhole/tunnel vision'. Yes, often one eye is kept on watching predators and prey near them while the opposite eye will continue to scan its surroundings for other dangers",
"Hold your finger in front of your face and slowly move it around your head. Follow it with your eyes keeping your head facing forward and try to note the position at which you can no longer see it. You may find that if you wiggle your finger when you can no longer see it then you can sense the movement (sort of like a T Rex), and that the point at which this happens is slightly behind you. This allows you to be alerted to movement slightly behind you and turn your head to focus on it more clearly and make sure it's not dangerous. What's weird is how instinctively we use it, so much so that we don't even know it. It's hard enough to fully understand how we perceive our own vision without even trying to understand other creatures.\n\nWe are primarily a predator species, but with eyes slightly further apart than something like an eagle, allowing us to focus on prey in front of us, but also be aware of dangers to our sides without turning our heads.\n\nFor prey species like deer, having eyes on the side of their head allows them to look even further behind them than we can to give them a better chance of spotting predators. They don't need to focus on their prey because grass doesn't run away.\n\nIt's been pointed out that I got sidetracked and off the point I was originally steering towards. What I think I was trying to get at is that you mostly perceive your vision to be continuous, but you have blind spots, and spots that can only sense movement. Things like the finger experiment I mentioned above expose your own vision's shortcomings.\n\nAnimals like deer likely perceive their own vision to be continuous, but the part of their vision that's directly in front of their face would act like yours does at the side. Imagine having a blind spot directly in the forefront of your vision. Sort of like how most of the time you don't see your nose until you think about it. Like you are right now. Sorry.\n\n\n\n\n*edit* didn't realise this was going to be a gold-worthy response but thank you kind stranger. Never had one before so I don't quite know what to do with it. Maybe I'll build a school for grasses that can't run good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too.",
"I read somewhere that when they're eating, horses see everything around them but don't see what they're eating. \n\nCan anyone confirm this or is this straight bs?",
"Yes they can, but they usually have a blind spot immediately in front of them (which is why, for example, you always approach a horse from the side, where it can see you approaching). ",
"Hold something pretty close to your face, for example your phone. \n\nClose one eye, look at the phone with the other eye.\n\nNow do the same but with the other eye.\n\nYou'll notice you'll see an entirely different picture for each eye,when you do that.\n\nNow open both eyes. It takes some getting used to, but eventually you'll again see a whole picture, with both eyes. While each eye sees something different than the other eye, somehow, our brain succeeds in merging those two pictures into one coherent picture.\n\nThat's most likely how these animals see: a very wide picture, but somehow it still is one single picture.\n\n",
"How about a Hammerhead Shark?",
"Veterinary student here. If you look up a picture of a horse flight zone, it will show you an approximation of what they see. As other replies have mentioned, they can see nearly 360 degrees due to the sideways placement of their eyes. ",
"It depends on the species.\n\nMost animals with eyes on either side of their head will have about a 200 degree field of vision each side of the body. They generally have a blind spot directly behind them and in front of their snouts/noses until the field of vision crosses over.\n\nWhilst they have good vision on their sides because there is only one eye they generally have problems with depth perception on the sides. Directly in front of them the can have good binoculars vision if their fields of view cross over.\n\nThis [link](_URL_0_) is an article specifically about hammerhead sharks but has good illustrations to demonstrate what they can see.",
"What about alligators? They have their eyes on the sides",
"You have the same kind of vision that the animals have: they are creating a representation of \"the world\" and using their eyes. We do that too. \n\nYou have areas of your vision that you see with one eye only. Like, the extreme left side of your view is seen only by the left eye. You don't notice that you are only seeing that part of the world with one eye. Why would animals be any different. They just have much less overlap. \n\nThey see the non-overlapping part in the same way we do. It just spans more area. It's not as \"3-D\" because they only see that part with a single eye, and 3-D (stereoscopic) vision needs 2 eyes. But there are lots of cues about depth and 3-D that aren't stereoscopic. ",
"Woodcocks can! These birds have eyes directly on the sides of their heads and see 360 degrees. I was taught they have binocular vision both directly in front and behind them, simultaneously. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"Horses have eyes on the sides of their heads which gives them close to a 360 degree field of vision. They do have a small blind spots directly in front and behind them but they can cover these by moving their head around. I have read that these blind spots are about 3 feet wide directly in front and 6 feet wide directly behind them. From my own personal experience I have no reason to doubt it. \n\nThey can use both eyes together, in what is called binocular vision. This gives them depth perception allowing them to judge distances. They can also move each eye independently and watch two different objects at the same time, even if one's in front and the other is behind. Being able to see in front and behind at the same time gives them the advantage of watching where they're going while keeping an eye on a predator behind at the same time. There's been many a time where I've tried to catch a horse that didn't want to be caught and watched him walking away with his head turned to the side, with one eye on me and one looking ahead. I have seen horses running at a full gallop through the woods and underbrush with their heads turned to the side to monitor my whereabouts and not miss a step. \n\nIf something moves suddenly into a horse's blind spots it can startle the animal causing it to shy, kick or bolt away. You can walk in front of a horse a dozen times and it will remain standing in in place, relaxed and content. But, if you raise your arm and stick it out in front of you while you are passing directly in front of the animal you can spook it and cause it to pull away. The horse knows you are there and is expecting you to show up on the other side . It can not see you lift your arm in its blind spot though, so your hand becomes an unexpected object appearing suddenly which frightens it. You could be standing directly in front of a quiet, relaxed and contented horse, and have it quickly jerk away when you reach out straight ahead to pet it. Because of its blind spot, the horse is unable to see your hand moving toward it until it magically appears out of nowhere, next to its head or eye. The horse will do what it does naturally and spook. For this reason it is always best to talk to a horse before you pet it, giving it time to move it's head and see where you're standing first. \n\nWe had a horse that we originally named Midnight as a colt because it was jet black with no markings. We used him as a pack horse to carry our supplies inside packboxes tied on his sides. By the time he was 5 years old his name had been changed to Sleepyhead. The horse would be moving along down a trail and walk head first into a tree, over and over again. As he was walking along he would spend more time watching the horses behind him than the trail ahead. When the trail made a jog around a tree, the tree would end up in his blind spot and he wouldn't see it in time to avoid it. \n\nI have found that keeping a tight rein on a horse may cause it to trip or stumble. There are times when riding a green or rank horse you don't trust it enough to let it have a free rein. A horse can not buck unless it can lower it's head so by keeping a close rein on it I can prevent it from lowering it's head and start bucking. But by holding it's head tight and high I am also hindering it's ability to see what's in front and below it. When I first started breaking horses it took me quite a while to learn it wasn't the horses fault for stumbling, it was mine. I originally believed that the horse was deliberately doing it to annoy me or dump me. So with the erroneous belief that it would try to unseat me if I wasn't cautious I would exacerbate the problem by holding it's head in tighter. After about three months of doing this I was griping about one particular horse to my dad, who quickly told me why it was me causing the problem. \n\nIf you are walking behind a horse it may have one eye looking ahead and the other one looking back. If the eye looking back is toward the direction you're traveling it will appear to the animal that you have appeared out of the blue and spook it. Many people have been kicked because of this. The rule of thumb I have always followed is to talk to a horse I am behind and stay either as close to it as I can or far enough away that it can't kick me. By staying close I run the risk of getting kicked but am close enough that the foot doesn't have momentum, so it pushes me away instead of giving me a painful whallop. It is always best when walking around a horse to place a hand on its back and keep it there as you circle around. Once again this is because though the horse knows you are there it may not be expecting you to suddenly appear on its other side, causing the horse to jump, spook or kick. \n\n\nMy father's business depended on horses for transportation and we could only reach our home by horses or airplane when I was growing up. We kept a herd of 100 or so head of horses and rode them, packed them and put them in harness almost every day for seven or so months of the year. I kept and used my own string of 12 horses until about ten years ago, though I still have a few of my old favorites living a good life, pensioned off at a friend's farm. \n\n",
"Pretty much, yes. [This](_URL_0_) is a diagram of a rabbit's field of view. The binocular area is the area where both eyes can see, and a monocular area is where only one eye can see. (They have more vertical range than we do too, so they can see further up in their 'peripheral')\n\nSo as you'd imagine, this means rabbits and such have depth perception ranging from poor to none. This is because they don't actually need to know how far away a thing like a predator is, only what direction it is in, and if it is facing them, and then they can run away until they either feel safe or can't run anymore. (Whereas predators need to know ranges so they can pounce and know when to exert that last little burst of energy to catch the prey).\n\nAs for what it would *actually* look like, that is a harder ask, bc their brains will most certainly process that information in a way we can't really imagine (since we have no experience of it). The best representation would be a [360 field of view image](_URL_2_) That is basically how a rabbit or such would see. If you play Doom or Quake at all, you can mod those (and other games I imagine) to have 360 FOV, which would be the closest you can get to what 360 vision feels like. Like in [this image](_URL_1_) the walls that look like they are to the left and right, are actually behind the player.",
"I went to a small city zoo that had an attraction to test this. You'd look through one end and mirrors showed you the vision on either side. Our brains aren't wired to process that type of information, so it is disorienting, but you get an idea of how they see the world.",
"I was told something useful by my biology teacher. Eyes to the front likes to hunt, eyes to the side likes to hide. Just a random fact",
"Hold your hand up against your nose, flat so it divides your vision. Do you still have peripheral vision on both sides? I bet it’s like that.",
"Late to this, but [this](_URL_0_) will answer your question far better than any explanation will. \n\nBasically front facing vision (like humans, dogs, owls, etc) see a wider range of in focus view (binocular vision), with a narrower range of peripheral (monocular vision), whereas side eyes (most birds, fish, etc) see a narrower binocular field of view but can see periphery almost 360º, allowing for them to see motion coming at them at nearly all angles. \n\nTypically predators have front facing eyes and prey have side facing eyes. Also, binocular vision, where the two eyes overlap in the field of vision, is in focus whereas monocular vision, the periphery, is out of focus but used for motion detection. This is why side-eyed animals can turn their necks more, to get their binocular vision to focus on what theyre looking at -- since their binocular field of view is narrow, their neck have to turn their heads far more. ",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere is a visual representation of the vision of a carnivor with 2 forward eyes and a herbavor with 2 side eyes",
"In case you're interested. Animals with eyes on the side of the head are prey (so they can see their surroundings) and animals with eyes on the front of the head are predators (so they can prey)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://youtu.be/kw_d5lu0UlY"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://jeb.biologists.org/content/212/24/4010"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodcock"
],
[],
[
"https://www.vgr1.com/vision/Rabbit-vision.png",
"https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ThoseForsakenAzurewingedmagpie-mobile.jpg",
"https://c8.alamy.com/comp/J7PH6N/interior-rendering-of-a-modern-bathroom-with-a-360-field-of-view-J7PH6N.jpg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://imgur.com/dRX6PYP"
],
[
"https://images.app.goo.gl/61xLxCtbi7ojZjG56"
],
[]
] |
||
3d6viq | when my credit/debit card does not read for being too scratched, why does the reader then accept it after folding receipt paper around it and sliding it again? | Paper seems like would hinder the magnetic strip when swiped, though it works every time.
Edit: Plastic bags work, carboard works, almost anything smooth will work assuming it isn't magnetic itself. r/theskepticalheretic
Edit again : This is best... Use clear box tape r/time2fly2124 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d6viq/eli5_when_my_creditdebit_card_does_not_read_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"ct2c8e6"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The magnetic strip is magnetic but the head of the reader is prone to error if the surface it slides against is not smooth. So if you put a smooth outer layer on the card, the head now glides smoothly along the mag strip and reads the encoded numbers appropriately."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2dquad | why do luxury car company's with websites often never show the price of their vehicles? | I was looking at a bunch of luxury car company websites such as land rover, bentley, etc. and they never really show the price of their cars. Is it there a reason to this or am I just trippin' balls right now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dquad/eli5why_do_luxury_car_companys_with_websites/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjs4msg",
"cjs4ni0",
"cjs5tpf",
"cjs95zg",
"cjsbt9d",
"cjsedq6"
],
"score": [
29,
6,
3,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because if you have to ask...you can't afford it.",
"...maybe you're looking at wrong site. i'm on landrover's page and i see prices on every model. range rover Standard Wheelbase\nFrom $84,225* Long Wheelbase From $106,225* LR4 from 50k, LR2 from $37k",
"Low competition and pricing power for dealers. If they felt like they were losing sales by not listing the price, then they would start.",
"I bought my wife a Nissan Murano for $3000 less at a dealership out of town.\n\nThe relationship between manufacturers and their dealers is super sketchy.",
"Is so you have to ask via mail, phone and they can get your information as a potential customer.\n\nIf the price was posted right there, they wouldn't be aware how many people are evaluating buying the car.\n\nAlso, not only luzury car companies do this.",
"Sales tactic, maybe? People buy things based on emotion, so when a customer gets super pumped about a product before even having seen the price--it's easier to rationalize why it's a good purchase/worth the cost. It's also easier for the sales person to guide them into the purchase.\n\nThat's my theory anyway lol"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
kyvh0 | why are all nfl punters white? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kyvh0/eli5_why_are_all_nfl_punters_white/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2odush",
"c2of861",
"c2ofejq",
"c2og9me",
"c2oi4gf",
"c2odush",
"c2of861",
"c2ofejq",
"c2og9me",
"c2oi4gf"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Give it time.",
"Normally, I would call out blatant stereotyping, but....all of them really ARE white!",
"Because he died a few years ago\n\nReggie Roby\n_URL_0_",
"Not enough black people don't make the soccer team in high school.",
"Because being a punter isn't cool, so young blacks, even if they are proficient at punting or kicking, move to other positions so they aren't held in disdain from their peers.",
"Give it time.",
"Normally, I would call out blatant stereotyping, but....all of them really ARE white!",
"Because he died a few years ago\n\nReggie Roby\n_URL_0_",
"Not enough black people don't make the soccer team in high school.",
"Because being a punter isn't cool, so young blacks, even if they are proficient at punting or kicking, move to other positions so they aren't held in disdain from their peers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://i.imgur.com/irTik.jpg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://i.imgur.com/irTik.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
9ncjqv | why is a two-party system the stable result of first-past-the-post voting? what keeps it from collapsing into a single party system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ncjqv/eli5_why_is_a_twoparty_system_the_stable_result/ | {
"a_id": [
"e7la6x6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because the two parties are free to change their positions. If a certain position makes one of the parties widely unpopular, they'll change it to win those voters back. The other party is doing that at the same time.\n\nThis constant tug-of-war leads to an equilibrium where either party has roughly the same number of supporters. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
684pvo | the science/biology/chemistry behind capsicain and hot peppers such as ghost pepper and carolina reaper and how the body reacts | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/684pvo/eli5_the_sciencebiologychemistry_behind_capsicain/ | {
"a_id": [
"dgvoros"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Capsaicin binds to a receptor in nerves responsible for signalling heat, activating those nerves. Those nerves then send the signal to your brain that they are detecting heat, which causes the burning sensation in your mouth. More capsaicin means more of those heat-sensing nerves get activated, making your mouth feel even more on fire. Very hot peppers like ghost peppers and Carolina reaper have been selectively bred to produce very high concentrations of capsaicin.\n\nCapsaicin is thought to have been evolved to discourage mammals from eating the fruits of the plants. Birds are not sensitive to capsaicin, so they can eat the fruits and distribute the seeds by pooping them out later. Mammals have grinding molars that would grind up and destroy the seeds instead of distributing them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
89j8jk | why does co2 make a drink like coke feel 'fizzy' while nitrogen gas makes a drink like beer/ale feel smother? | Is it to do with the slight difference in charge between the C and Os or something about the kinds of receptors that are stimulated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89j8jk/eli5_why_does_co2_make_a_drink_like_coke_feel/ | {
"a_id": [
"dwrc4tq",
"dwrc9eh",
"dwrg2s7",
"dwrocmd",
"dwrooaq",
"dwrouji",
"dwrqh1d",
"dwrsj9v",
"dwrstdj",
"dwrubev",
"dwrwe70",
"dwrxc4r",
"dwrxxjf",
"dws09hz",
"dws3qgj",
"dws42xp",
"dws68bx",
"dws9d56",
"dwso1ey"
],
"score": [
3954,
101,
66,
12,
428,
2854,
2,
4,
7,
33,
2,
28,
3,
2,
15,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Bubble size. imagine bubble wrap for mailing packages - it comes in different sizes, some with lots of little bubbles and then some with fewer but bigger bubbles. \n\nIn beer, N2 makes lots of little bubbles while CO2 makes fewer big bubbles. And just like how fine silt feels smoother than rough sand in your fingers, finer bubbles feel smoother in your mouth.",
"CO2 in water makes carbonic acid which makes the fizzy sensation. While nitrogen can dissolve in water, it doesn't form a new compound. ",
"Nitrogen doesn’t stay in solution very well, it’s takes high pressures to get it to dissolve in a beer. When you pour a nitro beer the nitrogen comes out of solution and knocks the CO2 out of solution with it, essentially making the beer flat but with a nice creamy head.\n\nIn addition, soft drinks often have two or more times the amount of CO2 dissolved in solution compared to beer.",
"The fizzy taste is not from bubbles. That’s just how your brain interprets the taste of CO2. Nitrogen bubbles don’t taste the same.\n\nSome of your taste buds respond to sour tastes, and those taste buds have an enzyme on them that responds to carbon dioxide. That enzyme is carbonic anhydrase 4. When people take a carbon anhydrase inhibitor, like acetazolamide, they report that soda and sparking water and champagne tastes flat. Beer tastes normal.\n",
"There are a few reasons. \n\nFor one, N2 doesn't really have good solubility in water, and tends to escape faster once the pressure is decreased. Therefore, your nitro beer is just a foamy beer with nitrogen bubbles. \n\nOn the contrary, CO2 tends to supersaturate very well (think a can of cola that you leave open, and an hour later it's still slowly bubbling) and bubbles come out slowly over time, unless there's a nucleation site (and/or salivary enzymes such as carbonic anhydrase in your saliva that converts carbonic acid to CO2 and water) that encourage it to bubble out. Therefore, once you drink a liquid supersaturated with CO2, bubbles form in all your nooks and crannies in your mouth (nucleation sites), and physically make that stinging sensation.\n\nOf course, this is amplified by the fact that CO2 dissolves in water to a slightly acidic solution of carbonic acid, so your tongue also feels the acidity as the liquid hits your mouth. N2, being inert and neutral, does not give the same taste.",
"Bubble size and nitrogen dissolution is only part of it! \nNitrogen, when dissolved in water, partially blocks the mechanism that causes certain molecules to activate bitter taste in the tongue. This is why Guinness tastes smooth and creamy despite using bitter roasted malted grain. \nAlso, nitro infused cold brew coffee is beginning to take off for the same reason. \n\nSource: am beverage consultant.\n\nEdit: phrasing",
"It’s because when CO2 dissolves in water, it forms bicarbonate and carbonic acid. Both are weak acids and lower the pH, giving your drink that characteristic bite.\n\nNitrogen is inert and doesn’t react. It also doesn’t dissolve into solution nearly as well, hence the widget delivery system. Nitrogen essentially just adds texture to your brew.",
"Lots of good comments ITT but one thing to add: The CO2 & N2 mixture is also used at a much higher pressure than normal CO2 because of the partial pressure keeping the Nitrogen in solution. Usually these beers are served through a tap with a restrictor plate which has a bunch of tiny holes in it. The high pressure (~40psi vs ~10psi with CO2) forces it through the plate, which slows down the pour and forms tiny bubbles. If you pour a nitro beer at full pressure with a normal tap it will come out like a firehose!",
"N2 is typically an illusion. Most breweries just carb their beer to a lower level of Dissolved Volumes of CO2, and push with beer gas. Most tanks can't withstand the pressure it takes to get N2 into solution. ",
"The stout faucet also plays an important role. There’s a restriction plate in there that forces the beer to create that creamy head. \n\nJust putting a beer on nitrogen alone doesn’t really do anything, in fact, many bars use nitrogen to push already carbonated beer through normal faucets for the very reason that it isn’t readily liquid soluble. \n\nFrankly, this thread is full of misconceptions. ",
"Could I pressurize a drink with something other than these two gases without dying? Say, like neon or kypton? Would the effects be any different from nitrogen?",
"CO2 + H2O = carbonic acid \n\nIt's the acid that bites, tingles, etc. and stimulates sour taste buds\n\nN2 + H2O = nitrogen bubbles\n\nIt's NOT acid so all you have is texture.",
"This isn't really being addressed, although one comment started in, but a lot more carbon dioxide can be dissolved in water than nitrogen can. Of course this issue isn't necessarily about how much can be dissolved at equilibrium, instead about how much can be dissolved at higher pressures, and in what form it will outgas once the liquid is returned to a normal air pressure, the size and amount of bubbles, relating to mouthfeel. I just wrote about this as one possible explanation for why microwaved water doesn't work well for tea, relating to air becoming supersaturated due to more dissolving at room temperature than at boiling point (the opposite of solids in a solution), which doesn't happen using a pan or kettle for a few different reasons. I'm no expert on this subject, just kind of strange when it comes to going too far with ideas, and I am an engineer. I'll cite some links for further reading:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_",
"CO2 is very soluble in water whereas N2 is much less.\n\nThe biggest reason is CO2 forms H2CO3 acid when dissolved whereas N2 is does not form any acid (it's neutral) when dissolved in water.",
"Here's my take:\n\nCO2 is very special. The gas dissolves in water, and acidifies the water. We humans seem to have the ability to not only sense the sourness of carbonated soda with our sour taste-receptors (like any other acid), but also sense the dissolved CO2 gas through special proteins also associated with our sour taste receptors (Chandrashekar et al. 2009). Nitrogen doesn't acidify the water and doesn't interact with our senses chemically.\n\nIt has also been shown that when bubbles are suppressed by drinking carbonated soda in a hyperbaric chamber, the soda still has a \"bite\" to it. So it was concluded that it is in fact the carbonic acid that plays a dominant part in the sensation of \"fizzyness\", although bubbles are a second component that can influence the sensation (Wise et al. 2013).\n\nFrom this I'd say bubbles and their sizes are a very minor component.\n\n\nChandrashekar et al. (2009). The Taste of Carbonation. _URL_0_\n\nWise et al. (2013). The Influence of Bubbles on the Perception Carbonation Bite. _URL_1_\n",
"Question about n2o in case anyone sees this. I have a whipped cream dispenser so I ordered n2o cartridges to experiment with some nitro cold brew coffee.\n\n\n\nIs it normal for nitrous oxide to make plain black coffee taste sweet? Are the chargers somehow sweetened or am I just making shit up? I swear it's almost sweetened now and it's delicious but I want to understand why. ",
"I haven't seen yet addressed much the effect of saliva.\n\nSaliva contains a catalyst called carbonic anhydrase. What it does is very quickly degas the dissolved carbon dioxide in the soda and speed up the reaction that turns it into carbonic acid. \n\nThis is why the cola stays gassed up in the bottle but isn't really gassy in your stomach as it has been converted from a dissolved gas to an acid. The carbonic acid is interpreted as fizzy by your taste buds.\n\nIf you take a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor like topimirate, it slows down this reaction so you get less carbonic acid and soda tastes bitter and flat and you burp after drinking it.\n\nNitrogen gas doesn't create carbonic acid so does not taste fizzy.",
"To add on to the bubble discussion CO2 in general will add a sharp or acidic taste to a drink. Coke is essentially sugar water with flavorings and carbonation. The carbonation will cut the sweet flavor to make it slightly more bearable. It does the same thing with beer. I home brew and I've tasted soda and beer at various stages in the process. Sweet drinks tend to feel silky and smooth on the tongue. When you add CO2 to them they become sharp, bitter and hard. ",
"The taste and sensation of fizz is actually almost completely due to the taste of carbonic acid and not the feeling of the bubbles. They did a study where people drank carbonated drinks in a pressurized room (enough to prevent the CO2 coming out of solution and bubbling) and people still tasted the carbonation as fizzy. Even though no bubbles were forming in the drink or on their tongue, they still tasted the fizz. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html",
"http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-to-not-microwave-water-for-brewing.html",
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-solubility-water-d_639.html"
],
[],
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3654389/",
"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071488"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6ununx | how do you chug beer? like how do you get it to just slide down in one gulp? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ununx/eli5_how_do_you_chug_beer_like_how_do_you_get_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlu35mf"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Try opening your throat. Sounds like I'm being facetious, but I saw a guy once who had to neck a pint as him and his mates had to go get on a flight, and he just kinda knocked it back like a pelican. Just kinda constantly swallow"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8i84pn | why hotdogs called “hotdogs”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i84pn/eli5_why_hotdogs_called_hotdogs/ | {
"a_id": [
"dypmkqk"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"These immigrants brought not only sausages to America, but dachshund dogs. The name most likely began as a joke about the Germans' small, long, thin dogs. In fact, even Germans called the frankfurter a \"little-dog\" or \"dachshund\" sausage, thus linking the word \"dog\" to their popular concoction.\n\nHot Dog History | NHDSC\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3ixj6o | what would it take for americans to stop having guns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ixj6o/eli5_what_would_it_take_for_americans_to_stop/ | {
"a_id": [
"cukipm5",
"cukirls",
"cukizru"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Nothing. And as an American we don't give a fuck what you Brits think. Keep to your side of the ocean and maybe do something about that deeply fucked up surveillance state of yours before you worry about other people's problems, hmm?",
"There are a lot of Americans who don't understand this deep-seated obsession with guns either. I honestly don't know how many senseless gun deaths it will take for the people who can effect change to say \"uh, yeah, maybe we need to do something about this...\"",
"Prohibition of anything that is ingrained in ones society and cultural norms has proven time and time again that it doesnt work. Weve seen it the last 50 years from the drug war, we saw it in the 20s during alcohol prohibition. It creates a lucrative black market that does nothing but foster more crime. \n\nThere is peace of mind that I have the tools necessary to defend myself and my family tucked away in a safe in my closet. I lean left on almost every issue imaginable socially except firearms. Theres a lot of us \"liberal\" gun owners out there. We usually keep our mouth shut so were not lumped in with your stereotypical bible-thumping-right-wing-yahoo most people picture in their head when they think of American gun owners.\n\n\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2u711e | why do some males find glasses attractive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u711e/eli5_why_do_some_males_find_glasses_attractive/ | {
"a_id": [
"co5omdp"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because the girl can look over them at you, tilting their head down. This mimics a slightly submissive posture and shows the whites of the eye around the bottom, and widening of the eyes is an unconscious sign of arousal. The resulting \"sultry stare\" ties into instinctive cues of attraction, and small reading glasses tend to encourage or at least act as a prop for such displays (just giving the look with a little lip bite or clamping teeth on a fingernail is quite overt, sort of the string thong to the librarian glasses miniskirt)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6ht3v0 | how come plenty of deities in different ancient polytheist civilisations had more than one association? | For example, Zeus was known as the sky god and the god of lightning but Athena was the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, war strategy, craftsmanship and so on.
Same other ancient civilisations such as Ra was the Egyptian god of the sun while Seth was the god of chaos, violence, confusion, anarchy, war and so on.
