Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
why is the speed limit set at a speed that most people will surpass by 5-10 mph and not get pulled over? Is there a reason they don't set the limit 5-10 mph faster and actually enforce it strictly?	[ "I think the practice exists because that 5-10 mph helps compensate for normal fluctuations in speed (up/down hills) and precision in instrumentation (worn tires, viewing angle of the speedometer, variations in the radar gun) and the police generally don't want to issue contestable tickets.\n\nThat's not really a r...
I just don't understand Citizens United.	[ "First of all, Corporate Personhood was established in the late 1800s, way before Citizens United. \n\nAnd secondly, your question has nothing to do with your example. The issue with Citizens United had to do with Campaign Finance. Before the case, there were limits on what an entity could do in terms of Broadcasti...
I can read a sentence like "I bluit my husoe in Eanngld" due to cognitive ability but I can't understand it verbally, why?	[ "Because verbal and visual patterns are recognized differently. Visually, you can recognize \"Eanngld\" as \"England,\" but verbally \"Ean\" has little relation to \"Eng\" and \"ngld\" has almost no relation to \"land,\" assuming you can pronounce them properly. \"Bluit\" (\"blewt\"?) sounds nothing like \"built\" ...
Tor vs VPN vs Zenmate, and can/should we use all of them at the same time?	[ "Think of the Internet as a mail service...\n\nTor would be like putting your mail in a very strong safe, sending it to a random guy, which takes off the \"from\" address and replaces it with his own, then securing the rest of the address information (e.g your (figurative) fingerprints) and gives it to another rand...
Why is it that during the weekday, I have a hard time waking up at 6am and want to sleep forever, when on weekends, I am naturally up at 6am and ready to start the day?	[ "because it's your own choice to get up on weekends, not a forced one. you can either sleep longer or get up, and you enjoy that possibility of choice, therefore you feel okay with your decision. during the work week, you have no nice choice: either you go to work or you might have problems.", "I admittedly don't...
Please tell me the difference between effects and affect? I searched on Google but that isn't helping. Please give examples	[ "A lot of people have told you that effect is a noun and affect is a verb. Unfortunately it's not that simple. Both words can be used as both nouns and verbs. Affect as a noun is pretty rare nowadays, and it's fine in an ELI5 answer to basically ignore it, but effect as a verb is somewhat common.\n\n**Effect as ...
Why are we told to ice injuries?	[ "I can't be 100% sure without my resources in front of me, but I believe it is to help reduce blood flow, which would be carrying proteins that stimulate inflammation (a part of healing). Also, overloading nerves with sensations of cold help lower the amount of pain recognised by the brain.\n\nThat being said, I ha...
homelessness and Skid Row in LA	[ "Mental illness. Persistently homeless people tend to have mental illnesses and there aren't enough places to treat them, so they end up congregating together on the streets.", "Another factor is location. Most months of the year, LA has pretty good weather, so it much easier to sleep outside without rain, snow,...
When someone gets hit by a speeding car, what actually kills them? Is it the impact itself? The part where they fly high and snap in circles? Impact from hitting the ground?	[ "(My apologies to physics folks)\n\nSo take a minute and imagine yourself tripping and falling in a way that breaks your wrist. You were walking along, tripped on a rock, and tried to catch yourself on your way down. All of the energy of your falling (your weight, moving at speed) had to go somewhere. Your reaction...
The difference between psychologist, psychiatrist, and therapist	[ "it's levels of training, and what the training focused on.\n\ntherapist is a general term for anybody who gives therapy. This can be a pastor who only graduated from high school, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. \n\na psychologist is someone who got a master's or a PhD in psychology, counseling, or therapy- in o...
How do sites like Groupon and LivingSocial work?	[ "Their basic model is they call up a business, say \"hey, if you give 50% off coupons, and give us 50% of your revenue whenever someone uses that coupon, we'll advertise you on our site\". That's right, the deal for the business is they will make 1/4 the amount of money they would usually make for each sale with th...
