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Why are some people anti-immunisation? | explainlikeimfive | 1rnpbq | 1 | true | false | 0.67 | Until going on reddit, I hadn't heard of people being anti-vaccines, as it doesn't seem to happen in my country. What are the main reasons for people believing this? What percentage of the population disagree with it? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp1qev",
"comment_text": [
"Vaccines do have side effects. For live vaccines (ones with living, but damaged versions of a virus or bacteria) the side effects tend to show a mild form of the disease for which you are being immunized against. For dead vaccines, you can get side effects simply due to an immune response against the antigens present in the vaccine. ",
"Some people claim the flu shot gives them the flu, which is half true. You can get a mild version of the flu from the vaccine, or just a mild immune response to the antigens in the dead flu vaccine. Therefore, some people associate a vaccine with feeling sick. ",
"Like ",
"u/mrrandomman420",
" stated, there was a study published that linked the MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccine to autism. This study was poorly designed and thoroughly debunked. However, the damage was done, since there was a rise in measles and preventable diseases following this study (",
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7872541.stm",
").",
"There is also an argument that vaccines drive huge revenue for the medical industry, but most of the vaccines covered under Medicare part B & D, and Medicaid really don't drive much revenue for medical offices or big drug companies compared to medical treatment for these diseases that we are trying to protect against!",
" Basically, people think vaccines are either or scam, or outright dangerous. This is due to a poor understanding of what a vaccine actually does. I will edit again and explain that better as well.",
"A vaccine introduces a live virus/bacteria, or dead components of these organisms. Once these organisms enter the body via injection, oral, or nasal route (fluMist vaccine), your body collects these particles to present to your immune system. There are cells that roam the body looking for bad things (macrophages, neutrophils, dendritic cells). These cells (primarily dendritic cells) gather up dead things and bring them to the lymph nodes. Once in the lymph nodes, B and T cells are exposed to these particles and begin to change. B and T cells that recognize the antigen start to clone themselves, and eventually form differentiated B & T cells that hunt down more pathogens (B cells produce antibodies, T cells kill in other ways). They also differentiate into memory cells, which give you long lasting immunity to that antigen. ",
"Once you have been given a shot, it generally takes 10-14 days for this process to work. You are now immune to some strains of that virus or bacteria that you could be exposed to in the future. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp1n3t",
"comment_text": [
"Same reason some people think evolution doesn't occur day by day, that dinosaurs didn't exist, that their god HAS to be real and all other gods do not exist, bla bla bla, it is all self-perpetuated ignorance. When you want to believe something enough you will look for whatever reason you can possibly think of to convince yourself it is true and that you have not wasted time thinking something incorrect. ",
"Same for anti-immunisation, they have been caught up in media hype/brainwashing and are the type of people who will just believe what they hear. Sheep my friend, many of the people out there are just sheep and it is so sad. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp325n",
"comment_text": [
"Mainly, there's a douche canoe named Andrew Wakefield who put a lot of effort into convincing people that there was a link between vaccines and autism. His data was bogus, and his particular brand of fear mongering did not do well in the UK where he is from, but it caught the American imagination. ",
"I think Americans were particularly vulnerable because his theory resolved ambiguity about a mysterious disease (Americans hate ambiguity) while squarely setting the blame on opaque organizations that were out to make money, and damn the consequences. (Americans also love conspiracies, particularly with clear moral badguys at the bottom.) Also through previously very successful immunization programs, hardly anyone has seen scarlet fever or whooping cough, while autism is an 'epidemic'. This makes Americans particularly bad at estimating the risk of not vaccinating. Americans also have a broad misunderstanding and mistrust of science, and tend to mistake people using scientific sounding words and repetition for people who actually sense. Also, our preventative care system sucks, so many people will take any reason to not go to the doctor.",
"Most people vaccinate their kids, and themselves. For one thing a lot of schools require it. But hardly anyone does it because they understand know what they are doing and make a choice, it's mainly habit and doing what your doctor tells you. The ones who ",
" vaccinate make the news, and look like they understand what they're doing, which does occasionally convince people who don't know what they're doing to follow them."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp1fqy",
"comment_text": [
"Ignorance. Plain and simple, there is no other reason. A TL;DR of the whole situation:",
"Doctor fakes study that shows vaccines are causing autism. (This doctor is no longer allowed to practice medicine due to this fraud.)",
"People (Jenny McCarthy) who have a lot of influence on our culture repeat it on popular television shows (Oprah). ",
"People are too lazy to do their own research, so they believe what celebrities say. ",
"Children get sick and die. ",
"I sit here shaking my head."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp3mqp",
"comment_text": [
"It's unfortunate that that assclown marred the anti vaccine campaign. Please look at the link I left in a reply above, for genuine evidence."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What exactly is a Jehovah's Witness? | explainlikeimfive | 1rnotg | 27 | true | false | 0.77 | I know it is religion based but other than that I am pretty clueless. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp1i9n",
"comment_text": [
"Ex-JW here. It's a Christian religion (technically), however, they do not follow the nicene creed, meaning they do not believe in the trinity, whereas most other major Christian religions do. They also have a lot of doctrines that make them stand out from other churches for example:",
"Also, apart from those oddities that have some rather concerning practices that make many people view them as cult like:",
"Any specific questions let me know."
],
"score": 12
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp2hy1",
"comment_text": [
"Well, they are fundamentalist, meaning they take the bible literally. So when Jesus says go preach just like he did they take it very literally. Actually other major Christian religions do too, but the big difference being that Catholics don't go around trying to convince Protestants they are wrong and visa-versa. ",
"JW's actually believe that in 1914 god personally selected them out of all the religions on the earth to be his representative and spread the word on what people are really suppose to believe. They view themselves as the modern day equivalent of the biblical jews, in the sense that they are the only ones on earth god approves of. ",
"To a JW the only sure way to be safe from the impending destruction of the earth (which is any day now! Really!) is to listen to them and be baptised as a JW. So to not preach is putting blood guilt of all the people who weren't preached to on your head because they didn't get a chance to decide if they want to listen to god's true message for them (this is actually what they teach). ",
"As to why I left, I was born into the religion and they believe in an old earth creationism and once I started studying evolution I started seeing the number of lies published in their literature and that made me come to me senses and see what I was raised to believe was not the truth after all."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp27u1",
"comment_text": [
"What is it with them going about and spreading the word of Christ? I'm a Christian but iirc only JW go from door to door. Also, if you don't mind answering, why aren't you a JW anymore?"
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpe8bv",
"comment_text": [
"There's little difference when you live in Iran."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp2la4",
"comment_text": [
"Actually Islam is the fastest growing. And is expected to be the majority religion worldwide by 2050. "
],
"score": 3
} | |
How and can video be used to charge a person with a crime? (Example: murder vs drug use) | explainlikeimfive | 1rnse8 | 1 | true | false | 0.56 | Obviously murder is worse than drugs. But I've noticed documentaries have people smoking weed on camera, cocaine, etc. How can the police not use this footage to charge them with a crime? Do cops use this footage to keep a close watch on those they know are recreational drug users? Video of a crime: Does it depend on if it's a felony or misdemeanor? Violent crime? Case by case basis? What crimes can video be used as evidence? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp766n",
"comment_text": [
"im on mobile so i can't find a specific one but Here's an article about it---",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_conviction_without_a_body",
" "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp2pl1",
"comment_text": [
"When you see some smoking something, how do you know it is really pot and not tobacco? If you see someone snorting something, how do you know it is really cocaine and not powdered sugar? I think even with murder if you have a video of someone killing another person but you have no body you couldn't not prove a murder was committed.",
"This is all conjecture on my part."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp6d6p",
"comment_text": [
"People have been convicted of murder even though a body was never discovered/recovered."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp6xzj",
"comment_text": [
"Any particular case?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp7do8",
"comment_text": [
"Well there you go. Though it doesn't seem to be uncommon. None in the US, in that article anyway, so we have that going for us. Of course what qualifies as a body with modern forensics?"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why aren't national borders drawn along straight lines? | explainlikeimfive | 1rnrkj | 1 | true | false | 0.6 | Aren't borders that follow complicated courses difficult to quantify and keep secure? I know that some US states have straight borders, and the border between Canada and the USA is mostly regular. Why don't all borders - particularly in more recently established nations - follow straight lines? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp39u4",
"comment_text": [
"Quantify means you state the number of X. So, I can quantify the number of bananas in a bunch (it may be 4 or 5), but I can't quantify how much I love my mother - there's no objective scale.",
"You can quantify the length of a border, but to express the nature of the border - if it's straight or jagged and wandering is to give a qualitative assessment. You are describing the quality of the border and its features."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp24un",
"comment_text": [
"\"express or measure the quantity of,\" in this context I mean it must be difficult to actually pinpoint where exactly the borders run (although I suppose GPS fixes this) in relation to the maps. Particularly in areas with difficult terrain. I'll admit it probably wasn't the best word to use."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp24un",
"comment_text": [
"\"express or measure the quantity of,\" in this context I mean it must be difficult to actually pinpoint where exactly the borders run (although I suppose GPS fixes this) in relation to the maps. Particularly in areas with difficult terrain. I'll admit it probably wasn't the best word to use."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpm4nr",
"comment_text": [
"Or the quantity of area in which the border surrounds, the word works just fine."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp1vtn",
"comment_text": [
"I'd bet rivers are a big reason. Just a guess tho'"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why does music seem "faster" upon waking up? | explainlikeimfive | 1rnyw8 | 15 | true | false | 0.74 | Specifically music, as I have noticed on more than one occasion that my alarm (which would be any song in particular from my playlist) sounds sped up as I am hearing it for my alarm. Later that day I would listen to the same song, and sure enough it would sound slower than it did in the morning. Am I weird or has anyone else experienced this? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp8fbg",
"comment_text": [
"I have very minimal experience with this topic, but I would guess that because your processing capabilities are dulled upon waking up, perception and short-term memory follow suit. It might be that the reason it seems faster because our brain is latching onto fewer individual details. It has been documented that humans recall dangerous events in 'slow motion' due to a reverse of this phenomenon - more details recalled to increase survival chance = slower overall recall because of a fixed recall speed. The 'grogginess' experienced upon waking might play a part. That's a highly uneducated guess. Do with it what you will. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpjm3p",
"comment_text": [
"My own experiences fit with your explanation, sitting down and relaxing music seems faster, but if i go for a jog or begin any strenuous activity the speed decreases."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpara7",
"comment_text": [
"It might have to do with how your brain perceives sound. The \"sampling rate\", or the precision with which you hear may be lower when you have just woken up, giving you the feeling that things are 'faster' than you perceive. This sensor setting might be somehow coupled to the human circadian rhythm. But you should wait till someone gives you the exact answer. I'm probably wrong"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp9rkg",
"comment_text": [
"Maybe when you wake up your brain is still slow so everything else seems fast."
],
"score": 0
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp4egs",
"comment_text": [
"I would like to know this also. "
],
"score": -1
} | |
ELI5: How do we know what temperature absolute 0 is if we have never been able to achieve it? | explainlikeimfive | 1ro3rt | 6 | true | false | 0.72 | And also how do we know what properties absolute 0 possesses if we have never seen it in action? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp6206",
"comment_text": [
"Two ways:\n1) We reduce the heat of something. The closer we get to absolute zero, the harder it gets. From the measured efford it takes we can build a function that converges against absolute zero\n2) We measure the energy at a given temperature, we measure the energy at other temperatures. Observation: The energy-termperature curve behaves lineary. Now we can use this formula, set Energy to zero and solve for temperature."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp7pr5",
"comment_text": [
"As we reduce heat and look at the energy involved, we can see an asymptote towards a particular value when it gets to a point where no energy is present (−273.15°C)."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp7zpa",
"comment_text": [
"The pressure an ideal gas exerts is directly proportional to its temperature. If you plot pressure against temperature, you will get a line that is declining with sinking temperature, no matter the volume or amount of substance used (those need to be constant though). So if you keep following this line (\"extrapolating\" it), until you reach a pressure of 0 you will be at -273,15°C, or 0 Kelvin, absolute zero.",
"Since there can be no such thing as negative pressure (as pressure is an expression of force and area, both of which cannot be negative either), we have effectively reached a point where it would be no longer logical to continue, or simply something we cannot describe with our laws of nature. ",
"Keep in mind that a pressure of 0 also implies that there is no movement of molecules and atoms anymore, as to apply pressure, a particle needs to collide with a surface. A pressure of 0 means that no particle is moving to apply force to surfaces, meaning that everything is standing still."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp7084",
"comment_text": [
"You can use derivatives for this because absolute 0 is the limit. However the relationship expressed here is linear, so we don't need to. ",
"We can just plug zero into the relationship built for temperature and solve. I don't know the exact equation but I know it is linear."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp8f4f",
"comment_text": [
"With maths."
],
"score": -2
} | |
ELI5: Why aren't the farmers marching against Monsanto, but rather generic activists that claim to represent the farmers? | explainlikeimfive | 1ro4h4 | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | Sorry if the title is misleading, but my point is that I see people in facebook, twitter and some blogs rant so strongly against monsanto, but I see them use really bad arguments (appeal to nature, slippery slope, composition, etc.) and they are also usually involved in other campaigns I disagree with (vegans, anti large corporations while using a mac to post on facebook, anti government, anti banks, etc.). Any literature I look up is usually very emotional, or has some pseudoscience in it except for monsanto propaganda of course. However hatred for monsanto is so widespread that it makes me doubt, can so many people be that wrong? Why don't I see the ones that know about seeds in the marches such as the farmers, unions and other industry employees? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp5w8b",
"comment_text": [
"Anti-GMO activists tend to be urban twenty-somethings who have little experience with large scale farming done in the midwest. They tend to be anti-GMO because they are on the left and anti-GMO sentiment is just one of the anti-science stances on the left which they uncritically adopt. (just like people on the right tend to adopt anti-science views on the right unquestionably)",
"If you talk to farmers they love GM crops and they have no problem with the system as it is. ",
"In the bigger picture, the anti-GMO movement is an intersection of other leftist movements (\nAnti-war, environmental and anti-corporate) which conflate Monsanto and GMOs",
"The anti-war movement. Monsanto in the 60s was one of the manufactureres of Agent Orange. So you have lots of protesters and anti-war people from that era mad at them. It hardly matters if was 50 years ago or they were not the only manufacturer or responsible for how it was used.",
"The environmental movement. In the 60s-70s Monsanto was dumping PCBs these chemicals are pretty toxic and are still causing problems. They haven't been in this line of business since the 80s.",
"Organic food industry. Monsanto is one of many companies that produce GM seeds. For some people GM crops are either \"against gods plan\" or \"tampering with nature\" or \"not pure food\". The scientific consensus is the GM crops are as safe as non-GM crops... but of course people just claim a giant scientific conspiracy (see creationist, anti-vax, 911 truther...)",
"Anticorporatism. Some people just don't like the idea of corporations. In the case of Monsanto, this is usually centers around having patents for plants. Ironically, these same people have no problems with patents in other areas. A second area is on many of the claims that Monsanto uses heavy handed tactics to enforce patents, however when these claims are looked at, they typically are completely false or very exaggerated. You have to be purposely breaking contract agreements or violating patents to get their attention.",
"You will find many \"ideological clusters\" when you start digging into conspiracy theories",
"Farmers on the other hand tend to be less anti-war, have a measured view on environmental issues and tend to be more anti-government rather than anti-corporate."
],
"score": 11
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp8rn4",
"comment_text": [
"I was being sarcastic :)"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp89qn",
"comment_text": [
"All of them? Not a single specialist in the trade has realized how evil corporations are?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpb0wp",
"comment_text": [
"Sorry, you were too subtle in a topic where sweeping statements, arrogance and fallacies are too commonplace to take sarcasm for granted :-P",
"\nIf you had said farmers are aliens that export the seeds to Gallifrey and are in on the conspiracy I still would have doubted if it was sarcasm or not."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp79ir",
"comment_text": [
"Because farmers are boobs... they just believed the lies of the corporations... tisk tisk. "
],
"score": 0
} | |
ELI5: What is an 'itch' and why is it comforted by 'itching'? | explainlikeimfive | 1roclm | 6 | true | false | 0.63 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpb8cj",
"comment_text": [
"Scratching. "
],
"score": 14
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpcex6",
"comment_text": [
"Dear god, thank you. I almost reported this one to the mods."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpcn8k",
"comment_text": [
"People think I'm mean, but I seriously lose respect for people who say they \"itched\" an itch."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpewjn",
"comment_text": [
"C'mon now, don't be that guy. Read the rules."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdp8zup",
"comment_text": [
"When the subdermal hemotopes contract due to inflammation or exposure to an irritant, the human body experiences what is called itching. Scratching an inch stimulates the heomtobes i have no idea what i'm talking about which leads them to expand again and relieve the perceived itching sensation."
],
"score": -1
} | ||
ELI5: How hearing aids work | explainlikeimfive | 1rocef | 13 | true | false | 0.7 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpafh9",
"comment_text": [
"Hearing aids work by taking the acoustic signal, changing it to an electrical signal where it can modified and tailored to the specific hearing loss, and then that signal is changed back to an acoustic signal.",
"The modifications don't just make the sound/signal louder, they also adjust the sound according to a \"prescription\" (each manufacturer changes the signal in a different way. These modifications are based precisely on the wearer's hearing thresholds at a range of frequencies (250Hz to about 6,000Hz). They also transform the signal to ensure that the output is comfortable for the wearer - as well as making sure it won't blast their ears and damaging any hearing they have left, as well as making sure its not exceeding the limits of the hearing aid (which would cause distortion).",
"These prescriptions and algorithms are formulated to give the wearer the best access to speech.",
"(Lastly, because hearing aids need to be tailored to a specific hearing loss, no one should ever buy a hearing aid over the counter or through the mail!)",
"source: I'm an Audiologist and work with hearings aids."
],
"score": 12
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpah7p",
"comment_text": [
"There's a microphone, processor, and loudspeaker. Mic picks up the sound, the sound is processed and amplified and fed through the loudspeaker into the ear. Amount and type of amplification is determined by the kind of hearing loss a person has. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpb86w",
"comment_text": [
"My dad is super-lucky. Not only are his hearing aids 100% covered by VA, he's become a guinea pig for some hearing aid mfgr. He's got his go-to set in case they give him some prototype that doesn't work for him and whenever he finds one that works better, they let him keep that as the go-to pair once they get some data out of it (or something like that).",
"Anyway, he said that the hearing aids that he's been using are orders of magnitude better than what they were just 10 years ago."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpe34c",
"comment_text": [
"By the time you put a new pair of hearing aids on... they're already working to them work faster and better.",
"Your father is very lucky. VAs are excellent for getting good/excellent hearing aids covered 100%. And even luckier that he's getting top-of-line in exchange for providing information about the new aids! ",
"(Also, a big thank you to your father for serving and protecting our country!)"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdpeb2u",
"comment_text": [
"Whenever I was asked what my hearing aid was, I just told people that it was a futuristic radio in which I could listen to music. ",
"Now that I actually know how they work, I think I will stick to my old description, much more fun haha. "
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: When a town or a city elects a dog or a cat for mayor, how does that end up working? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjhbr | 12 | true | false | 0.88 | I've seen several towns that elected animals as their mayors, and I'm really curious about how that works. Does the animal actually get paid? Do they actually get an office? Is their presence required at official events? I read this article: and I just don't see how a cat or a dog could fulfill this role. Well, maybe a cat... | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnw262",
"comment_text": [
"It is never official.",
"Typically it only occurs in unincorporated towns where they don't have government at anything lower than the county level. Such communities will often elect an unofficial mayor as sort of a spokesman. Since there are no real laws covering this, there is nothing stopping them from getting silly from time to time."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxuw9",
"comment_text": [
"Historically, it is very difficult to get humans to acknowledge the new feline regime no matter how solid the legal argument. Dogs, cats and even horses have ascended pretty high on the political ladder but never without strong human backing."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo10z3",
"comment_text": [
"Not quite.",
"In an unincorporated town, there is no actual mayor. Cat, dog, or human, the position is honorary. That's why it doesn't matter."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2fxd",
"comment_text": [
"They hire an appointee to smoke crack cocaine for him/her and blow in in their face. Dogs are less keen on this change than cats. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxnm5",
"comment_text": [
"So even though the cat or dog beats out human candidates, the position isn't official? If the cat or dog wins, then they're just an honorary mayor, and a human becomes the actual mayor?"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5:How do massive schools of fish swim around without just bashing into each other | explainlikeimfive | 1rjljq | 19 | true | false | 0.92 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxutq",
"comment_text": [
"The fish only pay attention to the fish nearest them so its a chain-reaction. So when a fish on the outside reacts to something, the fish next to him reacts to that and so on down the line. This isn't just to avoid getting hit, but to stay close as well since there is safety in numbers. Since fish have fairly quick reflexes, they are able to avoid one another to an extent, but I'm sure some bumping occurs."
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyie1",
"comment_text": [
"Just want to add on that fish have a sensor system called lateral line which is used to sense the vibrations and movements in water around it. This allows the fish to easily react to changes in movement."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo11qx",
"comment_text": [
"The fish follow a few simple rules like: stay behind the fish in front, keep 2 buddies on either side, avoid threats, etc. On a large scale this leads to extremely cooperative behaviour even though there are so many different individual parts. It's a type of dynamical system. Read ",
"swarm intelligence"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo1q22",
"comment_text": [
"I did a project in college modeling schools of fish.",
"1.) If an individual fish is too close to any fish, then it will turn to swim away from that fish.",
"2.) If there are no fish too close, then an individual fish will attempt to travel in the same direction as fish that are a middle distance away.",
"3.) If there are fish that are far away, then an individual fish will attempt to turn towards fish that are far away.",
"The fish will prioritize rule 1 over 2 and 3. For the other 2 rules, they will use a combination.",
"There's a 4th rule that supercedes all other rules, which is to swim away from any predator.",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGKoUh_MdFk",
"That's basically what those 4 rules look like when simulated. If there had been more green arrows, the arrows would have reformed into one group instead of broken up into multiple smaller groups."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnwj7u",
"comment_text": [
"Have you ever used public transit in a large city?"
],
"score": 2
} | ||
ELI5: Is a computer intelligent? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjn2i | 1 | true | false | 0.55 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnwu4x",
"comment_text": [
"No, computers aren't intelligent, its like having an amazing car but no wheel or pedals, the programmer tell it exactly what to do and it never fails at it, If a program has a bug, its still doing ecactly what the programmer meant for it to do, and the programmer made the mistake, and even modern AI isn't thinking its just inputting different scenarios and finding the result, for example it will check if the traffic light is red or green, if it is red, it will say go, and this works perfectly but what if the light was yellow? or if the light stopped working? a human would easily figure it out but a computer would be stuck. and even if you make a fail safe function, then it would't be reacting to its surrounding, it would just be doing something."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnx75c",
"comment_text": [
"I forgot something, for a computer to be truly intelligent, it must be able to learn, for example, a computer can be programmed to take over the world but it wont know what to do after it does that, but the important thing is COMPUTERS CANT LEARN NEW THINGS LIKE A HUMAN, that is the most important thing"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxgyi",
"comment_text": [
"Machine learning is a decades old discipline and is all about how machines can represent concepts the programmer doesn't explicitly know and how to learn them from experience. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnwurs",
"comment_text": [
"Computers are only as smart as they're programmed to be, yes. However, take this, for example: You need to do a certain task several thousand times. You know how to do it, but it would take forever to do it manually, so you utilize the computer's processing power, and write a script to iterate through a loop, running the task each time.",
"This is something we've told it how to do, so it didn't learn on its own, but because it can process many thousands of instructions per second, it can do them faster than ever humanly possible."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnwv1o",
"comment_text": [
"Let's say you had a really smart professor and a kid who just learned to read and have them both answer really difficult questions. The professor figures them out because he is smart and an expert in the field, but the kid is given cards with the answers on them by someone else (this \"someone else\" is like the programmer of the computer). Both the professor and the kid give the same answer, but the kid was faster because he was given the answer by the programmer. Computers meant to have conversations like people are similar to the kid. The computer was given tons of pre-made responses by the programmer, and it spits them out when necessary. The computer has knowledge, but not necessarily intelligence. ",
"About the jobs thing, there has always been fear that new technology will take up jobs. This is often the case, but the technology itself produces new jobs at the same time as getting rid of obsolete ones. . "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Discrete Mathematics. WTF? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjpzk | 4 | true | false | 0.75 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxrvl",
"comment_text": [
"It's sort of a catchall subject for math that's related to computer science. There's not really a way to sum it up simply though, since it's such a varied set of mathematics... Are you confused about sequences? Functions? Graph Theory? Algorithmic Complexity? Boolean Algebra? Finite State Machines? There's just no way to sum it all up nicely."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxzg6",
"comment_text": [
"OK, then, is it not possible to explain it? I'm not confused about any subset, just what is it?"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyq59",
"comment_text": [
"OK then, what's discrete and what's continuous mean? Like I'm 5."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnzjoa",
"comment_text": [
"I was trying to think of a way to explain this, but I found it quite a bit more tricky then I expected, so I looked it up and came across ",
"this article",
". I hope it sheds some light on the matter :)"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxwx0",
"comment_text": [
"That really doesn't help at all. I'm still just as confused."