Since ancient civilisations shared similar ideologies *(like different city-states in ancient Greece shared a similar belief of the Olympian Pantheon)*, how come did they did not manage to come together what gods associated with what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ht3v0/eli5_how_come_plenty_of_deities_in_different/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj0wtic"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
" > ancient civilisations shared similar ideologies\n\nThey didn't. And you need to understand the timescales involved: the Ancient Egyptian civilisation goes back to long before the 30th century BC, while the Ancient Greek civilisation didn't get going until the 12th century BC. We today are closer to Ancient Greece than Ancient Greece was to Ancient Egypt. During the thousands and thousands of years these civilisations existed, their ideologies and religions changed and evolved radically.\n\nAs for your original question, you usually find that the different associations are actually very closely related. Athena represented wisdom and learning, and so became associated with weaving and then all crafts as they require skill and knowledge; and while her brother Ares was the god of warfare and bloodlust, she tempered that violence with wisdom -- specifically, the wisdom to know when and how to attack, and also when not to attack -- and so also became associated with war strategy. That is, Ares wants to rush in all guns blazing, Athena is the one who holds him back and says, \"Hold on, let's think about this.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4ri6zo | how is a global recession possible? doesn't the reduction of money from one economy doing poorly have to go into another economy doing well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ri6zo/eli5_how_is_a_global_recession_possible_doesnt/ | {
"a_id": [
"d51a6vu",
"d51aa6z",
"d51adxv",
"d51apvc",
"d51bddl",
"d51egrz",
"d51erem",
"d51f4jy",
"d51igc8",
"d51iwx8",
"d51izbw",
"d51k495",
"d51leqx",
"d51lgl8",
"d51loyy",
"d51nplz",
"d51p5it",
"d51q1ua",
"d51qq2k",
"d51r1kh",
"d51slq3",
"d51wt4h",
"d520806",
"d525fnx",
"d526x1n",
"d5284xz"
],
"score": [
1517,
51,
38,
3,
189,
3,
11,
2,
6,
2,
3,
12,
10,
6,
56,
2,
3,
5,
2,
2,
2,
4,
2,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"If you have a factory making things, and then it shuts down, does the production of that factory go somewhere? No, it just disappears.\n\nGDP isn't about money, it's about how much valuable stuff is produced by an economy, and that can go up or down independent of what's going on elsewhere in the world. A global recession is when the production of most or all economies goes down.",
" > Doesn't the reduction of money from one economy doing poorly have to go into another economy doing well?\n\nSo, when there is a recession/depression/economic downturn, it's not useful to think of it as \"a reduction of money,\" even though it appears that everyone has less money. These events cause a decrease in *economic output*, or put another way, *value*.\n\nTo put it in easier to understand terms, lets think of houses. If your house gains value (goes up in price), it's not absorbing value (money) from some other house somewhere. It gains value generally because the area it's in has become more desirable and/or there is higher demand than supply. Consequently, if your house loses value (goes down in price), there isn't some house somewhere that the value gets transferred to.\n\n > So if the UK's GDP decreases wouldn't another country's GDP increase?\n\nThe opposite, mostly. If the UK goes into recession, the countries they trade with will be impacted. If the UK's GDP decreases, that means consumers and businesses alike will be buying less, which means the countries that produce products that are sold in the UK or that UK tourists visit will earn less money.",
"No because the money you're thinking of as not going into the UK GDP doesn't _have_ to go into another countries. It can stay in the bank of whoever was buying the goods from the UK.\n\nImagine you want to buy an apple. \n\nThe UK and France will both sell you an apple for one dollar.\n\nNews breaks that Boris Johnson is going to personally spit polish every apple on his pants before export. \n\nThis frightens you. \n\nYou cancel your UK apple order. \n\nBut instead of buying a French apple you have become so turned off apples you don't buy the French apple either. \n\nYou keep your money in your piggy bank and sob quietly. \n\nNow the UK can't afford to pay it's farm bills, Boris can't afford his pants bills.\nBut also the French farmers can't pay their bills.\nEach bad dept leading to others, more and more people not paying debts and being more careful of luxuries. ",
"No. Money becomes static. Rich people put it under the bed and don't spend it, everyone else suffers. The same money is still there but it isn't changing hands.",
"Imagine everyone in your town sells goods in one big market in the center of town, that all the townspeople participate in. Those stores, while usually competing, are also intricately connected. The sandwich maker depends on the baker for her bread, the baker depends the farmer stand for wheat, the farmer depends on the hardware store for farming tools, and so on and so forth.\n\nBut one day, the baker decides to quit, and puts new owner in charge that plans to jack up the prices on everything they sell, but he refuses to specify how much the prices will go up, only saying that he'll figure out the exact amounts over the next two years.\n\nThe sandwich shop, freaking out because the price of bread will go up, increases their prices out of fear that the bread will be so expensive that they can't make money. The farmer, assuming that the increased prices at the baker will lower overall sales and demand for bread, decides to make less wheat next season. All three companies will probably make less money over the next few years then they had under the old bakery management.\n\nNow, you might be thinking this is great for the other food vendors in the market, our competitors are shooting themselves in the foot and now we can make way more money, but there unintended consequences at play. For one, the bakery is beloved by the townsfolk, many would come to the marketplace just to have great bread. Oftentimes while in the marketplace to buy bread, they'd stop by other shops and buy things.\n\nSo overall foot traffic in the market goes down. Even if the other vendors make a higher percentage of the markets overall revenue, they end up making less money overall from losing the people who came just for the bread. \n\nAdditionally, now the baker, the sandwich shop, and the farmer will need fewer workers because the increased prices will lower demand and sales. Each of them lay off a couple of workers, who then have less money to spend in the marketplace, further exacerbating the problem.\n\nThe baker in this story is the UK. The Sandwich shop and farmer are the EU. All the other stores in the market are other countries. Fear and uncertainty over Brexit has lead global investors to hold onto their money, or push money into stable goods like commodities, rather than investing in growing companies.\n\nThis has created a global downturn because nobody knows what is going to happen in the next two years, so they'd rather wait and see, than continue to pour money into global markets. This lack of investment will lead to a recession, which leads to layoffs, which causes consumers to spend less money, making the recession even worse. ",
"You and 100 people share pennies.\n\nI own 10,000 of them and you each own 10 pennies. You use these pennies to build a business to make more pennies and to pay people.\n\nBut it takes to long to get pennies.\n\nI loan them to you at interest.\n\nNow I have less pennies but you owe them to me so I'm ok.\n\nSince you have more pennies you get a bigger business. To make some pennies you loan some out to someone else while still holding penny debt (why pay it back at once if you can still put it off to make more pennies).\n\nMultiply this by 100x.\n\nThen people start to default and can't pay pennies back. People close down and no jobs, no jobs = no spending so more business fail and more people have no jobs.\n\nRinse and repeat globally. \n\n",
"Economies are partially based on how fast people and companies make money and on how fast they spend the money they make. When people and companies are worried then they won't spend their money as quickly, which means that money won't go to other people or companies, so they won't be able to spend it, etc.\n\nThe term I remember was \"velocity of money\".",
"A recession is the slowing down of an economy... if every economy slows, then there can be a global recession. Slowing down is literally a slowing of how quickly money changes hands among citizens -- you get a paycheck from your company and buy groceries. The grocery store employee buys clothing. The fashion designer buys a car. The car salesman pays an accountant to do his taxes, etc. The same amount of money spends more time in people's pockets/savings accounts in a recession than when the economy is growing. Certain areas of the economy are less harmed (agriculture, since people need to eat) while others are hurt more since they are discretionary (electronics, automobiles). Just because people buy fewer cars in one country doesn't mean they buy more in another -- it just means that fewer cars are manufactured and GDP falls as a result. \n\n",
"It is all about money FLOW. \n\nWhen people get scared they save more and don't invest or spend. \n\nWhen people all over the world reduce their spending at the same time, the flow of funds around the world is reduced, *and* we get a global recession.\n\nIf just one country experiences lowering money flows it can impact their currency. For example Venezuela is currently crashing _URL_0_\n\n",
"Think also about expansion of the credit system. During booms we take out more credit and then during recessions we pay down debt and deleverage and that money is taken out of the economy ",
"I'd watch the video on _URL_0_. It's a video explaining the business/economic by Ray Dalio, founder of one of the most successful hedge funds. Quite simplified but very informative",
"Economy's are not Zero sum games where if someone wins someone loses, this means that they can grow and shrink. If anything then other country's economy's would shrink because their would be less imports and exports from Britain.",
"Most of the money lost in a global recession isn't actually lost from bank accounts, or from factories, or from people hoarding money, at least initially. When you hear \"$12 trillion lost in the global economy in one day\", that's all fake money lost from the devaluation of stock and securities. Basically, when people hold stock in their accounts, the value of that stock isn't actually based on the value of the company it represents, or anything concrete (although that may factor into it). The value of a share of stock is *only* what people are willing to pay for it. If people are willing to pay a lot for a stock, it's worth a lot. That's it.\n\nWell, when something like the Brexit happens, no one is willing to buy *anything*. So, because of that, everyone just kind of decides that shares of stock are worth less; because no one wants to buy, you have to lower your asking price for the stock in your accounts if you want to sell them and expect anyone to buy. \n\nWhen this happens en masse, a lot of people's accounts are valued at a lot less at the same time. So, we say that money was lost, even though it was never money in the first place: it was all just bullshit account value, from accounts filled not with money, but with stock. So, when a global recession starts due to something like a Brexit and a ton of \"value\" evaporating from the world markets, the money doesn't \"go\" to another country or economy because it never really existed in the first place. \n\nSource: Series 7 and Series 63 FINRA licenses",
"There is no conservation of money as there is conservation of mass or energy. Money can be generated (e.g. planting and harvesting) or lost (house burns down).",
"Your confusion is caused by the fact that you're thinking about economies like lakes, when they're actually more like rivers.\n\nThe \"lake theory\" of an economy says, \"economies are strong when everyone has a bunch of money. So much money that it could fill up an entire lake.\"\n\nThe \"river theory\" of an economy says, \"it doesn't matter how much money an economy has. It only matters how quickly money flows through that economy.\"\n\nWhen you spend $100 to buy groceries, it doesn't go into a pile in the store room of the supermarket. It pays for employees' salaries, for new goods, and for building fees. In a well-functioning economy, the money is immediately paid forward in some way. **Every time the money changes hands, something useful happens.**\n\nWhen there's a recession going on, people aren't confident in the state of the economy, and so they're more likely to want to keep cash on hand. So they don't immediately reuse the money they get. The money-river becomes a money-lake. There's just as much money, but it isn't going anywhere, so it doesn't do anything.",
" > Is the total amount of money in the world always the same, and it's always there it is just redistributed across different countries as their economies do well or poorly? Or can the total amount of money in the world take a hit in a recession?\n\nYes, the total amount of money out there can fall. Sometimes the money was an illusion. This happened during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis: There were trillions of dollars' worth of assets out there on bank and company balance sheets - they *thought* they had this money - but those assets (mortgage-backed securities) turned out to be worth way, way less than everyone thought. *POOF*, all of a sudden your company has billions of dollars less than you thought. ",
"When economy began the amount of money was zero. \n\nIt was created out of thin air an arbitrarily went to some number. \nAs various countries joined and disappeared the number changed \n\nThere is nothing that says that total sum of money should be balanced across countries \n\nJust as it was created out of thin air, it can disappear too into thin air (due to expectations of people and supply and demand etc. ).\n\nMeaning money was never balanced across countries to be a neat balance sheet and hence entire global economy can go up or entire can go down as well. ",
"One thing that you need to understand is that the money supply is not constant. It expands and contracts. This is because the money supply expands when banks make loans, and contracts when people repay those loans. This has an exponential effect as pretty much ALL of the money in an economy is money that was created through the issuance of loans. The fact that we have a debt-based money supply, with interest charged on all of that money, pretty much guarantees endless cycles of expansion and contraction of the money supply. This is linked with what happens in the real productive economy. There's no way I can explain this in a satisfactory way in this post. I suggest you look up \"fractional reserve banking\" on YouTube.",
"It can also be thought about as a measure of confidence in the economy and the frequency that transactions occur. Recessions are a self fulfilling prophecy, people expect to have less money to spend, so they start being more careful, by spending less. Demand decreases, number of transactions decrease, so production decreases.",
"There are many factors. One is that wealth can disappear. The value of a stock is based on perception and as you know can vary from day to day. In a market crash, stock values go down... that's not wealth moving to a different place, that is wealth vanishing into nothing.\n\nAside from investors now having less wealth on paper, these kinds of value losses severely handicap the traded business's ability to meet bills because those stock prices are the basis of their credit with banks.",
"This is a huge point of discussion in economics. It sounds like you are in the camp that would agree with the general equilibrium theory.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI personally agree with what you are saying, I believe all booms/busts are relative to the global economy as a whole.",
"Also of note and implied in your question is the false assumption that the amount or level of \"money\" in the economy is constant. It's not. There is something called the money multiplier.\n\nSay you have $100 and you put it in the bank. The back reserves $10 of your dollars and loans out $90 to another guy. That guy takes his $90 and deposits it into the bank. Together, Yours and his account balance is now $190 even though there was only $100 in cash when we started. Who actually has money. The answer is everyone, you, the other guy and the bank. Now imagine this happening continuously and constantly. That is called the money multiplier and it's how central banks control inflation; By asking banks to reserve more or less of the cash deposited.\n\nThere is also another factor occurring here. It is the velocity of money. It's sees how fast you can get to the bank to deposit your $100 and have it turned into $190. Or how fast you can give it to your pub for beer and they put it into their bank. The faster the money moves, the more money it seems is out there. \n\nWhere people hoard money, the velocity of money is lowered and the money multiplier is not effective and it seems as if the economy is in a rut. It's society having the confidence to put money out there in the system instead of their wallets or \"mattresses\" that makes the world go round. This works this way regardless if the money is cash, gold or fur pelts.\n\nEdit: multiplier not multiplayer",
"I think the key issue here is that wealth is not a conserved quantity.\n\nA conserved quantity in physics is like mass or energy (or mass-energy in relativity)--theres a fixed amount that can never be created or destroyed, it just gets moved around from one place to another.\n\nWealth is *not* a conserved quantity. It just doesn't work that way. Wealth can be created out of nothing (e.g. if a farmer converts an unused field to grow crops) or destroyed (e.g. if your house burns down). These things don't require transfer from one person to another, they just come out of nowhere (and make everyone better off on average) or they disappear (and make everyone worse off, on average.) \n\nIndividually, it looks like money is never created, but actually the government creates money every year, and besides that economic \"growth\" means just that : the total amount of wealth (not just the number of dollars) is increasing.\n\nThe tacit assumption you're making here is that if one person is losing out, then somebody else _must_ be winning, and that's not the case. It's possible for _everyone_ to lose.",
"The best explanation of a recession I've ever seen, and which works at the ELI5 level, is the [parable of the capitol hill baby-sitting co-op](_URL_0_).\n\nAs a bonus it also explains monetary policy, the federal reserve, and interest rates.",
"You are an investor. You invest 5 money in Britain and expect to get 7 money out of it. Britain starts to look like it will not give that 7 money to you so you take your 5 money back. Britain already expected to spend/spent your 5 money though, so it paid you with 5 borrowed money since it didn't have 5 money for you. Other investors see that Britain has 5 money in debt and avoid investing in Britain/remove their money from Britain before Britain can't afford to pay them. Now Britain has a lot of money in debt and nobody wants to invest in it, so the economy grinds to a halt. \n\nOther nations depend on Britain for specific things as do certain industries. Lets say Britain sells 100 tea for 100 money to 100 nations. Those 100 nations still want their 100 tea after Britain's economy crashes but now they can't buy their tea for 1 money, they have to go to China for 2 money. So China gets those nations 2 money but each nation now has a larger trade debt. This means investors see that these nations are not doing as well and begin pulling out their money from those nations. Now 100 nations are in the same spot as Britain.\n\nNow the investors start looking around and see the global recession. They notice China is doing well but mostly they notice that everybody is doing bad and know it is only a matter of time before China starts doing bad as well. So they all start pulling out their money before they lose it. The self fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled, China's economy crashes like the rest, and the investors who \"called it\" feel satisfied they are smart. Others follow their example for any holdout nations because the smart people were right about China and are saying the same thing about every other nation.\n\nAfter the global economy grinds to a halt, industry starts to grow on actual value rather than investor value. Commodities (food, oil, ect) begins to boom as people need it and it is the only thing people spend on. Investors begin investing on these things and these industries become strong. Other industry grows around commodities and the global economy builds up again until investors get spooked.",
"At its heart, economics is about negotiation and trade. \n\nMoney is just something that we happen to use in most negotiations and trades, because it makes discussing the value of a certain deal or trade much easier and more universal. \n\nSince, typically (and bitcoin would be an exception) currency is backed by governments (this is called fiat currency), the relative value of a currency vs other currencies can fluctuate based on the value of the trades and deals that currency's issuing government makes.\n\nSo when governments get into a big disagreement (Brexit), which usually are over trade, trade relationships can break down for a period of time, as the people and businesses in those countries must now expend extra energy on adapting to the new situation, whereas before maybe they could have focused that energy on production for the trade pipelines already in place. When these relationships break down for one government, trades are less likely to take place and the pipeline of international trade can shrink temporarily. This will be reflected in the relative value of the currencies involved.\n\nHopefully that clears things up a little.\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/06/venezuela-abolish-currency/"
],
[],
[
"economicprinciples.com"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.pkarchive.org/theory/baby.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
av2gi8 | what actually happens inside of a meat when its marinaded that gives it the flavor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/av2gi8/eli5_what_actually_happens_inside_of_a_meat_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"ehcaqrb",
"ehcctof",
"ehcdlgk"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Depends a bit on the type of marinade you're using but generally three things:\n* adds salt (which helps a lot with general flavor perception)\n* allows more moisture to be absorbed so the meat is juicier\n* adds the flavors in the marinate itself to the meat",
"Also the citrus or vinegar in the marinade will start to break down the muscle tissue, allowing the flavor to absorb more completely. ",
"A marinade has 3 main components: an acid, a medium, herbs/spices. The flavor comes from all three elements. \n\nThe acid is things like lemon juice or vinegar. This breaks down the structure of the meat making it more tender and making it easier for the other elements to travel into the center of the meat. \n\nThe medium is something like olive oil or other cooking oil. This gives some flavor but also serves to bind everything together. \n\nFinally there are the herbs and spices like salt and pepper, oregano, garlic, etc. You can taste these things directly. By adding this to a marinade the flavor is carried into the body of the meat and binds with it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
ebxzh2 | why does deleting things clear storage even though the pc only can’t find it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebxzh2/eli5_why_does_deleting_things_clear_storage_even/ | {
"a_id": [
"fb7v2nb",
"fb7va1o",
"fb7vbe5",
"fb7vbqq",
"fb7vgv5",
"fb7vkb0",
"fb7w09s",
"fb820es"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
10,
2,
2,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Like, I heard that the pc doesn’t delete stuff, if you click on delete, but rather just doesn’t where it is. Why does it clear storage?",
"The PC \"remembers\" which parts of the hard drive are \"empty\" and can be used to store new information.",
"When you delete a file the file system marks that file for deletion and deletes any references to that files location on disk. \n\nAs far as the OS is concerned, this space is now clear and that's reflected through the GUI. The files are still on the disk in the same place, the OS just sees that space as \"Oh hey I can store stuff in those blocks of space now\". \n\nThe OS doesn't read a disk and say \"How many blocks read 0?\", but rather \"How many blocks can I write to?\", a deleted file is marked as blocks the OS can write to.",
"To actually delete the data, you would have to overwrite the section of the harddrive. \n\nThink of your harddrive like a whiteboard. You can write all over it and then decide to get rid of something. Deleting it would be like crossing out the bit you don't want. The data is still there.\n\nBut then you have another idea, and you write it over the bit where you crossed something out. You've now replaced the information.",
"Deleting a file hides the file from you, however your computer can still find the data as it knows exactly where it is. But it marks the space as available. So when there is a need to find storage space on your hard drive, either because you want to store more data on it or just to tidy up the existing data to make it easier to access, the computer might pick the storage that contains the data for the deleted file. It is first at this point that the data will get deleted as it is overwritten with the new data.",
"This is sometimes different between operating systems. However, generally the deleted stuff is marked as \"this stuff can be overwritten\". When the PC then calculates free storage, it counts both \"unwritten\" and \"rewritable\" stuff.",
"It’s like you run a big neighborhood and you have an address book with all the people who live there in it. One day one of your neighbors calls up and says “hey I’m moving. Take my name out your book.” So you do that. You don’t erase the address, just the name, and you don’t go to their house and clean it for them. \n\nThen a few days later someone comes up to you and says “Hey I’m looking to move into a new place. Are there any open houses in your neighborhood?” And you look through your address book and sure enough, there’s a space without a name. You and your friend drive up to the house and all the neighbor’s old stuff is still there, so you clean it out and help your new friend move in. Then you put his name in the book at that address so you know where he lives.",
"Filesystems work like libraries. \n\nWhen you want to find a book you look up the location in a catalog and then go get it. \n\nDeleting just removes the entry from the catalog so you can't find it. But the book is still on the shelf somewhere (until it has been replaced by another book). \n\nThis is why you can still recover deleted files...you just ignore the catalog and walk through the library and catalog everything yourself. \n\nTo truely delete something you must not only delete the catalog entry but you must also replace the book on the shelf by overwriting the old data with garbage."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1vptj9 | why does nascar not like drafting? | Couldn't they just have different drafting rules per race or would that require a differently built car every race? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vptj9/eli5_why_does_nascar_not_like_drafting/ | {
"a_id": [
"ceunnu6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Its more or less the track conditions than the car from my experience. Example you goto a high bank track like Texas motor speedway and start drafting, real drafting bumpers within a couple inches if not kissing, speeds will increase above what is expected. While at a more flat track... I believe California is fairly flat when it comes to the banks in the corner. On top of that you take a car which can knock out 200mph all day have it draft increase the speed.. This would already cause worries and a since of caution in NASCAR and track owners.. \n\nAlso the fences that go around the tracks, each track is different so each fence is different, are only tested to what they could see happening speed wise at that track. Example: Daytona 2013 where the fence failed.\n\nIf your on the highway driving,if you haven't done this don't do it unless your comfortable, but get up behind a 18 wheeler that's going round 70 or so once you get close enough good judge to know if your close enough to experience drafting is if you can't see his mirrors , THIS MEANS HE CANT SEE YOU!!!, So be careful, slightly move your wheel left to right, your car becomes completely different in feel and control.\n\nSource: I raced modified dirt track cars and NASCAR/Indy is my dream."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7haelo | what makes some names feminine and some names masculine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7haelo/eli5_what_makes_some_names_feminine_and_some/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqpnqd4"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"To answer that question well, we need to know if you are talking about names in English or in another language. English is kinda funny with the gender of it's words. Other languages, like French or Spanish, make every single word either feminine or masculine. In Spanish, for example, an o or an a at the end will determine it for a lot of names : Julio is masculine, Julia is feminine, and that is so because o and a determine the gender of a lot of words. French uses a lot of names ending in e, and that blurs the gender divide, as there are both feminine and masculine nouns ending in e. For example, Dominique can apply to both a man and a woman, so would frédérique. The definite answer to your question is quite complicated as it relates to the gender of words, which origins vary from a language to another and can also be sort of random or arbitrary."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
49hc0f | what happens to your sense of smell after being hit in the nose? | When ever I get hit in the nose, my sense of smell changes for a few seconds and I smell a very metallic smell and can't smell anything else other than that for a few seconds. What's happening in your olfactory system that's 1: shutting out other smells and 2: producing the metallic smell? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49hc0f/eli5_what_happens_to_your_sense_of_smell_after/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0rtnwy"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Blood smells metallic to a lot of people. Depending on how hard you've been booped, you'll get a metallic smell, if not a coppery taste too, particularly if you've had a particularly deep conversation with someone else's knuckles.\n\nAlso being schmacked in the schnozz can loosen up the crusties up in your air hole, releasing odors that might have been trapped in there. So if you were working in a metal-shop where someone was welding and got some ozone or smoke trapped into your snot, getting popped in your proboscis can cause the release of some of those agents later on. \n\nAn alternate explanation could be 'you're just weird' as I've not heard of anyone else experiencing this, but then again it's not like I've gone around and asked people."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
aa8jrk | if the individual acts involved are already illegal, why did they make a recent law making lynching a crime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aa8jrk/eli5_if_the_individual_acts_involved_are_already/ | {
"a_id": [
"ecqwnbv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"[The lynch law](_URL_0_) is federal. While things have improved over the last fifty years, many states have demonstrated a sympathetic reluctance to prosecute the perpetrators of mob violence. If justice appears to be miscarrying the feds can step in, and help investigate if the state needs it (similar to federal kidnapping law) or prosecute if the state drops the ball:\n > IN GENERAL.—No prosecution of any offense described in this section may be undertaken by the United States, except under the certification in writing of the Attorney General, or a designee, that \n(A) the State does not have jurisdiction; \n(B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction; \n(C) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or \n(D) a prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.\n\nThe law applies to any mob violence resulting in \"bodily injury\", for \"two or more people\" definition of \"mob\". It outlaws all such\n > OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN\n\nbased on the 14th amendment, and \n > OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY, OR DISABILITY.\n\nwhere permitted by the commerce clause.\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3178/text"
]
] |
||
2ciyao | why is my printer always fiddling with itself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ciyao/eli5_why_is_my_printer_always_fiddling_with_itself/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjfx9cz"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"It's \"cleaning\" itself so the ink doesn't get jammed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bm8azh | molten salt nuclear reactors | How do they work, and on what principles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bm8azh/eli5_molten_salt_nuclear_reactors/ | {
"a_id": [
"emuyvh0"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Well, no one has answered yet... So I'll try to explain it: To put it simply. An MSR uses salt instead of water to transfer thermal energy. However, instead of having fuel rods like in traditional nuclear reactors, the uranium fuel is mixed in with the salt. This creates an inherently stable reactor, as when the heat increases, the salt expands and pushes into cooling tubes. Even if the reactor gets too hot, it cannot go into meltdown, since the materials are already molten.\n\nEdit: Water is still used to generate steam to run turbines, it's just that salt is used to directly extract the heat energy from the uranium fuel.\n\nHopefully someone else who knows more about MSR's will find this post. But this is the basics of what I know about them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2m70ib | how does an automated telephone assistant know which numbers you dial? | I.E. "if you know your extension, please dial it now"
How does it know which numbers you input?
I assume each number has a slightly different tone, and it detects them somehow... if so, is it just a computer program that analyzes the tone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m70ib/eli5_how_does_an_automated_telephone_assistant/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm1hgfy",
"cm1jqk8"
],
"score": [
10,
4
],
"text": [
"Yes. It's actually two tones overlaid on top of each other. One tone indicates which row contains the button you pressed, and the other indicates which column. A computer can easily pick out the two tones, and work out which button they represent.",
"Most phones that interface with the traditional \"dial tone\" public phone network (called \"PSTN\" - Public Switched Telephone Network) use an analog (in this case, sound-based) signalling method called \"DTMF\" or Dual-Tone Multiple Frequency. This means that when you press a button on the phone keypad, the phone transmits 2 tones at once down the line at specific frequencies. This signal is then received by the system at the other end to which is listening specifically for specific sets of tones. They're designed specifically so that one set cannot get confused with another due to poor line quality given they're traditionally sent over voice quality phone lines, not digital quality lines. \n\nTraditionally phone networks themselves even used DTMF to perform signalling to dial or set the call to long distance or other features within the phone network itself, but mostly these days it's used for backwards compatibility as the core of most phone networks is exclusively digital. Cell phones for instance natively do not need to transmit DTMF signals unless they are leaving the cell network to communicate with older/PSTN systems. VoIP is the same."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1p772z | how is the money distributed when you donate to research cancer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p772z/eli5_how_is_the_money_distributed_when_you_donate/ | {
"a_id": [
"cczf709",
"cczgbxj",
"cczgcjb",
"cczgebc",
"cczh4jj",
"cczh60c",
"cczhatf",
"cczhs6h",
"cczhtmy",
"cczhvxk",
"cczi1hu",
"cczv6h1"
],
"score": [
7,
12,
33,
60,
21,
2,
3,
4,
4,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I'm on the board of a charity that essentially donates to other charities and it can be a confusing issue. A good idea is to make sure any organization you donate to is an accredited 501(c)3 charity and look for an administrative percentage on their website. Some charities carry a larger overhead than others which means a percentage of the money you donate would be going to keep the charity running/ pay salaries rather than to the cause you are donating to. ",
"Some organizations will tell you exactly which research projects are funded with their donations.\n\nOne I appreciate is [Pedal the Cause](_URL_0_), a great St. Louis-based cancer charity ride that gives 100% of their donations to local cancer research.",
"Also, make sure the charity is for cancer *research* not all that cancer *awareness*.",
"In the case of Susan G. Komen it's distributed directly to the CEO.",
"I am a committee member for my local Relay for Life and I can speak on some of this a little. About 72% of the money spent goes directly into services provided and about 28% is used Administrative overhead. The 72% is divided into a couple of sub categories including Support, Research, Treatment, and Prevention. \n\nPatient support is the largest chunk of the pie which includes thinks like helping with wigs, support groups, and other programs to help ease the burden for the person fighting cancer and their family. Research is money given to educational groups for studying and finding ways to combat the disease. Research gets the smallest chunk of the pie (around 20% I think), but details on why I can't provided. I would assume that there is only so many places you can throw money to get things done. Treatment is help with detection and programs related to actual treatment of people who have cancer. Prevention doesn't get the biggest cut but is pretty important. This deals with education, early detection, and other programs to raise awareness. One of the most effective ways to beat cancer is to detect it early. Obviously this isn't always possible, but it is easier to treat a small mass that hasn't spread than it is too treat cancer that has metastasised to a couple of major organs. \n\nThe overhead carries a number of things including salaries and cost of fund raising. By having a mesh of representatives across the country they can expand fund raising efforts and maintain goals and financially secure the organization. Much like a business, it is cheaper to have 4 people in one building, but having 10000 people at 50 locations returns a lot more money. As for fund raisers there is a cost to do an event such as a Relay. You have to pay for the park, the signs, and prizes for some events. Businesses that donate want to see their name on a sign, which we have to pay for. Teams get T-Shirts and some opt to get the prizes awarded for collecting certain amounts of money. \n\nI am sure there are people in the organization that are bastards and take advantage of the system. I know there are people who sacrifice a lot who work for the American Cancer Society. Personally I have done a lot of good and helped with a number of things. Make sure when you donate you are donating to a 501 c 3. All records are available for how money is spent and if a 501 c 3 does do something, someone will eventually find it and they will get hit. ",
"ITT: Answers about how the money does *not* go to cancer research.",
"There's a site called [Consano](_URL_0_) that uses crowd-funding for medical research (basically like Kickstarter.) Look at a list of projects, donate any amount to the one you want, and all of your money goes directly to that project. The researchers are required to send updates to their donors at least quarterly.",
"I plugged it before, but...\n\nIf you would like to have your money go to a good use, consider an organization like the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. 100%, yes all of it, goes to supporting research, _URL_1_, more info _URL_0_. It supports young talented scientists in a crucial part of his or her career, postdoctoral research, where one is generally expected to work long hours and provide his or her own funding, receiving very little pay. Obtaining a private fellowship alleviates some of the burden allowing young scientists to contribute novel ideas to the field. Thanks, cancer will only be cured through research.\n",
"Depends entirely on which charity you donate to.",
"It depends entirely on the charity. I work for a UK cancer research charity.\n\nHere in the UK, Cancer Research UK is one of the biggest cancer research charities. Off the top of my head, their money will go on:\n\n* Administrative spending: paying fundraisers, administrators, legal staff, IT, and so on. Don't forget pensions, some large charities may still be running their own pension fund for employees.\n* Infrastructure: building rent if not owned, maintenance, utilities, support staff (cleaners, maintenance staff, site management, security etc.). This will be for both their administrative buildings and their research buildings. It can be a huge cost. The electricity costs for the building I work in are huge because of all the scientific equipment packed in it.\n* In-house research: CRUK has its own research institutes. Here they have groups working on various aspects of cancer research from the basic science to patient diagnosis and treatment. The costs of research include all the staff costs (cheap, if you ask the scientists), equipment costs, and laboratory consumables. Consumable costs can be huge, and you have no idea how many plastic tubes, pipettes, resins, gels and whatever a lab can get through in a week until you see it happening.\n* Outside research: CRUK award grants to external researchers (in places such as the one I work in). There's a tough peer-reviewed application process to get this money, which has got even tougher in the current climate. The grant will usually be a fixed sum, with a proportion for staff costs, equipment costs, recurring costs and consumable costs. It may specify the number and type of staff that can be employed. It will usually be for something like 3 or 5 years. There is usually an annual or mid-point review. Smaller grants are for one-off goals. Bigger grants can be for a programme of research and may well be renewed several times as the programme progresses.\n* Future plans: they probably have a legal duty to have a financial reserve of some size invested. They may be saving to build new buildings or refurbish or start up labs in existing institutions.\n\nA good charity will publish its financial reports in some detail and highlight administrative costs.\n\nLow non-research spending is not always a good thing. One of the charities that funds work in our building has its charity charter written in a way that severely limits the money it can spend on stuff like infrastructure and utilities. They have to do complicated deals to piggy-back their research into existing groups because they can't pay for something as simple as lab space - institutions don't like people paying for research but not helping with the electricity bill, especially if they are themselves charities.\n\nTL;DR: It goes on a surprisingly complex list of different things, and although low administrative costs are good, somebody has got to pay for the electricity.",
"I'm gonna jump in here because I spent several years working in the \"not for profit\" sector and during that time I did a lot of research into this type of question (more generally, where does your dollar go). There is no straight answer to your question because every charity is different.\n\nThe best piece of advice I can give you is to research the charity itself. Look at their financials, their projects and even more so...how have their projects/ funding helped in easing/ solving the problem(s) they are addressing. There are a lot of charities that don't do well in any of these areas and that is unfortunate for those that do because it erodes the public's trust.\n\nOne of the most prolific cancer research campaigns is the Pink Ribbon. I once heard a quote from an authority in this subject that went along the lines of \"Do you not believe that with all the money that has been donated to this campaign, over all these years, if it went directly to research a cure that we would not have one by now?\" I am no authority in medical research but this point does raise some questions in my mind. Check out [this](_URL_0_) to help understand another perspective.\n\nI too sit on a Board of a local youth organization and we run a lean operation. I do know that in this case our staff are paid reasonably and we solicit everywhere we can so that we can survive and provide programs to our community. No extravagance here. \n\nedit- grammar and stuff",
"Mostly to the CEO's pocket."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://stlouis.pedalthecause.org/beneficiaries_research.jsp"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.consano.org/home/index"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon_Cancer_Research_Foundation",
"http://www.damonrunyon.org/donate/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://youtu.be/JQNTP0XyDG0"
],
[]
] |
||
f94p2b | how do fat reduction procesures work? | Lately, people at work and at the gym are in this craze for these procedures (cryosculpting, laser lipo, etc) and they've been sending me Groupon links left and right.