Why do photographs sell for millions of dollars when the photographer could just release a duplicate at any time?	[ "When artists sell pieces for this much, part of the sale includes a guarantee about how many copies of the work they will reproduce. If the artist were to go on and make more, presumably the first purchaser could take the artist to court and null the sale, forcing them to return the money.", "Because a lot of pr...
Why is the range from boiling to "absolute hot" much, much longer than the range from freezing to absolute cold?	[ "How many banana peels could you have in your front lawn?\n\nIt is pretty clear there is a minimum number, namely zero. But what is the maximum number? Is a tower of banana peels one mile high still in your front yard? Do they still count as banana peels if the ones on the bottom are crushed into sludge? Is there...
the value of USD vs the euro. If the dollar is worth more than the euro, does that mean I have more money if I go over to Europe?	[ "I have lived all over the world while still getting paid in dollars so I think I can answer this.\n\nIn short yes, if you convert your dollars to the local currency you will have more than you would in dollars.\n\nThe longer answer is that even if you have more Euro doesn't mean that you could buy the same amount ...
What is Pantheism?	[ "From what I understand [a little], the Universe equals divinity. There is no personal God that is seperate from the Universe // nature // the material.\n\nSome other religions have God as some seperate being who created the Universe... and/or is personal and cares about you, as an individual.\n\nA starting point...
how do trees know when to grow leaves?	[ "Generally it has to do with the change in daylight, not with the change in temperature...although that may have some small effect in some species." ]
Suicide Squad movie. Is is some kind of alternate universe? Who are they?	[ "The suicide squad are a group of villains who have been held by the government an are given the option to fight for there country. They mainly do it so they can get reduced prison time or to get some freedom. \n\nThe reason there called the suicide squad is because the missions are suicide missions a lot of the ti...
Why does Zalgo text seem to display everywhere regardless of localization?	[ "Zalgo text takes advantage of tricks built into unicode. \n\nUnicode is a standard for how text in all the world's major languages should be handled. It includes support not just for the latin alphabet but quite a few writing systems, including ones where text goes in other directions than left-to-right. On modern...
Why do some people get dizzy/feel uneasy while reading or using an electronic device while in a car	[ "My LI5 explanation - You work out where you are and how you are moving from both your eyes, and the motion detection organs in your ears. When you are in a car, your eyes see the device in front of you, and it does not appear to be moving. But your ears pick up all the movement of the car. \n\nSo your eyes are say...
Why has Botswana done so well compared to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa?	[ "Tiny country with giant diamond reserves and made a deal with DeBeers early on where Botswana gets 70% of the money and DeBeers runs the diamond mines for them. \n\nA lot of African countries kicked all the whites out after independence and that hurt their economies. That wasn't likely to happen in Botswana as the...
What happens when the breath gets knocked out of you?	[ "This happens when you are punched in the center of your belly, around the navel area. Two things happen:\n\n1: Your diaphragm gets forcibly compressed (assuming you don't have absurdly powerful abs to protect it from the impact), forcing air out of your lungs. The diaphragm is a large muscle in your belly used to ...
Why does your throat hurt when you chug down carbonated drinks repetitively?	[ "Our bodies have sensory receptors that allow us to feel and respond to things like pressure, changes in temperature, light, and pain. \"Nociceptor\" is the specific type of sensory receptor that allows us to experience pain.\n\nCarbonated drinks have a high content of carbon dioxide (CO2) that our body isn't used ...
How is Grand Theft Auto allowed to use cars that are almost exactly like real cars?	[ "because they aren't selling cars. There is nothing proprietary about an image of a car. Just the car itself and the name.", "almost like is key. They smartly use cars that look similar and close to real cars but aren't exact copies + they have unique names. So they don't have to license or get permission for any...
How do we know the visible universe is 4% and not more or less?	[ "The visible universe and the observable universe are two different things. The thing that is 4% is the collective mass of things in the observable universe comprised of ordinary (visible) matter. The other 96% is dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but whose presence can be roughly detected via gravit...
