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5y5k72 | do actors really eat/drink during a scene that involves food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y5k72/eli5_do_actors_really_eatdrink_during_a_scene/ | {
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"Yes, though they often have people standing by to allow them to spit out the food in the event of multiple takes. Some actors do prefer to swallow though, for effect. Chris Pratt for example eats everything.",
"Depends on the situation. If a scene is taking place where alcohol is involved, the drinks are likely non alcoholic. Since most scenes take multiple takes to get everything done correctly, the actors could easily become drunk causing more mistakes to happen which would lead to the scene being shot more times which would lead to the actors co aiming more alcohol. It's a vicious cycle. \n\nAs far as food is concerned, the good will be present but the actors likely will not be actively eating it. By eating they are risking dropping or spilling the food on to their clothes which would lead to a wardrobe change. They also risk missing their cue to talk if they are still chewing or they chew so fast so they dont miss their cue and start to choke. Either way it would cause a cut and the scene to be reshot. \n\nAt the end of the day it is just easier to simulate food and drink instead of the risk of time wasted on reshoots. ",
"I don't know about all movies and shows, but I read that the actor who played Uncle Rico in *Napoleon Dynamite* doesn't eat red meat. We see him bite into a big ole steak, but when he wipes his mouth he spits it out into his napkin."
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atisq1 | how can you feel the difference of a dull and sharp object of the same size and material? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atisq1/eli5_how_can_you_feel_the_difference_of_a_dull/ | {
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"Is your question how your skin perceives the difference?"
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130bfz | why is acid throwing such a problem in pakistan (and other similar countries)? | I'm watching Saving Face right now and I am having a hard time understanding why this is even a thing. And why the men usually aren't punished at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/130bfz/eli5_why_is_acid_throwing_such_a_problem_in/ | {
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"Because in these cultures, disgrace is worse than death. By throwing acid on her face you not only permanently disfigure her, but the scars prove to be a constant reminder to her and those around her about the consequences of not adhering to societal norms."
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5utrug | when a game on steam is on sale - who gets the smaller cut? is steam making less money when something has a discount or is it all on the studio? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5utrug/eli5_when_a_game_on_steam_is_on_sale_who_gets_the/ | {
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"It's assumed steam takes its cut in the form of a percentage. So would get less of a cut from a smaller price.",
"They both would make less money—per sale, at least. Steam takes a cut of all sales for providing the distribution platform (I think it's around 30%) so if the studio decides to put their game on sale, Steam gets the same cut percentage but the amount of money they're taking their cut from is less.",
"I don't know the specifics and can only assume but here goes.\n\nValve takes a regular cut from sales of other parties video games, IIRC it's 35% \n\nNow Valve doesn't own the games being sold like say a retailer owns the hard copy, it creates licenses and can distribute these to allow people to play the game on their own service (Steam). So Valve shouldn't have to deal with over quantity of stock due to it not selling and thus requiring it to be sold at a lower price to sell more therefore I assume the sales we see on Steam are agreed on between Valve and the publishers of the games such that if a game were to be sold at 50% off, valve would get 35% of that 50% or 17.5% of the non sale price and the publishers would get the rest.\n\nAs I say I don't know this for certain so maybe someone else has a better answer. ",
"Ideally neither.\n\nLet's say the game studio needs to sell 1000 copies the game for $10 to break even. Let's say steam wants 10% of the sales. Business don't want to break even, they want a profit. So they sell the game for $20, give steam two dollars, and make $8 profit on each purchase.\n\nThe purpose of a sale is to sell a large volume by discounting the product.\n\nSo instead of $20, we sell the game for $15, give steam $1.50, we make a profit of $2.50. obviously that's smaller than the 8 dollars we got before, but we sell 4000 copies.\n\nFirst let's assume that without the sale, we would have sold 2000 copies of the game. That's 1000 copies at $8 profit ($8,000) plus 1000 copies at $18 profit ($18,000). Everything sold after the break even number is all profit. This gives us a total of $36,000 profit on the game.\n\nAfter you break even, everything becomes profit. So we make $2.50 profit on 1000 copies ($2,500) then on the rest we make $13.50 ($40,500) for a total of $43,000 profit.\n\nThis is grossly simplified and I chose numbers that worked out evenly. The basic idea is sell a little at a large margin, or a lot at a small margin."
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3chzhj | different cheeses and how they pair with wine. | So, I've been to people's houses that have offered fancy cheese with crackers and wine. I was at the store and I saw the cheese section, and realized I didn't know what I was looking at. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3chzhj/eli5_different_cheeses_and_how_they_pair_with_wine/ | {
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"Your question is a little widely spread, try and focus it a little. I suspect you probably are asking for a primer on the various types of cheeses, and then one on the various wines. Finally how they pair with each other. \n\nCheese can be split into 4 basic categories. \n\n* Bloomy: Creamy, decadent cheeses, with a soft rind. \n* Hard: Stiff cheeses, which are often sharp and/or salty. They can also be aged. \n* Blue: Pungent, often salty cheeses, with a blue tinge. \n* Fresh: Soft, often spreadable cheeses that can be tangy or mild. They are not usually aged.\n\nThen of course wines is a whole other basket. \n\nI think you'd be better off splitting your question into a series of questions. First try /r/AskCulinary for a primer on the various cheeses\n\nThen maybe /r/wine for suggestions on how to pair specific types of cheeses with some wines.",
"I would suggest just trying as many cheeses and wine that interest you and you can learn a lot about them that way. \n\nThere are so many cheeses at the store because just changing one small detail in the making process can make the cheese taste completely different. I would suggest starting simple; look at the cheddars they have and notice the differences and maybe buy a few that interest you. If it says sharp, extra sharp or aged, that means that it will have a stronger flavor and more 'bite' to it. Colby or monterey jacks will have a more mild cheddar taste and have a softer texture than sharper cheddars.\n\nIf you see cheeses with a white kinda soft looking rind on it that comes round look and see if it says brie, camembert... these are mold ripened cheeses have a buttery and rich taste with a soft center, they can also have a funky ammonia like taste or smell that you may or may not like. If it says double cream or triple cream that means that it has more fat and will have a richer taste.\nBlue cheeses like gorgonzola, stilton, roquefort will have a strong ammonia smell and taste and crumbly texture.\nSwiss cheese will have a nutty taste and holes in it.\n\nThe list of different cheeses goes on and on especially when it comes to artisan or specialty cheeses so the best thing to do is to try a small sample, read the label or any other information that you can find on the cheese and see if they mention what it pairs well with.\n\nIf you are doing a cheese tasting, my rule of thumb is to start with the lightest tasting cheese and work your way to the strongest. Usually that means starting with a brie and ending on a blue cheese. That way the strong cheese doesn't over power the more delicate cheeses. In a similar vein, pair delicate cheeses with delicate wines and strong cheeses with more full body wines. So an unaged cheese would pair with a young white wine with floral or fruit flavors whereas an aged cheddar or blue cheese would do better with an aged red wine. Most wines will have descriptors on the label to give you an idea of what would pair well with it. \n\nIf you have any more questions, feel free to ask. There are so many ways to go about explaining this that hopefully I have provided you with some guidance."
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45xzph | how does the microwave heat liquids so that they are too hot to drink, but there is still no steam coming out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45xzph/eli5_how_does_the_microwave_heat_liquids_so_that/ | {
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"Steam bubbles tend to form at imperfections in the container or on solid things you place in the liquid. When heating in the microwave, you are likely using a ceramic or pyrex container which is very smooth. And the microwave doesn't disturb the liquid as it heats it. Without a point for steam to form, the liquid can become very hot (even superheated beyond boiling temperature)."
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24fp6b | how do ceo's apply to become a ceo for some totally unrelated company? | The company I work for... well, the CEO just resigned, annoucning he had taken a job as CEO for a totally unrelated company (specifically the company he's leaving has to do with contracting IT field services and the new company... well, has nothing to do with IT at all). Additionally, this same person was only with us for less than a year and in that time created a whooooooooole lot of fuck ups for everbody that were felt at all levels.
So it gets me to wonder: What kind of interview process might a current/former CEO be subjected to when seeking a new job with a totally unrelated corporation? What kind of criteria might be examined or overlooked? I guess what I'm really asking is: Might it be possible for a "CEO" to skate from one company to the next leaving a world of ruin behind each position they resign from while those who take him in have no true idea about his history while he makes millions all along the way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24fp6b/eli5_how_do_ceos_apply_to_become_a_ceo_for_some/ | {
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"To answer what you're really asking there, yes it is possible and it's done more than you'd imagine.\n\nLet's say a CEO get's hired for at a new company and because of his/her record they're expected to increase profits and share price.\n\nThere are 2 ways to do that. 1. Create something new, bold innovative, market it, sell it and profit. 2. Cut the fat. #1 takes a long time and #2 is way easier.\n\nSo a CEO could come in and start making cuts. The best example is R & D. The R & D department of any company is a huge financial black hole on the balance sheet. Obviously without them you wouldn't make new products and thus profit, but when looking over the books you don't actually get the money from R & D, you get it from the sales department. So lets say you're CEO and you cut R & D and in doing so costs. You've just saved the company millions maybe billions! Profits are up, not because you actually make a product and sold it but because you simply reduced spending, and because profits are up, the share price is up and the shareholders are happy.\n\nAnother company sees that you increased profits and offers you a job with better pay to entice you, because they want to increase profits. You pull the rip cord on your golden parachute and move on to a new company.\n\nAfter a while, your old company, without any R & D department, has stopped making new products and can't compete in the marketplace. The new guy complains about how you ruined everything and you sit back and say \"hey, when I left everything was going well, we had great profits, you must have screwed it up.\"\n\nRinse and repeat.\n\nAnd that's one of corporate America's biggest problems today."
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1rs3a4 | i am on the river right now. what causes ice to form like this? | _URL_0_
The water level definitely has not been that high.. can someone explain how it's forming the way it is? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rs3a4/eli5_i_am_on_the_river_right_now_what_causes_ice/ | {
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"I never saw something like this before and if it's true that the water level was never that high I would assume that a thin layer of fog above the river caused this phenomenon. \n\nFog often stays in thin layers, especially over rivers or lakes. The tiny water particles then freeze on something they can hold on. If it is cold enough and the there often is fog at the same height I could imagine this thing happen. \n\nBut that is just a wild guess, since I'm no meteoro-/geologist"
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2huvow | if mushrooms are made of chitin, a protein, why is the amount of protein listed in the nutritional information so low? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2huvow/eli5_if_mushrooms_are_made_of_chitin_a_protein/ | {
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"Chitin is a form of sugar - not protein. Since your question is still valid if you switch those words though, it is a type of sugar that our bodies cannot use. It acts just like fiber (also a sugar) and passes right through so to speak.",
"Fun fact, chitin is found in insect shells, and other animal parts."
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6wtnga | is the knowledge of how to physically have sex genetically passed or is it something animals like chimps learn from watching others? | Has there ever been an experiment where for example 20 baby chimps are locked together without ever having seen the act itself. Would they figure out on their own how to have sex and reproduce if during captivity they are just being fed?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wtnga/eli5_is_the_knowledge_of_how_to_physically_have/ | {
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"I don't know for sure but:\n\nAt some point someones getting a boner and at another point he will figure out where to put it. This isnt necessarily knowledge but insticts paired with curiosity. \nSomeone pointed the human trial and error modus operandi out perfectly: \n\n1. can you eat it?\n\n2. can you smoke it?\n\n3. can you have sex with it?",
"Sex is innate in all species, and is the most vital trait a species can have to continue existing. Yes, it is innate. In practice, observing speeds along the discovery process but it will happen regardless. And yes, it has been done with lab-chimps being introduced. They'll mate with each other despite not having observed the phenomena before."
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31ek64 | dual-edge vs single-edge swords | From my limited knowledge single-edged swords allow the blade to be curved which makes slicing (and possibly cutting) better while a straight dual-edged sword can thrust better to pierce armor? Am I missing something?
EDIT: I can't think of an intuitive way to cut/slice using the "false" blade. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31ek64/eli5_dualedge_vs_singleedge_swords/ | {
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"Each type of blade is designed to be better under different fighting styles. A single edged sword is designed under fighting styles that utilizes more slashing and slicing attacks. Double edged blades were developed for fighting styles that took advantage of having two sharp edges. Each has their advantages and disadvantages, but the fighting styles used for each takes advantage of their pro's, and minimizes their con's.",
"False edge can mean 2 things. On replica/re-enactment swords its a non-sharp edge. For real swords it's the trailing edge but can be just as sharp as the leading edge. One a straight sword both edges are sharp and the false edge is the one you don't generally attack with due to the way the sword is held. Some sabre type swords have a false edge which is where the back of the sword is sharpened for about a third of the length. This sharpness helps get the blade into the target when thrusting but also allows quick flicks to cut your opponent with the back of the blade when engaged in actual fencing."
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yrmqm | how to play dota 2? | A while ago, I got Dota 2 from the Steam holiday gift pile thing. I tried to play it, but failed miserably. I was wondering if anyone had starting tips or a basic concept of how to play this game. I feel like such a failure and I realize this is (from what I've experienced) a game for pros only or whatever.
Feedback is appreciated. Thank you! :D | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yrmqm/eli5_how_to_play_dota_2/ | {
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"Use A+click to hit the mobs when they are low health do not auto attack. Stay behind your creep waves and back up with them, carry some health/mana regen. Learn a hero and repeatedly play them until you get the game down.\n\nSuggest heroes- Crystal maiden, Venomancer, or lion.\n\nTell people you are new and play bot matches."
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3ejhd7 | travelling at the speed of light. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ejhd7/eli5_travelling_at_the_speed_of_light/ | {
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"Kepler-452b is 1400 light years away. A light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in one year. So, if you were moving at the speed of light (you can't, but we'll ignore that) then it would take 1400 years to get there."
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5i8gxx | why do some people reflexively gag when a q-tip is inserted into their ears? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5i8gxx/eli5_why_do_some_people_reflexively_gag_when_a/ | {
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"I get a very strong itch that require me to cough when one is inserted into my left ear only. ",
"This is by no means a professional answer but until a better one comes up: I asked my doctor about this one time and the simple response he gave me was \"there are nerves in your ear, some people have these nerves closer to the surface than other people, when you touch your inner ear with an instrument you may stimulate those nerves that, surprise, connect or are correlated to your throat movements, making you gag/cough\". I never investigated to know if it was true or if he was joking with me but I believed it all these years."
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a7ac3m | will a youtube video with a still background require the same processing power as a moving video ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7ac3m/eli5_will_a_youtube_video_with_a_still_background/ | {
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"No, Youtube doesn't send the video as a whole and sends every pixel, even if it doesn't change, they will send the changes between frames, so a completely still video uses less data and therefore involves less work. \nHow big the difference at the user-side is however, I can't say. ",
"No, there would be different levels of load for a still background and an actively changing video.\n\nFor basics you should know how lossy compression works, you can do that in this article: _URL_0_\n\nAnd for ELI5: video is not transmitted \"as-is\" for every pixel, it is encoded as \"difference between previous state and current state [of a small portion of the picture]\", so a static background requires to be \"drawn\" once and after that only \"nothing changed\" information is needed, while active changes will require constant \"this picture changed like that\", thus requiring more CPU or GPU power to process.\n"
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5ty08b | what makes some chocolates taste smoother than others? | Some chocolates (like Dove) are incredibly smooth when compared to bars. Does it have to do with size at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ty08b/eli5_what_makes_some_chocolates_taste_smoother/ | {
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"The most important elements in making a luxurious, smooth chocolate (other than starting with high quality ingredients) is how much time is spent in the conching process, followed by the tempering process. If chocolate is not conched long enough, or properly tempered, it will not be smooth and silky or melt on your tongue in that way only good chocolate can. Conching is the process by which the ingredients in the chocolate are ground into a smooth paste. It can take anywhere from several hours to several days. It involves refining, then heating and mixing the chocolate ingredients slowly. Heat is introduced mostly through friction but some additional heating may be used to bring it to the proper temperature range, depending on what the final chocolate will be used for and what qualities the chocolatier is seeking in the final chocolate. During the conching, the cocoa solids and the sugar particles are reduced and the cocoa butter coats each tiny particle. Also during conching, the sharp taste and acidity of the cocoa solids is reduced, producing a smoother, more rounded flavor. "
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9wj5mc | why doesn’t alcohol separate from the rest of the beer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wj5mc/eli5_why_doesnt_alcohol_separate_from_the_rest_of/ | {
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"Alcohol and water are mutually soluble. Like salt or sugar, alcohol (specifically ethanol here) molecules will stay in the liquid solution indefinitely.\n\nContrast that to most oils, which are *not* water soluble and will separate into distinct layers based on density.",
"Because alcohol is soluble in water. It would partially separate over a few months if left covered. Take a liquor bottle that’s been in your cupboard for a while and tap the top part that has liquid in it with a coin. Listen to the sound.\nShake the bottle and tap the same spot with a coin, the sound is different\n\nAlcohol will very slowly rise to the surface over time. \n\nIt’s why I drink beer quickly",
"Water and ethanol are miscible, meaning they mix in all proportions. It also means they will not separate or form a distinct layer no matter how long they sit. \n\nHaving said that, here’s an article describing a study that showed alcohol and water never completely mix on a microscopic level:\n\n_URL_0_",
"If you freeze it, it will separate. I learned this from keeping beer in my trunk during the winter. You get a shot of alcohol on top of a slushie."
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fr7o87 | how the u.s. congress can be allowed to go on a recess during a global crisis? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fr7o87/eli5_how_the_us_congress_can_be_allowed_to_go_on/ | {
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"The U.S. Congress doesn't run the world and they can recess because they choose to do so. Another reason is so they can return to their districts to hear from their constituents directly, rather than staying in Washington DC and getting entrenched in the politics of it all.",
"Remember that Congress, and the rules establishing it, are from a time before any sort of electronic communication (even telegram), so time is built into the annual schedule for Representative and Senators to return to their districts and communicate with their constituents. \n\nBesides which, the primary power of Congress in these times is over budget, and they just passed a $2.2 Trillion package to assist in fighting the virus. If needs be, Congress can declare an emergency session to reconvene if something critical needs to be voted upon.",
"_URL_0_ they can go back to their districts and hear from their constituents\n2.social distancing. Bad enough Rand Paul exposed the Senate to COVID-19, we don't need anymore members of Congress to get sick",
"The US Congress going on recess is probably one of the better things they could do. Congress has a tendency to fall into the \"just do *something*\" mindset and enact panic legislation that only makes things worse."