I was under the impression that fat cells can't be removed, just drained or emptied.
Do any of these things actually remove fat cells? How do they work?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f94p2b/eli5_how_do_fat_reduction_procesures_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"fipg2wu",
"fipm42y"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Oh yes, fat cells can certainly be removed. Liposuction physically removes the adipose tissue from the body.\n\nThese are just temporary solutions though, your body can simply create more fat cells over time or have the current ones increase in size to store more fat.",
"Liposuction is using suction to remove the fat cells. Cryolipolysis is freezing the fat cells so that they die. Once you reach adulthood the amount of fat cells you have are set. Your body will not make more but you can still make your current fat cells larger."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1zils8 | why is nigeria so strongly associated with scams? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zils8/eli5_why_is_nigeria_so_strongly_associated_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"cftzknl",
"cfu0jny",
"cfu2rpp",
"cfu3234",
"cfu3mze",
"cfu3p8a",
"cfu4a1j",
"cfu4lcf",
"cfu5ip9",
"cfu6gz7"
],
"score": [
37,
2,
6,
2,
3,
7,
10,
3,
2,
35
],
"text": [
"It's called an advance-fee-fraud and was made popular by nigerian groups in the 80s via fax and now via e-mail. They send you a letter in pretty bad english (they are africans and they want you to believe them, so they don't speak flawlessly) and say that a nigerian prince has a lot of money and wants to transfer it out of the country or something in that fashion. Usually, you have to pay a little amount of money, so they can \"set it up\", of course, you will never see any money. \n\nThis is also known as the Nigeria Connection or the 419 scam (The nigerian law code §419 is about scams like this)",
"Its official language is English so I'd say that's important to be fluent in English to carry out these scams. They'd also have to be in a foreign country where it would not be ridiculous to have relatively unknown members of royalty.\n\nAlthough I'd reckon there are just as many scams anywhere else in the world, it's just that the Nigerian prince scam has become a pop culture thing so it's more known. Could be also that it's more prominent because it's actually making them money.",
"_URL_0_ very nice website. It hasn't been updated for years but it has some nice stories in the Archive section.",
"It's not just that old chain email. The website I work for no longer allows signups from Nigeria because they are literally only ever fraudsters. It's like they know just enough to try to make scamming into a living so that's what they do.",
"In asked someone from Nigeria once and he said it was because there are so many educated people there with no jobs or legal ways to make money.",
"The president's son started it.\n\nHe still owes me",
"I saw a new(ish) one on my local craigslist. Back while \nI was apartment hunting I saw an add for a small house that was for rent in my price range (pretty cheap). The add said that he and his wife were in the peace corps, and they would like someone like me, someone who was a handyman and could take good care of a home for a year while they were on a mission. \n\nWe emailed back and forth and it seemed like a good fit. That is, until they asked me to wire the first months rent to Nigeria and then they would send me the lease. I demanded to see the lease first and they never responded. So I drove by the house, and lo, it was not for rent.",
"Nigerian scams are waning. Now I'm seeing more of similar scams from China and Hong Kong. If you own a website, you'll often get emails telling you that they are a domain registrar currently processing somebody else's order of your trademarks/domains of other TLD (_URL_0_, ._URL_1_, etc) and they're giving you a chance to pay $xxx to get the domains first.",
"Check your e-mail. ",
"* Nigeria has a very large population, at 175 million; for example it has a larger population than Russia, Japan or Mexico.\n* Nigeria is a former British colony, so English is the language used in government, trade, education and communication.\n* Nigeria is one of the more prosperous countries in Africa. Did you know that [Nigeria has a space program that has successfully launched satellites](_URL_1_)? More importantly to your question, they have better Internet connectivity than most other African countries.\n* [Nigeria has a huge political corruption problem](_URL_0_), and law enforcement isn't that great.\n\nThese factors put Nigeria into a \"sweet spot\" for this sort of scam. Most other countries either don't have as many people, or not nearly as many English speakers, or are too poor to carry out these scams in comparable number against English speakers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.419eater.com/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"yourdomain.cn",
"com.hk"
],
[],
[
"http://www.transparency.org/country#NGA",
"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-21954395"
]
] |
||
2jjudd | "mrs." or "ms."? | If a heterosexual married couple has different last names, is the wife's title "Mrs." or " Ms."? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jjudd/eli5_mrs_or_ms/ | {
"a_id": [
"clce3mw",
"clceakz"
],
"score": [
17,
3
],
"text": [
"* Mrs. - married woman\n* Miss - unmarried woman\n* Ms. - none of your goddamned business\n\nTraditionally, Miss vs. Mrs. was to advertise a woman's marital status, with Miss implying she was available. \n\nSince men have no such distinction and are just Mr., Ms. was invented as a similar titled that was agnostic to marital status.",
"Definitely Ms. when they have different last names. Wikipedia says:\n\n > Even several public opponents of \"non-sexist language\", such as William Safire, were finally convinced that Ms. had earned a place in English by the case of US Congresswoman Geraldine A. Ferraro. Ferraro, a United States vice-presidential candidate in 1984, was a married woman who used her birth surname professionally rather than her husband's (\"Zaccaro\"). Safire pointed out that it would be equally incorrect to call her \"Miss Ferraro\" (as she was married), or \"Mrs. Ferraro\" (as her husband was not \"Mr. Ferraro\")—and that calling her \"Mrs. Zaccaro\" would confuse the reader."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1d28sk | how to land a plane | Specifically, a commercial jet | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d28sk/eli5_how_to_land_a_plane/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9m74ia"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"First of all, a disclaimer. I'm a flying instructor, I've been teaching people to fly (and land) planes for 9 years. It takes practice - lots of practice. What I'm writing here is background information for people who want to know more - it is **not an instruction manual**. If you want to learn to fly, have flying lessons.\n\nBefore landing, you need to fly a good approach. Line the aircraft up with the runway, with the gear and flaps selected down. Once on final approach, use power to control your speed, and move the nose up/down to control where you're going. Your aircraft manual will tell you what speed to fly at.\n\nIf you're overshooting, you'll see the start of the runway move down in the windscreen, so lower the nose. If you're undershooting the start of the runway will move up.\n\nIf you get too low, the perspective of the runway will look wrong. It will look flat. Too high, and it won't look flat enough. If this happens, get back to the correct perspective, then check where the numbers are moving to make sure it doesn't happen again.\n\nDuring this phase, your \"scan\" should be: horizon, airspeed indicator, runway threshold. Keep checking these three things.\n\nThen, as you cross the start of the runway, shift your focus to the end of the runway. The reason you do that is because it enables you to judge your height. You can practice this in your car on the motorway when there's no traffic - look about 1/2 mile ahead, and you'll be able to judge the height of your car seat above the road.\n\nUsing this method, when you're about 10' above the ground, raise the nose to fly level, and simultaneously close the throttle.\n\nThe aim now is not to let the aircraft land, but to hold it 10' above the runway for as long as possible. (N.b. - this is true for light aircraft. A different technique is used for jets.) As the aircraft slows down, gradually raise the nose more and more to maintain your height, always judging your height by looking at the end of the runway. Eventually, the aircraft will land itself - even after it lands, continue to use the controls to keep the weight off the nose wheel, until you're ready to gently lower the nose wheel to the ground.\n\nFinally, congratulate yourself on a perfect landing.\n\n(Coming up later today, if people are interested - landing in crosswinds.)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3n9s9j | why do so many right wingers dislike green energy and are stuck that oil is what we should go for when there are so many political and geological benefits to drop it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n9s9j/eli5_why_do_so_many_right_wingers_dislike_green/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvm477m",
"cvm48u5",
"cvm4u41",
"cvm54ln",
"cvm5opa",
"cvm5uv9",
"cvm619u",
"cvm66fw",
"cvm6b84",
"cvm6d0t",
"cvm6un7",
"cvm8mlc",
"cvmbhv5",
"cvmbieb",
"cvmblig",
"cvmbvwn",
"cvmdimd"
],
"score": [
103,
10,
155,
3,
6,
7,
3,
4,
47,
8,
23,
31,
2,
4,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The core of conservatism is that government regulation restricts the growth of businesses and thus the economy. The government can't just \"drop it\", because they aren't the major users of it. Most oil is used by shipping companies that import and export products, and ship stuff across the country. The government can create regulations that make oil less profitable and offer incentives to make green energy more profitable, that's it.",
"Green Energy = VERY EXPENSIVE Energy\n\nOil is cheap, and low costs allow the economy to perform well without stimulation that would involve raising taxes. The right wingers think that government mostly spends its money unwisely, and green energy deals like Solyndra tend to reinforce that belief. They see giving the money to the people leaves nothing to blame government for, albeit with side effects (like unemployment).",
"Many politicians are personally invested in industries that would be negatively impacted if we migrated away from oil. Further, they get funding from and are lobbied by such industries. Investing in newer, cleaner energy is a financial gamble they're not willing to take.",
"Its not a dislike of green energy, its a dislike of government involvement in the economy (in stated beliefs, many republicans still tend to swing subsidies just towards their own contributors). The best way to develop green energy is to let market forces work, not for government to use its crystal ball and say \"we should go this way\". ",
"Solar is coming along nicely, once Graphen is available it will be a real game changer. But there is an abundance of fossil fuels and they cannot be beat (presently) for energy to weight ratio. For example, aviation will use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future as the batteries for electric flight eliminate any other payload. Plus anymore diesel can be made from algae in one hour so you could call fossil fuels renewable.",
"Petroleum is very good at what it does for what it costs financially.\n\nGreen Energy may or may not hit limitations in returns. (I'd much rather focus on Nuclear.)\n\nChanges to support Green Energy will either accomplish very little or raise the cost on tons of every day items. A massive % of the pollution comes from the ships bring goods between nations.\n\nLot's of the American conservatives don't live in big cities and will frequently drive 150 + miles a week easily so fuel costs are very relevant.\n\nFinally, for a little ad ho·mi·nem: Many of the people pushing for Green Energy on the national stage are making significant profit off of it. Logic has it's place but some data is so complex you will spend lots of time researching or never have an opinion. As nobody else decides not to have an opinion when they don't have a logical defense why should you?\n\n\n",
"Oil is the most efficient way to store energy and the cheapest relatively speaking. Because of these reasons and the right wings' preference of business development over environmental regulations they see no reason to force private companies from fossil fuels. They believe the free market will ultimately correct for any issue and that government shouldn't get involved, this is a well supported position by conservatives and therefore the right wing has no pressuring reason to drop oil, but they do have a few reasons (in their eyes) to stay with it. ",
"Reddit may be lefty, but the reality is that while green-energy can be affordable on the micro scale, it's still quite expensive at the level of consumption the U.S. is at (5 trillion kwh a year) At the retail level, lots of the subsidies are wasted going to rich northerners, who can hardly utilize the technology. If it isn't viable in the market, most conservatives don't want it subsidized. What's viable in Florida isn't in Maine. \n\ntl;dr: solar has tons of advantages, and I've bought and installed it myself, but asking taxpayers to foot the bill for extremely expensive energy while we're deeply in debt doesn't resound with a lot of fiscally-responsible people. The panels alone cost alone would be probably $1 trillion (5 trillion kwh/4.5 sun-hours * $1/kwh), but it's the storage expense that'll be the real stickler. Decentralized, market-based solutions are what the right wants, not utility monopolies forcing expensive technology on the plebs. ",
"Conservatives don't dislike green energy. They fucking love it. They dislike the fact that green energy as it stands today sucks and is expensive / not readily available, and most people aren't going to outlay tens of thousands od dollars to solar panel their fucking roof, especially in this economy. As the markets and large oil and gas companies invest more and develop the energy to where its functional and affordable to the middle class, then it'll take over and be more mainstream. These companies have long term R & D programs designed that are doing this RIGHT NOW. Furthermore, people and businesses are being punished, as well as taxpayers, due to the higher costs associated with higher regulations in efforts to speed the process. Punishing and trying to force the middle class to use these types of energy through higher costs is not the role of government and is shortsighted. \n\nShort answer, conservatives want the markets and companies to continue to develop these technologies to where they make sense to use them. Liberals want to force companies and people to prematurely adopt technologies that are in their infancy and don't make sense in mainstream energy markets. ",
"I'm not a winger, but am right of center.\n\nI Don't think oil is the answer or solution. I just believe that the government shouldn't make rules or incentives. Let the market guide progress, not some law that Congress wants.\n\nPeople in the US reward 'green' companies like Chipolte, Whole Foods and others. I enjoy New Belgium beers (makers of fat tire) and I respect their green energy use.\n\nTL;DR most modern conservatives simply don't want federal laws like the Left insists upon.",
"Many right wingers don't dislike green energy. They dislike green energy REGARDLESS OF COST. Frankly they don't care where they electricity comes from, but they don't want taxpayer dollars artificially propping up the green energy sector, which is what the production tax credit (PTC) for wind and solar have done for two decades now.",
"We have a lot of things that still need energy provided by fossil fuels that green energy sources are not yet capable of providing. Since we have an ongoing need, we need to ensure an ongoing supply.\n\nRight-wingers don't dislike green energy per se; they dislike government intervention in the energy market. When green energy becomes more available, more effective, more practical than fossil fuels - \"right-wingers\" will like it too... except the crazies. ",
"What are the many geological benefits of dropping oil?",
"You're not even asking the right question.\n\nExcept in a few backwater heavily subsidized markets, oil is not even competitive with green energy because green energy (hydro/solar/wind/bio) generates electricity, when very little oil is used for electricity generation - the lion's share is used for transportation, which is the driving force behind the market price of oil - other products such as natural gas, plastics and heating oil are merely profitable byproducts.\n\nTL;DR Oil has almost nothing to do with green energy.",
"Geological benefits to drop it? I don't think you know what that word means.",
"The big irony is that many conservatives are in favor of nuclear energy, the most reliable snd powerful form of green energy, but it is opposed by the green energy movement cuz some bad shit happened 40 years ago.",
"These answers are wrong. The world economy runs on oil. There is no replacement-repeat, absolutely no viable replacement for oil right now. Full stop. 90 million barrels of oil are consumed globally every day. There is absolutely nothing to replace anything more than a small fraction, and that small fraction would be incredibly expensive and resource intensive. \n\n\nBottom line: You are hearing some bullshit from a bunch of people who really, really want to believe you can fix everything with solar panels and wind turbines. Well, you just fucking can't. The technology to replace oil doesn't currently exist. Your two assumptions-that there are political and economic benefits to \"dropping\" oil are flat wrong. It's not a conspiracy. Everything good in your life is there because of oil. \n\nRight wingers realize this, but are in denial about the obvious consequence-drastic climate change. Left wingers ignore this reality and pretend that tiny expensive reductions in carbon emissions are great victories. It's idiocy. \n\n\nI feel the solar powered downvotes headed my way. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1v325y | we can send signals to the rover on mars. how come i can't get a hdmi plug that wirelessly sends an hd signal from my cable box to my tv? | I'm trying to figure out the best way to word this and hopefully I can. So pretty much we all hate dealing with wires. I have my Cable box, Internet modem, tv and Xbox One all set up in my living room all together on my TV stand. Why can't I wireless HDMI adapters to plug in so I don't have to deal with 25 different wires. It's a mess back there and god help me if I try to move anything, it just gets more tangled. So why can't this idea be put to work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v325y/eli5_we_can_send_signals_to_the_rover_on_mars_how/ | {
"a_id": [
"ceo86mx",
"ceo89yh",
"ceo8ohw"
],
"score": [
5,
7,
5
],
"text": [
"Chromecast + hdmi hub ",
"The equipment to send and receive signals to mars costs several billion dollars. A HDMI cable costs $15. \n\nThat multi-billion dollar equipment sends and received data at a rate of several kilobytes per second. Your TV could need a gigabyte per second to cover the audio and video signal.\n\nThey are experimenting with very high frequency wireless connections, trying to push the boundaries of what is possible so they can make good, fast, error-free wireless connections to things like televisions. It is not easy. And it is far too easy to make a system that works as long as no one in your street turns on a microwave oven.\n\nTL,DR: Wireless is just hard.",
"The electronics industry could do wireless HDMI tomorrow. The standards body that controls HDMI, which is in turn controlled by content creators, doesn't want to do it.\n\nThey fear that wirelessly broadcasting the signal will make it easier for you to pirate that signal, bypassing the copyright protection scheme that is embedded in HDMI. Because obviously the thing that keeps nobody in the world from making a digital copy of an HDMI stream is hardware based copy protection.\n\nI'm seriously not kidding. (_URL_0_) \n\nA 1080p video stream would be trivial to send wirelessly. If you have an Apple device and an AppleTV you can do it right now using tech they call AirPlay. Video the quality of a BluRay DVD is is max about 8 megabits per second. Wifi on 802.11g is 54 mb/s. 802.11n is 600mb/s."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Content_protection_.28HDCP.29"
]
] |
|
6jpy0e | why does cartilage completely degrade from overuse? does something prevent it from regenerating like muscle tissue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jpy0e/eli5_why_does_cartilage_completely_degrade_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"djg6hzc"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Cartilage isn't connected to any blood supply, such as arteries and veins. Thus, it simply wears down over time instead of regenerating. Additionally, this is why torn ligaments/tendons also take so long to heal, and require direct medical intervention in the form of surgery."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4ma2fg | how do we know how to spell and pronounce names from ancient sumer and egypt just from reading symbols etched in clay? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ma2fg/eli5_how_do_we_know_how_to_spell_and_pronounce/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3tsf2p",
"d3tvp0w"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"You ever heard of the Rosetta Stone?\n\nIt's written in three languages. Two of them nobody knew how to decipher before it was found. The third is Greek. \n\nBy comparing the Greek passages to the same words written in Demotic and Hieroglyphs scholars really busted the languages wide open. That one simple piece of writing was the key to reading everything the Egyptians spent a thousand years writing down.",
"Egypt specifically had the Rosetta Stone. A tablet that had writing in hieroglyphs, phonetic Egyptian and Greek. This allowed us to learn what certain symbols mean.\n\nWe don't know what it sounds like though. Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, like proper Latin. This means that no one knows what it is supposed to sound like, just what we think it is supposed to sound like."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
c4dg5p | why does the charge of one atom determine how many atoms there are of another element in a molecule? | For example. H2O. Oxygen is a -2 charge and hydrogen (in this case) is a +1 charge. When they combine, *BECAUSE* oxygen has a -2 charge, that means there are now two hydrogens in the molecule.
Why does the charge on oxygen describe how many atoms of hydrogen there are going to be in the molecule?