- The Euro Crisis	[ "In simple terms, when an economy is doing bad, governments tend to make the currency worth less so that people will buy the goods. Then they can get the economy going again. But in the eurozone, the governments that are in trouble can not make the money worth less because it is a international currency and they do...
Why does music trigger vivid memories?	[ "The hippocampus and the frontal cortex are two large ares in the brain associated with memory and the take in a great deal of imformation every minute. Retrieving it is not always easy. It doesn't simply come when you ask it to. Music helps because it provides a rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration which he...
Why does a four cylinder Harley motorcycle have a low rumble exhaust note like an american V8, but inline four cylinder engines (Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen) have a raspy high exhaust note?	[ "Harleys have twins, not fours. V twins traditionally have a low, rumbling sound to them compared to the higher revving inline fours. Mainly this is down to the size of the explosion and the frequency. A 1000cc inline four has four, small explosions every revolution, and these combine to form a very high pitched wh...
What is the purpose of the "rough" pavement outside of grocery stores?	[ "I know that this type of thing is used in other places (like on a subway, they have rough paving like that so it can be felt) as a way of warning blind people that they are near a street or something else dangerous. I'm not sure if that is the purpose at grocery stores, though.", "It's an ADA accommodation for b...
Why do some people have permanent small red veins in their eyes?	[ "> I'm assuming that that's normal. How is this called and what's this all about?\n\nYes, they are normal. Our eyes are flesh and need blood, they are called \"blood vessels\" or \"capillaries\" and they get the blood to keep our cells alive to and from where it needs to be." ]
What does "senpai" mean and what does it mean for Anime fans?	[ "Senpai roughly translates to \"upperclassman.\" Basically, a senpai is an older student, possibly a mentor, and a \"kohai\" would be the yonger student, or mentee. The senpai is expected to guide the younger student, while the kohai is expected to do menial tasks for the senpai. It's sort of like a traditional Eng...
why do we picture the earth as the northern hemisphere facing upwards rather than downwards?	[ "Generally, the most powerful nations in the world have been in the northern hemisphere. They made the maps so they put themselves at the top.", "England was the first country to map the globe. They are in the northern hemisphere, they oriented the map to their location and they had the most reliable maps. The...
How come alcoholism is considered a disease but being addicted to smokes or other substances isn't?	[ "Technically they are diseases... But if you're talking about public perception, it's probably because of how much it affects the person - a chronic smoker can still go about their day-to-day life with fairly little impact. They may take an extra break here and there, and spend lots of cash on cigarettes, but other...
why is Scrabble more popular in English than other languages?	[ "One possible reason is that while in English-speaking countries, especially the US, Scrabble tournaments were widely played, increasing awareness of the game: this didn't happen so often in other countries.\n\nThere are sometimes also problems with other languages that make a game made for the English language a b...
If cats are lactose-intolerant, how did we come to the belief that giving cats milk = good? Or asked differently; how is it that cats (seemingly) enjoy - to the level of demanding it - milk?	[ "Cats are carnivores, meaning they depend entirely on meat and fat for sustenance. We add non-meat products to their food, such as grain/corn, but with enough protein and fat to nourish them properly, as well as a special chemical called \"taurine,\" which is vital to a lot of different functions in the body. Cats ...
How would the internet work on an interstellar scale?	[ "That is correct. No information can travel faster than the speed of light, and so any \"universal internet\" would only update that fast.\n\nIn other news, aliens on the planet Kepler 9b just updated space-Reddit to find that Jesus has just been crucified.\n\nEdit: Due to the amount of people responding to this wi...
Apple has deep pockets and is shoving huge amounts of money to artists to make music temporarily exclusive to their service.Smaller Services like Spotify, who don't have a trillion dollars to throw at people can't do this. Is this Anti-Competitive?	[ "It is certainly an attempt to beat the competition. But since they are only booking a small percentage of the available musicians, it is not making it hard for the competition to do business.", "It's definitely anti-competitive - that's the whole point of doing it. They want to make their service \"better\" than...