],
"score": 2
} | ||
ELI5: What's happening inside our bodies when we hold in farts? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjr1k | 18 | true | false | 0.76 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnz7ye",
"comment_text": [
"Simply you are just contracting the muscles not allowing the gas built up from the digestive bacteria in your digestive system to be released. "
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo09tt",
"comment_text": [
"Well from MY body it causes whale sounds emanate from my abdomen.. iieeeeeeoouuuuooooooo..."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo0mu3",
"comment_text": [
"Maybe he only speaks whale"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoj877",
"comment_text": [
"And ",
" knows that's not your stomach rumbling"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdovijw",
"comment_text": [
"And it only happens when the office is super quiet."
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: How come we can see pictures of space probes as far as Saturn if they are so far away? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjswg | 3 | true | false | 1 | If light, which is the fastest traveling subject in the universe takes so much time to reach the edges of the solar system, how come we can get information, pictures and stuff like that so fast from probes like the voyager and such? Wouldn't the info take years to arrive? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyeok",
"comment_text": [
"No, the solar system is only a few light-hours wide, even if you include Pluto."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyhnr",
"comment_text": [
"Wouldn't the info take years to arrive?",
"No, it takes about an hour (I think) from the edge of the planetary solar system.",
"If it took a year, then it would be a light-year away which is 9.5×10",
" kilometers wheras Uranus (the farthest planet that's not [Neptune or] Pluto) is at most 2 billion (2x10",
" ) kilometers away. So that's three orders of magnitude closer than a single light year.",
"So if the speed of light is about 1 × 10",
" kilometers / hour then it would take two hours to send a message to Uranus and another two hours to hear back. It would be quicker for closer planets like Jupiter."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyiip",
"comment_text": [
"Neptune is the furthest planet. It's about 4.5 billion kms from the Sun. And Pluto isn't a planet at all. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyn0j",
"comment_text": [
"To be specific, Voyager I, the farthest man made probe we have, is 1.899×10",
" km away. It takes light (and therefore things like radio signals) just over 17.5 hours to reach that from the earth."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnyj1u",
"comment_text": [
"Whoops. I don't know why I said that."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How come I'm still able to code when I'm really drunk? | explainlikeimfive | 1rk1me | 0 | true | false | 0.29 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo12p7",
"comment_text": [
"Well i guess that ur brain is more creative when your drunk. When your drunk your brain makes creative (sometimes weird) connections. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2bra",
"comment_text": [
"http://xkcd.com/323/"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2bzn",
"comment_text": [
"Image",
" Ballmer Peak",
" Apple uses automated schnapps IVs.",
"Comic Explanation",
" This comic has been referenced 44 time(s), representing 1.15546218487% of referenced xkcds.",
"Questions/Problems",
" ",
" ",
"Website"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2jwm",
"comment_text": [
"Stats: This comic has been referenced 44 time(s), representing 1.15546218487% of referenced xkcds.",
"That probably explains the negative points. Typing is getting harder btw... and so is the coding. I'm pretty sure I'm on the backside of the Ballmer Peak."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2l24",
"comment_text": [
"That being said. I'm still writing code that works."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Whats the difference between cracking my own back/neck and a Chiropractor doing it? | explainlikeimfive | 1rk0qo | 1 | true | false | 1 | Is it less/more healthy?
Is there a physical difference? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo0nwc",
"comment_text": [
"You don't crack your neck with so much force that it cuts or crimps blood vessels leading to stroke and you aren't paying some quack good money to do something that has little to no scientific support. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo0vom",
"comment_text": [
"Yep. Chiropractors are snake oil selling grifters with facy tables. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo2scb",
"comment_text": [
"Spinal manipulation has shown little evidence of being a more effective treatment than regular interventions. There are studies done that show a little effect but these often are not of a very high quality and most studies that show a positive result for spinal manipulation are done by chiropractors. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo0x7q",
"comment_text": [
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!",
"Takes a breath",
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!",
"Chiropractors have killed people while doing nothing more than cracking their joints to make a noise with no medical benefit. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo0yc3",
"comment_text": [
"I'm only stating what they say. If you have a problem with it take it up to them. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why are photos of people black and white in movies( and probably in real life) | explainlikeimfive | 1rkg5f | 3 | true | false | 0.61 | Like when the police or anyone in a movie(usually action movies) shows a picture of what/who they're going after its usually black and white. Why? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo4t6c",
"comment_text": [
"This question is worded really badly. ",
"I think what yor're getting at is police surveylance photograhs that are usually black and white. ",
"I would guess that it is because before digital photography pictures had to be developed and it is cheaper and faster to do this in black and white instead of colour."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo52ft",
"comment_text": [
"Ty for the info."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo4wnp",
"comment_text": [
"Most photos the cops show to people are printed on a printer, rather than developed. Since laser printing is way cheaper than ink printing, large organisations that print a lot tend to have laser printers mainly. And color laser printers are way more expensive than b/w laser printers (a color laser printer is basically 4 b/w laser printers in one machine). So most of those photos have been printed on a b/w laser printer. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo5258",
"comment_text": [
"Makes sense, Ty."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo5tis",
"comment_text": [
"Furthermore, a person doesn't look any different in a black-and-white printout compared to a colour printout. A colour printout is only useful if the person's hair and eye colour would otherwise be unknown."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why are there many homeless veterans? | explainlikeimfive | 1rjycc | 19 | true | false | 0.74 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo00vu",
"comment_text": [
"Because of what they experience a lot of them have trouble (PTSD, etc) reintegrating back into society. In spite of all the ribbons and flag waving we don't always give them the best support when they return."
],
"score": 19
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo1gov",
"comment_text": [
"Most of he guys with signs aren't really veteran's"
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo05ys",
"comment_text": [
"This. We had an army guy come to the YMCA and ask to volunteer there because he said he was not yet ready to interact with regular civilians all the time. He wanted to try and be \"more humanized\" as he said. He was getting out of the service soon, and obviously been deployed a few times. I believe he had seen some shit."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo4d28",
"comment_text": [
"A lot of the times, especially with the older veterans, it's because their transition out of the service was rushed and left them ill-prepared for what they faced in every day life.",
"They are trying to combat this now with TAPS (Transition Assistance Program) and other programs like that - yet it's something where you'll only take out as much as you put in.",
"For a normal, unmarried enlisted member of the military there is a lot they don't have to worry about. You get a meal card so you can eat at the chow hall (food is taken care of.) You get a barracks room (housing is taken care of.) This leaves them with pretty much all of their income as disposable. Young members of the military (not all, but I'd be willing to bet that it's 50%+ from personal experience) basically pay for cable/internet, junk food, alcohol and whatever else they want to spend their money on (video games, weekend excursions, etc.)",
"Imagine doing that for 4+ years straight, then being shoved to the curb quickly (as helpful as their transition programs can be, it's really a 'check in the box' and they don't care what you take from it as long as you do it and GTFO when it's your time) to now having no real-world education (though leadership training in the military is better than any college classroom can prepare you for), a lesser income WHILE having to pay for rent/food/etc.",
"The GI Bill can help take care of some of this, but it's a toss-up as to if the person wants to use it. Not many 22 year-olds fresh out of the military feel like going to university if they didn't feel like going before they joined.",
"This is just going into the more... general(?) points of it and not taking into account the PTSD/TBI type victims who can rarely afford the help they need, if undocumented and everything like that. There's also the lying homeless out there that feel like a beard and camo jacket with a sign will get them sympathy even if they never served.",
"TL;DR - Transition programs not up to snuff, huge paradigm shift in responsibilities, injuries can play a part. Military doesn't ",
" care too much after you're out, they have new issues to worry about."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo3eg2",
"comment_text": [
"Lots of people can claim to be vets when they are not. As a grunt, I am used to sleeping on the ground, not having anything, and making do with what I do have. I have considered being homeless on several occasions for different reasons. "
],
"score": 3
} | ||
ELI5: Why people are so defensive about their beliefs? | explainlikeimfive | 1rkkjy | 1 | true | false | 0.55 | Whether someone believes theology, ideals, or even the theory of evolution - Why do people claw teeth and nail to impart their understanding of the world upon you? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdobmkc",
"comment_text": [
"Well, your suggesting arrogance is the true arrogance. ",
"Human nature -- because of evolution and cultural conditioning -- resulted in this mess. It was necessary for human survival as a species. It's no longer necessary and has become destructive, violent, murderous, and insane. ",
"To escape it requires tremendous effort, but people can do it. It's difficult because you're overcoming thousands of years of evolution and cultural conditioning, but with extensive practice, study, reflection, and patience, it can be done. I've gone through that process and I'm still going though that process. ",
"But the idea that humans must hold strong beliefs and all,of the modern chaos and insanity that foes along with that is just categorically false. And there are many cultural traditions across many geographic regions for thousands of years who categorically reject the claims that you're making. See, for example, Ancient Greece starting with Socrates or earlier; and ancient roman and the various philosophical schools, such as the Skeptics, Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, and others; and see many forms of Buddhism and Zen Buddhism dating back 6,000 years; and see various forms of Vedanta in India dating back maybe 10,000 years; and see Schopenhauer, Montaigne, Leibniz, and so many other European philosophers throughout the Middle Ages and renaissance and later more modern thinkers. ",
"I'm very sorry, but your knowledge of history, philosophy, and anthropology is just way too limited. ",
"Edit -- to be clear, not all humans get defensive and angry when their beliefs are challenged -- not even close -- see above. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo5mz4",
"comment_text": [
"Some people tie beliefs to self and to self worth. If they are wrong about something it makes them worth less."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdojt0u",
"comment_text": [
"Completely what I was going to say. And so short and simple."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6260",
"comment_text": [
"The Theory of Evolution isn't a belief, it's a scientific theory that relies on evidence. It can't be equated to a belief which is an opinion which is held without evidence. ",
"The reason people are so defensive about their beliefs is due to congnitive dissonance. When a belief is challenged and shown to be incorrect or inaccurate it causes discomfort in the believer which results in anger, embarrassment, etc, and all of this quite often actually leads to the believer having their beliefs even further reinforced to protect their emotional state."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo7ezj",
"comment_text": [
"Because they foolishly and weirdly identify their beliefs -- or at least some of their beliefs, such as religion, politics, sports teams, ethnicity, group identities, national identities, cultural identities, opinions, positions, and so on -- with themselves. ",
"Therefore, when they perceive their precious little beliefs are being attacked, they also simultaneously perceive that they themselves -- their very existence -- is also being attacked. And, so they react the same way as,if they were being physically attacked -- violence, defense, flight, trickery, fight, anger, rage, sadness,and all of the usual insanity. ",
"People need to consciously understand that they are NOT their petty, little, and puny beliefs. And that all beliefs are at least questionable on some level, if not outright verifiably false. ",
"So, let go of your beliefs, suspend your judgment, and leave everyone else alone. ",
"Edit -- typo. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What people are doing to stop the NSA | explainlikeimfive | 1rkmp9 | 5 | true | false | 0.67 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6exj",
"comment_text": [
"what are you doing?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6fwg",
"comment_text": [
"Reposting things about it on reddit."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6ido",
"comment_text": [
"What could you do? I guess you could go live off the grid. But i like my fancy gadges. Im just waiting for the day people of my age range get positions of power, and hoping they really do try to make the changes my generation totes as gospel."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6kv0",
"comment_text": [
"Don't use your real information when getting anything. Which is nearly impossible so you can't. Blame the patriot act. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6p1q",
"comment_text": [
"This isn't really an eli5 question, but seems intended to argue a particular political position. Removing. "
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: How do people gain money from selling "their" houses that isn't really theirs? | explainlikeimfive | 1rkmg0 | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo64av",
"comment_text": [
"You do own the house. You borrowed money and bought a house with it. This means you own the house but you owe someone, or something, money, such as a bank. They don't own your house, not unless you fail to pay them back. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo64h0",
"comment_text": [
"The standard mortgage agreement includes the clause that you can sell the house at any time, provided that the profits from doing so will pay off the lien on the house."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo65ai",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, so I'll answer it in two ways...",
"Let's say I'm buying a house for $100,000. I put $20,000 down and the bank puts up the other $80,000. After a few years of making payments I only owe them $70,000 and I decide to sell. I get $120,000 for the house. I pay back the $70,000 to the bank and keep the $50,000. ",
"Maybe you're asking why the bank doesn't get that $50,000 though? The bank isn't technically the owner of the house. I'm the owner of the house. The bank just holds my debt of $80,000. The mortgage agreement includes a provision that if I fail to pay they can take the house and sell it to recover the money. However by law they can only collect the $80,000 owed to them. If they foreclose and sell for $100,000 they'll take $80,000 and give $20,000 back to me."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo65bf",
"comment_text": [
"Let's say that I take out a mortgage on a house that costs $200,000. I put down $20,000, and over the next year, I pay another $20,000 in mortgage payments. So after one year, I've paid $40,000, and I owe the bank $160,000.",
"Now let's say that the market improves, and I manage to sell the house for $230,000. $160,000 of that is used to pay off the mortgage, and the remaining $70,000 is mine to keep, which offsets all of my payments to date, ($40,000), with a $30,000 profit."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo6ayr",
"comment_text": [
"If you buy a house for its current market value (say, $100,000 for simple maths). A bank lends you the portion of the money not covered by your deposit (say $90,000). This gives you $10,000 of ",
" in the property.",
".",
"Now over the next 5 years, you payments to the loan, your moneylender charges you interest on money still owing. You managed to stay ahead of your payments and reduced your loan to $70,000, and your house has increased in value to $105,000.",
"So, you decide to sell the house an you get 35,000 out of the sale that you didn't have when you started.",
"If you now go to buy another house; your bank will probably lend you $90,000 (or more) because you were a good customer last time, and your house buying budget is now expanded to $125,000."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How a currency can just be invented? Ex: Bitcoin | explainlikeimfive | 1rlcbk | 14 | true | false | 0.68 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoe122",
"comment_text": [
"Bitcoins (or any currency for that matter) have value because people believe it has a value to the point that they are willing to exchange goods and services for it. "
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdofzep",
"comment_text": [
"Is Bitcoin fiat?",
"The computational time needed to arrive at a Bitcoin certainly exists in a physical sense."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoixck",
"comment_text": [
"Anyone can invent a currency, and in fact dozens of people have followed in Bitcoin's footsteps and created similar systems, most with a few cosmetic changes. This may seem weird, but you've seen private currencies for a long time and probably never even noticed them. For example, take ISK, the currency in EVE online. It is entirely issued by the game's developers and only has value to buy things within the game, but there are also exchanges where you can trade USD to ISK just as you can trade USD for EUR. In a very real sense the developers of that game invented a currency.",
"The real trick is to get a currency to become valuable, and to do that you have to get people to start using it. Now, if you start printing up your own monopoly money then people aren't going to value it--there's no scarcity model (i.e. you could go and start printing 100 trillion dollar bills and crash the market), there's no legal backing (i.e. if you pay your bills in monopoly money then you will get sued for ",
" paying your bills and you will lose the lawsuit), and there's no other property that makes your monopoly money superior to your national currency.",
"Bitcoin, however, addresses these points. There's a very strong scarcity model--25 Bitcoins are released every 10 minutes or so and there's very little anyone can do to mess with that rate in any substantial way; there's a maximum of 21 million that will ever be produced. Also there are lots of properties that people want--you can transact nearly instantly online with very low (or no) fees, largely anonymously, without asking a bank for permission. These properties made the initial users want to use Bitcoin which sparked the initial value, which has grown as more people realize that cutting out banks feels pretty awesome (although we're far from that point).",
"As for who started it, he goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, which is roughly a Japanese equivalent of John Doe. It is suspected that he may be British since he used British English spellings in some of the code he wrote. It is believed that he is a single person, but he could very well be more than one person. IIRC the leader of The Bitcoin Foundation, Gavin Anderson, knows Satoshi's identity, or at least has spoken with him (he could ",
" Satoshi for all we know). Satoshi has not publicly revealed himself nor has he made any public statements in a very long time. All of his work is open source, though, so he hasn't been needed since shortly after the creation of the network. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdodnu9",
"comment_text": [
"God doesn't have a treasury department in the sky you need to go through or anything, you just start giving out tokens and say 'this is money' and you have a currency. (Or not even that, people just need to make a group decision to use some tokens as money.)",
"A guy made bitcoin, maybe a team. The code was written to do the various things the bitcoin network does and miners were able to start mining, and thus bitcoin was born.",
"It got value because people started buying it. All that defines value in an open market is what people will pay. If someone is willing to pay $1000 for a bitcoin that's the value of a bitcoin. If tomorrow someone is willing to pay $1500 for a bitcoin that's the new value. If interest in it drops and the most someone will pay is $500 that's the new value."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoep5f",
"comment_text": [
"In this case there was also the want/need for untraceable transactions. "
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: how does 401k matching work? | explainlikeimfive | 1rle0v | 0 | true | false | 0.4 | I'm running a virtual business and I need to find out how much the company needs to spend on retirement funds but I don't know how 401k matching works because it's kind of confusing. From what I read a company should match 100% (but i don't know of what) up to 5% (but i don't know what the 5% is referring to). If anyone could clear up those things for me that'd be appreciated :) | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoe1e5",
"comment_text": [
"up to a limit, your employer will match what you put into your 401k.",
"The 5% is likely referring to your salary."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoe3bh",
"comment_text": [
"So if i give my employees $50,000 per year and they put in 10% of their salary I should only give them up to 5% of their salary? Wouldn't that defeat the 100% matching part?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoflkz",
"comment_text": [
"The 5% is referring to their salary. In the instance you mentioned, its 100% of the first 5%. So say that the employee determines they only want to contribute 5% of their salary, you would be matching what they put in 100%....$2,500 and $2,500 to total $5,000 in 401k contributions. However, if the employee determines that they want to contribute 10%, you would only be matching 100% of the first 5%, but nothing above. So the max in your example that you would be matching would be $2,500. The employee would contribute $5,000, so the total contributions would be $7,500.",
"There are some more complicated scenarios. For instance, my work will match 100% of the first 3% that you contribute (technically, if you only contribute 3%, they are matching 100% of what you contribute). If you contribute 5%, they will match the first 3% at a rate of 100%, but the next 2% is matched at a rate of 50%. They do not match anything over the 5%."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdofm7p",
"comment_text": [
"You match 100% of the 5%. Some companies will match half of the employees contributions. This is largely seen as an evasive tactic as it forces the employee to put in a larger portion of their salary into the 401k to get the full match the company is offering.",
"ie. Employee makes $100,000/year. Company A matches 100% of first 2% of salary. Company B matches 50% of first 4% of salary. In both cases, the maximum the company will contribute is $2,000. However in company A, the employee only has to contribute $2,000 compared to the $4,000 in Company B."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdoe5p3",
"comment_text": [
"Basically you match 100% of the employees contributions, up to 5% of the employees salary (I think).",
"So if your employee makes $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year (lets just say no taxes for the sake of simplicity), you will cover up to a maximum of $3,000 in matching funds.",
"So the employee will put up to $3,000 from his/her own paychecks into the 401K, and you will match it up to $3,000 (5% of total/gross pay). The 100% means you match 100% of what the employee contributes. So if Dan the Man contributes $250 a month to his 401K, you match 100% of that, up to the $3,000 limit (5%). If Dan the Man contributes $300 a month, you match 100% of that, but when he hits the $3,000 limit, you no longer have to contribute. If Dan the Man contributes $200 a month, you match 100% of that, but when he falls short of $3,000, thats not your problem. The contribution limit resets yearly - e.g. after 1 year, you have to allow for $3,000 (5%) again. I do not know if this means new year or 1 year since the employee began getting paychecks.",
"You should put a spreadsheet together of your current employee salaries, make a column for '5%', and start there - you probably want in excess of that budgeted just in case. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5:Why are swear words considered "bad" or looked down upon? | explainlikeimfive | 1rlozb | 2 | true | false | 0.75 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdojhhv",
"comment_text": [
"This has been asked about 500 times. Please search first."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdojdaj",
"comment_text": [
"Language is contextual. There are certain words, phrases, and topics that are appropriate in some settings but not others. We teach children to never use language relating to sex, violence, and defecation because they are not expected to be in situations where this kind of language is useful.",
"It is inappropriate to say \"fuck yeah!\" to someone you just met. It's also inappropriate to say, \"how do you do?\" in the middle of making love."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdol4cw",
"comment_text": [
"Apologies, I just got lazy. I guess it kinda screwed me over lol."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdol6ec",
"comment_text": [
"thanks for the info. But it just seems that swear words are just alternative words rather than bad. But even with what you stated. It is leaving them as bad words. Like any time you hear the word \"fuck\", it is always considered bad, no matter what context given.",
"Sure it doesnt mean much around friends, but it just doesn't seem right in all contexts given with it. You know?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdouqgx",
"comment_text": [
"As pointed out by another user, this is a common subject on ELI5 - hence I've removed this post. ",
"Please use the search bar!"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: What causes the metallic taste in my mouth when working with powerful antennas that put out a lot of RF? | explainlikeimfive | 1rggqr | 5 | true | false | 0.78 | Couldn't find an explanation for it while on searching the interwebs. Edit: I want to know what's happening to my body that causes the taste. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmzp34",
"comment_text": [
"I looked and found this NASA training guide for RF Awareness. Inside it mentions that a sign of over exposure might result in a metallic taste in your mouth. The other symptoms they include are Confusion, Vertigo, Headache, Blurred vision, Overall nauseous feeling, Body heating (Heat Stress), and Shocks and burns. ",
"http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code803/docs/RF%20Awareness%20Training%205-2013.pdf"
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmznxy",
"comment_text": [
"The realization that your level of exposure to RF is above acceptable limits.",
"But seriously - do you have any fillings? High power RF fields will induce a voltage within any conductive metal, which in turn would cause currents to flow within your mouth / teeth. Probably the same reason that you get that metallic taste when you put your tongue on a 9v battery."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn0ffg",
"comment_text": [
"I'd suggest you also try asking at ",
"/r/askscience",
"."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn95yj",
"comment_text": [
"Rf at high levels is like getting Microwaved. In fact Microwave ovens were invented by mistake by Radio techs. If you are working towers, you better make sure you have an rf exposure meter. You could be getting rf burn. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnaxap",
"comment_text": [
"Sufficient RF is either directly stimulating your taste buds (more likely) or it's denaturing some proteins in a way that the resulting compounds stimulate the taste buds."