My chem professor is absolutely horrible and I’m having a hard time getting this shit. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c4dg5p/eli5_why_does_the_charge_of_one_atom_determine/ | {
"a_id": [
"erw0swt",
"erw1o5h",
"erw1xmb",
"erw4hhu"
],
"score": [
3,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It doesn't, it determines what a stable molecule would contain. The 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 of oxegen have to all already exist and react together to form the new molecule.",
"The general idea is that a atom what a full outer electron shell. That i 2 electrons for the first shell and 8 for all other .\n\nSo look at the [Periodic table](_URL_0_) where the nobel gases on the far right column have full outer shells. If you move a step to the right you add a electron and a step to the left remove one. Covalent bond is sharing electrons and both atoms move a step to the right. There is also Ionic bonding where one atom lose a electron and another gain one.\n\n So oxygen are two steps to the left so you need to add two electrons for a full shell and hydrogen is one step from helium so you need to add one. In covalent bond atoms share electron. So hydrogen what to share 1 electron and water what to share 2 electrons. So if two hydrogen atoms each share 1 electron with a oxygen atom each hydrogen atoms have 2 electrons and oxygen have 8 in the outer shell. The result is that all have a full shell and is happy.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nCarbon is 4 steps from a nobel gas so it like to share 4 electrons. So you can combine it with two oxygen that like to share 2 electron each and ger CO2 or with 4 hydrogen atoms and get CH4 (methane)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nA example of Ionic bonding is table salt NaCl. Na looses a electrons and jump one step to the left and have a full outer shell and Cl gain a atom and move a step to the right.",
"Hold on, when you say charge do you really mean oxidation number? Oxidation number is more of a theoretical charge of an atom in a molecule as opposed to an actual electric charge such as that held by an ion.",
" > When they combine, BECAUSE oxygen has a -2 charge, that means there are now two hydrogens in the molecule.\n\nNo! If you have one oxygen and one hydrogen when they combined they would form HO, and the oxygen would still have a -1 charge that it wants filled. When it gets another hydrogen it forms H2O and it is stable.\n\nThe charge of the oxygen isn't making one hydrogen into two. I suspect your chemistry professor is saying that when oxygen is reacted with hydrogen (lots of oxygen atoms and lots of hydrogen atoms) it results in the pairing of H2O because oxygen's -2 charge is fully satisfied by the +1 charge of two hydrogen atoms (in total +2) which equal out to neutral charge."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Periodic_Table_Chart-en.svg"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
43d8d5 | how do you order at starbucks? please give me a step by step answer as in how do you order and the different options. i want to become a person with a super complicated order. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43d8d5/eli5how_do_you_order_at_starbucks_please_give_me/ | {
"a_id": [
"czhdvgd",
"czhdvvg",
"czhe8ox",
"czhen58",
"czhetw6",
"czhexsr"
],
"score": [
5,
5,
4,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"At the risk of sounding rude: isn't all the information you're looking for on the menu and/or available by asking the staff?",
"\"Hi, can I get a small/medium/large (thing from menu) but can you {detailed adjustments like add caramel, no whipped cream, etc)?\"\n\nIf you don't understand the menu: \"Do you have a coffee that, like, tastes like hazelnut but also is more blended like a milkshake. Like the Frappuccinos? And I'd need it to come in decaf. And I'd like caramel in it.\" \n\nJust say whats in your head. That's it. If they need further clarification, they'll ask.\n\nCashier: \"Do you mean caramel drizzle or caramel syrup?\"\n\nThey're a luxury coffee shop, their job is to give you exactly what you want, because god knows you're not there for the prices. Be as complicated as you want and ignore terms you don't know like \"venti\", just go with what's in your head. They'll get it.",
"So my brother works at starbucks and I asked him his tastiest over complicated drink. I asked for it once and it was good, but got a look from the cashier. \n\nMocha coconut frappuccino with 1 pump of toffeenut syrup, extra coconut flakes to be blended, whole banana blended, and a floating shot. ",
"You *want* a super complicated order? This makes no sense.\n\nOrder a coffee you like. Making it hard on the barista for no reason is a dick move.",
"I've managed to put my \"go-to\" drink together through trial and error.\n\nI usually order a \"Venti Soy Vanilla Latte, 6 pumps of vanilla, Kids Temp, No foam\"\n\nI learned how to phrase it in Starbucks terms because in uni, I had friends who worked at the Starbucks in school, and as I was going through my trial and error phase I would ask them \n\nex. \"I hate when I order a latte and it burns my tongue, I want to drink it right away and not have to wait\" \n\n\"you should ask for kids Temp then, it's not just for kids, some people want to drink their coffee right away, or some people who won't be drinking it for another couple hours ask for 'extra hot' \" \n\nrecently, most Starbucks I've been to have some kind of visual chart showing the layers of what goes into a latte, cappuccino, espresso, etc. so that might help a bit. \n\nfor a normal latte, which is basically espresso shot, with steamed/frothed milk and syrup there are a couple customizations.\n\n1) Size: Tall(?oz), Grande(16oz), Venti(20oz)\n\n2) Type of Milk (Soy, NonFat, Lactose etc)\n\n3) Type of Drink (Latte, Frappucino-frozen,slushdrink. etc)\n\n4) no. of syrup pumps - whatever flavour syrup the latte you asked for (mine is Vanilla)\n\n5) Temperature: kids Temp, warm, extra hot\n\n6) Foam/No Foam/Extra Foam: the foamy white stuff on top of the coffee.\n\n LPT, when they make it with no foam, they fill the cup with coffee to the brim. \n\nHope that helps, if you need to clarify anything try to catch a Starbucks when they're not busy and strike up a conversation with the barista, they're usually very nice and will help you with the lingo. GoodLuck \n\nEdit: format and spacing ",
"I like \"normal\" coffee. I call it a drip, I say the size first. I also mention that I want room for cream. I prefer the dark roast, so I mention that too, I say:\n > \"May I have a grande drip of the dark with room?\"\n\nThough I usually have my own mug so while handing my mug with the lid off and in my hand I say, (and I still want room, but they assume the lid takes up a huge amount of volume but it doesn't)\n > \"I'd like the dark roast please, no room\" \n\nAs for normal items on the menu I just say what I want unless I want to augment them, here's an augmented example:\n > I'd like a grande Caramel Macchiato with two extra shots\n\nIf you're about to get in your car and drive I recommend asking for a stopper, don't ask the person you give the order to, ask the person at the other end that gives you your drink.\n\nI hope this was helpful, let me know if you have any questions, I have lived in the Puget Sound for 25 years which is Starbucks ground zero."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2viwci | are unreliable cars unreliable because of cost cutting measures or because manufacturers can't do better? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2viwci/eli5are_unreliable_cars_unreliable_because_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"coi1aca"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Depends on what era you're talking about. In the 80s American cars were horribly built, because Ford, GM and Chrystler didn't care. They were confident in their market position, so they didn't focus on quality control, the defects per car rate was very high.\n\nIn the 90s defects per car declined because of automated manufacturing, and better focus on quality control. Now there are very few defects per car, most of the problems with cars are with cost cutting, using cheaper materials or intentionally ignoring design flaws to save money, such as the GM ignition issue, or the Toyota floor mats"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2vlt1p | how do the new quantum equations suggest to scientists that the big bang didn't happen the way we thought it did and that the universe is infinitely old? | EDIT: If correct, how does this change our understanding of "the early universe" - the cosmic microwave background radiation, the disassociation of the forces of nature, the synthesis of particles, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vlt1p/eli5_how_do_the_new_quantum_equations_suggest_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cojodof"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because obscure scientists wanted to get famous and click bait \"news\" sites will pick up on contrarian papers and completely misrepresent them or blow their claims out of proportion because science journalism is almost always awful even in reputable newspapers, let alone in the New Media.\n\nThe short answer is: They don't change a damn thing without more evidence and peer review."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2vgki2 | how does tsa precheck actually make sure people aren't smuggling bad things through security? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vgki2/eli5_how_does_tsa_precheck_actually_make_sure/ | {
"a_id": [
"cohkg0i",
"cohksc0"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"They still check you out, in most airports I see its a quicker check and only uses a metal detector instead of a back-scatter scanner.\n\nThese are also normally people that fly often and are considered low risk. ",
"The pre-check program is only for select individuals who are considered low-risk, extremely frequent fliers and certain government employees and so on. Its not impossible that someone with negative goals could spend the time building up this reputation, but it's unlikely, and not an efficient plan.\n\nMost importantly, they are still subjected to screening, just an expedited version. Even if you are precheck approved you can still, at random, be subjected to a full screening, and their bags and person still go under enough scrutiny that smuggling contraband on-board would be difficult."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
3syet3 | how are people who create and build a company be fired? for example, how does someone like steve jobs get fired from apple if it's his company? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3syet3/eli5_how_are_people_who_create_and_build_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cx1h14b",
"cx1henh",
"cx1ilf5"
],
"score": [
13,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"It wasn't his company. By the time he left, it had gone public: it was owned by investors, and the Board of Directors (elected by shareholders) were in charge (this is common when a company grows; it gives the company lots of cash in exchange for shareholders getting control over it). Jobs was chairman of the board, but the CEO at the time convinced the other members that his plan was better than Jobs's plan and Jobs was put in a position which was designed to get him to resign from the board.",
"That's the nature of taking a company public. You give up control in return for cash. If you want to maintain complete control, then you should not take the company public.\n\nAlso, it's worth nothing that Steve Jobs never owned Apple in it's entirety. When it went public in 1980 Jobs and Steve Wozniak held the bulk of the shares, with a small percentage held by some early investors and employees.",
"I work for a small, privately held manufacturing company. When they started, John mortgaged his house and used that cash to buy machines and pay employees to make his product. Our product is great, and sales have been increasing dramatically over the past few years, and most of our customers are really happy with our service, so they've stopped buying from our competitors. But it has gotten to the point that, when a customer orders a part, they will have to wait 4-5 weeks before we can get it to them. That's unacceptable in this industry, so we need way more machines, which are really expensive, in order to keep our customers happy, or even think about expanding to new ones.\n\n\nJohn's out of cash, so he looks for investors. For a bank, that's WAY too risky. They're not going to give us $200,000 and just collect a few % interest, because their chance of losing the investment is reasonably high, and the just making the interest payments would likely cripple us. So, we look to venture capitalists. These capitalists say, \"OK, your business is currently worth $100,000. If we get together and give you $200,000, and then we will own 2/3 of your business. We don't necessarily need to pay them a monthly interest or anything, but now if the investment works, and the company triples in value over the next 10 years, their investment is now worth $600,000. That might be worth the risk. \n\n\nSince they own 2/3 of the company, they get to make the big decisions, like who's in charge. They would typically leave John running the show, since he built this from the ground up, but if it looks like he's not maximizing profits, they can call a meeting, and decide that John's no longer in charge. All he can do is watch as the company that he has been running for the past 20 years, probably bears his name, and probably employs a lot of his family, is run by somebody else. Also, due to the non-compete clause in his contract, he's probably not allowed to work for any other company in the industry, or start his own new company, for a set number of years. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2fjv4d | poetic meter and rhyme scheme. | I want to be the next.. eh.. supreme master romantic/deep poet-superhero. But I dont understand poems. :(
Help me in writing my first poem. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fjv4d/eli5_poetic_meter_and_rhyme_scheme/ | {
"a_id": [
"ck9zt3s",
"cka2m25"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"...blink. \"Rome was not built in a day.\" Rhyme schemes differ and aren't actually required, although you might check out Shakespeare's sonnets. For meter, you could start with old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who had a way with meter that is extremely insistent. Robert Frost? Percy Bysshe Shelley? \"Ozymandias\" is a fine old classic, and brief enough.\n\nYou must study, young padawan, and practice your skills.",
"Particularly formatted poems can be difficult at first, but when you understand the basics, you can work toward the more difficult formats. I'll just go ahead and break down each of your inquiries. This is my first explaining post, bear with me.\n\n\n**1. Rhyme Scheme**\n\nRhyme schemes can vary from the simplest (ABAB) to more challenging tasks such as sonnets or sestinas where you get stuff that looks like (ABCDEF FAEBDC CFDABE ECBFAD DEACFB BDFECA). Don't freak out. When you see rhyme schemes represented by such letters, it *typically* means that a letter stands for a certain end-rhyme for the end of each line and all the same-letters following adhere to said rhyme. \n\nIn a simple ABAB, the A's would rhyme with one another, and the B's would rhyme with one another.\n\n* Example: An orange *cat* / Lives in my *house* / He's really *fat* / Since he ate *mouse*\n\nHowever, while I said the lettering of rhyme scheme *typically* indicates a literal rhyme, it can *also* indicate exact words being repeated. This is the case of the sestina mentioned above. The 'rhyme scheme' as it were in a sestina is not about putting 'spoon' and 'moon' together when you need an 'A' end; it means that you actually use the same word, 'spoon,' every time you need an 'A' end.\n\nStill with me? In most cases, if you understand this, you can use this basic knowledge and adjust for the particular kind of poem you are attempting to create. \n\n\n**2. Poetic meter**\n\nThe challenge with formatted poetry comes with balancing rhyme scheme and poetic meter together. But, again, if you understand the basics, you can practice with simple things and work your way up. Meter basically refers to the rhythm the poem makes using its sounds. This can be developed through the syllables of the words used, and how 'long' or 'short' they sound (stressed or unstressed). I like to think of meter in beats. A popular example can be seen in the poem, \"A Visit from St. Nicholas.\"\n\n* Example: 'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house\n\nReading that, you most likely felt the rise and fall, the emphasis of the beats when you hit them. \n\n* Example 2: 'Twas the **night** before **Christ**mas when **all** through the **house**\n\n* Example 3: You should be able to sense the general \"da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM\" rhythm of the phrase, in that the 'DUM' is the beat, and the 'da da' are on the off-beats. \n\nTo connect back to the syllables, the 'DUM' is a stressed syllable, and the 'da' is an unstressed syllable.\n\nThere are many different kinds of meters, again, some more difficult than others, and it can take getting used to. If you understand the pattern requirements for a particular kind of poem, you can use this basic knowledge of meter to accomplish what you want. Understand that meter is like a rhythm, and the syllables help move to the beat. \n\n\n\nUltimately, that's the basis for what you need to know to create structured poems. There's a lot of combinations and variations, but it really just takes practice. Try some simpler poetic forms like limerick or cinquain poems and work your way toward more complicated formats like sestinas or sonnets. Then you can decide for yourself which forms you prefer. If you break it down, it won't be as daunting. Just practice! As with everything, practice!\n\n\n**Endnote**\n\nAlso, I realize I just elaborated on rhyme scheme and meter here, but don't be afraid of free verse poetry either! It has no rules, and anything goes. You can write something in the shape of a [bird](_URL_1_) and have it be a poem. You can write a few simple, un-rhyming stanzas about a [red wheelbarrow](_URL_0_) and have it be a wonderfully whimsical, and much-beloved poem. All that to say: the sky's the limit when it comes to poetry."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://tootyandlolly.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/98860592.png",
"http://parthdoshi.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/the-bird.jpg"
]
] |
|
5n9f07 | how is the car heating up when the fans are running but the a/c isn't on? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n9f07/eli5how_is_the_car_heating_up_when_the_fans_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"dc9pzy7",
"dc9r44d"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The fans blow air into the car, that air is heated by heat coming off the engine while it runs.",
"The AC in your car is only for cold air, when you turn AC on, it releases a small amount of gas that's used to cool the air, try put your thermostat on low without AC on and compare it to when AC is on, probably best to try in summer or when it's warmer because the air coming in would be cold anyway during winter"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2e9frp | what is the white stream seen coming from the back of airplanes? | Couple guys started discussing this at work and we could not come up with a conclusion | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e9frp/eli5_what_is_the_white_stream_seen_coming_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjxblz1"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"There are two or three kinds of contrails.\n\nOne kind is from wingtip vortices (I think /u/ThatsPower's father was talking about these). At the tip of any wing, the high pressure air underneath swirls around to the low pressure region above, and as the plain flies along this leaves a (sometimes pretty intense) tubular vortex behind it. The pressure at the center of a vortex is lower than the surrounding air, so if the plane is flying through moist air that's just on the edge of cloud formation, the water vapor in that low-pressure region condenses out into fog and you get a pair of contrails coming off the wingtips. In some cases, [even the normal low-pressure area over the wing is enough to produce condensation](_URL_1_). [Here's a nice photo](_URL_2_) showing wingtip vortices as well as the far-field vortex wake of an airliner. Here's [a kind of crazy shot](_URL_0_) showing a bunch of low-pressure regions made visible around a transsonic jet by condensation.\n\nAnother kind is engine exhaust. Jet exhaust has a bunch of water vapor in it (burning a hydrocarbon fuel produces CO2 and water), and if the temperature/humidity is right, this can condense out into water droplets or ice crystals. This is what /u/barc0de is talking about.\n\nISTR there's a third phenomenon where the airplane can cause nucleation of visible vapor if it flies through saturated air, but I think that's a rare case."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cX5tHgBeKu0/U3UtXrXiIdI/AAAAAAAABio/RGjxmgAuv0I/s1600/F-22_Prandtl-Glauert_condensation.jpg",
"https://www.flickr.com/photos/23032926@N05/6777607687",
"http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-pPSICV3V5dM/T2pJ_UyKizI/AAAAAAABq-U/Bv45DkcP-Ws/j26.jpg"
]
] |
|
533vgq | why does your chest feel 'heavy' for a few seconds after swigging a strong alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/533vgq/eli5_why_does_your_chest_feel_heavy_for_a_few/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7pxro1"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"Alcohol irritates your stomach. Your stomach doesn't have many direct \"pain receptor\" nerve endings, and in any case you can't see or otherwise directly sense your stomach so it's hard for your brain to draw a direct link from discomfort in your stomach to a direct sense of pain in that area of your body (contrast that against, say, burning your hand; your hand is full of nerve endings, you know that your hand was just over a hot stove, you can look and see your hand over the burner, and you can draw a direct causal link from pulling your hand away from the burner and the pain sensation changing, so it's easier to \"peg\" the sensation to the hand specifically and to recognize it as pain). \n\nWhen you irritate your stomach by swigging alcohol your body knows something is kind of amiss, and it wants to bring that to your attention, and nerves fire. But the relative lack of pain receptors and the inability to sense what's going on through other means makes it hard for your brain to present that to you in a way that makes intuitive sense, so it just gives you a report that says something like \"Hey! There's something happening in your torso region that's affecting stuff somehow! It's vaguely unpleasant!\"\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
c5o66m | generally, how do car accidents kill people? | I'm assuming most of them has to do with neck/spine injuries, right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c5o66m/eli5_generally_how_do_car_accidents_kill_people/ | {
"a_id": [
"es2x0c6"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Depending on where the victim is...\n\nA pedestrian struck by a car is either killed through internal bleeding or head trauma generally.\n\nA driver or passenger usually either does from head trauma, internal bleeding, the severing of the spinal column resulting in brain suffocation, or if metal or glass is involved external blood loss or damage to the brain would do it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
34qp2d | coffee on the sand | Found this [video](_URL_0_) on /r/streeteats, could someone please explain how it works?
***
[
Original thread.](_URL_1_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34qp2d/eli5_coffee_on_the_sand/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqx57lq"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Looks like a wok full of sand. The sand is heated over a fire, and the coffee pot is placed in the sand to heat the coffee.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXPZW8B93S0",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/streeteats/comments/34pmrv/coffee_on_the_sand_xpist_rvideos/"
] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coffee#Equipment"
]
] |
|
aflbc0 | what happens inside a venus flytrap after a bug gets trapped in it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aflbc0/eli5_what_happens_inside_a_venus_flytrap_after_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"edzi2b3"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"The plant excretes chemicals that digest the bug and then the plant absorbs it. Very similar to what happens when you eat a bug. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8xm898 | why does it sound likes it’s easier to get pregnant when you are young. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xm898/eli5_why_does_it_sound_likes_its_easier_to_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"e242vj6",
"e244meb"
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text": [
"Your hormones change/decrease\n\nYour ovaries don't produce an egg every time you ovulate\n\nMen's sperm loses motility- meaning they slow down \n\nYour uterus lining doesn't support an egg attaching to it as well as it did when you were younger\n\nYour vagina and cervix atrophy\n\nLess sex overall when you age",
"Statistics.\n\nTeenagers, as a general rule, don't want to get pregnant. They are also hormonal, impulsive, and often lack access to birth control or education on how to use it. When they get pregnant, it's *usually* by accident.\n\nAdults, on the other hand, are less impulsive, have better access to birth control etc, and are generally in a better place to deal with a baby overall, so even if a pregnancy was unplanned, you don't often hear about it.\n\nYou hardly ever hear of teenagers failing to conceive because very, very few teenagers are actively trying to conceive. Adults, on the other hand, often want to have babies, and when that doesn't work, it becomes an issue to talk about."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
ezdd9p | what happens when you buy a put option or sell a call option? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ezdd9p/eli5_what_happens_when_you_buy_a_put_option_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"fgmj9ym",
"fgmjr98",
"fgmlyr0"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"A put option gives you the right to sell a stock by a specific date at a specific price per share. It can be useful if the stock is volatile and may drop in price. The put option gives you a guaranteed buy at a set price, should you choose to exercise it. The call option is the opposite. It give you the right to buy a certain stock, at a set price, by a certain date.",
"Call options - right to buy a stock at a specific price on or before a specific date\n\nPut option - right to sell a stock at a specific price on or before a specific date.\n\n\"Buying\" an option - purchasing a call or put option from another party\n\n\"Selling\" an option - selling a call or put option from another party.\n\nSo, if you buy a put option from me, that means that you have the right to sell me a specific share of stock at a specific price on or before a specific date and I **must** buy it from you if you choose to sell (called exercising the option). If you sell a call option to me, that means that I have the right to buy a specific share of stock from you at a specific price on or before a specific date and you **must** sell it to me if I choose to buy.",
"It gives you the right to buy or sell a stock by a later specified date. Options are bought and sold with an interest in 100 shares, but I'm only going to use one for simplicity.\n\nSo if you buy a call option while their stock is at 100 dollars a share, and by the time the option expires, the stock is at 110 dollars a share, then you're allowed to purchase that at the price agreed when you bought the call option, and now you own a 110 dollar share but only paid 100, plus whatever the cost was to take the option. So if you bought the call option at 1 dollar per share, you would gain 9 dollars here immediately.\n\nIn the event the price went down, and you choose not to buy it, since why would you?, then you lose your dollar that you spent buying the option.\n\n This helps mitigate some risk to you, so if you were POSITIVE a stock will go up, then you would want to buy as much as you can. But you're not dumb and know that there isn't gaurantees like that in trading. So you would invest a comparatively small amount today and that will give you the right to later buy it when it does go up at the price you agreed to, called the strike price, or to pass if it drops.\n\nA put option is the opposite. So if you buy a put option, you'll also have a strike price, and it will give you the right to sell those stocks at the higher strike price, if they fall below that, to whomever the contract is with.\n\nGenerally you would buy put options for stocks you already own, and think will decline, whereas call options are normally stocks you are interested in, but want to see if they go up before investing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
dlazni | jury | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlazni/eli5_jury/ | {
"a_id": [
"f4owl1k"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"They have the power just like a judge in your country has the power. As for the bribing question same thing. Possible but you could also just bribe a judge."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
26appp | what does the military actually protect us from? | Ok. Not trying to show disrespect or ignorance here. I've always heard that the military protects our freedom and liberties. It just seems that the military is more of a pawn for the government to push our power down the throats of the world. Other than 9/11 not much happens that involves our freedom. So, can someone explain their position in our freedom?
Again. No disrespect intended. Just looking to get educated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26appp/eli5_what_does_the_military_actually_protect_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"chp85pn",
"chp89iy",
"chp8d3w",
"chp8h8q",
"chp956j",
"chpijih"
],
"score": [
9,
4,
8,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Deterrence is an important factor. A lot of things don't happen because other countries (and various organizations) know that it would be a bad idea to mess with us. We haven't had a lot of big conflicts in quite a while, of course, and I won't say our military couldn't stand to be smaller and do less; but a big military is like a big dog; you don't screw with the owner.",
"Do you think that, without a military, that the US would be left alone?\n\nJust our natural resources alone would be enough to motivate a foreign power to invade or coloniZe us.\n\nForeign relations always have, as a silent subtext, the threat of military force, should one side try to fuck with the other too much.",
"There is an important element that goes along with the ability to project force.\n\nIf two countries don't like eachother they can build up armies, posture and maybe attack. \n\nOr one of them can form a treaty with us where in we say \"We'll come help you if they attack.\"\n\nNow that country can work on economy and social advancement rather than weapons. And their neighbor can do the same since our treaty nation is no real threat.\n\nSo us having the ability to go there prevents us from needing to go there and improves the world economy which keeps your TV's cheap.\n\nIf you are specifically referring to Iraq? That was political BS for the most part. ",
"On a personal level, not much...most of the time. Unless a country is invading our borders, which is not a reasonable possibility currently. But why is it not a reasonable possibility?\n\nLets look at a larger scale than personally, the nation-state scale. Here the military is your ability to defend yourself and your rights, or more nefarious motives depending on your agenda. Much like owning a gun or taking self-defense classes. \n\nThere is a saying in the marines that traces all the way back to Plato: 'If you want peace, prepare for war.' Basically that by projecting force you make others less likely to attack you. \n\nThis was driven home in the US during WWII. The military might of the Germans and Japanese threatened everything we held dear and as wonderful of a job as the US did at gearing up the economy for war it was *just barely* enough. The argument is now that by having a strong military force on standby that it will deter threats such as these from occurring again. CIA, NSA, drone warfare etc all follow a similar argument, that it's better to prevent the war from occurring than to win it. ",
"An army is like a bunch of men on the street. If another bunch of men turn up and want to make trouble, they are going to avoid the street with the largest bunch of other men on it.\n\nExplained it more like you were 3, I guess, but valid enough I hope.",
"Depending upon reddit to answer why we have such a large military is just as silly as depending on Jon Stewart and the daily show to explain politics and the news to you. Responses MIGHT be slightly biased."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
a4y9zi | how do animals keep track of their babies? can they count? if so they know math? if not what kind of logic they use to know how many are there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4y9zi/eli5_how_do_animals_keep_track_of_their_babies/ | {
"a_id": [
"ebiefm8",
"ebifw68",
"ebipt01",
"ebist81",
"ebistiu",
"ebiswk2",
"ebitmn4",
"ebittf5",
"ebitxsh",
"ebiurv1",
"ebivi1x",
"ebivjcj",
"ebiw0ml",
"ebixwwp",
"ebiy4nc",
"ebj00bw",
"ebj1a5z",
"ebj2ds5",
"ebj2w0l",
"ebj413p",
"ebj5s66",
"ebj6k59",
"ebj7hyh",
"ebj9ra6",
"ebjatus",
"ebjggtc"
],
"score": [
2571,
3924,
249,
79,
50,
1870,
26,
12,
2,
9,
14,
170,
2678,
453,
6,
4,
19,
3,
4,
3,
3,
2,
2,
8,
2,
5
],
"text": [
"Animals is a pretty broad group. Birds try to keep track, but birds also try to sneak an egg into someone else's nest so that they hatch and feed it. Fish are less selective, more than a few can see their young as potential food.",
"Counting isn't required to detect someone is missing, just the ability to distinguish individuals. Suppose you have no concept of numbers or math but you have children Billy, Bobby, Sally, and Sarah. You see Billy, Bobby, and Sarah. Where is Sally? You don't see her, she is missing.\n\nSee? No numbers, no math, but it gets the job done.",
"I feel like recently there were a bunch of studies done with crows that showed they could solve simple problems and that some of them involved math, but I could be mistaken. Chimps and the like can definitely figure out simple math. \"Animals\" is a pretty broad spectrum, given that it includes humans.",
"Depends on the animal. Some with higher social skills sure realize that someone from their tribe is missing (Apes, animals, dogs, cats, etc.)\n\nOther animals don't count or care, they will just feed and raise whatever they find in their nest. Chickens wont miss a chick or wonder something is akward when it suddendly one too much.",
"By scent and sound. \n\nMother birds will care for anything that makes the ‘cheep’ sound. If a chick doesn’t make the sound she will kill it. If you give her another birds chicks she will care for them as their own. \n\nOther animals use scent in the same way. Some animals will care for the young from another species as long as it doesn’t smell like a threat (known predator or dominant male). \n\nCounting is common to MOST humans but not all. Some remote tribes never grasped the concept. Other animals with the known ability to count are Orangutans and Ravens (who are the two most intelligent species next to humans.)",
"That's going to depend on the animal but many rely on smell. Since each of their young will smell a little different they can tell when one is missing. \n\nIt's like a soup. If an ingredient is missing it is going to smell different. No need to count or even necessarily know exactly what is missing. \n\nThose impressions can change pretty quickly though. It's not uncommon for animals to forget and leave babies behind. ",
"Animals don't need any kind of logic or special thought to notice the absence of something. It's like how dogs don't have object permanence - they don't necessarily understand *where* it's gone and that it still exists, they just know that something was there and now it's not. Like understanding dark and light.",
"If your brain is big enough you don’t have to know anything about numbers because you have audiovisual memory. The animal knows it has 8 babies but it will never grasp the concept math or numbers if that makes sense. The fact that most animals instincts incorporate paying a lot of attention to their young (especially mothers) helps even more with keeping track of them.",
"When it's time to bang, certain hormones increase or decrease depending on role. When pregnant, other hormones alter their levels to maintain the pregnancy. In animals that provide parental care, there is another set usually involved in brooding or lactation. When those baby raising hormones (the name escapes me. To bang = estrogen for \"estrus\" and for gestation \"progesterone\" I do believe oxytocin is the big one for maternal care) are present, they are pretty determined to raise offspring. Most can recognize unique vocal or drastic visual cues in their young but it's not perfect. You can use a chicken who thinks she's laying on eggs to raise all kinds of eggs including quail and duck simply because the hormones are telling her to sit. I have had hens who hatched one or 2 that later died, dumped 7 brand new different colored ones and they've all been ok with it after brief confusion. They know something is different but the hormones say \"we have babies\" so the females are prone to adoption especially when still confused about loss of any young. ",
"Animals can count, they also notice when something is missing. They will generally realise that something is missing and will continue to look for that missing baby.",
"I remember seeing a documentary on cheetah mom's and their kittens. David Attenborough stated that, \"she can't count\" so it was if she saw a few, that was all she would go by. ",
"__ELI5__:\n\nYour brain uses a different part when recognizing the size of small sets (there are three puppies) vs. counting large sets (I can count seventeen puppies). This is called [subitism](_URL_0_), and we have seen evidence of it in many animals.\n\n---\n\n > How do animals keep track of their babies?\n\nSome animals have different reproductive strategies than humans and so don't care for or track their offspring in the same way. Fish have large broods of offspring, for example, and don't nurture their young the same way humans do. Birds will have nests and eggs: some of these care deeply for their offspring (like Emperor Penguins), while others seem indifferent to the loss of an individual egg or child.\n\nAnimals that keep track of their children in a similar manner to humans (gorillas, dogs, horses) keep track of them in a similar manner - knowing them as an individual. Dogs, for example, will look for other animals that they know in places that the animal frequented.\n\n > Can they count?\n\nYes. Some animals can count better than others. Certain species of frog will count with their croaks, some fish can recognize which school of fish has more fish in it, and chickens can recognize which pile of balls is larger. In some cases this is subitism. In some cases animals can clearly count: hunting dogs will keep track of how many animals they have fetched and how many are left in the field, at least to small numbers.\n\n---\nI'm not a biologist or psychologist, but this was an interesting thing to read up on. If there's anything I should add let me know.\n\nInteresting further reads and sources:\n- [Animals that can count, BBC, 2012](_URL_3_)\n- [Free ranging dogs assess relative group size by subitizing, Psychology Today, 2018](_URL_4_)\n- [Many animals can count, some better than you; NYT; 2018](_URL_1_)\n- [Do Dogs Know Mathematics?, Psychology Today, 2011](_URL_5_)\n- [Do Dogs Grieve Over the Loss of an Animal Companion?, Psychology Today, 2016](_URL_2_)",
"Livestock farmer here. For sheep and cattle, it’s mostly scent based. Any time a lamb dies at birth, you skin it to wrap any orphaned lambs in the hide. Tricks momma into adopting other lambs when they smell their own offspring. Alternatively, you can buy scent to smear onto lambs and calves who have lost their mommas. Lambing and calving usually goes smoothly, but when it doesn’t, it’s tough for everyone to make it through alive. Also, they all now each others’ calls\n\nEdit:I should add that I don’t know how the store-bought scent works, and I’ve never used it...",
"My mom’s cat could count — to 5. My mom usually have her 5 cat treats. One day, my mom gave her 3. The cat kept patting my mom with her paw .. so my mom gave another one. More patting. When the 5th cat treat was put out, the cat quit the patting.\n\nMy mom tried different combinations after that. Over 5 didn’t make a difference, but up to 5, that cat could count.",
"You know when you go out with a large group of friends, like 5+, and you get to the restaurant and they ask \"how many?\" and you don't immediately know the answer so you stop and count how many people are there? It's exactly like that.\n\nYou'd know who's there, you'd know if someone was missing, but you're not exactly keeping track of the number of people there, just the people themselves.",
"This goose mom does not seem concerned whatsoever about the missing gooslings: _URL_0_",
"I don't know how they do it.. But I know they do. We had a dog with a litter of 7 puppies and we had to separate them for a moment from her and then when we put them back we gave her all but one just to see if she'd notice. She totally scanned the six as if she was counting and then just looked up at us like \"ummm excuse me?\" Amazing. ",
"Knowing math and knowing how to count are somewhat different. The brain can do what is known as \"summatize\". When there are 5 or fewer items, humans, and likely many mammals, can immediately identify the number WITHOUT counting. Essentially, a group of 5 or fewer becomes a symbol that is identified as a single unit.\n\nIt is likely that animals have a similar ability. They are probably able to recognize \"the correct amount\" rather than count \"1, 2, 3, puppies\". It is also likely that smell, particularly pheromones (sort of a fingerprint for smell, unique to individuals), appearance, and other factors are used to recognize their offspring.\n\nEdited to add possibly pertinent information. ",
"I thought a story from my cat's pregnancy/labor might be an interesting addition. When my cat was having her babies, she was looking for a dark place and meowing, and I saw something protruding from her rear. I quickly wrapped her in a towel and drove her down to the vet. They were much less panicked than me. They said the mom pretty much takes care of everything on instinct. I said I was still a bit worried in case there was any complications, can I have stay, so they put us in a waiting room and said just let her do her thing.\n\nShe ended up having 5 kittens over the course of the next six hours. The first two came out fine and she licked them etc, but the third was still in the sac/small/not moving/presumably stilborn, and the nurse took it away.\n\nI went home with 4 kittens, and that evening/the next day, momma kitten would leave the others and go to the different spots she had gone to in the house and meowed. Broke my heart. She didn't even see the stilborn one for more than a minute and I was wondering if she would even notice, but she did. I got the sense that she didn't have a perception of how many there should be, so much that that she would be missing the one. There might be a difference between ducks and cats because all the kittens looked different. One was black, one was brown, one was white and black, the other white and tan... \n\nBut I can see how if you're having babies, you have a memory of having each one right, so you'd associate each one with the memory of having it, and that means the details of that one, some small differences that stand out, and that gets tied to the 2nd baby and the 3rd baby... not as math, but as a chain of events. I could see them knowing which one is missing based on the order they had the babies, the order they hatched, and how they behaved etc if they're ducks. \n\nI think part of our confusion is that we are doing the species equivalent of \"they all look the same\" when the mother especially, knows.",