Why does a propane fire have that last "blow" when the gas supply is turned off?	[ "The proper ratio of air and propane causes it to burn nicely, like when you are cooking on your bbq. But when close off the gas supply you decrease the propane to air ratio and it makes a less stable. This causes a more volatile ratio of the two gasses and it explodes. Research stoichiometric ratios and upper and ...
Why does birth control make some women depressed?	[ "Incase you wanted more information, let me give it a shot. Birth control works by increasing and decreasing hormones in the body. There are several different things going on, but the main thing is changing estrogen and progestin in the body. The change in estrogen levels is linked to several problems, weight gain,...
Why do microwaves make my fish sticks mushy?	[ "Microwaves heat food mostly by exciting the water molecules in it. Water can only be heated to 100C before it becomes water vapor. So, microwaves generally don't heat your food beyond that temperature. But, ovens get much hotter and so can really create a crisp texture by evaporating the water out of the food.", ...
Leibnizian monads	[ "I don't think I can explain it to five year old. \n\nHere's the higher level explanation: unlike atoms, which are only physical entities, monads are little minds. Leibniz sees the universe as a collection of simple (indivisible) minds. The minds don't perceive each other by casually affecting each other (they are ...
Why do people prefer kiosks over cashiers?	[ "This is in response to the news about McDonalds yes? \n\nMostly for me it's less stressful in a way. I can just flip through the menu without feeling like I'm making anyone wait on me, but that's a very personal and subjective thing. \nWhat I do notice is that with McDonald's there's usually more kiosks availabl...
Why does the Russian goverment still dislike the United States?	[ "This is just me but the U.S. has a very arrogant position on WW2 and how we saved the day once we joined in the war. In reality Russia suffered millions of more casualties with America being around 500 thousand I think, the Nazis ravished half of Russia and the only reason they didn't completely annihilate them wa...
Ok, so im still confused about stocks. Explain Li5	[ "You buy a stock at $5 and then a year later when the company is doing better, the price of the stock increases to $8 and then you sell it! so you make $3!", "redsunglasses2134 is right.\n\nAlso, most stocks allow you to vote on company decisions, and if you have more then 50% then you're in control." ]
How did television in North-America evolve to a situation where people are paying 50 dollars a month to watch little 15 minutes segments interrupted by ads.	[ "That's why cable is dying. They used to have monopolies, more or less, but that changed with the internet.", "I'm not sure if you want an actual answer, or if everyone just wants to talk about how much they hate commercials, since those seem to be the responses so far. \n\nI'm not sure how it is in Europe, but...
If botox is the most lethal substance known to man, how and why do we use it for cosmetic surgery?	[ "its all about controlled dosage. understanding how long it remains active in the system. Spacing injections both by time and location to stay within safe margins. \n\nThe concentration of Botox injected in patients is around 0.75 ng per 100 units, or roughly 1/5 of the estimated lethal dose in humans. Typical inje...
How does purple shampoo work?	[ "Hair stylist for 10 years here. The purple pigment is not a bleach or a magic chemical or marketing plot. Think about This in terms of light reflection. If the hair has warm undertones, the hair will look yellow/orange depending on the lightness level of the blonde. If you cancel out the warm undertone by using pu...
How does Winamp generate its visualisations?	[ "With the raw audio data, you will only get the loudness of the audio at a specific point in time (or for a range)\n\nIf you analyze/convert the raw data using [Fourier Transform](_URL_0_), you can calculate which frequencies are used and how strong (power) those frequencies are. This can be done in real-time using...
Why a doctor would prescribe the name brand for a drug over the generic.	[ "I am going to go ahead and say that while the other two posted answers are partially correct, they are not the most correct answer. It is very true that the pharmacists are the ones giving you the drug and you could ask them if a generic is available, but that is not all that goes into it. \n\nSo now we come to ...
How does Data capping effect Gamers?	[ "The data required to play video games is quite small compared to the amount of data needed to stream video.\n\nThe bigger issue that data download caps have on gamers is for downloading the digital versions of games and the resulting patches. Games nowadays are approaching the limits of Bluray disks (50 GB). Star ...