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5 From where did Country music emerge? | explainlikeimfive | 1rghun | 5 | true | false | 0.78 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn1nh6",
"comment_text": [
"A lot of mountain music (aka bluegrass) evolved from Irish settlers."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn69h3",
"comment_text": [
"Hank Williams Sr."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnsuom",
"comment_text": [
"Pirate kitties"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn022a",
"comment_text": [
"African & Caribbean slaves -> Southern plantations -> Gospel music -> Country & Western -> Country.",
"Edit: Tangentially, you might enjoy ",
"this",
", or ",
"this",
"."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn1z9t",
"comment_text": [
"The music and the language hasn't changed much from the original Scots Irish settlers and even homeland. Some of the deeper pockets (hollers) have speech patterns right out of the 1700's. Ex.: Thems did real good on their maths."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How does raising minimum wage to $15 an hour benefit anyone? | explainlikeimfive | 1rlx2u | 38 | true | false | 0.71 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdojw40",
"comment_text": [
"Because if you make the current minimum wage you live under the federal poverty line for a family of 2. ",
"The idea is that the minimum wage should adjust with the dollar to match inflation.",
"For example lets say minimum wage is $1 an hour. And $1 buys you a loaf of bread. ",
"A few years go by and the dollar gets weaker, now bread costs $5 but minimum wage remains the same. Now you are getting paid less without realizing it because your dollar has less buying power. "
],
"score": 41
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdolh59",
"comment_text": [
"Thats the key, the dollar has become weaker (meaning it buys less) but without any law to adjust the minimum wage it remains the same. Thus your getting less buying power for the same amount of labor. Thats the issue that some people wish to address by linking the minimum wage to inflation so that you would get the same amount of buying power for your labor regardless of the current value of the currency. "
],
"score": 18
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdott95",
"comment_text": [
"ITT: A horde of libertarians and a very narrow view. Lemme balance that by giving a more leftist POV.",
"The small-scale examples given in the other examples, whereby rise in wages and rise in living expenses are directly correlated, is true inside of a small-scale closed system. However, it fails to account for changes that occur at larger scales.",
"First off, you are absolutely right. Just raising the minimum wage will do very little on it's own. However, it is an important part of creating a ",
". You'll also want to ensure business regulation will prevent monopolies from emerging in the new markets created by the new demand, and you want to make sure your tax scheme is progressive enough to prevent the rich from getting so rich they flip it around again, creating the situation you described. So, yes, preventing an executive from making too much more than the workers can help, but you have to be careful not to overdo it; you still need investment capital.",
"Simply put, the health of an economy is tied to the flow of money. If money is changing hands, it generally means things are getting done, goods and services are trading hands and have good value associated with it, and you have an example of the old saying \"A rising tide lifts all boats.\" While the actual value of individual units of currency might change, in an economy that is both growing and health, purchasing power increases. As growth is primarily fueled by technological innovation and doesn't really look to slow down, increasing the value of labour to match is healthy!",
"The next thing to understand is that poor people and rich people handle their money very differently. Poor people, they spend their money as soon as they get it, on things like rent, food, clothes, medical care, etc. They don't (and can't) hold on to very much. By contrast, rich people traditionally either save their money, or shunt their money off into the financial sector, where it is ",
". Ideally, that money is invested in ways that enhance the economy by keeping the money flowing; into businesses, especially small businesses, on a competitive stock market, and into limited markets. That dynamic of investiture is what forms the basis of the financial sector of the market.",
"Now, something interesting happens when the system gets \"top heavy\", when the richer portion of society has a disproportionately large chunk of the money compared to the poorer half. (like, for example, in a society which believes in supply side \"trickle down\" economics) Essentially, this causes the financial sector, especially small portions of it, to become bloated with capital. Money is invested at a faster rate than growth can keep up with, because money is not the only limiting factor on growth.",
"Investment is rarely straightforward. Oftentimes, an investment is actually an investment into an investment ad nausium which is finally being invested in the actual market. What happens is that large portions of the economy are segregated off, circulating only in an incestuous subset of the financial industry chasing real value to be invested in for growth. Other people, usually middle class people who want to be rich, take out loans in order to invest in these seemingly-valuable markets. Pretty soon, there is more money being invested than the things are actually worth. When people realize this has happened and they won't see a return on their investments, the bubble \"pop\".",
"This is known as a \"Bust\", and it involves the sudden loss of value in a market as everyone tries to get out as once. This not only releases a bunch of money back \"into the wild\", leading to inflation, but saddles a bunch of people with worthless investments they can't get rid of. Booms and busts are commonplace in an economy; without regulation, they are extremely vicious, creating periods of extreme growth followed by even worse depressions.",
"So why does this matter for minimum wage?",
"Because the people making minimum wage don't invest in the financial market. Money comes to them through their jobs and is immediately spent on ",
", which pays other people their salaries so they can spend it on ",
", and so on and so forth. When you pay minimum wage workers, more, they still do that, but they have more options. They might be able to afford to eat out and eat better, so new markets open up for restaurants and quality food. They can buy electronics and entertainment, so those markets expand. Competition in these markets is no longer strictly a race to the bottom in terms of prices, which creates a more diversified economy as luxury options move in. You still have people who own those companies and make lots of money and are rich, but they are not making quite as much as they were, their profit margins are narrower (further encouraging competition and reducing monopolization) and less money is shunted off into the financial sector, so booms are not so frantic and busts are not so drastic.",
"A \"demand-side\" economy sees more regular, stable growth in markets that are more in line with the long-term value of a market, because most of the money is coming from consistent spenders (the poor) instead of investment chasers (the rich). The growth of the economy is seen directly by everyone, instead of just to investors. Rich people still exist and still invest, providing the raw capital needed to break new ground into fresh markets and reaping the benefits, but because the system is more bottom-heavy, investments are more metered and safer. Less runaway booms and busts.",
"Either way, you get growth, usually fairly comparable numbers, when you look at it over long periods of time. But in a supply side economy where minimum wage is low, thus devaluing labour and massively increasing profits for the rich, the economy spikes and drops harshly, wasting capital and hurting the people at the bottom who can't afford to have their labour devalued any further. In a demand-side economy, the growth is a steady line, with little dips and rises. Less money is squandered and prices are more stable, so your money goes further!",
"So, everyone else here is absolutely right; in a closed system, raising the minimum wage would be meaningless. But it's not a closed system; the economy of labour exists alongside things like financial sector, like government and public spending, and like the global market.",
"*",
"*\nHigher minimum wage and redistribution of the economy so poor people have a higher proportion of the money leads to steadier, more stable economic growth with better competition by growing new markets in proportion to the consumer rather than the investor. However, this sort of economy also requires greater regulation and progressive taxation."
],
"score": 11
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdomw69",
"comment_text": [
"Wages adjust on their own all the time. Federally-mandated minimum wage levels do not, unless you pass a law to either change it, or permanently tie it to inflation."
],
"score": 9
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdox27k",
"comment_text": [
"This statement is simply not true",
"Cite your work. Defend your statement.",
"Not saying what you wrote is true or false, but there arent anymore cites in your post than the parent"
],
"score": 8
} | |
ELI5: The current protests in Kiev, Ukraine about the EU/Russia | explainlikeimfive | 1rh2vv | 11 | true | false | 0.99 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn7krr",
"comment_text": [
"Ukraine has been in talks to join the EU for several years. Many Ukranians see entry into the EU as a step forward in economy, job creation, mobility, development, etc. This is because several postsoviet states, including the baltic states and Poland, have experienced growth and prosperity over the past couple decades because of the EU. Things like increased foreign investment to develop infrastructure and create jobs and better chances for emigration would directly affect the standard of living for the individual.",
"Ukraine is a major postsoviet state. It is contiguous with russia. Russia is attempting to create a regional organization cum economic bloc comparative with the EU to compete with it and increase its influence. However, being part of this is not well thought of in Ukraine, well, in most postsoviet states because Russians, who dominated the soviet governments, badly mismanaged nationalisms and resource distribution under the soviet system. For non-russians, the soviet system was, in a simplified analogy, simply a new imperialism. As well, Western Europe has more capital for investment and more opportunities to offer.",
"If Russia cannot convince the Ukraine to join its regional organization, it basically means the organization will be geographically fragmented and, well, not very sensible. Russian politicians have put political pressure on the Ukraine to join their bloc rather than the EU by threatening to renegotiate their gas sales, which the Ukrainian energy infrastructure is dependent upon.",
"As well, the current Ukrainian leadership, under Yanukovich, is viewed circumspectly by a number of indivduals, because he has jailed the former PM, Tymonshenko, (actually, over supposedly shady energy dealings with russia) as well because he seems to be more culturally and politically tied to the Russo-Ukranian linguistic/ethnic community and to Russia itself. His government's choice to suspend the integration process is a deeply unpopular move, and could be seen as a cowardly or corrupt move, betraying the people to Russian pressure or, ...perhaps, incentives."
],
"score": 14
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn9b08",
"comment_text": [
"Well summarized"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn9e3e",
"comment_text": [
"This is an amazing, dumbed down explanation. Perfect. I visited Kiev this summer. When I got back, my uncle said now when I see news from Ukraine on tv, it'll be like news of your second home. I absolutely love Ukraine and would hate to see it fall victim to mismanagement. Seeing the tents set up in European Square, right outside where my hostel was, is stunning. I would love to go back there and photograph/film the protests. Fuck responsibilities. I assumed that joining with Russia would look like a 21st century USSR, and if I am understanding you completely, that is what it is, to a certain extent. Kiev is a beautiful city but I can definitely see where it could use economic improvements. Thank you so much for this explanation. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cexi16a",
"comment_text": [
"well that helped me and saved me the trouble of sorting through 10 or more news articles. Thank you."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cfitwkq",
"comment_text": [
"Do you happen to have a source for this? I'm writing a research paper."
],
"score": 2
} | ||
ELI5: Why aren't terrorist attacks committed more frequently? | explainlikeimfive | 1rhao4 | 0 | true | false | 0.43 | I don't understand why smaller scale acts of terrorism aren't committed on a more regular basis. Are there simply not enough people willing to carry out the attacks? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn8yla",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty much the latter.",
"Most people are sane, and don't want to kill, injure or even inconvenience anyone. A very small number are willing to think about such things, and a few of them even begin planning them. But it takes a special kind of nut to actually follow through."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn8p3i",
"comment_text": [
"What are smaller scale acts in your opinion here? ",
"Are we talking on the global scale or in a specific country? "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn92w0",
"comment_text": [
"Derailing a train, public shootings, small bombs, etc.",
"I guess I'm talking about First World countries, but with an emphasis on the United States."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn95z2",
"comment_text": [
"That combined with the fact a lot of police are regularly combing through the stupider ones. \"Hey I want help assassinating somebody!\" - a nutter\n\"Sure I'll help you, just give me some incriminating evidence.\" ",
"\nSeriously, the people who are stupid enough to actually try anything are also the ones stupid enough to get caught easily."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnariy",
"comment_text": [
"It is important to understand the role of the media here.",
"Most of the potential domestic terrorists are fat lazy selfish cunts who will never get up off the couch. Their media outlets (even their \"alternative\" media) are very careful to keep their pet extremists angry enough to vote, but not quite angry enough to shoot people.",
"Most of the potential foreign terrorists are illiterate, poor and not actually that aggressive. Certain media outlets would like you to think the Middle East is completely full of axe-crazy fundies. In reality they have about as many fundies as we do, but without the fatness and laziness and media control that combine to inhibit their behavior in the United States."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: It's common in Australia for all police officers to carry a handheld breathalyzer with them while on patrol, why don't all American police carry them? | explainlikeimfive | 1rhx1m | 1 | true | false | 0.6 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdng4ab",
"comment_text": [
"There's a difference between a traffic cop and a beat cop. One is primarily patrolling the highways/roads and probably has a breathalyzer. ",
"The other is responding to various calls, probably rarely pulls people over, and therefore doesn't carry a breathalyzer."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnhn00",
"comment_text": [
"American police carry them just like Australian police. You were misinformed if someone told you American cops on patrol don't carry a breathalyzer. Often they carry more than one. One of them is a simple alcohol sensor built into a flashlight, so when they shine it in somebody's face it takes a quick reading of their breath for alcohol vapor. A positive ID for alcohol vapor can be used as probable cause in an auto stop, which may cause the officer to use a second, much more accurate, breathalyzer usually kept in the patrol car. Also, public intoxication and underage consumption are violations that would require breathalyzing, but not an automobile."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnel3l",
"comment_text": [
"I don't know what it's like in Australia. But in the US, breathalyzers aren't actually useful unless you're stopping cars to check for drunk driving. There's no other reason you'd need to determine someone's BAC."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnfw97",
"comment_text": [
"say a police officer sees someone driving erratically, shouldn't they have a reliable and accurate way on hand to test their sobriety?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnftvs",
"comment_text": [
"As someone else said unless someone is performing a DUI they wouldn't need one. American police typically have their hands full with actual violent crime and traffic enforcement. "
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Why do I & 80 million people need to lose their health insurance & get forced onto the non-working exchanges? | explainlikeimfive | 1rhs3w | 0 | true | false | 0.4 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnetpm",
"comment_text": [
"You are looking for an argument, not an explanation. Removed."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnertm",
"comment_text": [
"Obama promised every American that they could keep their plan if it was purchased prior to the the law being signed in March 2010. This was true. However, what he didn't say was that if your insurance provider changed your plan it would lose its grandfathered status. This gave insurance companies (who are against Obamacare) an easy way to ensure millions \"lose\" their insurance - they just changed the plans by a small amount, enough to trigger the clause in the Affordable Care Act.",
"However, the good news is that you will almost certainly get better coverage for less money by going with a plan from one of the exchanges. Only 0.6% of people are paying more under an exchange plan than they were under their old plan, and these people are not at your end of the market."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdng1hj",
"comment_text": [
"Your question was explained ",
"here",
". The fact that you don't like the explanation and refuse to accept it is not ELI5's problem."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdndnck",
"comment_text": [
"A). I'm sorry to hear you may loose your insurance, that isn't right.",
"\nB) Your employer and insurance company chose to boot you, to save cash and abuse the safety net system. It is not part of the ACA policy.",
"\nC). The exchanges work in places where they have been allowed to. In many places it isn't considered politically advantageous to make the system work, do it doesn't. Give it some time and the system will improve. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnerd1",
"comment_text": [
"I'm assuming you are a single adult male, in which case I totally agree! Of course your female and parent coworkers might have different needs. Do you know which of the basic requirements your old plan lacked, that is forcing it to get dropped? "
],
"score": 3
} | ||
ELI5: Why does socialism go wrong? | explainlikeimfive | 1rhtrr | 0 | true | false | 0.4 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdndn98",
"comment_text": [
"What part of it are you refering to? There are many types of socialist economic systems. Socialism is an economic system, not a political one, and they exist everywhere, some places without even knowing they have a socialist title. Hit wikipedia for a brief understanding and broaden your question for an answer closer to what you want."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdne0ey",
"comment_text": [
"You seem to be confusing socialism and communism. Welcome to the '50s, ",
"McCarthy",
". "
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdne7sj",
"comment_text": [
"You're describing an American propaganda-based version of socialism. That type of extreme socialism doesn’t exist in practice anymore, except maybe in communist North Korea. Most countries in the world are socialist and capitalist. Balancing the two economic goals tends to make countries more successful. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdndx14",
"comment_text": [
"Anytime someone paraphrases that Thatcher quote I immediately want to start punching faces."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnermn",
"comment_text": [
"Fair enough. But you're not describing socialism. You're describing Marxism."
],
"score": 2
} | ||
ELI5: If heat can only be passed from a hotter body to a cooler body, how does adding ice cubes make your drink cooler? | explainlikeimfive | 1ridni | 2 | true | false | 0.76 | Always baffled me, this one... | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnjf18",
"comment_text": [
"In this case the hotter body is your drink. The heat passes to the colder ice cubes, warming them up and causing them to melt."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnklui",
"comment_text": [
"Because the warmer temperature is moving to the ice, making the drink colder."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnomen",
"comment_text": [
"Exactly! That is the idea behind thermal energy.",
"Drink has higher thermal energy.",
"I've cubes have lower",
"Thermal energy transfers from high to low",
"So drink =10, warm",
"Ice cubes = 0, cold",
"The heat of the drink transfers to the ice cubes ",
"Ice cubes = 5 now, drink =5. ",
"The ice cubes melt because the ice has reached enough thermal energy to change the state of the water molecules from solid to liquid."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdobdob",
"comment_text": [
"Haha thank you I thoroughly enjoyed that!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnkybx",
"comment_text": [
"You have a cup of hot water and a cup of cold water. You mix the two until you have lukewarm water.",
"The final temperature is lower than that of the hot water, and higher than that of the cold water. The hot water \"cooled down\" to lukewarm water. The cold water \"heated up\" to lukewarm water.",
"Likewise - other endothermic processes aside - ice can warm up and the drink can cool down until they reach some average temperature.",
"It's also important to note that much of the cooling is done by the process of ice melting, not just heat transfer to ice."
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: Why don't chemical/processing/manufacturing plants combine their facilities in order to increase efficiency/profit? | explainlikeimfive | 1rif4q | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | Drive through a rural US highway in historically poor area and you will see several dirty industries close to it. In a particular stretch of highway there is a iron smelter, a petroleum refinery and up the road there is a coke producer (they process coal into fuel pellet type thing) and a activated charcoal filter manufacturer, there is also a power plant close by. As you drive by you will see waste by products out of the smoke stack, the refinery and the smelter in particular are always shooting out blue flames from one of their chimneys. Why not built a combined plant from several different companies where efficiency is optimized and waste products can be reused for different processes? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnjz9l",
"comment_text": [
"The processes are radically different. You'd just wind up having the same facilities, closer to each other.",
"If there were waste products they could collect and share for other purposes, you can be sure they would be doing that and selling them to each other anyway."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnk340",
"comment_text": [
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it probably has a lot to do with the regulations required for each industry - there are numerous health and safety each factory has to undergo. Every additional piece you add complicates the ability for the business to operate. Complexity is typically not good for manufacturing - simplicity is almost always cheaper.",
"In India, my grandfather has ownership of a steel mill. The mill used to have a forge area, a cutting area, a chemical treatment area, and an assembly area. All in a single compound. The chemical fumes from the area where they nickle plated piping would float all around the factory floor, so that the guys who were grinding and cutting away at the metal pieces would get a good strong whiff of it themselves.",
"There were minimal safety features involved (not uncommon for manufacturing work in India), but that is what made it possible - if you applied U.S. Health and Safety standards, every worker in the factory would need chemical protection for hands, body, feet, eyes, they would need masks, etc. This is huge expense for the guy whose only job is to cut the metal sheets as they come down the line.",
"That doesn't mean that chemical/processing/manufacturing plants don't have such agreements to move waste material around - they probably do, especially if there is a financial advantage to it. But I imagine there are regulations on that as well, and trying to sell the byproduct of factory 1 to factory 2 might end up complicated so much so by regulation that its cheaper to dump it than it is to sell/transfer it."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnl8bb",
"comment_text": [
"In addition the EPA regs now usually mandate that any infrastructure changes that are over a certain percentage of square footage, or dollar market value (or any of several criteria) require full environmental review and permitting and are treated as entirely new facilities. ",
"So essentially this means that to raze a smelter and combine it with a coke production facility would require them to get a full environmental review, permits, and mitigation plan for razing the smelter - which could run into hundreds of millions of dollars (to ELIMINATE a facility). Then to add on to the production facility the EPA and other agencies would treat it as new construction of BOTH plants, and require the full process for each. Again running into multiple millions of dollars for EACH facility.",
"This is why there haven't been hardly any new refineries built in decades, and why there are so many shuttered and abandoned industrial facilities rather than selling off the land. The permitting process simply to tear down a facility is cost prohibitive. It is cheaper and easier to just \"mothball\" it and walk away."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnls0k",
"comment_text": [
"Generalizing here, but yes.",
"Without performing specific market and efficiency analysis it is hard gauge, but I would think in general that is probably more true than not. However sometimes the more efficient process (from a process->production->profit standpoint) is EXTREMELY harmful environmentally. Processes using mercury are a good example. Mercury is a byproduct of coke production. Environmental regulations controlling the allowable emission of mercury by necessity increase the cost and decrease the efficiency of production. However until these regulations were implemented mercury toxicity levels were rapidly reaching dangerous levels in numerous industrialized areas of the world (not just the U.S.)"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnlutt",
"comment_text": [
"Oh, and in some cases (hydrocarbon refineries is a perfect examples) it is cheaper not to build anything. The regulatory expense of building a new refinery can no longer be recouped in any reasonable time frame. Which is why the existing refineries aren't being replaced. The profit margin on fuel refining is so low that the companies can never recoup the cost of building a refinery before the refinery will reach end of life."
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: If a country gets richer, does that mean some other countries somewhere are getting equally as poorer? | explainlikeimfive | 1riyx7 | 6 | true | false | 0.71 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnq37k",
"comment_text": [
"No. There's not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. Total global productivity has increased several orders of magnitude over the last couple of centuries. "
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnrm7w",
"comment_text": [
"No. But a lot of people instinctively ",
" this way, and would like you to feel guilty about having the things you have because people in developing countries don't have them.",
"When you get a new iPhone, these people will try to spoil your fun by reminding you that \"80% of the people in the world have never used a phone\"* as if your owning new technology was the major factor holding back the development of Somalia.",
"* Also this isn't true."