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a906my | if pills can provide all vitamin and mineral needs, what does the label mean by "does not replace varied diet" exactly? | I understand that no amount of vitamin pills can remove the harmful side effects of junk food, but I'm sure there's more to the warning than that. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a906my/eli5_if_pills_can_provide_all_vitamin_and_mineral/ | {
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"Unless it's specifically formulated *to* replace a diet, no one pill is going to have all of the trace nutrients one needs. And no single pill is going to have the calories to keep you alive, either. \n\nSo--a pill cannot replace a varied diet, as the label says.",
"It's because vitamin supplements can't replace all the other micronutrients you need like bioflavonoids (found in colourful fruits and vegetables) and many trace minerals that essential to optimum health",
"For one thing, vitamins don't provide the macronutrients you need to survive: Fats, sugars, protein. There are essential fatty acids and amino acids (from protein) you need as well.\n\nThey also don't provide other healthy things like fiber.\n\nSecondly, they likely don't provide all of the micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) that you need. The absorption of these nutrients, like Iron, varies depending on the specific form of iron and different sources of iron are absorbed better than others. You likely can't get all you need from a single pill.\n\nFor example, when someone has an iron deficiency doctors want to correct, historically it's been to take 325mg of Iron three times a day. However, some studies have shown that taking less iron every other day actually results in superior absorption. The optimal regimen is not known.\n\nThe vitamin manufacturers likely don't know the optimal regimen either and can't say whether you're actually absorbing all of what you need from the pill.\n\nSo it would not replace a varied diet.\n\n\n"
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2f74ov | when modern currency (coins and bills) was just invented. why did people agreed to use it instead of traditional trade ( cow for goat , chair for bench etc.) ? | (Pardon my poor English..) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f74ov/eli5_when_modern_currency_coins_and_bills_was/ | {
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"It is more efficient to use currency. If you are selling a good, let's say, pens, and you want some pizza, you have to find someone who sells pizza and wants a pen in order to get the pizza. \n\nIf you had currency, you have the same form of exchange from all parties which provides you with greater possibilities. Now, you can sell your pens for a bill or a coin, and use that coin to buy the pizza. You don't need to wait for the pizza man to want a pen, because the form of exchange is constant. ",
"Barter never really happened.\n\nWe used to have a favour economy. If someone helps you then you should help them. This is different from barter because favours can be paid months or years later. This worked because we lived in small groups and you knew everyone. \n\nKings then invented coins as a tax. He gave coins to the army and then demanded that villagers pay him in coin. He did this so villagers would have to feed the army which makes running the army easier. People then started thinking about favours in terms of the currency and even after the kingdom had gone people still measured value in the currency even when they didn't have physical coins.\n\nAtleast this is what the book DEBT: The first 5000 years says",
"The most valuable commodity on the planet is.... gold... well it used to be at some point. There have been a lot of currencies. But the first real international currency was the [Venitian Ducat](_URL_0_). It was made of gold so even if you didn't accept it as currency, you could melt down the gold and make jewelry.\n\nThe Venitian traders were certainly accepting trades like cow for goat but in the abscence of a particular goat on their ship they would trade gold coins so that the person could get a future goat."
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1x4r3t | how does redistricting work in the united states? | Did a search but didn't feel satisfied with the answers I saw... Who oversees redistricting to prevent gerrymandering? Does it always end up challenged in court? If it's state specific, how does it work in your state? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x4r3t/eli5_how_does_redistricting_work_in_the_united/ | {
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"It depends on the individual state. Generally, though, the party which has the power in the state legislature gets to draw the maps, and because this does not please the minority party, yes, they end up in court.\n\nCalifornia changed their law so that they have a nonpartisan commission for drawing district maps. I'm no authority, but it seems to have worked pretty well, really.",
"The number of seats in the House of Representatives is set at 435 by law - it is not a Constitutional limit. It could be raised or lowered by changing the law, but for now, it is set at 435 seats.\n\nThese seats are allocated to the states pro rata based on their population, with the exception that a state gets at least one Representative regardless of its population. Currently, a Congressional district represents about 710,000 people, which is more than the population of several states - but each of those states gets 1 rep anyway.\n\nEvery 10 years, following the census, the seats are reallocated according to the law. Each state is told how many seats it gets.\n\nEach state, in turn, has laws that determine how the Congressional districts are drawn. In theory, the states can draw those districts any way they want. In practice there are some historical restrictions (keep the districts geographically meaningful), and some legal restrictions (related to the the Voting Rights Act), and a **tremendous** amount of precedent from lawsuits.\n\nIf a state gains or loses a seat, it usually redraws its districts. It could redraw them any time its state laws say it can, but in practice changes usually only happen when required because the number of seats is changing.\n\nThe results are virtually guaranteed to be litigated, but it is very hard to win a suit regarding the redistricting process. In general, unless there's an egregious attempt to disenfranchise a protected class (by race, for example), the suits will fail.\n\nThe term \"gerrymandering\" may not mean what you think it means. The original \"Gerrymander\" was a term used to describe a district that was drafted in such a way as to look like a salamander or a lizard, to protect the interests of an incumbent. By including certain households and excluding certain households, a district can be manipulated to reliably produce an outcome favoring one party or candidate or another, so there's an incentive for the people in power when a redistricting happens to weight matters in favor of their own party.\n\nBut sometimes districts are drawn with irregular borders for reasons other than rigging the system. Some districts have been constructed on purpose to be \"majority minority\" districts - districts that will concentrate the votes of a protected class (like a race) so as to reliably produce a Representative that reflects that class. In order to make this work a lot of crazy boundaries may need to be drawn to get just the right mix of households to produce the desired result. Sometimes the lines reflect geographical features that are meaningful to a population. You generally want a district with a lot of shared common interests - you want the farmers in one district, the fishermen in a district, the big city in a district, etc. The idea is that the Congress should reflect the will of the People, and it's easier to see if that's true if there's a commonality in the interests of the district.\n\nOver the years a lot of people have decided that the districting process is too ripe for abuse. California has recently taken steps to address this problem by creating a public commission to handle drawing the boundaries and making that process more transparent to public input and critique. The hope is that the districts will have more emphasis on making commonalities of voters, and less about ensuring a predetermined party outcome. If California is successful, expect other states to consider similar systems."
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3h4qt5 | why are crops in the southwest planted in circles, while crops in the midwest planted in rectangles? | I just flew from Phoenix, AZ to Chicago, IL and noticed that a lot of crops in the southwest (i.e. less than an hour out of Phoenix) are planted in in circles. In the upper midwest, I didn't see any crops planted in circles - they were all rectangles.
Here is a picture comparing the two: _URL_0_
Why the difference? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4qt5/eli5_why_are_crops_in_the_southwest_planted_in/ | {
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"It has to do with the irrigation system. Some farms use a large boom, that swings around the centre of the field like a compass (geometry compass, not geography compass) applying water in a massive circle. Other farms use irrigation mounted to tractors or designed to operate parallel to the rows. ",
"Areas with lower precipitation (like AZ) often require irrigation in order to support (certain) crops. While there are a number of distinct irrigation systems that work in various ways, a rolling system of pipes complete with sprinklers with a central water source is the most common. The result is circular fields of crops.\n\nIn other areas (like IL) enough rain falls to make irrigation mostly unnecessary. This permits farmers to plant crops in their (typically) rectangular fields.\n\n"
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ad8dn7 | why do the memories we acquire during sleep fade away so much faster than a regular memory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ad8dn7/eli5_why_do_the_memories_we_acquire_during_sleep/ | {
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"Think about those times you were at class,but instead of focusing on the lesson you were browsing Reddit half of the time. Chances are, on the lesson you figured you got most of it. However, when homework hits, you notice you don't remember shit. Or if I asked you, what colour shoes I had the day before yesterday, would you recall? Point being, when you aren't specifically concentrating on something, your mind usually just dismisses it as unnecessary.\n\nTherefore when you wake up, unless you specifically try to put the dream to your long term memory when you wake up, your brain will probably just discard it as unnecessary.\n\nDo note, not an expert on the matter, so grains of salt and such.",
"It's not known for certain why we usually don't remember dreams. The leading hypotheses seem to currently revolve around the brain shutting down its long-term memory facilities during sleep. The hippocampus, responsible for sorting and encoding memories into long-term storage, seems to stop accepting new memories during sleep. In addition, certain neurotransmitters associated with memory formation drop off rapidly in sleep.\n\nSo this is perhaps the chemical reason why we don't remember. There may be an evolutionary advantage to this in that remembering dreams could lead to confusing experiences. Dreams are sometimes thought to be the result of the brain sorting through experiences and figuring out how to tie them together. This can lead to nonsensical results, as anyone who remembers even fragments of dreams knows. If these nonsensical results were remembered, they might get cycled into the real memories and the wrong lessons could get added to long-term memory. Those wrong lessons could shorten the person's life, and if that happens before they can reproduce, the odds of dream recollection drop off.\n\nSome people can remember their dreams vividly for a day or so, until they also and the hippocampus tosses them. Most people have a few they remember pretty well (I have one from my childhood of watching the moon explode, dodging the fragments, and getting into a hundred-foot tank that rumbled by). A few people regularly remember their dreams and can recall them like they recall their lives.\n\nThis isn't always a good thing: some of them can't separate dream memories from reality memories, and it can make it extremely difficult to get through life not sure which conversations actually happened, to say nothing remembering going somewhere you didn't or even thinking you experienced a traumatic event that never happened. I've heard that it can lead to mental breakdowns.",
"When you are awake and alert, your brain makes memories by building connections between different things, smells, sights, sounds, etc. these connections allow you to remember things associated with the thing that reminds you of them. \n\nWhen you sleep, your mind is cycling through unconnected memories, but not creating new connections. This is why crazy things seem perfectly normal in a dream, but then you forget all about it after you wake up. No new connections were made.\n\nSometimes, you can realize that you were dreaming, and some of those crazy things are still in short term memory. If they were powerful enough, you can make a connection between them and your dreams, but you wont remember all the details. ",
"One of the theories about dreaming is that it's just a biproduct of memory consolidation. While you are sleeping you brain is pruning out unnecessary memories and reinforcing the important ones from the day. But our mind doesn't like random stuff so it tries to build a narrative to follow along with the memories. \nWe probably don't remember dreams because there is no reason to, unless you try to. They are just your minds way of making sense of the chaos. ",
"Well when we dream we are in our subconscious, and unless the experience is very emotional (good or bad), you probably won’t remember it.\n\nWith that said, since you’re only in your subconscious for a portion of sleep, it’s easy to forget, or not even remember at all.\n\nThey say we always dream, but I haven’t had a dream in a while. I chalk it up to the jazz cabbage"
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1p8x8i | how does an ultrasonic field levitate a drop of liquid? | In reference to this
_URL_0_
Thanks
How is ultrasonic field levitating it?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p8x8i/eli5_how_does_an_ultrasonic_field_levitate_a_drop/ | {
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"Sound is vibration of the air around the sound source. Ultrasonic is the same except its \"above\" the level of normal human hearing. While I don't know the exact mechanics of this machine, imagine moving the air around you with enough energy to \"blow\" you off the ground. It's basically sound waves being turned into work (_URL_0_) in order to levitate objects."
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5q06oh | how do poems translated from one language to another still rhyme? | I am reading a poem for a college course and it was originally written in Russian but has since been translated into English. It still rhymes, and I was just wondering how it went from one language to another and still rhymed.
Sorry if this is a dumb question | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q06oh/eli5_how_do_poems_translated_from_one_language_to/ | {
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"Because it's not a literal, word-for-word translation. The translator had to take liberties with the poem to get it to rhyme in English.\n\nHere's a very short example from a rhyming English translation of *Tartuffe*, originally a rhyming French-language play.\n\nRhyming French:\n\n*C'est véritablement la tour de Babylone,*\n\n*Car chacun y babille, et tout du long de l'aune.*\n\nGoogle Translate output:\n\n*It is truly the tower of Babylon,*\n\n*For everyone there babbles, and all along the yard.*\n\nRhyming English translation:\n\n*Parties are towers of Babylon, because*\n\n*The guests all babble on with never a pause*",
"The translated form is altered in order to rhyme, almost always. Usually the translator is also a poet who understands the original poet's style, so they'll try to keep the meaning and meter (if necessary) as close as possible to the original, while finding rhyming words that fit.\n\nEDIT: Here's an example from Charles Baudelaire, from *Benediction*\n\n**Original French (rhyming):**\n\nCar il ne sera fait que de pure lumière,\n\nPuisée au foyer saint des rayons primitifs,\n\nEt dont les yeux mortels, dans leur splendeur entière,\n\nNe sont que des miroirs obscurcis et plaintifs!\n\n**More literal (non-rhyming) translation:**\n\nFor that crown will be made of nothing but pure light \n\nDrawn from the holy source of primal rays, \n\nWhereof our mortal eyes, in their fullest brightness, \n\nAre no more than tarnished, mournful mirrors!\n\n**Rhyming translation:**\n\nBecause it will be only made of light, \n\nDrawn from the hearth of the essential rays, \n\nTo which our mortal eyes, when burning bright, \n\nAre but the tarnished mirrors that they glaze.\n\nYou can see that word order and word choices have been fiddled a bit in that last example to make things rhyme. But it mostly keeps the effect of the original, if the translator knows their stuff."
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3303u1 | why is gravity the least understood of the four fundamental forces? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3303u1/eli5_why_is_gravity_the_least_understood_of_the/ | {
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"To a large degree because it is so much weaker than the others. We have various types of laboratory equipment that let us produce the other three forces in significant quantities so that we can manipulate and study them. Gravity is so weak that equipment to produce it is massive and the effects produced difficult to distinguish from background noise."
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d2ckdj | why do smaller animals like fish often die because of stressful situations they're put into? | During the time I had an aquarium I often read that you have to handle the fish very carefully because they could die because of the stress. In addition to that I have never heard that humans or other bigger animals die only because of the stress. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d2ckdj/eli5_why_do_smaller_animals_like_fish_often_die/ | {
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"They don’t really die because from stress, but from stress-related causes like cardiac arrest. So basically any living thing can die from that but I’d imagine being so small and vulnerable is probably much scarier then being larger.",
"humans can and do have heart attacks due to stress. There is less of that now, likely b/c our modern life is more safe and secure, so no single event can derail your life completely. But if somebody the size of Godzilla picked you up, turned you over to get a better look, and them dumped you into a different building, you would have a heart attack too.\n\nI was gonna say that there is not much that can give a heart attack to an elephant, but I was wrong: _URL_0_"
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fhsg9e | why is getting a large amount back on your tax return not considered a good thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fhsg9e/eli5_why_is_getting_a_large_amount_back_on_your/ | {
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"Tax return = the paperwork you file with the IRS/state revenue service. \n\nTax refund = the money you get back.\n\nIt's not a *bad* thing, but it means that *your* money was tied up in the government treasury and you couldn't do anything with it for up to over a year. It's like giving the government an interest-free loan, whereas if *you* got the money upfront you could save or invest it and make your own interest off of it.",
"It's not free money, it's just money that came out of your pay check, sat around for a while then came back to you. It's fun to get a little back every year as a silly kind of interest free forced savings account, like finding a 20 in an old coat pocket is, but it's just really dumb to tie up a large amount of money in a bank account you can't withdraw from that also has no benefits or interest or anything.",
"Because you're lending money to the government, and they are just paying you back without interest."
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5hq97v | ohms law and how it works | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hq97v/eli5_ohms_law_and_how_it_works/ | {
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"V = Voltage = pressure of electrons \nR = Resistance = well.. resistance.. how difficult it is for them to flow \nI = Current = how many electrons are flowing\n\nImagine instead of electrons you are talking about a water pipe with a tap. You can turn the tap in order to open/close it, or you might say in order to reduce/increase the resistance. And the city can increase or reduce the pressure of the water in your pipes.\n\nIf the city increases the pressure, more water will flow when you open the tap. In other words: more voltage means more current.\n\nThe more you close the tap the more resistance you have. The more resistance you have, the less water will flow. In other words: more resistance means less current.\n\nTherefore: Current = Voltage / Resistance\n\nIf you increase the denominator the result gets smaller (more resistance, less current) and if you increase the numerator the result gets bigger (more voltage, more current).",
"Imagine a multilane highway with a lot of cars. At rush hour, a lot of cars want to travel the highway. At midnight, fewer cars want to travel it. \nOne day, a construction crew blocks off some of the lanes. Now at rush hour everyone has to merge, so traffic is slower. Some cars even take alternate routes to avoid the traffic. Same thing happens at midnight but on a smaller scale. \nAmount of cars that want to travel = Voltage \nSpeed of all cars added together = Current \nConstruction lanes = Resistance ",
"/u/manolo_ribera did a fantastic job. I show this image to my students also. Some students seem to grasp this better than the water valve explanation. _URL_0_ ",
"A lot of people use water as an analogy, but I personally prefer a pipe full of marbles, I think it fits better.\n\nSo, imagine you have a pipe full of marbles, the inside diameter of the pipe is the size of one marble, so they're all in a line.\n\nIf you push a marble into one end of the pipe, another one pops out of the end, just like electricity. The marbles move slow, but the effect is fast.\n\nNow let's let's define some terms:\nVoltage: The pressure behind the marbles, or in the case of electricity, the motive force behind the electrons.\n\nCurrent: The number of marbles moving past a given point in the pipe per second. In a circuit, this is the number of coulombs of electrons passing a given point per second, measured in Amperes.\n\nCoulomb: One whole marble, or 6.24150934(14)e×10 18\nElectrons (you don't have to know what that number specifically means, just that it's huge, and thus, electrons are small). One coulomb moving past a given point in a circuit is equal to one Ampere by definition. This is here so you can understand what an ampere is while we talk about it.\n\nResistance: In the case of the pipe, this could be likened to how slippery the walls of the pipe are. More sticky means more resistance, and it will take more force (voltage) to move the marbles in the pipe. The longer the pipe or the greater the stickiness, the greater this resistance to movement is, and thus the more force you need to get the marbles to move. In a circuit, this is basically the same. It's how much voltage you need to get a given amount of current to flow.\n\nSo now we have our definitions down let's do some stuff with them.\n\nWe know that resistance degreases the number of coulombs per second flowing past a given point, and voltage does the opposite. More resistance means less current (and vice versa), more voltage means more current (and vice versa). We also know that this relationship must be linear (going from one to two is the same amount of change as going from nine to ten, for example) because current is always proportional to resistance.\n\nSince it's linear, there's really no fancy math involved, it's just multiplication and division, depending on what you're solving for, so let's construct our equation.\n\nCurrent is equal to voltage divided by resistance (I=V/R). I don't know why we use I for current, but we do.\n\nNow with a little algebra, we can rearrange this to solve for any variable given two others.\n\nV=I*R is used to solve for voltage, when you know how much current and resistance you have.\n\nR=V/I is used to find the resistance when you know voltage and current.\n\nThat's probably as deep as I can go for ELI5, so I'll leave it at that. If I didn't explain something clearly or glossed over something I shouldn't have, let me know and I'll edit accordingly.\n\n\n\n",
"This picture was hanging on the wall of the first section in tech school. I always liked it _URL_0_"
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8qpx4t | why are there other ingredients inside of water bottles instead of just purified water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qpx4t/eli5_why_are_there_other_ingredients_inside_of/ | {
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"Natural spring water, and tap water from aquifers, contain many dissolved minerals. This gives water from different regions or different springs different taste. \n\nPure distilled water tastes weird compared to water with dissolved minerals because all the water you'eve ever drank has been mineralized to some degree."