Why, after a certain point of being tired, do we switch and get energized instead?	[ "The longer you stay awake the more stressed your body gets. Now to counter the effects of sleep deprevation your body is flooded with adrennaline to keep you awake. At some point you are practically so flooded with adrennaline that you can't sleep. Thats also why you sometimes can have a racing heartbeat while try...
How are skyscrapers or tall buildings demolished?	[ "'Twas oft asked here. Ye may enjoy these:\n\n\n1. [ELI5:What's the end of life plan for skyscrapers? ](_URL_6_)\n1. [ELI5: How do big cities demolish old skyscrapers without damaging buildings around it? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5:How will they tear down skyscrapers like the Freedom Tower or Sears tower in a heavily pop...
Why do we swallow?	[ "Saliva is basically a lubricant for your mouth and throat. If you chose to spit your saliva out instead of swallowing it you would be spitting all day everyday. As far as feeling the need to produce saliva or not... it is your body's natural reaction to the situation you find yourself in, much like having to sweat...
Why are Uber and Lyft fighting regulations they put in place (i.e. fingerprinting in Houston and Austin)?	[ "Because all these regulations being proposed increase costs and make it more of a hassle to get drivers and passengers.\n\nUber and Lyft are mostly successful due to lack of regulation on services like theirs... once regulation starts to catch up they'll be no better off than Taxis and they lose their competitive ...
How come unknown amateur rappers get charged and convicted over "crime" lyrics, but rich famous rappers like 50 Cent, the Game, lil' Wayne and Snoop Dogg don't?	[ "lol well the mainstream artists you named generally don't really get themselves into trouble. accepted as fiction.", "Name an amateur rapper who has been convicted over \"crime\" lyrics.", "Mostly because allot of main stream artists rap about shit they have never done. Like Rick Ross slingin yayo while in re...
Why do we dress the way we dress?	[ "Culturally relative aesthetics combined with personal preference. People tend to dress in a way that they feel makes them look good or attractive or simply dress for physical comfort." ]
bone marrow transplants	[ "You kill all of the bone marrow that someone has with a combination of drugs and/or drugs and radiation. You can in some cases be your own donor, and in other cases a family member or lucky match can donate. In either case after the original marrow has totally died (leaving you very vulnerable to infection, so you...
Why can't people withdraw their money from a bank that goes bankrupt? Specifically those regular savings accounts? That supposedly have no such risk as it's a saving, not an investment.	[ "Any money you put into a bank they use to lend to others. If they go bankrupt then they have absolutely nothing left and your money is gone", "Banks use a fractional reserve system. For the sake of simplicity, let's say the bank has two customers, a saver and a borrower. The saver deposits $10,000. The bank can...
overtime	[ "Someone pays you to work hours that you wouldn’t normally work?" ]
Reverse Entropy	[ "imagine you have a jar of marbles that you tip over. The marbles all go out in different directions, ricochet off of eachother, and settle. Now, you must put them back how they were before. How? That's impossible, that's so much data to somehow learn, which way each marble went and what it hit and how at what angl...
Why do we only start to see fog yards away from where we are standing and not at our feet?	[ "If fog is very very thick, you can see it at your feet. The nature of fog is that you can see through some of it but not all of it (that is, some but not all light passes through). So, when you don't see it at your feet, it's because you're seeing through the stuff that is at your feet. You can see it farther ...
How do waterfalls have a continuous stream of water?	[ "This is true only for some waterfalls. The permanent waterfalls we normally think of are usually located in lower stream of areas which receive enough rainfall or snow year after year. The area is called \"drainage basin\" at means all the water from this area eventually flows into the same place, the same river. ...
Latency in video games, why is there lag?	[ "This is simplified, so excuse me if I miss a few things or get some steps out of order.\n\nSay you're in an FPS game. You see a guy and decide to shoot at him. You click your mouse to fire.\n\nYour computer picks up this signal from the mouse and translates it to a click. This click is then processed by the gam...