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnqg51",
"comment_text": [
"Not necessarily, but possibly. Assume that each nation is actually one person for simplicity. ",
"If I (representing my nation) walk into your house (representing your country), put a gun in your face, and take all of your stuff, then I'm necessarily richer and you are necessarily poorer. There are also external effects on people who become aware of this event, but we can ignore them for purposes of your question. This is a case where my wealth increase correlates precisely with your wealth decrease. ",
"However, assume that I walk into your house and offer you to sell you a car for $10,000 and you agree. Assuming that's the car's actual fair market value, then neither of us are better off at all, but we're both in the same positions at that transaction's moment. But then, I take that $10,000, invest it, and get $20,000 back from the investment. I've now increased my wealth by $10,000 while you haven't lost anything. And, presumably, my investment has also benefitted third-parties who are also better off also without you losing anything. ",
"Now, further assume that you use the car to get a lucrative job that would have been too far away for you to take in the absence of having an affordable and reliable car, which I sold to you. This new job pays you much more than anything you had before, and so your wealth increases without diminishing my wealth. Presumably, your employer has also benefitted from your labor too in amount that exceeds your cost to the employer. And let's say you then leverage this job into even better jobs while also accumulating investment capital, which further enriches you. ",
"In this second scenario, I'm richer, the recipients of my investment are richer, you're richer, your employer is richer, and the recipients of your investments are richer -- and nobody is poorer. ",
"These same scenarios with an infinite number of permutations happen every day at national and international levels. These free, voluntary, and consensual transactions -- overall -- lead to better aggregate wealth results for all, assuming full information, zero coercion, and zero fraud. Obviously, there are individual exceptions, but the system overall -- with inherent disadvantages that we work to minimize -- seems to be the best devised and implemented as a practical matter. ",
"So, if there's force, coercion, trickery, or violence, then one nation's wealth will probably come at the expense of the other nation's wealth. With free, consensual, voluntary, and informed trade, then it's likely that all participants will benefit (although it's unlikely that they would benefit in exactly the same amounts). "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnqfoo",
"comment_text": [
"No. What you are saying is referred to as the idea that the world is a ",
".",
"A negative-sum game is one where the total value of the players' assets is less than it was before the \"game\" was played. War, for example, is negative-sum: one side may end up better off than it was before, but the total wealth is less. All of the dead soldiers, and the production of (now) useless tanks, bullets, and bombs is a loss. If one side ends up better, it is only because the other side got ",
".",
"A zero-sum game is one where the total value of the players' assets is the same as it was before the \"game\" was played. A poker tournament is a zero-sum game. Everyone buys in at $50, and gets 50 chips in front of him at the beginning. After the tournament is over, one guy has all the chips and wins.",
"A positive-sum game is one where the total value of the players' assets is more as it was before the \"game\" was played. A market economy (including the modern global economy) is a positive-sum game. Some individuals and countries get richer. Some may even end up poorer than they were before, if they make poor choices. But overall, the total wealth is greater than it used to be.",
"If China gets richer, it does not hurt countries in Africa. In fact, it makes it easier for them to modernize, since all of the goods they need are now cheaper than ever.",
"The only sense in which one country getting more powerful hurts other countries is in a ",
". For example, after WWII, every other country was smashed, but the U.S. was untouched. Americans were vastly richer than even Western Europeans. Later, Western Europe caught up, but it was not because Americans got poorer. Europeans just got richer, too."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnuphy",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty much right. Though in a particular rudimentary sense, couldn't wealth be thought of as a right to a certain amount of the earth's natural resources? In that case it would be zero-sum."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: If a movie does well in the box office, who gets all of the money/profit? | explainlikeimfive | 1rj2k2 | 8 | true | false | 0.76 | Does it go straight to the director? Actors? The movie theatre itself? I've wondered this for some time. To make it easier, let's say the movie does extremely well. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnr2i4",
"comment_text": [
"The company that produced it (Paramount, Warner Bros., etc). The people involved with making the film are generally paid by this company, and the company gets the profit from the actual output (the movie). I'm sure some actors and such have contracts that state that they'll get part of the profits from the film though."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdns0hs",
"comment_text": [
"This. Basically.",
"To expand on it some:",
"The movie theater makes a very small cut of ticket sales, most goes to the producer. The theater generally makes it's money off of concessions.",
"Actors, and by extension directors etc., are paid by the producer. Their contract can be set up in many ways, the three most common being a one time payment, a percentage of profit payment, or a residual (payment per showing)."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdo4mui",
"comment_text": [
"Oooo me..me!",
"I grew up in a movie theater and I think more detail about the process required.",
"Everyone makes a lot of money but who gets it all depends on how well the movie does. ",
"There are a lot of people paid up front for their services. \nMany of these people are technical/support and are often paid at a flat rate but depending on their talents might be able to negotiate royalties. ",
"Actors, producers and directors often receive their pay in a combination of flat pay and royalties over-time. Even if the movie flops, they already get some cash. This is why this group has to negotiate, because if the movie does really well you don't want to have worked for too cheap and screwed yourself out of ass tons of cash. ",
"Next we move to the theaters and producers. \nFor theaters deciding what movies to show are a gamble. Producers don't take a flat cut of sales. They take different percentages over time and these percentages vary from company to company. ",
"A producer will present a movie they want to distribute to the theater operators. The producer may ask for something like 80% cut of the profits for the first 2 weeks of box office receipts and then maybe bring it down to 50% later. (random imaginary numbers). The theater owner then looks at the movies being offered and tries to ascertain how long the movie will stay popular or if it will be popular at all. If theaters think the movie is too risky and turn out will be poor they haggle down the price or refuse to show the movie in their theater. Now that the terms have been decided, theaters have to pay up front to purchase rights to show the movie. Then they hope to god that they movie will be popular for more than 2 weeks because they won't really be making any money before that time period. ",
"So now the movie premiers and the producers starts to make bank. The first weekend is the most important because that is when studios mop up the biggest cut of ticket sales. ",
"2 weeks pass, movie is still popular and now the theater can mop up without the huge cut going to the producers. if it turns out to be a movie popular as long as the Avengers, theaters will make ass tons of money on top of their concessions that is their primary source of income. ",
"But what if the movie flops immediately?\nThe reputation of the all the people that made/starred/worked in the movie is diminished and you lose your bargaining power with the theaters and hence can loss access to key markets. \nThe producer absorbs the loss. ",
"If the movie flops later, the theater takes most of the loss. Sometimes people lose interest in a movie after a week of it being out. The theater next time will be wary of this producer and probably negotiate a shorter run and less seating for that producer as well as a larger piece of the profits. ",
" Too bad\nEdit:Typos..gotta fix em all"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnr054",
"comment_text": [
"What do you mean?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnr054",
"comment_text": [
"What do you mean?"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Is this a good time to buy bitcoin, and how do I do it if it is? | explainlikeimfive | 1rizsk | 5 | true | false | 0.86 | And if I made a profit, how would I use it to buy/sell? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnu7m2",
"comment_text": [
"Bitcoin is not intended to be used for investment, it's intended to be used to perform anonymous online transactions. If that's your intention, it's always a great time to buy.",
"If you plan on speculating on the price going up, it's a pretty volatile thing to get into. You're basically gambling - hoping that people keep wanting to buy it for more money than you paid before ",
" walks away from it."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnqaln",
"comment_text": [
"No one knows for sure what the price of Bitcoin is going to do. It could go up or could go down, certainly lots of people have opinions but no one knows for sure. So no one can tell you for sure if it's a good time to buy.",
"Personally I would say that it is not, but I thought it would not break $300 so what the hell do I know. ",
"If you buy in, and if the price goes up then you make a profit. You can then use the coins to buy goods and services directly or you can change them back into cash (in whatever currency you like). Technically anyone can sell you things in exchange for bitcoins, but there aren't that many places to do this yet (but the number of retailers is growing). "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnsr1v",
"comment_text": [
"yeah It's not a very trustworthy system. In ireland there's only two sellers online, and you have to deposit money direct into their bank account. I allllmost bought some when bitcoin was at around 300"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnsp1t",
"comment_text": [
"In my experience, buying bitcoins is not an exceptionally easy task - especially if you live outside the US. I've been trying to buy some since they were £30 and I've still failed to gain verification at any exchange.",
"If you're even considering buying some I suggest you get verified somewhere like Coinbase if you're in the USA or Kraken.com if not. That way you'll at least be able to sometime in the future (although for me Kraken has been \"processing\" my address for a few weeks now lol)"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnw6xs",
"comment_text": [
"Using bitcoin for investment purposes requires the same skills that investing in the stock market requires. You need to understand the market and what could make it rally and fall in price.",
"I don't recommend it. You would have to be very involved in the culture to have any idea of where it is going next, and that's just to have an idea. Bitcoins are infamously volatile."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why are people stupid? (serious) | explainlikeimfive | 1rj802 | 0 | true | false | 0.4 | I know this sounds like a dumb questions but I really want to know. Is it a low IQ? Is it just bad decisions? Is it a specific thought process? What is stupidity and why are some people stupid and others aren't? I know everyone makes mistakes, but do some just make more than others? Fill me in Reddit I want to get a good solid answer for this. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnswc0",
"comment_text": [
"Environment affects intelligence. If someone is extremely malnourished throughout their childhood, it will affect how their body develops, including the brain. If someone is encouraged to challenge their brain, they will be better at using it. ",
"Genes may also affect intelligence. There is always genetic variation within a species. This goes for pretty much everything that isn't fatal. ",
"Some people are smart in different ways. Someone could be great at math, but awful at everything else, or vice versa. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnt75a",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks for replying, ",
"So what you are mainly talking about is development of the brain then. If you are born with a hindering mutation or a beneficial one, and how that brain is raised environmentally. That helps me understand a lot.",
"So if I see a \"stupid person\" that to me, makes bad decisions, uses non logical reasoning, or fails in comprehension, is it safe to say that it is mostly not their fault for being stupid? Its almost entirely based on outside factors?",
"What I'm getting at is, you don't chose to be stupid, you just are?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdntil6",
"comment_text": [
"I tentatively say yes. I am not an expert, and anything to do with living things is usually far more complicated than it looks. ",
"You can choose to try to learn and understand, but sometimes you just don't understand. An example of this is students learning in schools. Though more knowledge doesn't really equal more intelligence. ",
"Edit:I just remembered! Parts of your brain that you use consistently more will physically grow. This is observable in taxi drivers, whose \"mapping\" parts of the brain are larger than average. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnxdpe",
"comment_text": [
"oh thats cool! thank you"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnskz1",
"comment_text": [
"They're just not as smart as I"
],
"score": 0
} | |
ELI5:Why is the holocaust so heavily covered in American high school history? | explainlikeimfive | 1rdvms | 24 | true | false | 0.72 | We spent a month in several classes talking about the holocaust but we didn't learn about any other atrocities. Many people that go to my college aren't even aware of the Armenian genocide or the Rape of Nanking. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmao9f",
"comment_text": [
"It wasn't about religion. It was about race. Plus. Stalin killed more. "
],
"score": 21
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm8w2m",
"comment_text": [
"Remind me of the last time 6 million people were wiped out due purely to their religion. ",
"I think it's a shame that schools don't cover stuff like the Rape of Nanking and the Holodomor as much. Still, the holocaust is by far the most dramatic event. "
],
"score": 11
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmclij",
"comment_text": [
"Stalin killed more, but that's not why the Holocaust is so terrible. The reason that the Holocaust is worse than Holomordor is not just the death count (11 People, 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust; 1.8-5 million Ukranians killed in Holomordor) but how they were killed. ",
"Operation Reinhart was started because ",
"I'm going to repeat that. Hitler killed people industrially, on conveyor belts and mechanically, because they weren't dying fast enough by there own means. ",
"Stalin starved his people to death, which is a horrible way to go. But he let them go. Hitler realised he didn't have enough bullets to kill them. It would be more economical to build chambers full of poison to kill people and industrially dispose of them there. ",
"Just look at the name. ",
" ",
" The same word that's used when you have a cockroach infestation. That's what Nazis treated the Undesirables as. Animals. Sub humans. Not worth the bullet it would take to kill them. ",
"Stalin killed more people, but he didn't build complexes to kill them faster. He let them die mercifully, not stuffed into cattle trains. "
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmb6v2",
"comment_text": [
"I can think of a few reasons. Firstly, the US was very directly involved in World War II so the Holocaust is much more relevant to US history than most other atrocities of that order of magnitude. Secondly, the Germans were on a path to global conquest so the outcome of WW II is probably the most significant event of the 20th century in terms of explaining how the world is currently shaped."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmd2e1",
"comment_text": [
"I feel like \"Majority of shot callers in US educational system are of jewish descent\" needs a source or some backup info."
],
"score": 5
} | |
How come so many redditors are racist? | explainlikeimfive | 1rdx2j | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | "There isn't a single European that doesn't hate Gypsies. I swear to god, even gang members and shit hate them
And we have reasons to" +65 upvotes in 40 minutes Someone calls him out for being racist:
" "There isn't a single European that doesn't hate Gypsies."
Yes, there is.
And further; fuck you, you racist piece of shit."
And he recieves -44 downvotes in 30 minutes. So how come that reddit, whos followers usually claim to be progressive can upvote this shit? P.S. As a swede I would also like to refute the statement that all Europeeans hate gypsis. In the previous months there have been a huge critizim by media towards institutions that mistreat romani people(also known as gypsys). Not all europeeans are racist. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9hzc",
"comment_text": [
"No, they're generally not homeless. I don't know about the gypsies in the rest of Europe, but in Sweden most of them lives in flats. They live by their own rules and laws, mostly ignoring the laws of the country they live in. Stealing is a non-issue for many them. For example, most thefts of copper in Sweden are made by gypsies. Shoplifting is extremely common.\nOf course there's a lot of law-abiding gypsies as well, but the ones that aren't are the ones that stick out. "
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9dgu",
"comment_text": [
"The fact is that lots of ",
" are racist. There are many cultural reasons for that, and potentially biological ones as well.",
"People say things on the internet that they wouldn't say in real life. That's what anonymity does for you."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9it8",
"comment_text": [
"The gypsies in question aren't homeless strictly speaking. They're more like travelling communities that travel in caravans and such, then set up camp on unused or private lands.",
"They can be quite large communities, but the issues only tend to arise if the land they're on is privately owned and the legal turmoil involved in getting them moved on.",
"Other than that, they're like any other community. 99% of the time they're perfectly harmless and peaceful, but a certain contingent ruin it for everyone."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9b4o",
"comment_text": [
"I'm an American. I honestly have no clue what modern gypsies are. Are they just homeless people? Are they organized? Do they do anything illegal?"
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmbwdt",
"comment_text": [
"People don't exclusively hate gypsies because of race. They do because there are a lot of subcultures of them who literally have no moral compunctions against stealing. As a matter of fact, my own grandparents working in a medical office had a specific \"thing\" where they would never send anyone to collection agencies. If the people never paid them they would just let them be. And they said that over the course of working their career, most people would pay, some poor people might try to get out of it, but one group who very clearly often had money but never paid anyways was a big group of gypsies. And that during this time, this group of gypsies apparently realized this and spread the word, leading to him doing a lot of work he was never paid for over the course of years exclusively to a gypsy population. And this was done by people coming in wearing expensive clothes, etc.",
"You can't decide that anyone who dislikes any group is doing it because of nothing but opinions on superior biology, whatever that means. Some people very much often come in contact with those people, with those people often causing big problems for them. Over time, this leads to spite. The people who complain the most about other people being racist are often the ones who have never actually had this happen to them, so they have no conception of what this type of avoidance would really manifest as. It's a naive privileged opinion coming from someone who doesn't actually understand what it's like to live with this issue constantly in your face. Note of course that the poorest people are generally the most openly racist, since they're the ones who come in contact with times this may be more of a reality for them. (And have less ability to determine the distinctions in their mind.)"
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: What does adding a "pinch of salt" actually do to foods and recipes? That doesn't seem like it would change the flavor much... | explainlikeimfive | 1rdxwz | 5 | true | false | 0.65 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9fw4",
"comment_text": [
"It draws out moisture and with it, it draws out and condenses flavours."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmaiiw",
"comment_text": [
"A pinch of salt isn't to give a salty taste, but to suppress bitterness and increase the relative sweetness of a dish",
"Here's a long paper about it but the short answer is that the sodium ions even in small amounts interfere with the mechanisms we perceive bitterness with\n",
"http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30004284/keast-suppressionofbitterness-2001.pdf"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmkoms",
"comment_text": [
"Unless that pinch of salt added to the food was taken all in the same bite, then it is not the same."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9jvc",
"comment_text": [
"Take a pinch of salt and put it in your mouth. It seems like a lot now right?"
],
"score": -4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmabvv",
"comment_text": [
"Pinch is a relative term. Usually when they say a pinch of salt in a recipe they really mean \"put as much salt as you would like or need to taste\""
],
"score": -6
} | ||
ELI5:why is gender re assignment surgery covered by provincial health care but dental work is not? | explainlikeimfive | 1re6yb | 5 | true | false | 0.7 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdml8i4",
"comment_text": [
"Looking at it cynically (as someone who's dealt with the system) it's a bizarre combination of money, compassion and prejudice. ",
"The number of people who need transition-related care is far smaller than the number of people who need dental work, and the consequences of not being able to transition are incredibly severe, so part of it is about getting maximum return for minimum expense. That said, it's very common for provincial law to make it as difficult as possible for trans people to transition, meaning that even fewer people can access those services. (For example, my home province covers several specialist services that aren't available there... but those procedures have to be performed in-province to be eligible for coverage.)",
"Trans people are a small, stigmatized minority group that the general public doesn't understand, so even if a group of us gets together to pool our scanty resources and do something about the situation, public backlash is usually so extreme that provincial gov't will throw us under the bus to appeal to their non-trans constituents who are yapping about our \"lifestyle choices\". To government, it's win-win: we're officially covered by provincial health (so the province looks good on paper from a human rights perspective) but in practice, it's incredibly difficult to get care (so as little funding as possible actually goes towards helping us and the uneducated voters don't get their shorts in a twist). If they tried doing that to people who need dental care, the odds are 100% that they'd piss off people who were in a position to take them to the cleaners. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdms2zv",
"comment_text": [
"Well, then, here's a few points to consider:",
"The stresses of not being able to access medical treatment result in a 41% attempted suicide rate for trans people who can't get care. Yeah, 41%, not 4.1%. By stresses, I mean things like job discrimination, housing discrimination, depression, anxiety, dysphoria, violence, addiction, PTSD, etc. In a lot of places, even basic stuff like correcting your ID can't happen until you've had surgery, so trans people end up having to deal with mismatched ID that outs them to anyone who sees it. (Oh hai, greatly increased risk of discrimination and violence...) It's actually illegal on paper for trans people to get on a plane with mismatched ID in Canada: up to two years in jail and a five thousand dollar fine if the authorities decide you don't fit your ID. ",
"Treating us properly as soon as possible instead of letting things slide is by far the easiest option for everyone involved. The attempted suicide rate for trans people who've gotten appropriate care is something like 1.6%- pretty much identical to the general population- and the other rates drop drastically as well.",
"By the standards you're applying, everything is elective because nobody's putting a gun to the patient's head and telling them that they're going to undergo x procedure. (For the record, transition is actually classified as medically necessary, not elective.) Burn victims won't die if they don't get plastic surgery, and yet I don't see anyone advocating against their elective treatment. This is because it's easy for the average person to empathize with a burn victim. Trans people, not so much, even when you ask them to imagine being a short, pear-shaped, hairless man with tits, smooth skin and a soprano voice/tall, angular, broad-shouldered woman with an Adam's apple, baritone voice and hair everywhere. ",
"The system your friend hates is set up to make absolutely, totally sure that no cis person 'accidentally' gets treatment by making shit as tough as possible for trans people. This is because we're seen as less-than, as something to be discouraged. People who know they need treatment are being denied it in case it turns out it was the wrong thing. And it's not like there are other procedures available for us: transitioning is the only thing that works. Other medical procedures aren't rationed like this in case the wrong people get them, just this one. ",
"The double standard is incredible. Cis man loses his balls to cancer? Poor guy, here, have some testicular implants and testosterone injections. Everyone gets worried about his T levels because it's common for people with sex hormone imbalances to suffer from depression. Trans man wants to transition? Gotta prove yourself over and over again before you even get hormone therapy because you might not ",
" be trans and if you weren't, it would be a goddamn tragedy for you to get cross-sex treatment. They don't see me as a man with sky-high estrogen levels, they see me as a woman who wants to be a man, and they don't give a shit about dysphoria so bad that I can't shower with the lights on or touch my crotch. All they want is to sit around waiting to see if I'm suddenly gonna turn into a woman, because a flat-chested woman with facial hair would be really upset about her looks (unless she's a trans woman, and then it's right back to \"are you sure you aren't really a guy?\"). ",
"Bottom line: the system is set up this way because cis people have a vague grasp of how horrible it would be for their bodies to change in ways that they can't control and find upsetting- not enough to understand dysphoria in trans people but enough to freak out over the idea of some 'confused' person transitioning and regretting it later. The gatekeeping aspect of trans medicine is about making sure cis people don't do anything they might regret, not about making sure trans people get what they need."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmvrkp",
"comment_text": [
"Is there statistical information to prove what actually drives the average trans person to commit suicide? I think its offering a bit too much credit saying the 41% specifically commit suicide because they cannot receive care, do they take into account other outside influences or would that number b pushed even higher accounting for other factors?",
"As far as a burn victim not dying if they don't receive plastic surgery you are wrong and right at the same time, specifically regarding burns skin grafts are put in place to prevent infection and speed healing, would they die with out them, maybe maybe not, would they take far longer to heal and I the end be incredibly physically disabled in both. Cases furthering their strain on the system on which they rely, it would be incredibly hard to argue that they would not. ",
"Would a trans individual put further strain on the system and continue leeching resources for the rest of their life if surgery were either denied or e bill or at least part of the bill were put back on the? Doubtful unless they had some type of psychotic break and ended up in a long term care facility, while within the sphere of possibility not really in the sphere of probability.",
"All comparing the plight of a trans person to that of someone who suffered a disease that damaged heir body is ridiculous, while the psychological aspect of being trans is in born going under the knife ",
" a choice, if you get cancer unless you want it to potentially metastasize and kill you surgery isn't exactly an option.",
"Regarding your claim that it is iilegal to have an ID that doesn't match your physical gender is at least in my city false, the friend I spoke of is still 100% physically male! yet her ID classes her as female.",
"And finally your definition of surgery being elective is incorrect, it's determined by where or not you will live or die, or have your quality of life severely impacted if the procedure is not done, such as amputating a deformed or infected limb. I can see you saying \" but it will negatively effect out way of life\" maybe to a point, but it will not kill you unless it's by your own hand.",
"Sorry for the novel."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmx94b",
"comment_text": [
"Yes, the stats are out there. I'm not Googling them because I'm recovering from a recent suicidal episode myself and don't need that. The folks at ",
"r/asktransgender",
" can point you towards the studies you need if you'd like a starting point that's not Google.",
"Not everyone lives in places that allow updated ID without surgery (again, just Google it), and while mismatched ID isn't illegal in and of itself (stated clearly in my earlier comment), flying with it can still land you in jail. ",
"As for the rest of it, I wish you'd apologize for the content rather than the length. This is exactly why we get thrown under the bus so often: \"I don't know anything about this but it's not really necessary, your quality of life is just fine, there's nothing wrong with your body, prove that you need this, etc. etc.\" I've explained why transition is covered by provincial health care; I'm not going to justify it as well. There's plenty of reading material out there if you genuinely want to learn about what being trans is like and why it's treated the way it is, but for my own mental health, I'm stopping the conversation here. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnjtvv",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah, like I said, an uniformed viewpoint is worth nothing. Sorry you think that being ignorant about a minority group makes your ~opinions~ worth considering, but that's really not how it works. I'm not here to justify my whole existence to cis people who ask for education and yet don't want to listen to what I have to say because their ~opinions~ are so important. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why do some sounds sound more soothing than others? Like why do some make me fall asleep versus making me tear my hair out? | explainlikeimfive | 1rea5k | 26 | true | false | 0.78 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmfbfy",
"comment_text": [
"It's all about overtones. ",
"This video is somewhat relevant and does a pretty good job explaining them.",
"Basically, sounds that have the same pitch (how high or low the sound is) can have different timbres (characters of sounds - think of a tuba and a guitar playing the same note - they have the same pitch but different timbres) because most sounds that sound like one pitch are actually made of lots of different pitches. Changing the way these pitches are combined will make different timbres."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmh1vv",
"comment_text": [
"I can't speak to every sound and tone that people find pleasing or unpleasant. I can mention a few things, though that I've heard in the past:",
"Sounds like \"shhh\" are soothing, to babies, at least, because they remind them of being in the womb. Dunno if we retain much of that proto-memory though...",
"Sounds that resemble those of carnivorous animals remind us of predators that might've eaten us in the past. So we're hard wires to find them unpleasant and seek to avoid them.",
"Sounds that resemble crying babies we absolutely cannot stand. Crying babies are absolutely intolerable, probably to encourage us to be attentive to baby's needs. So much so, in fact, that when DARPA (or maybe it was ARPA) was looking into ways to torture people the worst audio they could generate was 1 part nails-across-chalkboard, and 2 parts crying baby played backwards."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdml45c",
"comment_text": [
"Older psychoanalytical theories (and maybe some more recent ones) talk about birth being the very first trauma a human being ever experiences. The womb is a warm, soft, bearing place of comfort, while the world you're exposed to after the painful and excruciating process of birth (think about the last time your head was pressed through an immensely tight canal) is cold, dry and scary in contrast. This allegedly leaves a subconscious stain that the womb is ultimately the most desirable place/condition to be in. I have no idea how much scientific footing this theory in actuality has (as a lot of Freudian stuff has been debunked over the last century), but that should be the underlying basic idea of womb things being more pleasant."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmfo1t",
"comment_text": [
"You'd have to be more specific.",
"For example, a Lion's roar is nerve racking because it's a fucking lion and can kill and eat you, versus the sound of a sleeping person's breathing being calming because obviously if somebody's asleep nearby then the area must be pretty safe to relax in.",
"Obviously, not all sounds have a place in basic human instinct, so whether a sound is soothing, irritating or terrifying is a reason unique to that sound or set of sounds."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmi65w",
"comment_text": [
"People often say that things which remind us of the womb are pleasant. Serious question, what's so great about the womb? "
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Why is it the year 2013 and phone audio is still so poor it's like speaking underwater? | explainlikeimfive | 1re74y | 5 | true | false | 0.67 | The #1 reason why I hate making phone calls - the audio quality is so bad I can't understand half the time what the other person is saying. Any phone, any network, anywhere. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdme446",
"comment_text": [
"It's a combination of factors. ",
"The one with the most impact is infrastructure. We designed the telephone system a long time ago; this was way before we had the capabilities to capture and send the same audio quality we deal with today, thus the infrastructure was designed to only handle this level of data and quality. ",
"On top of that, there is the ability for a phone to record audio. Cell phones typically receive audio through a tiny hole in their framing. As you can imagine, a tiny hole cannot record the same quality of sound as a high-end microphone. ",
"Lastly, there's playback. Like the phone's microphone, the speakers are also sub-par. If you've ever listened to music on a smart phone, you can tell the quality is obviously no where near the quality you'd get from a good sound system. Most smartphones also don't play the audio in a phone call through the larger speaker; they play it through the even smaller speaker that's close to your ear.",
"With all of these factors into play, the audio quality is severely reduced."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmxpnr",
"comment_text": [
"Sure, there are lots of sound emitting things that transfer sound through solids, but in a vast majority of cases, it's transferred through air waves. I've worked with the ones that go through sound (I worked with a teacher soldiering the speakers to cheap mp3 players for an engineering project) , but they mostly use the solid for resonance, rather than the actual transfer of sound. Actual bone conduction headphones aren't typically mainstream, but I heard they're decent, but only used in a few niche cases. In my case, the use of the word \"every\" was a bad choice, obviously there are exceptions."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn2ofh",
"comment_text": [
"No, I was talking about what is seen in most common applications. What I was originally saying was that using a standard speaker, having holes for the sound to travel through would produce a better sound quality than trying the same with out the holes. Speakers designed to create air vibrations will sound more accurate with openings that will allow sound to travel through the medium it was designed for. Sure solids could transmit sound better, but they'd require a speaker that isn't designed to transmit it through air first. If you have to go through air to a solid to get back into air again, chances are quality will be lost. ",
"Network compression is easily the bottleneck for sound quality. You could record on the most expensive microphone in the world, but it would still sound shitty if sent through cellular network communication. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmdqzk",
"comment_text": [
"mine works great"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdme6ub",
"comment_text": [
"Predominantly to save resources.",
"The ISDN 64K exists as without compression 64K is about the lowest amount required to transmit a voice conversation and still have it feel human enough to pickup inflection, voice characteristics, etc.",
"As we've opened up more band we still use no more than 64K of it for a voice call, plus we compress, so we've made things worse for the sake of being able to split the pipes more effectively."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5:Central banking | explainlikeimfive | 1reaan | 7 | true | false | 0.71 | I am trying to understand better the situation the united states is in with continuing to print money etc, could you please explain the idea of central banking, and the central bank in the U.S. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmgr2h",
"comment_text": [
"The Federal Reserve (Fed) is actually not a United States entity. The Fed board of governors represent the private banks in each of their 13 different regions. The Fed essentially operates as any other business…",
"This is misleading. The Fed isn't exactly a private entity, and it isn't exactly a government agency, but it's much closer to the latter than to the former. Its operations are determined by Federal law and by governors and a chairman appointed by the President.",
"Also, there are twelve regional federal reserve banks."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmfxzk",
"comment_text": [
"That sums up most of it, I just think the debate on these liabilities has abated, since the housing sector has stabilized. The assets were a hot potato, but it has since been cooled. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmy6xn",
"comment_text": [
"I just hope that their actions do not re-inflate the bubble. If it crashes again I'm not sure that anyone knows what will happen."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdme4ij",
"comment_text": [
"The Federal Reserve (Fed) is actually not a United States entity. The Fed board of governors represent the private banks in each of their 12 different regions. The Fed essentially operates as any other business except their assets (dollars) get printed any time they wish. With these assets they buy certain liabilities such as treasury bills (foreign and domestic), gold, and lately, mortgaged backed securities. Once purchased these become part of their balance sheet. ",
"The Fed has two main objectives - to stabilize interest rates and keep unemployment low. There is debate whether any thing they can do has any effect in the short term. However in the long term, there is evidence that they can pull off these objectives.",
"Your question is rather open ended and the topic is very deep, but I assume you are asking because of the the qualitative easing programs that have been going on since the start of the financial crisis. The Fed's balance sheet has quadrupled since the beginning of the financial crisis. This is unheard of in the history of the Fed. The two main liabilities that have been purchased with all this printed money have been mortgaged backed securities and US treasury bills. The reason that these two liabilities were purchased is to maintain low interest rates of US t-bill and get toxic housing assets of the balance sheet os the banks. The reason that inflation has not exploded is because, although this money is out there in the economy, it is not being used for many everyday transactions yet.",
"There is much debate about what would happen if some of the liabilities default but as we have never seen an inflated Fed like we do today it is impossible to say what the actual consequences would be. I believe not much would change and they would just print more money and buy more liabilities.\nEdit: Actually 12 regional banks."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmyihl",
"comment_text": [
"I wrote most of this from memory since I am in the midst of Macroeconomics for my MBA. I researched the Governors a little more in depth. There are 7 Governors appointed by the President and affirmed by the Senate. The Federal Open Market Committee consists of 12 members, the 7 Governors and 5 regional Presidents who rotate. From what I can tell most of the Presidents come from a long banking background, and there seems to be more politicians among the Governors however.",
"This is speculation but I'm sure they put their own interests above those of the average American's..."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why does Black Friday exist? | explainlikeimfive | 1ret41 | 5 | true | false | 0.86 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmixf3",
"comment_text": [
"No one really wants it to end.\nHave you seen those discounts?",
"Just because something happens to you on store property does not make the store liable. If I punch you in the face in a Walmart to get a Turboman doll, I'm the only one in trouble."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmiyj8",
"comment_text": [
"People are still entering voluntarily and everyone knows the stories.\nIt's an informed risk."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmiyj8",
"comment_text": [
"People are still entering voluntarily and everyone knows the stories.\nIt's an informed risk."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmizwc",
"comment_text": [
"Fine, go out friday and punch some people, you won't get arrested. Let me know how it turns out."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmizwc",
"comment_text": [
"Fine, go out friday and punch some people, you won't get arrested. Let me know how it turns out."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why do I have to pay for NHS dental work but not for any other NHS service? | explainlikeimfive | 1resa9 | 3 | true | false | 1 | Why is it that NHS dentists were partitioned of as someone whose services you have to pay for where as, for example, if I need a triple heart bypass it doesn't cost me a penny? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmivfo",
"comment_text": [
"According to ",
"NHSHistory.net",
", after the creation of the NHS, the expected budget was very quickly exceeded, and within 3 years it was necessary to include some charges in order to balance the books.",
"The charges included charging for prescriptions (one shilling) and for dental work (a flat rate of £1 for all treatement).",
"As for the ",
"modern HNS",
", those for whom dental health is most critical - children and young people, and pregnant women - get free dentistry, as do those on certain benefits."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmipy0",
"comment_text": [
"I've never understood it either. I think it's just a legacy of how it was introduced. I hope one day it becomes free, but all the major parties seem to be against public spending, in favour of selling public services off to private companies I think it's unlikely."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmiqm9",
"comment_text": [
"Was it always the case? Have we always had to pay for NHS dental work (albeit subsidised) since the conception of the NHS?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmiy18",
"comment_text": [
"LINK",
"When introduced, the NHS limited the price of prescriptions and dentistry, but didn't make them free. Wales has made prescriptions free, but this is not true for all of the NHS (although, again, I feel it should be)."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmk4m4",
"comment_text": [
"I'd imagine it's simply because dental work isn't life threatening, an emergency, or unreasonably expensive that necessitates insurance. It's those types of factors that make something unreasonable to privatize.",
"Count your blessings. Most of us on reddit are in the US..."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Can lifeforms be created out of antimatter? | explainlikeimfive | 1repi7 | 2 | true | false | 0.67 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmi65i",
"comment_text": [
"If there was part of the universe that was antimatter-dominated, with anti-matter suns and planets, anti-matter water and air, everything, then it would be indistinguishable from the matter equivalent.",
"And the people on this anti-matter planet would create matter in their high-energy particle colliders, and observe the energy that is given off when it interacts with (their) normal matter.",
"And someone on their anti-reddit logs on and posts an anti-ama asking if life could be made of matter :D",
"TL;DR: Yes."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmii2g",
"comment_text": [
"And someone on their anti-reddit logs on and posts an anti-ama asking if life could be made of matter :D",
"True - except to them, they would be made of \"matter\", and they'd be asking if life could be made of \"anti-matter\", referring to the stuff we're made of!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmimqw",
"comment_text": [
":D I wanted to mention that, but I figured I'd waffled enough. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmsh3u",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty sure that the arrow of time remains unchanged. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmisav",
"comment_text": [
"Chemically speaking there's no known difference between matter and antimatter. The Alpha experiment at CERN is investigating the energy levels of the Anti-hydrogen atom to see if it is the same as it's matter counterpart.",
"Note that there is a reason that the observable universe is matter dominated, and we are not sure what that is yet. The current understanding is, if there were to be a anti-matter universe, it would behave in the exact same way. However, once we determine why matter dominates, that prediction might not hold.",
"TL:DR: From what we know of physics thus far, yes."