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2dun2h | what is happening to a battery when it's charging? | What's going on to recharge a battery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dun2h/eli5_what_is_happening_to_a_battery_when_its/ | {
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"Batteries don't produce any electricity. Instead, batteries are electricity pumps. The path for electric current is *through* the battery, then back out again through the other terminal.\n\nAs with any pump, in order to pump a flow of charges through the wires, energy is required. This energy is stored in a sort of \"chemical fuel\" in one or both battery plates. When a battery runs your devices, its stored chemical fuel gets converted into waste products. It's a bit like combustion. When all the fuel is gone, the battery is \"dead,\" and the plates contain only the waste.\n\nBut unlike combustion, we can convert the waste products back into fuel: just force the electricity backwards through the battery! Weird, eh? It's like making gasoline by pushing your car backwards up a hill while pumping exhaust into the tail pipe. Or more sensible: a battery is like a molecular wind-up motor: it can run down, but it can be wound back up by forcing it to spin backwards.\n\nIn theory, all batteries can be recharged. But in practice, \"non-rechargable\" batteries have their plates destroyed at the end, when they're almost dead. We can't restore the plates to their \"fully charged\" state unless they still exist. Rechargables are designed so this doesn't happen; the plates never fully dissolve. Even so, the plates don't perfectly rebuild themselves during recharge. After many discharge/recharge cycles, errors build up, so perhaps the rechargable battery develops an internal layer of insulator, or perhaps the plates will electrically connect together (internal short circuit.)\n\n",
"Batteries are a mini factory that mixes a few chemicals together to make some waste chemicals and electricity.\n\nWhen you recharge a battery, you are using the electricity to force the waste chemicals back into the starting chemicals, so the factory can work again."
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3y9akw | catholic communion | I was raised catholic and have since changed my views but have always wondered what these people are actually believing when going up for communion. I understand that the priest turns the wafers into the "body of Christ" and the wine into the "blood of Christ" but do these people actually believe they are drinking blood and eating human flesh? If so, that seems like more than enough to question what the hell am I doing and if they don't believe they are actually eating human flesh and drinking blood, isn't it just a formality and kind of pointless? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y9akw/eli5_catholic_communion/ | {
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"Religion is, in a very high degree, about symbolism. Hell, Jesus was *huge* on symbolism. Most of his parables are practically drowning in symbolism. \n\nIt's possible *some* people think they're actually eating flesh and blood, but that's not the general idea. The idea is that you are *symbolically* accepting Jesus to be part of you. \n\nAnother huge part of Religion is Ritual. Catholicism has a lot of that, too. Communion is, very obviously, a ritual. \n\nNow, as to whether it's pointless or not, you may as well apply that question to religion in general, and that's pretty much up to you. ",
"Well, you'd have to ask the individual people what they believe.\n\nYou might be asking one of two questions: Do Catholic people believe they're consuming the transubstantiated body & blood of Jesus? Or, does the Catholic Church believe it? It's important to separate the two. Religion is extraordinarily personal & the flock doesn't always exactly align (even though it should) with the Church.\n\nBut here's a piece written in 1995 by an [Archbishop that may cause you to ask yourself the questions at the end of your post.](_URL_1_) But that's from 20 years ago & just some Archbishop.\n\nThis is an essay from the [US Conference of Catholic Bishops](_URL_2_) that also believes in the literal transubstantiation of Christ. This holds much more weight, and, to my knowledge, wasn't refuted by the Church.\n\nIf I might interject my own personal Catholic opinion--it doesn't matter. It's one of those things that seems important if you intellectualize it, but honestly doesn't bother me that much. Maybe some people think it's really Christ [transubstantiated](_URL_0_). It's about the ritual of receiving it & making sure you're worthy of receiving it. If you're in a church community, it should feel empowering to do as a group. But I know that's a little wishy-washy.",
"I'm a Protestant, we don't buy into the whole transubstantiation thing, so I can't speak to the first part of your question, but I can answer why it is that we take communion. It's a symbolic acceptance of Christ's sacrifice, and a look back to how he foreshadowed his own death at the Last Supper by offering bread and wine to his disciples as a representation of his own body about to be broken. It is symbolic in the same way that Christ's life itself was symbolic, but also a reminder of who we are looking to to emulate.",
"This doctrine is called transubstantiation. When the priest says the \"words of institution\" which are \"take eat, this is my body\" and \"take drink, this is my blood\", the bread and wine literally turn into the body and blood of Christ, although under the appearance of bread and wine.\n\nLutherans and Anglicans believe something similar, although they don't believe that the bread and wine physically turn into the body and blood of Christ, only spiritually. The Eucharist is still literally the body and blood, just not literally. And they don't think the minister changes the bread and wine into the body and blood, but that it is an act of God working through all believers present (this is the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers). They also don't regard communion as a sacrifice, or reenactment of Christ's death on the cross. Rather, Christ died once and for all and instituted communion as a way to impute his grace to us from the original fount of salvation, his death on the cross.\n\nCalvinists, like Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed, believe that communion is symbolic, but that God's grace is imputed to the believer through the sacrament.\n\nBaptists believe that communion is strictly symbolic, that no grace is imputed, and it is just a sign of fellowship between believers."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation",
"https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=1340",
"http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/order-of-mass/liturgy-of-the-eucharist/the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ-in-the-sacrament-of-the-eucharist-basic-questions... | |
36fyh3 | why do we make weird faces and mouth movements when grabbing for something out of reach or opening something difficult? | Such as fumbling around in a cookie jar that your hand can barely fit in trying to grab a cookie. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36fyh3/eli5_why_do_we_make_weird_faces_and_mouth/ | {
"a_id": [
"crdng82"
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"AFAIK that's a quirk in our social expression. Our brains are hard wired to display emotional states facially. When you're concentrating on getting your hand through a tight space or reaching out that is using the same process as emotions such as happiness or fear so they reflect as facial ticks accordingly.\n\nIt might also be a gut reaction that makes it feel more productive. Like how there's an instinct to hold your breath when you're straining your abdominal muscles during situps or defecating. Holding your breath doesn't actually help you, but it feels like it does because you're straining more muscles which tells your brain you're doing something."
]
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[]
] | |
87u4zj | why are repetitive noises like constant beeping annoying? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87u4zj/eli5_why_are_repetitive_noises_like_constant/ | {
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"There was a study done (i am one mobile and im exhausted so if you want the link google is your friend) that showed people who had the ability to turn off an annoying sound were capable of withstanding said annoyance for a longer period of time than the group who didnt have control.\n\nRepetitive noises are just useless, there's no variance, so our brains tire of them quickly. And because of their type, they demand more attention."
]
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f5b1bh | why don’t condoms work for some guys? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5b1bh/eli5_why_dont_condoms_work_for_some_guys/ | {
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"text": [
"Don't work as in... They are not effective? Or don't work as in they don't fit? The guy doesn't want to wear them? I need more info."
]
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[]
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2dxlid | in us politics, why cant there be a fiscal-conservative / social-liberal party? | Seems like that party would do really well. For example someone / a party that would support: Freedom of choice, gay marriage, lower taxes, smaller government spending. IMHO, both parties have sound logic on some aspects and less on others. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dxlid/eli5_in_us_politics_why_cant_there_be_a/ | {
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"text": [
"They're called Libertarians, and they are mocked by both liberals and conservatives for allegedly living in a fantasy land.\n\n* Freedom of choice - Probably split among them. \n* Gay marriage - You can do whatever you want if it doesn't affect anyone else's rights to life, liberty or property.\n* Lower taxes - The role of the government should be limited, thus taxes will be lower.\n* Smaller government spending - See above."
]
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[]
] | |
9w6tm3 | ; is it true that 12 miles out to sea there are no laws and you can do whatever you want? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w6tm3/eli5_is_it_true_that_12_miles_out_to_sea_there/ | {
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"No. There is international maritime law, it's just different then normal laws because there's no one country ruling it. You can still be charged with murder if you kill someone at sea.",
"After leaving at most 12 nautical miles from shore, you exit a country's \"Territorial waters\", and that country no longer has jurisdiction over you for most things. However, at this point you enter \"international waters\", where international maritime law applies. You can still be punished for any violation of maritime law.\n\nAdditionally, while I'm unsure of the exact specifics, I believe if you are flying the flag of a given country on your ship, that country has jurisdiction over your actions should you break the law, regardless of how far from shore you are.\n\nMany maritime crimes, such as piracy, have \"universal jurisdiction\", which means any country can prosecute you for them."
]
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[],
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3r91xs | is australian rules football most similar to rugby, soccer, or american football, in gameplay and needed skills? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r91xs/eli5_is_australian_rules_football_most_similar_to/ | {
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"If anything, the gameplay is like that of Gaelic football. \n\nPoint wise, it's a totally different realm. \n\nThe skills required would be similar if not the same, I would imagine. \n\n_URL_0_\n",
"Its pretty far removed from all 3 games. Certainly its least related to soccer. There are elements of rugby and american football in that you can handle the ball, you can tackle, etc but its much further from rugby or american football than american football and rugby are from eachother, and american football and rugby are quite different games as it is. Aussie rules is played on an oval cricket pitch, passes need to be punched rather than thrown, you need to dribble the ball every 15m, kicking plays a much larger role, there is no try/touchdown equivalent, the list goes on. ",
"It's a pretty unique game. Like some have said it's closest to garlic football, but in the context of your suggestions...\n\nThe way the play moves is probably closest to soccer, because the players don't have to start every play on opposite sides, and the ball can move along the ground or in the air. However it's not really similar because it's full contact, and if you 'mark' the ball (catch it on the full from a kick) then you get a free kick, so it can range from very flowing to very stop start.\n\nSkills required are most similar to rugby because it's full contact but only near the ball, and you can get rucks where everybody is piling on the ball. Again though, it's not very similar because everybody needs to be able to kick well. Handballing is also different to a rugby pass and is a bit weird, you have to kind of punch the ball out of your other hand.\n\nI don't think it had much in common with American football, but I don't know much about American football. Players can interchange on and off the field multiple times to get short rests, but it's still a very aerobic game, players need very high endurance - they tend to play for about two hours on the field.\n\nThere are a ton of other details I've not gone into that make it unique, if you want to find out more then I think the AFL made some promotional videos explaining it, they're probably on YouTube. "
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvUld0shh8"
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7mqpz6 | why does fog often only appear along the floor of a valley? | Over the past holiday we had a phenominal sunrise view of a valley floor that was covered in fog. As the sun got higher and started hitting the fog it slowly crept up the sides of the mountains and eventually disperesed. Why did it start in the bottom of the valley and move upwards once the sun was up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mqpz6/eli5_why_does_fog_often_only_appear_along_the/ | {
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"Water is dense so it sinks. Hot water is less dense than cold water so it rises and eventually disperses. The sun came up, heated the fog that had sunk while cold, and it rose and dispersed.",
"If it were higher up, it would be called a cloud.\n\nFog is merely a cloud that occurs at ground level. The reason for this depends on the specifics temperature and humidity conditions.\n\nHowever, what you saw was likely a result is a weather phenomenon called a Temperature Inversion. \n\nAs you gain altitude, temperature normally decreases. However winds and terrain can work to trap a pool of significantly colder air at ground level, while warm, dry breeze floats over the top."
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3tjira | what is the difference between momentum and inertia? | My 5-year-old really likes vehicles, and we've been talking about rockets and rocket cars and why they're not as agile as regular cars when it comes to turning and maneuverability. They are designed to just go straight, in the case of rocket cars.
I think this is because they have a great deal of forward momentum. But as we talked, I realized I no longer remember much about momentum -- or inertia -- and what the difference is between them.
And one thing I have learned in answering these questions from my son is that you need a rock solid understanding to be able to explain things in a way that promotes good comprehension for a young child. And when you have gaps in your own knowledge of a subject, you will realize it right away.
Anyway, thanks for helping a mom out! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tjira/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_momentum_and/ | {
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"Inertia is an objects resistance to changes in motion. For instance, a heavier object is harder to push around so it has more inertia. Inertia does not change with speed (unless you consider einstein's theories, which can be ignored in daily life) so a certain object always has the same amount of inertia, which means it will always take the same amount of force to accelerate. \n\nMomentum is the total amount of motion of all the parts of the object. Specifically it's the velocity of an object times its mass, in other words, the amount of motion times the amount of stuff. An object with a lot of momentum can push a lot of objects out of the way before it stops, while an object with less momentum can only push a few things out of the way before it stops. (an object with a lot of mass counts as many objects with smaller mass, because it can be thought of as a lot of lighter objects glued together). \n\nA faster object can push more on things (more momentum), but it still takes the same force to change its speed (inertia does not depend on speed). ",
"You should show your son Kerbal Space Program, he's love it.\n\n\nInertia is the sluggishness of an object. It's the actual resistance of an object to move and it's decided by mass.\n\n\nMomentum is the kinetic energy of the object. It's how fast it's already going times interia. A fast moving brick will have more momentum than a slow moving bouncy ball.",
"In a literal sense, inertia is something's tendency to resist motion, and momentum is something's tendency to continue motion. \n\n**In terms of physics** those are *exactly the same thing*. Motion in my reference frame might be stillness in your reference frame, and vise versa. From the universe's perspective there's no difference there.\n\nIf there's a distinction in usage, usually the word \"inertia\" refers to the property of matter, that it has momentum; and \"momentum\" refers to the physical quantity (inertial mass)×(velocity). And there are set phrases like \"moment of inertia\" and \"conservation of momentum\".\n\nWhy two words for this? We've known this [since Galileo](_URL_0_) that they were equivalent, Aristotle had a theory of physics/mechanics in which objects had separate inherent tendencies to stop and to continue. And people who haven't studied physics usually develop an intuition about physics that is basically Aristotelian. \n\n**In other contexts** the two words are practically opposites. If I tell someone \"I have lots of momentum today!\" they think I'm on a roll, getting stuff done. If I tell someone \"I have lots of inertia today!\" they think I'm sluggish and having a hard time motivating myself."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance"
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fa5oy9 | why does it seem easier to drink more water with a straw than without one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fa5oy9/eli5_why_does_it_seem_easier_to_drink_more_water/ | {
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"text": [
"It’s because you’re taking in water at a slower rate, which causes your body to register the intake slower."
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3b533d | why do people die after coming into contact with food when they haven't had it for a long time? | Examples of this in History: When many Jews were liberated from Concentration Camps they died after eating real food in a long time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b533d/eli5_why_do_people_die_after_coming_into_contact/ | {
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"text": [
"Its not just coming into contact with food, its when they starved for so long their stomachs shrunk. And when they finally ate, a psychological phenomenon occurs where you keep eating until your stomach bursts. "
]
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7lai2x | ketosis | how does eating high fat diet make the body burn your own fat? i want to believe, but it's confusing.. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lai2x/eli5ketosis/ | {
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"Getting into ketosis isn't necessarily the addition of fats, but the lack of glucose. When glucose enters the body, it is stored as fat. With the lack of it, the body burns the fat your body has stored instead of glucose. Also, keep in mind, all fats aren't bad like everyone makes them out to be. Monounsaturated Fat and Polyunsaturated fats can actually be very healthy for you in the right quantities."
]
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5f0kyo | how do channels like cinemasins get their footage? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f0kyo/eli5_how_do_channels_like_cinemasins_get_their/ | {
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"text": [
"They usually review a film once it becomes available on Blu-ray, so they either rip it or get a decent quality torrent (at least 10GB)."
]
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xcgoz | why are we unable to synthesize certain naturally occuring compounds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xcgoz/why_are_we_unable_to_synthesize_certain_naturally/ | {
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"You can't just build complex molecules out of atoms as if you're fitting legos together. Certain configurations of atoms are unstable and are very difficult to create, or break apart immediately after you create them. It's as if you were trying to build a lego house, and you could never have just 1,2, or 3 walls up, you have to put all 4 walls in at once.\n"
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2b7cgs | if hypothyroidism causes weight gain, can't we do something to temporarily give someone with a normal thyroid hyperthyroidism to trigger weight loss? | I know it wouldn't be a magic pill, because you have to worry about the other factors affecting why you've gained weight, but wouldn't it help? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b7cgs/eli5_if_hypothyroidism_causes_weight_gain_cant_we/ | {
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"This is my attempt at an ELI5 answer. When synthetic thyroid hormones were first used in medicine (like synthroid) , they were also tested for weight loss. The body recognized the increase in thyroid hormones, and stopped producing them. So, the body was getting thyroid hormones from an outside source, decided it had enough, and quit producing them. This negated any weight loss effects in someone with a healthy thyroid. The weight loss effects from thyroid hormones only happen if the body isn't producing enough on it's own.",
"Taking medications for hyper/hypothyroidism without actually having those diseases tends to cause really serious side effects. Also, those diseases don't always cause weight gain/loss, and if they do, it's not always that much weight.",
"You would also need to trick the body into not recognizing that it had too much thyroid hormone, as the body naturally regulates the amount to an extent, and would stop producing when you introduced the outside thyroid hormone. But tricking the body in this way would open up a big can of worms, as hyperthyroidism taxes many of your organs to a great extent, and being overweight is also taxing on your organs. So combine the two, and there would be a high rate of organ failure. \n\nSo yeah, while it might be a Dr. House-level solution for very specific cases, it is a very dangerous tool to open to the general public.",
"If you give people with normal thyroids synthetic hormone a few things will happen. First, their body will reduce the amount of home-made hormone since there's already too much floating around. If you give enough synthetic hormone, production may stop altogether and your total hormone levels will rise. Kinda like pouring water into a cup that has a hole in the bottom. Your body makes just enough to keep the cup full.\n\n\nNow that you've intentionally increased your hormone levels beyond what your body needs, the cup overflows. You'll likely start to develop side effects. These include anxiety, tachycardia, palpitations, weight loss, cardiac dysrhythmias. The side effects can be mitigated by some medications, but the simple answer is that giving thyroid hormone to normal-thyroid patients is not really practical, effective or safe. \n\n\nEDIT: screwed up an important comma.",
"Because weight loss is only one symptom of hyperthyroidism, and there are others. Heat intolerance, rapid heart beat, decreased sleep, sweating, agitation and hair loss are other common symptoms. It's not a particularly comfortable thing to have. ",
"I believe I can answer this question, finally a use for taking endocrinology as an undergraduate.\n\nMany hormones including thyroxine released from the thyroid are under 'feedback control'. It all starts in the hypothalamus which releases 'thyrotropin releasing horome' on to the pituitary, the pituitary then releases thyrotropin or thyroid stimulating horome (TSH) which then in turn causes the release of thyroxine which increases basal metabolic rate.\n\nBut the hypothalamus in inhibited by circulating thyroxine so it feeds back and shuts down the process. So if exogenous thyroxine is administered, the body downregulates its own thyroxine levels through this mechanism.\n\nYou might be thinking well what if we give more thyroxine even after the body has completely quit making its own, then surely we can increase thyroxine levels beyond normal to trigger weight loss. But the body is too clever, thyroxine must be detected by receptors to be functional, upon chronic exposure to high levels of thyroxine, the body simply quits making these receptors. Now you can have as much thyroxine as you want, but it will not have the desired effect.\n\nThis process is reversible to a large extent by withdrawing the exogenous thyroxine."
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3gwn3d | the difference between a plebiscite and a referendum. | The Australian Government is saying that after the next election they will hold one or the other on the subject of Gay marriage. Could using one over the other influence the outcome? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gwn3d/eli5the_difference_between_a_plebiscite_and_a/ | {
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"In Australia a referendum is used to change the constitution. To pass a majority of people have to vote in favour, as well as a majority of people in a majority of states.\n\nA plebiscite is just a poll. People would vote but it would have no legal force."
]
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2ikko6 | why do girls like the smell of my sweat? | I've had several girlfriends really like how I smell after I work out; literally smelling my body and armpits. I think it smells gross. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ikko6/eli5_why_do_girls_like_the_smell_of_my_sweat/ | {
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"Your sweat has pheromones in it. They can't pick out the pheromones, it just shows up as liking the smell for unknown reasons.\n\nSince you're not looking to have sexytimes with yourself, you don't notice them.",
"Your sweat smells like *you*, and your girlfriends like that. You probably like what they smell like too.\n\nOne thing dog owners do sometimes, when they leave their dog for a while, is leave some of their dirty laundry, since many dogs find their owner's scent reassuring.",
"I'm a girl, and I do not like the smell of sweat. ",
"Bisexual man here. Personal story time: I feared the post-coital smell before I had my first sexual experience with another man (I mean, I smell gross afterwards, surely two stinky men must be absolutely dreadful?). Immediately after my first time, I couldn't stop smelling him and his sweat. It just smells like *man* and that's a good thing.\n\nEdit: also, as a med student, pheromones, just as others have pointed out. _URL_0_ for more info of how they are perceived. Long story short, smells we can't consciously tell, but that affects us on a subconscious level. Although, it should be said it is not 100% clear whether humans actually have a vomeronasal organ, and even if we do, as I understand it, it is not clear to what extent it affects us. We know more about these smelly stuff in animals, and supposedly we can apply *some* of that knowledge on ourselves.",
"Apparently the pleasantness of someone's sweat depends on how far away they are, genetically, from the person who smells it. If the two are too close - the smell will not be attractive; if they are far away (but not too far) - it will be attractive; and if their genetics are too far away, it'll start becoming repulsive again.\n\nEvolution explains why this would be so (except for the \"too dissimilar genetics\" - I don't get that but perhaps a safeguard to keep you from doing it with incompatible partners), especially when you consider that this happens at puberty before which the repulsiveness/attractiveness of smell is the opposite. I.e. before you can reproduce, you're attracted to the smell of your parents and siblings which tends to keep you closer and safer and as soon as you can create babies you want to get further away from your family.\n\nThe fact "
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j67nb | nietzsche and his ideas | Have heard his name referenced around (such as in Little Miss Sunshine) and now saw this rage comic today, _URL_0_, somebody fill me in, please! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j67nb/eli5_nietzsche_and_his_ideas/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nThis guy has a LOT of summaries of philosophical works written in \"bro\" language. They are very accurate despite the simpicity/hilarity of the language used, hope you enjoy.\n",
"Nietzsche is popular on reddit because of his rather harsh criticisms of Christianity. He said stuff like “In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” But his views on Christian morality are much more extreme then most people would accept. So to explain this like you're five: he saw Christianity as upside down. He got rid Christian virtues like charity, kindness and humility and replaced them with things such as ambition, pride and power. But if you believe these things because Nietzsche says these things then you're doing it wrong. You have to reject all values and virtues on your own. Get rid of any moral, philosophical and scientific baggage that you might have and come of with a new list of values that is entirely your own.",
"His statement \"God is dead\" is often quoted, but much less often is it understood. Nietzsche rejected God in the sense that God is a source of absolute meaning. He was not a Richard Dawkins type of atheist. In Nietzsche's view, it is also a mistake to believe that the sort of rational, scientific, Enlightenment views of people like Dawkins have any claim to objectivity. *Everything* comes from a certain perspective.\n",
"Basically there are two types of people in this world. Those that belong to something called a 'master morality'. These are the good people. They have strength, power, courage, truthfulness and are noble. The most important part is how noble you are. Being noble means that other people see you as being very important.\n\nBut everything has a bad side. The bad side is called 'slave morality'. This is the opposite basically. It comes from people who are cowardly, frightened and most importantly scared. Slave morality exists because these people are jealous and afraid of people who are a part of this 'master morality'. You see, all animals, especially people have one major goal in life. They want power. This is what is driving people. It's the reason humans act the way they do. It's how you survive. \n\nYou gain this power yourself. No really, it comes from you. You become what you are. You follow what you believe in. It's the source of all happiness and beauty in life. This is what being in the 'master morality' is. Realizing all the potential you have and embracing it completely. People of the 'slave morality' don't do this. They believe in other things that are harmful to exceptional, beautiful people. These people's values are wrong. They believe in something that they shouldn't because it is wrong. Religion is misleading and making people bad all over the world. It's the source that is destroying the world. If God 'died', it would be a good thing because it would force people to stop believing something that is wrong, and you would be forced to gain your own unique perspective of the world around you. You give the world your own meaning. You have nothing misleading you anymore.\n\nBut that hasn't happened yet. It's the main problem in the world because there are more people in the slave morality than in the master morality. The slave morality are trying to drag everyone else down to there level. They are putting down the unique individuals in this world and they are not flourishing like they should be. If you want to be happy though, you need to be able to do this.\n\ntl;dr: Beauty and happiness comes from determining your own perception of reality, so become what you are and flourish.",
"Before I begin this, I'd like to say that it's pretty fucking difficult to summarize Nietzsche's philosophy, and this is not some amazing attempt. For example, I left out entirely Kant's epistemological pessimism, and Schopenhauer's reaction to it, which was a huge influence on Nietzsche. It is important to understand that much of philosophy is a reaction to earlier philosophers, e.g., much of Plato's work is a reaction to the Sophists, and much of Kierkegaard's work is a reaction to Hegel. If you're really curious about this stuff, I'd highly suggest reading Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*, and Schopenhauer's *On the Will in Nature*. Those two works will give you a much better understanding of Nietzsche and his works. As well, I have added some suggested readings at the end of this post, for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of Nietzsche. This post barely scratches the surface of what is an amazing philosopher's work. \n\nFirst and foremost, Nietzsche is an anti-realist when it comes to morality. This means that Nietzsche denies there is an objective set of moral values. For example, you may think it's immoral to steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, and I may think it is immoral not to. However, the concepts of right and wrong, or good and evil, are nothing more than human created illusions that we attempt to live by, and these concepts do not exist in this world independent of humanity. There are many branches of ethics (e.g., a utilitarian believes in doing things that benefit the most amount of people, while a virtue ethicist would believe that you must live by your virtues in all situations), and Nietzsche would say that they are arguing something that does not exist. What you say is right cannot be proven right, nor can I prove that I am right in my beliefs. Nietzsche’s goal is to free humankind from the false notion that morality is good for them.\n\nSecond, it’s important to understand that Nietzsche believes humans are no better than animals. As well, Nietzsche does not believe in the concept of free will. His argument against free will is a bit difficult to explain, but I will do my best. He argues that a being with free will would have to be the cause of himself, or self-caused (causa sui – A is a cause of A), and since we are not self-caused then we do not have free will. If we do not have free will, then we cannot be responsible for our own actions. In fact, Nietzsche argues that we are like animals, going on instinct, but we’ve been given this thing called reason which is not as strong as our instincts. Like Freud’s concept of the human as a battlefield between the id, ego, and superego, Nietzsche believes we have an internal battle between instincts and reason. The will of a human is actually nothing more than the type of person that s/he is, which is based on that individual’s instincts. So, if I am an angry type of person, and I kill someone, then I really cannot be held responsible for that killing, because it was bound to happen due to the type of person that I am. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Nietzsche is saying they should not be punished.\n\nAlright, now on to the most well-known aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy: his influence on existentialism, as well as his critiques of religion. For Nietzsche, the greatest problem for man is how we justify our lives, and make them meaningful and valuable. He believes that the justification of life through morals and values leads to nihilism, and that is what he sees happening around him. Therefore, Nietzsche believes that we need to justify our lives not through morals, or God, but rather through the highest form of earthly man, Superman. Basically, the role of the Superman is to pursue that beyond the morals, and to suppress the instinct side of ourselves that we discussed earlier. The Superman is the goal of humanity. Rather than setting our goal on things that are not real, i.e., God and morals, it makes more sense to set our goal on creating a Superman of ourselves. Nietzsche believes that Platonism and Christianity distract us from our pursuit of being the Superman, because they rely on reason and faith. Both reason and faith share the feature of having a moral conception of the world. This is seen in Western Civilization as follows: For humanity to enjoy security, they must project their desires onto the world as morals or values. This creates a false world beside this world, and the false world is invented by lies. The false world, morals, values, God, and absolute truth are all words for the same mistake. It’s not just that God does not exist, but that God is a lie, and the word God and morals are two things that mean the same thing. The entire concept has been created by humanity and has become a distraction. The death of God signifies the end of this distraction, whereby mankind can now pursue earthly duties to the real world. It is the false world that creates nihilism, and the death of the lies that lifts us from this state. The Superman lives beyond the concepts of good and evil. The Superman pursues self-mastery, and is able to return to life and rejoin nature (Nietzsche is not painting the Noble Savage portrait of Rousseau).\n\nNietzsche did not believe that all beings are equal. He believed in an order of rank. The idea of equality was something of the past, something advocated by God, and with God dead we can now see that it too is a lie. Nietzsche believed that there were higher men, and lower men, just as in nature there are dominant members of the pack, and submissive members of the pack (remember, Nietzsche sees no difference between humans and animals). Nietzsche believed that the idea of equality was created by lower men, to bring the higher men down to their level. The lower man makes up most of society, and is the typical man whose only goal is to suppress his instincts. However, the higher man not only possesses great power, creative power, and strength, but also he is able to keep all of these things in control. The higher man has a strong will to power, and can basically suppress instincts. For Nietzsche, the only value of a human is what qualities that human acquires, and the value of humanity exists solely in creating Supermen. With lies such as God gone, the only objective now is to become a Superman.\n\n**Suggested Reading:**\n\n[Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought](_URL_2_)\n\n[Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed](_URL_1_)\n\n[Basic Writings of Nietzsche](_URL_3_)\n\n[Nietzsche's Ethics and his War on \"Morality\"](_URL_4_)\n\n[I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition](_URL_0_) - This one I just recommend because it's a fun and interesting read, but it's not necessarily going to give a lot of insight into Nietzsche's philosophy.",
"just an anecdote, but the study of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Negri/Hardt led to us starting the PirateBureau and shortly after also The Pirate Bay. if anyone wants to know more about our philosophy behind it then ask away.",
"The rage comic is in reference to a quote attributed to him which goes something like this (forgive me I'm doing this from memory): Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; if you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes also into you.\n\nIt basically warns us not to become the thing we are fighting against.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis guy has a LOT of summaries of philosophical works written in \"bro\" language. They are very accurate despite the simpicity/hilarity of the language used, hope you enjoy.\n",
"Nietzsche is popular on reddit because of his rather harsh criticisms of Christianity. He said stuff like “In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” But his views on Christian morality are much more extreme then most people would accept. So to explain this like you're five: he saw Christianity as upside down. He got rid Christian virtues like charity, kindness and humility and replaced them with things such as ambition, pride and power. But if you believe these things because Nietzsche says these things then you're doing it wrong. You have to reject all values and virtues on your own. Get rid of any moral, philosophical and scientific baggage that you might have and come of with a new list of values that is entirely your own.",
"His statement \"God is dead\" is often quoted, but much less often is it understood. Nietzsche rejected God in the sense that God is a source of absolute meaning. He was not a Richard Dawkins type of atheist. In Nietzsche's view, it is also a mistake to believe that the sort of rational, scientific, Enlightenment views of people like Dawkins have any claim to objectivity. *Everything* comes from a certain perspective.\n",
"Basically there are two types of people in this world. Those that belong to something called a 'master morality'. These are the good people. They have strength, power, courage, truthfulness and are noble. The most important part is how noble you are. Being noble means that other people see you as being very important.\n\nBut everything has a bad side. The bad side is called 'slave morality'. This is the opposite basically. It comes from people who are cowardly, frightened and most importantly scared. Slave morality exists because these people are jealous and afraid of people who are a part of this 'master morality'. You see, all animals, especially people have one major goal in life. They want power. This is what is driving people. It's the reason humans act the way they do. It's how you survive. \n\nYou gain this power yourself. No really, it comes from you. You become what you are. You follow what you believe in. It's the source of all happiness and beauty in life. This is what being in the 'master morality' is. Realizing all the potential you have and embracing it completely. People of the 'slave morality' don't do this. They believe in other things that are harmful to exceptional, beautiful people. These people's values are wrong. They believe in something that they shouldn't because it is wrong. Religion is misleading and making people bad all over the world. It's the source that is destroying the world. If God 'died', it would be a good thing because it would force people to stop believing something that is wrong, and you would be forced to gain your own unique perspective of the world around you. You give the world your own meaning. You have nothing misleading you anymore.\n\nBut that hasn't happened yet. It's the main problem in the world because there are more people in the slave morality than in the master morality. The slave morality are trying to drag everyone else down to there level. They are putting down the unique individuals in this world and they are not flourishing like they should be. If you want to be happy though, you need to be able to do this.\n\ntl;dr: Beauty and happiness comes from determining your own perception of reality, so become what you are and flourish.",
"Before I begin this, I'd like to say that it's pretty fucking difficult to summarize Nietzsche's philosophy, and this is not some amazing attempt. For example, I left out entirely Kant's epistemological pessimism, and Schopenhauer's reaction to it, which was a huge influence on Nietzsche. It is important to understand that much of philosophy is a reaction to earlier philosophers, e.g., much of Plato's work is a reaction to the Sophists, and much of Kierkegaard's work is a reaction to Hegel. If you're really curious about this stuff, I'd highly suggest reading Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*, and Schopenhauer's *On the Will in Nature*. Those two works will give you a much better understanding of Nietzsche and his works. As well, I have added some suggested readings at the end of this post, for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of Nietzsche. This post barely scratches the surface of what is an amazing philosopher's work. \n\nFirst and foremost, Nietzsche is an anti-realist when it comes to morality. This means that Nietzsche denies there is an objective set of moral values. For example, you may think it's immoral to steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, and I may think it is immoral not to. However, the concepts of right and wrong, or good and evil, are nothing more than human created illusions that we attempt to live by, and these concepts do not exist in this world independent of humanity. There are many branches of ethics (e.g., a utilitarian believes in doing things that benefit the most amount of people, while a virtue ethicist would believe that you must live by your virtues in all situations), and Nietzsche would say that they are arguing something that does not exist. What you say is right cannot be proven right, nor can I prove that I am right in my beliefs. Nietzsche’s goal is to free humankind from the false notion that morality is good for them.\n\nSecond, it’s important to understand that Nietzsche believes humans are no better than animals. As well, Nietzsche does not believe in the concept of free will. His argument against free will is a bit difficult to explain, but I will do my best. He argues that a being with free will would have to be the cause of himself, or self-caused (causa sui – A is a cause of A), and since we are not self-caused then we do not have free will. If we do not have free will, then we cannot be responsible for our own actions. In fact, Nietzsche argues that we are like animals, going on instinct, but we’ve been given this thing called reason which is not as strong as our instincts. Like Freud’s concept of the human as a battlefield between the id, ego, and superego, Nietzsche believes we have an internal battle between instincts and reason. The will of a human is actually nothing more than the type of person that s/he is, which is based on that individual’s instincts. So, if I am an angry type of person, and I kill someone, then I really cannot be held responsible for that killing, because it was bound to happen due to the type of person that I am. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Nietzsche is saying they should not be punished.\n\nAlright, now on to the most well-known aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy: his influence on existentialism, as well as his critiques of religion. For Nietzsche, the greatest problem for man is how we justify our lives, and make them meaningful and valuable. He believes that the justification of life through morals and values leads to nihilism, and that is what he sees happening around him. Therefore, Nietzsche believes that we need to justify our lives not through morals, or God, but rather through the highest form of earthly man, Superman. Basically, the role of the Superman is to pursue that beyond the morals, and to suppress the instinct side of ourselves that we discussed earlier. The Superman is the goal of humanity. Rather than setting our goal on things that are not real, i.e., God and morals, it makes more sense to set our goal on creating a Superman of ourselves. Nietzsche believes that Platonism and Christianity distract us from our pursuit of being the Superman, because they rely on reason and faith. Both reason and faith share the feature of having a moral conception of the world. This is seen in Western Civilization as follows: For humanity to enjoy security, they must project their desires onto the world as morals or values. This creates a false world beside this world, and the false world is invented by lies. The false world, morals, values, God, and absolute truth are all words for the same mistake. It’s not just that God does not exist, but that God is a lie, and the word God and morals are two things that mean the same thing. The entire concept has been created by humanity and has become a distraction. The death of God signifies the end of this distraction, whereby mankind can now pursue earthly duties to the real world. It is the false world that creates nihilism, and the death of the lies that lifts us from this state. The Superman lives beyond the concepts of good and evil. The Superman pursues self-mastery, and is able to return to life and rejoin nature (Nietzsche is not painting the Noble Savage portrait of Rousseau).\n\nNietzsche did not believe that all beings are equal. He believed in an order of rank. The idea of equality was something of the past, something advocated by God, and with God dead we can now see that it too is a lie. Nietzsche believed that there were higher men, and lower men, just as in nature there are dominant members of the pack, and submissive members of the pack (remember, Nietzsche sees no difference between humans and animals). Nietzsche believed that the idea of equality was created by lower men, to bring the higher men down to their level. The lower man makes up most of society, and is the typical man whose only goal is to suppress his instincts. However, the higher man not only possesses great power, creative power, and strength, but also he is able to keep all of these things in control. The higher man has a strong will to power, and can basically suppress instincts. For Nietzsche, the only value of a human is what qualities that human acquires, and the value of humanity exists solely in creating Supermen. With lies such as God gone, the only objective now is to become a Superman.\n\n**Suggested Reading:**\n\n[Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought](_URL_2_)\n\n[Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed](_URL_1_)\n\n[Basic Writings of Nietzsche](_URL_3_)\n\n[Nietzsche's Ethics and his War on \"Morality\"](_URL_4_)\n\n[I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition](_URL_0_) - This one I just recommend because it's a fun and interesting read, but it's not necessarily going to give a lot of insight into Nietzsche's philosophy.",
"just an anecdote, but the study of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Negri/Hardt led to us starting the PirateBureau and shortly after also The Pirate Bay. if anyone wants to know more about our philosophy behind it then ask away.",
"The rage comic is in reference to a quote attributed to him which goes something like this (forgive me I'm doing this from memory): Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; if you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes also into you.\n\nIt basically warns us not to become the thing we are fighting against."