"most animals can’t count but recognise up to a certain number, around 3-5 depending on the animal. for some mammals that may be one way of keeping their offspring, assume a bear can recognise three objects immediately (as can humans, without counting) and they have three babies and they see three youngs they might know that all of them are around. but as people pointed out, that wouldn’t be necessary and for the most part, other mechanisms will do the job.\n\nyou might have come across the phrase “if you think dogs can’t count show them three treats but then only give them two” but that’s not counting. show them eleven treats and give them ten, they won’t notice. bees are one of the few species that have been shown to count, up to 20 has been experimentally shown in the study i’ve heard of. they also have a concept of zero which is quite interesting.",
"Smell is a big factor as well. When my ferret had babies if I handled them she would then try to drag my finger or thumb in with her babies. Baby ferrets do look like little sausages though. She did manage to always collect all her little ones and know that there weren’t any missing. ",
"Look at the fingers on your right hand. Are they all there? Did you need to count them to know?\n\n",
"To answer the concept very simply, when animals or people count, the part of the brain used depends on how much is being counted, if you’re counting things in a 1-8 range, you’re not really “counting” he 8 things, you simply know of 8 things. Animals are the same, they don’t think in numbers because they don’t ever have to “count” past a certain number, a very low number. Sry if I explained it poorly but simply put, we don’t “count” things until we cross a threshold of being a number that requires counting",
"We had a feral mom cat have kittens in our backyard. There were 5 and we caught her and 2 kittens and put them in a spare room until we caught the rest to get em fixed, \n\nMom and 2 kittens. Incessant meowing and scratching at the door. \n\nNext day we catch 2 more. Meowing and scratching intensifies. \n\nNext day we get skunked and can’t catch the last one. The meowing and scratching levels are now over 9000. \n\nFinally catch the last one, put her in there and,...\n\nNothing. \n\nNo meowing or scratching or yowling. Just a happy content little family, \n\nWas right then I realized that cats can count!",
"Mice cannot count. At University, we would use this to our advantage when conducting experiments with mice, specifically experiments that involve mice running a maze. \n\nIf you starve a mouse and motivate it to run a maze for a food reward, it will only work until the mouse is satiated. \n\nIf you use a young mother mouse and displace her pups, she will run the maze to find them, and then continue to run the maze to retrieve each pup as she brings them back to her nest. She will also always make one final trip to make sure there are no more pups left out of the nest. \n\nWe used this to motivate the mouse when studying things like the effect of a sun compass or other navigational aid on how a mouse traverses a maze. How animals navigate their habitats gives us clues into their cognition.",
"Having fostered many a mama cat, I know for cats it's sort of a combination of things. When the queen goes into labor, she experiences a surge of hormones that cause her to imprint on any tiny fuzzy thing nearby for about a day (this is why you see those viral videos of cats \"adopting\" ducklings or other baby animals after giving birth to their kittens. From there, it's a smell thing. She and all her babies will share a smell from nesting together that tell her \"okay, this baby is mine.\" So she's able to find her babies based on smell. Conversely, mama won't recognize her adult child if it is raised away from her because it doesn't smell like her baby anymore, its just another cat. Also, it kind of goes both ways. The kittens know who their mama is and they'll seek her out for milk and affection once they start weaning and walking around. As her babies grow, she will start to recognize them as individuals just from being around them all the time and as such, will notice their absence. In our most recent foster, at around 6 weeks, one of the five kittens injured his leg and had to be put into a different foster home because he needed strict cage rest and being around his siblings was not conducive to that. Mama definitely noticed that one of her babies was missing and was searching/meowing for him around the apartment for a few days after, which was quite sad, but she has since moved on and is focussed on the four still with her."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing",
"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/animals-count-numbers.html",
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/canine-corner/201611/do-dogs-grieve-over-the-loss-animal-companion",
"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121128-animals-that-can-count",
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/animal-emotions/201802/free-ranging-dogs-assess-relative-group-size-subitizing",
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/canine-corner/201103/do-dogs-know-mathematics"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ua1GGUIlA"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1bgza2 | the alien & sedition acts of 1798 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bgza2/eli5_the_alien_sedition_acts_of_1798/ | {
"a_id": [
"c96skot"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"* *Naturalization Act* (June 18th) - Immigrants had to have lived in the U.S. for 14 years before they could become citizens, and you had to wait 5 years after saying \"I want to be a citizen\" before you could become one.\n* *Alien Act* (June 25th) - Gave the President the authority to deport aliens suspected of treason or otherwise dangerous to \"public safety.\" If those people stayed in the country after being ordered to leave, they could be imprisoned and forever banned from becoming U.S. citizens.\n* *Alien Enemies Act* (July 6th) - During wartime, allowed the President to arrest, imprison, and / or deport citizens of enemy nations who happened to be living in the U.S.\n* *Sedition Act* (July 14th) - Allowed the government to fine and / or imprison people who conspired against it. \"Conspire\" is used loosely here because it included things like \"unlawful assembly\" and \"publishing false, scandalous and malicious writings.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
28xvl0 | why do ach (electronic bank transfers) take 3+ days | I have accounts with two banks and one with a brokerage and I can't seem to figure out why it takes 3 days or sometimes more to transfer money from one account to another, writing a check seems faster | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28xvl0/eli5why_do_ach_electronic_bank_transfers_take_3/ | {
"a_id": [
"cifitlc",
"cifiu9b",
"cifjnzy",
"cifm5q2",
"cifmm0v",
"cifmz5c",
"cifn1o8",
"cifrxq7"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Banking Rules are Pre Internet. some have computers or computer programs from the 1970's that run on batchs run by a physical person. so after hours or weekends the transaction sits in the queue until the batch is run. so all banks run on the assumption that the bank they are drawing the funds from is in the stone age and have a max allowed transaction time that allows for horse and buggy delay. and banks exploit that to the fullest to delay the parting with money and also to allow for transaction errors ",
"The longer banks sit on your money, even if it is only for a few hours, the more interest they make. ",
"Just to chime in and say it's at least *possible* for banks to perform transfers much quick. I'm with Lloyds bank in the UK, and if I transfer money to someone else (not with Lloyds) through online banking, it generally gets to their account in a couple of hours, at most.",
"In Romania, transfers between 2 accounts at the same bank are instant, and between 2 different banks take from a few seconds to few hours.\nAll transactions between different banks are processed the next business day if you initiate the transfer after 4PM.",
"Having worked for a payroll/direct deposit provider a number of years ago, I can tell you that the intermediaries make a considerable amount of money on the interest from ACH transfers. The company I used to work for counts on that interest, or \"float\" as it's called in the industry, to make up a hefty chunk of their annual earnings. Obviously it's only a couple of pennies from each transaction (2+ days interest on small transfers), but when you're dealing with millions of customers, and billions of transactions each year, you end up with some of that Richard Pryor, Superman 3 money.",
"For a New Zealand perspective:\n\n-Transfers from one account of your own to another account of your own at the same bank are generally instant. \n-Transfers to someone else's account at the same bank are usually instant, depending on the bank, but this is sometimes overnight. \n-Transfers to an account at another bank are nearly always overnight on business days only. There are are some exceptions to this - some of our banks are real time so transfers go out immediately. Then if the other bank is real time too, it gets deposited immediately. This means a transfer can take an hour or two. \n\nOur banks don't do jack on the weekend or public holidays though. ",
"Really, 3 days? At least for me it's like 5 hours. Is that an American thing?",
"Short answer: because it's the way things have always been done.\n\nThe technology is incredibly old and the banks haven't really had any incentives to change how anything works. \n\nNPR's \"Planet Money\" podcast has a great episode that covered all aspects of the ACH system's slowness: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the-invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy"
]
] |
|
5tyaef | how do gas planets have any kind of objects orbiting them and/or gravity when they are just a big ball of gas, no rocks and stuff? | It seems to me if they have gravity stuff would just go right through them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tyaef/eli5_how_do_gas_planets_have_any_kind_of_objects/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddpyj0l",
"ddpyna0",
"ddpynpv"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
15
],
"text": [
"Even something that is as fluid as gas still contains mass. When you you have something as big as Jupiter, that is a lot of mass. The greater the mass of an object the greater the influence, that we call gravity, it exerts on other objects. Gas planets can exert enough gravity to cause other objects to remain in their orbit.\n\nAdditionally there is ongoing debate on whether gas giants like Jupiter actually contains a solid core or not although it is generally accepted that there is a mass of heavy elements near the center.\n\nEdit: Added some stuff.",
"Stars are made of gas too. You just have toget enough of it in one place. Besides, gas giants do have molten rocky cores.",
"Gas is the same stuff as solid matter, just all spread out. Every particle of matter has its own gravity; the gravity of a planet is the combined gravity of each of its particles.\n\nAlso, gas giants are only mostly made of gas - they're believed to have solid cores and oceans of liquid."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8kikg6 | what is the neurological explanation for the zapping sensation people experience in their heads when they are late taking anti-depressants? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kikg6/eli5_what_is_the_neurological_explanation_for_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dz84237",
"dz855lk",
"dz85w3p",
"dz87gem",
"dz8ar83",
"dz8dynq",
"dz8klxr",
"dz8miyn",
"dz8n8cs",
"dz8s9rt",
"dz8xoo4"
],
"score": [
9,
2,
192,
57,
11,
6,
2,
6,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"This happens sometimes for people who do a lot of MDMA and then stop taking it too, weird stuff.",
"The term I’ve seen often used are “brain zaps”. \n\nI do not know what is happening at a neurological level though, good question! ",
"There are some pretty bad answers in this thread 😂. Guys I’m pretty sure OP knows what they are & what causes them, he’s asking *why* they happen.\n\nIn short, we dont *really* know why they occur. We barely know why SSRIs work in the first place, and a lot of the withdrawal symptoms are an even bigger mystery. One theory is that discontinuation of these drugs leads to temporarily low GABA levels. Since low GABA has been liked to increased seizure risk, [it is postulated](_URL_0_) that these brain zaps might be small, localised seizures.\n\nWe do know that despite ther discomfort, they’re usually harmless and in almost all cases disappear.\n\n\n",
"I’ve commented this elsewhere in the thread, but just for visibility- a single fluoxetine will stop the “brain zaps” occurring when you are coming off other SSRIs, and it is crazy that drs don’t routinely give patients this option (especially for antidepressants with horrible withdrawals like venlafaxine) ",
"The best eli5 theory I've heard it's that a lack of serotonin in certain parts of the brain can lower the firing threshold for certain synapses, which causes a chain of neurons to fire rapidly, resulting in the unpleasant zap-zap-zap sensation; for that theory to hold water, serotonin would therefore have to act almost like a down-regulator for certain types of synapse, perhaps?\n\nI've had it a lot when withdrawing from certain medication, and also get it together with sleep paralysis some nights.",
"Wow I had no idea there was a name for this. I’ve actually tried googling my symptoms and never found anything. I described it as a popping or grinding sensation in my brain. Strangely it only occurs when I’m napping. \n\nThe weird thing is that I’m not coming off SSRIs. I’m just taking a single dose daily of Prozac. Does this mean something might be wrong with the dosage?",
"Head zaps are weird, i got them a lot when i was anti-deppressants. It was really hard explaining them to my GF. I tried finding good information online, but it was hard to find a solid source and reasoning. ",
"I could shoot my doctor for not warning me about the month of misery I was in for when I couldn't afford the refill. ",
"Yeah, I was on Paxil for a while (five months give or take) and I stopped taking it....for probably five or six weeks every time a took a step I'd feel that sensation all throughout my body, cold sweats while I slept, etc. Weirdest shit coming off of.",
"I get these when im tired and ive never been on antidepressants. Is there an official term so I can tell a doctor?",
"Nothing to add, but I wanted to say that this was a good question, OP! I’ve been on almost every type of med for the last ten years and have certainly experienced it. When I mentioned it to my docs (at the VA), they acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about. Thanks for asking this!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201710/what-causes-brain-zaps"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2mb1b2 | how do doctors get paid? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mb1b2/eli5how_do_doctors_get_paid/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm2jgvj",
"cm2jwt4",
"cm2m1h5",
"cm2mhzi",
"cm2s5oe"
],
"score": [
55,
2,
22,
10,
3
],
"text": [
"Doctor sends the bill to insurance company. Insurance checks their books and pays $x amount to the doctor. Doctor send the patient a bill for the remaining balance.",
"Sometimes, it depends. A relative of mine was an ER doctor; he and the other ER doctors formed their own \"ER corporation\" so they could pay and manage themselves, whilst billing the hospital they worked in // \"worked for\".",
"My father is a radiologist, and the way he is paid is typical of many doctors (though certainly not all).\n\nThere are about 25-30 doctors who are all radiologists and equal partners of the company that they collectively run. When someone new wants to join (if accepted), he has to pay in a certain sum of money to buy his share of the company. When someone wants to retire, he sells his share to the other doctors.\n\nThe doctors employ nurses, technicians, and office workers who are not partners, just salaried employees.\n\nAs radiologists, the doctors read X-rays, CT scans, etc. either done at their own clinic or at various hospitals within the general area (a city of about 100,000 people and surrounding towns). The partnership is paid either directly by patients or their insurance companies—in the case of work done at their own clinic—or by the hospitals they work at. (They actually go to work at different hospitals—or their clinic—on different days.)\n\nThe doctors decide as a group (with the advice of accountants) how much to spend on rent, new machines, workers' salaries, and other business operations. The rest they take as profit for themselves. If the company does better, they can pay themselves more. If it does worse, they get less.\n\nSometimes, before a doctor actually retires, he chooses to work less than the other doctors. In return, he has to sell part of his share so that he makes less.\n\nAgain, not all doctors everywhere in the U.S. work under such a system. Many are just salaried employees of a bigger firm or hospital. But small to mid-size practices usually work this way. (Lawyers work in a very similar way.)",
"It depends on the doctor and how they are employed, but typically (for US doctors):\n\nDoctors can work in a number of different types of practices. They can either work for themselves (as an individual or in a group practice), for a hospital or clinic, or for an insurance company or health system. The type of practice they work in (called individual, physician group, hospital owned, etc) changes how exactly they get paid but the process is generally similar.\n\nWhen a doctor sees a patient in a clinic, that office visit is assigned a specific designation based upon (1)if the patient is a new or established patient, as well as (2)how sick or complex of a patient they are. In essence, they assign a level of service (that is based upon very strict and standardized guidelines). This level of service for a visit costs a certain price based upon whatever the insurance company has negotiated with the doctor/doctor group/hospital/clinic etc that employs the doctor. If a procedure is performed, or the visit is especially long, there are other modifying factors or things that add to the bill. \n\nWhoever is running the clinic (and thereby determining the type of practice for the doctor, be it the doctor themselves, the group of doctors, the hospital/clinic, etc) receives the payment from the insurance company and patient. How much the doctor actually gets in his/her paycheck at the end of the day then depends on the type of practice they are in. If they work by themselves and run the clinic, they pay their overhead, staff, malpractice insurance, etc, then whatever is left over is their paycheck. If they work in a group, it is often all pooled together from every doctor to pay the overhead/staff then divided up based upon how many patients each doctor saw (and how challenging they were). If they work for a clinic or hospital itself, they usually have a contract to get paid either a certain salary or a certain amount of money for each type of office visit (based upon the level of service I mentioned). \n\nReally, it is extremely complex, I don't know if I quite hit a 5yo level but would be happy to answer any questions. \n\nSource: I am a Doctor. ",
"Medical Revenue Cycle analyst here!\n\n\nThe major process of docs getting paid is called \"Coding and Billing\"; insurance companies have a strict set of procedures and how much they are willing/supposed to pay for them. So, physicians need to translate \"what they did today\" into these procedure codes (called CPT codes) and let the insurance folks know how much they are owed based on how many \"units\" of each procedure was administered (ie, 2 X-rays, 1 General Checkup). The physician can then bill the insurance company, and if applicable, the patient. However, the journey from procedure-to-payment is a lengthy, and there are several routes that the bill can take.\n\n\nThere are a few ways doctors take care of coding and billing, but normally it falls into 1 of 3 categories: in-house, corporate (or \"group\" or a couple of other terms), or outsourced. In-house, the physician is running their own practice and hires people to take care of coding and billing. In a group (or physician network, or whatever-overarching-group-is-called), the doctor passes off their \"charts\" and notes to staff employed by the group, which takes care of all the back-office stuff (hiring, scheduling, and of course, coding-and-billing). These physicians receive a regular paycheck like any other commission-based employee would. Finally, some groups (and some private practice physicians) outsource altogether - they just send info on to another group that takes care of the billing and lets that group take a percentage of what they collect, then deposits the rest back to the physician/group. The remaining amount is handled just as if they had collected it themselves.\n\nNow, that's how the process goes from paper-to-bill-to-cash, but who pays what is a more complex matter as well. Payments typically come from 1 of 2 sources: Patients and Insurance (both of which can be divided into smaller categories).\n\n\nThe healthcare provider \"enrolls\" in a number of insurance plans (this is what is meant by \"in-network\") that will send him more patients if he gives them a bit of a discount. If you aren't in-network, the insurance company may penalize you (higher copay, not count towards deductible, or not even cover you) because that physician isn't contracted with them (and the insurance company can't make money if they're paying full-price for every procedure). Thus, there are a few different scenarios that can result in patients not owing ANYTHING, or patients paying EVERYTHING.\n\n\n\nSo, these are the major scenarios, and let's just say it's a $1,000 procedure:\n\nScenario 1. I am insured, and I am seeing a physician in-network: \n\n* The doctor takes your insurance information and treats you. You go home.\n* Coding takes place to translate the procedures to a standardized \"menu\" of procedures. Now, we can send a bill.\n* The bill is sent to your insurance. They notice you have a $100 co-pay for the procedure. They have a contract with the physician saying they only have to pay $600 for the procedure. The insurance company will sent a check for $600 and an EOB explaining that they are required to write-off $300, and they may bill you for the remaining $100.\n* The physician practice or network or whatever receives the check and posts the payment/write-off, then sends you a bill for $100.\n* Assuming you sent in the check or paid online, the payment gets deposited to the practice's account. Depending on your insurance plan, they might count this towards your deductible.\n\nScenario 2. I am insured, and I am seeing a physician out-of-network, but the procedure is covered (often emergency services):\n\n* The doctor takes your insurance information and treats you. You go home.\n* Coding takes place to translate the procedures to a standardized \"menu\" of procedures. Now, we can send a bill.\n* The bill is sent to your insurance. They notice you have a $150 co-pay for the procedure when performed out-of-network. They do not have a contract with the physician, so they are responsible for $850 of the procedure. The insurance company will sent a check for $850 and an EOB explaining that they may bill you for the remaining $150.\n* The physician practice or network or whatever receives the check and posts the payment, then sends you a bill for $150.\n* Assuming you sent in the check or paid online, the payment gets deposited to the practice's account. Depending on your insurance plan, they might count this towards your deductible (but not likely).\n\n\nScenario 3. I am insured, and I am seeing a physician out-of-network, and the procedure is not covered (DON'T do this! Often only used for cosmetic procedures that you can afford!):\n\n* If this is a cosmetic procedure, you will likely have to pay something or everything up-front.\n* The doctor takes your insurance information and treats you. You go home.\n* Coding takes place to translate the procedures to a standardized \"menu\" of procedures. Now, we can send a bill.\n* The bill is sent to your insurance. They notice you are not covered. They will deny the claim and return the information to the provider saying, \"Nope - not our responsibility. Here's why: NOT COVERED.\" Some providers will double-check and put plenty of effort into making sure that you're not actually covered (sometimes, a procedure is mis-coded, or there can be some negotiation, or some particularly heinous insurance carriers will just deny a claim for no apparent reason). The denial comes back to the provider and is confirmed.\n* The provider sends you a bill (and sometimes a notification of the denial) for $1,000\n* You can probably call in and ask for a payment plan or a discount (\"Prompt-Pay Discount\", \"Charity Adjustment\", or \"Settlement\" are the buzzwords), but ultimately, you owe that now. Some groups will send you to collections if you aren't timely in paying :/\n\n\nScenario 4. I am uninsured:\n\n* The doctor takes your personal information and treats you. You go home.\n* The provider sends you a bill for $1,000\n* You can probably call in and ask for a payment plan or a discount (\"Prompt-Pay Discount\", \"Charity Adjustment\", or \"Settlement\" are the buzzwords), but ultimately, you owe that now. Some groups will send you to collections if you aren't timely in paying :/\n\n\nThere are all kinds of additional rules (like, in most states, if you're covered by Medicaid, they can't send you a bill for emergency services despite copays or whatever), but these are the most likely scenarios. You will not be denied healthcare at most facilities for urgent or life-threatening matters, but they can destroy your credit. Ultimately, commercial insurance carriers (Blue Cross, Aetna, etc) are the best bets both for you and the physician.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3asw0o | during a divorce why isn't custody entirely up to the child? if they're old enough to properly understand and make decisions? | Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don't know terribly much about divorce but I mean it is their life so shouldn't it be their choice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3asw0o/eli5_during_a_divorce_why_isnt_custody_entirely/ | {
"a_id": [
"csfniyw",
"csfpbtj"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Until a child is 18, they aren't considered developed enough to be making legal decisions. They can testify and favor a parent, but it doesn't make a definitive choice. Once that child hits 18, they're allowed to live with whoever they want. ",
"As a society we like to pretend we care about \"the children\" but we give children zero rights at all. No matter how much children tell us they don't like something, we ignore them, all the hell we put them through is \"for their own good.\" "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
bowqtg | what is the geometric mean and why is it good as a type of average for comparing things that are indexes of lots of other things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bowqtg/eli5_what_is_the_geometric_mean_and_why_is_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"enly23a"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The geometric mean of n values is the nth root of the product of the n values.\n\nBy contrast the usual mean, the arithmetic mean, is the sum of the n values divided by n.\n\nThe geometric mean is interesting when you are interested in tracking proportional changes between different values.\n\nSay, you have two values: 1 and 100.\n\nThe arithmetic mean is 50.5 and the geometric mean is 10.\n\nNow, say you double one of the values. \n\n* If you double the first value -- (1, 100) - > (2, 100) -- the arithmetic mean becomes 51 and the geometric mean is 14.1. \n* If you double the second value -- (1, 100) - > (1, 200) -- the arithmetic mean jumps to 100.5 while the geometric mean is the same 14.1.\n\nWith the geometric mean, the same proportional change to any of the values has the same effect on the mean. With the arithmetic mean, the larger values dominate. \n\nFor this reason, some like to use it for component indexes. For example, a 25% gain in a 10 dollar stock has the same effect as a 25% gain in a 100 dollar stock in the same index. There are other ways of handling this problem (such as pre-scaling the data) but the geometric mean is one tool in a statisticians toolbox."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
d53zra | when you’re playing chess with the computer and you select the lowest difficulty, how does the computer know what movie is not a clever move? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d53zra/eli5_when_youre_playing_chess_with_the_computer/ | {
"a_id": [
"f0jg1qn",
"f0jg2h6",
"f0jg4lf",
"f0jgnsz",
"f0jhjqy",
"f0jhtaa",
"f0ji721",
"f0jis48",
"f0jj23k",
"f0jkaup",
"f0jlhc2",
"f0jymfr",
"f0jywro",
"f0k4ihp",
"f0kcczy",
"f0l3yzf",
"f0l7eyi",
"f0ltw17"
],
"score": [
38,
12759,
2,
16,
915,
293,
8,
11,
156,
13,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The computer typically rates moves by looking ahead -- if I make this move, will I lose a piece or a good position in the future, or will my opponent.\n\nSetting lower difficulty tells the computer to look less far ahead, or to consider fewer possibilities before stopping.",
"The computer typically rates moves by looking ahead -- if I make this move, will I lose a piece or a good position in the future, or will my opponent.\n\nSetting lower difficulty tells the computer to look less far ahead, or to consider fewer possibilities before stopping.",
"The computer typically rates moves by looking ahead -- if I make this move, will I lose a piece or a good position in the future, or will my opponent.\n\nSetting lower difficulty tells the computer to look less far ahead, or to consider fewer possibilities before stopping.",
"Well... if it knew what *was* clever, surely it would just pic one of the lower-ranking possible moves in its algorithm?",
"Computers are ranking and scoring moves as it goes. When you lower the difficulty it will not look as far ahead, and purposly not choose the move it deems the best.",
"In short a computer is capable (with enough processing power) of looking at every possible move that could happen based on the current state of the board, and calculating the response to each move, and repeating this calculation until it hits the end of each possible list of moves. This builds what is called a decision tree. Once that tree is built, the computer can score it's potential moves based on how likely they are to lead to a win in the computers favor. \n\nOnce all the moves are scored, it simply picks the highest scoring move and goes with that one. A difficulty setting may affect how moves are scored or it may require the computer to pick lower scoring moves so the game swings more in favor of the player. \n\ntl;dr - Computers can calculate the best moves possible, lower difficulty can force the computer to make weaker moves.",
"A bit simplified description is that a computer play chess by evaluating a position with some numerical score that is based on how the pieces is placed on the board. It it stat with the current position and test all possible move and evaluated by calculating the score. It reject the one that is bad for it and test all possible opponents move and take the one that is good for the opponent. Recent the alternative where the opponents have move that is very good for them and continue to test all alternative. So that for some time of for some number of moves and you can find what move that give you the best advantage even if the opponent do there best move.\n\nTo change difficulty you primary limit the time or the numer of position the computer use to evaluate moves , you could also change the selection criteria so it select a move with a lower score. You could write in so that there is a 5% chance that is take a move that is very good for you.",
"A typical chess program analyzes a position by \"looking forward\" - it predicts the best moves to achieve a better result in subsequent moves. Setting it to low difficulty limits the number of moves it looks ahead. This allows the human player to more easily beat the program by employing better positional strategy (ie using human heuristics/experience to make \"better\" moves for the long term)",
"Generally, when you set a computer to play at a lower difficulty, three things are happening:\n\n* You're limiting the amount of time that the computer is allowed to \"think\"\n* You're limiting the number of moves ahead that the computer looks\n* You're denying the computer access to its opening book and its pre-selected \"good moves\"\n\nSo if you take a lot of that stuff away, you really limit a computer's ability to select strong moves. It might not get so bad that it just throws its queen away and leaves its king open to an easy checkmate, but it might miss things like \"Oh, in two turns your knight can do some damage unless I move this pawn\" or \"if I don't move this rook now, I can be checkmated in 5 turns\" the way that a supercomputer would be able to calculate.",
"Making AI convincingly stupid is often a lot harder than making it cruelly difficult.\n\nThe program has some method of determining the \"best\" moves by combining brute force (just calcuate all possible moves for the next few turns) and priorities.\n\nAfter running these programs over and over we start to know which priorities produce the best win rates and which produce the worst.\n\nTo make the AI look dumb, you have it stick with the bad priorities more often and pick the \"best\" move less often. You don't want it to *never* pick the best move though, it should still respond believably to easy-to-see hazards and not just lose pieces any child would have repositioned.",
"A computer doesn't inherently know what a good or bad move is. Instead it looks at lots and lots and lots of possibilities and chooses the one most likely to lead to a win state.\n\nSince chess has an extreme amount of possible states, it's impossible for computers to look at all possibilities. Instead they will look ahead a certain number of moves and rank the state of the board (for example, piece advantage, position advantage, possible mates, etc.) and will choose a move that is most likely to lead to a favorable future state.\n\nTo \"dumb down\" a computer, they restrict how far ahead it looks at possible moves. The less moves it can look ahead, the less likely it is to choose a series of moves that are favorable for it in the long term, allowing it to be out smarted by a human opponent capable of looking ahead further.",
"In chess .com the computer levels are stupid. They basically make good moves and then make one terrible move. Then they make more good moves, then one stupid move.. like sacrificing their queen. They can still win though because they will play really really smart after that. It's very unrealistic.",
"I'm totally guessing here but I think it all comes down to how many plays in advance the computer gives itself to think before actually making a move. For instance, if the computer just moves pieces randomly it will be the same as no difficulty. If the computer checks the possible consequences of moving a piece (for instance trying to avoid that piece being eliminated...) That would be difficulty 1. The more analysis the computer makes the harder it will be as an opponent, the computer is not intentionally trying to play dumb, it's just not trying hard enough.\n\nAgain, I'm just guessing",
"Anyone remember the computer cheating in windows 95?",
"Depends on the program but in general yes.A good chess program has every possible layout as an integer score (or generates scores on the fly). From any state that you are in, it selects (often randomly) the next valid state that has a score +/- the level of difficulty (or a range determined by the level of difficulty). \n\nedit: typed a section twice, i've removed it. \n\nedit: realized I may not have been as direct as I could be. The computer does know a move that has the greatest success value, it may or may not pick it based on the range of difficulty it is allowed.",
"Since this question has already been answered in many very good ways I would just like to add a little bit of general AI knowledge on top. Most AIs are designed to the hardest difficulty first and then scaled downward. The designer creates a \"perfect\" AI that usually is too difficult to be fun and then scales that AI down by intentionally causing mistakes. This is particularly true for games with potentially perfect play or where the computer has a distinct advantage (such as reaction time). For first person shooters enemies usually deal less damage than players and have intentionally bad aim. For fighting games random pauses are often injected into the AI where it is not allowed to take an action or sometimes intentionally wrong actions are taken at intervals providing space for the player. The primary similarity is that AI is always designed from best to worst and it takes more skill, time and effort to make an AI bad at a game than good at a game.\n\nEDIT: Grammar",
"An answer I didn't read here: \n\n\nIn the same way that a person who has driven to work many times is able to know which patterns are likely to develop. In the early game you generally have something like 10-40 different moves to make, to some people this isn't a lot, but realistically, an amateur player probably looks at 60-70% of them, one move out, where a grandmaster can see literally 100% of the upcoming moves for potentially 3, 4, or even 5 future moves - and perhaps falling off to 85-90% after that.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nChess is an amazing game because there are 10^(120) different games out there - more than the number of atoms in the universe. For this reason, computers are an eternity away from solving chess. That being said, League of legends probably has an infinitely higher number of potential games, given the complexity of potential moves a player makes in a given game frame (hint: there's a lot). \n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut yes, the answer everyone has already given - it rates the moves, finds the worst ones, eliminates them, and move forward. This is another way people learn about the concept of recursion, whereby the optimal move is a function of subsequent optimal moves, thus the computer cannot rate a move until it understands the position of the board after that move, etc. etc., so thus sometimes we can think of this recursively, where the score method is something like scorn(move\\_n) = score (move\\_n + 1) while the number of moves ultimatlely converges into the endgame (stalemate, checkmate etc.), where the win is the highest score and the loss is the lowest.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhen you think about how quickly a computer can solve complex math problems, it's pretty cool to think how quantitatively a computer could evaluate the best move in a complex game like Chess.",
"chess engines like stockfish create a tree diagram of future potential lines and runs an algorithm that gives a score to these lines according to piece value, position etc. The further the engine predicts, the more accurately it can score these lines and the more difficult it is to win against it. If the engine is only allowed to see a few moves ahead, most of these lines are going to have very similar scores and thus sub-optimal lines will be selected."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4ytk2h | how does the akinator site/app so accurately guess characters/people in so few questions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ytk2h/eli5_how_does_the_akinator_siteapp_so_accurately/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6qcuok",
"d6qd33q",
"d6qddib",
"d6qdhov",
"d6qgiyr",
"d6qh8ln",
"d6qjdv7",
"d6qls2b",
"d6qrjf8"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
12,
33,
13,
91,
27,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"It seems to start by asking questions that will lead to answers that are common choices (popular celebrities/characters from movies/tv) and if you don't choose the clues that lead to those answers it will start asking general questions again (more vague) like if you're looking for an anime character youtube personality etc. then narrow it down to whatever you say yes too by hair color, facial hair, other distinctive features till it has a reliable answer. ",
"[This search](_URL_0_) has answers for you.",
"Just answered approx 70 questions thinking about a (once very popular) video game character and the site was unable to guess it. ( _URL_0_ )",
"It's pretty much a long process of elimination, isn't it?",
"If we simplify somewhat and pretend that you can only give two answers, yes or no, then after 20 questions there are about a million possible answers. There are probably not a million famous people, fictional or otherwise. (And if there are: after 30 questions, there are about a billion possible answers, which is certainly enough.)\n\nOf course, akinator has to deal with the fact that you're probably not going to give exactly accurate answers, but the basic idea is that a few more questions results in being able to choose from a much larger collection.",
"It works because many people already answered the questions thinking of the same person as you. Akinator remembers all the answers of its users and uses them to learn what questions and answers lead to what person.\n\nIf you try describing a very obscure/unknown person akinator will not be able to guess them because not enough people tried describing the person, so Akinator doesn't have enough data to guess correctly.",
"Every question is designed to divide the set of people that it knows about approximately in half (male/female, real/fictional etc.), so with every question you can discard about half of potential answers. \n\n10 or 20 questions may seem few, but actually that is quite a lot of information to work with. If you are able to discard half of possibilities 10 times in a row, then you can uniquely identify about a thousand characters. If you do it 10 times more, then this becomes a million, for 30 yes/no questions this becomes a billion.\n\nIf you think about how many popular characters or people are there, there are most definitely *not* a billion or even a million of them.",
"Courtesy of /u/martelfirst \n \n > When someone answers a series of questions and Akinator gets the answer wrong, it offers you the choice to write in the correct answer.\nThroughout the years, with millions of users playing the game, Akinator built its database of answers to different series of questions. The database knows the patterns, which is why sometimes it seems to guess an obscure character based on very few questions.\nNaturally, some people may answer questions wrong from time to time, which would falsify the database if it weren't for more people answering correctly at a specific question. The database tends to take the most common answer as the correct one. So if you're thinking Stallone, and the question is \"does he have black hair\". Most people will answer \"yes\". Some people might get it wrong and answer \"no\", but the system takes into account that there can be mistakes.",
"28 questions including \"does your character have a number in their name?\" and \"is your character associated with wolves?\" to get direwolf20."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=akinator&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Mole"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6g1oe6 | is it really possible for a person or entity to get precise information, such as your street location, from your ip address? | Hi everyone.