],
"score": 2
} | |
Monotheistic vs polytheistic religions in society | explainlikeimfive | 1rewgx | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmk6sg",
"comment_text": [
"Because people in western society are more familiar with Christianity, Islam and Judaism. They are the major faiths across Europe and the Americas and are the ones that have an impact on people's lives, so they're the ones that people are going to criticise. The average American is going to know very little about Hinduism and probably won't encounter many Hindus, so they have little reason to develop an opinion on it. In a Hindu-majority area Hinduism would be the faith system that someone would criticise if they talking about religion.",
"As far as I know, Taoism isn't even theistic - and again, people in western society would be too unfamiliar of its beliefs and practices to criticise it.",
"Whilst Wicca exists mainly in western societies, it only has a very small number of followers and doesn't impact on non-followers' lives in the same way that Christianity does, so, again, people don't really have a reason to form an opinion on it.",
"Nobody believes in the ancient Greek, Roman and Sumerian gods anymore, so that's why no one criticises those religions - they don't exist anymore."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdml2um",
"comment_text": [
"While you are correct, I caution you to be careful to not use the term \"Abrahamic religions\" and then make generalizations. Judaism does not proselytize, and Islam has had only minor influences on Western society, even compared to Judaism. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmkaf2",
"comment_text": [
"Very well put, though I'd add that there are small neopagan groups following those last few pantheons. Hellenistic paganism in particular got a weird upsurge in response to the huge recession and general decline of Greece in the past couple of years. Roman paganism is really rare, I've never met one, only heard of them and seen traces of their writings on the internet, but I'm sure they lurk somewhere out there, alongside those people who do hardcore Roman war re-enactments I'd guess."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn011l",
"comment_text": [
"Most people don't understand the historical significance of polytheism and how it was essential to creating the cohesive bonds a society requires to create an empire. If they did know they would understand how their own monotheistic philosophy can be inferior in many ways to the ancient religions.",
"Source: degreed in comparative religions."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmk8p0",
"comment_text": [
"Monotheism, generally speaking (VERY generally), refers to the Abrahamic religions which have a host of riders attached to them that modern society doesn't like. They expect followers to preach and attempt to convert others. They do not accept any believers of other faiths because they believe there is only one god. They have a very strictly defined set of beliefs that are codeified in an old book that all followers are expected to believe quite rigidly. On top of all that, monotheism has been dictating Western society for well over a thousand years, and whilst it used to do a lot of good, it's easy to look at it's place in modern society and say we don't need it any more, let's get rid of it, giving an avenue for criticism.",
"Polytheism, first and foremost, isn't as visible a target. It's also not embedded in our social structure; you might complain about some puritan law being passed by Christians but you can hardly complain about some Hellenic pagan belief that isn't doing anything to guide politics and force your behaviour. Less than that, and as a pagan I'll admit somewhat subjectively, polytheists are often more accepting and less dogmatic. Having a pantheon of gods makes it possible to accept that other people's beliefs can have merit, that your worldview makes sense to you but maybe other gods do exist outside your sphere of worship. We don't try to stamp out unbelievers or followers of other religions There's also absolutely zero mandate to preach and attempt to convert. We live and let live, do our own thing in private, and don't attempt to influence society beyond seeking acceptance. That's largely why people don't feel the need to go out of the way to criticize us. On top of all that, it's difficult, because we're not organised religions with a central authority to bitch about and directly criticize, it's just individuals doing their own thing.",
"Not that we should be above legitimate criticism. As a norse pagan, we have a problem with racist bullshit amongst our numbers. Neonazi-ism, white power (it's viewed as the 'ethnic and ancestral religion' of white europeans by scumbags), that kind of nasty bullshit. There was a high profile case lately with a couple of supposed Wiccans who tried to use religious reasons to excuse their child abuse. There are shitty assholes and vile human beings in every walk of life and we're no exception. But it's not at an institutional level, since we have no central institution."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What exactly is obamacare and why are so many people against it? | explainlikeimfive | 1rfhuv | 1 | true | false | 1 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpqgc",
"comment_text": [
"You are supposed to check to see if your question has been asked before you post. This one has. One thousand fucking times.",
"Here is the link to ELI5 results",
"And here it is from AskReddit",
"Now fuck off."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpye0",
"comment_text": [
"Believe me, us mods share the same frustrations as you when it comes to repeat topics like this, and we appreciate you pointing OP towards the search results (and I suspect the post-report too)..",
"But the rest of the post isn't really what we want on ELI5... If you could tone down on that sort of commenting, we'd appreciate it :)",
"Thanks!"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpued",
"comment_text": [
"This question concerns one of the most frequently asked topics on ELI5, so it has been removed. Try the searchbar!",
"It's okay to re-post questions, but please indicate that you did a search and that previous questions/answers didn't help you understand."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpyox",
"comment_text": [
"C'mon, boss... I don't even get an upvote for linking him to the results?",
"Wait, are mods even allowed to upvote? That's a serious question actually."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmq2lk",
"comment_text": [
"We do still participate yes! ",
"Though we try our best to separate our mod-duties and our contributions to the sub.. i.e. if I've given an explanation to OP, I'll avoid moderating in that thread (lest the most egregious rule violations).. Conflict of interests etc.. Typically we'll drop a message to the other mods asking someone else to step in and take a look.",
"That being said we'll often up/downvote as we see fit.. ",
"Like I said in my reply to you, we appreciate the linking to old results and reminding of the rules, but your:",
"Now fuck off.",
"lost you the upvote.. and very nearly earned you a post removal!"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Why do taste buds cease to function when you're sick? | explainlikeimfive | 1rf8w2 | 1 | true | false | 0.57 | Currently missing the taste of food. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmn1hz",
"comment_text": [
"Usually it's when your suffering from a cold, when your nose is all stuffed up and you can't smell anything. The taste of food is mostly experienced through smell. Obviously there's other flavors that are strong enough to cut through that, like salty, and spicy. Spicy is a reaction more than a flavor but you get my point. When you feel better try eating something that smells fantastic once normally, then once while holding your nose. What should happen is the first time will have more flavor because you're inhaling the smell as opposed to not smelling it.",
"Feel better! :)",
"Edit: found ",
"this site",
" to elaborate more on it. "
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmn0uj",
"comment_text": [
"A large part of the sense of taste is actually smell. When you're sick your nose is usually stuffed so you can't smell anything - ergo, you can hardly taste anything as well."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmn1u6",
"comment_text": [
"smell contributes a lot to how you taste things, when your sickness causes your nose to be stuffed then your sense of taste will be affected"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmn8jw",
"comment_text": [
"Wow, that's an excellent explanation. Thanks a bunch!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn12lh",
"comment_text": [
"No problem! Feel better! "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: If someone in Arizona murders someone in Colorado at the 4 corners monument, which state handles the case? | explainlikeimfive | 1rf7tk | 1 | true | false | 0.6 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmmssz",
"comment_text": [
"FBI investigates murders on Indian land. The Four Corners monument is on Indian land.",
"See: ",
"Indian County Crime"
],
"score": 10
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmnjcf",
"comment_text": [
"Well that was an unexpectedly simple explanation. ",
"What if it were just across a border between 2 states, a shot fired from Oklahoma across the Red River into Texas for instance?",
"Or even if someone standing on a border shot and killed someone else standing on that border? And would the prosecution play out differently in regard to a state border vs. a national border?"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmobu8",
"comment_text": [
"The state the person was killed in would likely request the extradition of the shooter from the other arguing that it has jurisdiction since the actual killing happened within its borders. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmogrn",
"comment_text": [
"That makes sense. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmmx6r",
"comment_text": [
"Simpsons reference, set up the person you shoot in Colorado, he fires the bullet in Arizona that travels to New Mexico, it hits the person in Colorado and the body lands in Utah. Supposedly no one can persecute you now, but actually so long it happens (and wherever the murderer's from), anybody can persecute you, but probably if there's a metropolitan police on Indian territory they will."
],
"score": 0
} | ||
ELI5: How does one acquire the d and f values when doing a Depth-first Search of a graph? | explainlikeimfive | 1rfj0g | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpt8w",
"comment_text": [
"What does D and F stand for? I know how to do depth first searches, I just don't know what notation you're using."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmq1yb",
"comment_text": [
"alright so there are some options. One is, you can wrap each node in a class that holds a flag. Or you can actually add the flag to every node. Or you can have an array that keeps track of the flags.",
"so for blackening the vertex: just do this in every case. Visit every node that it is connected to. After that, blacken the node. The code would look something like:",
"DepthFirstSearch (Node node)\n{\n if (node.visited == false)\n {\n node.visited = true; //this is your D flag\n DepthFirstSearch (node.chilren) // this would be a loop for each child, do a depthfirstsearch.\n //finished examining, set the F flag here\n }\n}\n",
"this is kind of the idea. I'm not sure you need two different flags, just one \"visited\" flag should be enough."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmpw9v",
"comment_text": [
"The D timestamp is when the vertex is first discovered, and F is when the search finishes examining the adjacency list and \"blackens\" the vertex. I'm having a hard time getting correct values however..."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmq9e3",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you! I'll try that."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmqavw",
"comment_text": [
"i fixed the format of the code."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5 what happens to old headphones when you have to hold them in a certain position to hear them work | explainlikeimfive | 1rfthv | 5 | true | false | 0.73 | This just started happening with a pair of headphones I only bought in May. I'm rather frustrated, but since I can't exactly fix the problem, I might as well know what's going on! Maybe the cause too, if anyone knows. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmsx1a",
"comment_text": [
"The metal part of the wire has split inside the insulation or at a connection. There's no connection except in the one position that works. You could probably either fix the wire or plug yourself or have them repaired fairly inexpensively. ",
"To prevent that in the future, be careful not to let the wire flex too sharply (especially near the plug). "
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmsv2o",
"comment_text": [
"There's probably some connection inside that is loose, and it only makes contact when it that position."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmsvao",
"comment_text": [
"Wires not connecting. Get new ones. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmsvdi",
"comment_text": [
"Got this problem too, but only on one side.."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmuua9",
"comment_text": [
"You cut the wire, probably from bending it too much. When you hold the headphone in that certain position, you're touching the two parts of wire so that they connect again."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Modalities of connecting to the internet over time and their difference in speed | explainlikeimfive | 1rfw6b | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | I searched other posts on the matter but it doesn't seem to be explained fully to me. Why did dialup tend to be offered in 56kb/s and what was the difference in how the extra(or less) speed was delivered? Why did we have to "dial" to the internet and how did that work? With modern modalities, why do we no longer need to "dial" into the internet? Why did DSL hit the Mb/s speeds, but not be able to truly compete with coaxial speeds? Why are filters needed on the modem lines when using DSL? How can Comcast(or others) provide different speeds and switch packages without having to come out to adjust your line or do some wizardry inside your home? Is it that the highest speed is provided but they electronically manage/throttle what is delivered to your house based on what package you pay for? Why is fiber optic the fastest available connection now? What makes it capable of delivering 1000Mb/s whereas coaxial, DSL, or dialup cannot? Will it be capable of delivering more than 1Gb/s in the future or will we need another modality to surpass that? Edit: 56k dialup speed, it's been so long that I thought they were 256/512. My mistake. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmua8c",
"comment_text": [
"OK, let's break this down:",
"The term \"Dial-Up\" was in reference to when people used a standard phone line to connect their computer to the internet via a modem - These only made it to 56K which is a limitation of standard telephone modem communication. With modern connections, it is always on, therefore no dialing is necessary. Dialing was necessary in the past as most people used their one and only phone line to also connect to the internet. If you wanted to make a phone call, you had to \"hang-up\" the internet.",
"DSL Came along and piggy-backed a single on a standard phone line. Utilizing a much higher frequency delivering much faster speeds. Still over the same standard twisted pair phone line. The higher frequency requires the filter or you will hear a constant buzzing on phone calls o the same line.",
"DSL has limitations due to being on a twisted pair. Coax is also limited, but only at much higher speeds. Currently in the 100MB range.",
"Most of the speed is limited by the connecting equipment outside of your home. The modem you have is generally capable of passing data at 100M, but is limited to how fast it can get it from your ISP. The ISP can throttle your connection from the node, thereby offering different packages based on what you are willing to pay. They can also reprovision your modem shoudl the need arise. Ultimately, if you surpass the capability of your modem, they will likely send you a new one with more capability.",
"Fiber uses light to transmit data. So far we haven't found anything faster than light. Currently the limiting factor for fiber is the connection equipment. 10GB is currently supported for both internal and external networks. It appeasr that for the forseeable future, fiber will be able to deliver any speed the connecting equipment can provide.",
"Hope this helps"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmwsvn",
"comment_text": [
"I think the main reason cable companies can offer higher speeds over time is that they upgrade the connection between your local cable office and the rest of the internet. I'd take everything I've said with a grain of salt, though. I should have added a disclaimer in my first post: I'm by no means an expert. ",
"To your second question: That makes sense, but I don't know."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmu2vw",
"comment_text": [
"Basically, here's the idea behind a dial-up modem: Say you have a computer in your house and your friend has a computer in theirs. You want your computer to communicate with theirs. You both have a landline phone, but that's it. So what do you do? ",
"You could put the computer's speaker and microphone up to the phone and dial your friend's house. Then they could pick up and put the phone up to their computer's speaker and microphone. You can have your computers communicate data: maybe a high tone for a 1 and a low tone for a 0 or something. ",
"Faster dial-up modems use more sophisticated methods of encoding data, but they still have to use the same basic landline telephone technology, and end up being limited to about 56kbps. You have to dial into the ISP, because you're literally making a phone call to the ISP so your computer can communicate with theirs. ",
"DSL uses copper wires just like regular phones, but it uses them differently. Data transfer over DSL is much faster, but has a much, much shorter range. To get DSL in your neighborhood, the ISP has to build a facility within like a mile of your house. Then your DSL modem communicates with their facility, which uses a bunch of expensive infrastructure to ultimately communicate with the rest of the internet. ",
"Cable uses the same coaxial cable that cable TV does. These wires can transfer data a lot faster than DSL (think of how many cable channels you can have with just one wire. That's a ton of data capacity). They can basically just turn up the speed whenever they feel like it. They may require an upgraded modem or something, but current-gen modems are no where near capacity for what speeds Comcast offers. ",
"Fiber optic is the fastest. It uses tubes of light to communicate data. I don't know what's faster out there, but fiber is pretty fast. If you need more speed, you can just stuff some more tubes in the bundle."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdng899",
"comment_text": [
"Expert or not - you are right on target - As the companies upgrade to newer/faster technologies, they make them available to their customers. As you said previously, the modems they provide are nowhere near their capacity in terms of bandwidth."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmw11r",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks for the correction on dialup speeds. It's been so long since I've had it that I forgot the speeds they ran at.",
"Most of the speed is limited by the connecting equipment outside of your home. The modem you have is generally capable of passing data at 100M, but is limited to how fast it can get it from your ISP. The ISP can throttle your connection from the node, thereby offering different packages based on what you are willing to pay. They can also reprovision your modem shoudl the need arise. Ultimately, if you surpass the capability of your modem, they will likely send you a new one with more capability.",
"Where is the node? I assume there's one for every house, correct? That way my neighbor could pump a full stream of 100Mb/s while I'm running 25Mb/s. Could you go into more depth/technical terms on how they throttle the connection speed? For example, if a 100Mb/s connection used 100% of the wires in the coax bundle, would a 25Mb/s use only 25%? Or would they slow your connection via activating resistors/capacitors/??? or something? Sorry, not an electrician, but would love to hear how they throttle it more specifically.",
"Fiber uses light to transmit data. So far we haven't found anything faster than light. Currently the limiting factor for fiber is the connection equipment. 10GB is currently supported for both internal and external networks. It appeasr that for the forseeable future, fiber will be able to deliver any speed the connecting equipment can provide.",
"With this insight, would fiber providers be able to offer packages of varying speeds? How would they throttle this compared to a coax connection?",
"Thanks in advance, and you gave a very thorough response!"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Google has a monopoly on search, so how has it been able to avoid trouble with government regulators? | explainlikeimfive | 1rfw1v | 0 | true | false | 0.33 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtkt4",
"comment_text": [
"How does Google have a monopoly on search? There are plenty of other search engines."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmu0ag",
"comment_text": [
"On top of the fact that they aren't a monopoly Google is in the clear because what get's you into trouble is anti-competitive behavior. Google does't stop other people from trying to become the top search engine, there just hasn't been anyone else that can create a product that competes with it."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtzls",
"comment_text": [
"Being the most popular does not mean they have a monopoly. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtotd",
"comment_text": [
"Your premise is flawed. Google absolutely does not have a monopoly on search. Other examples include dogpile, bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, ask, aol, lycos, and many others."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmuu3y",
"comment_text": [
"It could be said to have a hegemony, in that it is overwhelmingly more popular and influential than other search engines, but that is not a monopoly by a long shot."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
Why is raw milk illegal? | explainlikeimfive | 1rfuns | 1 | true | false | 0.67 | It's natural right? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtc5y",
"comment_text": [
"A: natural isn't always better",
"B: Raw milk means unpasteurized, which is dangerous. It contains more bacteria, and will spoil much more quickly, even if its refrigerated, and may also cause very harmful and dangerous types of food poisoning and/or infections."