]
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"http://www.amazon.com/Dynamite-Friedrich-Nietzsche-Anarchist-Tradition/dp/1570271216/ref=sr_1_30?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312271242&sr=1-30",
"http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Guide-Perplex... | |
8w733z | why do some injuries hurt when partially submerged and then feel better fully submerged in water? | Abrasions, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8w733z/eli5_why_do_some_injuries_hurt_when_partially/ | {
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"If the injury is to a weight-bearing part of your body, the extra weightlessness of being in water can relieve it.\n\nIt’s also why older people do a lot of exercise in pools, it’s less impact on your body"
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xk2nk | what are the different "steps" to creating a brand new video game with a new engine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xk2nk/what_are_the_different_steps_to_creating_a_brand/ | {
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"There are so many steps, but I'll do a quick rundown. First of, it depends a lot on what sort of company it is. \n\nAll the big companies have their own engines (or they lease on from someone else). They have dedicated engine guys working on the engine at all times, and separate guys to make the game. If someone at, say Valve, wanted to create a new engine and a game on it, they would probably just make the engine (while other guys made games in existing engines) and then create the game when it's finished (or at least usable).\n\nIf you are a indi-studio, you would probably use a pre-made engine, it's just so much quicker. And the skills are so different (You wouldn't want the same guys creating the engine in a car and the finished car either).\n\nNow, if you are crazy (and lots of people are) and you want to create a game and a engine there are a lot of steps. They depend on the type of game. A small 2-d platformer would be quite different from Battlefield 4. But say you decide on a happy middle. A fairly advanced game, but nothing to much. And you are a pretty big team, so things can happen in parallel as much as possible.\n\n1. First you need to have some idea about the game. This is the design phase. You figure out ideas for the gameplay. You make some mock-ups for the art style. If the story is important, you might think about that a little.\n\n2. Then I would imagine you start two things in parallel (if you can). Some guys start making the engine, while some make a prototype (in some pre-made engine). You start the engine because that most be ahead of the rest of the game (you can start with an unfinished engine, but you need some basics in place first), and you make a prototype to see if it's any fun. Many games have some sort of gimmick, be it portals that teleport you, gravity guns or pausing the battles, and you never know if it will actually be fun before you try it.\n\n3. Now, the engine is coming along nicely, and you have the design pretty much ready. Now it's time for the game. Once again you split into two parts. The art team and the game team. The artists start making models, textures and sound. The game team start making the game. This is why it's important to have a creative manager of some sort. Someone needs to coordinate the two teams. In a real game studio the teams can be over a hundred guys (and probably 2 girls or so). At this stage the engine guys try to predict what the game guys will need. If they don't they take orders.\n\n4. Once you start getting the game logic together you can have someone start the actual game. This involves making maps, making quests, making dialog, making a story, etc.\n\n5. Then you test it. You will play test it while making it, but this is the first time you get someone from outside to test it. Here you will iron out the mechanics (what's funny, what's confusing, etc), and any bugs. This will take a while. Often you must go back and rework something (Diablo 3 went back and reworked the whole skill system after bad feedback in this step). \n\n6. Then you release it. Actually this step is slightly more involved of course, but it's not really relevant to making the game. But promoting it, distributing it, etc. take some time.\n\nIf there is any one step you are more currious about I can try to write a little more, but it's a big subject. And as I said, the scope of the game and the size of the team means a lot. "
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2lfov0 | why do some diseases have grace periods in which a patient seems to recover? | Intuitively, you'd think that a person would just get worse and worse over time. Also, if anyone knows, I'd like to know what is going on when diseases incubate for months before being noticed. Wouldn't a person gradually feel weaker and weaker? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lfov0/eli5_why_do_some_diseases_have_grace_periods_in/ | {
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"In terms of viruses, sometimes they replicate inside the cell. Under favorable conditions or stressful situations the pathogen will come out of the cell and start causing symptoms. Herpes is one of these viruses. "
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8wumop | why do tornado/emergency sirens use that whining drone sound instead of a beeping or something similar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wumop/eli5_why_do_tornadoemergency_sirens_use_that/ | {
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"The whining is created by what is basically a whistle driven by a powerful electric motor. It spins a cylinder with carefully positioned slots in them in order to create the resonant whistle and characteristic whine of the storm/air raid siren.\n\nThe benefit here is that by adding a more powerful motor you can easily and reliably create an *enormously* loud sound which is easily recognizable through various background noise. By gradually changing in pitch it will hopefully not be overpowered by some nearby noise which is exactly the same pitch.",
"Car alarms make a lot of noise and are distinct. Do you pay attention when they go off? Nope. The air raid and disaster emergency sirens use a sound distinct to something bad happening that is nearly impossible to ignore or drown out and when you hear it, you immediately know to pay attention.",
"I have the tornado siren set as my alarm on my phone it is super effective I never miss it.",
"they predate electronics and are designed to be extremely simple. there were times and places where they were driven by hand cranks. \n\nwhile there are places that use different sounds today, the old whirring noise is cheap, reliable, and iconic. "
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95l344 | how can your eyes focus on the information on "smart glasses" that is so close to your eyes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95l344/eli5_how_can_your_eyes_focus_on_the_information/ | {
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"Previous answers are missing something crucial: **a system of lenses** is used to refocus the light rays from the screen so that they appear to come from much further away. The same system is used for \"red dot sights\" on guns, heads-up displays in cars and airplanes, etc.\n\nTo give more detail: light rays from an object spread out in a wide fan. The lens and cornea of your eye must bend those light rays so they converge on a single point at the back of your eye. Your eye only has so much \"ray bending power\", so that if the object is too close to your eye, the light will fan out too widely, your eye can't bend it to a point, and it ends up as a fuzzy spot. Adding extra lenses makes the light rays fan out less, so your eye can bring them to a focus.",
"When you see something with your eyes, they have their own adjustable \"lens\" that focuses depending on the distance. Generally, you can't focus on something too close to your eye, because it's outside the limitations of your eyes lens. However, additional lenses can be used to compensate for this limitation, allowing the eye to see something much closer than it normally could. The additional lenses focus the light just enough that it is similar to light at a certain distance, and your eye does the rest. This is why images seen with Google Glass, or a VR headset, appear much further away than they really are.\n\nSmart glasses project light through a lens, and onto a reflective surface. The light reflected into your eye *looks* like it's further away because of the first lens, and your eye is then able to focus on it."
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9vlhyf | why (sometimes) guys with more mass (bigger or fat) can lift heavier than muscular guys? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vlhyf/eli5_why_sometimes_guys_with_more_mass_bigger_or/ | {
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"the bigger you are the more muscle you have naturally because you need to move yourself around = more strength\n\ndoes not apply to obese/just fat people",
"Being fat doesn't necessarily mean you aren't muscular. The 'bodybuilder' body type is in part an aesthetic choice, not necessarily a raw power one. ",
"There is \"muscular\" and then there is \"cut\". The body builders you see with the very defined muscles are sacrificing things like proper hydration ~~for~~ and raw power. In order to obtain the very low body fat to make the muscles visible they also need to diet in such a way that their overall strength is reduced. Also the aesthetic being sought tends to neglect the development of a robust core meaning bodybuilders tend to look like inverted pyramids while strongmen look like barrels.\n\nSomeone training purely for power then is likely to have higher body fat since the way they must eat to fuel muscles and allow more growth will inevitably result in a reasonable amount of excess fat. They aren't carrying so much that it impairs their physical exertion but they aren't trying to obtain paper-thin skin so people can see their veins and muscle fibers.",
"As others have pointed out. Looking \"muscular\" in the modern vernacular often just means \"low bodyfat percentage\". The ripped up guy who weighs 160lbs is very unlikely to have anywhere near the strength level of the lifter who weighs 205lbs and looks chubby. The heavier guy has more muscle mass, it's just hidden under fat. \n\nAlso, people who train for asthetics trains substantially differently than those who train for strength. Bodybuilders often focus on a great number of isolation exercises, and train high volume (reps) with light weight (light is relative). \n\nPeople who consider themselves lifters, and not bodybuilders, focus on core movements (Squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press), train with much much heavier loads, but less volume. They have a greater neural adaptation, meaning they are better at recruiting more of their individual muscle fibers to contract maximally during a lift. \n\nThere are other factors too, including leverages, and some ways in which carrying some bodyfat is actually beneficial (there is a reason the world's strongest men have been bellies and not abs). ",
"Your muscles exist on a layer of your body that is below the fat on your body.\n\nDoing strenuous lifting and physical activity builds muscle mass, and eating more calories than you burn produces fat.\\* If you're both lifting heavy stuff and eating a bunch of food, you're going to still put on some fat, but you'll have functional muscles as well.\n\nTo get the \"bodybuilder\" physique of showing muscles straight through skin, you have to cut fat while increasing muscle mass.\n\n\\* It's technically more complicated than this, as how much you burn can change based on how much of your diet is fat vs protein vs carbs, but by and large eating more calories than you burn will make that mass go somewhere, and what you eat/what you're doing will determine how much of that will be fat and how much will be muscle."
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6u3edv | why are people suddenly removing confederate memorials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u3edv/eli5_why_are_people_suddenly_removing_confederate/ | {
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"The people being memorialized are held in low regard because: 1) they were in a war **against** the US government, and 2) they were in the war because they **wanted to be able to legally enslave people**.\n\nThese are not their tombs, they are just statues to celebrate them.",
"First off, these are just statues and not gravestones/grave markets. And technically, they are memorials for traitors who decided to break apart from the United State in order to keep owning slaves... so fuck 'em. The real question should be is why they were built to begin with and why they've been allowed to remain for so long. ",
"I think the purpose of removing them is to show a distinct lack of respect for what those monuments stood/stand for. The argument is that we shouldn't be venerating/respecting individuals that fought for a side that largely (though not exclusively) supported the practice of slavery and were not exactly that into equal rights.\n\nI think its odd that they were put up in the first place. Arguing against them being taken down is like framing a \"colored people only\" sign. Sure its historical, and significant in its own way, but maybe it shouldn't be hung up in a public park.\n\nPeople feel upset at the large push to protect a statue of someone who literally fought for the right to deny human rights to a good chunk of the population.\n\nTo those inevitable responses about causes of the civil war, you don't get to nitpick reasons, you get to support the whole cause. Like you don't get to talk about Hitlers pretty successful economic push post WW1 and ignore all the brutal murdering of people because of their ethnicity. (yes that is a pre-emptive godwins law)",
"The memorials have become the exact opposite of what leaders like Lee wanted, symbols against the Union.\n\nLee post war actually spent a large amount of time trying to keep the South's incorporation back into the US as smooth as possible. If they wanted to they could have told the Southerners to head to the hills and drag the war out even longer. Instead most of them accepted defeat and refused to act as martyrs. Flash foreward 50 years and most of these leaders are dead. Southern groups ranging from vets to KKK set up monuments to these men for thr exact reasons they didn't want to be symbols in the first place.\n\nI beleive many of these monuments and memorials should go into museums as artifacts and peices to show the time period. But out of respect for the men who never wanted them and not to give groups like the Klan and other unsavory groups rallying points."
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1kfeis | why are adult video stores still open? | I mean with all the free porn on the internet why are they even open? You have to drive there and pay for them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kfeis/eli5_why_are_adult_video_stores_still_open/ | {
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"Always remember that your level of computer literacy, simply by being a member of Reddit, is already far and away higher than the average person. There are still people without broadband, and don't care to get it. There are people that don't want a computer. There are people that don't want to watch porn *on* a computer. There are people that don't know how to get to porn. And, of course, there are people that prefer to have video libraries. ",
"Sex toys and any outher sex related fun stuff like wips, and hand cuffs ... im pretty sure its less about the movies more about other stuff",
"Adult video stores often have separate private rooms or booths for viewing sections of movies for small amounts of money, often $1. It is common for multiple people to gather in that area, and sometimes discreetly, things happen in that area that are beyond a discussion in ELI5."
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9lwo96 | why is artificial horror more scary than gore? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9lwo96/eli5_why_is_artificial_horror_more_scary_than_gore/ | {
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"For me, it's the same thing. I believe it's due to desensitization of blood and gore in general. You don't think twice about slicing and dicing something in a video game, therefore if you happen to see gore, whether real or dramatized, it won't bother you. However, jump scares and and the like will always bother me, and I've tried to desensitize myself to it, and I've never been able to.",
"An involuntary reaction to gore is likely disgust, a involuntary reaction to horror is commonly fear.. \n\nSo since horror and gore are two different things, you react differently to them. "
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ds91m0 | -how do you "lose stocks"? | I've been talking to people about investing and a lot of people say they "lost everything" during the recession. The way I understood investing, you gain a share of a certain company or market, and if the market crashed, and you kept your shares and just had to wait for the market to go back up to at least get the money back that you invested. How is it possible to lose all of your money without selling your shares in a panic while the market is down?
EDIT: Thanks everyone! You all helped tremendously! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ds91m0/eli5how_do_you_lose_stocks/ | {
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"Usually, when they lose everything it’s exactly because they do panic sell. There are also some companies that do go bankrupt and shit down, and those shareholders would lose all their value. But those who simply held a diversified portfolio would have bounced back.",
"The value of a stock is actually $0\n\nThere is no actual money value of a stock.\n\nThe value only exists when two parties agree to make a trade.\n\nLets say I buy a stock for $100. Now I want to sell it. I can't find anyone willing to pay $100, but I find someone willing to pay $90. I sell it for $90. I lost $10 on it. Sucks, but not terrible right.\n\nWhat if I had that same $100 stock I bought and want to sell. I look for a buyer. No one is willing to pay $90, no one is willing to pay $50, hell I lower the price to $1, ok at that rate, someone is willing to buy, whew. Well my $100 stock just sold at a $99 loss.\n\nYour stock's only value is what someone else is willing to pay for it. If no one is willing to pay for it, the value is effectively $0.",
"1) A lot of folks will sell off during a crash, losing money, as you stated if they need some level of liquidity.\n\n2) If you have shares in companies that go out of business, Not bankruptcy but actually cease to exist, those shares become worth nothing.\n\n3) Some people are referring to their retirement monies vs their bank account. If they are heavily into stocks, vs funds or bonds, their planned nest egg evaporates and they end up working more.",
"There are two main ways to lose everything you invested:\n\n-The value of a share can go to $0 if a company goes out of business.\n\n-You're investing in options and derivatives that have 'leverage' built in. Leverage multiplies the potential gains, but it also multiplies the potential losses.",
"A lot if different scenarios here.\n\n1) The market rebounded but your stocks might have not. Some stocks never recovered. \n\n2) If you were retired or close to it, you may not have had the opportunity to weather the storm and either missed out or ran out of time. Maybe you had a health scare and had to liquidate at the bottom or you sold on the way down out of fear you'd die before the market rebounded. \n\n3) Buying stocks and hoping they go up is only a part of the market. You could have 'shorted' stocks or participared many other more complicated trades for which you have to settle up later. Yes. You can lose more money than you put in if you trade more sophisticated items and you guessed wrong.\n\nThere a lot of ways you could \"lose everything,\" but you're right, if you had invested in index stocks and kept the money in you would have recovered by now and then some.",
"When the value of your stock goes to zero you make zero money selling it. If you paid one dollar for each share and have a million shares, then when the value drops to nothing and doesn't go back up, you're out a million dollars.\n\nLook at movie pass. Anyone who bought their stock lost money, the value was down to nothing before the company closed.",
"Often, the stock holder is exaggerating. E.g. I had a bunch of Sun stock that was worth $120/share, and then the crash of 2001 happened and Sun was worth $6/share. I whine that I lost everything, but really I only lost 95%.\n\nBut it's possible to lose absolutely everything and more. Suppose I had borrowed $60/share to buy it in the first place (called buying on margin). If the stock had kept going up, I would have made out like a bandit. But since Sun went down to $6 I'd be completely screwed."
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2393ul | how can astronauts get so far away from the ship without being lost in space? | There is this [thread](_URL_0_) going on on /r/pics right now and it blew my mind, especially the 2nd picture. How is this possible without leaving him behind? Isn't the ship orbiting Earth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2393ul/eli5_how_can_astronauts_get_so_far_away_from_the/ | {
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"Yes, the ship is orbiting the earth at very high speed (7.71 km/s at station orbit), but when he steps out of the airlock, he is also moving at the same speed with the same velocity relative to the earth so he is barely moving relative to the ship/station. When he fires his own thrusters, the acceleration is changing his initial velocity and moving slowly away relative to the station, but that acceleration is still tiny relative to his initial velocity. So instead of going 7.71 km/s, maybe he's now going 7.7099 km/s instead (wild guess there, not actual numbers) and moving back relative to the station/shuttle. Or if he moves perpendicular to the orbit, he's still moving 7.71 km/s in orbit, but just changing the angle of orbit slightly. \n\nIt's similar to when you toss a ball in the air while sitting in an airplane. Since you and the ball are both moving together to start with, you only experience the movement relative to yourself and the ball. The ball appears to move a short distance relatively slowly. But compared to the ground, it may be moving at hundreds of km/h.\n\nStill, because it was risky, untethered spacewalks were discontinued in the mid 80s."
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5v2n8n | how do colony insects (bees, ants, etc.) coordinate to make such a complex community? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v2n8n/eli5_how_do_colony_insects_bees_ants_etc/ | {
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"Each individual simply follows a small set of rules that it 'knows' from birth. Here are some options:\n\n-stay near queen and care for children\n\n-go out and bring back food\n\n-protect the hive\n\n-gather material and build hive\n\n-etc...\n\nThe queen births a proportional amount of each as needed for the task. The will also have simple communication for things like:\n\n-I know where food is, follow me.\n\n-The hive is under attack, charge!\n\nThey are not unlike robots in how they are built for a task or two and only know how to do those few things.\n\nAs long as each individual sticks to their task all flows smoothly."
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357xxw | how can a speaker play high and low notes at the same time? | For example, listening to a song with multiple singers/instruments and there are high and low notes being played at once. How does a speaker produce multiple sound frequencies at once? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/357xxw/eli5_how_can_a_speaker_play_high_and_low_notes_at/ | {
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"Because audio sound waves are not consistently the same signal. IE, its not rolling hills, but looks more like a mountain range.\n\n_URL_0_"
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872mw4 | how does trading gold/oil work? | I know oil and gold are traded as commodities, which is all I know. But how does trading them work. I hear oil being traded at $x.xx a gallon and people turning to trade gold. How is that possible? Are they just trading the companies that deal with those commodities? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/872mw4/eli5_how_does_trading_goldoil_work/ | {
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"No, they are trading contracts to actually buy these products. A seller produces a contract to deliver, for example, 100,000 barrels of oil on May 1. Someone buys this contract, and can resell it to another investor rather than take the oil delivery.",
"They are trading what's called contracts futures and or options. They are essentially betting that the price will go up or down relative to time depending on their outlook. Some go long term others have strategies that execute within fractions of a second. The latter is what the market is/has turned into. Taking humans out of the equation and allowing AI/algorithms to do the work. Knowledge is now kind of less important than distance from the data feed. Some of that is irrelevant to your question but I threw it in anyway! *SNIFF SNIFF*\nPlease see attached\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n\n",
"The trades are for futures contracts — trading the right to acquire the commodity on a specific future date for the price agreed upon on the contract sale. So you might buy crude oil for June delivery or cattle for August delivery. As the delivery date approaches, those in need of crude or cattle would buy the contract so some trader in NYC doesn’t end up with a tanker of oil outside his office."
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duotpi | if potato is a very common commodity in ireland, why isn't vodka firstly and mostly produced there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/duotpi/eli5_if_potato_is_a_very_common_commodity_in/ | {
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"Potatoes are common in a lot of places. Ireland doesn't even make the top ten for potato production. Vodka can also be made from a bunch of different sources, not just potatoes (in fact vodka predates potatoes in europe).",
"Vodka was not originally made out of potatoes, and even today, most vodka is made from grain. Also, potatoes are from the Americas, and took quite a while to become part of European diets. Potatoes being associated with Ireland is a pretty recent thing, that happened far later than vodka becoming common in eastern Europe.",
"We were already producing whiskey a long time before the potato even reached Irish shores about 300 years ago. \n\nIreland's version of moonshine is called poitín and it's very similar to vodka. _URL_0_",
"Potatoes are generally so associated with Ireland because of events like the potato blight and the resulting [great famine](_URL_0_). However, Ireland was producing other crops at the time, but a system of absentee landlords in England resulted in several middlemen dividing the land up to such small levels with high rents, meaning the potato was the most useful crop for the tenants to feed themselves on the land. So when it was affected there was mass famine. There was even other food being produced in Ireland, but much of it was being exported to England via the landlords. The potato had also been pushed on the tenants by people who wanted them to come to rely on it. \n\nBasically, the potato is, as with all of Europe, relatively new in Ireland. Also, as others have noted, whiskey is older in Ireland than the potato."
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4e25ta | what happens when a singer switches from head voice to chest voice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e25ta/eli5_what_happens_when_a_singer_switches_from/ | {
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"Although the terms are not agreed on in all circles (see note), I'm going to use the male full voice vs. falsetto as my explanation.\n\nWhen a male singer sings or speaks using their regular voice, the vocal folds vibrate against each other to produce the pitch. Despite what other commenters have said, the mouth doesn't create pitch; it only adjusts and modifies the sound. To make the pitch higher, the folds get tighter, or under more tension (like tuning a guitar).\n\nIn falsetto, the vocal folds only vibrate along a smaller length. This creates the effect of a smaller instrument (therefore higher pitch). This also accounts for the breathy quality of the falsetto for most singers. That air is being allowed to escape.\n\nNote on terms: different teachers and theorists don't agree on the meaning of terms. Head/chest is not uncommon, but that's best applied to female singers. For men, some teachers refer to the falsetto as \"head voice\". Others use \"head voice\" for the mixed, lighter sound that a singer can produce in softer passages without resorting to falsetto. But that's getting beyond eli5.",
"A lot of it is where the power for the breath is coming from. In normal speaking (head voice) you barely use your diaphragm, a sheetlike muscle under your lungs that does most of the real work of breathing. The muscles between your ribs (intracostals) can provide enough strength.\n\nBut to really sing (or shout), you tense your whole belly (and intracostals) and the power comes from your diaphragm.\n\nYou can also tell when singers are lip syncing by watching the muscles on the sides of their neck, called the scalenes. Try it your self. Place your hand on the side of your neck and inhale almost all the way. Then take that last gulp of air and you will feel your scalenes flex as they pull up on your first rib to get that last little space into your lungs. When singers are syncing their neck muscles will not flex. \n\nSource: I'm a professional voice actor, singer and former LMP"
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4ac3tj | how come sports have 'seasons', and how were their timings and durations decided upon? | Who decided that (American) football would be played in the fall/winter, and baseball in the spring/summer? Why does basketball even have a 'season', since the games all happen indoors and thus could happen at any point in the year? Was there some sort of convention where everyone decided that it would be better for sports to be spread out over the course of the year, rather than having baseball and hockey seasons happen in parallel? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ac3tj/eli5_how_come_sports_have_seasons_and_how_were/ | {
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"You have to go back to where and how these sports were founded. American football and basketball were first popularized as collegiate sports, so they played during the school year. When professional leagues founded, the seasons generally followed the established times. In football, this was also because many early teams played in baseball stadiums after the baseball teams' season was over.\n\nAs for baseball and hockey, those games were weather-dependent so the seasons followed the traditional times when the game could be played."
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67yl7a | hard drives: how do the read/write heads read/write data on the platters if its spinning so fast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67yl7a/eli5_hard_drives_how_do_the_readwrite_heads/ | {
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"To us it's spinning fast, but the integrated circuit processors that control the position of the heads and the platters are much faster, and can keep track of when to start and when to stop writing. Hard drive access time is 9-15 milliseconds (how long it takes to move the heads and start reading / writing), but the memory and processors on the hard drive itself can work about 200 times faster than that (they can process 200 commands in the time it takes the head to move to one location).",
"It does NOT take a lot of time to reorient the magnetic property of an area on the platter(s). A 10,000 rpm disk rotate at 167 rotation per ~~minute~~ second. A point on the outside of a 3.5inch hdd will then move at a speed of ~~9,328~~ 4,719 cm per second. Or ~~93~~ 47m/s , that is quick but still allows plenty of time for the electronic and the heads to reorient the magnetic coating of the platter.\n\nEDIT: Don't know my math. Thanks u/DodgeCatbear."
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uvb8q | when people say they are "anti tsa" or want the tsa to be shut down, do they want an alternative security agency/system or just no security. if they do want an alternative, what would that be? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uvb8q/when_people_say_they_are_anti_tsa_or_want_the_tsa/ | {
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"There are as many answers to this question as there are people who are anti-TSA. Everyone's reasons are slightly different, because everyone's experiences are slightly different. So if you want to know specifically what any particular person would like to change about the TSA, you're going to have to ask them.\n\nHowever, there are some general trends that are common to almost all of the people who are anti-TSA. Most people who are anti-TSA are basically against pointless hassle that doesn't actually make them any safer. There's a smart guy named [Bruce Schneier](_URL_0_) who sums this up pretty well. He calls these pointless and annoying TSA procedures \"security theater\". As in, the TSA is *pretending* it's enforcing security, and is making a big show of things, but the things they do aren't really making us significantly safer. They're mainly just putting on a show.\n\nSchneier has said that the only things that have *actually* made us safer since 9/11 are: 1) bulletproof cockpits doors that lock from the inside (so hijackers can't get in) and 2) the presence of an armed, plainclothes Air Marshall on every airline flight. Everything else, from the fancy new scanners to the prohibitions on carrying too much toothpaste in your luggage, have been bullshit. See _URL_1_",
"This would probably do better in /r/askreddit since it's asking for opinions.\n\nI don't think anybody wants no security at all, we just want don't want to have to go through searches that are usually reserved for those being booked into prison just to go see our Meema for Thanksgiving.\n\nAnd I second Bruce Schneier. I remember seeing a brilliant lecture he gave on PBS or something. It was YEARS later when I saw him and finally occurred to me it was the same guy. He is, indeed, awesome.\n"
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67r0gw | why have cars in the past decade included more features for handsfree mobile phone use if talking on the phone while driving is dangerous? | Almost all new cars have Bluetooth connectivity and designated buttons on the steering wheel or console for accepting a call, even before Bluetooth car phones were installed in cars. Why do these features exist if talking on the phone while driving is dangerous?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67r0gw/eli5_why_have_cars_in_the_past_decade_included/ | {
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"Talking while driving and *holding* a phone is dangerous. The added manual task of holding the phone is what Rob's attention from the manual task of driving. Talking over Bluetooth is realistically no more mentally taxing than talking to a passenger in the vehicle. ",
"Because two things primarily (aside from it's a cool feature)\n\n1: it's more dangerous to talk on the phone while holding it compared to hands free, and many people will talk on the phone while driving regardless of the presence of these features OR the law. speaking of the law...\n\n2: The laws as they usually are written specifically ban using a phone unless it is set up to be hands free in the car, because the law recognizes that people are going to use their phones in the car, so was written to eliminate the physical distraction and meet people half way. Since using a hands free device is still allowable, including it as a stock feature makes your car more usable, which means you are more likely to have it picked by the consumer."
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184la3 | why is mainstream music targeted towards 12 year old girls instead of the adult population? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/184la3/why_is_mainstream_music_targeted_towards_12_year/ | {
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"Because they are a great market. No mortgage, car loans, grocery bills. Most teenagers' money is spent on non-necessities, including music and all the crap branded with band / singer images. When is the last time you saw an adult with a briefcase bearing an image of their favorite singer? Girls' backpacks are all Bieber and One Direction these days. Source: my daughter and her friends",
"because you can sell them almost anything.",
"I think there's something to be said for the fact that 12 year olds are still developing their music tastes. By the time people reach their mid-20's, I think most people are set in their musical tastes, and a gap of 10-15 years is enough for the majority of new music to be a different genre entirely. Thus, new types of music would have a limited revenue from that market, so if you can convince a small population of very young people to listen to something new, peer pressure would make the rest of them listen, and thus Beiber Fever. ",
"In addition to not having anything useful to spend their money on, they also *listen* to music a lot more than adults do. I remember in my teenage years I always had music going, I felt empty without it. Now I hardly listen to music at all unless I'm driving. And I've noticed a lot of my friends are the same. We don't really buy music because we don't really listen to it. ",
"a lot of adults still enjoy that music too. it's pretty simplistic and easy to get into (if it doesn't annoy you).",
"Because they will spend money where it counts, and adults won't. While adults might buy a CD, 12-year-old girls will buy the Taylor Swift t-shirt (one for casual and one for dressy), the Taylor Swift backpack, lunch box, tennis shoes, stickers, temporary tattoos, etc.",
"Why do you assume that any music you don't like is for 12 year old girls? ",
"I don't think mainstream music is necessarily targeted towards 12 year old girls. \"Mainstream\" music is just accessible to a lot of people. It's trendy, superficial music that you don't have to \"get\" to enjoy. It's often fun, catchy music, but usually lacks depth. \n\nA lot of people, including adults, aren't looking for music with depth. Fun, catchy songs that all your friends know are exactly what they are looking for. 12 year old girls probably usually fall into this category of not looking for musical depth, not to mention the fact that they are at a time in their lives when being popular is very important, it isn't really surprising that they would gravitate towards trendy bubblegum-pop type music. \n\nSo basically I think mainstream music isn't \"targeted\" toward 12 year old girls, but that the 12 year old girl demographic is likely to overwhelmingly listen to mainstream pop music. ",
"Because they don't know how to pirate music yet.",
"Becuase that is the age group that doesn't know how to pirate.",
"A few answers:\n\n1) Branding. Here is a list of crap that you can sell for a band. Things adults will buy are highlighted in bold. **Albums, concert tickets, books, pos**ters, backpacks, action figures/ dolls, calendars, candy, trading cards, etc.\n\n2) Inexperience in music. Pop music is very formulaic and appeals to a ton of people, especially young people. As you get older, your tastes get more nuanced and you start to drift toward music that appeals to YOU, but the younger population is still a mass market to sell vanilla, bland pop music.\n\n3) Marketing pays off MUCH more. Kids are heavily influenced by their peers, to the point where little girls will start to like a band just to fit in. So a little bit of marketing has a lot of payoff.\n\n4) Kids spend with their parents' money! It's true they have an allowance, but when kids go shopping with their parents they get a say in what their parents spend money on. Take back to school shopping for example. A girl might want new One Direction clothes, folders with the band members on it, pencils with their logo, book covers, etc. When you have five million girls who want random OD crap, the licensing fees add up.\n\nIn conclusion, there are a lot of reasons why you can get a lot of money out of them."
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1wy8h2 | why do some languages have conjugations and others not? | For example, English there are no conjugations but in Spanish/German/French, etc. you are constantly conjugating verbs to make the proper type of sentence.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wy8h2/eli5_why_do_some_languages_have_conjugations_and/ | {
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"There are conjugations in english it's just not as easily noticeable. A good example is ''to be''. Another example is that you would I say ''He sits'', not ''He sit'' (Unless you use the subjunctive, in which case it is ''he sit''). "
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74gch1 | as the leads used in ecg measure electrical activity of the heart are placed on skin, how does it not confuse the impulses from the heart and the nerves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74gch1/eli5_as_the_leads_used_in_ecg_measure_electrical/ | {
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"Measuring electrical signals is done in a way it doesn't modify the signal\n\nVoltage is measured using extremely high resistance probes so only micro or nanoamps flow\n\nCurrent can be measured by detecting the magnet field\n\nNeither of these methods significantly modify the current or voltage in the system. An ECG has very little current flowing through it from your body",
"Peripheral nerves are much smaller than the heart, so any signal they produce will be far too tiny to interfere with ECG. The central nervous system is surrounded by bone, an insulator, which also is why EEG signals are very hard to detect and have a smaller amplitude than ECG (10-100 μV vs up to several mV).\n\nSkeletal muscle can, however, cause interference, because it is massive compared to the heart and thus it can produce much stronger electric signals. That is why you should stay still and relax when getting an ECG made, otherwise you can make it unreadable."
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eu1tbs | how come somebody transitioning mtf can take female hormones to grow breasts, but a female (assigned at birth) can't take them for the same reason? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eu1tbs/eli5_how_come_somebody_transitioning_mtf_can_take/ | {
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"Well first, female birth control is essentially a dose (albeit a small one) of female sex hormones, and many women who take birth control *do* get larger breasts while taking them. It's just not a viable option for breast augmentation.\n\nHRT (hormone replacement therapy) is *replacing* sex hormones, not adding on top of them. Transwomen take testosterone blockers, which block male sex hormones, and then replace them with female sex hormones. Having too may hormones or the wrong balance of them is not good. In a person who already has adequate levels of female sex hormones, adding more is going to cause a whole host of medical problems. Post-menopausal women can also take HRT to replace the hormones they stop producing after menopause."
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35zc4y | why are our brains designed to enjoy what feels good as opposed to what is good for us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35zc4y/eli5_why_are_our_brains_designed_to_enjoy_what/ | {
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"Just about everything that feels good is at some level good for you, or at least helped your primitive ancestors pass on their genes.\n\nFor example, eating sweets and fats is bad for you only because we have so much food that those things will make you fat.\n\nBut if you are a primitive hunter who isn't sure where their next meal is coming from, and you have a choice between eating a honeycomb and a turnip, the honeycomb is going to give you much more energy. And more energy means a better chance at survival.",
"Inefficiency in evolution. Many of the things that feel good, but are bad for you in excess, were much scarcer throughout our evolutionary history. Fat, for example, is needed for different bodily functions, but was not something that was easy to get your hands on in earlier eras of human history, especially before major civilizations. As a result of this, those getting more pleasure out of fat were more likely to eat enough for healthy bodily functioning. Now, fat is plentiful, and it is easy to have in excess, but it didn't used to be that way.",
"When we evolved those responses they made sense. We crave salt, sugar, fat, because these are critical to survival but *were* a rare resource. We haven't had enough time to lose instincts and responses. Overload of sugar, salt, and fat is extremely recent in our history and our bodies have not caught up with modern convenience."
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bblj7a | how are structures, bond lengths, and bond angles of compounds determined? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bblj7a/eli5_how_are_structures_bond_lengths_and_bond/ | {
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"The way it was explained to me in freshman chemistry... (I guess this is more of a \"explain like you're a sleepy college student\")\n\nChemical bonds form from atoms sharing valence (outermost) electrons. Because electrons have all the same charge, they repel each other. If you have several atoms bound together by shared electrons, they too will arrange themselves as far apart as possible. \n\nThus, methane (CH_4) forms a tetrahedral shape where the carbon is at the center and the hydrogen atoms are where the points of a tetrahedron would be (the points of a triangle base pyramid) because that's the furthest away the hydrogen atoms can be from each other while still bonded to the same carbon atom.\n\nIt turns out valence electrons that aren't part of a bond can also change the molecular shape. This can be seen with water. You might think it would be just H-O-H in a straight line, but in fact the hydrogen atoms are pushed towards each other into a \"bent\" configuration. This is because the oxygen atom has additional valence electrons repelling the ones that are forming the bonds with the hydrogen atoms just like in the tetrahedral molecule methane.\n\nAll that said, I think that's a very simplified idea of what's actually going on. A chemist should be able to explain it better.\n\nThe bond strength and length depend on what type of bond is formed. I can't get into as much detail on that."
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2u49qk | is it illegal to live off the grid in the u.s.? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u49qk/eli5_is_it_illegal_to_live_off_the_grid_in_the_us/ | {
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"Besides having to pay property taxes, I don't see why you couldn't. ",
"You can certainly live off the grid in the US. Though, you generally can't just disappear leaving debts unpaid, or use your off the grid status as a way to commit fraud/avoid taxes or building codes without expecting repercussions. ",
"You might want to check out /r/personalfinance for advice. The bad thing about living outside the system is that it will be very hard to work and switch jobs as well as renting, etc. ",
"Have you explored filing bankruptcy?",
"An important question to ask is 'what sort of advantages do you expect to get out of this'? You could easily do all the things you described but what gain could it possibly have? Goods, services, and debt all cost the same whether you have a bank account or not.",
"You best bet is BLM/public land in the western states. Most people here are going to tell you the legal route. I'll tell you the realistic route.\n\nLearn about backpacking and a buy a nice down sleeping bag and gas stove. Read a book like \"Bushcraft.\" Do some heavy studying of national forest land particularly in the western states. Locate forest and public land near medium sized cities. You don't want to have to haul more than 10 days worth of food at a time, and this is your major limitation in choosing distance from the city. \n\nYou can salvage munitions near slab city, handle herb in trinidad county CA, harvest produce in WA. One season of this sort of labor will fund you for the year.\n\nWith an axe, you can find plenty of places in the cascades where no one would find your little shelter. Build an Adirondack shelter.\n\nIf you want to talk to others, consider an HF radio. Near 7 MHz you can bounce off the ionosphere to folks 200 miles away and it is very difficult to triangulate (if you radiate mostly up). It will help you out of you hurt yourself out there.\n\n\n\n",
"You are fully allowed to buy a piece of land and live there growing your own crops, raising your own animals, and not using electricity or public water lines. But you still owe property tax on the land.\n\nYou cannot legally live on public lands (ie national forests), use electricity without paying for it, use public water lines without paying for it, work a job where you recieve a wage without paying taxes on your earnings, hunt or fish without the proper licenses, drive a care without a license, etc. ",
" > am I allowed to just keep my money under my mattress\n\nYes\n\n > not use banks,\n\nYes\n\n > not enroll in credit cards\n\nYes\n\n > buy a car cash\n\nYes\n\n > house cash\n\nYes\n\n > have no mailing address\n\nYes, but I imagine you'll have a problem getting a drivers license (or anything in the mail, for that matter).\n\n > I am slowly paying all of it but I no longer want to be a part in the system, can I legally do that?\n\nIf the debt is in your name it will stay that way until you pay it off (or find a legal way to have it moved back to your mother).",
"If debt is your main reason for exploring this, then I would recommend thinking twice. How much is your total debt? It is likely manageable with diligence. Check out /r/personalfinance.",
"Check out /r/TinyHouses. Sounds like something that could work for you. Build it yourself and you could have a completely off-grid home (with any amenities you desire) for practically nothing. While you are paying off your (parents') debts, you can collect materials to build it. People have built tiny houses for less than $1,000.",
"I meant more in the, \"how can you own the earth\" sort of way. Whatever. Never mind."