I've heard this a couple of times now and I'm not sure what to believe.
My understanding was that the most a person could do with an IP address was find the city you live in. Precise information like street location could only be obtained from an ISP. Now I'm not so sure. Could anyone explain this?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g1oe6/eli5_is_it_really_possible_for_a_person_or_entity/ | {
"a_id": [
"dimpv7a",
"dimpzbl",
"dimq3mr",
"dimqd47",
"dimtzz1",
"dinaf22"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
8,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The I.P. address only drills down to a general location. Someone would have to analyze your data packets to get anything more, such as names sent in-the-clear, meta-data that identifies, etc. Using a VPN to mask location is not a perfect solution, either. ",
"It depends on the environment, and requires prior knowledge of the environment. In general; no. You can't diagnose an explicit physical location from an IP address.\n\n*However*, groups of computers will have similar IP addresses, particularly in the first two groups of an IPv4 address, and particularly in an office environment where you have tons of computers on the same network. Thus, you can make an educated guess as to *approximately* where the computer is. How close that guess is in terms of a physical location therefore basically depends on how densely grouped the devices are.",
"It's not really possible with just the IP. You can use it to get a rough approximation of your location - my IP address points to my town but to my ISP's location and not to my house. \n\nYou can get a little more detailed with the hostname depending on what your ISP sets it to. A hostname is basically a text label that whoever manages your IP applies to it. When I lived on campus, the campus IT department marked each IP with a hostname that explicitly identified what building in the graduate student apartment complex you lived in - each building had only four apartments. That was fun to learn. ",
"A single IP cannot locate you. However cross reference the IP with other information may be more than enough.\n\nSuppose you had hacked Facebook. Or Hotmail or Gmail. You can now look up that IP in Facebook's logs and find any matches for that IP. Chances are thats the same person.\n\nIf you're a bit less ambitious than hacking Facebook, then you could look up the already hacked systems that data has been published for. Like the Sony hacks. Or the bank of America hacks. \n\n",
"It depends on the entity. IP addresses typically can only be traced to your ISP (Internet Service Provider). That will usually be somewhere near where you live, but not necessarily very close. \n \nAs you said, there is at least one entity who must be able to provide more precise location...your ISP. If they, **or someone who has compromised their systems**, wants to locate the exact location of an IP address they most certainly can. \n \nThis is well beyond the capabilities of the vast majority of hackers. So it isn't likely. Could some rogue hacker who works for the ISP do it? Maybe. Could the NSA do it? Probably. ",
"Simply put, your understanding is mostly correct. Accurate IP address to physical location is only known by your ISP. Publicly available information can only come from what they provide to other entities. Some services sell geolocation information (Information that ties physical location and IP address). Accuracy of such services depends on your ISP giving them your address and IP address.\n\nIP addresses are allocated in something called a block. A block can be something like 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.255. Blocks of IP address are owned by various entities, your ISP being one of them. Ownership is publicly known and maintained by [IANA](_URL_0_).\n\nIP address allocation is allocated by country. If your address comes from a certain IP block they can effectively figure out your country (Barring connecting through services like VPNs or other things that obfuscate your IP). Beyond that there is no other definitive information they can get about you without hacking your ISP, or your ISP telling everyone. Most ISPs don't give precise physical locations simply because it's a PITA to keep updating that since most ISPs do not give you a fixed IP address. A fixed IP address is usually a service you have to buy."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority"
]
] |
|
7wz4fq | if our brain is the control system for everything, how come we aren't naturally experts at our own anatomy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wz4fq/eli5_if_our_brain_is_the_control_system_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"du49o3t",
"du49r93",
"du4ax2f"
],
"score": [
4,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because most of it is automated. There's no real benefit to our ancestors evolving some innate master level knowledge of every system.",
"Because we never needed to be. Evolution needed us to be able to control our bodies so we have motor centers, same with all other properties of our brains like how big they are.\nAlso you could reason it would be impossible to develop this trait since it would require dna to store huge amounts of exact memories/knowledge, while it usually can only help develop most basic instincts like eating and drinking.",
"Because it would be a computational nightmare and possibly break physics.\n\nOur brains are already the most complicated and powerful computers in existence. We don't even understand how it does a lot of the things it does yet. In order to do what you suggest, our brains would have to be able to simulate every single fragment of our body with a great degree of accuracy. After all, imagination is just your brain simulating possible (or impossible) things. In order to simulate everything in our bodies it would also have to simulate itself, as nothing in the body works without the brain. If the brain had to simulate itself inside its simulation of the body, you're looking at fractal simulations. The brain would be simulating itself simulating itself simulating itself...etc. If it didn't do that, it would be unable to do much useful with the simulations that it couldn't already do with its current hack job at it.\n\nThis fractal imagination problem would break physics because there is a finite amount of information that can be stored in any given volume. As your simulation increases in accuracy the information density of your brain would have to keep increasing because it's storing more and more copies of itself in copies of itself. Incidentally, this also means that it is impossible to make a computer which can perfectly simulate a region of our universe larger than itself. You could just program it to simulate a region which contains itself plus a little more and use that little more in each layer to make a computer of infinite processing capacity. Processing information requires energy, so doing this would also require infinite energy.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
47pf4o | why is english considered one of the hardest languages to learn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47pf4o/eli5_why_is_english_considered_one_of_the_hardest/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0emkv8",
"d0emxis",
"d0en6wm",
"d0en83y",
"d0envz5",
"d0enx1y",
"d0epek9",
"d0evcul",
"d0ewzdx",
"d0ext6r",
"d0f47wz",
"d0f7av0",
"d0f7t9v",
"d0f9mfm",
"d0fcirg",
"d0few1j"
],
"score": [
173,
72,
8,
71,
2,
8,
26,
2,
7,
5,
4,
2,
2,
2,
4,
4
],
"text": [
"THIS ISN'T MY WORK. Sorry for any confusion.\n\nDearest creature in creation,\nStudy English pronunciation.\nI will teach you in my verse\nSounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.\nI will keep you, Suzy, busy,\nMake your head with heat grow dizzy.\nTear in eye, your dress will tear.\nSo shall I! Oh hear my prayer.\n\nJust compare heart, beard, and heard,\nDies and diet, lord and word,\nSword and sward, retain and Britain.\n(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)\nNow I surely will not plague you\nWith such words as plaque and ague.\nBut be careful how you speak:\nSay break and steak, but bleak and streak;\nCloven, oven, how and low,\nScript, receipt, show, poem, and toe.\n\nHear me say, devoid of trickery,\nDaughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,\nTyphoid, measles, topsails, aisles,\nExiles, similes, and reviles;\nScholar, vicar, and cigar,\nSolar, mica, war and far;\nOne, anemone, Balmoral,\nKitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;\nGertrude, German, wind and mind,\nScene, Melpomene, mankind.\n\nBillet does not rhyme with ballet,\nBouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.\nBlood and flood are not like food,\nNor is mould like should and would.\nViscous, viscount, load and broad,\nToward, to forward, to reward.\nAnd your pronunciation’s OK\nWhen you correctly say croquet,\nRounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,\nFriend and fiend, alive and live.\n\nIvy, privy, famous; clamour\nAnd enamour rhyme with hammer.\nRiver, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,\nDoll and roll and some and home.\nStranger does not rhyme with anger,\nNeither does devour with clangour.\nSouls but foul, haunt but aunt,\nFont, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,\nShoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,\nAnd then singer, ginger, linger,\nReal, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,\nMarriage, foliage, mirage, and age.\n\nQuery does not rhyme with very,\nNor does fury sound like bury.\nDost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.\nJob, nob, bosom, transom, oath.\nThough the differences seem little,\nWe say actual but victual.\nRefer does not rhyme with deafer.\nFoeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.\nMint, pint, senate and sedate;\nDull, bull, and George ate late.\nScenic, Arabic, Pacific,\nScience, conscience, scientific.\n\nLiberty, library, heave and heaven,\nRachel, ache, moustache, eleven.\nWe say hallowed, but allowed,\nPeople, leopard, towed, but vowed.\nMark the differences, moreover,\nBetween mover, cover, clover;\nLeeches, breeches, wise, precise,\nChalice, but police and lice;\nCamel, constable, unstable,\nPrinciple, disciple, label.\n\nPetal, panel, and canal,\nWait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.\nWorm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,\nSenator, spectator, mayor.\nTour, but our and succour, four.\nGas, alas, and Arkansas.\nSea, idea, Korea, area,\nPsalm, Maria, but malaria.\nYouth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.\nDoctrine, turpentine, marine.\n\nCompare alien with Italian,\nDandelion and battalion.\nSally with ally, yea, ye,\nEye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.\nSay aver, but ever, fever,\nNeither, leisure, skein, deceiver.\nHeron, granary, canary.\nCrevice and device and aerie.\n\nFace, but preface, not efface.\nPhlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.\nLarge, but target, gin, give, verging,\nOught, out, joust and scour, scourging.\nEar, but earn and wear and tear\nDo not rhyme with here but ere.\nSeven is right, but so is even,\nHyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,\nMonkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,\nAsk, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.\n\nPronunciation — think of Psyche!\nIs a paling stout and spikey?\nWon’t it make you lose your wits,\nWriting groats and saying grits?\nIt’s a dark abyss or tunnel:\nStrewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,\nIslington and Isle of Wight,\nHousewife, verdict and indict.\n\nFinally, which rhymes with enough —\nThough, through, plough, or dough, or cough?\nHiccough has the sound of cup.\nMy advice is to give up!!!*",
"Could you provide a source that considers English as one of the hardest languages to learn? As a French, I think learning English is waayyyy easier than learning Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, or even German...\n\nSo yeah, I don't think the premise of the question is right, or at least not universal.",
"English is not that hard, it' just that there are a ton of exceptions to the few rules while other languages have a lot of rules to cover exception. \n \n English doesn't do a lot of things that makes it easier, such as not assigning gender to inanimate objects like a table or juice, which they do do in languages like French.",
"I used to work with people from all over the world. Many of them knew two or three languages on top of English. \n\nThey didn't think English was all that difficult. Especially the ones from Eastern Europe. A Czech man actually laughed when I suggested English was difficult to learn.",
"English is both hard to learn and easy to learn because it is a hodge podge created by combining words of different languages over time.\n\nIt is hard to learn because there are exceptions to every rule it has and multiple meanings to many words and multiple words mean the same thing (which means people who learn English sometimes use words that exist but are not actually used in normal English like saying \"greetings\" instead of \"hello).\n\nIt is easy to learn because you do not have to know all of the different words, just some of them. And the grammar, pronunciation and such is very forgiving because it is such a hodge podge.\n\nHaving 10 ways to say \"hello, how are you?\" makes it hard to say it the \"correct\" way, but easy to say it in a way that is understandable and acceptable.",
"I've lived and worked around Asia. Most people say English is easy to learn, but hard to master.\n\nMy experience learning Chinese was the opposite: difficult to get started, but easy when you know the basics.",
"Can you provide any source for this claim? As far as I'm aware, English is a rather easy language to learn. The fact that it doesn't have grammatical gender (like French, German, Russian etc.) and doesn't have grammatical cases (like German, Finnish, Russian) makes it rather easy from a grammatical standpoint. Of course, English orthography and phonology is rather complicated, but it isn't necessarily more complicated than most other languages. As someone who speaks both German (which English is closely related to) and Portuguese (which is a Romance language and thus shares many words with English due to its French influence), learning English was really easy for me, but I still consider English phonology to be rather difficult compared to most Romance languages. \n\nHere is an example of how I was able to use my knowledge of both German and Portuguese to my advantage. English words such as *example*, *part*, *honest*, *public*, *important*, *impossible*, *necessary*, *different* have Portuguese equivalents that look very similar to English: *exemplo*, *parte*, *honesto*, *público*, *importante*, *impossível*, *necessário*, *diferente*. However, English is actually considered a Germanic language from a linguistic standpoint with simply a large amount of Romance vocabulary. As such, English words *hand*, *winter*, *sink*, *find*, *sand*, *sea*, *house*, *mouse* and many others have very similar German equivalents: *Hand*, *Winter*, *sinken*, *finden*, *Sand*, *See*, *Haus*, *Maus* (the two last ones are pronounced exactly the same as in English). However, it is important to note that the first row of words (*example*, *part*, *honest*, *public*, *important*, *impossible*, *necessary*, *different*) is completely different in German: *Beispiel*, *Teil*, *ehrlich*, *öffentlich*, *wichtig*, *unmöglich*, *nötig*, *anders*. This is because German uses Germanic words while English uses words derived from Latin for these concepts. Furthermore, the second row of words (*hand*, *winter*, *sink*, *find*, *sand*, *sea*, *house*, *mouse*) is completely different in Portuguese: *mão*, *inverno*, *afundar*, *achar*, *areia*, *mar*, *casa*, *rato*. Here, English uses Germanic words for these concepts, whereas Portuguese uses words derived from Latin.\n\nHowever, I can imagine that for someone who speaks Chinese, which has a much simpler grammatical system than English and a completely different phonological and writing system, English can indeed be a hard language to learn, but I bet that even in their case they'd have a harder time learning German than English.\n\nAlso, if anyone is curious about me, I was born in Brazil and came to Switzerland when I was 7. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I learned German very quickly once I migrated to Switzerland. Some time later, I decided to learn English. Now I am perfectly fluent in German, English and Portuguese. I also study English linguistics, so I do know enough about English etymology (the origin of words) and morphology (how words are constructed, such as plurals or conjugation) to compare it to other languages. I also speak French and Italian and I have studied Latin, so I suppose I should have a fairly good idea of how difficult English is compared to other languages out there. However, all the languages I know fluently belong to only two Indo-European (the larger language family that English, German, French, Russian, Greek and even Hindi belong to) language families: Germanic (which is derived from Proto-Germanic and includes German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and also English) and Romance (which is derived from Latin and includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). Therefore, my experience may be a tad limited, so I'm sure that someone who speaks Chinese or any other language that is wildly different from English might have some better input into how hard a language English really is. However, I know enough about the grammatical structures of non-Indo-European languages to know that some of them can seem quite alien to an English speaker and hence English itself can seem rather alien to them. Don't hesitate to ask me if there was any term I didn't adequately explain to you. I really hope I managed to make myself clear even for people who know very little about linguistics.",
"English has a bad habit of taking other languages, taking them to a dark alley where it mugs and pickpockets bits of their language.",
"white guilt as well as a way to trick kids into thinking spanish class isn't that hard because they already speak a super-difficult language",
"Did you meant to write \"easy\" instead of hard?",
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. ",
"English is not so hard. \n\n1) Most of us (non native english speakers, travelling internationaly speak the *globish* subset of english. which is always enough for small talk and business conversation. It's not enough to write a book or understand a legal text. I guess that some conservative british loving their language might hate it, but knowing that the acceptable subset of english to be known is pretty small helps trying to talk\n\n2) At the moment the English-speaking culture dominates, if you want to practice english it's easy everybody (at least in the \"west\") can name a lot of English-speaking movies (While in the best-case I can name one or two movie from a given foreign country). If you add the video games (not always translated), music and a big part of the internet you have plenty of opportunities to practice English which helps getting an acceptable level (Specially with the globish tolerance) It's really harder to find a descent selection of Spanish-speaking song and movies (at least if you're not leaving there) \n\n3) Even if English has some weird structures (Why do you say *Do you*) verbs have almot the same form ( I love, you love, s-he loves, we love, you love, they love /Compare to : quiero quieres quiere queremos queréis quieren) most of the are regular. Name's gender are irrelevant (OK you should say *she* to describe a ship but I can still say a ship and not worry about *le/la* Moreover English ha no declension (OK the possessive *'s* is a kind of genitive but it's nothing compared to Check/Polish ) \n\nThere's really worse language to learn. But it's still a foreign language and it need some work to be learned but there are really worse choice. ",
"Googled - Why Is English So Hard to Learn? \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe Oxford Royale Academy sounds like a legit source....",
"Yeah English has some exceptions, but you can still communicate 99% and be perfectly understood from context. And only 26 letters including vowels. \n\nCompare to Thai, which has has 44 letters, ~29 separate vowels, and five levels (intonations?), which my ear can't even distinguish, for every single one. And you screw up one thing and nobody understands you. \n\nE.g. \"Khao\" (pronounced \"cow\" basically) means five different things depending on how you intonate it, and every single intonation sounds the exact damn same. Each level just goes up in pitch maybe a half-step in musical terms. ",
"English is easy to learn, however English pronunciation is hard to pick up on, especially later in life, because its all out of whack - there is no logic to it. If you can figure out the root of the word (Greek, Latin, French, Germanic, Britonnic, etc.) it helps. But otherwise the pronunciation is bullshit, while other languages - like Spanish or Hindi, have very obvious and logical pronunciation.",
"No one considers it the hardest language to learn, because it isn't. It's one of the easiest language to learn both in terms of difficulty and exposure. Your question makes no sense."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-hard.html"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4hka29 | how can scientist really know what cats or dogs see? | Searched to try and find this answer in this sub but couldn't find it so I'm putting it out there. So supposedly some animals are colour blind, like dogs for example supposedly are. But, like, how do we really know that? Same goes for taste buds. How do we know cats can't taste sweet?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hka29/eli5how_can_scientist_really_know_what_cats_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"d2qa7kk",
"d2qfjgn"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"If you cut open a human eye, you see certain structures that respond to light. Rods and Cones as we call them. Humans have 3 cones that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light (Red, Blue, and Green), and the various wavelengths of light will be registered by one or more of the cones.\n\nIf you cut open a dog's eye, they only have 2 of the cones in there. They don't have one that's sensitive to red. The others look like our blue and green cones, so they can know what a dog sees.\n\nIt's when you get to animals that have more than 3 structures that we can't describe what they see, like a Mantis Shrimp (they have 16).",
"You test them.\n\nYou train the animal that if it picks out the right colored object, it will get a treat. First you train it with black and white, then you try it with various color pairs.\n\nIf the animal can learn to pick the right color, then it can tell the difference between the two colors. If it never does better than random, then it cannot."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4punlf | how is it possible to own/ operate a graveyard considering that all payments are made up front (are low, relatively) and need to last indefinitely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4punlf/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_own_operate_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4nz4od",
"d4nzqpw",
"d4o097d"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Aren't they paid for by governments and/or churches and other religious organizations? Neither of those operate like other businesses and get money from taxes or donations",
"In some countries, the rights to the plot only last a certain time - 100 years or so. \n\nThen the remains are dug up and the plot resold. ",
"In the modern world, the idea that your grave is your body's final resting spot for all of eternity is pretty much gone. Of course there are exceptions to that rule. \n\nPlots are generally leased for 50-100 years, with an extension to renew if any of your heirs are so inclined. How many people know where their great great grandma is buried, and are willing to spend several thousands of dollars to keep exclusive for long gone granny for another 100 years?\n\nFor the poor or unidentified bodies, they're generally put in city owned plots in a cardboard and plywood coffin which quickly decays, and the plot can be reused in a few decades. \n\nAlso this past post will help.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization"
]
] |
||
fzxfqo | what's the relationship between power, wavelength and penetration? | So I work as ISP tech support (yes, I do tell people to turn off and on their router). I always assumed that the shorter the wavelength (+Hz) the harder to penetrate objects, but I'm not really sure what role the emitter power does play.
So I went to Wikipedia, and I figured out that there's a relationship between wavelength and power (the shorter the wavelength, the greater the power), but I'm not sure, then, how it's possible to have two emitters with different power output and the same wavelength.
Or how it's safe to touch a 5Ghz home router antenna, but some people died being in front of a radar with longer wavelength.
It's clearly out of my very basic physics knowledge. I'm missing something, and I really want to know what's going on about this. First, because some clients ask questions about this and I'm unable to provide answers about this very matter. Second, because when my brother asked me about this whole 5G paranoia, despite I vaguely know what's ionizing vs non-ionizing, I realized I really didn't know about the fundamentals.