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtex6",
"comment_text": [
"Natural doesn't mean healthy. Cyanide, botulism toxin and snake venom are all natural! ",
"Pasteurization kills any micro-organisms added to the milk during the milking/storing/transit process. It's quite hard to keep these organisms out of the milk consistently, so rather than allow the risk, the government bans selling raw milk. ",
"Farmers who have the ability to keep much closer watch on milk they're producing for themselves are allowed to drink/use all the raw milk they wish. Also, it would be quite hard to enforce a ban on milking one's own cows for personal milk. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmu07r",
"comment_text": [
"The FDA puts restrictions on foods to protect the public. This means people & companies can't sell us poisonous or otherwise harmful and dangerous foods. I thought raw milk was illegal nationally from the FDA, but I guess it's legal status is determined by state laws. It's illegal in about half of the states.",
"Many things are \"natural,\" but that doesn't mean they are safe. For example, there are deadly mushrooms. They are natural, but they'll also kill you if you eat them. ",
"We pasteurize milk to kill harmful bacteria. Pasteurization is one of the most beneficial things we do for public health, and it involves heating milk to temperatures that kill bacteria. Think of it like making sure you don't eat raw chicken or other raw meats. Actually, think of it this Thanksgiving, if you (or a family member) is cooking a turkey. People use a meat thermometer to make sure it reaches a certain temperature so that it's safe to eat. That's basically what we do with milk before distributing it for sale to the public.",
"Raw milk isn't pasteurized and can contain harmful bacteria (like e. coli and listeria and salmonella) that can make you really sick. I did a quick Google search to see what diseases it can carry, and I see that raw milk can transmit tuberculosis, typhoid, strep, and diptheria. In the news right now is a case from Tennessee about raw milk that caused 9 people to get sick from e. coli. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmtbzg",
"comment_text": [
"You might take a look at this... ",
"http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/raw_milk_map.htm"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmte6u",
"comment_text": [
"It's because of the risk involved. With raw milk, there is the possibility of transferring bacterial infections from the cow to whoever drinks the milk if the cow happens to be infected with certain bacterial diseases. It is also thought that drinking raw milk may be linked to the development of asthma and allergies, although the evidence isn't quite clear.",
"By pasteurizing milk, you kill off the bacteria that could have potentially spread and caused infection in the drinker and you eliminate the risks (if any) of the milk causing asthma or allergies. For these reasons, many jurisdictions mandate the pasteurization of all milk which is sold commercially."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How does a website hijack my back button? | explainlikeimfive | 1rg1qu | 1 | true | false | 0.67 | ELI5: How does a website hijack my back button? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmvc71",
"comment_text": [
"Do you mean where you click Back, but it doesn't go back to your previous page and instead keeps you where you were?",
"That's because there's two pages. If you click a link to myfakewebsite.com/trappage.html, I'll put a redirect in the code of that page to myfakewebsite.com/givemeyourmoney.html. If you press back, you end up back at trappage.html, which forwards you again."
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmvike",
"comment_text": [
"Thats what I'm guessing he means, and if so you nailed it. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmvyv5",
"comment_text": [
"It mostly depends on how your browser handles the multiple requests at once. You could have the page rendered before or after the forward instruction is processed. And if you pressed it before the page was rendered, it might not be fully executed before the render is complete."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmvyv5",
"comment_text": [
"It mostly depends on how your browser handles the multiple requests at once. You could have the page rendered before or after the forward instruction is processed. And if you pressed it before the page was rendered, it might not be fully executed before the render is complete."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn1t94",
"comment_text": [
"When you click it multiple times quickly, it leaves the redirect page before it has the chance to actually redirect you (or, before it has the chance to add the other page to your back history). "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What would a dragon actually need to breathe fire? | explainlikeimfive | 1rg5n0 | 0 | true | false | 0.4 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmwg04",
"comment_text": [
"Some organ or gland that produces a combustible gas or liquid and the ability to project that substance from their mouths. Just like a spitting cobra sprays its venom! But then they would also need some way to ignite that substance just as it leaves their mouths. If they had special teeth they could clash and make a spark, that could work."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmwqru",
"comment_text": [
"deleted ",
" ",
" "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmwlna",
"comment_text": [
"Existence. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmxwlp",
"comment_text": [
"Maybe they could have glands which would concentrate alcohol from their gut which could be spat in a cloud to irritate and incapacitate their foes. When hunted or attacked at night (during the day they hide in caves) or in their dark caves, primitive man would be carrying torches or other open flame for light. When spat upon the cloud of alcohol would ignite, causing the men to think that they spat fire. In reality the ignition was limited to human encounters as other situations lacked any source of ignition."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdn0z3f",
"comment_text": [
"Most likely it would have to be a simple hydrocarbon compound that could be stored as a liquid (and be safe), but when expelled through the mouth would vaporize and be much easier to combust. Other than that, they'd need an ignition source. Think some sort of flint action using a harder part of their tongue and a part of their mouth.",
"So basically all they'd need to do is spit something analogous to a biodiesel made from short-chain hydrocarbons produced in some bacteria-laden organ of their bodies and ignited. This would be marginally easier than making alcohol, as well as much less likely to explode, but would also be less volatile."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Why doesn't the US have no limit interstate highways? | explainlikeimfive | 1rg8y4 | 3 | true | false | 0.72 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmxgxz",
"comment_text": [
"Because Germany treats their population like adults who can be trusted, which they are in return. The States treat the population like children who can't be trusted, which they are in return. And American cars aren't safe enough to drive that way. Just saying..."
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmxqr9",
"comment_text": [
"While I'm no expert on this, I did see a documentary on the autobahn. It was fascinating all of the technology and money put into it. It costs a lot, and you have to pay to use it. I think the biggest reason we don't have one is because we can't afford to make one that would be safe. Parts of it anyway are very high technology. Someone from Europe could explain better. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmxrh8",
"comment_text": [
"Germany's autobahns were first built by the National Socialists (Hitler) in the 30's and 40's. The standards were very high and included features like wide shoulders (for safely stopping), limited on-ramps with graded entry, and sloped curves for high speed cornering. The roads were designed to handle speeds safely at 150 km/h. These were expensive roads. German cars also grew up to have stronger brakes and other features to make high speed travel safer. Yes, the Autobahn's have no speed limits in some areas but have many restrictions when approaching a city, when encountering construction, when operating in bad weather, etc... Most Autobahns today have an advisory speed limit of 130 km/h. America's highway system which was created in a big way from the Eisenhower administration in the 50's were not designed to the same standards and are consequently much cheaper. Still good roads but not rated for very high speed travel. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmyfo6",
"comment_text": [
"and you have to pay to use it",
"What do you mean?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdncdq2",
"comment_text": [
"I thought they said in the documentary to use certain portions of it you had to have a permit, or pay a fee or something. Maybe it's just in the form of higher taxes. I don't really know. Google it!"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why does an iPad generate hardly any heat whereas a laptop requires multiple cooling fans? | explainlikeimfive | 1rbhka | 7 | true | false | 0.65 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlih6q",
"comment_text": [
"Computers are much more capable than an iPad. Their processors are much more powerful.",
"The smooth performance of an iPad is due to the programmers and manufacturers being very careful about what they make or allow the iPad to do, rather than a large amount of processing power."
],
"score": 14
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlk0lq",
"comment_text": [
"The emphasis on 'older'. The hardware inside the older equipment is far less efficient than modern hardware."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdllg6i",
"comment_text": [
"It's implied"
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdllg6i",
"comment_text": [
"It's implied"
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdli0cq",
"comment_text": [
"The iPad is basically like a giant phone as opposed to a small computer.",
"That means that the chips inside the iPad are lower power and produce less heat, just like in a phone. The heat that the chips do produce can adequately be got rid of using a heatsink and the case as a sort of radiator.",
"The processors inside a computer are quite different. Due to their size, power and design you can't just put a huge heatsink on them: you do that anyway, but you're going to need to actively cool it as well. The traditional way is with fans, but you can liquid cool them as well."
],
"score": 5
} | |
ELI5: why do Americans, when citing a date, go month/day/year instead of day/month/year like others? | explainlikeimfive | 1rbjtu | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlj4b9",
"comment_text": [
"I think it's more regional than national, or even professional. Everything in the military is either year-month-day (20131123) or writtien out day month year ( 23 November 2013). Imperial was often considered easier to use, and implemented by the French who saved our asses during the revolution. An added \"up yours\" to the Brits (who used metric), then France flopped (big surprise) and went metric with the rest of Europe, leaving us with our 4 INCH dicks in our hands..."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdljfpn",
"comment_text": [
"Imperial was often considered easier to use, and implemented by the French who saved our asses during the revolution. An added \"up yours\" to the Brits (who used metric), then France flopped (big surprise) and went metric with the rest of Europe",
"Um, you got that totally backwards. The Brits have never used the metric system (I mean back in the days, nowadays I think the metric system is the official system in UK, not sure though), they defined the Imperial system in the Weights and Measures Act back in 1824. The Metric System was introduced by the French 25 years earlier, in the mètre des Archives and kilogramme des Archives. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdliru4",
"comment_text": [
"See where I'm from we say it's the 23rd (or 24th right now where I am) of November. So the question still remains!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlj8jq",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah it's interesting because we use the metric system but still refer to our personal heights in feet and inches. I tell people I'm 6 ft 2, not 187 cm"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlj9ro",
"comment_text": [
"then again the military is really retarded about it. distance is metric, weight is imperial... hardware is metric."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: What power does having your Bank Account and Routing number give someone? | explainlikeimfive | 1rbjqn | 1 | true | false | 1 | Does this give the holder the ability to make deposits and withdrawals from your account? Just withdrawals? Sign up for services in your name? I'm setting up a payment middle man service and I want to know what reasons are someone would be hesitant to give up their information, and ways that I can allay their concerns (for example explaining that I'm not actually storing their info, it's just being sent to Stripe and I hold a unique token instead) | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlimt4",
"comment_text": [
"You can tell them that anyone who has seen a check of their's has this information already, if that will help. I know that isn't necessarily explaining like you are five, but maybe!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlirap",
"comment_text": [
"Yep, right there on a void cheque plain as day. (That's why people would ever want a void cheque.)",
"It allows deposits into the account because that's the info you need to tell a bank what you're depositing into. It grants no authority to withdraw. It's like a username, not a password. It let's people point out who you are but isn't an form of identification and no bank would accept it as authorization for anything. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlis3g",
"comment_text": [
"Well technically you could set up an online ACH payment with it. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlizjz",
"comment_text": [
"It is possible to set up automated payments with just this information. Jeremy Clarkson (top gear) printed his Bank Account and Sorting Code in a national newspaper, making fun out of people who are nervous about disclosing it, and someone signed him up to make payments to a charity."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdljj24",
"comment_text": [
"It is kind of frightening to realize that your bank account is only as safe as ",
" -- you are relying on them to keep your account information safe. Likewise, you debit card information is only as safe as ",
". When you think about it that way, it's a little bit amazing how infrequently fraud does occur. ",
"In any case, if someone has your account number, they could potentially use it to set up a preauthorized (ACH) debit out of your checking account. For example, call up the telephone company and have them set up a payment to pay off their phone bill. In actuality, this doesn't happen too often, because it would be easily traceable -- after all, the money has to go ",
". But it is a pain in the ass for the time and inconvenience, and can potentially wreak havoc on you account in other ways (bouncing payments to other stuff). ",
"Another way that fraudsters use account numbers is to print up fake checks, and use those. By the time the bank discovers the checks are fake (a couple of days), it's too late and the money's gone. Oftentimes it's a two-step process for the fraudster to cover their tracks. They'll use the fake checks to deposit into another account they've stolen, then withdraw the money out of that account before the bank discovers the checks are no good."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why do some of us loose the ability to remember our dreams? (or dream at all, whichever it is) | explainlikeimfive | 1rbmvh | 2 | true | false | 0.6 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdljvwy",
"comment_text": [
"Everybody dreams, but most people only remember the most vivid ones. The rest are forgotten as you're waking up. It's actually possible to train yourself to remember more dreams, but it takes some time and effort. There are tons of guides to remembering more dreams on the internet which can enlighten you much better than I could, but the main method is to spend some time each morning trying to remember whatever you can and write it down in a journal. Eventually you'll start remembering more dreams than you know what to do with.. Sometimes even multiple dreams per night.",
"\nI used to do this when I was into lucid dreaming and it worked really well, but I stopped a long time ago and now I'm lucky if I remember two dreams in a month."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlkoex",
"comment_text": [
"As much as I'd like to, I don't have a hard scientific answer for you, though perhaps somebody out there does. Perhaps dreams are a way for the brain to make new connections and parse new experiences, and as we get older we simply don't need them as much because we've already got things pretty well sussed out.",
"\nI do know that there's some sort of mechanism in the brain which basically wipes your memory of being asleep, as evidenced by the fact that people usually don't remember the last 5 minutes ",
" they fall asleep. No idea why that's the case, but dreams probably just get erased along with everything else."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlkqyb",
"comment_text": [
"Some of the higher faculties of our brain simply are not ON as it were, when we are dreaming. Our hippocampus - the memory system that pertains to short-term memory is turned off during our sleep, so if we are not awake when we have the dream, the very impression of having that dream will be gone because our brain is unable to process the memory. The short term memory and therefore ability to commit a thing to long term memory is not active. I know this is not an explain like I am five explanation; but this is the key piece of knowledge that you want to understand why you dont remember the things. ",
"In adressing Abeham:\nI dont think that the concept that we do not remember things that do not adher to our conception of reality is not true; in fact, things that stick out from our reality are sometimes much easier to remember because they do stick out. We have an easier time remembering a floating dog, than a dog that you see on a street. If a man is 10 meters long, he does not adher to our reality but; if he stands as large as a house - why wouldnt that be easier to remember? If a man has the head of a giraff, he does stick out but does not adher to our reality (our puny hearts are too small for a head so far removed...) "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlkbvx",
"comment_text": [
"But why do we forget? It seems as children, we remember our dreams (and especially nightmares) almost nightly, but as we get older, that ability fades. Whats stopping us from remembering?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdll58r",
"comment_text": [
"Most of your dreams happen during an unbroken stretch of sleep. These dreams get forgotten. If you wake up during a dream, then you remember it."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5:How does sex work.. | explainlikeimfive | 1rc8lr | 0 | true | true | 0.42 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqpqr",
"comment_text": [
"OP is actually 5, and props for learning to use reddit at such a tender age. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqydl",
"comment_text": [
"OK like you're 5. Sex is just what we call special mommy and daddy hugs.... for a serious answer try your parents, then for the real answer go to ",
"/r/sex",
" "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqxp9",
"comment_text": [
"But only on Tuesday."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqn3n",
"comment_text": [
"With your big toe"
],
"score": 0
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqozl",
"comment_text": [
"On the third Thursday of the month"
],
"score": 0
} | |
ELI5: Why can I usually hear when a person is black, without seeing them (phone calls or radio etc). And I don't mean accents. | explainlikeimfive | 1rcbrz | 16 | true | false | 0.66 | Maybe it is an accent, and I'm just not aware I'm detecting it. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsdny",
"comment_text": [
"There can be a very slight innate difference from race to race, but it's more to do with culture and accent than physiology - although physiology can sometimes play a part. However most likely if you heard a black guy who was, say, dutch or portuguese, you wouldn't be able to tell his race. ",
"To make another example, Phil Lamarr is a black guy who's a prolific voice actor, if you didn't know who he was you'd never be able to tell the color of his skin. However I've noticed it's very difficult for white guys to do convincing voices of black characters.",
"Edit: Come to think of it, Phil Lamarr's normal voice doesn't sound like any particular race. Watch some interviews of him and see for yourself."
],
"score": 12
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlvpda",
"comment_text": [
"I have approved this submission despite it being reported. Please keep racism to yourselves and I suggest you cite sources when possible. We are watching this thread closely."
],
"score": 12
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltd56",
"comment_text": [
"I can posit an answer to this from a singing perspective, but please keep in mind that it is a massive generalization and there are plenty of exceptions to the 'rule'. ",
"Black singers tend to have particular muscle groups that are stronger or are used more/differently, and this creates certain colours in the voice. These same muscle groups also impact on your speaking voice. Im not going to say thats genetic, i have absolutely no idea. I guess it could easily be like how a family of loud talkers use more diaphragm support and then their kids would have that too because they had more practice at it.",
"These singers also more often have a 'thicker chord setting' that sounds beefy. Different harmonic partials, a darker or warmer tone etc. This is what gives that strong sound. Yes, other not-black singers can do this and sometimes will do it naturally or can learn to do it. And yes, there are of course black singers that have different voices.",
"But you might be hearing the tonal changes that are associated with having strong muscle support. It would come across as warmer, fuller, richer sounding than someone who uses less muscle support when speaking."
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltbh8",
"comment_text": [
"It's very possible you have confirmation bias here, you're only remembering the times you were right."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlvomt",
"comment_text": [
"Yes. Also Samurai Jack."
],
"score": 4
} | |
ELI5:Why evolutionarily wise aren't humans born with the ability to go through puberty? | explainlikeimfive | 1rbzwd | 4 | true | false | 0.66 | What in out evolution made it an advantage to not be fertile, until we go through puberty? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlnyhg",
"comment_text": [
"Questions like this are common and responses should always be read with the understanding that linking any particular behavior to evolutionary fitness is informed guesswork at best and very often simply pure speculation.",
"Bearing children and participating in mating is generally a stressful and taxing behavior. Children have bodies which are physically incapable of bearing young and need to dedicate a great deal of resources to just growing. They are often developing socially, such that they are not yet fully able to navigate the intricacies of the mating process, which can often lead to conflict. When social animals are young, they often appear significantly different from fertile adults and this appearance often gives them greater protection from mating adults. Puberty is a period both of sexual maturity and of acquiring characteristics to communicate this change to others which has the effect of helping protecting children while they are still underdeveloped."
],
"score": 8
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlnz9m",
"comment_text": [
"I am not sure there is a settled explanation for this in the scientific community, but here's an explanation I once heard, ELI5'd:",
"Humans are social animals. At birth we are very vulnerable and extremely dependent on the care of our parents. Birth itself is costly to the organism and highly dangerous. ",
"Having children later facilitates each of these things. By delaying sexual maturation it makes it easier to care for children as a group. Non-sexually mature children don't compete for mates, and with fewer sex hormones they are less aggressive and prone to disrupt the group. Also, since they aren't as big and strong before puberty, they are easier to provide food for, easier to control, and easier to socialize. This makes the group as a whole more likely to thrive, and more offspring likely.",
"Also, By delaying sexual maturation until the organism is more developed, you also give the parents a chance to actually get their bearings, physically and mentally. This means that they are more likely to survive the child birth process, and more likely to provide effectively for the children they do have---who, remember, are totally dependent on them---increasing birth rates and survival rates for mother and child. ",
"again, not definitive, but both of these reasons would provide an evolutionary driver for some delay to sexual maturity, balancing a greater potential time span in which to have more children (earlier onset puberty) with the chance to have more successful children, but with less time to do so (later onset.)"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlp21i",
"comment_text": [
"All mammals go through puberty. The reason for most is simply nutrition. When the animal is growing, the body wants to focus all the calories on reaching full size and maintaining living. Once full size has been reached calories can go into reproductive needs. Its not helpful to be pregnant and tiny trying to put the calories to your growth as well as your fetus. For this reason, lots of males hit puberty at a young age, because being a male animal demands less calories.",
"The other reason puberty occurs is social reasons. For example, males have to fight to won a mate, so why should they put energy into reproducing before they are strong enough to fight. In humans, reproduction and raising kids is a highly social event. We must have a level of social skills (which simply takes time), nutritional fitness, a large size, a basic understanding of the world and stable interpersonal relationships in order to successfully have children and raise them. There is no point in spending energy on reproductive bits until we have all these things in place. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm6emo",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks!"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlnsci",
"comment_text": [
"It's possible it's just the way we develop. Not everything has an evolutionary reason."
],
"score": -1
} | |
ELI5: What is "left" and "right" in politics? | explainlikeimfive | 1rce2q | 2 | true | false | 0.6 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdls9sy",
"comment_text": [
"Nonsense.",
"Left is liberal/progressive. Right is conservative. That's what the terms mean. ",
"It comes from France where those supporting the Monarch (BIG GOVERNMENT) sat on the right side of Parliament. Those supporting change sat on the left side. "
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdls9hg",
"comment_text": [
"In addition to the other comments, the terms \"left\" and \"right\" originate from the seating of various representatives in the ",
"French parliament",
" just before the Revolution."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsdof",
"comment_text": [
"Because what is progressive in one country is old hat in another. ",
"Quite a lot of conservative parties in Western countries have joked that if they moved to the US they'd have to join the Democrats to still have the same policies. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsdda",
"comment_text": [
"At least in the US, one saying we have is that Democrats want to regulate you economically, Republicans want to regulate you morally. Big government means different things to different people.",
"We have a 3rd party, and while it's the biggest one it still usually gets 1-2% of the vote, called the Libertarian party. Their platform is just small government. They advocate relaxing laws on guns, drugs, and abortions, increasing gay rights, and reducing government spending, even in popular programs that Democrats and Republicans both seem to support."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsdda",
"comment_text": [
"At least in the US, one saying we have is that Democrats want to regulate you economically, Republicans want to regulate you morally. Big government means different things to different people.",
"We have a 3rd party, and while it's the biggest one it still usually gets 1-2% of the vote, called the Libertarian party. Their platform is just small government. They advocate relaxing laws on guns, drugs, and abortions, increasing gay rights, and reducing government spending, even in popular programs that Democrats and Republicans both seem to support."
],
"score": 3
} | |
ELI5 what are the four fundamental forces of nature | explainlikeimfive | 1rcfti | 0 | true | false | 0.33 | What are they specifically? Also what exactly is a force? Why am I being downvoted for this? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsnqq",
"comment_text": [
"Gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force.",
"A force is the interaction between objects or particles in such a way that they can exchange attributes such as momentum and energy. Forces are explained by assuming there is a ",
" that carries the interaction from one particle to the other. For instance, in electromagnetism the field is the electric and magnetic field that exists around an object with electric charge and movement. For gravitation, it is the gravitational field (the one that causes your body to stick to the surface of the Earth)."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsnv7",
"comment_text": [
"Of those gravity is the weakest by far. We're talking a lot weaker. Not just a little. It's crazily weaker. On the order of bajillions of times weaker. ",
"Force is something that causes things to undergo change. For instance, gravity causes spacetime to curve and objects to accelerate. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsthp",
"comment_text": [
"Gravity you're familiar with. EM you can see when you play with magnets or listen to the radio. The other two just make matter stick together & aren't really things you can actively see outside of a lab."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlsodr",
"comment_text": [
"What does EM stand for? ",
"Also what is the difference between strong and weak nuclear?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlspaj",
"comment_text": [
"Electromagnetism",
"The strong binds the nucleus of an atom together. It's the strongest of the 4 forces but only acts over a short distance. This is why larger elements tend to decay rapidly due to the short distance at which it acts. ",
"The weak nuclear force is responsible for radioactive decay."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How come my phone can alert me to a Facebook message before I see it even when I am browsing from a computer? Why is there such a lag time? | explainlikeimfive | 1rcgq3 | 1 | true | false | 1 | I recently noticed that my phone would sometimes alert me that I got a message even before I get it even while actively browsing Facebook. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlt0eg",
"comment_text": [
"When you're browsing facebook, or any other site for that matter, there is no continuously opened connection or pipe, to facebook's servers.\nAs such, the way in which the browser knows that you had a new message is by continuously \"polling\" the facebook server for updates (i.e. \"Do you have any news for me?\"). ",
"In order to save some bandwidth and strain on the server, these pollings happen once every X seconds or something(I don't know how much is X). This is the same thing your phone does. So if the phone sees the updates first, it's either because the app has a smaller polling interval, or maybe it just got lucky, and the phone \"won\"."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlw478",
"comment_text": [
"IIRC phones also support push messages, this basically means that they are constantly connected with the server and if a server has news for the client is notified that some information has changed and it request the new information. ",
"Think of it as a string between you and your buddy, when your buddy has some news for you he vibrates the string and you instantly are notified, that your buddy has news for you. and you ask him. ",
"The browser on the other hand does not have a string, it's like you going to your buddy every few minutes and ask him if he has any news for you."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm1egu",
"comment_text": [
"It doesn't matter. Even if they support push messages, the whole communication happens via http protocol which limits some things. Sure, someone could do certain tricks, but I highly doubt that we're talking about push messages."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9w45",
"comment_text": [
"What is \"push message\" ?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdnh7j3",
"comment_text": [
"There is a server, and there is a client that need to communicate; When browsing facebook, the client is your browser, and the server is, well, facebook's server.\nPoll is when the client (browser) asks the server repeatedly for updates; push is when the server triggers the update, and doesn't wait to be asked first (i.e. who takes initiative)."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why do we like our alcohol cold? | explainlikeimfive | 1rcpim | 1 | true | false | 0.66 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlvup8",
"comment_text": [
"The British love their beer warm. When rating foreign beers they quite often rate them poorly if they need to be chilled to taste better. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm27zu",
"comment_text": [
"Between 11 and 13 degrees, actually. Not coming round to yours for tea, if that's room temperature, old bean!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm3lx3",
"comment_text": [
"I stand corrected. Cellar Temperature not room temperature, and, my tea is made with boiling water, and served in a proper mug I'll have you know, "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlxbsk",
"comment_text": [
"A cold beer is much more refreshing than a room-temperature one. And cheaper beers (",
"budweiser",
") get a funky taste when they approach room temperature."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm26mv",
"comment_text": [
"CO₁ (that's carbon dioxide, a gas, since this is ELI5) dissolves differently in different temperatures of liquid. Some alcoholic drinks (mostly beers and ciders) taste their best with the right amount of CO₂ dissolved in them, so are usually served at that temperature. This part of taste is actually called \"mouth feel\", and quite literally refers to how the drink feels in ... well, your mouth.",
"Drinks that aren't gassy may also taste better at different temperatures -- long cocktails are usually served icy cold, but you'll hear people claiming that both sake, and occasionally also red wine, should be served actually a little above room temperature.",
" I don't necessarily like my alcohol cold; it depends on the drink."
],
"score": 2
} | ||
ELI5: Why do humans, in moments of great concentration, often contort their mouths and tongues? | explainlikeimfive | 1rcpj0 | 113 | true | false | 0.79 | You often see it in musicians, or people doing mentally-intensive tasks or concentration, where people will contort/move their mouth and tongue, not on purpose. There's even a common "phrase" (which may be a more rural or "southern" phrase) of "You weren't holding your mouth right" Why does this happen? Does it increase our ability to concentrate on minutiae or tasks? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdly59o",
"comment_text": [
"actually, back in high school my physics teacher read to us from a book by some physics guy. This particular bit of book was about sticking your tongue out as a form of non-verbal communication. There was a series of experiments which supported the theory that sticking your tongue out (or probably \"contorting your mouth and tongue\" is actually a sub-verbal, sub-conscious way of saying \"leave me alone.\" Usually you see it when people are concentrating and don't want to be interrupted, but their study showed that it will even work to avoiding meeting strange people you run into on the street. Unfortunatly, that was many years ago, and I don't think there's any way I'm going to remember the name of the book or the physics guy, sorry."
],
"score": 36
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm0cpw",
"comment_text": [
"So you are saying that Walter White just doesn't give a single fuck about anything anyone has ever said to him?"
],
"score": 19
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdly1f9",
"comment_text": [
"It has to do with the brains connection between control and muscle control. I do it when I'm mad at something like the remote and beating it up against something else, when I have the urge to squeeze something that's cute and when I'm concentrating. The brain makes a connection that tells us if we control more muscles we will have more control over the situation. You can see their mouth and tongue working differently, but what you can't see is that even if a person is concentrating on just what their hands are doing, their feet and legs muscles are contracted too. "
],
"score": 9
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlxzct",
"comment_text": [
"Because he essentially said, \"I am not an expert in this subject and didn't bother to do any research for you, but it sure sounds good, right?\" with that last sentence."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlysc5",
"comment_text": [
"It's one of the rules of the sub:"
],
"score": 6
} | |
ELI5: Autographs or "Why do people want the signature of popular people?" | explainlikeimfive | 1rciyy | 1 | true | false | 0.57 | I never really understood it. What does it gain them? Is it just some kind of proof that you actually saw $person? Why not just take a picture? Also why do popular people scribble something onto random objects? Is it just enforced by their managers? Are there popular people that don't do that but are in a group that usually does that? (for example, politicians rarely or never do that. But (popular) musicians or popular actors often do it and it seems to be kind of expected from them). | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltuo4",
"comment_text": [
"People used to try to get autographs on random items. But today, people rather take pictures with celebrities. If they get autographs, then it's on particular items, like the CD of the celebrity or the jersey of the player."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltwbk",
"comment_text": [
"oh, right. Never made the connection between those two things. That'd also explain why I never saw the sense in getting an autograph...I've no 'hero' or 'role model'."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltoav",
"comment_text": [
"I've never understood it either, but it seems like it's just for proof that you've met them.",
"Either that or sell them, autographed stuff fetches a pretty good price in the right circles."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltofe",
"comment_text": [
"It sort of a keepsake and people tend to glorify musicians and celebrities. They want to be like them or look up to them. Alot of people don't really look up to politicians or want to be politicians. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdltzgb",
"comment_text": [
"Also don't forget monetary value. Some people get autographs to sell them. Also managers of musicians gets them to sign something like a guitar or a t shirt and give it away as a prize."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How does nuclear fuel work and how does it turn into stuff that can harm us? | explainlikeimfive | 1rcyn9 | 3 | true | false | 1 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyitu",
"comment_text": [
"Nuclear material is very very hot. ",
"Nuclear material heats up water around it. ",
"Hot water turns into steam",
"Hot steam is diverted to a turbine.",
"Turbine produces power (by spinning a mgnet round coils of wire)",
"Nuclear material produces a type of radiation called gamma rays. These gamma rays can damage DNA cells nd cause cancer or muttions. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzd9k",
"comment_text": [
"It happens all the time regardless, the core is just where it is increased to usable levels. Those rods pictured are spent, they are just being stored until they can be disposed of. Their supply of unstable atoms has been depleted to the level where they aren't really useful, but they are still dangerous to bystanders."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzd9k",
"comment_text": [
"It happens all the time regardless, the core is just where it is increased to usable levels. Those rods pictured are spent, they are just being stored until they can be disposed of. Their supply of unstable atoms has been depleted to the level where they aren't really useful, but they are still dangerous to bystanders."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyvog",
"comment_text": [
"Does nuclear fission occur inside the fuel rods?",
"Yep.",
"If it does, how does it occur inside there?",
"Nuclear fission is when an atom splits into more than one piece. The fuel rods contain an element that is unstable, and prone to spontaneously splitting as well as being coerced into splitting. When it breaks apart it releases energy and some fast-moving particles that can make other atoms split if they knock into them. If you get enough of this stuff close enough together then the splitting causes a chain reaction that makes more and more split, heating the material up. This can be controlled to be a very steady and long lived heat source."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyvog",
"comment_text": [
"Does nuclear fission occur inside the fuel rods?",
"Yep.",
"If it does, how does it occur inside there?",
"Nuclear fission is when an atom splits into more than one piece. The fuel rods contain an element that is unstable, and prone to spontaneously splitting as well as being coerced into splitting. When it breaks apart it releases energy and some fast-moving particles that can make other atoms split if they knock into them. If you get enough of this stuff close enough together then the splitting causes a chain reaction that makes more and more split, heating the material up. This can be controlled to be a very steady and long lived heat source."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How did Humans evolve to such a high level in a relatively short amount of time, and no other species? | explainlikeimfive | 1rczau | 2 | true | false | 0.75 | Like... why aren't there really intelligent bears, too? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlys55",
"comment_text": [
"A common misconception about evolution is that is has a goal or direction. That humans are the \"best\" species or that there could even be a best species - there isn't. Moreover other species are not trying to become more human. ",
"Intelligence is not the best trait of all traits. Each trait is suited to a species in their niche (environment). Human's cannot run like a cheetah, we can't dive like a whale, or withstand heated pools like a bacteria so why judge other animals on their intelligence. This is a very human-centric point of view. ",
"Bears are not intelligent like humans because they don't need to be in order to survive - yet you are also assuming that they lack intelligence. Animals have many cognitive abilities that approximate humans. They can use tools, solve complex problems, they hunt, they have long-term memories and form strong bonds with other group members (especially social animals). I could go on but the point I am trying to make is animals ",
" intelligent. However we must examine their intelligence from their point of view, not ours.",
"If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing it is stupid - albert einstein",
"Cooperative breeding",
" is a social system where mothers require help from others to raise their offspring - all human cultures exhibit this trait and this developed because we are bipedal and have ",
"trouble giving birth",
". Combined, cooperative breeding and the motivation to share mental states leads to ",
"shared intentionality",
", which is the ability and desire to work collaboratively with others towards a shared goal, as well as understanding that others are aware of your intentions. Cooperative breeding in primates to date is observed only in callatrichids and humans, both of which exhibit shared intentionality. What sets apart humans from other cooperative breeders with shared intentionality is our ancestral ape-level cognitive system. The unique combination of social cognitive skills, ape-level cognitive skills and shared intentionality led to the development of our species-specific traits, including language and enhanced cultural transmission. Our ape-level cognitive skills stem from freed grasping hands, our tool use and ability to solve complex problems.",
"In other words: Ability to use tools and solve problems + complex social system that involves cooperative breeding + shared intentionality = human cognitive abilities."
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlynx3",
"comment_text": [
"Evolution doesn't have \"levels\", it just has features that aid survival. Intelligence happens to be something that helps us, but what would a really smart bear do with that? Make a spear with bear paws? Our ancestor species benefitted from being more and more intelligent because we had the dexterity to build tools, but most other animals cannot manage that, smarts or not."
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm0qsg",
"comment_text": [
"Male peacocks don't really need those tails to survive. Female peacocks just preferred them. Sometimes traits will evolve even if they don't necessarily increase the odds of survival. ",
"I'm not saying art, music, etc. are only there as ways to attract mates. I am saying that things will arise even if there is no obvious evolutionary need. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzalq",
"comment_text": [
"Probably just time. Our particular brand of tool-using primate has been around for 200,000 years and we only really took off in technology in the last 10,000 years. Primitive ancestors of man were probably experimenting with tools and fire even earlier than 200k years ago. Crows might start making primitive ornaments or something eventually, but it might take 400,000 years for something like that to happen."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzaza",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not trying to say animals aren't doing a great job at what they do. I understand they do not need the intelligence level of humans to survive. Then again, do humans need art, or music, or consciousness to survive?"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: How did black people evolve to be faster runners, white people evolve to be smarter, etc? | explainlikeimfive | 1rd0fh | 0 | true | false | 0.32 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyv6w",
"comment_text": [
"We are all the same. Your just a racist asshole. White people like myself are of the same intelligence as black people. Asking questions like this only ensures progress is stalled. "
],
"score": 7
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlz06t",
"comment_text": [
"Lmao why aren't we all the same. We are, there's ridiculously fast white people and ridiculously smart black people. Though you, you are as dumb as a rock. Please adapt or remove yourself from the gene pool"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyyqm",
"comment_text": [
"Don't feed the trolls, downvote & move on."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlz74t",
"comment_text": [
"I know! I don't understand why it's not okay that black people are faster runners. If we say that a species of deer runs faster than another, everybody just accepts it and moves on. But the same phenomenon with people? Oh no, totally impossible!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlyxy1",
"comment_text": [
"No kidding hey. Hate people like him"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: How is Dr. Krieger a genetic clone of Adolf Hitler? | explainlikeimfive | 1rd1kk | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | I never understood that episode. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlze3t",
"comment_text": [
"It's a reference to the movie The Boys from Brazil. Haven't watched it myself, but I hear it's a great movie."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmchh6",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks, watching it now. It's on Netflix. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmcllh",
"comment_text": [
"Nice"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzhkp",
"comment_text": [
"It's a reference to the movie \"The Boys From Brazil\" that's why they also make reference to Portuguese. The broad strokes of the movie is that Nazi scientists created clones of Hitler all around the world but they would be children so the scientists would have to recreate Adolf's upbringing. Several clones were made because they knew mistakes would come up, the joke being Krieger is one of these clones."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlzhbj",
"comment_text": [
"/r/AskScienceFiction",
"...and you might want to include something about where this is from"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5:Why Schrödinger's cat needs to be observed, and why someone/thing needs to be observing everything around us? | explainlikeimfive | 1rdonn | 3 | true | false | 0.81 | Even a wiki page would be great, I just wouldnt know where to begin. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm71cf",
"comment_text": [
"It is a bit different than that. In normal physics, when you don't measure something you don't know the value of whatever it was that you did not measure.",
"When you ",
" decide to measure the value (you ",
") you find one single value. You deduce that it did have that particular value all along, even at the time when you hadn't measured it yet. Furthermore, when you repeat the measurement you expect to find that exact same value, no matter how often you measure it. Within tolerances of accuracy.",
"In quantum physics, this is not the case. You can make measurements, and each time you measure something the outcome can be one of several possible values. The first measurement yields 3, the second and third measurement yield 7, and the fourth measurement yields 3 again. You cannot know in advance what value will be measured, only that it will be one of several distinct values that follow a certain statistical distribution.",
"This phenomenon is explained by assuming that before the measurement, the quantum physical system has ",
". In quantum physic speak we say that the system can be in different states at the same time. We do not know what state it is in until we make a measurement (observe the system) and as we make more measurements, we will find different values grouped according to some statistical distribution.",
"Now, the experiment involving Schrödingers cat says that a certain elementary particle has or has not decayed during a certain time. If it has, the cat is poisoned, if it hasn't, the cat lives. Because it is a quantum physical system, we say that the two states (decayed particle/not decayed) both exist at the same time for the system. This translates into the cat being both dead and alive at the same time prior to the measurement. Only after observing the system, one would find that the cat is either dead or alive.",
"Here is the wikipedia article on this experiment:",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmc6x2",
"comment_text": [
"The shortest possible explanation is that on uber small scales things work in ways such that for all we know they have no absolute value, but are based on statistical spreads of many possible ones. However, they obviously progress forward through time with the assumption that in each PAST state they must have had one, and not many. This is the difference between superposition and position. When you observe or measure it very closely it influences it and it becomes in one position."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9fu2",
"comment_text": [
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm6npc",
"comment_text": [
"Quantum physics is... odd in that everything is defined from the point of view of an observer. Without an observer you cannot be certain of the state of a system, and by observing the state you actually change it from this uncertainty into whatever you observe, the cat is an attempt to explain how this works by using clear states, such as a cat, and dead or alive.",
"Now, observers matter for quantum level events, but do not seem to matter on the macroscopic scale. This is yet another reason why we haven't been able to reconcile quantum physics and general relativity (yet)."
],
"score": 0
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm9fma",
"comment_text": [
"Quantum physics, ELI5 - style: ",
"Dr. Quantum!"
],
"score": 0
} | |
From an economic stand point, what does it mean that the US dollar is the world currency reserve? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9epe | 1 | true | false | 0.57 | I mean, I don't get it. The dollar (like most currencies are today) is a fiat currency. It's not backed by anything, it's just a piece of paper that we choose to believe is worth something. Why do countries have a reserve of money that isn't even their own countries currency, but instead they use the US dollar? Why the US dollar in specific? Why not the Euro, British Pound, or Yuan? What's so special about the US dollar, and why is it the "world currency reserve"? I mean, there are many currencies that have a higher value than the dollar, like the Pound or Euro, so what's so special about the US dollar? What purpose does the US dollar being the "world currency reserve" hold? What benefits does it give to the US that the dollar is the world currency reserve, and what benefit does it give other countries using it as their currency reserve? This has always confused me when it came to economics. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkwr53",
"comment_text": [
"People hold US currency reserves because they are confident others will want US currency in trade in the future. This keeps demand for US dollars high, which allows the US to get more foreign currency in trade."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkwun3",
"comment_text": [
"They could, but people are less confident their trading parter will want yuan. Everyone wants dollars."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkwtaj",
"comment_text": [
"But why the dollar? I mean, couldn't they theoretically use any other currency and just trade using the exchange rate? So if one dollar is worth six yuans, why can't a country just buy a million dollars worth of minerals, using 6 million yuans?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkx6bl",
"comment_text": [
"Why do countries have a reserve of money that isn't even their own countries currency, but instead they use the US dollar? ",
"Historical prescient, while the Bretton Woods system was in effect the US was the official reserve currency for everyone (so two trading partners would trade in dollars). Beyond the benefits to the US it also smoothed trade in the post-war period.",
"Since the end of Bretton Woods USD has remained the reserve currency because its the most stable currency in use worldwide. JPY, GBP, EUR, DEM etc are (or were) far more volatile and so expose trading partners to risk in exchange.",
"there are many currencies that have a higher value than the dollar, like the Pound or Euro",
"A currencies value is simply an expression of anticipated future demand for the currency, for the purposes of trade its more useful that a currency has stable value rather then high value.",
"What benefits does it give to the US that the dollar is the world currency reserve",
"We get to nudge economic policy around the world.",
"what benefit does it give other countries using it as their currency reserve?",
"Stability."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzlqt",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks."
],
"score": 1
} | |
How do our bodies store information about diseases we've overcome, i.e., how do we stay immune to stuff decades after we've had a disease? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9g62 | 1 | true | false | 1 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkxan6",
"comment_text": [
"Your white blood cells make proteins called \"antibodies.\" Antibodies are very specially shaped to match specific foreign objects.",
"The antibody binds to the \"bad\" bacteria/virus, and the white blood cells try to fight and kill anything that the antibody binds to. It's actually super easy to kill a bacteria or virus once your body knows which things to target, the hard part is knowing what to kill and what to leave alone.",
"The way that the body \"remembers\" how to make antibodies is that there are specialized cells which hang around doing nothing other than remembering how to make antibodies. Since they don't really do anything else, they can live for tons of years, basically just waiting for an illness to flare up."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzaol",
"comment_text": [
"No idea. They didn't cover that in BIO-107."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlea8g",
"comment_text": [
"Antibodies are produced by B-cells, which exist in two forms: plasma cells to actually crank out the antibodies, and memory B-cells which float around for decades waiting for a target. You were completely accurate to posit that each cell makes 1 kind of antibody which targets one kind of pathogen. The trick, then, is that your body has millions of different B-cells that make an almost infinite variety of different antibodies. As each memory B-cell matures, it uses a bunch of tricks to rearrange sections of its DNA to create entirely novel binding-tips on their antibodies. (see: ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody#Immunoglobulin_diversity",
")",
"Most of them will have made antibodies against entirely useless things that your body will never see, so they'll just float around quietly and eventually die. The lucky ones, though, will happen to have a binding site that recognizes a pathogen. Through a complicated mechanism, the body will say \"yeah, make more of that cell line!\" and that memory B-cell will go into overdrive, making many more of its line of cells, and actually working to refine the binding site to fit the pathogen even better. [all of this applies to T-cells as well, which fight intracellular pathogens but don't actually make antibodies, but the principles are the same]",
"This is why we vaccinate people, incidentally -- it causes the memory B-cell(s) which target, say, Strep pneumoniae bacteria, to go into a flurry and create many more copies. Then, the first time the body runs into the real bacteria, it can respond much more quickly and overwhelmingly. While every infection would eventually create a response, a lot of diseases strike to fast for your body to recognize it, ramp up the antibody production, and fight back before you're already really sick. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkxjy4",
"comment_text": [
"Great explanation. Could you also expand a little on how the specialized cells produce antibodies for an illness not yet encountered? Let's call these cells A-cells and for the sake of this question let's assume, each kind of A-cell produces 1 kind of antibody which tackles one kind of pathogen. So my question is this, if I am infected with a virus whose corresponding A-cell doesn't exist in my bone marrow, am I doomed?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkx7n0",
"comment_text": [
"We develop antibodies from having the disease or from vaccines. "
],
"score": 0
} | ||
ELI5: How to burn movies using an Apple. | explainlikeimfive | 1r9hd5 | 1 | true | false | 0.67 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkxo9n",
"comment_text": [
"I think a 5 yo would have a lot of trouble trying to understand this"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0obh",
"comment_text": [
"What kind of movies? Movies you've made yourself or actual Hollywood movies? "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl6a7s",
"comment_text": [
"Hollywood movies."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlg7h8",
"comment_text": [
"So you have store-bought DVDs and you want to copy them?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkz4we",
"comment_text": [
"First question to ask: Does your Macbook Pro have a disc drive that you can insert DVDs into? If the answer is yes, go to A. If the answer is no, go to B.",
"A. Determine if the disc drive you have can burn DVDs. If it can burn DVDs (which it probably can, if your laptop is a new model), go to C. If it cannot burn DVDs, go to B. ",
"B. You'll need an external DVD drive, which can be connected by USB. Look for one that is Mac Compatible through a website like Newegg. Move on to C.",
"C. Okay, so you now either know that the DVD drive in your laptop can burn DVDs, or otherwise, you have an external DVD burner. You'll need a program for making playable DVDs. iDVD is made by Apple and is fairly easy to use. Another good and easy-to-use alternative is a program called Toast."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why do wet items dry faster when air is blowing over them? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9jpw | 1 | true | false | 1 | Lets say I was 5. I wet the bed and now I need to dry my bed. I left it alone for 8+ hours while I was working in hopes that it would dry itself. I came home and it was still wet. I now put a fan blowing over the top of it and it dries within a few hours before I need to go to bed. It smells like piss now in my house but my bed is dry. Do liquids just evaporate faster with air blowing over them? Why? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdky69u",
"comment_text": [
"Water goes into solution in air. Since air is drier than your clothing items, water is passed into the drier air. Since the air is moving, this wetter air moves away, drier air takes its place.",
"Repeat as required."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkycjx",
"comment_text": [
"To kind of add onto this, it's similar (in a way) to two items of different temperatures trying to find a balance between the two. If you put a 100 degree item next to a 0 degree item, all other things and variables being equal, they would try to find a balance temperature between the both. It's the same with dry and wet things....to an extent."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkyrb8",
"comment_text": [
"There is a balance between water vapor and dry air; the ratio between the two is the relative humidity. The lower the initial relative humidity, the more water that can be absorbed. Moving air means that the high humidity air is moved away and is replaced by dry air.",
"There is another important factor in this. Heat is taken from the air by the water and this gives the water molecules enough energy to break free and evaporate. Air can only give so much heat, so moving air helps to consistently provide a source of energy for evaporation. This is why the exhaust from a clothes dryer is cooler than the temperature the air is originally heated to. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzhbo",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks! Any suggestions how to get piss smell out of a bed?"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzk10",
"comment_text": [
"Baking soda!"
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5: My fellow Americans, how are we not f*cked? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9lvz | 0 | true | false | 0.43 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkz9pu",
"comment_text": [
"Because most of those numbers don't ",
" anything. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzj6u",
"comment_text": [
"Idk why you are being downvoted... this is accurate information, albeit a bit generalized, but still accurate!"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkz2t5",
"comment_text": [
"Because we're still the most economically powerful country on the planet and as the expression goes \"when america catches a cold, the rest of the world sneezes\"",
"I'm not saying the debt is good, but the rest of the developed world has a vested interest in us not collapsing."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkzs8o",
"comment_text": [
"Eh, i don't really care. It was a low effort response to a low effort question. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdkz0wb",
"comment_text": [
"Because no one is going to do anything about it. Also, that's honestly not that much money when you look at what we spend per day on our military."
],
"score": 0
} | ||
ELI5:What is Bitcoin and why do people think it will actually succeed | explainlikeimfive | 1r9r38 | 0 | true | false | 0.48 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0m3m",
"comment_text": [
"The first part of your question (and maybe the second part) can easily be found by using the search bar and looking up bitcoin: ",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=bitcoin&sort=relevance&restrict_sr=on&t=all"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlepv8",
"comment_text": [
"i didnt even fucking reply you cunt"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlfdk3",
"comment_text": [
"And yet...."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlqest",
"comment_text": [
"and yet you're so desperate for attention, why the fuck are you even mentioning gold? I don't give a shit about your meaningless internet points"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0wh8",
"comment_text": [
"Cool story, now how does that create a dialogue of clarification?",
"You know, the whole point of CMV?"
],
"score": -1
} | ||
ELI5: If i cut my finger and suck the blood out, what am i actually doing? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9rs7 | 2 | true | false | 1 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0shk",
"comment_text": [
"If you'd severed an artery the high pressure spraying blood across the room with every heart beat is going to do that for you."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0oqx",
"comment_text": [
"Creating a vacuum that pulls a little blood out of your vein/artery and into your mouth. A benefit in doing so is that it removes some bacteria and helps a bit with preventing infection: 'flushing' the wound, as it were."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl190f",
"comment_text": [
"Well, yeah you're right, there is that. That would be the 'put pressure on it' one..."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0qo9",
"comment_text": [
"Stopping the blood from dripping onto your clothes/desk/pets. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl0ryh",
"comment_text": [
"Putting pressure onto the wound. The brain has trouble feeling pain and pressure from the same location and will prioritise the feeling of pressure over pain. Squeezing a boo boo or sucking on it forces your brain to somewhat ignore the pain. Obviously if you've been shot and stabbed 12 times this probably won't work as the pain will be too high to override. "
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: When I visited London, I saw properties for "sale" with 999 year "leases". How does this system work? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9w7a | 3 | true | false | 0.81 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2uss",
"comment_text": [
"Properties in Britain tend to be either Leasehold or Freehold (or others that are less common).\nWhen you buy a property 'Freehold', you are buying the house and the land underneath it",
"When you buy 'Leasehold' you are buying the house but only renting the land. This means you have to either pay 'ground rent' or have a long term lease on the land",
"A 999year lease is as good as buying it outright but just means the developers want to keep the land in their portfolio. Probably more useful where land values are expected to rise and they would be able to sell the land at a later date for a great profit. I think it also restricts your own ability to do extensions and development"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl4486",
"comment_text": [
"There are a few different sorts of legal ownership of land: freehold, leasehold, cross-lease (amongst others).",
"I believe that the London 999-year lease is ",
", although in my country anyway, all of the ownership types include a lease term.",
"(Rest of this post applies to New Zealand only, but our system is based on the British one, so some of it may also apply there).",
" (aka. fee simple) is defined as a 99-year lease from the Crown here, but it gets renewed to 99 years on sale (and I presume the owner has the right to renew it at any time). It's done like this so that the country the land is in still has the right to charge you property tax, and apply the laws of the country, etc. For most intents and purposes, you own the land absolutely.",
" is also popular here, it's where there is a single underlying freehold title, but two members agree to both share the freehold title, and also lease half of the property from the other person for 999 years (which is the closest the law allows to saying \"in perpetuity\".",
"Cross-leases are typically used when the land is too small to divide into two separate freehold titles (city councils have rules about that); or occasionally when an unscrupulous developer is too lazy to subdivide properly.",
" is where one person owns the land freehold and then they lease the buildings out. This is the worst type of ownership if you're the one buying the lease; because the leaseholder can change the terms of usage of the land, and also put up the rent. There was a case recently where some leasehold titles included a lease of $7000/yr for the land, and then they were renewed (this happens every 21 years) for a rent of $84,000. So most people who owned houses on this leasehold land were immediately ruined , because they couldn't afford this rent and the re-sale value of the house was destroyed."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl1xos",
"comment_text": [
"Same here. Very curious. ",
"The \"Black's for rent\" was also rather funny, and not at all."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl1xrj",
"comment_text": [
"after 999 years, you give it back"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2bxq",
"comment_text": [
"I believe this is a system based on a loophole preventing sale, or in some way causing great difficulty with outright sale. The lease is typically considered an outright sale. The one put the property up for lease may often fail to bequeath the property along a generation or two in which case the lease end would cause the property to become state owned. ",
"I have no concrete facts to support this only a vague memory of something I was once told. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What really happens during Deja Vu and why does it really feel like it has happened before? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9tri | 5 | true | false | 0.78 | I tend to get Deja Vu on a regular basis. When it happens, the feeling is extremely vivid. It isn't just what I saw but also what I am currently doing, seeing, thinking, feeling, etc. Almost like all my senses have experienced it before. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl1r1g",
"comment_text": [
"Vsauce did a great video on this you should ",
"check it out.",
" "
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2s77",
"comment_text": [
"TED-Ed also has a good video on deja-vu: ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foVMwJtlR5s"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlbisv",
"comment_text": [
"It's caused by a glitch in the Matrix."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl1ikm",
"comment_text": [
"I remember reading that Deja Vu occurs when your brain receives a visual cue, such as the color of a car, and then while sending that message to a part of the brain where images are translated into the things we see, it loses it and then the brain tries to rematch what it just forgot with what you are seeing, hence that feeling that you've seen it before."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl1olj",
"comment_text": [
"Déjà vu -may be the result of a neural misfiring, during which neurons in the brain transmit signals at random and cause healthy people to experience a false sense of remembered familiarity. ",
"Basically the brain chokes, placing a memory file into the wrong place. Fun fact, if you are a young adult or have seizures you are more prone to experience this misfire. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why can't the US military defeat the Taliban? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9xxa | 1 | true | false | 0.6 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2ybh",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not here to argue politics man. And you're complaining about the money we spend and then ask why we don't use more. It's not like we're just hanging out over there. We ",
" capturing and killing them. My comment about joining the military was because apparently you think it's easy to do these things. The best thing you can do is watch a few documentaries. Not just American ones either. The brits are doing the same thing we are over there. Watch these documentaries to see what it's like over there. See what it's like for our troops to have to deal with this situation. Watch the soldiers go into villages and ask the locals about the taliban presence and capture and question suspects. And I'll say it again, if we were at war the country itself, it would have been over within a year or two and all your comments about out huge arsenal would be completely relevant. We are combating a certain group. And we are doing our best to not cause collateral damage. That's why we aren't using all of our resources. You seem to be rejecting logic and answers. I think you should start with the film \"This is what winning looks like\" and then \"Restrepo\" The first will show you how hard it is to get cooperation out of the Afghan people. And The latter will show you how rough the combat is. "
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2ybh",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not here to argue politics man. And you're complaining about the money we spend and then ask why we don't use more. It's not like we're just hanging out over there. We ",
" capturing and killing them. My comment about joining the military was because apparently you think it's easy to do these things. The best thing you can do is watch a few documentaries. Not just American ones either. The brits are doing the same thing we are over there. Watch these documentaries to see what it's like over there. See what it's like for our troops to have to deal with this situation. Watch the soldiers go into villages and ask the locals about the taliban presence and capture and question suspects. And I'll say it again, if we were at war the country itself, it would have been over within a year or two and all your comments about out huge arsenal would be completely relevant. We are combating a certain group. And we are doing our best to not cause collateral damage. That's why we aren't using all of our resources. You seem to be rejecting logic and answers. I think you should start with the film \"This is what winning looks like\" and then \"Restrepo\" The first will show you how hard it is to get cooperation out of the Afghan people. And The latter will show you how rough the combat is. "
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2h17",
"comment_text": [
"An enemy hiding amongst innocents is a rough battle. We ",
" defeating them when it comes to combat. Think about Vietnam. We won most battles. Look at our \"K/D\" spread of that war. We didn't pull out because we were failing in combat. We pulled out because they were willing to go to the very last man and because so many innocents were dying (and a bunch of other reasons, mostly political) And that is not a good way to win a war. Our soldiers are dying more from suicide than the enemy. Also, the Taliban are hard to kill because they are always hiding. They don't engage our troops till they're all dead. The pop a corner, bust a few rounds (usually aimlessly) and then run like all hell."
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2pvk",
"comment_text": [
"You act like we are using our nukes and all our resources. Yes, it is hard when the enemy is not uniformed. If you want answers. Join the military and get deployed. War with guerilla fighters is a bitch when you don't want to level every single village and city. And don't ask me what the point of the war is. I'm not a politician. If the COUNTRY ITSELF was at war with us you would be right. But it's not. We are fighting a certain group hiding amongst an entire country. How is that hard to understand. It's not so much a war ",
" Afghanistan. It's a war ",
" Afghanistan. "
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl2pvk",
"comment_text": [
"You act like we are using our nukes and all our resources. Yes, it is hard when the enemy is not uniformed. If you want answers. Join the military and get deployed. War with guerilla fighters is a bitch when you don't want to level every single village and city. And don't ask me what the point of the war is. I'm not a politician. If the COUNTRY ITSELF was at war with us you would be right. But it's not. We are fighting a certain group hiding amongst an entire country. How is that hard to understand. It's not so much a war ",
" Afghanistan. It's a war ",
" Afghanistan. "
],
"score": 4
} | |
ELI5: How has Toronto's mayor managed to stay in power? | explainlikeimfive | 1ra0ar | 6 | true | false | 0.75 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl34xk",
"comment_text": [
"He is not a convicted felon and we cannot impeach, so he stays in position, we can and have taken away his powers, so he's just kinda sitting there. "
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl4r97",
"comment_text": [
"I don't see why he shouldn't be mayor? He seems like the kind of guy I would want to be the mayor of my city."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl70th",
"comment_text": [
"don't forget that for the most part he's been doing a good job as a mayor (atleast from what i've read)"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7nfk",
"comment_text": [
"cause he saves me money"
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl35bf",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks!"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: If Daylight Savings time is supposed to give us more daylight after work in the summer, why bother switching our clocks back for the winter? | explainlikeimfive | 1r9zyw | 2 | true | false | 0.75 | The only thing switching our clocks back in the winter accomplishes is providing more daylight in the morning and less in the evening. Why does the rationale that people prefer daylight in the evening than in the morning only apply during the summer? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl34ex",
"comment_text": [
"The problem is that there's less daylight overall in the winter. If you don't set the clocks back, by January you'd have some places where the sun didn't rise until 9am."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl39q5",
"comment_text": [
"In your example, why is sunlight at 8:50am useful and sunlight at 5:30pm not? They seem roughly the same amount of usefulness to me, assuming a 9-5 job. 10 minutes before work vs 30 minutes after. If we assume 8-5, like you are suggesting, then clearly sun at 5:30pm is more useful than 8:50am because you are already at work at 8:50am. Once again, I would know from living in Edmonton. I work 8-5, and in January, it is completely dark when I drive to work and completely dark when I drive home. At least if we shifted the clocks forward an hour there would be half an hour of sunlight on my way home."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3674",
"comment_text": [
"Why does that matter? In those places, the sun is setting really early, too, and by setting the clocks back then the sun sets even earlier. I think most people would agree that they would rather have the sun set later in the day than rise earlier in the day, hence the purpose of daylight savings time in the first place. ",
"Source: I live in Edmonton."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl38df",
"comment_text": [
"Source: I live in Edmonton.",
"In Edmonton, on Jaunurary 1st, the sun will rise at 8:50am, and set at 4:25pm.",
"If daylight saving time were left in effect, then the sun would rise at 9:50am, and set at 5:25pm.",
"So you'd still get no useful extra daylight in the evening (assuming a normal 8-5 job), and you'd spend half the morning in darkness."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3ewc",
"comment_text": [
"Daylight Savings Time was started during the war so that people could have more working hours without having to change the 'time' they did stuff. But they never stopped it afterwards. \nWhat would make more sense is for the time to stay as it is, and businesses to have different opening hours at different times of the year. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Why is coffee described as a drug? | explainlikeimfive | 1ra4z5 | 2 | true | false | 0.75 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl4dp3",
"comment_text": [
"It's a drug because it causes an effect in the body. The active ingredient in coffee is caffeine which has a stimulant effect on the central nervous system. ",
"Coffee is the most widely consumed drug on the planet. "
],
"score": 5
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl63mq",
"comment_text": [
"The first line of the wikipedia page is a good start ",
"A drug is a substance which may have medicinal, intoxicating, performance enhancing or other effects when taken or put into a human body or the body of another animal and is not considered a food or exclusively a food.",
"The term drug is used extremely broadly in most contexts, and since coffee it used for its stimulant properties, it becomes a drug in most classical senses. Our culture has somewhat confused the definition of the word drug with that of recreational drugs, consumed for purpose of intoxication. "
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlm6h1",
"comment_text": [
"If coffee isn't a drug, an ounce of weed isn't a drug either."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlm5rf",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty sure that would be tea."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl636y",
"comment_text": [
"It's actually addictive, in a medical sense. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: What made Gandhi so famous? | explainlikeimfive | 1ra1hq | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3y14",
"comment_text": [
"In one word, resilience.",
"His method of protest was one that could not be subdued by conventional means. In a world plagued with violent wars which were seen as the most convenient solutions to issues, Gandhi stood out."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3ikq",
"comment_text": [
"He led a non-violent civil protest for India's independence from the British."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3jgx",
"comment_text": [
"And is probably the nicest racist to have ever lived. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl3nyc",
"comment_text": [
"Oh, I'm not familiar with his racism in detail. You should probably ask someone who's studied it. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl4wr1",
"comment_text": [
"He followed a unique system of non violent protests which he called \"satyagraha\"."
],
"score": 1
} | ||
What do companies do with our used products when we exchange them? | explainlikeimfive | 1ra8eh | 1 | true | false | 1 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl5eyj",
"comment_text": [
"they either refurbish them and use them for warranty exchanges or destroy them."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl5oi2",
"comment_text": [
"If they destroy them, why don't they just re-sell them at low price instead? I mean, they would lose less money that way.."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl5rrz",
"comment_text": [
"It's cheaper to destroy them then it is to pay someone to re pack the thing and to hire someone to sell it."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl8ta3",
"comment_text": [
"eh, you can only sell a refurb for so much, and (lets take an iphone) if you have to replace the screen, the case, the battery, and the audio jack, you're going to spend more money to refurb that unit than you'd get back from selling a refurb, so it makes no sense to refurb it. "
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlm463",
"comment_text": [
"That's what it means to 'refurbish' it. They fix simple problems, repack them and ship them out again. Apple tries to save most of these for warranty replacements.",
"Part of what you buy when you buy an Apple product is the prestige of having a new, shiny phone. If they started selling refurbs for cheap, it would cheapen the perceived value of the brand."
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Would it be possible to stab and kill someone with an icicle, leaving behind no trace of a murder weapon? | explainlikeimfive | 1rabji | 0 | true | false | 0.5 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl68pv",
"comment_text": [
"Provided you found the right naturally formed icicle, yes.",
"Making a molded weapon out of ice wouldn't make much sense, because then you'd have the same problem with the mold that you would with a murder weapon.",
"There are practical problems with using an icicle to stab someone, though. It's going to start to melt in your hand(s). Your dexterity will be limited, either because of the cold, or because of the gloves you'll be wearing. There is a non-zero possibility of the ice slipping.",
"Stabbing isn't a particularly efficient means of murder, either; unless you get through the skull, death is not instantaneous. It takes seconds to minutes for a person to bleed out, during which time they can fight. The ice is likely not be hard enough to penetrate bone, so you'll be targeting soft tissue somewhere in the neck or torso, which is all well and good, but your victim will probably be moving around and fighting you by this time, making it harder to hit your mark...",
"And after all that trouble, all you've done is created a murder without a murder weapon. Which you could have done by strangling your victim instead.",
"And you still have to figure out what to do with the body."
],
"score": 6
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl6pdw",
"comment_text": [
"In can see you've thought about this. I applaud your thoroughness!"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl6squ",
"comment_text": [
"Very well thought out! I was just curious because on Tumblr and Twitter people kept talking about \"Oh, if you want to get away with murder just kill someone with an icicle!\" and I wasn't sure if that was actually possible."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl6z62",
"comment_text": [
"First off, why would you want to murder someone in the first place? I sincerely hope that the only reason people aren't murdering each other isn't because they think they'd get caught.",
"Anyway, the murder weapon is not the only consideration law enforcement takes into account when trying to solve a murder.",
"Who had motive? Most likely suspects are people known to the victim or who would have a reason to target the victim.",
"Who had the means? Here is where a murder weapon comes into play, but it's not essential. Plenty of people are convicted for bludgeoning others to death with their bare hands, strangling others, et cetera.",
"Who had opportunity? Among those who had motive and means, who was with the victim at the time of the murder and lacks a reliable alibi?",
"Proving you were with the victim at the time of the murder is a major way they can connect you to the crime. And it's getting tougher and tougher to evade this.",
"Time of death is established using ",
"various forensic methods",
".",
"The victim and the surrounding area will also be scoured for forensic evidence. Ever notice how there are little hairs that show up on your sink, but you have no idea how they they got there? It happens at crime scenes, too.",
"They will look for hair, blood, saliva, semen... any of the biological material that you produce on a fairly regular basis. They'll check under the victim's fingernails for any of your tissue that may have ended up there during the death struggle.",
"They'll look or shoe prints, and then they'll know the make and model of shoes that you wore, along with your shoe size. Similarly for tire treads and your vehicle.",
"Depending on the records kept by companies you do business with and whether you used a credit card linked to your name, they will have your purchase history for weeks, months, or years predating the murder, which may indicate any preparation you may have done.",
"Any movement you've made that required more than a single tank of gas will also likely be recorded, and surveillance tape may be available from gas stations showing you were there.",
"Once you are a suspect, your computers will be seized and your internet search history will be examined. Your e-mails will be searched, your social media counts (",
"including reddit",
") will be investigated. This thread will be found, and the prosecutor will discuss at length in court how you were talking about murder weapons.",
"So on and so forth.",
"We leave such a prominent digital paper trail now, and there are so many ways in which our activities are monitored and recorded, that it is becoming increasingly trivial to trace the whereabouts of someone suspected of murder."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl92wf",
"comment_text": [
"Err, thanks... But I think you hugely misinterpreted my question and this definitely wasn't the answer I was looking for lol"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: What happens during a CPR? | explainlikeimfive | 1rac7q | 2 | true | false | 0.6 | What is happening to a patient during CPR? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl6b90",
"comment_text": [
"You pump the heart manually, sending oxygenated blood through the body, delaying cell death until an AED or other advanced medical personnel. That's why it's just as important to breathe for them every 30 compressions. \nSource: Emergency Medical Responder"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl75mx",
"comment_text": [
"They now teach just compressions for First Aid."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl8d3e",
"comment_text": [
"Also, people suck at giving breaths. They take too long, don't deliver it that effectively, and it really doesn't do that much, as the body often retains ~8-10 minutes of oxygen in the body before biological death occurs.",
"Studies have shown that continuing to deliver compressions could be equally, if not more, effective than breaths (in most situations).",
"Source: CPR Instructor"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7mqm",
"comment_text": [
"Because that's what is being taught now. There's some residual oxygen in the body. It's not like they're currently running around using a lot. "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7wtw",
"comment_text": [
"It was explained to me that people are more likely to do compressions on strangers than both and anything is better than nothing."
],
"score": 2
} | |
ELI5:Why do famous actors/singers make way more money than other people who actually contribute to further developing the world, like engineers or scientists? | explainlikeimfive | 1rahe2 | 0 | true | false | 0.36 | [deleted] | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7tce",
"comment_text": [
"Because the world is unfair. /thread"
],
"score": 4
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7p13",
"comment_text": [
"Tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of people will see a movie or listen to a song. And the actor or singer will make more, and more, and more. This makes them quite valuable. ",
"An engineer or a scientist is unlikely to work on as many projects or make a company as much money."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlc3sk",
"comment_text": [
"Because the small group of famous actors and singers who make so much money are \"the 1%\" of the artistic world. If you looked at the 1% of engineers and scientists, I'm willing to bet that these people would have even more money than the famous actors. Yet they're not famous: only their inventions or discoveries are famous. This is because when you consume the art of an engineer, you're consuming a beautifully designed product, whereas when you're consuming the art of an actor or singer, you're fixated on the person and their associated performance. ",
"On average, your typical engineer or scientist makes far more than your typical actor or singer. So it turns out, life's not unfair! "
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl7sv4",
"comment_text": [
"Supply and demand I suppose.\nMany people are willing to pay good money for seeing or hearing one artist/group, and only that one. A song/movie just as good but under a different group/artist won't do",
"However alot of people is willing to pay for the solution the engineers/scientists come up with. And there can be hundreds of solutions to one problem, if not millions.\nSo they need to split the money."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdl8atf",
"comment_text": [
"Supply and demand. "
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: Anything David Blaine does. | explainlikeimfive | 1raqyr | 0 | true | false | 0.38 | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlacwx",
"comment_text": [
"magic is not real"
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlahoe",
"comment_text": [
"Thats about the best answer I can think of. All elaborate tricks set up in ways that you would find hard to imagine. Watch the \"Dynamo revealed\" vids on youtube if you arent convinced."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlaksf",
"comment_text": [
"is that the skinny english dude?",
"does he do it like chris angel and just pays the audience to pretend to believe?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlatd2",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah it is he has crones disease. Yeah I think he must man. He is smart and totally top of his game but its trickery, this just shows some of the tricks. Awesome to watch"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlbv9z",
"comment_text": [
"Are you sure?"
],
"score": 1
} | ||
ELI5: Why is there a second tidal bulge on Earth opposite of the Moon? | explainlikeimfive | 1ratow | 5 | true | false | 1 | Examples of wrong answers: This guy below breaks everything down and disproves lot of the big name sources' reason on why there is a second bulge. But I can't wrap my head around the reasoning. If you scroll down to the section titled Final Exam at , that is how I'm currently understanding it. But he says: How does the gravitational force of the earth and the tensile force come into play? Mind you this is part of the science curriculum for 6th graders, and I want to get it right. In someone posted but I don't understand how after he subtracts the Earth's force the resulting force is now two equal and opposite forces? | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlb1je",
"comment_text": [
"The moon is also pulling the earth away from the water on the opposite side."
],
"score": 3
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlc7aj",
"comment_text": [
"Tensile forces just means internal forces that keep the earth roughly rigid. If the earth weren't more rigid than the ocean, the entire earth would stretch due to the tidal forces and the land and sea would rise the same amount so there would be no apparent tide. You notice the ocean water level rising relative to the shore, not in absolute terms. The land rises slightly too, but much less than the water because the earth is mostly rigid. The earth's gravity, of course keeps the water on the surface and would tend to bring the water level back towards a uniform depth."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlb4et",
"comment_text": [
"So isn't the entire Earth moved away while the water kinda lags behind."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlbtjt",
"comment_text": [
"There's two good pictures in the ",
"Wikipedia article",
". Basically, the earth is rigid while the oceans are not. Because gravity forces fall off with distance the moon pulls hardest on the parts of earth closest to it, less hard in the middle, and least hard at the point farthest from it. So water close to moon is pulled towards the moon relative to the center of the earth, and the center of the earth is pulled harder than the water on the far side."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlbzt6",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah I got that in the ",
"lhup article",
" he states:",
"How does the internal tensile and the gravitational force of the Earth come into play?"
],
"score": 1
} | |
ELI5: The way that credit works: From cards; to loans; to APRs | explainlikeimfive | 1rawdq | 3 | true | false | 1 | Please and thank you. | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdlc02f",
"comment_text": [
"lets start with the basics.",
"a credit card is basically a standing agreement that you can be loaned X amount at any one time, and you can use it anywhere, and if you pay it off you can use it again. a loan is an agreement that you can borrow x amount of money once. an APR stands for annual percentage rate and is the amount of interest you have to pay on a loan over the course of a year.",
"you use a credit card like you do a debit card, for any purchases you want to make. if you pay off your purchases at the end of the month then the credit card company will waive the interest that would be due that month. if you don't pay off your purchases, then you're responsible for paying the interest accrued over the month.",
"there are a couple types of loans, those would be secured and unsecured loans. a mortgage or car note are examples of secured loans, you're using the money to purchase an item that can be repoed by the bank if you don't pay on your loan. unsecured loans are usually called personal loans and are for smaller amounts. lets say you need 5k for repairs on your home, you may be able to get the loan from your bank just because of your credit history. there's no collateral, so if you default(don't pay), the bank is out that money. both secured and unsecured loans also have an interest rate that you pay, so at the end of the loan you may have borrowed 10k, but with interest you're actually paying back 11k to the bank.",
"need any more info? let me know."
],
"score": 2
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdm6qzb",
"comment_text": [
"So in the case that I do not pay my initial credit bill on time before its due, I incure addition fees according to whatever my APR is, is that right?",
"What do you have to say about the minimum payments? How does my APR affect that? ",
"If I were to take out a loan for a car could I make \"surplus\" payments? Where I pay more than what is due that month and would anything different happen to my credit score if I did?"
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmem5u",
"comment_text": [
"a late fee is not based on your APR, it is based on your credit card agreement, it's usually $25 or $39, but it completely depends on the bank and your credit card agreement",
"the minimum payment depends and can and can not be effected by your APR. to calculate your minimum payment for a credit card you take 1% of your current balance, plus any fees accrued in the billing cycle ",
" $15 or $25 or whatever is specified in your credit card agreement as the base minimum payment, ",
". so, lets say in your agreement you have a $25 minimum payment, you have a balance of $500 and interest charged of $10, you'd take 1% of the $500, or $5, plus $10 in fees, that's only $15, so your minimum payment would be $25 as agreed upon in your credit card agreement. now lets say you have a $5000 balance and $45 in interest. your minimum payment is going to be $95, so in this instance your APR does have an effect on your minimum payment.",
"i'm not a credit analyst so i can't say what it will do to your credit score. a car loan payment is calculated differently than credit card payments. the interest is calculated and applied to the amount you're paying back, so lets say you have a $1000 principle, 10% interest, and 12 months worth of payments your payment would be $1100/12=$91.66. lets say you want to pay $100 a month, you can absolutely do so and your loan would be paid off in 11 months. Since the loan was based off 12 months, and the interest was previously calculated and added in, you'd get a break on one month's worth of interest when you make the final payment. You'd have to contact the bank and they'd provide the payoff amount for that last payment.",
"let me know if you have more questions or need clarification on anything."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmhs5t",
"comment_text": [
"I thank you so much for all of your knowledge. However I am sttill having a hard time understanding an APR. It seems like interest I would have to pay no matter what. ",
"Aa bettter way to get to the point is by asking this: how do I get out of paying my APR? Is it manditory or is there some sort of way I can just pay off the initial fee borrowed? This question goes for loans and credit."
],
"score": 1
} | {
"comment_id": "t1_cdmlm3h",
"comment_text": [
"With credit cards if you pay off the full statement balance each month you will not be charged any interest. You'll always pay interest on loans, it's how banks make money."
],
"score": 1
} |
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