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29yzvs | political ideologies like capitalism, socialism, marxism and communism. | What are the differences? Is it possible for a country to operate two or more of the systems simultaneously? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29yzvs/eli5_political_ideologies_like_capitalism/ | {
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"You have to be very careful with questions like this, because it's one of those things most people seem to believe they have a genetic knowledge of. They'll never open a Wikipedia article never mind a book, but will eagerly unload all of the half-heard chinese whispers they've picked up over the years as if it's the definitive explanation on the subject. Case in point, Phantasmidine's post in this thread.\n\n**Capitalism** is an economic system whereby the means of production (factories, etc) are privately owned and operated for the purpose of profit. Production is done by wage labour, and the commodities produced will usually be traded in a marketplace that sets prices on the basis of supply and demand (amongst other things).\n\nThe state also plays an important role in capitalist societies, though it's different from place to place. Its main role has been to operate a police force and military for the protection and advancement of private ownership, and regulation to protect or grow certain sections of the economy.\n\nWe live in capitalist societies, so you can appreciate that it's much more complicated than this, but that's the ELI5.\n\n**Socialism** today is an umbrella term. A lot of communists will call themselves socialists, but so will a lot of fairly right wing capitalists (if they're not in the US). Thus although they Labour Party in the UK, or the Socialist Party in France, or the Social Democratic Party in Germany will all call themselves socialist, in principle they aren't that much different from any other party.\n\nHistorically socialism has called for the democratic ownership of the means of production (factories, etc) by the working class (wage-labour). Some socialists have sought this via democratic reform, while some have sought it via revolution.\n\nI'll discuss **Marxism** along with **communism**. However, it's worth noting that while all Marxists are communists, not all communists are Marxists. Communism predated Karl Marx (who founded Marxism in the mid-1800s), but most communists today would call themselves Marxists of one stripe or another.\n\nMarxism is a huge body of work covering pretty much everything you can think of. There are Marxist economists, politicians, cultural critics, geographers, archeologists, and so on and so on. If you can think of a career, there's probably a Marxist version of it.\n\nMarx spent most of his time analysing capitalism (you may have heard of his three volume work Das Kapital). He suggested that capitalism was fundamentally exploitative and alienating for the vast majority who exist within it -- what he called the proletariat, or the aforementioned wage-labourers. The main economic point is that in order for a capitalist (factory owner) to make a profit they must pay the wage-labourer less than the value they have produced.\n\nSo, for example, I hire you to build a nice lego house and pay you £5. You do so and give it to me, and I then sell it for £10. I've made £5 profit without actually producing anything.\n\nThis creates class conflict, whereby you want have higher wages so that you are better off, and I want you to have lower wages so that I have higher profit. This is why unions form and why we see industrial action like strikes. He posited that eventually the wage-labourers would overthrow the capitalists and take ownership of the means of production for themselves (see: socialism).\n\nMarx's analysis of the state is that it's the apparatus the ruling class (eg. capitalists) use to repress the lower classes (like wage-labourers). You can see his basic reasoning for this historically with anti-union laws, police breaking up strikes, and things like that. Thus his analysis led him to the conclusion that once the working class had overthrown capitalism, and thus there was only one class left, the state would \"wither away\" because it would have no use -- all of its functions would gradually be taken up by the workers themselves.\n\nOnce the state had withered away and the economy was being run cooperatively by the working class we have what a Marxist would call communism.\n\nI spoke at a fair length on Marxism here, but it's important to know that this is the real bare bones of it. It's a complicated subject that is a lot harder to envision than the complexities of capitalism since we don't exist with it all around us. but hopefully I gave enough detail to explain why it isn't just a case of \"more welfare\" or \"nationalisations\" like most people will tell you.\n\nDisclaimer: Already late so no time to proof-read. Sorry if anything doesn't make sense, feel free to ask and I'll reply later."
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77dud1 | if the edge of a rotating disc moves faster than the center, is this accounted for when pressing a vinyl album? | Wouldn't the music have to be slowly sped up over time? Otherwise I feel like the music would sound slower and slower as the needle gets closer to the center. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77dud1/eli5_if_the_edge_of_a_rotating_disc_moves_faster/ | {
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"Yes. And this is pretty easy to cater for, because vinyl discs are created from being pressed in a mould, which is itself created by manually inscribing the tracks onto a spinning disc, rotating at the same speed as the eventual pressing.",
"In a vinyl album, the inner tracks are indeed more compressed than the outer tracks. But since this affects both the recording machine and the playback machine in exactly the same way, the music speed is unaffected.\n\nCDs and DVDs actually change speed to adjust for this, so they can fit more music per rotation on the outer tracks.",
"When designing a disc format, you have two choices: Constant *Angular* Velocity (CAV) or Constant *Linear* Velocity (CLV). \n\nVinyl records are a CAV format - this means that the disc always makes the same numbers of RPMs, which is a much simple playback mechanism. The tradeoff is that the quality of the inner & outer tracks will differ slightly.\n\nOther formats, like DVD & Blu Ray are CLV - they change rotational speed so the same amount of \"stuff\" gets read over a period of time. This requires more complex hardware for spinning the disc but it makes the data encoding much simpler.\n\nIn either case, the difference doesn't really matter because the recording is made with the same technique as the playback."
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4f48ha | what happens to your blood flow when you bind off a wound? where does the stream of blood turn to? | Example: You lose a leg in some accident and they wrap something around your stump and tighten it in order to stop you from losing blood. The blood that gets pumped to your leg gets blocked, but where does it go? Wouldn't the next heartbeat create more and more pressure?
Edit:Wording
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f48ha/eli5what_happens_to_your_blood_flow_when_you_bind/ | {
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"Whatever blood you lost in that limb stays in the limb; your body also doesn't make new blood to replace the lost blood because your body has to maintain a certain body mass to blood ratio to prevent the overpressure you spoke of. In essence your leg stump or arm stump has become a giant finger or toe. ",
"Each heart beat increases pressure in your entire system. The pressure in your wound (that is being closed by the tourniquet) will rise to your blood pressure with every beat but it doesn't \"build up\". If blood can't go any further in that direction it simply doesn't go in that direction.\n\n",
"Your circulatory system doesn't work like a garden hose you just \"pinch off.\" There are millions of tiny capillaries throughout your body that can all act as bypasses for cut off circulation."
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6e5i5p | why do we fill balloons with helium if hydrogen is lighter and isn't running out like helium? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e5i5p/eli5_why_do_we_fill_balloons_with_helium_if/ | {
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"Because hydrogen is extremely flammable. See the [Hindenburg disaster](_URL_0_)",
"Hydrogen burns readily, which would make such balloons a safety hazard. A balloon floating up to an incandescent ceiling bulb would make a nice little fireball. However, I think the more pressing concern may be that the cylinders of compressed hydrogen you would use to fill the balloons are extremely dangerous, with high potential to become flamethrowers or cause explosions by leaking. Not something you want to be wheeling around to birthday parties, and also a hassle to keep in storage. Any compressed gas cylinder is hazardous due to the pressure, but compressed helium is as safe as they get otherwise."
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ah8zju | why does alexa respond to me saying a word that sounds similar to alexa, but does not respond to any commercial that uses “alexa” in its commercial? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ah8zju/eli5_why_does_alexa_respond_to_me_saying_a_word/ | {
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"Originally it did have this problem. They have created a special tone that they play on the commercials that makes it not listen.",
"Amazon [mutes certain frequency ranges to prevent Alexa from responding to its own commercials](_URL_1_). For third-party ads, like [this one](_URL_0_), they pretty much need to blacklist certain audio clips.",
"Commericals, at least official ones, edit the audio to (for the most part) alleviate the risk. Unfortunately, Alexa is so popular that it is featured in TV and movies, which does NOT often (if ever) do a good job of obscuring the command. While my Echos don't generally understand the rest of what is asked, the wake up word gets triggered often, followed by a jarring \"sorry I didn't get that\".\n\nDid you hear about the little girl who got Alexa to order a crazy expensive doll house by asking for it, and then the dozens of news shows that said, on air, what she said to trigger it? A lot of pissed off people that day."
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3kfgqt | do companies gain anything by geo-restricting their videos (specifically on youtube)? why does this happen so much? | Specifically spawned this question because Colbert's new show isn't viewable in Canada, even though the Late Late Show's youtube channel is.
Is this just an intern screwing up? Or a insane legal mess they have to wade through? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kfgqt/eli5_do_companies_gain_anything_by_georestricting/ | {
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"An insane legal mess. CBS probably sold the exclusive rights to the Late Show to some Canadian company. Allowing Canadian viewers to watch the show on their YouTube channel would violate their contract with the company that has the Canadian rights."
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5hx689 | what makes lithium ion batteries so combustible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hx689/eli5_what_makes_lithium_ion_batteries_so/ | {
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"Lots of chemical energy separated by super thin insulators made of an easy to melt plastic. The fire produced in a tiny spot heats the insulator enough to melt it in the adjacent area, which generates more heat, ... . It's a chain reaction.",
"Chemical batteries rely on a chemical process called a redox reaction. \"Redox\" is a contracted form of \"**Red**uction/**Ox**idation.\" Without going too far into the chemistry and physics of how and why redox reactions occur, it has to do mainly with moving electrons from one source to another. A really good battery has 2 main parts, a reducing agent and an oxidizing agent. The bigger the gap in reaction energy between the two, the more power you get. \n\nYou might recall that combustion is a form of oxidation; so when a battery is breached or used incorrectly, the oxidation reaction that's normally happening in a controlled manner in the battery can get out of control and create those fun [fireball videos.](_URL_0_)",
"All commercial lithium-ion batteries use organic electrolytes, i.e. they're composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, so they're highly combustible. Internal short circuits in the battery between the positive and negative electrodes, which can happen for a number of different reasons (like physical damage to the battery, cheap materials, or dangerous operating conditions), can create sudden temperature spikes inside the battery. As the temperature rises, the pressure inside also rises, and this can eventually cause the battery casing to fail. The superheated combustible electrolyte begins venting, which ignites in contact with air.\n\nSource: my master's thesis in college involved thermal safety for lithium-ion batteries."
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3vrm56 | how can we estimate the age of a star based on its size? | I have a homework problem that boils down to this: globular clusters have stars of a certain size in them, and when you plug that size into a formula, it says they are about 30 billion years old. (The universe is only 14 bil) I just don't understand the entire concept of getting a star's age from its size... why couldn't the stars be made yesterday just because they are a certain size?
I get that a big star dies younger and therefore couldn't be more than x years old etc, but how on earth could we know when a star was "born" just based on how big it is, outside of setting a limit on how long the star could have lasted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vrm56/eli5_how_can_we_estimate_the_age_of_a_star_based/ | {
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"Well you can't estimate the age of a star by its mass alone and if you are getting a value greater than the age of the universe you obviously went wrong somewhere.\n\nYou can use the size in combination with its luminosity to estimate its age, because stars get brighter as they age. Obviously bigger stars give of more light than smaller ones so we have to account for that too. We can say things like: a star of this size should be this bright when it is young and that bright when it is much older.\n\nThis does not work for all star though. There are different types of stars that age in different ways.",
"You can't get age just from mass. You need some other variable. A star could conceivably have formed at (almost) any mass, so for any mass it could be 1 year old.",
" > and when you plug that size into a formula, it says they are about 30 billion years old\n\nI am not aware that there is an formula to decide age of the star by size alone.\n\nIn fact, to accurately decide a star's age, assuming they evolved independently, you'll need 3 parameter: Size, Temperature, Mass. Size and temperature could derive luminosity and other ways around so if you have any two of above it'd work. And you also need mass to accurately have an idea of the age (though it usually can be infered with the first two).",
"As others have already pointed out, mass alone is not sufficient to estimate the age of a star.\nBut ... it does make sense to estimate the **maximum age** a star will eventually reach based on mass alone. Accordingly, the formula you mentioned does not estimate the current age of the star but it's maximum life span. \n\nSo, the unresolved problem bit is about what happens after the long and stable life of the (probably very light) star in question, how it will die. Since its life span is longer than the age of the universe the end product of such a star can not be observed yet because they are all still \"alive\". ",
"Check the question again. Does it talk about AGE or LIFESPAN? There's a distinct difference. Many small stars have a calculated lifespan of hundreds of billions or even trillions of years, but that doesn't mean they are that old.",
"I guess I have a valid answer to your problem. It's all about the globular Clusters. Since all the stars in a given clustwr were created at the same time, they bagun their \"life\"at the same time. Because bigger stars are burning out faster than small ones, only small stars are left after a certain amount of time. (I won't start messing around with the formula, I hope the idea is understandable). \nYou simly look at how old the biggest stars which you see in the cluster can become. This is the age of the whole cluster. Smaller stars will live much longer,while all the bigger ones are already \"dead\", only the stars at the verge of burning out indicate the age of the cluster.",
"The important thing is that all the stars in a globular cluster form at very nearly the same time (the difference is very small on an astronomical scale) and thus have the same age. Because life expectancy of a star is inversely proportional to its mass, if you were to plot all the stars in a cluster on a graph of luminosity versus mass (the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram), there is some mass above which all the stars would have moved off the main sequence. You can see this in [this HR diagram of two clusters](_URL_0_). Therefore the cluster's age could be found by determining the life expectancy of the most massive main sequence star in the cluster.\n\nThe paradox in this case is that for this cluster, the mass of the stars that are \"turning off\" the main sequence have a lifespan of 30 billion years. However, this isn't possible, as the age of the universe is not long enough for that to have happened."
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3ea0vc | how large gyms like puregym can set a monthly price as low as £10.99 without a contract, run 24 hours and still be profitable | I understand that if you sign up online there's no administration fees, but the buildings are usually massive and operate around the clock.
I dint see how they'd maintain it, pay staff, pay electricity, and pay the building rent while only charging £10.99 per member per month.
They'll only be getting the money once a month from all members cumulatively | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ea0vc/eli5_how_large_gyms_like_puregym_can_set_a/ | {
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"Gyms have a lot of fixed costs - that is, costs that don't change depending on the number of people you have there. You still have to pay for staff, rent, utilities, equipment, etc. regardless of whether people come or not. However, they don't have many variable costs - costs that do change. Electricity may change a little bit, may need more maintenance, etc., but variable costs are pretty small. Sort of like cable & internet - it costs a lot of money to build the fibers and set up the grid, but not much to actually send the signals back and forth.\n\nBut gyms are a tricky business, and they rely on sneaky facets of human behavior to trick you into paying too much. First, they use promotional pricing, where they charge you a low introductory rate to try to get you \"hooked\" on the service, and then raise the rates once you become a consistent customer. It's all about getting you signed up and in the door.\n\nOf course, people don't generally go to the gym a lot, so they can also offer big discounts to get you to commit on a yearly basis (or other longer-term commitment). That way, even if you stop showing up after three months, you're still paying for a year.\n\nIt gets worse - gyms like to get you set up on auto-pay as well, where they bill you every month whether you show up or not, and the burden to cancel is on you. Economic research has suggested that people are generally too lazy to actually call and cancel their membership, and gyms don't make it easy for you do to so either. Of course, if you weren't so lazy, you would probably still be going to the gym, but, see above.\n\nThe tl;dr version is that gym memberships have very elastic demand and low variable costs, so they maximize profit by charging low rates and getting lots of customers. And they use sneaky economic tricks to get people to pay a lot more than they think they will when they sign up.",
"As DriftingSkies pointed out, it doesn't really cost them a lot more to have more members, so it's better that they sign up a lot of people, even at a low price. \n\nAlso, people just give up. The gym chain I go to (24 Hour Fitness) sounds like it has a similar business model. I always grit my teeth when I go to the gym in January, because everyone's making their New Year's resolutions to get in shape, and the place is *packed*.\nBy March, it's usually back to normal. A lot of those people, though, bought one-year memberships. Some even bought three-year memberships!\n\nAs far as how they have monthly prices like that without a contract? Hmm. I'd assume there must be a catch. "
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5yoi8q | what immune cells are used to attack parasites? | And how effective would this usually be if it was strong? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yoi8q/eli5_what_immune_cells_are_used_to_attack/ | {
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"Eosinophiles.\n\nI'm not sure what the second part of your questions is supposed to mean, but yeah they are reasonably effective."
]
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8kzi21 | why are astronaut helmets mirrored on the outside? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kzi21/eli5_why_are_astronaut_helmets_mirrored_on_the/ | {
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"They are designed to be reflective to a variety of potentially damaging forms of radiation - some of it within the visible light spectrum, which is why they appear to be mirrored. ",
"it's like how skier and snowboarder wears mirrored goggles, for protection against irritating radiations. in space for example, the sun",
"On earth you get sunlight reaching you weakened through many kilometers of air and you can still damage your sight by staring at the sun. In space it hits astronauts at full power, so they need the visor protection to not be blinded by it."
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cz048w | - why fibercloth is called fibercloth and what makes it so special for cleaning smudges of glass surfaces so good? why other pieces of cloths cant do it properly? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cz048w/eli5_why_fibercloth_is_called_fibercloth_and_what/ | {
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"I'm not sure if it's because English isn't your native language or if you've just been interpreting things incorrectly but I think you're talking about [microfiber](_URL_0_) cloth - a cloth made from microfibers - rather than a tiny \"fibercloth\" (if that's even a thing). \n\nIn short, a microfiber cloth is made up of a bunch of *really tiny* fibers which give you a massive amount of surface area for wiping an absorbing things (like oil smudges on your glasses)."
]
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667o9x | do muslims have equal rights for women? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/667o9x/eli5_do_muslims_have_equal_rights_for_women/ | {
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"That fully depends on what country they live in. In the US, which I think you are asking about they do. \n\nAlso Sharia law is unconstitutional as it violates the 14th amendment as you say, but also because it violates the first amendment to have religiously dictated law. ",
"Much like Christians, there is a wide diversity of the lifestyles of Muslims worldwide. Some of them have far more egalitarian societies than others. Sharia law is practiced in only some Muslim-majority countries."
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2cyqxv | why is it that in the morning i want nothing more than to stay in bed, but at nigut going to sleep is the last thing i want to do? (so i'm on reddit- 4:46am) | ELI5: Why is it that in the morning I want nothing more than to stay in bed, but at nigut going to sleep is the last thing i want to do? (So I'm on Reddit- 4:46am) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cyqxv/eli5_why_is_it_that_in_the_morning_i_want_nothing/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nthere is a bunch of others, but that one had the most answers.",
"Didn't even bother clicking on the link in the first reply but these menial questions keep popping up and annoying me so I'm going to be ignorant and assume one or any of the following:\n- you don't exercise regularly\n- you don't eat healthily\n- you don't read books, especially around a reasonable bedtime\n- you are generally not a productive person\n- you have very few responsibilities which would require a normal sleep pattern\n- you use drugs or caffeine at wild times in the day\n- you are a college student (combination of all the above)\n"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lws04/how_come_i_can_stay_up_until_6am_without_issue/"
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j3aga | the scientific-method[li5] | I think we all have a general idea of how it works, but can anyone explain it [LI5] | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3aga/the_scientificmethodli5/ | {
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"Like you're five. Here goes.\n\n1. Get an idea, and write it down. \"I think that grass grows faster if you play music next to it\"\n\n2. Try out your idea using an experiment. Experiments need to have at least 2 parts. A control group (Grass grown normally) and your test group (grass grown with music playing). Since all you're testing is the music part, everything else about the two groups needs to be the same. Water, sunlight, etc.\n\n3. Measure your results. \n\n4a. Do your results match your hypothesis? (Wow! My rock and roll grass is much larger than the no-music group) Congrats! You're done.\n\n4b. Do your results NOT support your hypothesis? (Oh no! The grasses are the same size! or Oh no! The rock and roll grass is smaller!) Then you need to go back to step one. Make a new statement based on what you learned. In this case, \"I think that grass grows slower if you play music next to it\""
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7lrxyw | if our brains can store up to 2.5 petabytes of information then why can't it record everything we go through in our life? why can't we remember everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lrxyw/eli5if_our_brains_can_store_up_to_25_petabytes_of/ | {
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"What you're overlooking is all of the sensory data that we intake at all times, if we set our brains to record in 100% detail in regards to sight and sound we'd have to cease other functions. Basically we don't have the RAM for that ",
"Not a neuroscientist but...\n\nIt's not a \"storage\" issue but a \"retrieval\" issue.\n\nImagine you have a huge box and every time you create a memory you through a colored ball in that box. After a while it becomes really hard to find any specific ball.\n\nOn top of that, your brain starts to see all balls of the same color as the same memory. This causes some weird interactions with memory retrieval. As an example, you might walk into your kitchen and smell potroast. Your brain starts recalling important times you had smelled it in the past, even if it is unrelated to current memories.\n\nIt's like a really good database with a horrible search function. You get drowned in bad results.",
"Recording stuff is rather easy.\n\nMaking use of that data is a much messier ordeal. Like, you could record thousands of hours of video with a few terabytes. But if you just record it, and someone asks if you happened to see flaming red gorilla the past month or two, to answer that question you'd have to go through those thousands of hours of video to answer this question. The same for any action you take. Where did you put your toothbrush? Time to watch a couple of hours of videofeed from last night. Who's this person? Time to watch couple of years worth of video feed...\n\nLike, it's great to have video recording as a supplementary skill, but it should be obvious that photographic memory is not what determines usefulness of memory you have.\n\nInstead how memory works is that you create links and connections between things. Later when you remember things, this recollection is a creative process where you construct the memory from connections established. You see red color, you have all sorts of related concepts, people, events, feelings and such at your disposal, for anything that you've associated color red with. Maybe it's a stop sign, maybe it's color of the fire. Maybe it's blood, maybe it's passion, or danger.\n\nWhich means, the moment you see a person, you automatically and without much thinking at all will end up recognizing them if you've seen them before, you know what they are like, what they like, what they've been doing, how you like them... because you've before this created all these links in your brain from what they are to what you want to remember them from.\n\nLike, the most intelligent machine learning bots we have are actually developed in ways that resemble this poor memory of humans. They can't remember things, but rather, they are taught to make the right connections often enough. Those bots can't tell if they've encountered a situation before.\n\nSimilar to humans, the trick in recording an event is in creating those necessary connections, so the next time you see a thing, you're lead to make the right connections, the same as those AI bots. The difference being, we can do introspection on those connections, figure out why we wanted those connections to happen, and reconstruct the events that lead to these memories forming."