Why do 15 fps video clips looks sped up and 60 fps clips look like they're slowed down?	[ "That happens when the video player plays doesn't adjust for the frame rate of the recording device. For example, your TV plays at 30fps, but the source material is recorded at 60fps. Now if you want to watch your video at a \"normal\" speed, every other frame from the source material has to be dumped so you end up...
if two different phones/tablets/computers are running the exact same OS, how is it possible that one device can experience a bug/glitch but not the other device when performing the exact same task?	[ "1: A mechanical defect in the device. This could be something as large as a bad piece of solder on a board to as small as an actual defect in a chip, or anything in between.\n\n2: Random cosmic ray strike. High energy particles from space can hit sensitive electronics and \"flip\" a bit from a 1 to a 0 or vice...
Why does drinking alcohol usually make you wake up unusually early the next morning?	[ "This is a great question I would love to know the answer to. Its not thirst, or dehydration for me. Its waking up 4 or 5 hours after falling asleep and ready to start the whole day. Cant fall back asleep. And then, 3 hours later I feel like absolute shit." ]
How do scientists determine how much fat, proteins, and carbohydrates there is in any product?	[ "I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that this is determined by many analytical chemistry methods. I'll give a few examples, though you can check out [this page](_URL_2_ 7.5) for more detailed information. \n\nFat: Fatty acids are first extracted from a substance by solubilization in an [organic solvent](_...
Why can't cellular radio waves be divided for unlimited data carrying?	[ "The narrower the channel, the less information you can send down it reliably. Using your freeway example, you could take a 3 lane highway and give yourself 24 bike lanes but nobody'd be getting anywhere very quickly.", "The smaller you make the signal, the more complex your recieving station needs to be, and th...
Why can't/shouldn't we go back to the gold standard?	[ "Gold is a luxury item. Only 10% of gold is used for manufacturing or technical purposes, the rest is used in vanity goods like jewelry or hoarded as an investment. Therefor, its value is perceived rather than practical, and as such the price is subject to whims. (See: gold rising to insane levels as people fear...
What is the Raspberry Pi? How can a computer cost 5$ while mainstream computers can cost up to 2000$?	[ "The Raspberry Pi is a very small, lower power, lower complexity computer. Because they have sold, and will continue to sell many, they can afford to get parts at bulk pricing. The RPi $5 board is also so much smaller and stripped back compared to the ones that cost a few times more than that.\n\nThere's also the f...
Why is the Tracey Morgan car accident getting a federal investigation?	[ "That National Transportation Safety Board regularly assists state authorities with highway accident investigations. This is usually in the form of technical assistance, and is very different from if an agency like the FBI got involved.", "NTSB is involved with any DOT Licensee accident which includes a fatality...
How are 300 calories in a donut different than 300 calories in a burger?	[ "In terms of caloric content, they are the same, but the tasks your body accomplishes with the two are very different.\n\nYour body uses proteins to construct new cells. Think of proteins as the parts of the engine inside your car. The proteins from that burger get deconstructed and reconstituted as proteins inside...
How do insects survive winter? How does the common housefly live through months of freezing to come back next year?	[ "There are micro climates around. By this I mean that there will be little pockets around where they can survive. Think of a large wholesale fruit market where it is never allowed to freeze. Flies can survive there. There are also many other places, kitchens, trash collection points inside buildings, and other pla...
How do bats, whales, dolphins, etc. differentiate their echolocation clicks from others?	[ "Mostly pitch. While they'll all be within a particular range, each bat varies its own voice by a tiny fraction and listens for that particular pitch. Bat voices can be between 40ish to 120ish thousand Hz, which gives a huge range for an individual to pick from.\n\n[Some quick research](_URL_0_) reveals other tri...
How is salt "Kosher"?	[ "It's not Kosher salt, it's Koshering salt, i.e. salt used for Koshering. The salt is used for draining the blood out of meat, and the larger grain size makes it better suitable for the job than ordinary table salt.", "/u/Schnutzel's answer didn't spell it out, but salt is almost always kosher, unless there's...
What is the relationship between resolution (pixels) and the dimensions of a printed photo?	[ "The measurement you are looking for is dots-per-inch, or DPI.\n\nLet's use some easy numbers...\n\nImagine you had a picture that was 1,000 x 1,000 pixels. That picture would actually contain 1 million pixels, or what modern marketing called 1 megapixel.\n\nIf you tried to print it 10\" x 10\", you would have 100 ...
Will an antenna produce visible light?	[ "If you pump enough energy into that antenna, assuming its metal, it will produce red then orange then yellow visible light.", "Yes, but. To work properly, antennas need to be roughly as large as a wavelength of the wave, and must be connected to a circuit that creates oscillating voltages at the same frequency ...
Why a wheel turning at high speed appears to be turning the other way round?	[ "If you take a basic wall clock and watch the minute hand, it moves very slowly, doing one rotation every 60 minutes. However, if you take a camera, and leave it to take a picture of the clock every hour, and watch those pictures like a movie, you'll think it doesn't move at all.\n\nNow take that camera and make it...
Homomorphic encryption. What is it and what is it not?	[ "Basically it's an encryption scheme where you can perform operations on the encrypted data and get a result that when decrypted using the same method as decrypting the source data will result in the same output as if those operations had been performed on the original unencrypted data.\n\nThis means that encrypted...
The differences between aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen	[ "aspirin: blood thinner. this is why it's effective for heart disease.\n\nibuprofin: anti-inflammatory. that's why it's effective for swollen things.\n\ntylenol: general pain killer. that's why it's better for generic/non-specific pain.\n\nthat's about as simple as i can make it.", "Aspirin and Ibuprofen (as well...
In jobs that have a lot of initial training investment, and then a subsequent minimum length contract (for example, most military careers), what happens if, after training, a person just isn't good enough, or doesn't put in enough effort?	[ "They cut their losses usually and kick your ass to the curb. Or in some cases you may leave one training and be moved to a lower job or a different job and trained for that job instead.\n\nObviously its not uncommon for people to perform poorly at a specific job and be moved to a different one, in any industry or...
How does a fly keep buzzing around my head when I'm traveling at 30 knots in a boat?	[ "The air around you is also travelling at 30 knots.", "When you're going along in your boat, unless your on the front, you are kept in a bubble of air. [Here is a good example](_URL_0_) of airflow for a big truck. If you look at the back the air is almost completely stationary. Granted the air does move around a ...
What is the purpose behind the common "crescent" shaped ice cube?	[ "Crescent-shaped ice cubes are easy for a machine to remove from the tray. After they're done freezing, a mechanical arm swings in a circle and pushes them out of the tray. Cube-shaped trays are a bit harder to automatically remove the ice from them." ]
Are current microwaves ovens much different than the ones from the 80s?	[ "A little more robust and elegant in their electrical design, but they work the same way. A lot of components in things like microwaves get switched out over time as we become more and more capable of doing things digitally and don't have to rely on analog. This results in better performance, more even heating in t...
If you have a tattoo and the layer off skin came off where it was, would the tatoo be removed?	[ "if the wound is deep enough yes. [There was a time when tattoos were removed by implanting an inflatable bag under the skin next to the tattoo and gradually filling it with saline over a period of weeks expanding the tissue](_URL_0_). When there was sufficient tissue the implant would be removed and the tattoo exc...
The spice must flow	[ "I think a big part of it is that before refrigerators and other methods of food preservation were developed, people often ate food that was less than fresh or just straight up spoiled. Spices and cooking techniques make bad food more palatable.", "Spices were an extremely popular luxury in Europe, that's why the...
Why dont companies like Sony/Microsoft add backwards compatibility for their consoles?	[ "It's more than 'adding the code', it's adding a lot of code. The new consoles have completely different hardware that basically makes them incompatible with running previous generation games. Don't think of this as xbone trying to run xbox360, think of this as PC trying to running xbox360 and you've got the same...
Why do we have 10 fingers and not 8?	[ "Because we evolved from fish that had 5 bones in their fins. All vertebrates follow the same pattern - 1 bone, 2 bones, lots of bones. As to why the fish had 5 fin-bones, it was probably simply how it evolved - the optimal number of fin-bones to maintain the fin structure.", "To be fair, if we had 8 fingers, you...