So If a client calls and tells me that he's going to burn down his 5G Antenna, I'd like to have more that a vague layman explanation on what's going on. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fzxfqo/eli5_whats_the_relationship_between_power/ | {
"a_id": [
"fn6qgca"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Power is power, that doesn't change with wavelength. A 1 watt transmitter is a 1 watt transmitter whether its putting out microwaves or UV rays. Each photon has more energy which changes its behavior, but that's distinctly different from the power of the transmitter.\n\nWavelength, penetration, and target material are all related. Longer wavelengths work their way around objects and bounce off walls well, shorter wavelengths tend to get absorbed more, but this is only true for radio waves in the spectrum that we look at (100 kHz-100 GHz). Xrays don't care about drywall, they'll go right through them, visible light doesn't care about glass it'll pass straight through as well while longer wavelength IR waves are blocked by glass extremely well.\n\nWiFi routers are restricted to 1 Watt max so there really isn't anything exciting they can do. Big TV broadcast antennas can be over 1 MW but since they're such low frequency that they don't interact with your body much its not a problem, a little warming at most. Meanwhile a big military S-Band radar that runs in the 2-4 GHz range could be used to microwave whatever you want with some frequency tuning.\n\nIts a complex interaction between power, wavelength, and material to determine what'll end up happening, but in general if its used around the general public someone has done the math and it came up harmless. 5G is not a danger to anything."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2fj713 | what (if any) does the color of a laser have to do with its power? | So why would a green laser be stronger or brighter than a red laser? Or does color not have anything do with it just how much electricity you can pump through it? So would a blue laser be more powerful because it is closer to UV wavelengths? Or can you just not get certain power levels out of certain colors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fj713/eli5_what_if_any_does_the_color_of_a_laser_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"ck9qmqc",
"ck9qqo1",
"ck9twfv"
],
"score": [
6,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Power and color are separate. The color determines the energy in the individual photons, but the power is the total amount of energy being emitted (how many photons times the energy in each).",
"Rather than do my own sloppy explanation, I'll link to an expert answering laymen: _URL_0_\n\n > Q: I was curious as to the difference in power between the colors, and if there is a limit to that power depending on each color. I have watched lasers melt through things, depending on wattage and nanometers, and was wondering about the relation of colors to wattage and nanometers, if there was any at all. Mostly I just want to know if a blue laser would be more effective at melting stuff than a green or red would be, or if it's completely unrelated.\n > - Dave (age 22)\n > Ames IA US\n\n > A:\n > It's the Watts that count, not the color. There is, however, a relationship between the energy of a single photon of a certain color, E = hf where h is Plank's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. So in that sense it takes fewer photons per second to make up one Watt for higher frequency (shorter wavelength) light. However, the power specification takes that fact into account making the color irrelevant. ",
"The power of a laser on a given target relies on two factors.\n\nThe first factor is how much energy is put into the stream of photons being ejected. That's the wattage.\n\nThe second factor is that all materials have spectral patterns in which they either absorb or reflect light energy. So a laser used against a material that reflects the frequency of light being produced will have less impact than one of a frequency that is absorbed by the target. \n\nThis allows for some excellent physics experiments from pulse detection of specific elements in a material either by reflection or absorption OR in the most extreme case Lasers have been used to COOL materials to within billionths of a degree of absolute zero.\n\nSo the total wattage AND the frequency of the laser are listed so that one can be selected for the intended use. It is much more effective to use the right frequency than to use a much higher energy state and in certain circumstances such as surgery, you want a laser that is completely absorbed by the exposed tissue so that it vaporizes the tissue but doesn't flash-heat the flesh beneath.\n\nSuch qualities are used in automated laser cutting systems as well.\n\nUsing a laser on a material with high rejection incidence will literally spray the stream of photons back at the laser and the operating environment and is an excellent way to accidentally blind people, start fires and cause injuries. When using industrial lasers in the 300 watt range you can end up with sudden flares so bright that they WILL burn a spot on the human retina just by looking at them. If you don't grasp this concept, think about the tiny LED in the center of a three watt Cree flashlight - very painful to look at."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1930"
],
[]
] |
|
aoo91q | do petitions actually change anything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aoo91q/eli5_do_petitions_actually_change_anything/ | {
"a_id": [
"eg2d2up",
"eg2d5ea",
"eg2diiv",
"eg2drva"
],
"score": [
12,
7,
2,
9
],
"text": [
"By and large, they don't make much of a difference. A petition is no real indicator of anything beyond a person's willingness to sign something. It doesn't confer any promise of action, nor any lasting consequence, and not even a guarantee of authenticity.\n\nThey can hold sway in situations where a decision may go one way or another, but it's rare for a petition alone to overturn a made decision. That typically takes more active engagement.",
"It's a way to draw attention to something. If a huge number of people agree with you about something then maybe that's enough leverage to start changing the thing you want to change. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnd some petitions do come with specific actions if a threshold is met. Like collecting signatures to appear on an election ballot or to force a recall vote. Those conditions are usually written in the law so the standards are also a bit stricter than the guy who wanted the Sponge Bob song in the Superbowl. ",
"It is human nature for people to want to feel like they are doing something, but often just like other task this feeling is satisfied in the easiest way possible. So you give the homeless guy a buck, but never do anything to address the plight of people living in the street.",
"Some do. Actual pen and paper petitions can legally force issues in states. In my state, the legislature would never address the issue of medical marijuana -- so a petition drive forced it to be on the ballot for the people to vote on, and they did.\n\nOnline petitions aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on, however."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
ad9wya | . what is the difference between hdr and 4k? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ad9wya/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_hdr_and_4k/ | {
"a_id": [
"edezunt",
"edf037d"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"HDR gives you better and brighter/darker colors (High Dynamic Range).\n\n4K just gives you a massive amount of screen space",
"4K refers to the resolution or how many pixels there are. For home TVs this is 3840x2160 pixels. For comparison, Full HD 1080p is 1920x1080. So, 4K has four times as many pixels as 1080p.\n\nHDR refers to a different concept which is often seen in 4K content but isn't technically part of the 4K resolution. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Basically, it allows your TV to show more colors than a standard dynamic range TV would. These extra colors can make things on screen look more vibrant, more true-to-life, smoother or simply brighter depending on how they use those extra available colors."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
11qmlv | if fat is stored energy, then why do fat people get tired faster than skinny people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11qmlv/eli5_if_fat_is_stored_energy_then_why_do_fat/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6oqt5y",
"c6oqug0",
"c6oqvau",
"c6or4dt",
"c6orlcv",
"c6orm8q",
"c6oryj7",
"c6os4l5",
"c6os4w7",
"c6osagy",
"c6osayl",
"c6ot6tm",
"c6otge6",
"c6otus2",
"c6ou33k",
"c6oue64",
"c6ouhpf",
"c6oy6wk"
],
"score": [
29,
6,
309,
5,
20,
2,
6,
19,
3,
3,
2,
2,
14,
2,
2,
2,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Because they aren't using that energy. Your body gets used to storing it and not using it. Skinny people use their energy. Their body is used to burning it. ",
"Heavier people carry more workload through their weight. Their body still functions on the same metabolic level that everyone else does by using carbohydrates first, then fat, then protein. However, if they're eating enough carbs to not get to the 'burning fat' portion, then the extra fat really makes no difference.\n\nOn that note, even if they starved themselves and ate minimal calories, they still need enough calories to 'feed' their Basal Metabolic Rate (same as base metabolic rate, or basically your metabolism OR to sum it down further the stuff that goes on in your body to keep you alive in functioning) ... Without that, their body goes into 'starvation' mode and any calories eaten are converted to fat because the body feels like it is starving. \n\nWhen they exercise, if they have eaten enough to feed their basal metabolic rate, they'll burn through their carbs and then start burning fat. They'll get tired more quickly because they have extra weight and still have the same base frame that everyone else has to carry all this weight on... Think like if you are an average weight person and have all these weights strapped on you - you'd get more tired too doing anything.\n\nHope this answers it well enough.\nedit: forgot a word",
"There are two reasons that I can think of, off the top of my head: \n \nFirst, you don't get access to all the energy at the same time. Generally speaking (and way oversimplifying it), your body prefers to fuel itself using the food you eat instead of using your stored fat. Because of this, almost all of the fat remains in storage most of the time, but you still have to carry it around with you, and carrying all that extra mass makes you tire faster. It's like walking around with a heavy lead apron on all day - it doesn't really provide much in the way of energy benefits, but adds a lot to your energy costs. \n \nSecond, overweight people also *tend* to be less fit anyway - eating too much and doing too little tend to go together. So a tendency towards lack of exercise among overweight people leads to a tendency towards tiring more easily as well.",
"It's more an issue of fitness than excess fat.",
"Fat is the body's emergency supply of energy. It is only to be used when food is not available and then only to keep the person alive long enough to find a new food source. \n\nFat is not intended as a fuel for excercise and strenous activities but of course in modern times we force it to do that in some cases where we want to slim down fast. It is a survival mechinasm which provides a small steady stream of energy to tide us over during famines. This is why it is not good for fueling sprinting etc.\n \nWhen our body gets the chance to store un-needed calories as fat it does it. If we have a good supply of food and keep over eating our body will gratefully store any excess as fat. We are designed with this special redundancy and it works very well. \n \nIf you eat more than you need you will gain weight. If you eat a \"maintenance\" level you will remain at your present weight assuming similar levels of exertion. If you eat less than you need to fuel your body's needs then you lose weight. \n \nIt is as simple as that. Everything else you hear about weight loss is smoke and mirrors. \n \n\"Calories in\" minus \"Calories used\" = X \n \nIf X is a negative number you will lose weight (even in so called starvation mode).",
"For the same reason that a semi that carrying fuel still has to refuel at regular intervals at a gas station just like everyone else. Just because you have all that fuel doesn't mean you have access to or can burn it.\n\nAlso, its obvious that its much harder for someone that is 400lbs to run a mile than it is for someone that is 100lbs.",
"this question assumes that fat people actually do get tired faster than skinny people, which isn't necessarily true.\n\nthe most important factor that determines how quickly a \"healthy person\" (meaning the person doesn't have any diseases that affect their energy balance) tires is their cardiovascular health. meaning, how fit/strong is their heart and how healthy are their blood vessels. this in turn is dependent on if the person exercises regularly (if you make your heart work hard, the muscles of your heart get bigger, stronger, and more durable) and if the person is relatively free of gunk in their blood vessels (smoking can damage your blood vessels, a diet high in cholesterol can clog up your vessels, etc.).\n\ni've seen plenty of \"fat\" people who are actually quite fit from regular exercise and can run long distances or play sports for an extended time. i've also seen plenty of skinny people who can barely run a mile because their cardiovascular health has been ravaged by smoking.\n\ni think the assumption in OP's question exists because people who tend to exercise and eat healthy (and therefore maintain good cardiovascular health) *tend* to be skinny, and people who don't exercise and eat fatty food *tend* to be fat. but whether they tire quickly or not is not actually dependent on whether they are fat.",
"You ever seen fuel trucks go up a hill on the highway? They lumber in the slow lane because fuel is heavy. If there were suddenly no gas stations, the fuel truck would be able to use its stored fuel to keep going. But that would be hard. \n\nHeavy people are the same way. They can use their stored fuel, but it is far more convenient and comfortable to fuel up at regular intervals just like everyone else. ",
"Obesity often comes with insulin resistance (works also the other way around, insulin resistance triggers obesity, it's a chicken & egg thing).\n\nWhen you eat, you produce insulin, which signals cells to store energy as fat. After eating, the insulin levels drop slowly and gets replaced by glucagon which signals cells to free the energy.\n\nInsulin resistant people always have insulin in their blood and cannot release this energy like a normal body would.\n\nRead somehow this analogy : Insulin resistance is like having a lot of money in bank and being able to save more, but never being able to go to the ATM and get some back.\n\nGary Taubes says from these kind of people that they're not fat because they eat a lot, but they eat a lot because they're fat. Makes sense, not being able to used stored energy, they have to provide more and more via diet.",
"You are confusing two very different things: fat level and fit level. If your fitness level is high you tend to get tired harder. If your fat level is high you have excess fuel to survive the famine.",
"Here's a video which will explain part of it but is not for 5 year olds. _URL_0_",
"In a nutshell, because living things are spectacularly complex machines, and simplistic, intuitive reasoning about how these machines works is often (if not virtually always) inadequate for understanding how these machines work.",
"Any motion that a person makes is because their muscles contract. Muscles need a fuel-like substance called \"ATP\" to contract. Bodies make ATP from two possible sources: **carbohydrates**, and\n **fat**. The body wants to burn carbohydrates into ATP first, because carbohydrates turn into ATP much more efficiently than fat.\n\nWhile a fat person may have more stored energy from fat than a skinny person, the body doesn't like to burn fat right away. The body burns up the carbohydrates first, and everyone can store about the same amount of carbohydrates, no matter what their size. That's why a fat person doesn't have more usable energy stores than a skinny person.\n\nMoving a bigger mass requires more energy, so that's why a fat person burns their available energy faster than a skinny person.\n*****\n**NON-FIVE YEAR-OLD ELABORATION**: The fat/carb dichotomy is why marathoners hit \"the wall.\" Every human body can only store about 2,000 calories worth of carbohydrates at any given time, mostly as glycogen stored in the muscles. 2,000 calories will take you about 20-22 miles, and then, if you haven't replenished along the way, you're just out. The system for converting fat to ATP requires much more oxygen than the system for converting glycogen to ATP, and speaking from personal experience, IT HURTS. Like \"holy crap my legs are full of lead shot\" hurts, like \"I was running eight minutes for a mile for 21 miles, now I can't go any faster than 9:30/mile\" hurts.\n\nThis is also the basic idea behind the \"ketogenic\" or atkins diet. With a keto diet, the theory is that you withhold carbohydrates, and force your body to get more efficient at converting fat to ATP. I'm sure someone from /r/keto can come by and elaborate/correct my very limited understanding of ketogenic diets.\n*****\nSources:\n\n\"[Understanding Muscle Fueling](_URL_0_)\" - it's obviously pro-powerbar biased, but their basic idea of the science is right.\n\nWikipedia links:\n\n[Glycolysis](_URL_1_) - the process by which the body converts glycogen to ATP\n\n[Beta Oxidation](_URL_2_) - the process by which the body converts fatty acids to ATP\n\nAlso, 15 years of personal experience as an endurance athlete of various pursuits and skill levels (usually poor, however).\n\n",
"In your body, energy comes in many shapes and forms, and just because it's there, doesn't mean you can use it at any time. Stored fat is definitely energy, but it's a sort of long-term storage. Fat is there to take you through the winter (if you are a stone age human, that is) -- you can't use it right now.",
"Your username is extremely relevant. ",
"I have been watching this series all morning. I **highly** encourage everyone to watch this.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The same reason that sports cars are faster than 18-wheelers hauling 50,000 gallons of gasoline.",
"It's like a small car having to pull a semi-trailer full of fuel."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&ob=av3e"
],
[],
[
"http://www.powerbar.com/articles/356/understanding-muscle-fueling.aspx",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-oxidation"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity/"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
3aa2gf | why is it always a hate crime when a white person kills blacks, but not a hate crime when it is a black person killing whites? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3aa2gf/eli5_why_is_it_always_a_hate_crime_when_a_white/ | {
"a_id": [
"csamkh8",
"csamoqp",
"csamwav",
"csanaaa",
"csankx6",
"csanmde",
"csb398a"
],
"score": [
6,
6,
7,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"If a black guy walked into an all white church and opened fire, it WOULD be considered a hate crime if no other motive was discovered. Also, white people have a history of committing hate crimes against minorities and lets face it, discrimination is still alive and well in the U.S.",
"It's about the motive, not the color of the person's skin.\n\nIf someone kills someone else because he were robbing them, or found them in bed with his wife, then that wouldn't be a hate crime, no matter what the various skin tones involved were.\n\nBut if someone kills someone else *because* of the color of their skin, or their religion, or their sexual preference, and so on, then that *is* a hate crime.\n\nIt's not always a hate crime when a white person kills a black person. But a hate crime committed by anyone is **far** more likely to make the news than any other kind of murder, so you're more likely to hear about it.",
"[Of the reported 3,407 single-bias hate crime offenses that were racially motivated, 66.4 were motivated by anti-black or African-American bias, and 21.4 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.](_URL_0_)",
"It's often not clear, but it's also true the media doesn't report black hate crimes. Yes it's true, black people can be racist too.",
"It's all about what the intention is. To put it this way, think of yourself on a farm with lots of animals and there was a long lasting feud over years with pigs and chickens where the chickens mistreated the pigs, and then this kind of dies down a bit over the years. There might still be some chickens that hate pigs for just being pigs and some of them might feel the need to express their hate in violence. If a chicken killed a pig for no apparent reason, except for the fact that they were a pig, in this context it would probably be deemed a hate crime; the same for the other way around though. On the other hand, if a pig was just poor and wanted to rob a chicken and ended up killing them on the side/in the heat of the moment, the fact that they were chickens and pigs has no real relationship in the fact that this murder happened.",
"Well, there's the media saying that something is a hate crime, and then there's prosecuting a hate crime. The media tends to throw it around when something might not actually be a hate crime.\n\nIn prosecuting a hate crime, you have to prove that the person committed the crime, but also that they committed the crime because of a bias based on race, religion.\n\nSo: person with a history of racism kills other person in hated group, because they got into a bar fight. Not a hate crime.\n\nPerson seeks out someone of a race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. they hate, and injure that person because of any of those things: hate crime.\n\nIt's exceptionally hard to prove that something is a hate crime. But a person of any race or religion CAN commit a hate crime. The thing here is that whites have a history of organizing large groups around the hatred of other groups.",
"It's not. But the talking heads on the media like to paint it that way to get ratings. Dirty laundry sells, and things get hyped, misconstrued, and misunderstood. Human are fickle creatures."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/december/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
d27v1b | why is it that the government has made it illegal to own both firearms and a medical mariguana license? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d27v1b/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_government_has_made_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"ezt8bjx",
"ezt9nz1"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Under federal law there is no such thing as medical marijuana. So to the feds it's illegal to possess a firearm while being a user or possessor of restricted controlled substances, which marijuana still is. Federal law does not recognize state legalization of marijuana, so while your state does not criminalize it, if a federal law enforcement agency happened upon you using state legal weed on federal property or crossing state borders, they could arrest you and charge you.",
"Marijuana is illegal under federal law. Period. Full Stop. Some states have gone against that law and have legalized/decriminalized marijuana (medical and/or recreational), and the enforcement agencies of the federal government have declined to push it. That doesn't make it legal per federal law. It is illegal to own firearms if you are a user of illegal drugs. Again, since marijuana is illegal under federal law, it is part of that same prohibition. Therefore it's illegal to own a firearm if you use medical marijuana.\n\nAs far as the license goes, if you had a medical marijuana license and never used marijuana at all, it would not be illegal to own the firearm. It might be tough or impossible to prove that, though. The government has said that having the medical marijuana license is enough to assume that you are a user of medical marijuana and therefore you are prohibited from possessing a firearm."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
6f6vy6 | why do doors get squeaky over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f6vy6/eli5_why_do_doors_get_squeaky_over_time/ | {
"a_id": [
"difvg4m"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"there's oil in the hinges that hold the door, over time that oil dries/evaporates/leaks and the metal parts of the hinges start rubbing \n and scratching against each other, resonating when you open and close a door"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
cvp4sh | how do sites like dhgate easily get away with selling fake products online? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvp4sh/eli5_how_do_sites_like_dhgate_easily_get_away/ | {
"a_id": [
"ey5lrk5",
"ey5nqph"
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text": [
"I think just about everything there is shipped straight from China. And a lot of the stuff isn't necessarily \"fake\" but is just very low quality or an obvious knockoff that is not being made to look like the real product.",
"Fake products are a big problem for a lot of sites that let sellers sell directly to buyers. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, \n\nPart of the problem is that it’s very easy to set up a selling account. Sellers can list items very quickly, with little to no verification from the selling platform. It’s only when buyers complain, or the owner of the copyright/trademark files a case, that anything is done. Even if the platform takes down the seller. It’s pretty easy for them to set up a new account under a different name/email address. \n\nPart of the problem is also that current law doesn’t hold the platform owner (amazon, eBay, etc) in any way responsible for damages. If someone is caught selling fake NFL merchandise, the NFL can’t go after Amazon for damages. So there’s little incentive for the platform owners to police their sites."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
j3uw7 | whats the difference between "union" rugby, and "league" rugby? eli5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3uw7/whats_the_difference_between_union_rugby_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"c28wwzn",
"c28y1st"
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text": [
"League has 13 players per side, and play stops as soon as a player is tackled, with the team in possession keeping the ball and the defending team having to go back ten metres and defend again. Once the defending team successfully completes 6 tackles, they are awarded possession.\n\nUnion has 15 players per side (2 extra forwards - the flankers), and play keeps going until either somebody scores, the ball goes out of play or the referee blows his whistle for an infringement of some kind. When somebody is tackled, rather than stopping, everybody steams in and fights for possession of the ball.\n\nThere are other differences, but that's really the big divide.",
"Rugby Union and Rugby League are versions of the same game.\n\nGenerally speaking, the object is the same. To earn points, the ball must be carried over the try line and touched down (this scores a \"try\") or the ball can be drop-kicked over the goal posts. After a try is scored, the ball can be place-kicked or drop-kicked from in-line with the position of the try to \"convert\" the try and earn two extra points. Whichever team has more points after eighty minutes of play wins the game.\n\nThe organizing groups for the sports split about a hundred years ago, because some people wanted to be paid by their team when they took time off work to play. Others thought being paid to play would ruin the game. The people who wanted to be paid split off and formed the \"Rugby League\", those who didn't were the \"Rugby Union\".\n\nThere wasn't any intent to create a separate type of rugby when the split happened, but after hundred years of having different leaders the rules have become different under the two groups of leaders.\n\nIn Rugby League:\n\n- There are two fewer players in each team (13 per team, with two fewer \"forwards\" than rugby union)\n- Tries are worth four points\n- Drop kicks are worth one point\n- Penalty kicks are worth two points\n- Most of the parts of the game that cause the Union version to stop or slow down have been \"sped up\". For example Scrums are pretty much uncontested and Lines outs have been removed from the game. \n- The above causes the most obvious difference in the way play unfolds. When a player is tackled with the ball, his team keeps possession. The tackled player stands, and rolls the ball back under his foot to a team mate.\n- If there is doubt over whether a try is scored, the benefit of the doubt goes to the attacking team\n\nIn Rugby Union:\n\n- There are fifteen players in each team\n- Tries are worth five points\n- Drop kicks are worth three points\n- Penalty kicks are worth three points\n- In contrast to Rugby League, when a player is tackled, members of both team will try to get the ball from him. This forms a \"ruck\" over the ball as both teams try to work the ball back to \"their\" side of the ruck. People who don't understand what's happening can find this very boring since you can't see what is going on.\n- Every restart is contested; scrums, line-outs and rucks are intended to allow the defending side to have a chance to get possession of the ball. This added competition tends, though, to lead to more penalties being awarded, which can slow down the game.\n\n- If there is doubt over whether a try is scored, the benefit of the doubt goes to the defenders\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
7mjoo2 | when a train enters a tunnel, what is the cause of the sudden pressure drop in the cabin? | I was riding CalTrain today and in the 4 tunnels before the final stop there was a quite noticable pressure change (which I found to be a drop in pressure using the barometer on my phone). Thank you!
Rule 7: In accordance with rule 7, I did search this question up beforehand, and there were two posts about the topic, but one of the posts described an increase in pressure (which I found not to be the case) and the other didn't have that great of an explanation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mjoo2/eli5_when_a_train_enters_a_tunnel_what_is_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"drugifu"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"When air speeds up its pressure drops. As the train passes through the tunnel the air around the sides is being squeezed into a much tighter space than before the train’s presence. A narrowing of the space between the train and the tunnel causes the air to speed up which also means the pressure of the air drops as it speeds up; speed being relative in that it’s the train that’s moving while the air is still but the effect is the same. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
ct9pwk | what causes the ear-piercing sensation caused by grinding forks against plates or nails on a chalkboard? or even the thought of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ct9pwk/eli5_what_causes_the_earpiercing_sensation_caused/ | {
"a_id": [
"exjkmet",
"exjkpmw",
"exjnvwb",
"exjqhzu",
"exjrv4j",
"exjs9qi",
"exjsxpt",
"exjta4h",
"exjuczq",
"exjumzv",
"exjuq78",
"exjural",
"exjvnbs",
"exjwnd3",
"exjxjkd",
"exjxoap",
"exjy0uc",
"exjy2nd",
"exqyahg"
],
"score": [
995,
36,
106,
5,
98,
4,
9,
9,
3,
2,
70,
11,
6,
5,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It is similar to shrieks made by mammals in times of distress or danger and is an evolutionary artifact. It's supposed to be 'jarring' so it gets your attention.",
"I heard somewhere that it was because it was close to the sound one of our predator made when we were primates. That, or it is really close to the death scream of a primate, which both indicate impending danger.\n\nHowever, I could be wrong. I'm not really sure.",
"Nobody really knows why people get \"the chills\" but the best theory I've heard is that your teeth don't have nerves going all the way to the end so any sound that makes your brain think you're in danger of losing enamel triggers a response to protect your teeth.",
"Wait, people are bothered by the sound of forks on plates? How do they eat?",
"I cringe HARD when people eating with forks stick the fork in their mouth, bite down, and slide the fork out through their teeth. \n\nThese people need straightjackets.",
"Honestly I’ve scratched a chalkboard and it really wasn’t that bad. \n\nAlthough at my work, I was cutting food for a resident (nursing home), scraped the fork against a plate on accident, and felt so god damn uncomfortable.",
"Help, I need to know that there is at least one more person out there who gets that same feeling from wet sand. I could never stand it. The very thought of someone walking in wet sand or - help me God - digs around in it with their bare hands gives me the shivers and goosebumps all over.",
"In our country, our word for that is \"ngilo\" or \"pangingilo\", to refer to the sound, as well as to mean tooth ache",
"I get a very similar sensation when I rub some types of synthetic materials together or with other objects, my family doesn't get it.",
"And how common is it?\nCuz those have never bothered me",
"Kinda a tangent, but autistic people and anyone who has auditory sensitivity issues can be really well understood as people who have a \"nails on a chalkboard\" reaction to a wider variety of sounds than most people. I've thought of this comparison as usually a good way to explain auditory sensitivities to most people.",
"Your ears are *super* sensitive to the 2K-5KHz region of the sound spectrum, and nails on chalkboard is right in that range.",
"I didn't notice anyone mention this but I absolutely hate the sound of chewing. Even with their mouth closed. Not all people but some still make that sqwashing sound, and it triggers a huge amount anxiety/anger in my brain. Mouth open chewing is far worse. I find it hard to eat around other people in quiet rooms. My angel gf will wait for us both to start eating, and I'll always turn on the TV for background noise. I've tried endlessly to not let it bother me but never succeeded. 30 years old and it still drives me bonkers. I don't often tell the loud chewers because its rude but damn do I hate it/them indirectly. Sometimes it will boil up until I tell them to please stop. \nThis also converts into other noises like sniffling and typing, or pretty much anything repetative. \nI truly hate it about myself. Thankfully a vast majority of the time I bear through it silently.",
"I wonder if it's like a negative version of ASMR. Everything fits exactly, it's just the experience is negative rather than soothing.",
"Is it bad that these sounds don't bother me?",
"I'm not gonna read the comments on this thread.\n\n*proceeds to read all the comments and gets the uneasy sensation every time someone mentions nails and chalkboard*",
"From what I understand, it all just comes down to dissonance. The brain is weirdly phenomenal at patterns; and vibrations within the ear are part of it. The sounds are causing wavelengths that are disorienting because they don’t match each other in a harmonic way.\n\nInterestingly, those wavelengths are part of why we find music so good! They match!",
"Or scraping aluminum foil with a metal object?",
"I mean the animalistic theories are nice. But I'm pretty sure it's just because it's an incredibly high pitched sound. High frequencies really hurt our ears, and it's incredibly loud to boot. Also it could a case it has some kind of resonate frequency. Either way that sound is stuck in my ears now and I want to die."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
82o71w | is athleticism genetic? if so how? | I'm trying to get back into sports since I've started uni and feel this is the best opportunity to after 3-4 years but I feel I've got nothing going for me atm athletically other than my stamina, I've got an average vertical and average strength I come from a pretty athletic family is it because I've not done any sport for the past 4 years or have I just lucked out in genetics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/82o71w/eli5_is_athleticism_genetic_if_so_how/ | {
"a_id": [
"dvbi7rx",
"dvbjs4p",
"dvbl5h0"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"It is to a degree; when it comes to how well your body heals itself, how efficiently your blood carries oxygen, the maintenance of bone tissue, your body type, things like that. \n\nYour body can change some stuff like muscle mass, and it's all in the brain when it comes to how you maneuver your body. So it's a combination of nature and nurture.",
"There is some genetic component but unless it's a disability effort makes far more of a difference.",
"It plays a factor to a degree, and what degree that is is up for debate. The poor grammar in your question makes it difficult to determing exactly what your problem is. If you are wondering why you are not very good at sports after not doing sports for several years, then you answered your own question. Peek athletic performance requires constant long term training. If you are wondering why you are still somewhat athletic despite not doing much, it is because it takes a while to go away completely especially if you don't lead a partcularly sedentary lifestyle or overeat."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1q2wyj | why do people call australia a prison? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q2wyj/eli5_why_do_people_call_australia_a_prison/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd8mrtk",
"cd8mt02",
"cd8n1bs",
"cd8nl8m",
"cd8oqcn"
],
"score": [
5,
5,
9,
12,
11
],
"text": [
"It was used as a prison for the English empire ",
"Most of the first settlers were exiles from Britain, usually criminals.",
"When the British found it, they decided it was a great place to put their criminals. ",
"The British--they live on a crowded, cold, wet, little island with dubious neighbours. The discover a magnificent land, with sunshine, beaches, wide open spaces unique flora and fauna, and send their criminals there!",
"Australia was first colonised by the British as prison. They sent convicts from over crowded prisons in England to Sydney and used convict labour to build the colony. Convicts were the majority of colonists for the first approx. 30 years of British colonisation (1788-1820s).\n\nCriminals in Britain and Ireland were often sentenced to 7 years hard labour in New South Wales. Once they had served their sentence (or earlier if they behaved well) they were given a ticket of freedom and allowed to set up their own small farms.\n\nWikipedia's article on Australian History is fairly comprehensive: _URL_0_\n "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Australia#Colonisation"
]
] |
||
mc232 | how does chest decongestant work along side cough suppressant? | I may be completely wrong about this but from what I've understood chest decongestant breaks down mucus and other bad stuff in your lungs and makes you cough it all out. And cough suppressant just makes you stop coughing. Now my question is most cold medicines have both of these in them. How do they work together? Don't they counteract each other? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mc232/eli5_how_does_chest_decongestant_work_along_side/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2zrjdy",
"c2ztf6k",
"c2zrjdy",
"c2ztf6k"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"so stuff like Mucinex includes two chemicals normally, Dextromethorphan and Guaifenesin. You have correctly identified the paradox of cough medicine, the Dextro acts as a cough suppressant by depressed activity in the part of your brain that tells you to initiate the cough reflex. The Guaifenesin acts as an expectorant, that is it causes the mucus to swell with water making it easier and heavier to cough out, normally the mucus isnt super thick but kinda wispy and thin so the air travels right past it. What is happening is that the dextro eases your reflex to cough, which can become painful, so that the Guaifensein has a chance to make it get all thick and gooey. Now the dextro suppresses but doesnt prevent, that is it makes it so more neurons in your brain need to fire before it tells your lungs to cough. Which means as it gets ticker and heavier your lungs keep going 'help help we need to get this out of here!' so you cough eventually. The logic here is that it reduces the number of coughs you have and makes them more productive.\n\nHope that helps (most of my sources is wiki and erowid :-/)",
"My doctor recommended against taking them together. She said take guaifenesin during the day, and take dextromethorphan at night ONLY if you have an uncontrollable cough that's keeping you from sleeping. If you have a lot of mucus, you shouldn't take a cough suppressant. This jives with my experience. I never take cough suppressants for upper respiratory infections; they make me feel like I'm going to suffocate. ",
"so stuff like Mucinex includes two chemicals normally, Dextromethorphan and Guaifenesin. You have correctly identified the paradox of cough medicine, the Dextro acts as a cough suppressant by depressed activity in the part of your brain that tells you to initiate the cough reflex. The Guaifenesin acts as an expectorant, that is it causes the mucus to swell with water making it easier and heavier to cough out, normally the mucus isnt super thick but kinda wispy and thin so the air travels right past it. What is happening is that the dextro eases your reflex to cough, which can become painful, so that the Guaifensein has a chance to make it get all thick and gooey. Now the dextro suppresses but doesnt prevent, that is it makes it so more neurons in your brain need to fire before it tells your lungs to cough. Which means as it gets ticker and heavier your lungs keep going 'help help we need to get this out of here!' so you cough eventually. The logic here is that it reduces the number of coughs you have and makes them more productive.\n\nHope that helps (most of my sources is wiki and erowid :-/)",
"My doctor recommended against taking them together. She said take guaifenesin during the day, and take dextromethorphan at night ONLY if you have an uncontrollable cough that's keeping you from sleeping. If you have a lot of mucus, you shouldn't take a cough suppressant. This jives with my experience. I never take cough suppressants for upper respiratory infections; they make me feel like I'm going to suffocate. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
yqm12 | dada art | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yqm12/eli5_dada_art/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5xygit",
"c5xzuzz"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Basically art that has no meaning or is supposed to be superficial and just aesthetically pleasing. If you were to ask the artist what the painting means he/she would say \"who cares\".",
"With art, there are always those nagging questions that never get entirely satisfactory answers one way or the other. Questions like \"does art need to be aesthetically pleasing?\", and \"does art need to have a deeper meaning?\"; \"Is everything we put in a museum art, and what happens when you remove it from said museum?\"\n\nDada attempted to throw out all the old rules and ideas, and see what happened. That meant there was poetry that did not conform to the rule that poetry needs to contain actual words. Art that was not actually art at all, except somebody put it in a museum. Nonsense art, or possibly anti-art.\n\nThis generates some questions for the modern audience. Questions like \"why the hell would I pay to go look at an empty frame?\" and \"exactly what kind of nonsense is this?\"\n\nIn defence of Dada, it's power is exactly that it makes us ask those kind of questions. It inspired new generations of artists to make up new rules and ideas for their art, giving birth to all kinds of artistic movements occasionally lumped together as \"post-modern art\". It forces the audience to contemplation about what exactly they were expecting when they entered a museum.\n\nNot everybody will appreciate it. There's a group of people who are not necessarily looking to have their assumptions challenged, either because they went through it, have asked themselves the questions, rendering Dada more than a little pointless and a touch boring, or because they just want to look at pretty pictures of landscapes and famous generals on horses (or stated in a more high-brow fashion: they're looking for beauty and meaning, rather than introspection).\n\nPersonally, I consider all three approaches to Dada entirely valid. Nobody *has* to appreciate Dada; I generally don't. What I do object to, though, is the \"degenerate art\" approach, where people essentially say that because they don't get it or appreciate it, it should not be made or actively destroyed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1rk4v2 | if video game companies lose so much money on consoles, and make so much money on games, why don't they collaborate on one console that can play any game? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rk4v2/eli5_if_video_game_companies_lose_so_much_money/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdo1uc1",
"cdo1v15",
"cdo1vqf",
"cdo56e3"
],
"score": [
25,
6,
11,
2
],
"text": [
"Like a PC?",
"And share the profits? Why don't all the grocery stores combine since they sell the same things?",
"Because they can make *more* money if they convince developers to make exclusives or they create their own IP to give them an edge. Look at Nintendo for example, if it weren't for Mario, Zelda, and a few others the Wii would have died a long time ago for lack of power. ",
"Rarely happens: They are building a brand image- which is worth more than money they can really lose. Building a brand is their main focus than just profit margins sometimes.\n\nGames: they get a subsidy but most money really goes to the developers who spend that time to create a game for your console. In few cases, some game-makers even become exclusive for the console (ie Halo-Microsoft, God of War/Sony, Mario! for Nintendo)\n\nSO in a way, they are already collaborating and in few years time, they turn profit on consoles anyways as life-span of these consoles tend to be anywhere from 5-7 years and production costs go down!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2a6r2b | how is 1984 a foreshadowing of the modern western world? | I've read the book and seen the film, and while there are certainly some similarities between the things portrayed in the novel and our world, most notably surveillance, I'm not really sure how people can feel confident saying that the world we live in today is the world that is portrayed in the novel. 1984 seems to omit two of the key driving forces behind Western society - capitalism and consumerism. The people I hear making the comparison often tend to be left-wing (which is how I would describe my own personal politics, for the record), but if anything the novel appears to be portraying a socialist dystopia, and seems closer to North Korea or China than it does to the UK or USA.