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34gfl5 | if someone were to commit a crime on the moon, what would happen to said individual? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34gfl5/eli5_if_someone_were_to_commit_a_crime_on_the/ | {
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"Go to the moon and download a car. Nobody's gonna prosecute you because you're on the moon. Enjoy your car.",
"Most space faring countries legally consider their own spacecraft and passengers to be subject to the own laws, so the general rule is that whenever you go into space you remain subject to the law of what ever country you departed from.\n\nBeyond that, generally all space activities are subject to International Law and if a person accused of a crime wasn't charged under some other jurisdiction of a violation of international law, they could be tried in the International Criminal Court. The main issue in that case would be extradition to stand trial, not jurisdiction. \n\nFor the purpose of this subject, there's no legal difference between being in orbit, versus being on the moon or anywhere else in Outer Space.",
"Laws can have jurisdiction over individuals. In Australia for example, child sex tourism is a crime. So if you're in the Philippines and you're caught as a child sex tourist, you'll be tried once you return to Australia.\n\nIf you're an Australian and you have sex with a child on the moon, you'll face the same sentence. However child sex tourism is specific in that the legislation specifically extends its jurisdiction overseas.",
"Nobody owns the moon so nobody has jurisdiction over it. However, most nations can apply their legal systems to individuals who commit crimes in international waters or airspace (which presumably goes all the way up).\n\nIf the person was to ever return, they could be arrested and extradited to their country of origin or the nation they victimized and subjected to legal proceedings.\n\nOf course, it may be difficult to actually commit a crime on the moon if you're there by yourself."
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27xkok | how do artillery spotting work? | From what I've seen from movies and such, artillery and mortars can fire really long distance away, yet there's people in army whose job is to pinpoint where it's fired.
Even 81mm mortar doesn't seem to leave any significant smoke trail or something to exactly point at the bush it was fired from.
So how does that really happen? Aside looking at map and guessing where enemy position is, of course?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27xkok/eli5how_do_artillery_spotting_work/ | {
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"They're called Forward Observers, 13Fs, FISTERs. \n\nUsing a compass, map, protractor, lasers - you can determine the direction and distance to a target, from the Forward Observer's position. Now this is important, the FO has to relay his exact position, since all corrections to the artillery fire will be made from his sight position. \n\nIn essence, if I'm telling the guns \"right 30 meters\" to me, the rounds will go right 30 meters. But, if the gun line (the actual cannons) say, is 12 miles to my north, they would actually be firing south, \"longer\" or further from their position, while simultaneously it going to my right. \n\nFor this, the Forward Observers call the Fire Directional Center. They calculate what \"right 30 meters\" means for the gun line, and they inform the FO what types of rounds are available, how many rounds will be fired, and when exactly they will impact the ground. This is called \"splash\" exactly 5 seconds after \"splash\" is called, the round impacts the ground. This is done so that the Observer does not have to keep exposing himself by looking at the target continuously. \n\nThe observer keeps making corrections \"add\" brings the round farther away from him. \"Drop\" brings the round closer to him. \"Right\" is right, \"Left\" is left. \"Up\" means the altitude will be increased, and \"down' altitude decreased. Altitude is important when calling in illumination rounds that start to burn high up in the sky, illuminating the enemy. With \"continuous illumination\" one cannon can fire the illumination, and the other cannon can fire the \"HE\" impact rounds, with practically daylight. It is also used with artillery rounds that impact over ground troops, or to infiltrate trenches, or place mines using cannons. \n\nFOs can also laser the target, giving them an exact grid coordinate, altitude of target and the direction. \n\nThink of the Artillery as a Man;\nArms: Gun line, brawn\nBrain: FDC, figures out all the calculations\nEyes: FOs, get close enough to the target to blow it to smithereens. \n\nFOs are also cross-trained at a certain level as JFOs (Joint Fires Observers) to help call in Close Air Support (CAS) and helicopter strikes (Close Combat Aircraft, CCA). \n\nIt's a fun job I did for 7 years, but I now wish I had become an Air Force JTAC, those guys are awesome. "
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577haz | where do fire hydrants get there water supply from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/577haz/eli5_where_do_fire_hydrants_get_there_water/ | {
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"They are hooked up to the water main. The same main that is supplying every house on the street.",
"The main water line that supplies every building and home in the area the fire hydrant is. They are hooked up to it just like everyone else. ",
"The water mains under the street can be 6 inch pipes all the way up to 36 inch pipes and each water consumer takes a little bit of water out of that main with a little 1 inch pipe. A fire hydrant is just a bigger pipe from that main under the street. My point is there are large amounts of water flowing under the street, you just never see it because in your house your faucet is fed by a small 1/2 inch pipe from the wall."
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6docuf | : why is airplane food so bad? is it logistically challenging to serve fresh food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6docuf/eli5_why_is_airplane_food_so_bad_is_it/ | {
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"There's a good summary here.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSince link only explanations aren't allowed I'll give a tl;dr, but really, just go read the link, it answer this perfectly.\n\n- at altitude the cabin has (very) low air pressure & humidity compared to normal\n- these factors reduce the sensitivity of your taste buds to sweet and salty foods by around 30%\n- sense of smell, which accounts for 80% of what we think of as 'sense of taste', is also greatly reduced\n- ergo, even if you could magically teleport food from the best restaurant into the world, it would still taste meh\n\nBut of course you can't do that, and additionally\n\n- \"Because of food safety standards, all meals must be cooked on the ground. There the food is packed, blast-chilled, refrigerated, and finally must survive re-heating in the air. All of this would modify the flavour even if it was served at sea level.\"\n- Airplanes are further limited by the type of cooking/heating technology allowed on planes (e.g. no microwaves)",
"Because given the space, time, costs, and skills involved, airline food can't be much more than a glorified TV dinner. What's more, because of space restrictions, it is impossible to offer very many choices, increasing the chance there won't be anything you like on the menu.\n\nAlso, outside of standup comedy routines, airplane food really isn't that bad. For domestic flights, most US airlines have switched from hot meals to snack boxes unless you are in first class. The first class meals I have had range from adequate to quite good. The last time I had a bad meal was on a foreign flight, and that was mostly because it was food I was unfamiliar with."
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1ekf9j | why is there a stigma associated with being ginger? | The amount of attention it gets completely baffles me. Are people really dim enough to give this subject the amount of stigma they do, or is irony being completely lost on me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ekf9j/eli5_why_is_there_a_stigma_associated_with_being/ | {
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"There are three reasons I know of. 1) Redheads are uncommon in general. 2) According to Christian tradition Judas Iscariot, Jesus's betrayer, had red hair, so people in the middle ages might have assumed gingers were descendants of Judas and persecuted them on that basis. 3) Red hair was uncommon among the Britons and Picts, Angles, Saxons, and Normans, the four main groups that (in roughly that order) settled in what is now England and Scotland. The Danes, however, which were the primary Nordic nation who raided England and Scotland as vikings, had a lot of redheads. So a redheaded person in Britain was likely to be an enemy or the rape-baby of an enemy.",
"It's so ingrained in western humour that even Tesco got in on the joke. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nyes they did get slated for it and withdrew the card. ",
"Good question. I am super attracted to ginger chicks. The paler and freckly the better. ",
"Mostly South Park.",
"It's not Ginger, it's Viking Sunset. ",
"The majority always round on the minority if their behaviour goes unchecked. This goes for race, colour, gender, ability, you name it. It is a trait of the pack animal (a way of promoting your own position and demoting that of another) and is ingrained in our base human instincts, we are supposed to have evolved to pull together and be tolerant of differences, but it always creeps back in.",
"Anyone who is **different** can be stigmatized and ostracized. Even if those differences don't really mean anything.",
"Are gingers the only group of people where it's socially acceptable to make of of them based entirely on physical attributes? ",
"That's always confused me. Personally, I think red hair is beautiful.\nI think in the US at least, it's a bit of an internet joke - I know I've never heard anyone call someone a 'ginger' IRL without a i-don't-really-mean-this-it's-just-funny-on-the-internet tone of voice. Growing up, I only ever heard people with red hair described as 'redheads' and it wasn't any more pejorative than other hair colors. probably less so than blonde, come to think of it. Apparently it's real in Britain, though.",
"South Park did an episode on this. They do an excellent job of answer your exact question. Check it out:\n_URL_0_",
"One reason I heard was that because red hair is a recessive trait, you could have two parents wind up with a redheaded kid when neither of the parents nor any grandparents had red hair. As this was before paternity testing was a thing, it would not look that good. This probably wouldn't explain it all, but it likely didn't help matters.",
"Because redheads are fucking hot.",
"Probably because its rare. And you know what people are like with stuff that's different.\n\nWell, thats the explanation I've been telling myself anyway."
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21kkvi | why did we go through this huge change from 4:3 tvs to 16:9 tvs, only to have all the movies now come out in letter-boxed 2.40:1? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21kkvi/eli5_why_did_we_go_through_this_huge_change_from/ | {
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"2.40:1 isn't really new -- it and 1.85:1 have been cinema film standards in the US for awhile now. Even though the movies you used to see were in pan and scan 4:3 formats, the original footage was in widescreen.\n\nAs for going 16:9, it's been stated that that specific ratio is a compromise between many other ratios. As HDTV broadcast expanded, that format was adopted for it, so it stays.\n\nThere are TVs in other formats, but they're not common, and they're not \"the standard\".",
"Not all movies are 2.35:1. I'd say it's about half of the movies released today, if that. ",
"This might be of interest. \n\n[The Changing Shape of Cinema: The History of Aspect Ratio\n](_URL_0_)\n\nThe whole Filmmaker IQ series is pretty awesome IMO.",
"Change keeps the wheels of commerce oiled. ",
"A bit of history for you guys new to this whole debacle ...\n\nMovies way back in the day were shot and projected at a 1.66 : 1 aspect ratio, which is essentially 'television aspect'. That was the original aspect ratio.\n\nWith the advent of television hitting the market, the TV industry staked a claim in direct competition with theatrical movies. The movie studios hit back by introducing stuff like 'technicolor', (essentially a beautiful, vibrant colour palette achieved by using higher-grade colour film stock ... impossible to replicate on televisions at the time). Another gimmick they thought up, was bigger and better images ... hence the introduction of 'widescreen'.\n\nWidescreen films (some shot and showcased in 70mm) were another attempt by the studios to try and dissuade people from staying home to watch television. The whole advent for 2.35 : 1 aspect ratios (and the other varying types) was in direct response to the fact you could never (at the time) see a full film, in it's original format, on your square-screen home television box.\n\nAnd now, with generations of filmmakers having grown up loving films made in those eras, the decision to continue shooting on wide-aspect film stocks (and now digital formats) continues because it's their preference.\nSome directors, like John Carpenter, prefer 2.35 : 1. He's said many times that it's his preference because of his childhood love for old Howard Hawks and John Ford movies, many shot with the same aspect ratio.\nOther times, like in 'The Avengers', the aspect ratio choice is made for technical reasons. Joss Whedon decided using 1.85 : 1, a much 'taller' aspect ratio, to accommodate the height differences of The Hulk, Iron Man, etc. in any group shots.\n\nLong story short, television came around and fucked everything up. You can thank magnavox for why you get into fights about the black bars on your buddies' Bad Boys 2 DVD.",
"So we can all buy new tv's in a few years?"
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1yjk72 | why has heroin use suddenly exploded? | Why is there a "new heroin epidemic" in the past few years? I understand it partly stems from pain pill abuse, such as oxycontin but how does that explain such a cheap supply? Where is all the dope coming from? - Is it related to the Afghan conflict and the abundance of opium in that region? Is something like Iran-Contra, but with heroin instead of cocaine suspected of going on?
Every day there's some story about heroin on the news: PSH, crocodil in Russia, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yjk72/eli5_why_has_heroin_use_suddenly_exploded/ | {
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"It might just be your perception of the world but I don't think it has suddenly exploded, might just be that you are more aware of it now due to some high profile users etc..\n",
"Heroin has been an epidemic for awhile now. It's like you said, people have gotten hooked on pain pills, and when they are taken away or become too expensive, people seek out alternatives. \n\nHeroin is a very cheap alternative and has been flooding all of the cities. It isn't coming from just one source, but many different one, wether they be from South America or the Middle East or Asia, it's coming from everywhere. \n\nIt's sad that it has taken this long for it to be considered an \"epidemic\" and unfortunately it took Phillip Seymour Hoffman to die for people to actually start paying attention. \n\nSource: Former heroin addict",
"I heard a discussion of this on NPR a week or two ago. The belief is that there are two major factors: \n \nOne is that there has been a big move in this country to reduce the amount of over-prescription of narcotic medicine - Oxycontin, Vicodin, etc. So people who have become addicted to prescription pain pills are having a more difficult time getting them, and they cost more when they can be acquired. \n \nIn concert with that, heroin has become very cheap, mostly due to the turmoil in the Middle East. There aren't a lot of good government controls in many countries preventing its production and distribution, so the production has gone up, driving prices down. And there's a belief that some terrorist organizations are funding their operations through opiate production. \n \nThe obvious choice for an opiate-seeker is therefore to switch to heroin. It is cheaper and more accessible. Smart, huh?",
"Not sure what part of the world you're from but there has been a pretty huge heroin/opiate problem in my part of the US for about 15 years now. It's hit middle/lower-middle class suburban communities especially hard",
"Yes, a lot stems from the US involvement in Afghanistan and the pain pill abuse. \n\nUnder Taliban rule poppy growing was seen as unislamic and production was cut down drastically. Poppy cultivation is really the only option for many. As well as local opium lords controlling areas are key for US intelligence of Taliban locations. Local Afghani enforcement is easily bought off with bribes as well. I remember as much as 50% of the GDP of Afghanistan is related to the opium trade. \n\nFor the rest of this I'm speaking from more of a regional level. As far as pain pills are concerned, recently there have been efforts to curb distribution and make possession of them unprescribed punishable with that of illicit drugs. Heroin began its rise as many transitioned from pills. Pills where popular because they where widely available, and socially not seen as morally objectable. Heroin was always viewed as a more dirty drug and used by 'junkies'. As supplies of pills began to become harder to get, people started to chase other options, heroin was an available and cheap alternative. ",
"A friend in Canadian Forces showed me his photo collection of his time in Afghanistan and a lot of his time not spent on patrol was eradication of poppy fields, raw opium and the places it got processed.\n\nThe crop grows well without chemicals or fertilizers, and the opium is a virtually untraceable product to sell untaxed.\n\nPeople who used to be subsistence farmer can earn more and do less work by growing the poppies, even if his crop gets cut down before harvest 3 out of 4 times.",
"Heroin has always been a relatively inexpensive drug. Availability obviously varies over time and location, but it has always been around.\n\nUse in the US is on the rise and it is tied to pain pills in a big way. From 1999-2010 the sale of pain medication quadrupled. Some of this is from over prescription and a false perception that these are not serious and addictive drugs. Another very important factor is that it was astoundingly easy for an individual to get multiple doctors to write multiple prescriptions and then sell or recreationally use the pills. Over the last few years the government has cracked down big time on exploiting the system to get pills. This resulted in less pills on the black market and the pills that are being sold are now more expensive. This has caused some users to switch to heroin, which is a similar drug.",
"Because the US government has been subsidising opium poppy production in Afghanistan, leading to a worldwide price drop.\n\nWhy, you may ask?\n\nBecause opium poppy production is basically the ONLY source of jobs in many parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban is able to flourish in parts of Afghanistan where there is no work because they offer to pay people five bucks a day to shoot at coalition troops or bury roadside bombs. Opium production allows people to make enough money to tell the Taliban to fuck off.\n\nIn one of the great ironies of of the modern era, one of the ways the Taliban tries to get around this is by burning opium fields, in response to which the US Army has been providing security to opium farmers in certain areas.",
"In the 1990s, health regulatory agencies (joint commission, nih, va) proclaimed pain as the 5th vital sign and that pain was what the patient said it was - furthermore, providers could be negligent if they did not treat patients' pain. Both the original premises and subsequent fear of not following the new practice guidelines caused a huge jump in opioid\n prescriptions during the 2000s. Best guess, 95% of folks in substance use treatment who used opioids for physical pain at some point eventually began to use the meds also to treat emotional pain (depression is a side effect of chronic opioid use). Thus, demand and supply rose yet in 2010 - current, the prescription markets are lessening and costs are high as prescriptive databases are being used and some providers are being prosecuted. Hello, heroin resurfaces. Lots of folks now physically dependent, needing more and more opioids. Pills are becoming in short supply. Pills running $25 each or same heroin hit for $10? People start to use heroin for financial reasons and continue to chase the dragon, demand for cheaper fix rises, so does supply.... heroin becomes more the norm and the nightmare. \n",
"We were talking about this in my adult ceramics class. One of the people (65+) there started saying the rise in heroin use corresponds to when we're at war. She spouted off Vietnam and Afghanistan as examples.",
"Because Lou Reed died and someone has to pick up the slack in demand. ",
"krokodil is deosomorphine, not heroin.",
"It's so sad to see people get sucked into this stuff.\n\nParticularly since Heroin in particular has such a long and very public history of tragic addiction & early death.",
"I can smoke less then a rice size piece of heroin on some tin foil & feel retarded for 1-2 hours.\n\nNothing else takes me away from the world like that."
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223ekt | why is it that porn sites ask you if you are over 18 before they let you in, but wikipedia doesn't have any such thing for content that may be inappropriate for children? | Even Reddit asks if you are over 18 before letting you in some of the subreddits. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/223ekt/eli5_why_is_it_that_porn_sites_ask_you_if_you_are/ | {
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"wikipedia is encyclopedia, porn site is... porn site.",
"Because porn and reddit are entertainment, Wikipedia is education and on a meta level. You also get age checked when trying to buy alcohol, not when reading about it.\n",
"Female art studies."
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