What is Rick Perry being indicted for?	[ "You know how a school bully might threaten to beat you up if you don't give him your lunch money? Governor Perry is accused of doing sort of the same thing by threatening to not give a woman's department money if she didn't resign from office.\n\nSince it was the governor doing it, he should know better. This woul...
If the months are based on the phases of the moon why are some months longer than others?	[ "Because the number of days it takes to go from 'full moon' to 'full moon' doesn't evenly match up with the time it takes to go from 'lowest sunrise' to 'lowest sunrise'.\n\nAnd that's OK.\n\nWhy February? Because the calendar used to start in the spring, and February used to be 'the last month of the year'. So a...
How do ships stay afloat even when carrying thousands of tons of cargo?	[ "By displacing more tons of water than the ship+cargo weighs. That's why they have to be so strong, to keep enough water out.", "Displacement, dude. Basically, the ship's average density needs to be less than water to keep floating. So, it may carry thousands of tons of cargo, but it also has lots of air spaces...
What are BDSM relationships?	[ "BDSM is a compound acronym. It stands for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism. \n\nOn the submissive end, you have people that gain satisfaction from being hurt, punished, being physically bound, and/or being ordered around. \n\nOn the dominant end, you have people that gain sati...
popular apps terms and conditions	[ "This website is great at breaking down what you need to know\n\n_URL_0_" ]
Why have bones evolved to heal so slowly, or why do they heal at all? Wouldn't any animal with a broken bone likely die in the wild of something before the bone was healed?	[ "Evolution is still limited by physics and chemistry, and each feature is a balancing act with a million other advantages and disadvantages. This is sort of like asking:\n\nWhy has skin evolved to be so soft and easy to cut, resulting in blood leaking out of the body? Wouldn't any animal with cut skin likely bleed ...
how is it that (according to my plant bio textbook) glucose and fructose have identical molecular formulas? Isn't the purpose if molecular formulas to be unique identifiers?	[ "Just like you can assemble Legos into any number of shapes, molecules can also be put together differently. So while both glucose and fructose have the same number of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, the molecules are assembled differently and thus they are different chemicals.", "The are called isomers, mole...
Why is it easier to balance on a bike when you're going faster?	[ "Smaller corrections are needed to maintain the center of balance. [Here](_URL_0_ ) is a really interesting thread on the interactions between wheel gyro effect and front fork angle which explains a lot of the mechanics of balancing a bike." ]
why are organizations trying to send people to live on mars and not on closer places like the moon?	[ "Mars has atmosphere and accessible (but frozen) water and soil that could be conditioned to grow crops with a lot of work and is a place a person could live with some work. the moon has vacuum and radiation and micrometeorites and horrible staticy sandpaper for ground." ]
Why are people preoccupied with order and detail called "anal" or "anal retentive".	[ "Because he hypothesized that issues during this developmental stage (when a child is learning to control toilet functions, such as bowel movements) would carry over into adulthood, manifested as an obsession over detail and exerting inordinate control over ones environment." ]
How do animals look into they eyes of other animals instinctively?	[ "I can't speak for every animal, but for humans, it's a matter of \"top down processing\", and the fact that only other animals have faces and/or eyes. And sometimes animals - and humans - do confuse other markings for eyes.\n\n\n\nTo a baby human, recognizing a face is very important. Take a piece of paper, draw...
What happens when you melt a magnet.	[ "LI5: The magnet will stop behaving magnetically once it hits a certain temperature (sort of). Then it'll simply behave like a piece of metal and melt\n\nLI20: Let me know if there is interests, not typing an explanation for the hell of it, though it's not extremely complicated." ]
How people learn to hack.	[ "You've played video games right? Ever played a video game so much you know it backwards and forwards and know every little niche here and there and have all the maps memorized? People who know how to break into other computer systems are exactly like that but with operating systems. When you know a video game so w...

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