Don't get me wrong, there are things massively wrong with our society, but I feel like despite everything, the fact we are able to compare our society to 1984 kinda dampens the comparison itself. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a6r2b/eli5_how_is_1984_a_foreshadowing_of_the_modern/ | {
"a_id": [
"cis1ijm",
"cis1xeq",
"cis2490",
"cis27o1",
"cis3e5w"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"This behavior is an example of political hyperbole. It is, in my opinion, the equivalent of saying that President Obama is a communist for supporting higher minimum wages or single payer health insurance. \n\nNeither hyperbole is accurate, but within political circles, both are widely understood analogies.",
"Perhaps if you don't take it is a literal foreshadowing it might help. Aspects of the book do ring true to modern times. \n\n For instance, the idea of censorship and privacy. In some respects, we really do lack privacy in modern Western society. We are constantly being followed online. Our Clicks, this message, posts, Likes are all being tracked. In this sense Big Brother is watching what we are doing on a daily basis online. Also, texts and phone calls have been noted to be monitored as well. \n\nI haven't read the book in a couple years so I can't remember all the details. ",
"I remember on his old HBO show, Dennis Miller had a rant about how he thinks people act like the government is after them because it makes them feel important enough for a big organization to go after. He ended it with \"No one's out to get you. No one gives a shit whether you live or die. There! You feel better now?\"",
"Not an explanation, but I think that Brave New World (where mindless consumerism and petty distractions are letting the public be duped) is a more accurate metaphor",
"people have been making the comparison to dystopian novels since forever. these works are *designed* to be just close enough to reality to get you on edge."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
7vxj33 | why does the vision darken and limbs become shaky when we slip? | for example, slipping on an icy road or wet floor. wouldn't the opposite response of the body be more useful? like helping to grab on something or regain balance instead of this completely useless reaction. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vxj33/eli5_why_does_the_vision_darken_and_limbs_become/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtvuhe1"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"This is part of the adrenaline response; your brain narrows vision (so you can focus on a threat), enhances strength and speed for gross motor functions like swinging a weapon or running (at the expense of fine motor control, so you get shaky), and constricts blood flow to extremities to reduce the risk of bleeding out from a wound to the limbs (again causing some shakiness).\n\nFor the specific use-case of slipping, this isn't particularly helpful, but in the case of a predator or lethal fight with traditional weapons, this is incredibly useful. But for modern day, situations like this don't come up for most people, and when they do, we're typically using a firearm to deal with the threat, and this is something that needs to be worked around anyway.\n\nBasically it was evolutionarily useful for millions of years for mammals to have this response, and only in our very recent history has it become more of a hindrance than a help."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5to9o2 | how does mobile "direct deposit" work for checks? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5to9o2/eli5_how_does_mobile_direct_deposit_work_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddnu6h8",
"ddnu9lv"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"You take pictures, you enter amount, you send it in. They use a computer to analyze the check and the serial numbers to see if it's a true check, they also check the amount as well of course.",
"These days, banks process checks between them by transmitting images of them, or even just the key numbers on them. It was getting too expensive (and slow) for the receiving bank to physically return the checks to the originating bank.\n\nSo you're just taking the same digital image your bank was going to take anyway."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
s96u2 | does an orchestra actually pay attention to the conductor? | I know I'm gonna get the die hards going berserk over this, but seriously...do they really? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s96u2/does_an_orchestra_actually_pay_attention_to_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4c467f",
"c4c5ed7"
],
"score": [
18,
2
],
"text": [
"In a sense, yes. \n\nThe orchestra as a whole is like the conductor's instrument. A living, breathing, instrument. He or she has some creative authority over the performers, and can mix up the pieces the orchestra is playing at will.\nThis doesn't necessarily mean changing actual notes in the piece, but adding his or her own flair to them. \n\nThe conductor sets the tempo, the level of energy, and minute details like how long a note is held. There are accent marks in the music like [this](_URL_0_) that indicate when change is likely going to appear, so the orchestra has an idea of when these changes might happen. \n\nThere's a fair amount of rehearsal that goes into a performance as well, so for the most part, they know how the conductor would like the piece(s) to be played. \n\nThe performers must multitask throughout the whole performance. They keep their attention focused on both the conductor and the sheet music in front of them. Most music stands are set at an angle from the performers perspective to make this easier.\n\nI hope this helps! (: ",
"This was explained in detail recently by [someone in a response to _URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\nHere's an excerpt, but do read it all at the link for a lot more interesting details.\n\n > You're absolutely right that one of the main things an orchestra conductor does is to prepare the orchestra in rehearsal for the way he/she wants the piece to sound in performance. A lot of stuff is conveyed in that way that the conductor then won't need to attempt to convey in real time during the performance. And furthermore, as you suspect, conductors are often in some sense kind of \"dancing\" for the audience during performances, in ways that are strictly superfluous to making the musicians play correctly, though sometimes an enjoyable part of the concert experience."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermata"
],
[
"http://kottke.org/12/04/what-does-a-music-conductor-do",
"kottke.org"
]
] |
|
cythuo | why you're more likely not to keep weight off if you lose too quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cythuo/eli5_why_youre_more_likely_not_to_keep_weight_off/ | {
"a_id": [
"eyu3ooz",
"eyu5cc9"
],
"score": [
13,
3
],
"text": [
"Because loosing weight is relatively easy. Do some things, avoid certain things-soon enough you'll lose weight.\n\nKeeping the weight off is a lifestyle change. Do those same things, avoid those same things, and repeat for the rest of your life.\n\nDiscipline is one thing to lose weight. Maintaining that discipline is commitment to keep the weight off.",
"If you're rapidly losing weight, you're likely making drastic lifestyle changes, quickly. Such as going from working a sedentary job and eating garbage every day without keeping track of what you're eating, to working out 5 times a week, eating much healthier, tracking all your calories, etc. \n\nMost people can't do a complete 180 in their life, and stick with it for the rest of our lives. Habits take time to form, and the more you're taking on at once, the harder it will be to stick with it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
2yor0u | why do cable companies like comcast and time warner advertise so much if they have no competition? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yor0u/eli5_why_do_cable_companies_like_comcast_and_time/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpbhtpi",
"cpbiuuf",
"cpbj0hv",
"cpbla00",
"cpblul3",
"cpbmd8p",
"cpc94as"
],
"score": [
23,
18,
9,
5,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"They have lots of competition. Every home that has a clear view of the southern sky has the option to get their television via satellite.",
"For the same reason Kim Jung Un puts out propaganda in North Korea",
"Tv services has significant competition. It is cable interent, that most providers have limited to no competition. Though, they are still competiting with dial up a little. ",
"They do have competition from Direct TV, Dish, Antenna, and Internet. ",
"From a management standpoint its economical. You spend \"X\" amount of dollars to get \"Y\" amount of return. Return here being customers and their money. This system simplifies decision making yet accounts for all the nuances of competition. So for time warner/Comcast, someone crunched the number and demonstrated that the amount of money spent towards advertisement despite their already having a large marketshare, I still worth it due to the return they get. ",
"They're trying to get people without cable TV to buy cable TV. They're trying to retain existing customers by selling them new packages that (depending on the company) can lock them into new contracts. Also, DirecTV and Dish are available if you don't have interference in your area for their satellites. ",
"Brand empowerment. Same reason why Coca Cola and McDonalds spend so much on advertising budgets despite being almost universally known corporations throughout the developed world."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
389g1y | how does water "reset" hair? | I have longish hair on top and a handlebar moustache and whenever either is acting up from sleeping on it weird, all I have to do is get it wet and it'll get rid of even the most intense bed head/'stache, but will refuse to cooperate even a little if it's dry the whole time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/389g1y/eli5_how_does_water_reset_hair/ | {
"a_id": [
"crtcg0w",
"crtd0d7"
],
"score": [
8,
7
],
"text": [
"Mustaches are naturally hydrophobic, which makes them extremely docile in the presence of water. The fear particles have probably migrated from your face to your scalp, resulting in the bizarre and unnatural phenomenon you describe. Each of your follicles is a living, sentient being, and when you shower you're essentially water boarding them all together.\n\nYou monster.",
"Hair follicles have very small scales on them. Hot water and friction (like lying on a pillow) will open up these scales and cold water will close them. This is what gives hair \"memory\" and why instruments like curling irons work. The curling iron opens up and re sets the scales in a \"curl\" position. \n\nWhen you wet your hair (presumably in warm water) and allow it to dry, you're resetting it's memory."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2wc2vp | why does pepto bismal make the tongue and stools black and how does it cure diarrhea? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wc2vp/eli5_why_does_pepto_bismal_make_the_tongue_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"copibjv"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Pepto bismol has a large amount of bismuth in it. Bismuth is a heavy metal and kills bacteria through heavy metal poisoning, but in the doses we take it doesn't cause any known harm.\n\nPoo comes out tarry and black because of the byproducts of killing bacteria, namely dead bacteria and a bunch of organic bismuth molecules.\n\nLook up how to purify bismuth from pepto on YouTube, pretty interesting videos showing how much metal there is in it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
fj7ws2 | why are aluminum and tin containers safe for long term storage of beverages and other food items? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fj7ws2/eli5_why_are_aluminum_and_tin_containers_safe_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"fklehm9"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"They have protective coatings on the inside that prevent corrosion and leaching. These coatings are tailored to suit the content a particular can holds as there is no one-size-fits-all."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3akf0l | what donald trump thinks he can fix in america and how? | Yes, I am aware of how much of an arrogant wealthy douche Donald is.. But what does he really think he can bring to the office that would help the country flourish? What are his plans so far? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3akf0l/eli5_what_donald_trump_thinks_he_can_fix_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"csdg8ej",
"csdgbqy"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"He doesn't have a plan. He's not really even running for office. This is how he stays in the media spotlight and sells the Trump brand. It's for money. ",
"Trump is savvy enough to know he couldn't win a mayoral race. It's a ploy, cycle after cycle, to keep himself \"relevant,\" maximize his brand (which is himself) and massage his ego.\n\n This is a man who hired a P.I. to find Obama's Kenyan birth certificate and picked a public fued with Rosie O'Donnell. His actions would almost be performance art at this point if he wasn't so sad and self-important."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2ujphq | why do airlines [some] price single tickets at huge premiums to return trips? | Surely passengers will book return trips and just not show up for the return leg. Leaving the airline with a no-show and empty seat they cannot sell (unless they are overbooking). Equally they are just throwing away potential business on oneway flights with crazy pricing. Budget airlines moved from the business model years ago, but the majors still stick to it. Why?
A perfect example: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ujphq/eli5_why_do_airlines_some_price_single_tickets_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"co92n7y"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"I don't work for an airline and so can't speak for why any one airline would act this way, but I would suspect that it's an attempt to segregate their customer base by price sensitivity.\n\nSomeone who is flying for personal reasons, or for pleasure, is going to be price sensitive; if they aren't presented with a price they like, they'll shop elsewhere, including budget airlines, or by changing the dates that they're flying on. As a result, major airlines would want to drive that price down and fly it at a discounted rate in order to drum up business.\n\nOne-way trips are more likely to be taken by either business customers or people with enough disposable income to not have a set itinerary on where they're going, or people who are permanently moving to a location. For those passengers, the cost of the flight is less important than the time of the flight. If I'm travelling for business and I need to get, say, from Chicago to San Francisco by Tuesday, I'm going to take the Monday night flight regardless of cost. I'm not paying for the flight personally; I'm going to expense it to the business, so I'm price insensitive. The airline can get away with charging me more money because I'm less likely to care about it, and I'm certainly not going to change the time of my flight over it.\n\nSimilarly, luxury hotels are more likely to [charge for wifi access](_URL_0_) than budget hotels for the same reason; their clientele is more likely to be travelling on business, charging the trip to their business and are therefore price insensitive. Or they're *choosing* to pay a huge amount for the room in the first place, so the hotel figures they won't even notice a small charge for the wifi. On the other hand, if you're at a Motel 6 and there's a Super 8 down the road that's giving away free wifi, charging for it is going to cause you to lose business.\n\nAside from that, if you're booking each half of the trip separately, you may decide to switch airlines for your return flight. If each leg is exactly half (let's say each leg is $500), then you may decide to give your $500 to United on the way out and the other $500 Delta on your way back. If, instead of $1000 for a round-trip, United cuts you a deal and offers $700 total, they're getting all of your money, and you're not giving any to a competitor. They're taking a guaranteed $700 over a guaranteed $500 with a possibility of another $500 later.\n\n > Leaving the airline with a no-show and empty seat they cannot sell (unless they are overbooking).\n\nSure, but they *do* overbook."
]
} | [] | [
"http://imgur.com/gallery/faLp65E/new"
] | [
[
"http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/ive-always-wondered/why-do-luxury-hotels-charge-wi-fi-cheap-hotels-dont"
]
] |
|
bqf89e | why usual purchases with a card need something memorable (pin code), but online purchases have their secret code printed right on the card? | The way I understand, the usual (non-contactless) payment is a prime example of 2FA: you present your card, and then either sign or enter PIN code. First option ticks something you have (card) + something you are (the person who can white a signature matching the card's one), second - something you have (card) + something you know (PIN code).
I get that online purchases can't match the signature - but why between PIN and CSC you'd pick the latter as a security measure? It reduces the security to single factor (if I steal a wallet I can spend all the money on the card until it's blocked, having the object is all I need), and doesn't even add any speed to the transaction. What's the benefit of CSC as the verification? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bqf89e/eli5_why_usual_purchases_with_a_card_need/ | {
"a_id": [
"eo40m6p",
"eo41dam"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"This is something that is changing in the EU. They are going to add in 2 factor authentication for cards. For example one of the cards I have requires me to unlock my banking app using my pin or fingerprint and approve the transaction. \n\nEffectively requiring someone to steal and unlock your phone and card.\n\nCurrently it's not uncommon for Visa or Mastercard to add a secondary check where you enter a password as part of the transaction.",
"Post about it from 3 years ago that go over a few points:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44dza4/eli5why_pin_does_not_required_for_online_shopping/"
]
] |
|
1k56ms | social darwinism | Tried Wikipedia but it makes no sense whatsoever to me. Any explanation would be great. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k56ms/eli5_social_darwinism/ | {
"a_id": [
"cblhieb",
"cblhjxw",
"cblji63",
"cblkde0",
"cblnwx8",
"cblo7jz",
"cblotyj",
"cblqp98",
"cblqshe",
"cblqzll",
"cblvbgx"
],
"score": [
8,
573,
4,
21,
2,
5,
2,
2,
2,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"It's the application of Darwin's \"evolution of species\" to the society. Some philosophers wrote about a link between the evolution of species (larger wings, ability of changing colour etc.) and the evolution of society. They referred mainly to capitalist society. This meant that the stronger had the right to \"survive\" and to colonize other kind of societies considered as inferior. This stream of thought brought to colonialism, imperialism, and all sort of discrimination",
"Social darwinism is an attempt to use Darwin's idea of natural selection, or \"the survival of the fittest,\" to explain or, in my experience usually *justify*, the mistreatment of one group of humans by another. In normal polite discourse, it is almost never a good thing to be accused of being a Social Darwinist. Social Darwinism has an ugly history of being used to justify mistreatment of groups of people and even genocide. People who may subscribe to some ideas of Social Darwinism usually don't like to use the term because of the ugly connotations.\n\nHere's an example: why are some people poor? The Social Darwinist would say some people are poor because they are dumber, lazier, or otherwise not as capable of competing with smarter, harder working, *richer* people. Similar to how natural selection causes less fit types of organisms get outcompeted by more fit ones, the Social Darwinist would believe that poor people will over time be removed from the gene pool because they cannot compete with the people who are more fit. Basically, survival of the fittest for humans.\n\nHere's where it gets really ugly. If you believe in survival of the fittest for humans, you might think it is in humanity's best interest and therefore your duty to oppress or even kill the \"lesser people.\" This leads to all kinds of persecutions. How do groups wind up on the list of \"lesser people?\" Usually, historical biases. Nazi Germany is sometimes considered to be a Social Darwinist regime (there is some debate about their motivations). They believed the Aryan race to be superior to the Jews and gypsies and actively tried to kill them. By exterminating the undesirables they believed they were making the gene pool stronger. So Social Darwinism became a justification to murder millions of people they didn't like. It is pretty easy to see how Social Darwinism can be used to justify genocide.\n\nIt isn't just genocide though. This principle was used to justify colonialism and imperialism as well. As with people and gene pools, it was believe that stronger cultures would dominate over weaker cultures. The prevailing thought was that Europeans and European culture were superior and therefore it was desirable that they ruled over other groups of people and destroyed their cultures.\n\nIn a nutshell, under Social Darwinism if you don't like a group of people you can justify your mistreatment of them by saying that you are strong and they are weak. Therefore, it's a *good* thing when you mistreat them or kill them. This is all sorts of awful, and why Social Darwinism gets a bad rap.",
"\"Social Darwinism\" is paired with \"survival of the fittest\" and both have no connection at all to Darwin's theories of how organisms evolve over time. The movement is a hodgepodge of ideas from social \"scientists\", political philosophers and social groups that steals credibility by associating itself with the great biologist while having no actual connection to biology or evolutionary theory.\n\nBasically the theory is that certain segments of society have \"evolved\" to be less fit to survive and are thus dangerous, poor, uneducated, have no technology, etc. It explains away social, political and other complex factors involved by pointing to genetics and shifts blame from oppressor to oppressed. The theories have been used as justification for terrible acts ranging from institutionalized segregation to genocide.\n\nIt's complete discredited bullshit conjured and nurtured and often still accepted by elitists who distance themselves from the concept in public while absolutely subscribing in private. Mitt Romney comes to mind.\n\n",
"I hope a my future kid asks me this when they are five. \n\n\"Social Darwinism is a opinion that bad people and bullies have about how the world should be. They think helping people is bad because they don't like people who need help. The truth is we all need help and we are all in this together.\"",
"Social Darwinism is best explained to a 5 year old by \nJohn Kenneth Galbraith\n\"The modern conservative (social darwinism) is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”\n ",
"The social Darwinism I've studied is basically \"survival of the fittest\" of the social world. Poor people aren't working hard enough to succeed type of thing. There are two conflicting ideologies concerning this matter. One type of ideology is the capitalist, \"hard work pays off\" type of ideals. I once played WoW, so I'll explain it in terms of that. The more you complete quests and complete dungeons/raids, the more you succeed in the game (more gold, better gear). This can be true in our real social world (more work, more money/status) , BUT it is not always the case. Studying Social Sciences as I have, a bigger issue is at hand here. Back to WoW. Imagine doing those things mentioned above, but for some reason your specific race or class doesn't benefit as much from the tasks as other players and this was done by the developers with their own special interests in mind. All of sudden your Orc Warrior is at half the potential of a Human Warlock and you do a battlegrounds match. The Orc would surely lose and it's not because the Orc hasn't worked hard, just that there was no oppurtunity because the developers favor the alliance Human players. Same in the real world (unfortunately). Race / status / education all come into play in society and those that have higher status are designing the rules. That's my two cents. (kinda think I just wanted to talk about WoW)...",
"In regular Darwinism, the fittest organism prospers. Social Darwinism was a way to justify imperialist expansion *scientifically*...if you could take over another culture, you should, and you were right to do so because you're superior and they're not (if that wasn't the case, you wouldn't have been able to beat them in the first place).\n\nObviously kind of a prickish idea. On the other hand, we've now swung so far in the direction of cultural relativism that there is no way to call out a shitty culture for being shitty.\n\n",
"As Nietzsche said, 'like ants, the weak are innumerable so they always overcome the strong' but by fittest Darwin meant most able to adapt. Trust me, when the S#*% hits the fan the rich, with their robot pool cleaners and weed wacker adapters for edging things pristine, are not going to be the most adaptable.",
"Using Darwin's The Origin of Species to \"prove\" that people of minorities were biologically and mentally inferior to white people. The Eugenics movement sprang from this idea and used false psuedoscientific experiments to prove this. The findings from these studies were totally skewed, and the experiments almost never followed the scientific method.",
"I was once accused of being a social Darwinist. The debate in class was 'are pharmaceutical companies guilty of genocide in because they won't give free antiretroviral medication to the people in Africa who have AIDS/HIV?\" \n\nAs the discussion fumbled on for about 30 minutes, the comments from the other students reflected the idea that the antiretroviral medication was the \"cure\" for AIDS/HIV. I was bothered by this, because while it may help the person's quality of life it doesn't magically \"cure\" AIDS/HIV (the students in charge of the presentation did eventually cover this point, but it was the final slide in the powerpoint presentation). I raised my hand and pointed out that it wasn't possible to assume that a person with AIDS could go on to lead a 'perfectly normal life like they didn't have it' after taking the antiretrovirals. They are still going to be at risk for transferring it to their children and sexual partners and that taking the medicine isn't the end all solution to the problem. \n\nEveryone in the class gasped and I was accused of social Darwinism. I'm still not sure how it's considered social Darwinism, since AIDS/HIV is a HUMAN problem, and the virus doesn't care about race/gender/social-status/rank/income/which landmass you live on.\n\nEither way, no one talked to me for the rest of the class.",
"I think that, to understand Social Darwinism, you need to understand the development of \"race\". \n\nInterestingly, the idea of \"racism\" itself as we know it doesn't develop until fairly recently. Early human societies did not have a concept of \"race' like we do today, but rather judged you based on the group you belonged to and your traditions and customs. Yea, early Chinese did not care for the blonde haired barbarians to the west, but it was not their \"race\" that bothered them as much as the fact that they did not belong to their group.\n\nLikewise, slavery was, on the whole, not based on race as much as it was based on one group of powerful people subjugating another, and a particularly talented or skilled member of the subjugated group had the possibility of being accepted into the group doing the subjugating. \n\nWe sort of see this switch most noticeably in the Spanish treatment of the indigenous Americans. They were treated as slaves and subservient after Spanish conquest but, once they began converting to Christianity and developing Spanish customs, the Spanish throne began outlawing the slavery of any Natives who had become \"Spanish\". \n\nBut, by the time the Portuguese and Spanish begin bringing in African slaves, the idea of racial disparity and, with it, that some \"races\" were naturally and irrecoverably inferior to others had taken hold. \n\nSo, for the most part, the idea of \"race\" as a construct served to advance European empire and was a convenient excuse for what gave, say, the Portuguese the authority to sail into the Indian Ocean and take over trade routes that had flourished since Roman times.\n\nSo, when Darwin came along in the mid 1800's, his ideas of divergent evolution and the idea that nature \"selects\" the strongest got co-opted by the groups that had been practicing racism since the mid-1500's, and used it as \"scientific evidence\" for what they had been doing. Phrenology, or the \"science\" of discovering someones personality traits through their skull shape, had hit its peak 50 years before *Origins*.\n\nSo, to answer the question, Social Darwinism is essentially racism (although sometimes applied to class as opposed to race), where a stronger group sees itself as inherently superior based on its ancestry and acts to exploit other, inferior groups. The term itself is simply a mid-19th century attempt to take a horrendous practice and put a scientific spin on it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2wauni | if hackers were able to use inside knowledge of bank systems to steal $1 billion over time, how would they eventually have cashed in? | In this [reddit front page article](_URL_0_) recently posted, thieves managed to make off with some serious dough by infiltrating bank systems and using them to their advantage.
I get that measures, in particular amounts stolen under certain thresholds allowed the hackers to go undetected for a long time, but once detected how can they get away with the theft?
The article does mention that a lot of theft had to do with them making ATMs spit out cash at certain times that they presumably collected and I can see this being harder to trace but at least some of it sounds like it's described as having been transferred in to accounts.
How does the scam work if you have to put the money in to accounts which are presumably tied to people. Even if they don't notice for a long time and you spend it all surely there'd now be an identity they could use to try and track you down. They would have to have set up a lot of these too. They say something in the article about fake accounts, but if that detail is now known that accounts had been created fraudulently, then presumably they've figured out which ones they were and seized the funds. If the money was transferred from that account to any other account whatsoever that would leave a trail wouldn't it? Like you couldn't just transfer it all to your personal account with your name and address that you used to get it.
I know this sounds really naive but I don't actually see how the mechanism works for getting your hands on the money once you've successfully stolen it. Even the ATM cash presumably would be traceable because I'm guessing there's a log of what notes the machine has dispensed and that those notes are uniquely identifiable, I guess you could launder it though. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wauni/eli5_if_hackers_were_able_to_use_inside_knowledge/ | {
"a_id": [
"cop4s0f",
"cop67ob",
"cop7wwy",
"cop83vy",
"copb9pj"
],
"score": [
44,
19,
7,
8,
7
],
"text": [
"Pulling the cash out of ATMs would be hugely time consuming and increase the risk of getting caught. The better approach (and the one they're most likely to use) is to keep bouncing the money around the globe via wire transfers, ideally to countries with very strict banking privacy laws (Switzerland, Caymans, Singapore, etc). From there, disperse the money into smaller transfers to companies that can be used to launder the money. Online retailers of luxury items would be a good choice, although I'm sure there are plenty more options. ",
"ATMs do not, to my knowledge, keep a log of the unique identifiers associated with individual bills. It's possible, with modern technology to scan each bill, but it's so easy to launder the money that it wouldn't be worth the expense. \n\nFirst, and most important, they limited themselves to, I believe it was no more than ten million dollars from each institution. Believe it or not, that is actually a pretty small amount of funds to move unnoticed. As someone else mentioned, you can easily move funds from one bank to another and then another until all trace has been removed and the money has just disappeared. \n\nThe answer here is that it's nearly impossible for you to walk into a bank and steal ten million dollars today but if you have the time, patience and expertise to spend stealing small amounts over long periods of time, it's surprisingly easy. \n\nYou'd be surprised the ways that people have learned to take advantage of banks over the years that were far more successful than you would think. ",
"Theres a really good blackhat video on youtube about stealing from ATM's It's quite interesting how he did it, and also relatively untraceable. ",
"[From the Kaspersky report](_URL_0_), they've moved the money between banks, added some money on people's accounts, then remotely dispensed it from these accounts on various ATMs around the world, where it'd be picked up.",
"While the ATMs spitting out dollar bills is the cool Hollywood part of the story, Cash is much less useful to criminals than electronic money. \n\nEven if you know where the money started out at, the longer the money laundering chain becomes and the more jurisdictions it crosses and layers of transactions it gets from the source, it becomes virtually impossible to trace. There's so much money flowing around the global economy just as part of its normal functioning that you can hide in the volume.\n\nCome check out /r/MoneyLaundering if you're interested!"
]
} | [] | [
"http://phys.org/news/2015-02-hackers-billion-banks.html"
] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Carbanak_APT_eng.pdf"
],
[]
] |
|
4r2tqj | why is it more damaging to binge drink than to regularly drink in small portions the same amount of alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4r2tqj/eli5_why_is_it_more_damaging_to_binge_drink_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4xtj2i"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"So your liver is your filter of your body.\n\nTakes care of the toxins and regulates the body.\n\nWhen the liver has too much alcohol to handle, normal liver function may be interrupted. Chemical imbalance!\n\nIf the liver is required to detoxify alcohol all the time liver cells may be destroyed or altered! Fat deposits (yuck), inflammation (boo), or permanent scarring (not good).\n\nIf you dump a whole bunch in at once- liver is overwhelmed. Small amounts are dealt with more efficiently by the filter.\n\nIn general though, don't poison your body too often. Keep the liver running well!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
7ozvdh | how do hashing functions avoid collisions? | If you have a 256 bit hash with 2^256 possibilities and run every file ever created, would there be collisions?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ozvdh/eli5_how_do_hashing_functions_avoid_collisions/ | {
"a_id": [
"dsdg0ln",
"dsdmef9",
"dsdmpxn"
],
"score": [
10,
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Yes! Every Hashing function will have collisions. Each function also chooses how to deal with collisions. With a hash space like 2^256, you should be able to minimize collisions as I believe that number is bigger than the number of molecules thought to be in the universe (fact check that). Huge hash spaces help to minimize collisions, and good techniques for management can help to prevent clustering and further collisions.",
"By being well designed. A hashing function should have a good \"spread\", similar values should have dissimilar hashes, and hash values should be well distributed throughout the range without any clustering.\n\n > If you have a 256 bit hash with 2^256 possibilities and run every file ever created, would there be collisions?\n\nUnless it included files deliberately constructed to create collisions, probably not. 2^256 is one of those \"all the atoms in the universe\" type numbers, and greatly exceeds the total number of files that have ever existed.\n\nFor digital signatures, if the hash is secure, it is usually ok to ignore the possibility of collisions. For a hashing table, where the range is a lot smaller, you are going to want to have some means to handle collisions.",
"All hashes have an infinite number of collisions. What you're doing is mapping an infinite set into a finite space, so they're inevitable. An example of a really naive hash over a tiny space would be taking the remainder of division by 10 - all your hashes will map to a space between 0-9, inclusive, no matter how big or small, positive or negative an integer you use.\n\nIdeally, a robust hash is going to have a good distribution, but you also have to consider the nature of your inputs; hypothetically, the nature of a set of inputs may happen to have lots of collisions with a given hash - the problem isn't necessarily the hash itself, it's the hash chosen for those inputs. Using the above example, if your inputs are all even, you'll get twice as many collisions, because you're effectively halving the hash space. If all your inputs are a multiple of 10, then all your hashes will be 0. As you can imagine, a more sophisticated hash is intended to mitigate this problem, but there's no reason it can't happen.\n\nYou can change the algorithm, you can increase your hash space, but given a large enough input set, collisions are inevitable. If your input set were infinite, then hashes would be useless, as all inputs would collide."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits