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3n7ldj | what good came out of the arab spring | Libya is a disaster with wide spread lawlessness and local tribes (mostly black) murdered, most parts of Iraq are a disaster controlled by ISI, most part of Syria are a disaster controlled by ISIS.
Dictatorship is not good, but what are social scientists and geopolitical experts saying has become better now than it was before the overthrowing of these governments? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n7ldj/eli5_what_good_came_out_of_the_arab_spring/ | {
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"Tunisia has now its 2 feet in democracy, though there are still some work. Ennahda (islamic party), biggest competitor to the party in power at the moment, has agreed to a democratic regime and accepted a constitution in which many rights are granted to women. There are still people from the previous dictatorship in the administration, some bad habits from police remained and there were few political assassinations.\n\nIn Morocco, the King slightly changed the Constitution.\n\nBut most of the Arab Spring was a failure (Yemen, Lybia, Bahrein), or will most probably be one (Syria).\n\nWhen someone is claiming to be an expert, ask yourself who he is and where he is. If it's a guy affiliated to a party in a popular TV show, he will probably say what people want to hear.\n\nEdit: I forgot Egypt. A military dictatorship was overthrown. A democracy took the place, Islamists won, but failed at governing the country. The army took back the control of the country and is hunting down the Islamists. In fact, nearly nothing changed."
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3d26sc | how is yahoo still important, and what do people use it for? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d26sc/eli5_how_is_yahoo_still_important_and_what_do/ | {
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"I still use my email address from Yahoo even though I have a gmail one though. I make sure it doesnt get a lot of spam and a lot of important things from over the years are tied to it. Though I feel a bit judged when I give it out to people lol "
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3eb8z7 | why haven't we made a hoverboard yet ? what is limiting it ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eb8z7/eli5why_havent_we_made_a_hoverboard_yet_what_is/ | {
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"We don't possess legitimate antigrav technology, nor any knowledge of how to begin to create it. A hoverboard would instead have to rely on air pressure like a hovercraft, which would be both difficult to keep stable in a skateboard-like object, but also hard to generate without some fairly significant blowers affixed. ",
"Control and power.\n\nThe problem with control is that the center of mass will be above the center of lift. Unless the hover board is really heavy, but then it isn't a board anymore, but a hovercraft.\n\nPower is the second problem. Storing energy densely is hard, especially if you want a lightweight system. In addition, hovering is not very energy efficient.\n\nAlso, no real purpose. The US navy created a functional hoverplatform in 1955. They decided it was too slow, and flew too low, to be worth utilizing.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Biff Tannen keeps traveling back from the future to sabotage hoverboard development. Once a bully, always a bully, in all possible timelines."
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3ocei8 | crying during sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ocei8/eli5_crying_during_sex/ | {
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"For some it's just the rush of endorphins, the intensity of the experience, the flow of emotions that just overwhelms them.",
"I've cried during sex but only because my orgasm was so incredibly mind-numbing that it made me see what I would describe as nirvana and I think that warrants a few tears.",
"My ex used to cry after sex. I used to think I was being to rough but she would just say it's nothing. I asked her about it and she just said she felt emotional. Orgasms are crazy hormone explosions.",
"I was with a girl that cried after orgasm, she had done molly. I thought I was maybe too rough with her or something but she just got in a ball and cried for a bit and was fine after. Turns out that a boy or girl can experience this (never happened to me thought).. I read that an orgasm may just magnify the feelings you have been having that day/week. \n",
"it's a very intense rush of hormones/endorphins/etc and it overwhelms the brain. also, if it's with someone you truly love, the sheer amount of love or whatever can be too much to process. could also be from past trauma or abuse. \n\nsource: have cried during/after sex, but only because of the first two reasons. "
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2l5n3x | (kind of nsfw) why my testicles ache if i get sexually excited for long but do not ejaculate at the end? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l5n3x/eli5_kind_of_nsfw_why_my_testicles_ache_if_i_get/ | {
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"Blue balls is a real thing and it affects people in different ways. \n\nIts basically you priming your gun so your body goes through the processes to make that happen then you abort it halfway through so you have fluids sitting in your plumbing where it doesnt normally sit. ",
"Educated guess here.\n\nLots of blood and lubricating fluid builds up in all the \"tubes\" of your genitals when you sexually excited, and the tubes expand a bit for better flow. The \"plan\" is all that fluid is expelled in an ejaculation, then all the blood flow goes back to the rest of your body and all your \"tubes\" constrict back to their normal size.\n\nWhen you don't ejaculate, the tubes eventually return back to their normal size, but all the pent up fluid is still there, so your body is trying to constrict around a mass that \"shouldn't be there.\"\n\nIt's a pressure ache, and your body has to manually clean it up, absorbing the water and destroying all those \"foreign bodies\" that are sitting there.",
"Imagine blowing up a balloon to the point where it is ready to pop, and just leaving it. I imagine that's sort of what happens in my balls. Lots of pressure, but no release. "
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enochb | is it plausible to think there could be an entire universe inside an elementary particle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/enochb/eli5_is_it_plausible_to_think_there_could_be_an/ | {
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"That depends on what you mean as “for a fact”. If you mean “do we unquestionable know and will never be proven wrong” then no, we can’t be that certain. \n\nThe standard model indicates that elementary particles have no substructure. This is relatively well supported by our understanding of things but we obviously can’t just go look at them directly. Elementary particles, however, is just a concept; if we discovered that quarks were made up of smaller bits then those would be the elementary particles and quarks would get a new name. \n\nIs it possible that quarks are actually infinitesimal universes and the boundaries are just some kind of event horizon for a universe? I suppose but it’s in the realm of science that can’t be tested right now. To test something we need to have a hypothesis, a way to test that, and a way to interpret the results. Right now we can’t test for that and don’t have a reason to believe it either. It’s not that it’s impossible it’s just that it’s pure conjecture. Is it *possible*? Well... maybe. Do we have any reason to believe it or test for it? Not at current. \n\nIt’s not really about whether it’s possible or not, basically. It’s whether or not we have a reason to think so or observe it. Right now there’s no reason to believe that elementary particles are small universes. We could be wrong, and it could have wide implications, but there also isn’t any evidence we see for it."
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8sl3a5 | how japan’s emperor wasn’t able to centralize and assert his authority til the meiji restoration? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8sl3a5/eli5_how_japans_emperor_wasnt_able_to_centralize/ | {
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"The guys with swords (Tokugawa shogunate) were ruling over the guys without swords. There was still an \"emperor\" during the edo period, but he really couldn't do anything or care because he was treated so well. \n\nYou should watch [History Of Japan](_URL_0_). Hilarious and almost 100% accurate.",
"Because the office of emperor had essentially no power after the end of the Heian period when the first military government was established in Kamakura.\n\nWhen the country fell into civil war after the later collapse of the Ashikaga shogunate's ability to rule the country, there was basically no chance that the emperor would be the one to re-establish control. Local rulers held all the power and, eventually, it was one of them who engaged in the process of centralization and state-building that looked at least somewhat like what was happening contemporaneously in Western Europe, not the emperor.\n\nImagine if the king of France had, in the late medieval period, been stripped of his authority and real control over any territory or soldiers by a coup orchestrated by some member of the high nobility who then proceeded to rule the country \"in the name of the king.\" No one would be surprised if it was this noble house, rather than the king, who wound up building a French state in the 16th and 17th centuries."
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69tg2b | can there be a gas that has a higher density than a liquid or in other words is it possible for gas bubbles to sink in a liquid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69tg2b/eli5_can_there_be_a_gas_that_has_a_higher_density/ | {
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"IANA Physicist, but liquids are pressed atom to atom, while a gas's components are not (they're bouncing around with space in between, hence a gas). Given that, it doesn't seem likely to me that you could ever get the density of the gas high enough because no matter what the atoms of the respective liquid and gas actually are, there's just so much empty space in the gas that it's irrelevant. (If you increased the pressure on the system to smash the gas down into a tighter space at some point it's going to become a liquid, and I think that will happen long before the density of the gas phase surpasses that of even the lightest liquid).",
"It is possible to imagine a universe where that would work, but in our universe there is no gas dense enough and no liquid light enough to make that work."
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3e9esy | with home backup batteries gaining some momentum through products like the tesla powerwall, why aren't flywheel batteries being discussed as an alternative? | I have heard reports of their mechanical efficiency being as high as 97% which seems to beat most other batteries I have heard of.
They also seem to deteriorate a lot less slower than chemical batteries too. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e9esy/eli5_with_home_backup_batteries_gaining_some/ | {
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"Flywheels big enough to store power for a house are big heavy things that spin very, very fast and contain a huge amount of energy. Like enough energy to launch big pieces of metal clear into the next county if they get unbalanced.\n\nThat's why you don't see them suggested as an alternative for home use."
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39xpyr | why do depictions of religious figures generally (in the uk at least) portray them as white people, when they would have been black? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39xpyr/eli5_why_do_depictions_of_religious_figures/ | {
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"What color is the skin of most of the people who make and utilize those drawings?\n\nTheres your answer",
"Because you want the population you are preaching to/converting to connect with your religion. Which is why Jesus looks [Asian in Asia](_URL_0_), White in Europe & Black in Africa.",
"Which religious figures? \n\nJesus of Nazareth wouldn't have been *white* per se, but definitely would not have been black.\n\nHe would have been of a medium complexion, such as those from Israel.",
"It's hard for us in our 24/7 information superhighway post-enlightenment interconnected and scientific world to look back on our medieval ancestors with any kind of understanding.\n\nBack then, you never left the small town you grew up in. If you were from a village, you thought that people who went to the nearby city were exotic folk heroes, like the kind of people who go backpacking across the Himalayas or lived for a year in Mozambique. The next country over was like a whole other world, where everything about life was different - they spoke in gibberish, ate weird food, did their holidays all differently. It was like a bizarro world.\n\nTo the Medieval English, the Holy Land was practically fictional. It was a magical kingdom from beyond the edge of the world, where God walked the land and angels spoke to men. They could scarcely imagine it at all. They heard stories told in English about people speaking Greek and Latin to God and Angels, and they imagined their own people in those shoes, talking to God in the faraway magical kingdom of God.\n\nThose who ever visited on the Crusades didn't see Muslims as the natives but as invaders - they saw themselves as 'reclaiming' the lands for 'God's people' - after all that is what the Pope said when he authorized them. Surely these lands belonged to people like them.\n\nToday in our post-enlightenment world, religious 'iconography' (pictures and symbols) are more about tradition than about truth. Few Anglicans would look at their faith and say 'This is exactly what Jesus and the Apostles did' - they would say 'This is what my grandfather did to honor Jesus and the Apostles.' Changing that iconography breaks the connection to the ancestors, so for many it's better to depict Jesus 'wrong' than to lose that spiritual connection to their ancestors and roots.",
"How do you know that they would have been black and who are you talking about?",
"Which religious figures? Jesus may not would have been white, more of a deep tan, olive color. But far from black, there would have been a distinct difference between him standing next to someone from Africa at the time. "
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6o2tda | how does setting a car battery on bare concrete drain it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6o2tda/eli5_how_does_setting_a_car_battery_on_bare/ | {
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"It does not. It was only true for wet concrete and old batteries with shitty cases made of hard rubber, that let some battery acid seep through.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The casing of car batteries used to be slightly porous, so acid could seep out the bottom and create a conductive path to the concrete. If the concrete itself was damp, there would be a conductive path to ground, which would drain the battery. These days better materials are used so this isn't a problem anymore. It may actually be better to store modern batteries on the floor as it is cooler, and the cooler the battery is the slower its self-discharge rate.\n\n_URL_0_"
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mkdcx | generic accounting and what "writing things off" means | I've been shooting photos for a few years and am finally making enough income to justify declaring myself a sole proprietorship.
I know that over the course of running my business there are a lot of things that I can write off as business expenses, but the problem is, I have no idea what "writing things off" means or what the benefit is.
Please explain this to me like I'm 5. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mkdcx/eli5_generic_accounting_and_what_writing_things/ | {
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"an noncollectable debt calculated as en expense. ",
"\"writing things off\" is a generic layperson term.\n\nYou can \"write off\" expenses - which means that you note that certain expenses are business related. Expenses are subtracted from your revenue (as well as some other items) leaving net income (aka profit).\n\nBusinesses are taxed on their net income - so the more expenses you have, the less your taxable income is. One of the shady perks of being a small business owner is figuring out how to justify classifying things as a business expense. Home office space, Internet, phone, cell phone, car, some meals, books, etc are common examples of things that people may have needed anyways, but may be able to justify as a business expense. Go too far and you may get audited. Go crazy and expense items that are not justifiable, and you have committed tax fraud.\n\nThe other way \"write off\" is used, is when writing off bad debt. Say you gave a customer credit, and they failed to pay you back - you need to end up writing that off as bad debt so you can treat it as a loss on your taxes. In some cases you also need to issue the debtor a 1099 so that they can be taxed on the amount they failed to pay you (as this is income for them - they got the services/products and failed to pay you).\n\nIn your specific scenario - you now get to write off the cost of all your photog gear. Cameras, lights, memory cards, tripods, Photoshop, laptop(s), printers, any online services you pay for related to photgraphy, website hosting fees, books you bought related to your field (even tangentially).\n\nYou have an option of writing it all off in one fell swoop, or depreciating it over time. Its best to talk it over with an accountant to figure out what approach will work out better for you.\n\nAnd in the future, when buying new gear, you can take pleasure in knowing that each dollar you spend is dollar you are not paying your marginal (highest) tax rate on. So if your marginal rate is 30%, and you spend $3,000 on a bad ass MacBook Pro, you are essentially saving $900 in taxes.",
"I explained it [here](_URL_0_)\n\nMind you I'm a Canadian Accounting student so there will likely be differences in your eligible expenses so your best bet is to go talk to an accountant to see what you can deduct.\n\nAlso you should document your costs well and you will be able to save a ton of money on taxes :) ",
"If you are in the US then you shouldn't organize your business as a sole proprietorship. Organize it as an LLC (limited liability company). The problem with a sole proprietorship is that there's no separation between your personal finances and the business's finances; when you go buy something for your business you own it instead of your business owning it. This means that, if someone were to sue your business, they would be able to sue you for your personal possessions (such as your house, your car, money you've saved up, etc) as well as your business equipment. If you organize as an LLC then your business is completely separate from your personal finances - when you buy some photo equipment it actually belongs to the business instead of to you. This means that anyone who sues your business can only take what the business owns, not what you personally own. ",
"an noncollectable debt calculated as en expense. ",
"\"writing things off\" is a generic layperson term.\n\nYou can \"write off\" expenses - which means that you note that certain expenses are business related. Expenses are subtracted from your revenue (as well as some other items) leaving net income (aka profit).\n\nBusinesses are taxed on their net income - so the more expenses you have, the less your taxable income is. One of the shady perks of being a small business owner is figuring out how to justify classifying things as a business expense. Home office space, Internet, phone, cell phone, car, some meals, books, etc are common examples of things that people may have needed anyways, but may be able to justify as a business expense. Go too far and you may get audited. Go crazy and expense items that are not justifiable, and you have committed tax fraud.\n\nThe other way \"write off\" is used, is when writing off bad debt. Say you gave a customer credit, and they failed to pay you back - you need to end up writing that off as bad debt so you can treat it as a loss on your taxes. In some cases you also need to issue the debtor a 1099 so that they can be taxed on the amount they failed to pay you (as this is income for them - they got the services/products and failed to pay you).\n\nIn your specific scenario - you now get to write off the cost of all your photog gear. Cameras, lights, memory cards, tripods, Photoshop, laptop(s), printers, any online services you pay for related to photgraphy, website hosting fees, books you bought related to your field (even tangentially).\n\nYou have an option of writing it all off in one fell swoop, or depreciating it over time. Its best to talk it over with an accountant to figure out what approach will work out better for you.\n\nAnd in the future, when buying new gear, you can take pleasure in knowing that each dollar you spend is dollar you are not paying your marginal (highest) tax rate on. So if your marginal rate is 30%, and you spend $3,000 on a bad ass MacBook Pro, you are essentially saving $900 in taxes.",
"I explained it [here](_URL_0_)\n\nMind you I'm a Canadian Accounting student so there will likely be differences in your eligible expenses so your best bet is to go talk to an accountant to see what you can deduct.\n\nAlso you should document your costs well and you will be able to save a ton of money on taxes :) ",
"If you are in the US then you shouldn't organize your business as a sole proprietorship. Organize it as an LLC (limited liability company). The problem with a sole proprietorship is that there's no separation between your personal finances and the business's finances; when you go buy something for your business you own it instead of your business owning it. This means that, if someone were to sue your business, they would be able to sue you for your personal possessions (such as your house, your car, money you've saved up, etc) as well as your business equipment. If you organize as an LLC then your business is completely separate from your personal finances - when you buy some photo equipment it actually belongs to the business instead of to you. This means that anyone who sues your business can only take what the business owns, not what you personally own. "
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56hgec | why are dual clutch transmissions smoother in gear shift than single clutch transmissions? | I'm talking supercars, i.e. aventador single clutch vs huracan dual clutch.
Aventador is known for jerking violently during shifting, other dct are smooth on shifts.
I get why a DCT is faster, but not why its smoother. A clutch still has to engage with mismatched engine speed and gear speed during shift. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56hgec/eli5why_are_dual_clutch_transmissions_smoother_in/ | {
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"That is most likely a function of manufacturer programming on how fast the clutch is engaged, as well as the friction material used in the clutch. If the car is programmed to engage quickly at low speeds/throttle levels, the shift may feel more abrupt, particularly if the car is light weight and the engine has more rotating mass. An aggressive friction material will also bite harder, which is great to hold torque and transfer power, but it's difficult to smoothly engage."
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7armp6 | how come we don't have buildings over 1km in height? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7armp6/eli5_how_come_we_dont_have_buildings_over_1km_in/ | {
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"Everything comes down to cost\n\nA tall building will need a lot of materials to be built, that costs a lot.\n\nThe tall buildings weigh a crazy amount. Shanghai Tower weighs 850,000 metric tons. The taller but skinnier Burj Khalifa weighs 450,000 metric tons. You need a foundation that can support that weight straight down, but you also need structural elements that can support that load as it sways in the wind, its really windy 600 meters up in a city.\n\nSuper tall buildings also require novel construction techniques. You can't just use a crane to bring the windows into place when you're 600 meters up, you need a crane on the top of the building that can assemble itself and move itself up as it goes. This is really expensive\n\nAnd finally, utility. Why do you need a 1000 meter tall building? What do you need 200 floors of space for that you can't do in 100 slightly larger floors or 2 100 floor buildings of the same foot print across town? You need to have an economic reason to spend a few billion dollars to build a super tower when you could spend under a billion and get multiple little towers. Shanghai Tower cost $2.3B USD, and Burj Khalifa cost $1.5B USD, a 1000 meter office building would likely run you in the $5-10B range.",
"There's a good documentary done during the construction of the Burj khalifa and how precise the measurements and tolerances had to be due to the height. If they were off by a millimeter near the bottom nothing would line up as the go up. Go my guess must also include impossible tolerance standards the taller the building gets. Plus yeah, economics, cost goes up as well bringing return on investment down. ",
"Previous answers have omitted the top reason according to architects: as a building gets taller, you have to devote more and more of the lower portion to elevators. Everyone enters and exits near the ground, so when you have 100+ stories above, the lower part of the building must be penetrated by a huge amount of elevator service, reducing the usable floor space, thus shrinking the value of the building.",
"There are significantly more engineering constraints beyond cost that prevent buildings from getting much taller than they currently are. We simply do not have the materials needed to withstand the enormous stressed put onto the buildings at those heights, regardless of how much money you dedicate to the project.\n\nTo begin with, imagine how much such buildings weight. Every meter of building has to hold up every meter above it. So you have to make that chunk of building more solid, which makes it heavier. But that means every meter of building below that point also has to get heavier to support *that* chunk of building. There is a point where our construction methods and construction materials *cannot* hold up that much weight, regardless of how much money we throw at it.\n\nIn addition to that, buildings are not static objects. They move and sway with the forces acting on them, like wind (which we'll touch on again) and the earth shifting below them. The taller your building is, the more magnified that swaying becomes. It's like a tall, thin branch swaying a lot in the wind compared to a small thick branch. [We can construct counterbalances](_URL_2_) that help dampen the movement of the buildings, and include techniques to withstand the forces, but again we just don't have the materials to build much bigger. Even if the building could withstand the swaying, could you imagine being on the top floor and feeling the floor moving that much underneath you?\n\nWind becomes a significant problem as well, and not just for the most obvious reason. That is, the bigger your building is the more surface area it has, which is a greater surface for the wind to blow against. So the bigger your building is, the more you have to fight the wind. You might think to build your building aerodynamically, but that can cause the second, less obvious problem. Your building can accidentally act like a giant wing and great [swirling vortices of wind that push and pull the building](_URL_0_). Basically: you create a high-pressure zone which pushes the build one direction, and disrupts the airflow which changes how the wind flows, so the high-pressure zone flows to the other side of the building. That pushes the building the other way and flips the pressure again. This goes back and forth over and over, essentially vibrating your building slowly; and it gets stronger as the wind blows harder. The last thing you want your tall building to do is sway even more than it already does just with the wind pushing on it one way. So you have to construct your building in some specific shapes (mostly cone-shaped) to get the wind to flow in the right way to prevent those vortices from forming. Again, that puts limitations on how big your building can be.\n\nAnd that says nothing about the effect of *multiple* large buildings next to each other, which can act like a wind tunnel and funnel wind through the builds and make it flow even faster, compounding the problem. Nor can you forget that generally speaking the wind blows harder and faster the higher up you go, so your taller building is going to naturally be exposed to much higher winds.\n\nThere are some practical problems as well, such as the elevator problem. You've probably noticed what it's like to wait for an available elevator in a largish building with many floors. To combat this, very tall buildings have elevators dedicated to specific sets of floors (like 11-20, 21-30, etc.) and they will only travel between those sets and the ground floor. At some point, to service your building you would [need more elevator space than room space](_URL_1_). Plus, your cables get heavier as they get longer and eventually your cables are too heavy to be practical. And you can't move your elevator too quickly without running into technical problems or sickening your passengers.\n\nThere are also problems [delivering water up to the top of the building](_URL_3_). Your pumps can only sustain so much head pressure before you can't lift the water up to the top floors of your building (not to mention some potential engineering hurdles removing the waste from the top). As the linked video explains, there are ideas to get around this but it's still something to consider. That is one thing that can be tackled by just throwing money at it, but it's still something that can't be ignored as you build your building higher."
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6kz92i | how do they make the smoke in tv/film -when someone's smoking a cigarette for example- look so good | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kz92i/eli5_how_do_they_make_the_smoke_in_tvfilm_when/ | {
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"In older movies they actually smoked cigarettes. Nowadays even if the actor is a smoker they use tobacco and nicotine free herbal cigarettes. \n\nThere is no trick, the smoke is real. "
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ab45op | how can old movies be re-released at higher definitions later? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ab45op/eli5_how_can_old_movies_be_rereleased_at_higher/ | {
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"If I'm not mistaken, the actual physical film on which the movie was recorded is at a higher resolution than anything old tv sets were capable of producing.\n\nTransferring it to a digital media with a better resolution than what existed before with VCR or DVD shouldn't be very hard. ",
"35mm films can be scanned in to about a maximum of 4K. 70mm (imax) can be scanned in at 5-6K. Cameras are shooting upwards of 8K now, although the Arri Alexa has been the industry standard for about a decade now, and up until last spring it shot a max of 2K. Most movie prints are finished in 2K as well. 4K is more a product of the TV companies’ need to sell us new panels every couple years (3D was the last technological push after the market was saturated with 1080p panels)\n\nFun fact, the producers of Friends fought to shoot the series on film. Which the studio didn’t want to do. It almost killed the show. But they won. Which was genius, because it meant they could make hundreds of millions of dollars by selling 1080p and eventually 4K updates. Had they shot on video, it would have maxed out at 480p and anything beyond DVD releases would have been impossible. "
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c6wp3s | why are the beatles considered one of most influential bands ever. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6wp3s/eli5_why_are_the_beatles_considered_one_of_most/ | {
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"You wouldn't have the stoned, Floyd or zeppelin without the beatles, they changed the face of modern music, because they were wildly popular with the accepted song typical like \"love me do\" they were able to experiment and bring different sounds to a large audience",
"*Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band* was the first album to include printed lyrics.\n\nFirst music video: \"Paperback Writer,\" 1966.\n\nIn April, 1964, they had 14 songs in the Billboard Top 100, including the top five songs.\n\nFirst band to play stadium concerts.\n\nIn the studio, they either pioneered or popularized Artificial Double Tracking (ADT), back masking, tuned feedback, spliced audio loops, distortion, equalization, stereo effects, multi-tracking (overdubbing), compression, phase shifting, and innovative “microphoning.”",
"Not only did they write their own songs, which really wasn't the norm for pop acts back then, but Lennon and McCartney, who had been writing together since they were teenagers, happened to be very good at it.\n\nAnother major factor was their sense of innovation. In ~~1965~~ 1966, due to various reasons, the group decided to retire from playing live concerts and become a studio-only band. This was pretty much unheard of at the time, especially for one of the biggest acts in the world. \n\nWhat this meant was that they were no longer constrained by having to write conventional songs for two guitar, bass and drums, so they started to experiment with their songwriting, almost using the studio as another instrument. They began to incorporate various different instruments, sounds and influences in to their recorded work. George Harrison, for example, developed an interest in Indian classical music and that shone through in a lot of his compositions. \n\nThe more they worked in the studio the more experimental and daring they got. They also happened to have a kick ass producer/arranger/musician in George Martin who really helped the guys achieve any sound that they were looking for. \n\n\n\nNo other pop band had ever really done anything like this before, and that is why they are considered one of the most influential bands ever.",
"A lot of things they didn't to first per se, but they were the first to popularize it. \n\nFor example, deliberate use of feedback on I Feel Fine.\n\nBackwards tracking throughout Revolver.\n\nSynthesizer on I Want You (She's So Heavy) (though The Monkees beat them on this one, funny enough).\n\nMusic video for Paperback Writer/Rain (Dylan beat them with this one, with Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was '65 compared to the Beatles release in '66). \n\nAnd while I don't think you can say they *invented* any styles, they REALLY explored basically every style of rock that came out of the 60s - for example psychedelic rock (Rubber Soul through Sgt. Pepper), punk (on The White Album and Abbey Road), metal (Helter Skelter, others on The White Album), and did it, I don't want to say \"as well as\" or \"better than\" the \"specialists\" in those genres, if you will, but did things so uniquely that you had to take notice. And on The White Album in particular, they did *everything*.\n\nFor example of that previous point, take Helter Skelter. That song is *heavy*. But the vocal harmonies are classic Beatles, and you don't hear Black Sabbath or Zeppelin doing anything like that.",
"Production is another big one- After they quit touring, they were the first band to create songs on record that couldn’t be reproduced live.",
"More than any other factor I would say was using chord progressions that were typically only found in classical and instrumental jazz. The bridge of a song would sometimes have a chord that appeared nowhere else before or after.",
" > But what musical innovations\n\nThey had unexpected chord changes, great melodies, great harmonies, they would set you up for the trip, then take you somewhere unexpected. And they came along just when America needed to be distracted from the JFK assassination. \n\nThe Beatles wrote the Stones first hit, but the Stones managed to carve out their own niche in the rock world, Pink Floyd was the progressive band and Led Zeppelin was the great hard rock band. So all four of those bands carved out their own place in rock music, but the Beatles were the ones who had the right musicianship, three great songwriters, producer and engineers of the top level, and at the right time.",
"According to composer Howard Goodall, the Beatles virtually reinvented Western Music , saving it from decline and irrelevance \n_URL_0_\nIn the video he talks about a lot of technical reasons why they were so innovative, apparently reintroducing motifs that were prevalent in Western Music in the past but were somehow forgotten. Well worth the watch",
"Ringo's drumming, nothing and no one can top him! Listen to Strawberry Fields, his talent is phenomenal.",
"They were incredibly influential in creating British pop music, though I can see why Americans might not see them as that important.\n\n“Carr and Tyler, in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, claimed it [I Saw Her Standing There] was only the third all-British rock classic up to that time, the previous two being Cliff Richard's \"Move It\" and Johnny Kidd's \"Shakin' All Over\".”\n\nListen to the other two songs. They’re ok, but basically pastiche of US rock. Listen to I Saw Her Standing There and it’s like an instant leap into the future. It’s obviously steeped in the US influences they loved (with a baseline pinched from Chuck Berry), but it’s still its own thing.\n\nOther British kids were writing their own songs in the early sixties, but it’s hard to know if they would have broken through if not for the Beatles.",
"Put aside their innovations in the studio and their talents as musicians if you want- however, the sheer volume of quality songs they wrote is astounding and unmatched by any band. \nIt’s hard enough to write a song, and even harder to write a good one. Off the top of my head, I could think off maybe 50 that millions round the world would be able to recognise, that’s ridiculous!",
"A lot of standard music things these days were pioneered by the Beatles. The same can be said for the other groups you listed as well. They took production to another level. A big factor was the competition they had with the Beach Boys to outdo each other with complex and interesting production and arrangements.",
"As mentioned earlier, they were the first band to play a stadium concert, first to make a music video, first to utilize recording techniques in the studio to create “artificial” sounds and music in the Sgt Pepper album. Their television debut in America on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 was the most viewed thing on Television ever at the time with ~ 75 million viewers. \n\nAs for the far reaching influences they had over pop music, I attribute the boy band phenomenon of the 90s and early 2000’s almost entirely to the Beatles. They also largely cultivated the singer/songwriter movement of the 70s. Before them, writing your own music as an artist was not the expectation. \n\nTheir use of sex appeal and love songs is omnipresent in today’s pop music. \n\nComing from a musical perspective they utilized modulation and chromaticism unlike any other popular band. They used chord progressions that nobody could call “standard” or “overused.” they are famous for transitioning their songs to keep the listener engaged and listening the whole tune, often the beginning of a Beatles song will sound nothing like the end of it.",
"Their influence was a combination of innovation, popularity, and productivity. They scored very high in each category, even if they weren’t number 1 for any of them.",
"Have you listened to them? It’s that. \n\nOr if you were alive and female.",
"Just to add one very specific detail to all the other good responses in this thread - the song Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) from Rubber Soul was the first use of the sitar in pop music. They were nothing if not experimental and innovative (post 1964, at least).",
"They had to invent sound systems big enough for their concerts, creating stadium style concerts.",
"Helter Skelter had some of the first \"Proto Metal\" screaming/yelling in it. Just one example of many how they influenced music in general.",
"One thing that I still haven't seen in the comments yet (may have missed) is that they also pioneered the utilization of classical/orchestral instruments (e.g. violins) as well as instruments from other cultures (e.g. the sitar) on rock songs; something that every single artist started following after that. I think that the first one was All You Need Is Love",
" When they stopped touring; the Rolling Stones just formed the year before, Pink Floyd had formed that year, and Led Zeppelin was three years away from releasing their first album.",
"The Beatles evolved over the years, and continued to be relevant as the world was changing around them. John and Paul were the workhorse songwriters, and each were so good that they each moved on to successful solo careers.\n\nIt's a given that every generation will have several pop stars in the latest musical fashion that write and sing about sex, drugs, and rock and roll...loneliness and love. But do they last? are they one-hit wonders?\n\nThe Beatles created some clunkers that are rarely played, and I suspect a producer forced them to quickly write some filler so they could complete an album and publish on a schedule.\n\nThat being said, the bulk of their music and lyrics have a depth and breadth that is unmatched, IMHO...",
"Listen to Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever when it got to number 2 in the U.K. charts. \n\nThen listen to the rest of the top 40 that week. \n\nIt’s like it came from a different planet. \n\nMy dad was a musician at the time. He said “When *Pepper’s* came out, we all just thought, ‘Well... might as well give up and go home now!’” 😆\n\nExcellent documentary exploring why they were so different: _URL_0_",
"In the span of ~8 years 1962-1970, they went from a boy band that spit out numerous simple, catchy songs that were well written sold well and charted well to a major cultural and critical zeitgeist. Their style and substance was in lockstep with the culture at the time, going from the simplicity of the fifties through the political and sexual revolutions in the sixties. They could have left it at being a boy band, but they continued to push the envelope incorporating instruments like the sitar into western music, inventing and perfecting techniques in the studio that no one had even thought of before. And they did it really well. \n\nIn 8 years, they released 12 albums (10 of which are in the RS500), with sgt pepper arguably considered the #1 album of all time. \n\nDraw a line from early singles like Love Me Do and Please, Please Me to Hard Days Night and HELP! to Day Tripper and Paperback Writer to Penny Lane And Strawberry Fields to I am the Walrus and Helter Skelter to Get Back and Let it Be to the Magnum Opus that is Abbey Road. The progression, maturation and development is astounding for such a short time. \n\nAlso, they made one of the best (A Hard Days Night) rock ‘n roll movies ever made. As well as their unfortunate connection with the Manson Family. \n\nConsider the fact that this Wikipedia page exists — > _URL_0_\n\nFor comparison, the Stones, U2, Led Zeppelin and others are incredible bands and have had similar levels of influence, but the Beatles were the Michael Jordan or the Tiger Woods of their era. \n\nFor further comparison, ever hear of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich? They were a similar band, with a similar sound (there are many others) but didn’t have the Mojo to do what the Beatles did.",
"[The original catalogue in order, if you want to dip in.](_URL_0_)"
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2df0ot | why is it easier to fall asleep on new surfaces? whether it's in a different bed, a couch, or something entirely different, sleeping seems to always be easier when sleeping somewhere new. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2df0ot/eli5why_is_it_easier_to_fall_asleep_on_new/ | {
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"I'm completely opposite, as is the SO. So I suppose it's mostly personal preference?",
"I find it very difficult to fall asleep on places I do not commonly sleep.",
"Maybe you need a better bed at home? I think it would be the opposite for most people.",
"What? I have almost zero chance of sleeping in a strange environment. ",
"Do you sleep on a rock at home?"
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4b4k8m | how was the fade effect and other transition effects achieved in old 'film reel' movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b4k8m/eli5_how_was_the_fade_effect_and_other_transition/ | {
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"They would use an optical printer to create a double exposure on the film. For something like a fade to black, they would run the film through the printer and it would blast the frames with gradually increasing strengths of light. This would cause the frames to darken until they were completely overexposed and would show black.\n\nFor transition like a cross dissolve, they would do the same thing except double expose an image onto the other image. This would make it appear like the images were mixing. Double exposures are used in still photography too, [stuff like this](_URL_1_) can actually be done in camera, not with photoshop. Accidental double exposures sometimes made people think they were photographing ghosts or other worldly spirits, or photographers would take them on [purpose to fool people into believing they had photographed a ghost.](_URL_0_) "
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3q856n | why have the "new" ketchup packets not replaced the small, messy ones? | A few years ago, we were told Heinz Ketchup packets would change because the current ones are so difficult to extract ketchup from. They are so frustrating. Why has this not happened? (_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q856n/eli5why_have_the_new_ketchup_packets_not_replaced/ | {
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"They probably cost more, and restaurants don't want to spend more on something they give away for free...",
"The only place I've seen the former dead horse packages (as an Australian) is at mult-national chains, like Maccas.\n\nWe get sauce in packages like [this](_URL_0_) (hard plastic base, peel the foil off the top), or like [this](_URL_1_)(soft plastic base divided in two, foil top, fold in half and squeeze to get sauce out)",
"[This is why they're not around as much]( _URL_0_)"
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2tcn5a | if cigarettes (among other things) are so addictive, but so incredibely detrimental, why can't (or don't) they couple nicotine with something that makes you feel good and is beneficial? | So many people consume cigarettes multiple times on a daily basis, I myself used to be a part of this circle.... The nicotine keeps you wanting more and gives you a slight dopamine rush, but the hundreds of other chemicals + combustion make you feel sluggish, short of breath, and just overall terrible.
If cigarettes are man-made, then why can't we man-make something like an Apple that contains that tiny nicotine rush, and makes you want to eat several per day? I'm not saying we should genetically engineer all fruits and vegetables with a potentially lethal / detrimental substance. I'm just saying; would this not be better than inhaling combustibles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tcn5a/eli5_if_cigarettes_among_other_things_are_so/ | {
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"Nicotine itself is bad for your heart. They have patches and gum to help you quit, but the point is to actually quit rather than keep the addiction and switch sources.",
"id eat a lot more salads if they had a NicoRanch Dressing.\noh, who am i kidding, i'd probably just eat more chicken strips.\nbut still.."
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1qk0yr | if lifting things with your back as opposed to your legs is so awful for your body, why are deadlifts one of the main workouts trainers tell me to do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qk0yr/eli5_if_lifting_things_with_your_back_as_opposed/ | {
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"The dead lift, done properly, mostly works the glutes & quads. Especially for the actual vertical lifting of the weight. But part of what makes it a good exercise, is that is also forces you to include several other muscle groups. \n\nSo when the say to lift with your legs, they mean that you shouldn't just bend over at the waist and lift with straight legs (causing the lower back to do most of the work). \n\nIt's better & easier if you bend your legs and keep your back straight, then lift with your leg muscles. \n\nDoing a proper dead lift is basically the same. Bend the legs and keep the back as straight as you can. "
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2rk1e8 | what happens at the retailer end when identity theft happens. | My credit card was "used". Happened at 130 yesterday in Charlotte, North Carolina (I live on west coast). Found out 10 minutes after it happened. Received a text from the bank, called them, canceled the transaction. They sent me a new card blah blah.
On the bank end, it seemed like it went smoothly, happened within minutes. Unfortunately I know no justice will ever be served. That thief got away with 400$ of stuff.
Could someone working retail explain to me how this could have happened? Person working the register just punches in wrong number? Card that has a mirrored magnetic strip?
And what happens at the store. Does the bank notify you? Are police called? Is it just put down as theft like shoplifting for insurance purposes?
Almost asked this on the retail thread but was hoping some legal experts were in the crowd. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rk1e8/eli5what_happens_at_the_retailer_end_when/ | {
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"I wouldn't totally give up hope on justice being served. If you are similar in any way to the victims of identity theft that I've encountered, the relevant information on your credit card (i.e., the card number, expiration date, name, and etc.) was recorded, and the thief may have used it to buy something over the internet. If you contacted the credit card company, bank, or police about the transaction, they probably contacted the retailer. Large retailers have entire departments devoted to working with the police to investigate fraudulent transactions. That department may be able to track down the thief based on other information he/she gave to them during the transaction, for example, their IP address, delivery address, or email address. I've seen it happen before. Some thieves are so stupid/careless that they'll buy something over the internet with a stolen credit card, and give the retailer their personal email address and home address. Also, if he/she used the card in the store and the date and time of the transaction was properly recorded, his/her picture may have been captured by surveillance, and a cashier may be able to make an ID. "
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1i620j | phd | I have some questions surrounding the topic of PhDs, Wikipedia's answers were not specific or easy to follow, so an answer in simple terms would be prefered :P:
- What subjects could I possibly get a PhD in?
- What do I do in the process of/what to I have to do to get a PhD?
- What kind of establishments offer PhDs?
Thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i620j/eli5_phd/ | {
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"1. A PhD is awarded as a recognition of academic achievement. While there are often set 'requirements' used to get a PhD, the \"subject\" you get it in is entirely up to you. I know friends who have taken 50% of their classes outside of the conventional 'discipline' in which they got a PhD. eg: A friend of mine was a graduate student in the Physics department, and did his PhD research in particle accelerator beam dynamics. He is a PhD of Beam Physics/Beam Dynamics. Point being: The \"subject\" is determined by you, your advisor and (to a lesser extent) the thesis committee. \n2. Well, first you need to be an excellent undergraduate student. This isn't just a 'weed out' requirement - to get a PhD requires a lot of work and dedication (because there is no real reward while you are doing the work), and if you aren't an excellent undergrad it's unlikely you'll be any good as a PhD student (though not impossible). It's also fairly (but not absolutely) important to be actively involved in research during your undergraduate work. This will give you insight into your graduate experience (which is 50% research, 50% classwork). Then, you need to apply to a graduate school that has research programs in your area of interest. For example, it's not enough to say: \"I want to be a Chemistry PhD.\" You need to get a PhD from a program that studies what *you* ultimately want to do. So you apply to such a program, get accepted, and then begin taking coursework. Some schools will *force* you to take coursework first, but more intelligent and elightened programs will allow you to begin your thesis work immediately. When you are accepted to a graduate program, you will have an advisor. People get advisors in two ways: first, they are assigned to one; and second, they *pick* their own. **You want to be one of the second kinds of people.** This is why you picked a program that studies what you want. So that you find work under a professor who will help advance you. It's also important to make sure your work styles are compatible (ie, don't work for a details person if you're 'big picture' - etc). Your advisor will assist (but not lead) you in creating a research project, that will produce results that warrant inclusion in a thesis. A \"thesis\" is basically a report on a research project that discovers something that was previously unknown to science. So in order to graduate with a PhD you need to *discover something new.* This can take a *long* time and a *lot* of hard work - but ensures that you yourself are prepared to *be* a doctor of the subject you pursue; ie, someone who is an expert in the field. So you do your research project in concert with your coursework. Some programs will make you take a qualifying examination to prove you are knowledgeable enough to be a PhD student (this is basically an oral examination where you talk to a committee composed of your advisor and people you select, and they ask you questions). Finally, your research project is complete, and you prepare a dissertation on your thesis (a paper that describes your PhD work). This is presented to a thesis committee, consisting of your advisor and again people you select (also professors, who are experts in your field). The thesis committee then evaluates your dissertation, and decides whether to award your degree. And that's the end. \n3. PhD's are only awarded by accredited institutions of higher education; eg Universities. Not *all* universities actually award PhD's, and sometimes they will only award them in certain subjects (eg, maybe only history but not Biology). ",
"There are many fields you can get a PhD in. It depends on the school you go to. You need to go to a university/college to get one. It isn't an online thing or one of those for profit schools that advertise on TV.\n\nFirst you need a bachelors of art or science in a field that is or is very close to the one you want to get your PhD in. If it is a social science/english field, you probably need a masters first. You don't always need a masters though. Most science/engineering PhDs you can start right after you get your bachelors.\n\nFor example: I went and got my BS in Chemistry. I applied to PhD programs in chem, biochem and medicinal chemistry my senior year. I got accepted, and am finishing my first year of a chem PhD. \n\nMost science PhD's are 4-5 years, rarely more than that. There were many schools abusing PhD students as cheap labor for too long. I believe the NSF or NIH or some other association got together and decided students shouldn't be slaves forever, so 4-5 years and PhD. It involves lots of personal research under guidance from a professor in the field. You have a qualifying exam (varying formats based on school) which says OK, you can get your PhD here, just keep working. Then you defend your work (dissertation/thesis) and if you didn't fuck up, you get your PhD. It also involves publishing your work as you go in academic, peer reviewed journals. \n\nAnother thing to think about is funding. Many STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) PhD's are funded. If you go for a masters in STEM, you will most likely not be funded. You can apply for PhD, then stop after a couple years b/c it isn't \"for you\" and leave w/ a masters, getting funded as a PhD for those 2 years. This means you get paid enough to live in the area and buy food and that's about it. Humanities PhD's usually don't get any funding, so you have to apply for scholarships and fellowships to pay you so you dont' have to work a job and do your PhD. \n\nI'm not sure about humanities PhD other than that. I know some people have been doing their english PhD forever (7 years... why?) but that might be b/c they are forced to do it part time and so they can work to pay for living expenses and school. ",
"Trying to ELI5 this here:\n\n > What subjects could I possibly get a PhD in?\n\nA PhD is always a specific focus within a broader field. For example, British Victorian Literature as opposed to \"English.\"\n\n > What do I do in the process of/what to I have to do to get a PhD?\n\n1. Bachelors and Masters degrees.\n\n1. Doctoral coursework -- 2-3 years of classes.\n\n1. Written preliminary exams a year or two in to become an official doctoral candidate (or get bounced from your program).\n\n1. Oral comprehensive exams after coursework but before starting dissertation.\n\n1. Dissertation. Usually 150-250 pages for humanities, research+paper for sciences. This is very specific, like \"the use of postmodern fire imagery in Wuthering Heights.\"\n\n1. Oral defense of dissertation. Panel of advisors grills you to determine your expertise of dissertation topic.\n\n1. Get a robe.\n\n1. Profit. Namely none: you will be underpaid the rest of your life.\n\n > What kind of establishments offer PhDs?\n\nAll kinds. People prefer the reputable ones with fancy brand names.\n\nEdit: teh wordz"
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pwwww | what do computers need video cards? | I have a fair amount of knowledge in regards to computers, but I'm not sure about this one. Why wouldn't/can't the video just be processed by the CPU, which typically has a MUCH higher clock speed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pwwww/eli5_what_do_computers_need_video_cards/ | {
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" > Why wouldn't/can't the video just be processed by the CPU, which typically has a MUCH higher clock speed?\n\nBecause it turns out that using a GPU is actually more efficient. Even in the context of CPUs alone, clock speed is only one of many factors affecting actual processing speed, though the others used to be more played down.\n\nA GPU is a specialised kind of processor that is designed and optimised to perform many calculations simultaneously. That makes them much faster than a CPU when the algorithms can split the data into small chunks to be operated on individually. An excellent example is the computer graphics that we obviously use GPUs for, and which they're very optimised for in terms of how programs interact with them. In comparison, a CPU could do the same thing, but although it could do each chunk faster (naively, at least), there would be so many of them that it would actually take longer.\n\nThe graphics card as a whole also has advantages like speedy ram dedicated to video processing, and efficient ways of outputting the calculated image to a framebuffer and actual screen. Plus it's not like the CPU has any free time during gameplay anyway - if you check your system usage whilst playing a game you'll probably see at least one core (possibly more now as multicore games are more standard) is already maxed out on all the rest of the game, AI and so on. Because graphics processing is such a massive task, a video card is a practical necessity for the best gaming, even if it weren't much more than an extra CPU.\n\nEdit: Just in case my second paragraph is unclear, GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit, which describes exactly what these chips are designed to do. They include many optimisations designed for directly working with graphics code. The reason I don't suggest this as their only function is that their parallel-processing nature has more recently been looked on with great interest for many other tasks.",
"In all but the simplest machines, you need some sort of dedicated hardware to handle drawing graphics on the machine. It might be a frame buffer, it might support sprites but for a long time they were all pretty dumb - the CPU would write graphics to an area of memory & the graphics controller would put it on the screen. Some machines this was wired into the system, in others it was a separate component of a modular architecture - how it's integrated is not relevant.\n\nSomewhere along the way, people started making graphics controllers that could simplify some tasks - like moving a window across the screen without having to redraw **everything**. This allowed more of the CPU to be used to do actual work, rather than spend all it's time drawing stuff on a screen. Keep in mind that a 1024x768 screen refreshing at 60Hz is 47,185,920 pixels - that's a lot of busy work.\n\nThis carried along for a while until the advent of the 3D graphics card - at first, they were simple things that could *only* do 3D in games (talking consumer grade parts here, not workstation hardware) and still needed a \"regular\" card to do 2D graphics. Since then, they've gotten better & faster every year - their improvements far outstripping those made with general purpose CPUs.\n\nYou originally asked why this is the case - put quite simply, there are some problems that can easily be broken into a lot of parts and done at the same time & some that can't. There's a saying, \"nine women can't make a baby in a month\". Mathematically, you can prove that *most* computational problems can't be \"parallelized\" - this is why Intel's current top of the line only has 6 cores (parts of the CPU can simultaneously solve a problem). Graphics processing, however, is one of the areas that is *really easy* to do in parallel & it's really easy to stick a whole bunch of \"simple\" graphics processing cores onto a single chip. The current top of the line nVidia card has 1024 cores working in parallel. That's 170 times the processing units of our CPU!\n\n"
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5e357e | protests in south korea | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e357e/eli5_protests_in_south_korea/ | {
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"Park Geun-hye's \"contact\" is Choi Soon-sil. Park Geun-hye's father was the President of South Korea in the 60s and 70s; when his wife (Geun-hye's mother) was assassinated, Choi-Soon-sil's father took the opportunity to become a friend of the family and Geun-hye's mentor. You see, Soon-sil's father was Choi Tae-min, the leader of a shamanistic cult. He claimed to be able to channel the spirit of Geun-hye's mother, and became her mentor after her father was assassinated a few years later. Choi Tae-min died in the 90s, and his daughter Soon-sil took over.\n\nSo Choi Soon-sil had an immense amount of influence over the president, in a lot of ways the president was actually subservient to her. She had Park Geun-hye wear tacky clothes instead of what her handlers prepared, and Soon-sil had final editing control over her speeches (which were often gibberish as a result). Soon-sil extorted three-quarters of a billion dollars from private businesses, and used government influence to get her daughter into a prestigious college (in East Asia, entrance exams for educational institutions are more important than final exams; this was a Big Deal). Basically, the president has been the puppet of con artists for *decades*. \n\nWhen over a million people gathered to ask for her resignation, she refused (again, a Big Deal - in East Asia, when there's a screw-up, somebody takes the blame and resigns). Her approval rating is actually below 5%, at the moment.\n\nSo right now, you've got a massively unpopular, co-dependent puppet president who won't leave the office or apologize. Even Choi Soon-sil showed more contrition: “Please, forgive me. I’m sorry. I committed a sin that deserves death.”"
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e6z5at | how does a sleeping person know the time? | When i sleep I don't use an alarm clock and tend to sleep at different times but if i think to wake up at certain times i can do so with a few minutes difference.
So how does the brain tell what time it is while sleeping? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6z5at/eli5_how_does_a_sleeping_person_know_the_time/ | {
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"What you're describing is circadian rhythm.\n\nPart of your brain called the Hypothalamus controls your circadian rhythm, which is basically a 24 hour internal clock that is running in the background of your brain and cycles between sleepiness and alertness at regular intervals.\n\nBy getting regular sleep, and having a regular schedule, you basically tell your brain \"OK, at this hour of the day we need to be up and at 'em and ready for the day\". So since your hypothalamus is keeping track of the full day's cycle, whether you go to sleep at 9pm or 11pm it knows that roughly \"now\" is 6:30am, which is when I've been programmed, by repetition, to be alert.\n\nThis is the reason it's very difficult for someone who works night shift, to suddenly change to day shift, because they're abruptly trying ot reprogram their circadian rhythm and shift ahead 12 hours. You brain's not yet conditioned to release melatonin during the day instead of at night to make you sleepy, and thus you're sleepy when you need to be awake.",
"There is a tiny spot of around 20,000 cells tucked up by your pituitary gland in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It has a complicated chemical cycle that it uses to pass messages back and forth from one set of cells to the other, back and forth, like the pendulum on a clock. This is the master \"tick tock\" rate of your body.\n\nThe suprechiasmatic nucleus sends other signals around your body to other centers, called \"slave oscillators,\" which are basically little copies of the clock in various tissue. This is how your whole body coordinates its time together.\n\nThe nucleus is connected to your optic nerve, and its \"tick\" rate changes based on the light level. Meaning it ticks slightly faster or slower depending on the amount of light its getting. This change in tick rate is how it also knows when the sun is up or down, which is how it knows what part of a 24 hour day it is.\n\nThis in turn sets your body's wider \"circadian rhythm,\" which is the complex set of signals and reactions that happens in your body depending on the time of day, like knowing when it's time to get sleepy and go to bed, or when it's time to get up. If not much is changing for you day to day in how or when you're sleeping, it can be extremely accurate."
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63mk0j | why does nasa crash probes like casini when they're done with them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63mk0j/eli5_why_does_nasa_crash_probes_like_casini_when/ | {
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"They don't always. Casini in particular was sent into the atmosphere of Saturn so that it couldn't accidentally contaminate any nearby moons potentially capable of harboring life. While it's pretty long odds that it would succeed to do so, destroying the probe in the atmosphere removes them entirely, and at the time the plan was to send future probes anyway that could take over the operation. ",
"This question came up during an episode of Star Talk with Neil Degrasse Tyson. Their answer was that they use this as a final act of data-gathering. \n\nTo rephrase: they try to get as many different data as possible, and during the crash (or in the period leading up to it) much unique data is returned. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Not all probes are crashed down at the end of their mission, and the crash itself is more complex than just getting rid of the probe. When they do crash a probe on purpose, it's often to collect new data that they could not otherwise get.\n\nFor Cassini in particular, they are planning what they call its [Grand Finale](_URL_0_). From now until September, Cassini will dive between Saturn and its rings several times, gathering data on those regions which we've never been able to explore before (and most likely sending back some *incredible* pictures of the inner rings and planet atmosphere).\n\nOn the final orbit, the probe will dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, sending back data on the atmosphere itself for as long as it can survive. At some point, the probe will simply burn up and disintegrate, much like a small meteor burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.\n\n---\n\nOther than gathering data on Saturn, NASA is also concerned that some of Saturn's moons - Enceladus and Titan - may contain organic life, even if just microscopic.\n\nSimilar to the Prime Directive in *Star Trek*, they don't want to risk contaminating those environments in the case that Cassini - after it spends all its fuel making orbit adjustments - crashes into one of them. So, disposing of the probe completely by burning it in Saturn's atmosphere is the safest way to prevent it from being a nuisance in the future.\n\nIf nothing else, it's nice to see NASA and JPL cleaning up after themselves. :)",
"When they actually do have them destroyed, it's to prevent contamination of another body from earth viruses or bacteria.",
"The #1 reason is to preclude any possibility that Earth-based lifeforms on the probe itself contaminate a possible source of extraterrestrial life. Space probes like Cassini are sterilized to kill anything off before they are launched, and of course outer space is not very conducive to life. But there's no way to guarantee that *some* microbe won't manage to survive the trip. \n\nShould we one day discover extraterrestrial life on Europa, or Titan, or Enceladus, it would be a major bummer to determine that such life wasn't extraterrestrial at all and had just hitched a ride on an old probe a few hundred years before. Even worse: our Earth-based microbes might kill off any extraterrestrial life before we know it's there.\n\nWe limit where probes land on Mars for the same reason."
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2291lr | why haven't we lost all of our ocean water into the earth's mantle over time? | Given that the mantle is 1800 miles thick and that water wants to go down, wouldn't it would eventually find a path into the earth? I know water gets lost to sea faults, but can't it also escape through sand, dirt and rocks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2291lr/eli5_why_havent_we_lost_all_of_our_ocean_water/ | {
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"Water is less dense than magma so it won't go below it. ",
"Water, at that temperature (i.e.- upon contact with magma) , turns to steam, which rises. ",
"The earth is not hollow. It's not going to replace molten rock. "
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28w9yn | why is my hair brown but my beard is red? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w9yn/eli5_why_is_my_hair_brown_but_my_beard_is_red/ | {
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"Embrace the red beard.",
"You are a viking",
"Dreaded?\n\nI love my red beard. ",
"Your head hair is [Terminal hair](_URL_1_) and your face hair is [Androgenic hair](_URL_2_). While both are influenced by melanin genes, they're separate systems that can be affected by genetics separately, making their color able to vary. \n\nAs to why? Our ancestors used body hair and facial hair to sense their environment, whereas the predecessor of head hair was apparently judged to not need as many nerve endings, which is why the systems are different. \n\nEDIT: Wow, this really blew up! If you think that's freaky, you'll love the fact that humans have the genetic pathways for [stripes](_URL_0_).",
"I have this, but I love it, why is this a bad thing? Mine is more extreme though, I have a light brown hair, blonde soul patch, black moustache, brown sideburns and red under and around my neck. I shave the black moustache daily...",
"your scalp has a soul, but your face does not",
"Cus you have Irish roots. Source: I have a red beard and brown hair!",
"Hey, another brownheadedredbearded brother!\n\nEdit update: r/gingerbeard exists! The promised land! ",
"I'm the same way. Now I'll have an answer for every person who asks \"HAY Y's YER BEARD RED?!\" as if I freaking chose my facial hair color.",
"I was hoping this thread would turn into men posting pictures of their epic red beards...",
"Why dreaded? I'm a fellow brown/red man and literally the only thing I've ever received a compliment about is my giant red beard. People love it. I get asked if I dye it.",
"My beard is pretty weird, it's grey, black, brown, blonde and ginger. The lighter shades come through more in summer. My hair is really dark though.",
"All my life I thought I was alone!",
"I feel you man. I'm a darker blonde and I grow reddish beards.",
"Body hair can vary as well. My hair is brown, my beard is red and my arm hair is blonde.",
"blonde hair, blue eyes .... black facial hair and eyebrows .. genetic lottery winner right here",
"Because we are badasses",
"You must have gingervitis ",
"My hair is brown. My beard is red. My chest hair is black. My pubes are red. My arm and leg hair is blonde.\n\nWTF?",
"I have blonde hair everywhere, except my pudes, which are red . So when there is a rug, it doesn't match the curtains.",
"I have bright red facial hair myself, pale blonde leg/arm hair, black body hair and the hair on my head is a strange mix of all of those plus brown. When someone asks me what color my hair is I answer \"Calico.\"",
":( I was born with a full beard and only grew head hair after puberty. [It was horrible.](_URL_0_)",
"As you can probably guess, I am a huge beard lover. This is my absolute favorite. I fucking love dark hair with ginger beards. Embrace that shit my dude.",
"I've seen a bunch of comments about Irish/Scottish/Viking blah-blah. My dad's heritage is Russian Jew (think Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof). Red beard. Black head-hair.\n\nJust to broaden the realm of possibilities a bit.",
"My parents are from Bangladesh and I have a grandmother from Pakistan , which means my beard should be black pretty much like any other south Asian / east Indian to the naked eye , yet for about 4 years now my beard is gradually turning more and more reddish / brownish, almost maroon color . the corners of my beard are where the redness began and now it has spread to about 20% of my full beard, can anyone shine some light on why my beard is changing colors? ",
"A homeless man told my brother it was because he is a descendant of jesus.",
"YOU ARE NORTHWESTERN EUROPEAN GENES....etc...and stuff. We mixed race bastards are a coolata mix of Danes, Norwegians, Celts and a hundred other tribes. \n\nEmbrace your mongrel mix!\n\nSource: My parents are/were from the due West and Northeast of Ireland and have delivered me a boiling stew of genes that give me a blonde/red stubble, black hair, pale blue eyes and a fondness for drinking and rowing boats. ",
"Well this also explains my blonde hair and red beard. Sometimes around Christmas I liked to be called the Gingerbeard Man.",
"Because you are Xabi Alonso",
"Because you're Tormund Giantsbane?",
"I have blonde hair and my beard is red, so I feel your pain...",
"Red hair, black eyebrows, blonde mustache reporting in. ",
"So why is my moustache blonde but beard brown? ",
"Because you are a ginger beard man!\n\n...I'll show myself out.",
"I have this same problem with my pubes. I wonder the same thing! ",
"Somewhere along your ancestry, there be Irish! ",
"I love brown hair with a red beard! That's one of the main reasons to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs. ",
"I'm blond and my beard is brown. I kind of want a red beard to feel more like a Viking.",
"Because you're awesome? That's all I can figure.",
"I have brown hair and rock a red beard; no complaints from me, i like it\n",
"Congrats on your red wings homie",
"We have a chinger folks",
"_URL_0_\n\nI have the same issue. ",
"I got blonde hair, but dark facial hair.. odd combo",
"Im Scottish and Irish and barely have a red hair anywhere on my body. The tips of ,y facial hair are light brown, almost red but not quite. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown beard, guess I got the boring genes",
"Your mind tries to think rationally, but your mouth talks like a drunken irishman.",
"CONGRATULATIONS you have the red haired gene. If you procreate with a woman who had red hair you have a 75% chance of having a red headed child.\n\n\n\nIf the woman carries the red haired gene but has a dominant covering it, you'll never know without testing and have a 50% chance of having a red haired child. \n\n\nSource: my father is blonde with a red beard and my mum has dark hair, almost black yet both my brother and I are gingers. So they just got doubley unlucky - jokes I love my hair! :D",
"Trust no man, be he friend or be he brother, whose hair is one color, and his beard another.",
"TIL that sometimes the 'serious' tag is necessary",
"I have very dark brown hair and a red/blonde beard. People ask me all the damn time if I dye my hair. Um no I do not. \"Then why is your beard red?\" Ha! Now I know how to answer that, thanks!\n",
"because you take after your mother. \n/buddum'tis!",
"God wants you to shave your hideous facial hair.",
"/u/HondaBn The more we know...",
"Because you actually have half a soul. ",
"Oh ye must have a bit of Irish in ya boyo!",
"You sound like a viking.",
"You have just woken up from blacking out and you found yourself above a deer corpse that has multiple bite wounds in it.",
"chimera?\n\nabsorbed identical twin?",
"... Another red beard here!",
"I have brown head hair, a red beard, and blonde hair on my extremities. \n\nAnd half brown, half blonde eye brows.",
"I have a glorious red beard with dark brown hair. All the men in my family have it. I personally love it. Embrace the Red Beard!",
"They call us Chingers. Embrace it."
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7qgql5 | if there is a finite amount of water on earth, would the biblical global flood be possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qgql5/eli5_if_there_is_a_finite_amount_of_water_on/ | {
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"No, not given the current water supply and the current rough terrain of the land. Even if all the ice in the world melted, and all the rain fell, the seas would not rise enough to cover *nearly all* the land."
]
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4pfx2b | why did monarchs turn insane? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pfx2b/eli5_why_did_monarchs_turn_insane/ | {
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"European ones? Lots of inbreeding.\n\n[Impact of Europe’s Royal Inbreeding](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"Serious inbreeding. In order to keep the royal family \"pure\", they all ran around banging their cousins and such. Inbreeding can cause a myriad of both mental and physical issues.\n\nNot to mention a lack of real physicians at the time to recognize and treat illnesses.\n\nEdit: fixed a word ",
"Inbreeding\n\nUnlimited power with no one telling them no, same way no one is telling superstars no and them going all batshit.",
"Inbreeding, syphilis, lead-based makeup.",
"Besides inbreeding and of course the luck of the draw, it has to be considered that many monarchs did get a lot of bad press after their death or even during their reign. This could happen if the monarch did something that went against the grain of the power structure, for example by trying to take away privileges from clergy or nobility. But it also frequently happened after a regime change.\n\nFor example, King Louis XVI is often portrayed as a complete idiot because he supposedly caused the revolution to happen. But contemporary accounts, especially those from before the revolution, don't support this. The worst you can say about him is that he wasn't the best man for the job in a time of severe crisis, and that a more talented man could have averted it. But after his death, he became the scapegoat for everything bad that happened, and that's why we all think that he was retarded.",
"Syphilis has been suggested in some cases.",
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely. For most of ancient times kings were considered divine / chosen by God, so they could do whatever they wanted and never get in trouble, and generally didn't have anyone telling them to stop or that they were acting crazy.",
"The selection process for becoming king tends to favour those who are the least suited for it. The worse sociopath you are, the more likely you are to kill your opponents, the more likely you are to rise to power.",
"Monarchs had nearly unlimited power. Their \"mad\" status usually came from them doing what they wanted and not caring about common folk. Also, this distinction was left up to the uneducated masses. It's not like they based their titles off some serious research.\n\nThe inbreeding thing is a small factor, but honestly unless a line was borne of immediate family members, married cousins didn't produce the worst offspring. Such close familial relations have existed through mankind across the world. The issue was exacerbated when royalty would have to marry off a specific older son or daughter regardless of issues they may have had because of claims.",
"Most of the answers here focus on inbreeding, which was certainly part of it - but there are a lot of other interesting factors to consider\n\n- They were generally healthier, being rich and powerful enough to get the best healthcare.... meaning they lived long enough to go batshit crazy\n- Equally their wealth and power meant they were unlikely to fall into poverty and starve to death when they lost their mental health: unlike \"normal\" people of the time\n- They were more public, and therefore their illness couldn't be hidden. When Joe Blogg's grandma went insane, people used to just hide them away from the world and pretend they didn't exist. It's hard to do that with your king\n- To add to the above point... well, it's also just more obvious. If you saw a mad person in the street you'd think nothing of it. That's just Mad Tony the Butcher's son - but when it's the King, people pay attention\n- Power tends to make people a bit weird. When you grow up knowing that you're the heir to the throne, people do what you say. When you're an absolute monarch and can have people killed because you want to marry someone else (Henry VIII, for example)... well, it's hard to maintain a balanced mental outlook on life with that kind of power.\n- And, of course, the inbreeding: lots of marrying of cousins and similar: over several generations, this can make a real mess of your genetics",
"About one in three people today suffer from sort sort of mental illness at some time in their lives. It's just that when you're an absolute ruler there's nobody who's going to tell you when you're acting crazy, and you're far more visible than some average guy in the street.",
"Before we blame inbreeding and what not, are there any stats that support the claim that monarchs go insane more often than other demographics?"
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5qbph0 | i'm arguing with dumb relatives on facebook- can some one please explain global warming like i'm actually five? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qbph0/eli5_im_arguing_with_dumb_relatives_on_facebook/ | {
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"text": [
"Human make carbon pollution. Trap heat. Earth get hot. Climate changes. Bambi can't handle it. Bambi dies."
]
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6okuwk | why do cast iron pots and pans hold their heat so much longer than other cooking materials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6okuwk/eli5_why_do_cast_iron_pots_and_pans_hold_their/ | {
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"text": [
"Because they're heavy. Heavy, thick metal will hold heat much longer than thin, light aluminium or copper."
]
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9ul8a6 | in the context of video games, what exactly are unused assets, and how are they discovered by gamers? | I've been getting back into Bloodborne recently, and recently on r/bloodborne I saw a post about an unused boss that had the AI intact and it occured to me how little i knew about game developement. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ul8a6/eli5_in_the_context_of_video_games_what_exactly/ | {
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"Just like filming a movie. They make the movie following an initial outline, but when they watch early cuts of the film they may decide the movie flows better without a particular scene. Because these cuts are expected, they even often film extra scenes.\n\nGames are the same way. Unused assets are cut scenes. They are left in the data files of the original game because it makes it easier to add them back in in some form later on if needed.",
"What are unused assets? images, sound files, algorithms, data (items, areas, characters, etc) and other stuff that isn't used and doesn't appear during normal gameplay. It may have been intended for inclusion in the game but removed at some point for any number of reasons.\n\nHow are they discovered by gamers?\n By poking around in the actual files the game stores on your computer. These are often compressed with standard packaging tools so they can be uncompressed/unpackaged with free tools. A lot of games are built around universal engines (e.g. the Mass Effect series was built on Unreal Engine 3) which have freely available specifications, including ones for how files get processed by the engine. ",
"You know when you're in school writing answers in pen and you cross out something because it's not quite right? That's an unused asset that can be discovered. \n\nInitially it WAS going to be used (part of the answer) but later you decided you didn't like it, maybe it didn't flow with the game well or something, so you changed it appropriately (crossed it out) and went with the improved idea you came up with.\n\nThat crossed out word/sentence is still IN the answer you wrote, so people see it, but it's now not used in the final answer so it shouldn't be read as part of the answer.\n\nOf course it's much easier to hide unused assets in games, since you just leave the model/code/whatever in the game files, but don't link that to anything in the game. It can still be discovered, but requires a bit of looking around for it. Just like a crossed out word can be found too.\n\nThe reason unused assets are left in the game files is because they COULD be used later on. So if you have 500mb of a boss that is unused in a game, it could appear in a future DLC or something. If it does make its appearance, instead of making people download that 500mb, they just download the files with the code that put that boss in the game, which is often not as large as all the sounds, animations, models, etc.",
"Former game developer here,\n\nSoftware, and games are no exception, are almost never made as a fixed quantity - they don't go, \"This is exactly what we're going to make,\" during some planning phase, and then go and make exactly that. The process is more iterative and organic than that. There's testing and reviews involved.\n\nIn terms of unused assets - either something just isn't fun, or doesn't add to the story, or the studio runs out of time or money to complete that content and get it included into the game. During development, these pieces can be turned on or off, added or excluded from the project. The game ships, and sometimes these assets are left behind in the release - their data is all there, it's just turned off.\n\nNow I gripe about this - it's imperfect and shouldn't happen, especially since people ARE GOING TO find it. Hot coffee, anyone?\n\nBut, to be fair, it is kind of a pain in the ass to make your project's build system clean and perfect, and the studio would collectively prefer to ship a game than tank half a polished turd.\n\nPeople discover them either by accident or by digging into and reverse engineering game files. For example, and I don't know how much this is still in practice, it was often a hack by the studio to \"prime\" the render engine by having a secret room in the level, completely disconnected and otherwise inaccessible, that contained all the level assets, like coins, boxes, enemies, trees... It's a consequence of how the game engine was coded, memory caches, hardware latencies, etc. Sometimes people would stumble across a bug where they clip outside the game area and discover these hidden areas.\n\nAs for game files, if you're a savvy computer geek, you'll realize that certain content follows patterns. You just look at the bytes. Let's say you find some bytes that look like a reasonable integer, like 1026, followed by a regular interval of bytes that look very different, 1026 of them, followed by another integer looking byte, followed by some weird bytes... I would think that was an \"array\", a sequence of data, and the integer tells us how many elements are in that array, followed by another array, followed by more data of some form... Now that we've found a couple arrays and we know their boundaries and the size of each element, what are those elements? Well, let's see how we can interpret those bytes. I allude they probably don't look like integers. What if we looked at them like they were floating point \"real\" numbers? Do we get a meaningful interpretation? Or perhaps it's RGB data. Or perhaps we can see if we pass those bytes through a PNG algorithm, it might be compressed graphic data... You just gotta try. Nope, the result looks like noise. If they're floats, I'd plot them on a graph. Do they make a wave form? I didn't think they would (PCM or compressed audio is something I'd investigate, but PCM would look like integers). How about if we import these floats in groups of 3 into a 3D editor? 1026 is evenly divisible by 3, and you need 3 coordinates for X, Y, and Z. OH LOOK! We have a 3D model!\n\nThis isn't easy, there's a lot of guess work and trial and error, and experience counts for a lot. And some information found in these game files can remain a mystery for a long time, if not indefinitely. Another thing to do is look at the program binary and even watch it execute. This is also a hard thing to interpret, because source code does not directly map to machine instructions, optimizations can twist and warp the machine code instructions to be unrecognizable (and yet correct). But, seeing how the data is manipulated, how it gets passed around, can tell a lot about what it is and does. Image data doesn't get sent to the audio driver, for example."
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fta647 | how do movie productions and other companies in general get contact info of famous actors, their agents or other well known people, who are otherwise hiding their contact info from public as best as they can? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fta647/eli5_how_do_movie_productions_and_other_companies/ | {
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"This information is what agents and agencies base their entire business mode on. \n\nProducers have relationships around town. With agents, casting directors, other producers. Even most big time directors and producers have their own agents. These agents are in constant contact with other assistants, managers, and agents in order to book work and/or find talent. \n\nYou're making a movie with a studio. That studio wants certain talent involved - so their representatives reach out to talent agencies, \"who do you have for ____ role,\" or they reach out directly to talent, because they have an existing relationship with the talent's representatives. \n\nThese existing relationships are more prevalent than you think, they are the bread and butter of the industry."
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2sob0t | if time moves slower the faster an object goes, why don't clocks in cars or on airplanes ever get out of sync. | Basically title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sob0t/eli5_if_time_moves_slower_the_faster_an_object/ | {
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"Cars don't move fast enough for us to notice with minute or even second accuracy.\n\nPut an accurate enough clock on a fast enough plane, and you will be able to see very small changes.",
"Clocks on satellites get out of sync all the time.",
"You need to be going a lot faster than a car or even a plane to see a noticeable change. Doesn't mean it isn't there; it's just so small it's irrelevant.",
"They do, it's just so slight that you don't notice. If twins were born at the exact same moment, and one went on to become an airline pilot, by the end of a lifetime of flying, the twin who was a pilot would be only a few seconds \"younger\" due to time dilation",
"Relativity effects all things, there isn't a threshold where suddenly it happens, suddenly it doesn't. The problem is two fold: you're not moving fast enough to make a noticeable difference with the accuracy your car clock provides.\n\nThe US military did research on the subject, and in the 70s, they synced two atomic clocks, and put one on a jet which went flying for a few hours. Accounting for all other things, they were out of sync due to relativity.\n\nSatellites have this problem all the time. GPS wouldn't work if relativity wasn't taken into account.",
"There is correction due to time dilation in satellites, but the phenomenon only becomes noticeable at relativistic speeds. \n\nThe equation (that I can't post now since I'm on a phone) essentially relies on an relationship of 1/[sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)]. Note that unless v (velocity) is extremely close to c (3 x 10^8 m/s), the result of the expression will remain essentially at one. \n\nSo yes, when you fly in an airplane time dilation does occur, but considering airplanes fly at roughly 580 mph, you are nowhere near the relativistic speeds necessary to achieve noticeable dilation. \n\n"
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bd2gp6 | why is it imporntant to know why the universe began and the general nature of the universe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bd2gp6/eli5_why_is_it_imporntant_to_know_why_the/ | {
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"I’m going to say - curiosity. People have always wondered and explored, and when Galileo turned his telescope to the sky and saw the stars and planets and moons of Jupiter, that led us to new questions.\n\nThe study of the origins of the universe are not just a study of space - it’s physics and time. When science started to figure out the mass of the Milky Way and how it was spinning, they were confused - the models said it should rip itself apart. That led to the theories of dark matter and dark energy, and that gave us more questions.\n\nAnd to come back to the start....humans are curious animals.",
"I don't know if your real question is, \"Why should we spend tax money to find out?\" or, \"Why should I have to study it in school?\" or something else.\n\nBut it has always been important, even before science. For example, the Catholic Church once believed that the universe was created by God for people, and people were the most important thing in the universe, and Earth was literally the center of the universe. Officials of the time were willing to try and convict anyone that taught a different view.\n\nSo it has always been important to some part of the population, but never to everyone. I remember a story in the 1980s about a big guy in the stock market (I've forgotten his name) who was walking with his wife one night. She commented on how beautiful the moon was and he replied, \"You can't buy and sell the moon.\" So it was unimportant to his life."
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4x52j8 | why does bacon taste so much more flavorful and savory than other types of cooked pork? | Maybe this is just my opinion, but I think most would agree from the ubiquitousness of the opinion that Bacon = God that it tastes better than other ways to cook pork. Is there a particular reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x52j8/eli5_why_does_bacon_taste_so_much_more_flavorful/ | {
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"Bacon comes from the fatty side of a pigs belly and the cuts from them have flavorful compounds to make a salty, sweet taste when cooked right.",
"It's very high in salt and fat, which are two things humans naturally crave because they're both necessary for life. It's also often smoked, which adds another layer of savory flavor to it. Top all that off with the fact that it's often fried, which adds appealing texture and additional flavor. "
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1djddx | how do kids feature in 18+ films? | Do their parents give consent to them seeing nudity, cursing, drugs, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1djddx/eli5_how_do_kids_feature_in_18_films/ | {
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"Child actors in 18+ films don't necessarily watch the movie. Also, remember how movies are filmed. Just because a child is in the same scene as someone doing drugs, it doesn't mean that the child actually sees what's going on. The two actors might be filming their shots in different studios at different times. The editing makes it look like they're together.",
"Depends on the circumstances. In many cases, yes, the parents may consent to them doing whatever it is for the film role. A good example of this would be the movie Kick-Ass, where 13-year-old Chloe Grace Moratz swears like a sailor. \n\nThat being said, in plenty of cases the child actors can be completely separate from whatever darker material is being filmed, and many child actors don't see the completed film afterwards (such as Anna Paquin and The Piano)."
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2c40tn | how do they determine how many bars to display my wifi as? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c40tn/eli5_how_do_they_determine_how_many_bars_to/ | {
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"text": [
"The device measures the signal to noise ratio of the signal. Various thresholds are defined for the bar levels."
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31o97f | why exactly do asian students buy so much powdered milk in my shop? | I work in a supermarket in the UK, we have a limit on how much baby milk they can buy.
I know it's something to do with the milk problem in China, but are they selling it? Sending it to family?
I would ask the customers but I don't want to accidentally offend. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31o97f/eli5_why_exactly_do_asian_students_buy_so_much/ | {
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"text": [
"In 2008 there was a [huge problem](_URL_0_ ) with some Chinese firms adulterating infant formula with a chemical called melamine. The chemical caused the product to test as higher in protein than it actually was. It caused hysteria, and many parents with money and access to international products refused to buy Chinese infant formula. While better government oversight of the situation may be reducing the risk, the general population, in a country where they have pressure to maintain small families, would rather avoid the risk. Buying in a reputable UK store is an excellent way to get the benefit of high food safety standards for the price of shipping."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal"
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bey90g | how does a jet lighter works? does it have a higher pressure compared to a normal lighter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bey90g/eli5_how_does_a_jet_lighter_works_does_it_have_a/ | {
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"Let me answer your second question first: No, a jet lighter and a regular lighter both have the same internal pressure (for a given temperature). As long as there's liquid butane in your lighter, some of that liquid will evaporate into butane gas until it reaches that pressure.\n\nNow, the magic of a jet lighter is in how it releases and burns the butane gas, compared to a regular lighter. A regular lighter just lets the gas out and sets it on fire using the air around it. This results in a (relatively) cool orange flame. A jet lighter releases butane through a tube called a venturi, in such a way that it also pulls in air and mixes the fuel and air before lighting the mixture. This results in a much hotter blue flame, and the roaring sound jet lighters make, from all the extra turbulence."
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80jy8k | how can psychics/astrologists tell you specific/secret things about yourself. | A couple of my friends have spoken to an astrologist/psychic, one on one, over the phone and are saying that he was telling them things that they'd literally never told anybody, or things that they keep very secret (girls they've been hooking up with, their prospective college major, etc.). How in the hell does this work, cause they sound thoroughly convinced by this guy? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80jy8k/eli5how_can_psychicsastrologists_tell_you/ | {
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"It's called 'cold reading'.\n\nThere are a variety of techniques used, but the overarching principle is that you make very vague statements that could apply to anyone - and use those statements to draw more and more information about the specific circumstances of the individual.\n\nIf you do this well, they don't even realize that all you're doing is just repeating back to them things you told them a few minutes ago.\n\nIn essence, it's just a magic trick - there's a whole sub-category of magic called 'mentalism' that deals with this sort of thing - except sold as real rather than fakery.",
"They likely did some form of what's called cold reading. It's a skill where you use inference, probability, and just good old guessing to try and glean information from someone and make it seem like you're using your \"powers\". It's not something unique to self-professed psychics - it's something salespeople use too. \n\nSo if I were a psychic and you came to me, I could start with a couple of assumptions. I could assume that you're worried about something or stressed out about something because that's why most people seek out my services. Nobody pays for a psychic if their life is going well. This is the probability/inference part of it. I'd start with the common things: I'd gauge how you were dressed. Maybe you're not dressed all that well - you're clean, but your clothes look kinda cheap. I make a guess that your issue is money - you're running into some kind of problem at work. But when I say it, I leave it open in a way that lets me go in a different direction if I was wrong. I'll use statements that seem specific to you, but really could apply to a lot of people: \"I'm sensing you're having trouble at home,\" \"I'm sensing you have trouble at work.\" If you're married (by observing a wedding ring), \"I'm sensing you have trouble with your marriage\". These are based off of observations (your clothes, your demeanor) and probabilities/likelihoods (you're not coming to me if you're doing great in your life). \n\nProblems are also people related too. I'd start making cautious guesses about people in your life, watching for your reactions. I'd start with common assumptions about most people. I'd use phrases like, \"You lost someone recently.\" Everyone's lost someone: if you're older, maybe it's a parent so I'll say something that leads you down the direction of confirming whether or not that that's the case. \"I'm sensing that someone close to you, a role model or someone who has been in your life for a long time has passed.\" Again, these are generic statements that can apply to just about anyone. If it doesn't seem like you're responding, I'll go in a different direction. If you're younger, maybe the issue is with a significant other. \"I'm getting the sense that you're struggling with someone in your life, someone who is dear to you.\" Once I get a positive reaction, I can start drilling in. If you say, \"Yeah! I'm in a huge fight with my husband over something,\" I can start to narrow it down, returning to assumptions and generalities. Couples fight all the time over money or kids. I'll ask broad, general statements about those things to get reactions. \n\nNow the trick for why these statements are generic and universal but you believe that I'm talking about you specifically: you believe in me to some degree. You sought me out and WANT me to have the answers, so you're willing to make the connections necessary to fill in the blanks of my vague, broad statements and believe that I'm making specific statements about you. Your confirmations give me more information and so I can continue to drill down into specifics to the point where it seems like I'm legitimately psychic.",
"Well....psychics are really good cold readers. Astrologists, not really so much. Planets and numbers play a big role in unmasking a person. What month were you born (your Sun rising, your moon rising, where was your Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto, are you trine, what shape is your \"bucket\"). Based on the exact location of the time and place of your birth, no one will duplicate it in four million years. That is how precise an astrologist can get. And how unique we all are. "
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23zy9b | how did asian americans go from being a distrusted and abused minority to having the highest college graduation rate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23zy9b/eli5_how_did_asian_americans_go_from_being_a/ | {
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"Many asian american parents feel the only way to escape poverty and live a comfortable life is to get a higher education. Thus, the parents usually put education as a top priority and as a result more asians are graduating college.",
"Can't speak for all Asians, so I will focus on the Chinese\n\nThe original \"crop\" of Chinese immigrants to the US were unskilled laborers brought over in large numbers to build the trans-continental railroad in the late 1800s. These Chinese migrants are relatively uneducated, poor, completely disenfranchised and don't speak English, which makes them a perfect target for racists.\n\nNow, compare that with the modern Chinese Immigrants to America. Because the American Immigration system is merit based, most of the people who makes it into the US are highly educated, highly trained and most of them speak English well (and many of them are already independently wealthy before they came over). And these people pretty much end up in middle-class careers as soon as they land. And with the money, they can provide their children with the best education (considering the main reason many Asians immigrate to America is \"giving their children a better life\", you bet your ass they are going to spend every red penny on their children's education).\n\nPS. Also the concept of the \"model minority\" comes into play, because immigrants naturally would feel insecure of their position in the new world, they are MUCH MORE motivated to excel.",
"By only letting in immigrants who were top scholarship level students from overseas. \n\nImmigration of Chinese labour used to be very small numbers and most manual labourers. In many cases relatively highly productive manual labourers, but manual labour none the less. \n\nEnter the more modern ( post opening of China by Nixon) era. Now the US (and EU and Canada etc.) let in chinese immigrants, but rather than being flooded with peasants we only let in the very best. Naturally, smart people tend to have smart offspring, and hardworking people tend to raise hardworking children - not always of course, but mostly. If you moved half way around the world on a full academic scholarship for STEM or medicine you did so by being the top of a very big pile. And those people had kids, who have smart hardworking parents. \n\nIn a generation or two they'll probably start to average out more or less to the rest of us. "
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es96qj | what the closest possible observation of expansion of the universe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/es96qj/eli5_what_the_closest_possible_observation_of/ | {
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" > I made some calculation, and (if i do not did mistake) i found Earth orbit radius must increase at about 10 metres per year because of expansion of the universe.\n\nYou are, in fact, mistaken. That's not how the expansion of the universe works. I don't even know how you got that number because there's no equation or set of equations you can use that will give that answer. \n\nThe rate of expansion of the universe is called the Hubble constant, which is \\~70.0 km per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is 3,262,000 light years. That means a galaxy 1 megaparsec away from us, excluding the actual motion of the galaxy itself, is receding at a rate of \\~70km per second, except even a galaxy 1 megaparsec away would still be gravitationally bound to us.\n\nGravity is much stronger than the expansion of the universe on the scales of galaxies and even galaxy clusters. Objects, solar systems, entire galaxies, and even clusters of galaxies are unaffected by the expansion of the universe because gravity holds them together. Talking about the expansion of the universe is meaningless on scales smaller than galaxy clusters, which can be tens of millions of light years across.",
"The expansion of space is very slow. If two bodies have substantial attractive forces between them (like the Sun and Earth), those forces [counter the expansion and keep those bodies from drifting apart](_URL_0_). It's at intergalactic distances or larger that gravity is weak enough for expansion to matter or overpower gravity. \n\nAs far as I know, observing expansion is mainly by observing how light from very far away sources consistently have longer wavelengths than corresponding sources closer to us. Travelling through so much expanding space has [increased the light's wavelength ](_URL_1_)."
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3cf7e2 | why do people pay a similar price for fuel now at $55 a barrel as we did when it was $140 a barrel? | Edit:Wow - read through all the messages - some great answers! Thanks
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cf7e2/eli5_why_do_people_pay_a_similar_price_for_fuel/ | {
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"Demand, especially in places like China, has gone up.\n\nAdditionally, this is the price of *crude* oil. That barrel of oil still needs processed and transported. Which is still expensive. And needs to catch up capacity to meet rising demand.",
"First off, not everyone does. In my market, fuel prices are down more than $1.00 since the last time crude oil was above $100/barrel. \n\nSecond, as /u/stcamelia said, the price of crude oil is not the sole factor in determining how much gasoline costs.",
"Not really true. Oil was only $140 a short while during the energy crisis of 2008. At the time, gas was [$4/gallon](_URL_0_), which is quite a bit more expensive that today's $2.8/gallon.",
"The gasoline that you buy at the pump would have been made from crude oil bought a year ago, when prices were high. That crude oil was then processed, shipped and sent to garages and pumps around the world. So the price you pay now is based on prices from the past.\n\nOil companies are buying oil now at low prices to sell on to you in a year's time. But when we get to 2016, people will be used to paying the same prices for gasoline and expect it (like everything) to go up with inflation. The oil companies also have no incentive to reduce the price.\n\nNotice that when gasoline companies advertise, they might say, \"we compare the prices in your area and make sure you get the best deal\". This might be true, but they're only trying to be as good as the next gas/petrol station down the road.\n\nSource: I work for an oil company.",
"A lot of people are offering some very reasonable explanations, and I don't want to undermine them (because many commenters are smarter and more familiar with the industry than I am). But I will say this because I think it's important: Oil companies don't charge what's \"fair,\" as if they do the work on a calculator and determine the price that way. They charge what they can get. They determine the price based on how high they can make it before returns start to taper off. Because of government and market controls, there isn't always a lot of wiggle room there... but you need to know that part of the reason prices don't go down when oil costs do is because they know consumers will keep paying the higher price. And while there are many factors at play, that's really the bottom line.",
"It's a combination of \"yes, it has gone down\", and \"There's a lot of other factors at work\". Crude Oil is currently around $55 for WTI (West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for oil used in the US.), compared with about $140 at its peak. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons (which, when refined, includes both gasoline as well as petrodiesel, kerosene, heating oil, etc.), so each $1 change in the price of Crude Oil is expected to change gasoline & other refined products by about 2 cents per gallon.\n\nThere's been about $80 decrease in the price of oil, so, all things equal, the price of gasoline should have decreased by about $1.60. It actually has decreased by about $1.20 (Two years ago, I remember paying $3.60 / gallon, and right now, it's $2.35 here - I live in one of the cheapest markets for gasoline, though, so it's likely higher elsewhere).\n\nWhy the offset between $1.20 and $1.60? Well, part of it is that gasoline is pretty inelastic in its demand - a big fancy term that means that we don't change our consumption much when prices change. People are willing to pay more than $2.00 / gallon, so oil companies can raise their prices without losing too much demand (technically quantity demanded, as demand is the curve).\n\nAnother reason is that refineries sometimes go offline, which has the effect of lowering the price of crude (less crude is being used to produce refined products) while raising that of gasoline (less gasoline being produced from crude). Right now, we have a ton of oil being drilled out of the ground, but the amount of refining capacity hasn't gone up by nearly as much. When oil prices decrease, that lowers the cost for refineries to buy the raw material to process. But ultimately, what consumers demand is not crude oil - it's gasoline, and the demand for gasoline hasn't decreased nearly as much. Refineries are going to charge the price that they can on the refined goods side, which need not perfectly correlate with the price for crude oil - the raw material. This tends to make you really happy if you're a refinery. But it makes you wonder what's going on to see $55 crude and high gas prices. Oil prices do affect the supply curve for gasoline, as oil is a cost in the production of gasoline. But the demand side of gasoline also plays into consideration, and people are still buying at [price in your area], so that's what gets charged. \n\nThere's also the phenomenon that when prices fall, gasoline prices at the retail level don't fall as quickly or as hard - there's a saying that prices tend to shoot up like a rocket and fall like a feather. From the perspective of a retailer, you don't want to charge so little that you lose money, so you raise prices quickly when your costs increase. But when costs fall, consumers are going to be happy with any price decrease, so you don't lower prices by as much, and your margins increase.\n\nSo, where does the rest of the cost of gasoline come from?\n\nMostly the cost to ship the oil, refine & process it, and then distribute it to wholesalers and then to retail (and remember, those refiners are enjoying fat margins right now because their costs are low and their consumers will pay). There's also going to be 30-60 cents of gasoline tax, depending on which state you live in. Surprisingly, the retail markup is usually just a couple of percent - it's a very thin margin product designed to get you into the store and buy the overpriced items in the \"convenience\" store.\n\nTL; DR version: Crude Oil Prices are only one part of the picture. Taxes & Refinery costs are other big portions of the cost of gasoline, and refineries can charge more for gas despite lower prices for crude oil and increase their profit margins because consumers will pay for it.",
"There's another factor a lot of people seem to have forgot to address. Taxes. There are fixed and variable tax amounts that are included in every gallon of gas. Here in Pennsylvania, they just tacked on something like $0.15 per gallon because our infrastructure is falling apart. I believe there's more than a dollar per gallon in PA in just taxes.... so... If gas is $3 a gallon, and only $2 of that is over head for the mfg, distribution, and retail sale, and the price of oil drops 30%, and translated right into the cost at the pump, your price per gallon goes from $3 to $2.40, not $2.10. Either way-- its all a nightmare.",
"This article is from March, but you'll get the idea.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAverage US price per gallon $2.45.\n\nAverage California price per gallon $3.39\n\nTaxes make the price of gas fluctuate a lot from state to state. California seems to keep adding taxes to keep the gas price constant. ",
"Overhead costs are a big reason. There are costs for labor, shipping, and production that are built into the cost of every gallon of gas regardless of the cost of oil. Oil is one of the biggest expenses in making gas, but it's not the only expense. Even if the oil was completely free to obtain there would still be costs associated to make it into gas that you buy at your local gas station.",
"Not sure about other States, but in Utah, legislators quickly added more taxes when the gasoline was as low as $1.90. Apparently, they hadn't been able to make the increase for a decade or so due to the high price. They attribute the increase in taxes to pay for rural high way maintenance. The increase was somewhere between .20 and .35 per gallon. I'll see if I can track down an article on it.\n\nEdit: This article says the increase was of only 5 cents per gallon, bringing the total tax per gallon to 48 cents. In addition, the increase is due to declining federal transportation funding.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The price you pay at the pump includes several factors. About half is the cost of the crude oil. The other half is taxes, distribution, and refining. The costs involved in the second half do not change when the price of oil goes down, so if oil goes down by 50%, you would only expect the price of gas to drop by 25%.\n\nSource:\n_URL_0_\n\nGas prices in New England have fallen from 3.80 to 2.70 over the past year, almost exactly what you would expect based on a 50% drop in crude oil.\n\nSource: _URL_0_",
"The cost of gas isn't just the cost of crude. Its the cost of crude plus the cost to refine it into gas, the cost to deliver that to gas stations and for the gas stations to deliver that to your vehicle plus the profit each entity (refiner, transport, retail) involved charges. \n\nMost of the costs outside of acquiring the crude oil can be considered 'fixed' in that they don't change from month to month much. No matter how low the price of crude goes those fixed costs will always be there.\n\nSo, oil was $140/barrel and I was paying about $4.00/gal a gallon...then oil dropped to $55/barrel and I was paying about $2.30. Sure, that's a 60% decrease in the price of crude oil...but only a 42% decrease in the cost to deliver gas to my tank because the the fixed cost component of the total costs didn't change.\n\nIf crude drops lower than $55/barrel expect even less of a drop in gas prices as the fixed costs become an even higher part of the total costs of gas. \n\nEven if crude was free...gas would still cost a lot because refining it and delivering it to your tank costs a lot.",
"We don't. [The difference between $140/barrel (~$3.90) and $55/barrel (~$2.75) is $1.15 per gallon.](_URL_2_) That is a 29% difference. This means that each dollar change in crude price affects the price of gas by about 1.35 cents.\n\nThis is because crude price is only part of the end cost of gas. There is the cost to refine, transport, taxes (in the [US, 23.8 cents per gallon is just tax on average](_URL_0_)), company profits, etc. Those things do not change with the price of crude. There is a common misconception that the price of materials should be directly related to the end price of a product. It is only part of the equation. Every time you hear someone say \"The iPhone costs 10 cents to make but we pay $600. Why?\", you know this person knows little about the economics of business and should probably take a micro-econ class.\n\nEDIT: [Based on the numbers here](_URL_1_), the cost of crude when gas was $3.90 was about 3.18 per gallon (margin of 48.2 cents after tax). When it was $2.75, the cost for the crude used was about $1.25 (about $1.26 margin after taxes). [Refineries make more money when oil is cheap](_URL_3_) even though consumer prices are low. We don't pay the same price, but we possibly could pay less if the market would demand it.",
"Not sure I can explain it like I would to a 5 year old, but I'll do my best to simplify.\n\nFirst of all, there's a large disconnect in the price of gasoline to the price of crude. It trades hands through many companies by the time you put it into your car. Sure, crude is the base cost, but there are many other factors, the major one being gasoline has it's own supply and demand market separate from crude. It's very possible gasoline can go up while crude goes down.\n\nAlso, there are multiple hands in the pie by the time you buy the gasoline. It's true that there are Exxon/BP/Chevron stations around, so it is logical they would extract the product, refine it, transport it, and then sell it at the stations. However, this isn't really the case. Most of their gas stations are branding agreements but they are privately owned. \n\nAside from them, the most typical way you get gasoline, is some company you have never heard of pulls it from the ground, sells it to someone who will refine it, who then ships it somewhere else on a pipeline, where someone else will buy it and then either sell it to a gas station, or take it to their own gas station and sell it there. Three or four different companies are touching the product.\n\nYou also have to factor in that a LOT of these companies are hedging the product, so when prices are high they are locking in higher prices for a longer period of time, so even though the spot price of crude may drop, they will try to sell it as high as possible to prevent cutting into their profits (although this also works in reverse).\n\nSource: Work in the industry. I sell about 15 thousand barrels of gasoline a day.\n\ntl;dr So yeah, its very disconnected from crude, has it's own supply/demand markets, and usually passes through many companies. Gasoline typically isn't a very high margin product for oil companies.",
"The price of a barrel is not what you pay at the pump. The price of a barrel is what the producers get to pump it out of the ground. After that, money is spent to ship it to a refinery. After that, money is spent to refine the oil. After that, money is spent to distribute it to gas stations. Money is spent in every part of the chain to pay for equipment, labor, vehicles for transportation. After that, a fuel tax is added, depending on which state you're in. After that, the gas station needs to make a profit, or else it's just not worth doing. When you add up all the costs, you'll find that the actual cost of the initial barrel of fuel is just a small portion of the price at the gas station. That's why when the barrel price drops by 50%, the gas station must drop by less than 50%.\n\nFor example, gas at 4 dollars per gallon is perhaps 1 dollar's worth from the barrel. The remaining 3 dollars is for cost of equipment, labor, taxes, along the way. When the cost of a barrel drops 50%, the new gas price would be 0.50 + 3 dollars, because the cost of the chain after the producer does not change. The 50% drop in barrel price resulted in a 12% drop in gas station prices. (just an example don't quote the numbers at face value).",
"Gas is still $1 cheaper where I am. So 25% cheaper at 55 than 140. I wouldn't expect a linear relationship but you also have to remember the dollar has lost value and cost of living has increased.",
"This was asked fairly recently, although I tried and failed to find the exact thread to reference. \n \nThere are a variety of reasons, most of which have been mentioned: \n \n\"Sticky\" Prices. The price of oil via the futures market (what's quoted on TV) can drop over-night or in a matter of days, whereas the actual oil prices that big oil and gas companies are paying will take longer to adjust. Much of this is due to contracts of 'hedges' that they put in place at the previous price of oil. \n \nAnother can be summarized by basically saying 'because they can'. The large 'integrated' oil companies (think Shell, Exxon, etc.), which have oil exploration, refining and retail gas operations, will maintain gas prices in order to make up some of the cash that they are missing out on through their exploration operations due to the lower price of oil. This helps stymie the losses at a corporate level and mitigate the effect of the drop in price at the corporate level. Since we are all collectively fragmented parties with little power in the relationship, we don't really have a say in what gas prices are, or power to change it; we will still buy our gas no matter what because we need to.",
"It's all about margins. I work for an upstream company and there are really 3 pieces to the puzzle to get oil into fuel. There is Upstream, which is pulling raw crude oil out of the ground, there is midstream which is transportation to refineries, then there is downstream which is refining and selling as gasoline and other bi-products directly to consumers. The margins in the midstream and downstream are pretty steady and don't really change a whole lot with increased oil prices. The cost of production is also pretty constant. The cost of production for a barrel of oil in the Middle East is dirt cheap...$10-$20 a barrel...the cost of production in US shale is ~$40 a barrel this leaves virtual no room for revenue for large oil companies when oil is at $50 a barrel at least not in the U.S. shale play. \n\nThe upstream companies are making money hand over fist at $100 a barrel, but if the price drops they are also the ones hurt the most. The take the most risk. Now fully integrated companies (companies that provide upstream, midstream, and downstream services) like BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon-Mobile, these companies make their big $$ from upstream when oil is at $100/barrel. When oil is at $50 a barrel they still make money, but profit margins are tight.\n\nNow to the cost of gasoline. It's supply and demand on a global scale. When supply is down and demand for oil is up globally, the downstream (gas stations) have to charge more because they are being charge more by the midstream (refineries), because it costs mid-stream companies more to purchase a barrel of oil from upstream companies because there is a limited supply. The upstream company could sell the crude to anybody else in the world at the market price (unless you are in the U.S. and there is a ban on exporting crude) so in order for the midstream company to purchase the crude they need to pay more because supply and demand require it.\n\nNow when the market price goes up, there is more competition to produce because everybody sees that you can make serious $$. The market will somewhat correct itself, when prices hit the floor, companies stop spending huge dollars to produce more oil therefore supply goes down, and once demand catches up, oil prices go back up. \n\ngoogle \"oil companies cut capex\" too see how much oil companies are cutting back on spending to create more oil production and you'll see that spending was cut in half almost instantly for 2015/2016 budgets. This should cause production supply to decrease and allow demand to catch back up. At least in the U.S. shale play.\n\nLow oil prices aren't really a good thing for the U.S. right now as our economic rally the past 5-10 years has been largely because of U.S. Shale. With low oil prices the Saudi's are literally trying to put U.S. Shale out of business by price manipulation. Producing so much oil and selling at low prices, because they can still make money at those low prices.\n\nSorry that was long, hope it helped a little.",
"Thieves and crooks and greed driven people running gasoline refineries and oil companies?",
"Back in high school economics I was taught the concept of supply and demand which basically translated to the more you need it the more they charge",
"We don't. When oil was $140, my price for regular was > $5. Now, it's like $2.75.\n\nTo your point, oil is roughly 60% cheaper now, but gas is only 45% cheaper. A few reasons:\n\n- Taxes: Many fuel taxes are fixed on a per-gallon basis. They don't go down with oil prices and so account for a higher percentage of gasoline costs when oil is cheaper.\n\n- Other cost drivers: Crude is just one input into gasoline. The costs of labor and equipment to refine it and to lease/maintain tanker trucks or pipelines hasn't necessarily gone down.\n\n- Stickiness: Gasoline prices change more slowly than crude prices because each party in the value chain (refiner, gas station, etc) delays a little bit before adjusting prices. Also, refiners may use hedges to smooth out their costs. This means they never pay $140 or $55, but somewhere in between which softens the swings in gas prices.",
"iirc it's called \"sticky pricing\". It's the same with groceries. When oil went up to $140 a barrel they raised prices across the board due to fuel costs forcing the cost to transport the goods to rise. When the prices get raised that high they become the new normal,and they never quite come back to where they originally were even though the factors that actually forced the price jump have been resolved. Its bullshit. They know we have no choice but to buy the goods at the high price point, we have no choice in the matter at all. Sticky pricing is messed up. ",
"People love complaining about certain industries specifically as if they are the only ones to \"charge more because they can\". \n\nOil companies are evil, tobacco companies are evil, and banks/investment firms are all extra extra evil. \n\nBut then there are tech giants like Apple who charge WAY more than they need to for their overpriced products and are recording record-breaking profits. All while stashing 10's of billions in tax havens.\n\nBut Apple is the cool company that liberal hipsters blindly idolize so no one cares about any of that....liberals gunna liberal. ",
"Unfettered and unapologetic greed. Thirst for cash to fuel thier corrupt and cancerous business model",
"Because an enormous portion of what you pay at the pump consists of taxes, either those levied on the sale of gasoline or those rolled into the price because well-intended politicians don't understand what happens when they tax \"big evil corporations\" on \"obscene profits.\"\n\nEither way, most taxes don't fluctuate with market prices, so a big heap of what you pay is a fixed cost per gallon.\n\nFun fact: the government makes WAY more money per gallon than Exxon on its best day.",
"For the same reason that the massive increases in productivity haven't benefited most people; those who have the goods/money you want have ask the power. \n\nWe can bring in the same profits with half as many workers? Fire those bitches!\n\nWe can get oil cheaper? People are paying more for gas than we need to recoup our expenses? Keep those gas prices high!",
"Prices went low enough that the oil companies can afford to buy you your own personal barrel of oil, and bend you over it. If you want lube, they can charge extra for that. ",
"With natural resources, prices are often locked into long term contracts. Gasoline distributors have the prices they pay per barrel locked in for the length of the contract. Once those contracts expire/are renegotiated it is very likely we will see prices drop. ",
"When the price of oil drops, oil company close down drilling rigs which causes oil deliveries to factories to drop. While oil has been hovering around 58-60/bbl oil companies have close 82 drilling rig and 5 large refineries that change oil into gas for \"maintenance\". So as oil drops innprice oil companies keep then high through smoke and mirrors",
"Oil companies \"hedge\" the price to minimize the losses on a heavy downturn. These hedges are called \"triple collars\" and involve options trading on the future value of oil. This strategy minimizes the effects of price volatility for the company thus making the real cost different than than the current nominal cost. Interestingly airlines employ the same yet opposite strategy to protect themselves from rapidly increasing oil prices, which is why your plane ticket has not changed in price much, despite jet fuel being much less expensive to produce. ",
"Because it's a racket and prices are unregulated. Even if they were, the politicians are in the pockets of the oil companies and turn a blind eye as always. Their gas expenses are paid for by the government after all.",
"Maybe all these 'variables' are exactly what the parties involved want people to discuss. It really can be as simple as...We can probably charge 'x', after all, the people are still going to pay it...let them piss and whine, we hold the leverage. Not everything is complicated.",
"The short answer is that someone's pocketing the difference between when it's pulled out of the ground and when you're pumping its derivative into your car. \n\nThe long answer is slightly more complicated, but ultimately it just involves *how* that happens. There are \"chokepoints\" within the industry, points in the process of... processing... oil, which can only handle a certain capacity. The supply is controlled, so the cost can be as a result.",
"Oil futures.. most of the gas/oil used now is bought on futures contracts. As they wind down the price will drop.. as long as the futures are up, we will pay more..",
"Retail customers are at the very end of the supply chain. From the upstream drillers who sells oil wholesale, to the midstream transporters who charge a fee for moving the oil through their pipelines, to the downstream refineries that processes oil for a fee into gasoline, there are many layers of \"value-adds\" and they cost $$$. At the retail-end, you will be paying for all of these \"value-adds\" (which are, very often, fee-based. For instance the refinery charges a fee on a per unit volume basis, they don't care how much oil is, they charge the same fee for processing 1 cubic feet of oil-- and this fee is passed down to you) and not just the RAW PRICE of oil. So while the RAW PRICE have changed/fluctuated, they make up only a relatively small portion of the total price, and retail prices end up being always stickier and more inelastic vs. prices at the whole sale level. This is true for any commodities/crops/metals.\n\nTL;DR: You are paying for Gasoline, which is processed and shipped to you by service providers not directly exposed to the raw price of crude oil. Crude oil's price may change, but Gasoline may not.",
"The real answer is that cost has little to do with Oil Prices. We give over $300 Billion a year in subsidies and another $100 Billion in tax breaks to these companies, who are already making over a %30 return on their money (not counting the offshore tax evasion).. Gas prices change for either Political reasons, to make someone in power look good or bad, or so that stock holders can buy / sell the stocks at a profit. This allows the Oil companies to line their families pockets. They force the stock down, buy it, force the stock up. Because they are always promised a profit for the company, every year, they can drive the stock low without risk of loss, buy stocks through dummy corporations and family and then raise the value of the stock again. The ONLY time in history a President has been able to effect gas prices directly is Obama. Large Oil companies snatched up all the drilling permits and then didn't drill... so that they could keep their artificially raised prices high and act like it was a supply issue. So Obama nulled all idle drilling permits and gave them to companies that would drill in the next year.. This caused our current \"low\" in gas prices. Long version short... Oil companies charge what they want.. they make so much money on gas that prices could drop to $1 right now and they would still be making a profit. ",
"It is doubtful anyone on Reddit knows the answer to this, and if they do they aren't going to tell you. What you will get is a bunch of lies fed to us by the media. I have had this question for a while myself last year the gas price was $2.78 for mid grade which is what I put in my car, and the oil price was $98~ Today I paid $2.77 for the same mid grade. The oil and gas price miraculously went down around the same time of the elections, and have went up since then. I don't know a lot about the oil industry, but if the main input to a product decreases by 1/2, that doesn't necessarily mean the total product should drop by 1/2, but it does mean that the price should go down. The people that can answer this question won't. Another economic principle that is defied here is the demand for gasoline is declining, the supply is increasing, yet the price is still not dropping. Again, I am no expert but I would say the oil companies are price fixing the price of gas and saying F you to the public. They have money and can buy off politicians who will look the other way. That is just my speculative point of view. Hopefully I explained it like a 5 year old could understand",
"One simple answer is that oil companies cut production and lay off oilfield workers when the price gets too low to increase demand. When you saw the gas prices hit rock bottom not too long ago the industry started shutting down drilling etc. until the price point went back to the current level.",
"Gas is not priced as a cost-plus item, gas is priced by value.\n\nThere is no direct relationship between the price of a barrel of oil and the price of gasoline.\n\nThere was a congressional hearing years ago about how gasoline prices are set. It's pretty straight-forward.",
"They charge what the market will bear, not what it cost them.\n\n\n\nPut it this way. Lets say you are selling your house that you owned for 20 years. If you can get 3 times what you paid for it, do you insist its too much?",
"It's a rigged game.\nThe economics professors and theorists can rail and posture all they want. It doesn't matter what the commodity is, and they already know it.\n\nIt's a rigged game",
"In the UK at least, the government makes a hell of a lot more in tax per litre of fuel than an oil company makes in profit. ",
"I don't know where you are but I do not pay the same it's close to half what it was in my part of the states.",
"It's particularly perplexing in Canada where we always get the crap end of the stick when compared to what citizens of the USA pay for gas.",
"It's not about the price of oil, it's about the refining capacity to provide gasoline to meet the demand. Since demand is roughly the same and refining capacity hasn't gone up to increase the supply, the price stability reflects that. You could have a major influx of oil onto the market, but without increased refining into gas, the market forces of supply and demand will work just as before creating a lot of price stability.",
"I ask myself this question all the time. From what I hear you can just blame it on whatever international unrest or crisis is taking place at the time. So right now, I'd say it's because the Greeks voted no. ",
"If oil was $10 a barrel... you think these companies would give up the billions excuse me...trillions they make? They would find a way to still making a profit. ",
"Funny how it works. When oil goes down to $55 per barrel..the price at the pump stays the same as it did at $140. Yet when it goes up per barrel...the price immediately goes up too.",
"Because rich mother fuckers want to keep getting rich....you can say all the bullshit you want but this is the fact. They know people will pay it because we are used to a lot more so all the rich mother fuckers of the oil industry aren't making a move to lower prices because it would hurt their bottom dollar. Fuck them",
"Because as long as people keep paying the price they were paying when it was $140/barrel, there is no incentive for the oil companies to lower the price. And since most people have put themselves in a position where they *have* to drive everywhere they go every day, they'll pay whatever price is asked.",
"All I know is in Alaska we are paying $3.65 a gal and we ship a lot of our oil down south. It really blows.",
"So to answer your question you need to know what has happened to understand. Late last year OPEC decided it wanted to drive the American and Russian oil economy bankrupt. So they began to over produce oil and flood the market. Since their all rich oil sheiks they don't care about a profit they just wanted to fuck everyone over. As this began oil companies took action to try to salvage their money. ( as any company reasonably would). They did several things including filling up their storage to try and hold it off the Market to prevent over supply. This was a short term solution as we saw. Since it lasted longer than expected they eventually had no where to store it so they still ended up dumping the gas into the market. At the same time they cut production on their wells. In America there was about 1200 active or soon to be fracked wells now we're at around 200? (I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a drastic drop). So that in turn took control of the supply of the market giving them more control. That being their long term goal so now that they have control of the supply again they will make the same profit margins at reduced numbers ofcourse. Now what that looked like is what we saw. At first they drop in oil happened and everyone went yay low gas. But we didn't see anything at first then it dropped like a rock. Texas saw it go from 3.50$ down to about 1.20$ then back up to what it is now at 2.40$. So we did see a price decrease just not as relative to the drop in oil price. Which is a completely reasonable response to any free market the companies will take action to control revenue as best they can. That being said I'm not defending them their still greedy fucks. Now this isn't 100% everything that went on but I hope it gIves you a better understanding of the price situation. \n\n\n\nTLDR: oil companies took control of supply buy cutting production to control the price drop\n\nAnd yes I have shit grammar I'm aware",
"Gasoline is one of the few things that isn't valued based on supply and demand. The value of oil is \"speculated\" aka people make up a random number and decide to charge that much for it.\n\nFor this reason, you pay whatever the heck they want you to pay for it.",
"I guess it comes down to this... Do you have a choice to pay, whatever price they want? You may think that in a free market you would see competition, but at a certain point companies become so big, they stomp out competition. If you were to look into it, you would see they hinder the advancement of the human race, by trying to keep their profits up. \n\n",
"When the prices went up beyond $3 dollars a gallon, a lot of people suggested that we'd see the prices climb a little more, come back down to around 3, then stay there, regardless of PPB. Seems about right. Sometimes the market chooses not to decide, but still has made a choice. Our ignorance, their bli$$?",
"Exxon PROFITS for the past 5 years have been $30 Billion or greater ($44 Billion in 2012). Those are PROFITS folks. People saying the oil companies are \"suffering\" make me puke. They've ripped us off forever gouging us because they can. Oil companies are a disgrace and I can't wait until we're done with gasoline and be done with these idiotic discussions. It's profit and greed, pure and simple with all kinds of misinformation coming from oil company PR weasels.",
"Oil companies operate for their shareholders and work to maximize their profit\n\nThey are also evil, and owned by evil people\n ",
"I have another explanation. Competitiveness. Since there are relatively few competitors operating in the market, they can set a higher price without losing profits. \n\nIf there were lots of competitors 1 of them would lower the price, forcing the rest to do accordingly until the set up the price where they have minimum profits but still making the business worth it.\n\nThat is what I studied during college. It's about the market, not the costs.",
"The real answer is that the consumer has demonstrated the willingness to pay the same price - regardless of the cost of making the fuel.\n\nIn biz speak, you might hear it as \"companies will charge as high a price as what the market will bear\". So when the price of the input goes down, the difference is pure profit for the company.",
"I dont know if anyone actually answered, but here is the real answer. Source: I audit transactions between oilfield companies. I know what they are selling, who they are selling to, and for how much.\n\nWhen an oil producer begins to drill a new well they have their distributors and clients lined up for that well and they sign contracts and agreements that last the life of that well.\n\nIf a well is drilled and oil is $100 a barrel, that price is locked in for the life of that well. It could be 6 months, or 6 years.\n\nEvery major producer is still selling to their distributors for well over $100 a barrel. Only a few smaller players have began opening wells at a lower price point.\n\nWhat happens is when prices are high producers drill more wells than are really needed to meet demand and lock those wells in at a high price. When prices drop drilling stops and they produce from only their high priced wells.\n\nThe day to day price of oil is only really relevant to futures traders. Prices need to stay low for several years before any meaningful impact at the pump.\n\nWhen a politician says they will lower oil prices they are lying. It cant be done in a 4 year term.",
"Don't believe for a moment that bullshit explanation from DriftingSkies. That person obviously works for the oil industry. In fact, the real reason you are paying so much for gas in spite of the drop in the per barrel price, is good old fashioned GREED. You are being gouged yet again. Teach those greedy mother-fuckers a lesson and do what I did. STOP DRIVING. BUY a bike."
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2vtgld | why does my urine smell like spaghetti-o's after i eat them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vtgld/eli5_why_does_my_urine_smell_like_spaghettios/ | {
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"I don't know about Spaghetti-o's, but when I eat Sugar Crisp cereal, my urine'll smell like it a few hours later."
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13zwpa | how does solar radiation work and what can exposure in space result in? | I remember a lot of different groups who argue against space exploration, or those claiming the lunar landings were famed, mentioning that the solar radiation in space would kill anyone who was to venture into it. How does it work, what does it do and how are we protected?
I have been in some advanced astronomy classes, so I know verbiage well but this is not a subject we ever covered and I recently watched a few 'space conspiracy' shows in my spare time.
EDIT: Answered | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13zwpa/eli5_how_does_solar_radiation_work_and_what_can/ | {
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"The sun emits dangerous radiation (along with regular \"radiation\" called light and heat). The earth protects you though. If you go too far away though you will be in danger after long enough if you don't have sufficient protection.\n\nThey didn't have sufficient protection on the trip to the moon, but it was a pretty short trip so they weren't in any serious danger, at least not any more than the trip itself.\n\nThe Lunar Landings definitely happened, it's stupid to think they didn't.",
"There are actually two main sources of radiation in space, solar radiation and cosmic rays from elsewhere in our galaxy. The cosmic rays are a more constant threat; the solar radiation will peak during solar flares and such. \n\nAs Mason11987 points out, the earth itself shields us from a lot of this radiation. The atmosphere also protects us by absorbing the radiation. In low-earth orbit and above, however, astronauts are above the atmosphere's protection.\n\nHowever, the Earth's magnetic field also deflects cosmic rays, as does the interplanetary magnetic field due to the sun. This helps protects astronauts on the ISS, as do the aluminum wall of the station. They still receive low doses of radiation, though, which is one of the reasons they try to rotate out the space station crews regularly.\n\nThe damage caused by this radiation is similar to the \"radiation poisoning\" you hear about in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. High doses cause radiation sickness. Low but prolonged doses can cause cancer, which could be a problem with astronauts and cosmonauts that have served long-term in space.\n\nThe Apollo missions used shielding (basically, thick walls). I think the plan was that if a solar particle event was detected, they'd all move into a different module in the craft with thicker walls behind their water supply, which also blocked radiation. I don't remember if that happened during any of the missions."
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jvlvo | what are "teaparty" republicans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jvlvo/eli5_what_are_teaparty_republicans/ | {
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"Tea partiers want lower taxes, smaller government and a Christian social agenda.",
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3qv0c5 | why did petting animals become a thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qv0c5/eli5_why_did_petting_animals_become_a_thing/ | {
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"We like to show affection by making physical contact. So, as soon as we started being affectionate towards animals. We don't just pat any ol' animal, it's really just the animals we like. ",
"It is a grooming instinct that evolved into social bonding.\n\nWhen you pet an animal like a dog or a cat, it releases hormones in both of you that reinforce the bond between you.",
"I vaguely recall hearing that dogs generally do not like being pet (petted? patted?) on the head, because to them it is a sign of ownership/domination. I'm not sure how true this is. \n\nHowever, since reading this, I've noticed that my does seem to visibly flinch or otherwise brace herself when she sees me raise my hands, particularly if they appear to be moving in her direction. \n\nI would imagine that there is variation between individual animals. Some individuals are more affectionate than others. My dog is only affectionate when she wants something, like food or getting scratched. If you don't have anything to offer, she doesn't care much. ",
"Human beings use their hands and eyes to relate to the world around them. We need to pick things up, touch them, feel them, and look at them in order to relate to and make sense of them. \n\nFor instance if you put a rubicks cube down in front of a dog a chimpanzee and a human child, each would intereact with it in a different way when investigating. \n\nThe dog would sniff it because it relates to the world through smell. The chimp would pick it up but it would also taste it and smell it because they relate to the world with their hands but also their eyes, lips, nose, etc. And the child would pick it up and turn it over and look at it and if they were really young they might put it in their mouth but mostly they will pick it up and play with it. \n\nThis comes into play with affection. When we want to be affectionate, we use our hands a lot. Holding hands, massages, holding each other, even when you hug you use your hands to clasp. \n\nWhen dogs greet each other it's sniffing and licking, their paws don't really come into it. \n\nWe are all mammals though and there is something deeply mammilian about snuggling, cuddling, nudging, licking, and physicaly maintaining contact with each other. So the animal being petted is likely re-assured and it helps them bond to be handled. The human doing the petting definitely feels affection for the animal, it calms us down, makes us smile etc. Dogs version of a handshake or a greeting is to sniff, rub, and lick you. Cats is to rub their head and body all over your legs until you pick them up and then they do it to your hands because your hands are how you interact with them. Some cats also bite to show affection. \n\n",
"I think it would probably depend on the personality of the animal. Also how they have been treated in the past. A dog that has been hit will flinch."
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3pe6jm | why is google maps slower now than five years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pe6jm/eli5_why_is_google_maps_slower_now_than_five/ | {
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"The maps are significantly higher resolution and contain a lot more information that needs to load before it displays. Some of the information can be pretty useful, but as you point out, it might not be worth the extra load time.",
"Additionally, they took the \"terrain view\" option away. I loved that feature for planning hikes through mountainous or hilly areas.",
"Google Maps has grown more technically complex over time. It used to be just tiles, or \"just copy some pre-calculated pixels onto the screen\" in ELI5-speak. Nowadays it has vector graphics and continuous zooming. Those things make it more intensive to draw. It's kind of like drawing something and then making a photocopy of your drawing. The photocopy is obviously faster. The old Maps was more like the photocopy.\n\nYou can tell that other maps that use basic tiles like [OpenStreetMap](_URL_0_) are noticeably snappier.",
"I've noticed that within the past few months it's gotten even worse. I used to be able to just have the map up (just normal map view, no satellite) and use it to know where I was and when I was coming up on a turn. Now it seems to lag behind at times, even when using the GPS mode.",
"I see your point and i wish they'd let US to select which version to run.\n I cannot stand the new map system..\nwhoevers in charge...needs to not be in charge any longer",
"To really make this an ELI5, you need to cover all the variables. On what kind of hardware? What operating system? What browser or app? What version of browser, OS, etc?\n\nAs a software performance dude, I ask these questions constantly. Unfortunately the response is usually something like, \"Dude WTF it's just slower! What difference does it make?\"\n\nHeavy sigh.\n\nLike some others have said, the user interface is a lot more sophisticated than it used to be. Not necessarily better, but it does more. \n\nExample: pinch-zoom on a Mac trackpad sucked until about six months ago. Now it's perfect. Longer load time for that? I'll take it.",
"because google made it slower by forcing in some new vector graphics.\nNext they killed \"Classic maps\" because people kept using it.\nThey do \"mobile first\" which means screw your use cases and unplug your mouse and keyboard.\n",
"The biggest factor is probably switching from rasterized images to vector data for map tiles. This massively reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded, but it also puts a huge rendering burden on the client. Older computers and phones just can't handle it. According to a friend who worked on it, it was a known tradeoff at the time, but they decided it as worth it in the long run.\n\nAs phones get faster, the rendering speed becomes less important, and the amount of data being transmitted becomes the bottleneck. I think they wanted to switch over a bit early so that they could reap the rewards as soon as faster devices became available. I'm guessing another big motivator was offline maps, enabled by reducing the amount of storage required to precache an entire city on your phone.",
"Is there a way to disable by default the image gallery popping up from below when going into street view ? It's getting tiring to close it for the hundredth time each time I look up where something is located.",
"Google's plan is to continuously ruin every service that made them better than their competitors. Hangouts needed to be slowed down, less stable, and much more bloated. Maps needed less useful search results, more clutter, and poorer performance. Chrome needed much higher ram usage and the most useful extensions destroyed. Music simply needed to never release a PC client. Reader was so good they couldn't hope to slowly chip away at it. They flatout killed it and released the new garbage newspaper app. I expect the following over the next few years: Waze will only notify you of nearby McDonalds and route accordingly. Gmail will improve priority inbox but only let you see what's left over. Dialer will only call 900 numbers. All apps will have emoji support.\n\nEdit: Forgot about Photos. Sure its nice to be split from G+, but holy hell is it irritating to download an image and send it to someone. Photos seems to try its damnedest to show you only the photos taken weeks ago. Suck a dick Photos. Eat my ass Hangouts. Get lost Maps. I'm so close to switching to Windows Phone that I'm considering throwing myself in front of a train as my best option.",
"[Google redesigned the architecture to make it vector based (via WebGL)](_URL_0_)\n\nSupposedly it'll feel slow for a few years till hardware catches up, or it could just grow bigger with time and stay as slow as it is. \n\nAs with everything else alphabet (youtube, gmail, maps etc) the user experience was far better 5 years ago. I don't know what the hell happened in google in the last 5 years but somewhere along the line people who just signed off on shitty user experiences got into senior positions.",
"This encapsulates everything I hate about software design. As soon as processors get faster, some asshole decides we *need* to have transparent windows and wobbly 3d window animations involving ray tracing and alpha channel through-nesting and sparkle text made using quadricentennial kleptography. So now I *still* have to wait for the fucking menu to pop up.",
"Holy shit. I've been so pissed off by this recently. I attributed to my carrier's horrible coverage, but it looks like it isn't just me. ",
"I use bing maps, i constantly havr to look up auto shops on map by phone number and 85% show up on bing compared to google maps.",
"They put in that damn 3d earth view which mangles 2d satellite photos at close resolutions. \n\nAt one recent point, you could go into Lite mode and turn that off, but that option is obfuscated or no longer exists.",
"The old Google Maps (still available as \"lite\" mode) used [raster tiles](_URL_1_): pre-generated images of map arranged seamlessly. They're computationally very easy to handle, download relatively quickly, but limit how much interactivity you can build into the map. And because the map tiles are pre-generated at fixed zoom levels, you can't smoothly zoom into the map, nor can you do anything that involves having the map data inside the browser itself.\n\nThe alternative is [vector tiles](_URL_0_). Here, you cut the map *data* up into pre-defined tiles, and distribute that for rendering in the browser. This is much more flexible, but computationally much harder on the browser, and comes with limitations of its own. With enough computing power, and good design, the end result should look better, and behave a lot better for the user, with smooth zooming in and out and the ability to interact with individual features like roads or buildings. It also keeps an image on screen while fetching data - zoom in, and see how the roads remain visible while it fetches buildings.\n\nMeanwhile, they added other features (like the photos at the bottom), which don't seem to be very useful. So a bit of bloat in there too.\n\nGoogle Maps still seems to be a year or two ahead of the computing power available to the average user.\n\n(Source: wrote those Wikipedia articles).",
"Well, you know how they say universe is expanding? The earth got bigger in 5 years, so there's more data to load, which leads to more time loading.",
"I use google maps for my job every day many many times a day and I absolutely HATE the new maps. And it's not that I haven't given it a chance. All the relevent info is now several clicks away where before it was just there. You can take all your fancy bells and whistles and just make it function, and have it clean and neat like before. Don't show me multiple routes on the map just have the option to click them. Have the print button right there not hidden behind some secret bullshit! ",
"Lol we've arrived at the point where waiting an extra 5-10 seconds for an in depth map of the fucking world is a point of concern.",
"is there a feature that allows you to find a certain thing (such a pizza) along a route, while minimizing your detour? Say I am driving from point A to point B, a distance of 100 miles along a major interstate. At some point, I want to stop for pizza at a highly regarded pizza place. I don't care whether it is at the beginning of my journey, or at the end, my highest priority is finding a place that will require me to take as little of a detour as possible",
"It uses WebGL. WebGL is another pointless framework to waste CPU/memory on the client side and introduce privacy and security holes, all so the animation between zoom levels can be 'smoother' and it can do that pseudo-3D when you zoom in far enough.",
"I believe it's because it's storing more data now. \n\nSuch as all the housey houses and forty forts on its mappy maps. \n\nJust my guess. ",
"Because the new google maps sucks the dongs. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Related question...\n\nWhy does Google feel compelled to keep dicking around with Maps? It was easy to use, functional, and didn't make me swear at it 5 years ago. \n\nOver the years the UI \"improvements\" have left me desperate for an alternative...",
"I'm gonna piggy back this and ask. In new android wtf happened to being able to get directions in a list view?\n\n*EDIT: Figured it out by fiddling around -- at the top of the map screen it says your next street name, or whatever street you're on, basically, theres a street name at the top.... turns out you can swipe it left to get the next step, then swipe left again for the next, etc etc. Its not as efficient as a proper list tho to be able to assess quickly.*",
"Aside from the loading issues most people are commenting on, flit now takes more steps to get directions (type address, load, click \"directions\", type starting point, load again). It used to just need to load once, and had an interface that made sense in general. The new interface just sucks and they have no excuse for it ",
"And why don't they show the fucking name on some roads?",
"Just wondering.. are you using the same computer as five years ago?",
"I miss being able to make open-ended directions to a type of business like \"restaurants\" and having options show up on the map. Now it just picks some shitty place like subway, whoever paid google the most. And a list of a couple other places shows up on the side but doesn't show me where any of them are. Google maps sucks now. ",
"The universe is rapidly expanding, and so Google Maps has significantly more to load than it did 5 years ago.",
"I'd argue that the functionality of Google Maps has actually gone down. You used to be able to pull a list of all your starred places really easy and plug them in for driving directions. Now you have to go through a sub menu, bookmarks or some buried shit to pull up all your starred places.",
"Also why doesn't GM have a easy way to route multiple destinations? I'm often driving into cities downtown and it would be ultimately best to chart out multiple destinations as opposed to one at a time.",
"Also at play is Google's recent switch to [material design](_URL_0_) layouts, which they implement using their [Polymer](_URL_1_) library to take advantage of [web components](_URL_2_) features, which are still in the draft stage and not implemented in every browser. As a result, there's some extra overhead Polymer has to perform to bring web components-like features to browsers that don't support them natively.\n\n**In ELI5 terms**, Google Maps will probably load more slowly if you're not using Google Chrome due to workarounds for features not yet supported in your browser.",
"I just wanted to come in here to say how much I hate the new Google Maps. It's terrible. The whole thing is a mess. Every single update is a step back. You can't even see the whole address anymore without clicking on the thing to single it out.",
"Open Google Chrome, create a new bookmark with this:\n\n > javascript:var ids = [\"omnibox\", \"cards\", \"welcome\"];var classes = [\"widget-viewcard\", \"widget-zoom\", \"watermark\"];var hidden = (window.getComputedStyle(document.getElementById(ids[0]))).getPropertyValue(\"display\");if (hidden !== \"none\") {var disp = \"none\";} else {var disp = \"\";}for (var i = 0; i < ids.length; i++) {document.getElementById(ids[i]).style.display = disp;}for (var i = 0; i < classes.length; i++) {var div = document.getElementsByClassName(classes[i]);for (var j = 0; j < div.length; j++) {div[j].style.display = disp;}}\n\nAs the URL. Save that bookmark to your Bookmarks bar. Open Google Maps, then click that Bookmark and the annoying sidebar/features get toggled on/off. I've found it does make it quicker. I can't take credit for this though, a fellow by the name of [Alex Chan](_URL_0_) wrote the code. Props to him.",
"The slowness is annoying. But the terrible interface is what really kills it for me.\n\nEverything is buried behind so many menus and clicks.\n\nFor awhile they at least let you use classic maps. Now that seems to be stripped and we're stuck with this slow, bloated, clunky interface.",
"Yes, googlemaps is crap now. \n\nI'm always flummoxed when a major company that has a HUGE hit (or even near-monopoly) then promptly DESTROY the very core features that made it a hit in the first place.\n\nWe could talk about overengineering by ambitious VPs, or we could talk about the imperative to \"monetize\"/squeeze more money out of it; or we could talk about bureaucratic bloat...\n\n...but deep down, I wonder if there's not some sort of \"suicide\" social switch. That, for something social (and companies are social), if we're hardwired to try to kill our social body once it gets *too* successful. (Roman Empire; Catholic Church in the 14th century; Ancien Regime France; Germany in the early 20th c;; Microsoft; contemporary United States; Facebook; Google, are all examples of this flip into social suicide.)\n\n",
"I actually have been using bing because of Google maps being so slow. Glad I'm not the only one to notice.",
"because they fucked it up with all the web2.0 slidey fadey bullshit that gives you related pictures and business on every fucking search with no way to turn that crap off, by default. ",
"Do you have ATT because I find all Google apps run much slower on ATT. \n\nI can bring up the map that takes minutes on Google instantly on Bing when I am home (ATT) but they are about the same at work. ",
"If your internet speed hasn't increased in 5 years, the maps will be slower because the maps have been enhanced so much",
"This ties into a theory I'm formulating for a future paper on my grad degree. The short of it is simply stated; technology gets better on a long term, and worse on a short term. But maybe I'm full of it...",
"web interface for me recently added a bunch of new features that covered up and obscured much of what I liked about maps. it's still by far the most useful and data rich, but liked the previous interface better. it was slimmer, faster and easier to use. in fact, had the same reaction a year ago when they moved stuff around too.",
"I'm addition to this question, I'd like to know why I hear the words \"GPS signal lost\" so much now. Kinda scary in the middle of nowhere.",
"When I do a search in google maps on my phone, you know what I want? A map showing the locations of the things that most closely match my search. I do NOT want a giant popup menu of places that match my search, THAT I CAN'T SEE THE LOCATIONS OF.\n\nAnd then, when I want to exit that useless popup and instinctively hit the back button, I want to see the map with my search results. I LITERALLY NEVER WANT the app to totally forget that I ever typed in that long-ass search string.\n\nSorry, this isn't an answer. Just wanted to jump on bandwagon and complain about the new google maps."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiled_web_map"
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6qomml | is there an official iq test? also why do many people online seem to know their iq but in real life i've never heard someone mention it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qomml/eli5_is_there_an_official_iq_test_also_why_do/ | {
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"There are official IQ tests that you can pay to have done. (Keen parents often have their children take them). \n\nPeople mention it online because they confuse IQ, which commonly tests pattern recognition and speed, with something that affects their logic or inherent knowledge. They believe that a higher number (100 being average) is inherently an indicator that they are more likely to be right, regardless of the situation.\n\nPeople who mention this in real life tend to lack the social awareness to know that the above is not true, and don't socialize as much, making them less common.",
"dont underestimate the likelyhood that they are lying, or that they took a poor imitation from a shoddy website. \n\nThose that are truly smart are unlikely to brag about it. \n\nIn any case, the IQ test is a poor representation of the intelligence we appreciate, so even if someone does manage a good score on it, if this is their only claim to fame, it shouldnt count for much.",
"The closest to \"official\" will be the tests organised by Mensa in various countries. These are supervised paper-and-pencil tests, not online. \n\nThe thing about IQ is that it's something you were born with. If a test is a genuine measure of IQ, you did nothing to earn it and can take no credit for it. So it's generally not considered polite to talk about it. But it is real, and correlates strongly with success in education and life in general. \n\nedit: never been to /r/iamverysmart before. I think the title is meant to be ironic ... ",
"Most commonly the Wechsler intelligence scale for adults or children are used and there is also a Stanfied-Binet scale. Several standardized tests exist for these scales. Its not terribly polite to brag about IQ score as it is impolite to brag about income or wealth. By claiming you are intelligent or wealthy, you are implying others are not intelligent or poor, which may offend people and make you appear boastful or pompous. \nI have an IQ of 142 for example, which makes me a genius, but I often do \"stupid' things , so being intelligent does not make one \" smart\" or \"wise\". ",
"There are several internationally recognized IQ tests out there. Any legitimate test will need to be paid for and given by a trained, professional adjudicator, in person, several times. The results will vary slightly between the different tests and between test taking, and very high or very low scores can indicate a different test needs to be given for more accuracy. The current Wechsler test is only accurate between 70-135 or so, and the Stanford-Binet is only accurate between 60-160 or so. These are the two most common tests because they account for 99% of the world's population. \n\n",
"There are various tests designed to measure various aspects of a person's intelligence in all the various ways that can be interpreted / manifested. It's not an exact science and there is no real single score for human intelligence - plenty of incredibly smart people are terrible at things which \"average\" people are good at.\n\nIt's quite ironic that a lot of IQ tests seem aimed at getting people to pay money to be told how smart they are.",
"Some people online claim to have a very high IQ, because there's no way to dispute their claim, and they think it makes their opinions more valid if they have a high IQ. But this makes as much sense as claiming to be a better cook, because their hair is curly.\n\nIn real life, people don't often go around claiming a high IQ, because you interact mostly with people you know, and no one is going to believe the guy who was just eating paint chips is walking around with a 150 IQ.",
"There's no single, standard IQ test, rather there are a range of tests used by different groups. There are online ones which are hopelessly inaccurate - people you hear randomly bringing up their IQ have probably done one of these tests, got a high score, and like to brag about it.\n\nA few years ago my psychiatrist sent me to a neurologist for a full 'neurological impairment' workup. It involved a whole series of tests - memorising a list of words, memorising a list of numbers, looking at a set of shapes on a page and working out which ones were the same shape rotated, copying patterns on a page with tiles, reaction time...in all, it must have taken two or three hours, sitting with a specialist, to complete the tests.\n\nThis kind of workup is the closest there is to an 'official' IQ test. The result included my IQ, divided up by category. I can be reasonably confident in those results. The kind of results given by an online quiz that takes ten minutes to buzz through a few of the same tests and then spits out a number to make you feel good is probably not reliable."
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2xndei | if we send a people to mars, and there are muslims in the team, which direction would they face to pray? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xndei/eli5_if_we_send_a_people_to_mars_and_there_are/ | {
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"They have to pray towards Mecca, so I expect facing earth would be sufficient.",
"There's also [this](_URL_0_). A bit snarky, I'll admit.",
"We've already had [several Muslim astronauts](_URL_0_), actually, so there have been chances for religious and scientific experts to work out solutions to this question.\n\nI believe most of the material I've seen was considering scenarios in Earth orbit, but some of the conclusions would be similar. In circumstances where the direction to Mecca is subjective (perhaps because it is changing rapidly), I believe it is considered sufficient that the astronaut faces in their \"best guess\" direction. If that satisfies the important ritual as far as the astronaut is concerned, I doubt many reasonable people would tell them they're wrong.",
"Muslims are expected to pray towards the Kaaba, but it's not a requirement.\n\nFrom what I have researched, the Kaaba is what Muslims worship in the direction of because it was the first church/temple/shrine/whatever to be built for the explicit worship of God/Allah.\n\nThat means, if nothing else, they could take a shrine or the materials necessary and create something equivalent to the Kaaba for each planet's Qibla.\n\nRealistically though, many muslims outside of professionally built shrines, mosques and those near the Kaaba itself actually pray in the direction of it. Many just pray in the general direction, whether it be East, West, North, South or some combination thereof, they rarely take into consideration that the angle would change with location. For example, my friend prays due East during the salat, except that we are in Southern Ontario and that lines him up with Northern Italy.",
"This has been addressed.\n_URL_0_\nThe short version is what others have pointed out. It's the intent that counts. When it can't be determined it isn't a big deal."
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2j93hn | why do our brains interpret patterns on the wall or floor as faces? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j93hn/eli5why_do_our_brains_interpret_patterns_on_the/ | {
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"Because human brains are trained to look for faces. It's a useful skill to be able to recognise faces, and false positives are not as harmful as failing to spot a face when it could be the face of someone who is a threat. \n "
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3hwdxi | why don't probiotic supplements "colonize" the gut and remain as a permanent benefit, as opposed to only being transient and thus useless shortly after using them? | A lot of people are taking probiotics these days whether it's through capsules, drinks, fermented foods, etc. The goal is obviously to fortify your gut with beneficial bacteria. The problem is that probiotics are said to be "transient" and simply pass through your system making any of their benefits useless shortly after you stop taking them.
So why is it that the bacteria in a probiotic is unable to stay in your gut and provide life-time benefits? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hwdxi/eli5_why_dont_probiotic_supplements_colonize_the/ | {
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"The bugs in your belly help you eat your food.\n\nThe pill bugs (pun) help drive out bad bugs after medicine or because your not getting good bugs.\n\nYou can get good bugs from eating healthy foods, and these will outnumber the pill bugs that helped you get better after a while.\n\n(Imagine the pill size, then the length of your digestive system, if you have good bacteria already that one pill isn't adding a whole lot of benefit.)\n\n_URL_0_",
"Because your stomach an intestines are already full of bacteria. There's nowhere for the probiotics to latch onto, and if a few do hang around, they get outcompeted by the established microflora.\n\nFurthermore, the idea of probiotic food is bunk. Sure, that yoghurt might have bacteria which can provide a health benefit, but there's no niche for them to fill, and if it is possible for such a small culture to establish a foothold, your gut microflora is severely depleted that you have pretty major health problems that a pot of yoghurt won't cure.\n\nHealthy/good feelings you might get from probiotic foods are a combination of three possible factors: the food itself is good; the food is full of sugar, giving a burst of energy; and, of course, placebo.\n\nThat said, there *is* a new, experimental medical procedure that involves something akin to probiotics. Chemotherapy and aggressive antibiotic treatments sometimes leave patients with no bacteria in their digestive systems, which means they basically can't digest food. In this case, a donor can donate a sample of their own microflora, which is usually accomplished by taking a stool sample from the donor and getting it into the patient's body somehow. This repopulates the digestive system and allows the patient to lead a normal life.",
"I was put on antibiotics when I absolutely didn't need to be, but I didn't consider there would be any consequences to such a common treatment. It killed bacteria in my gut, and for the next 2 weeks I had the runs. I kept hoping it would just clear up like it normally does until I realised I needed to repopulate my gut with healthy bacteria. \n\nProbiotics worked. They have their place and they're only 'bunk' if people use them wrongly, don't need them, or are closed minded."
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x94bc | what makes optical fibre faster than any other cables? | I know light travles really fast thorugh them, but how can signals/ the internet travel fast trough it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x94bc/what_makes_optical_fibre_faster_than_any_other/ | {
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"Although information travels a bit physically faster in fibre the main benefit is bandwidth. \n\nFibre sends information by little flashes of light. Now the good thing about light is that you can easily split lots of different colours of light, so we can sent lots of data streams all at the same time by giving each one its own colour. ",
"The signal, or internet, is just a digital signal.\n\nAt one end of the fiber, you have a laser. At the other end you have an optical receiver. When you turn the laser on, the other side sees it, and when you turn the laser off, the other side sees it. And the on/off change gets there at the speed of light. Think of it as Morse code between your and your friend with a flashlight in the middle of the night (Not really though. The receiving optic just interprets \"off\" as 0, and \"on\" as 1, then composes a string of 0s and 1s, which is your information).\n\nAlso, fiber is capable of carrying multiple light signals at the same time. So there are multiple lasers shooting down the same fiber (known as Wave Division Multiplexing or WDM) using a different wavelength.\n\n* Shades of purple light are between 380nm (nanometers) and 420nm.\n* Shades of green light are between 520nm and 570nm.\n* Shades of red light are between 620nm and 740nm.\n\nLasers typically used in WDM are in the 1550nm neighborhood. In Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, or DWDM, cheap market solutions existing right now cram 80 channels of info into the 1530nm-1565nm range, which means that you have 80 different \"colors\" from 80 different lasers all being fired in different on/off sequences towards the other end of that piece of fiber.\n\nHope that helps."
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3f17n3 | why is the tea party "not in the news" as much as i remember them being around the us 2012 presidential election? | [Tea Party](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f17n3/eli5why_is_the_tea_party_not_in_the_news_as_much/ | {
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"There is no need for the plausible deniability of a racist subsidiary in the 2016 election. ",
"Because the Republican party incorporated many of their opinions into their mainstream platform. What would have been a Tea Party viewpoint in 2010 will be a Republican viewpoint in 2016, which means that there's no need for a separate movement. I'm also pretty sure that the economy is doing a bit better now than it was in 2010-2012. People who feel like the economy is doing well are less prone to political outrage.",
"They have succeeded in claiming ideological control of the Republican party. Now they are the mainstream, with almost all of the candidates. Those with pre-2008 views like Jeb are now 'moderates' instead of mainstreamers.",
"It is still very early in the election cycle. There are a lot of Republicans unhappy with the party and I'm pretty sure that will make the news as we move closer to the election next year. The GOP primaries are likely to be a long process with so many candidates."
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8t5em5 | how does a website know what card i have by the first digit? | I was ordering a pizza and when it asked for payment, I put a 4 in and it automatically knew I had a Visa card. How does it do this? Wouldn't a Mastercard also start with a 4? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8t5em5/eli5_how_does_a_website_know_what_card_i_have_by/ | {
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"VISA cards always start with 4 and MasterCard always start with 5. There's others for other kind of cards as well, but those are the most common.\n\n"
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4sn71l | what happens to money that was destroyed (or found to be destroyed) during a police investigation? | I was reading up on the [DB Cooper case](_URL_1_) and under [Physical Evidence](_URL_0_) it says that in 1980 they found $5800 (~$16,000 in today's dollars) lying nearly disintegrated in a river. Since it was such a high-profile case to the point where they had every single serial number from the ransom money documented and published publicly and were able to match up the serial numbers of the recovered money, would they reprint the money they found that was destroyed? Then again, the rightful owner of the money would probably be the US government (since the airline had already been compensated), so would they just credit it back to the treasury? I always thought you couldn't just "lose" money out of the system, but surely SOMEONE has to have this money in their books in order for it to even be a part of the system?
On another note, it also goes on to say that "none of the 9,710 remaining bills have turned up anywhere in the world," but that just makes me think that someone spent them a little bit at a time so it's still not really lost money the same way as the bills showing up on a riverbank.
I apologize if this rambled on a bit, I am just having trouble wrapping my head around money that's just gone. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sn71l/eli5_what_happens_to_money_that_was_destroyed_or/ | {
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"New money is printed and old money is taken out of circulation and destroyed all the time.\n\n > would they reprint the money they found that was destroyed\n\nThey wouldn't print \"special\" money just for this case. It would just be done on the normal schedule.\n\n > I always thought you couldn't just \"lose\" money out of the system\n\nTake a dollar bill out of your pocket and burn it. You just caused a loss of money from the system. Whose books was it on? What if you give a dollar to your child? Does your child keep books? What if you bury a bunch of money and then die. Who's keeping track of that? The fact is, physical cash isn't necessarily being accounted for all the time."
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5rqt3k | why do food/drink companies only sell certain flavours of their in some countries/areas? | For example: Here in south UK, Coca Cola sell Original, Diet, Zero and Life versions of their product. I see images from countries such as Turkey, where there are Coca Cola cans flavoured grape and orange. In Japan, they sell a GREEN TEA flavoured Kit-Kat. Why aren't these varieties readily available in the U.K.? Is there a financial or logistical reason, or is it simply because there are different departments of the company at work in different countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rqt3k/eli5_why_do_fooddrink_companies_only_sell_certain/ | {
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" > Is there a financial or logistical reason\n\nThe financial reaosn is the company doesn't think they'd make money on those flavors in the UK, or already has another beverage in that category and don't want to compete with themselves.",
"When new food/drink products are created, they're released in a test market. Basically, they release the product in a single city and see how it sells. If it sells well, they're release it in several cities in the area, then the state, then the neighboring states, then the country. That way, if it doesn't sell, they didn't product millions of bags of unsold candy that people hate. They might only produce hundreds of bags of unsold candy.\n\nIf stuff's not in your area, it might be because a small town in central Ohio didn't like it. But a small town in central Japan did.",
"There are a number of things in play when new goods are sold in a supermarket.\n\nIn essence, it's down to economics, to launch a new product in any given market is a costly exercise. Not only does a manufacturer need to change or add new manufacturing capacity to make the product often and usually at great cost a manufacturer will also produce a multi-channel marketing campaign, this could be TV ads, Facebook, giveaways, and other promotional tools.\n\nIf the manufacturer doesn't feel that there's a big enough market to be profitable once all those costs are taken into account it just doesn't make sense to launch.\n\nAnother big factor is shelf space within the supermarket themselves. A lot of time and cost is involved in choosing and placing goods on shelves and with such limited physical space, it would require removing other and probably more profitable goods to be able to sell them. Even within a supermarket there's a big difference between place items at eye level, towards the ground or at the end of an aisle. \n\n\n",
"Different products are coming from different branches of the company, a distributor & bottler in Turkey is basically unconnected from one in the UK and do not have the same items. In many cases it comes down to preferences among the customers in that area, some places have people who like different flavours, are used to buying different flavours, or the market competition is different (maybe nobody else sells a Grape flavoured pop in Turkey)\n\nThese companies do market research to see what their consumers want to buy, what works and what doesn't. People in Japan love kit-kats and buy a staggeringly huge amount of them because they symbolize good luck in Japan; also Japanese customers buy lots of different flavours.\n\nFinancial is a big part, they do market research to know how much of what kind of product they sell, what their competition sells, and what people say they want to try."
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471osj | where does the idea that people act crazier and strange things happen during a full moon come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/471osj/eli5_where_does_the_idea_that_people_act_crazier/ | {
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"Self-fulfilling prophesy and confirmation bias.\n\nPeople think crazy stuff happens during the full moon, so they act crazy. In rare cases, they may be mentally ill or very confused and actually believe they're werewolves or vampires or something and act out. \"People act crazy during the full moon, therefore I will act crazy because it's the full moon.\"\n\nAnd crazy happens all the time, you just may not notice it. But if you think people act crazy on the full moon, during those nights you'll be looking for it. Sure, you've seen the crazy street preacher guy every night for a month, but tonight is the full moon and wow, look how crazy that guy is! Or, Hey a bar fight started, and it's the full moon, clearly this confirms it and it's not just a random thing that just happened to be the same day as a full moon.\n\nThese are the descendants of the belief that the full moon had magical powers back in the day when people also generally believed that diseases were spread by bad smells and that the future could be predicted by throwing bones into a fire. As science caught up, we stopped generally believing in witchcraft, but that old idea of weird stuff happening because of the moon stuck around thanks to the confirmation bias.",
"Think back to when there was no electricity. If you wanted to get crazy at night, it was always easier with a full moon. If you wanted to have a party at night - full moon. There was just a lot more of an opportunity to get up to trouble. Then add on a sort of confirmation bias - if everyone talks about being crazy on the full moon, someone inclined to that will act accordingly. "
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32cth9 | with so many "knock off" products of coca cola, why haven't they released a coca cola brand ice pop? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32cth9/eli5_with_so_many_knock_off_products_of_coca_cola/ | {
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"text": [
"My guess would be due to the icee contract and how it is written. ",
"Do you mean like a Slurpee / slushie? They sell both Coca Cola and Pepsi branded Slurpees in Canada."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
666pvq | how is it that psychotherapy can "mimic" the effects of antidepressants without external chemical manipulation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/666pvq/eli5_how_is_it_that_psychotherapy_can_mimic_the/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because depression is a cycle: if we don't do things that might make us feel good, we don't get enough serotonin and dopamine; if we don't get enough serotonin and dopamine, we don't feel like doing the things that might make us feel good. It can reach a point where outside help is needed, because when you are depressed you've lost the tools you need to dig your way back out of the hole.\n\nIt's a chicken-vs-egg thing, which presents two broad ways to try to break the cycle:\n\nMedication: perhaps if given access to the neurotransmitters associated with well-being, you will have the energy and desire to engage in more healthy behavior.\n\nPsychotherapy: perhaps if you engage in more healthy behavior, your brain will start producing the neurotransmitters associated with well-being.\n\nBoth are trying to reach the same results, they are just focusing on different parts of the cycle. If either (or both) of them work, your brain returns to natural functionality with adequate amounts of natural neurotransmitters available.\n\nDepending on the person and their specific situation, there might be reasons why one approach might be more effective than the other. In general if you see *anyone* about depression, their first prescriptions should be \"eat right, exercise, sleep right\", because those are things that directly affect serotonin and dopamine production.\n\nIf you've been clinically depressed for long enough, your brain just stops making (or severely reduces production of) serotonin and dopamine: why waste the energy making them if you're not going to use them? (This is also why some drugs are so addicting: when they release a huge amount of serotonin/dopamine-like chemicals into your blood, your brain can decide \"great! don't need to make *that* anymore, there's enough here to last a lifetime.\") In general antidepressants aren't supplying you with feel-good chemicals, they are just ramping up how much natural serotonin/dopamine your brain makes or blocking the 're-uptake' of the natural serotonin/dopamine, increasing how much is available to you.\n\nIf your depression is based on a tendency to follow downward-pointing thoughts and feelings more often than you follow their upward-pointing counterparts, talking to someone who understands the way brains work might help. But that is just the other way of breaking the cycle; psychotherapy does not 'mimic' antidepressants. If it works, your brain starts making enough of the same natural neurotransmitters that the antidepressants are trying to bolster."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
86nbwy | water loss due to agriculture? | If a person drinks a full gallon of water, they will urinate/sweat out a percentage of that water. These fluids are returned to the eco system via evaporation or waste disposal/recycling.
One almond also takes about 1 gallon to grow to maturity (the water is absorbed by the roots), most of that fluid will be removed from the eco system forever. The only fluid gained from the almond would be whatever a person gets upon eating it.
Corporations are pumping billions of water into food every year from rivers and underground aquifers, and a large portion of this water will be removed from the eco system. Are we in danger of running out of clean, drinkable water or am i misunderstanding something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86nbwy/eli5_water_loss_due_to_agriculture/ | {
"a_id": [
"dw6d8b9"
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"text": [
"You're right and wrong.\n\nThe water used in agriculture (growing that almond for instance) is not destroyed. Almost nothing we do destroys water permanently. The water participates in the plant's transpiration cycle, is used to build parts of the plant, and is released as water vapor into the atmosphere, where it eventually goes and rains on someone (since I live in Seattle, probably me). Or for the water incorporated into the plant's tissues, digestion, rotting, or even burning, will release it. So it all comes back.\n\nThat's where you're wrong.\n\nHowever, you are right that water can be moved from very useful locations and states, to less useful locations and states. Water in a reservoir in southern California is very, very useful, because lots of very dry cities and agricultural counties desire it. Water raining on me in Seattle is a lot less useful, because we have more than enough. Water in the ocean is the same.\n\nSo it is definitely possible to overuse water in local areas, thereby moving it from places you want it, to places you don't. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
a9gf8j | is there a reason why epiphanies are so common in the shower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9gf8j/eli5_is_there_a_reason_why_epiphanies_are_so/ | {
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"Likely because you don’t have your phone on you. There was a podcast talking about this. I can recall the name, but it might have been on the “art of manliness”podcast. \n\nA psychologist guest basically stated that our minds are so geared up for constant and instant gratification from our phones, that we forget how to basically think and reflect. When we’re in the shower, we have no option but to do just that. ",
"I’ve read a bit about this. Our brains tend to work in one of two different modes, focused and diffused. In focus mode we study and concentrate on a subject. Later, when we’re doing something completely unrelated, like taking a shower, our brain enters diffused mode. At that time, our brain can process the new information and connect various previously unnoticed dots, an epiphany. \nEdison used an advanced related technique to help him overcome large, complex problems. _URL_0_\n\nMoral of the story, rest and relaxation are key when we’re learning something new. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Thomas-Edison-sleep-with-steel-balls-held-in-each-hand"
]
] | ||
f41euy | why are the gas giants so intensely radioactive? | I get that they are.. I just haven't seen any explanation that says why. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f41euy/eli5_why_are_the_gas_giants_so_intensely/ | {
"a_id": [
"fhnepex"
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"text": [
"It seems that when astronomers talk about Jupiter’s radiation, the concept tends to be misconstrued a bit because it's not really the planet that emits the deadly particles. A planet rather traps the highly energetic particles be it from the Sun or other interplanetary surroundings. Every planet with an active magnetic field, including Earth, traps highly energetic particles within the “belts” of the magnetic field since the magnetic filed flows out of the convective core in sort of paths, or belts. At some points of the magnetic field, the charged particles either from the Sun or whatever else they come from, get trapped. The fact that they get trapped doesn't change the fact that they can destroy any biological system or man made electronic devices.\n\nJupiter’s magnetic filed is the largest out of all the planets in the solar system. He's a giant after all :-) he probably has a huge metallic hydrogen core (still a mystery). His magnetosphere extends millions of kilometers into space all the way to Saturn on one end and millions of kilometers in other directions. It's because Jupiter’s magnetic field is so intense, which would not be that dangerous in on itself, much greater amount of the deadly charged particles get trapped be it from the Sun or Io’s volcanic activity. Those particles literally keep accumulating and residing within the Jupiter’s magnetic fields forming the so-called radiation belts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1sofzo | why do cell phone companies like verizon and at & t share their networks with page-plus and tracphone, who then offer cheaper cell phone service on the same network? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sofzo/eli5_why_do_cell_phone_companies_like_verizon_and/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"[MVNOs](_URL_0_) license access to the network for many millions of dollars, that Verizon and AT & T pocket without having to provide things like end-user support.",
"These second tier providers (Tracphone, Cricket...) are buying unused time from other companies. Take a Verizon tower for example, lets say it can handle 100 cellphones at a time and only 30 Verizon customers are using that tower. Verizon will let the other company use the remaining 70 spots for a small fee. The problem for these second tier companies comes when you hit peak times, such as between 12-1pm and 5-7pm on a weekday and the tower is now at 90 Verizon users and only has 10 free slots for the other company. If you are a customer with the other company, your call will take longer to connect or may not connect at all because the Verizon customers have priority on that tower. In the end this provides more revenue for Verizon because the infrastructure is already there and not always being completely used by Verizon customers, and for the small companies, they do not have to build any towers, just buy the airtime from Verizon at a reduced rate."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVNO"
],
[]
] | ||
1loasv | could a helicopter actually fly on the inside of a rotating wheel space station, like in the movie elysium ? | I was wondering how centrifugal force would interact with the flight. I did a quick search across reddit and Wikipedia and found nothing on this subject. What happens when an object can take off the ground of the inside of such a space station ?
And, by the way, how come air remains inside since the station is wide open on space ?
[Here's a view of the station, from the trailer.](_URL_0_)
Thank you, reddit ! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1loasv/eli5_could_a_helicopter_actually_fly_on_the/ | {
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"- Yes. The helicopter would actually weigh less the closer to the 'axle' that it flew, but with that in mind it should handle just like earth-normal . . . now, how the pilot would deal with the ground rotating beneath him is a different story, as I imagine you would go a LOT faster if you flew INTO the rotation, and slower flying with the rotation.",
"Sure, why not - helicopters can fly on a rotating Earth. However,there are some forces inside such a station that are not the same as on the Earth, but these would be relatively minor, and the pilot could compensate. Keep in mind that the air is moving with the station, so relative to the ground, it would be very similar to being on Earth.\n\nHow does the air stay in there? Good question.",
"It's all about having an atmosphere, since that's what helicopters need to fly. [This article explains it quite nicely ](_URL_0_)\n\nHere's a relevant quote:\n\n*\"Elysium was that—unlike an airplane cabin—its atmosphere wasn’t canned up in some hollow tube. A landing spacecraft could enter its air like it would on Earth. Like the idea of a rotating space station, holding in an atmosphere without a roof isn’t science fiction, and you can prove it to yourself. All you need is a bucket of water to see how Elysium’s atmosphere could work. Fill the bucket half way and hold it upside down, the water of course falls out. But spin the bucket of water around in a circle and the water stays pressed to the bottom of the bucket; even when the bucket is directly above your head.\"*\n\nNow, how that atmosphere was placed there, and how it would be replenished constantly, that's another question. Hope this helps.",
"The helicopter would be more affected by the second part of your question than the first. As long as there's sufficient air pressure, the helicopter can fly. Once it's airborne, the flight controls would have more effect on it than anything to do with the station's rotation.\n\nIf you think about it, the Earth rotates at a little over 1000 mph. Helicopters can also take off (and land) on moving ships, or even moving vehicles if you found a pilot crazy enough to try it.\n\nBecause the station is much smaller than the Earth, remaining in a stationary point might be more difficult (because the \"ground\" would be moving noticeably beneath it, without knowing the exact speed of rotation it would be difficult to guess how fast... probably several feet per minute, though). But again, that should be something the pilot could easily compensate for.\n\nAs to how the air remains inside the station, I'd assume it's some kind of glass (or clear composite), or is just something they added through artistic license. The [actual designs](_URL_0_) for a Stanford torus are usually fully enclosed."
]
} | [] | [
"https://lh3.ggpht.com/-eoI4BTuzLko/UWVvD5czz-I/AAAAAAAABxE/-c3zdu9glKU/s1600/Elysium+space+station+interior.jpg"
] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/2013/08/15/how-elysium-is-a-carnival-ride-and-why-its-atmosphere-is-a-bucket-of-water/"
],
[
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/elysium-science-space-station-sci-fi-movie-nasa_n_3731041.html"
]
] | |
sm954 | condensation | I leave my cup of water alone for ten minutes, and when I come back it's completely wet on the outside. How does condensation work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sm954/eli5_condensation/ | {
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"humidity is rarely at 0% (absolutely no water in the air). It's in a gasous form, so it has a lot of thermal energy. Water is at a relatively lower state of energy, which is why it's in liquid form. Also in nature, all energy generally wants to be as dispersed as possible\n\nI'm guessing your cup of water is cold, meaning it will be the first to absorb heat from the air. When it gets heat from the air, the air loses it, and it loses it in spots closest to the water, which is the outside of your glass. The water in the air cools, and forms little droplets that you see",
"There is always water vapor in the atmosphere around us, whether it can be seen or not.\n\nAir is kind of like a sponge, it can absorb water vapor. The temperature of the air determines the amount of water it can hold (generally, the warmer the air, the more water it can hold).\n\nThe temperature where a given amount of air can no longer hold a certain amount of water is called the dewpoint. When the air is cooled to it's dewpoint, it can no longer keep the water suspended and the water in it will condense and become visible.\n\nIn the example of your cup. The air in the room has water vapor in it, but you can't see it and it isn't falling out of the air because the temperature of the room air is above it's dewpoint. The temperature of your cup is at or below the dewpoint of the air, so when the air comes in contact with the cup, the air touching the cup cools enough to release it's water, which forms in little drops on the cool collecting surface. "
]
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[],
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] | |
4sf3qx | why does our brain sometimes skip over a misplaced word and correct it when we read over it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sf3qx/eli5_why_does_our_brain_sometimes_skip_over_a/ | {
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"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.\n\n\nI assume it also works that way if you interpret what you are reading as ideas rather than words.\n\nIt's because you are skimming, which is a valuable skill."
]
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[]
] | ||
6ow53p | how do trees which don't produce fruit disperse their seeds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ow53p/eli5_how_do_trees_which_dont_produce_fruit/ | {
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"Pine cones are an example of a \"fruit\" which isn't edible. It's still a cluster of seeds which will fall, perhaps roll, and potentially end up far from the tree. Of course, it's not as effective as a fruit that's eaten/pooped elsewhere or buried by a squirrel, like a berry or acorn. \n\nBut many pine cones only open and \"disperse\" seeds in conditions such as fire... the seeds aren't necessarily dispersed and grown (super successfully) while the \"parent\" is alive, but they're very successful at recolonizing after fires. \n\nMaple trees have \"helicopter\" seed pods which fall slowly and can blow further in the wind than if they simply fell.\n\nOverall, trees grow slowly but last a long time, they can be successful doing many things slowly, such as dispersing seeds a smaller distance. Berries and other smaller plants are less likely to survive the winter and reproduce again, so spreading their seeds widely helps ensure their otherwise-uncertain survival. ",
"As said many trees have seeds that are not covered by something that tastes good (fruit).\n\nSome have very light weight seeds which spread by wind. Others are sticky and get spread by birds.\n\nSome trees have roots that reach out underground and pop up and grow (suckers).",
"They grow fruit. It may not be fruit you want to (or can) eat, but it's still fruit. \n\nThat's if there are seeds. We have a bunch of cultivated trees that don't, and we have to spread them through cultivars. \n\nThere are also trees that spread through root systems, but, again, then there aren't seeds. "
]
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[],
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29ewxn | why is the human tongue so strong? evolutionarily, how did it develop that way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ewxn/eli5_why_is_the_human_tongue_so_strong/ | {
"a_id": [
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"The tongue is something that often gets taken for granted. When you think about it, it is incredibly important for eating. It's main job (beyond speech) is to move food around in your mouth to the optimal teeth for chewing. Moving a piece of food from one side of your mouth to the other is not in itself very difficult, but when you are eating, your tongue is constantly doing this over and over. It takes a good amount of muscle to be able to do this constantly for long periods of time, so your tongue needs to be strong.\n\nIn terms of evolution, it can be put pretty simply: Ability to get food is a very strong evolutionary force. They stronger your tongue, the more, different types of food you can eat, which leads to more caloric intake, which gives you a small edge over others with weaker tongues. Over millions of years, evolution will select for individuals with stronger tongues. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
8k9euu | what determines your instinctual fight/flight/freeze response? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8k9euu/eli5_what_determines_your_instinctual/ | {
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"I worked in a Social Psychophysiology laboratory in college, and this is exactly what we were studying. I've attached a link for the lab, which ironically has a picture of me as acting as a research participant, from when I was in college 10 years ago. Anyway... we wanted to know the answer to this question, and whether being exposed to either negative or positive criteria, before introducing a \"challenging\" or \"threatening\" scenario, would influence someone to fight or flee. For example, one experiment was to have a confederate (someone posing as a participant, but was a trained researcher) planted in a room with a real participant. The confederates spent days practicing Frogger. The game lasted a few minutes, but each game had the same pattern to it. Essentially, we memorized the pattern so we would be able to win or lose, on command. Both \"participants\" were told they were going to challenge each other in a game of Frogger, after they read a news article; the news article would either be positive or negative. Then when the game of Frogger came around, the confederate was given a hand gesture by the lab researcher to advise whether they should beat the person in the game, or let them win. During this entire exchange, the participant was hooked up to electrodes measuring their heart rate and physiological reactions to being challenged (fight) or threatened (flight).\n\nIn short: on a higher level, there are many different factors that could influence whether you fight (positive reaction), run (negative reaction) or freeze. On a much more basic level, this reaction has been retained through evolution, and is present in any animal living in the wild. It stems from an instinct to survive. I would think that your natural reaction of fight or flight would stem from your body's quick calculation of the highest chances of survival.\n\n_URL_0_ \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://ubwp.buffalo.edu/spplab/"
]
] | ||
fawh5i | what's to stop me declaring independence with a section of my own land? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fawh5i/eli5_whats_to_stop_me_declaring_independence_with/ | {
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"You could, but you’re only as independent as you can enforce. The local government can just come by and say, “uh, no” backed up by tanks and planes.",
"Ultimately the force of your nations military, but before that less exciting stuff like laws and the government(s) simply not recognizing your independence.",
"Sounds like you're looking for r/legaladviceofftopic."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
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1km6tg | when does cheese stop being cheese and becomes a "cheese product"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1km6tg/eli5_when_does_cheese_stop_being_cheese_and/ | {
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"It depends on moisture and buttermilk content, as well as what additives are used.\n\n > Pasteurized process cheese food is a variation of process cheese that may have dry milk, whey solids, or anhydrous milkfat added, which reduces the amount of cheese in the finished product. It must contain at least 51% of the cheese ingredient by weight, have a moisture content less than 44%, and have at least 23% milkfat.\n\n > Pasteurized process cheese spread is a variation on cheese food that may contain a sweetener and a stabilizing agent, such as the polysaccharide xanthan gum or the Irish moss colloid carrageenan, to prevent separation of the ingredients. The cheese must be spreadable at 70 F, contain 44 to 60% moisture, and have at least 20% milkfat.\n\n > Pasteurized process cheese product is process cheese that doesn't meet the moisture and/or milkfat standards.\n\n > Imitation cheese is made from vegetable oil; it is less expensive, but also has less flavor and doesn't melt well.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7806sci2.html"
]
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2an3b6 | why do some dogs not eat over their bowl? | My dog will grab a piece, then walk away to chew and swallow it, then go back for more. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2an3b6/eli5_why_do_some_dogs_not_eat_over_their_bowl/ | {
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"It has to do with the \"fitness\" of the dog. i.e., an alpha dog would not do this. This is because in the wild, the stronger dog will have taken a bigger part in the hunting of the food, simultaneously less threatened overall, while the less fit dogs in the pack will likely obtain the \"scraps\" of meat and retreat to eat it without fear of losing it.\n\nIt's instinct and evolution, really.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/why-does-my-dog-eat-his-food-away-from-his-bowl"
]
] | |
104vo7 | how does windows system restore work? | I just accidentally deleted quite a large folder (10GB+). I tried using a few recovery programs to no avail.
After exploring the properties of the folder, I tired using Windows Backup and it restored everything perfectly, including several permanently deleted files.
How does this work and why do the backup files (or shadowfiles) not take up a lot of unnecessary space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/104vo7/eli5_how_does_windows_system_restore_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6ag42t"
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"text": [
"When a file is \"deleted\" in Windows the actual data is not erased as that would take a considerable amount of time for a large amount of data and would be unnecessary unless you were worried about someone recovering the data. What actually happens is windows deletes the information telling it how to access the data (i.e. where it is actually physically stored on the hard drive). That data will remain on the hard drive intact until Windows has new data to save and chooses that space to overwrite. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
13d4yy | what the hell is homestuck and why is it so popular? | I'm afraid to Google it because it seems dumb. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13d4yy/eli5_what_the_hell_is_homestuck_and_why_is_it_so/ | {
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"text": [
"Homestuck is a comic story on the internet a lot of people like. [Here's the website.](_URL_0_)\n",
"A better explanation is [this one by the author](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6"
],
[
"http://mspaintadventures.com/scraps2/homestuckKS.html"
]
] | |
lc9o3 | how people can get arrested for protesting when it's a constitutional right | With all these protests going on in America and elsewhere where the act of protesting is not only a constitutional right, but is highly supported by the government and its people, how are people getting arrested every day?
Are there loopholes certain groups are going through to illegalize certain protests? Or are the protestors actually doing illegal things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lc9o3/eli5_how_people_can_get_arrested_for_protesting/ | {
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"For one, parks have closing times -- for various reasons: to prevent loitering, for cleaning, maintenance, etc. \n\nFor people getting arrested in parks, it's technically not because they're protesting, but rather because some are literally camping out at the park and violating the close times. ",
"No right is absolute. That's the most important thing to remember. The government can curtail them if it has, as the courts say, a 'legitimate state interest' in doing so.\n\nIn New York, this includes keeping traffic flowing, protecting bystanders, closing parks and cleaning them, and laws against homelessness. These laws serve a legitimate purpose.\n\nBut of course, as you've noticed, there is substantial room for abuse. It's an old trick to enforce a law with an ulterior motive, such as 'cleaning' and park and forcing protestors to leave.\n\nThat said, the city has been awfully respectful to these people for the most part, considering that they have been camping illegally in public space for weeks. The arrests that have happened (minus the Brooklyn Bridge - still not sure what happened there) have been mostly deserved, from what I understand. I've heard of students from my university *charging* a police line, and being beaten and arrested. Of course, I'm not sure what they expected.\n\nSo to answer your question - there are loopholes, but the city hasn't been as cruel with them as reddit would have you think. If it was, these people would have never been allowed to camp in the first place. And second, yes - sometimes they have done illegal things, but not often.",
"Like others have said, no right is absolute. For example, your freedom of speech doesn't allow you to exercise it at 2 in the morning at the top of your lungs and while accompanying loud music. ",
"All rights are absolute but rights only protect people from government not people from people. You have the right to freedom of expression, the government can't suppress that (or if they do then they are bad), but on private property that right only exists as long as the property owner is willing to have you.\n\nThe police are moving people on for two primary reasons; Some are on private land (many publicly accessible parks are actually owned by charities) and others are on state land rather then common land.\n\nState land is land owned by the state as private property rather then land maintained by the state for the common.\n\nEdit: If you would like to learn more about natural rights, where our right to freedom of expression originates from, I would suggest [this](_URL_0_) or [this](_URL_1_) (Warning: 8 minute flash video).",
"For one, parks have closing times -- for various reasons: to prevent loitering, for cleaning, maintenance, etc. \n\nFor people getting arrested in parks, it's technically not because they're protesting, but rather because some are literally camping out at the park and violating the close times. ",
"No right is absolute. That's the most important thing to remember. The government can curtail them if it has, as the courts say, a 'legitimate state interest' in doing so.\n\nIn New York, this includes keeping traffic flowing, protecting bystanders, closing parks and cleaning them, and laws against homelessness. These laws serve a legitimate purpose.\n\nBut of course, as you've noticed, there is substantial room for abuse. It's an old trick to enforce a law with an ulterior motive, such as 'cleaning' and park and forcing protestors to leave.\n\nThat said, the city has been awfully respectful to these people for the most part, considering that they have been camping illegally in public space for weeks. The arrests that have happened (minus the Brooklyn Bridge - still not sure what happened there) have been mostly deserved, from what I understand. I've heard of students from my university *charging* a police line, and being beaten and arrested. Of course, I'm not sure what they expected.\n\nSo to answer your question - there are loopholes, but the city hasn't been as cruel with them as reddit would have you think. If it was, these people would have never been allowed to camp in the first place. And second, yes - sometimes they have done illegal things, but not often.",
"Like others have said, no right is absolute. For example, your freedom of speech doesn't allow you to exercise it at 2 in the morning at the top of your lungs and while accompanying loud music. ",
"All rights are absolute but rights only protect people from government not people from people. You have the right to freedom of expression, the government can't suppress that (or if they do then they are bad), but on private property that right only exists as long as the property owner is willing to have you.\n\nThe police are moving people on for two primary reasons; Some are on private land (many publicly accessible parks are actually owned by charities) and others are on state land rather then common land.\n\nState land is land owned by the state as private property rather then land maintained by the state for the common.\n\nEdit: If you would like to learn more about natural rights, where our right to freedom of expression originates from, I would suggest [this](_URL_0_) or [this](_URL_1_) (Warning: 8 minute flash video)."
]
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[],
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[],
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"http://books.google.com/books?id=W96lsqqCZwoC&lpg=PP1&dq=Natural%20rights%20liberalism%20from%20Locke%20to%20Nozick&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false",
"http://www.isil.org/resources/philosophy-of-liberty-english.swf"
],
[],
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"http://books.google.com/... | |
6a15rt | in animal hybrids such as ligers and tigons, why does it matter which animal is female and male? | Why do Ligers and Tigons look so different? The difference between the hybrids being the combination of parent animals. Does this also occur in breeding of domesticated animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a15rt/eli5_in_animal_hybrids_such_as_ligers_and_tigons/ | {
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"Basically the different species have different ways of contributing genes to their offspring. Ligers don't have growth limiting genes because they result from a male from a male lion and a female tiger, and female lions and male tigers respectively donate these genes. This makes Ligers pretty huge. Tigons are small for the same reason, they get growth limiting genes from both parents. Basically it depends on how each species handles the transmission of certain genes and can vary widely depending on what animals you're trying to breed."
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becflc | how does 'building in the water' work for structures such as the hoover dam and offshore oil rigs? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/becflc/eli5_how_does_building_in_the_water_work_for/ | {
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"For the Hoover Dam, they first changed the course of the river so they didn't have to build in water. Then they put the river back to its old course to fill up the reservoir.\n\nOffshore drilling platforms are built in several ways, but some of those ways involve building most components above or out of water, towing them to their final location, and then partially sinking them and securing them to the sea floor.",
"When the Hoover Dam was built, the Colorado River was diverted around the build site. The two tunnels that were dug for this purpose eventually became the spillways.\n\nThere are several ways of constructing an offshore oil rig, but basically you build them like a ship (i.e. on land, in a dry dock) and move them to where you want to drill, and then anchor them to the sea bed. There are several ways the anchoring is done.",
"One of the coolest I have seen was a documentary (on Discovery Channel or something) about building a big ass bridge over a bay or something like that. The had to build a big-ass vertical pipe using sections they could lower from a barge and have divers connect them around where the pilings were to be, then pump all the water out of that pipe, so the could build the bridge pilings. Then re-flood and remove the giant pipes. Pretty amazing stuff"
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2x6yb6 | what makes computer parts more powerful than others, therefore costing more? | What separates say a 970 graphics card compared to one of a weaker parts, in terms of power? Why aren't all parts just the same? Wouldn't that have made a big difference if it had started out that way in the past? Question seems a bit vague imo, dunno how to explain it well. Also first post here, don't judge. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x6yb6/eli5_what_makes_computer_parts_more_powerful_than/ | {
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"Every few years the power of the same sized microprocessor doubles, and so the computing speed roughly doubles. It's called Moores Law, and you can look it up if you like.\n\nAs to why some parts are more expensive than others it they're made at the same time, it's on how much RAM they put on it, how fast the components are, and how new the processes are.\n\nNew smaller designs require more manufacturing steps and have more opportunities for error, so the quality has to boost to compensate, so it isn't feasible to make every GeForce 900 series card using the densest designs. Using designs from the 700 series, but with better design can get the same speeds as the older cards for much cheaper, and using less power.\n\nHope this helps :)",
"Electrons flow and send information. In order to send 30 percent more information you have to have 30 percent more \"electron highways\". Building highways isn't cheap, especially when everyone doesn't need to drive on all the highways. "
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8x0qc4 | does the dna carried by a sperm cell have any effect on the sperm cell's own structure? if so, is it a reasonable hypothesis that a sperm's swimming proficiency is significantly correlated with carrying dna with a high probability of creating a suitable individual? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x0qc4/eli5_does_the_dna_carried_by_a_sperm_cell_have/ | {
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"The germ cells structures is given by the dna information of the somatic cells(the daddys) so every sperms ability to swim is NOT correllated to the information which it is transporting. (Med student)\n\nEDIT: check laderlappe02 pubmed link if you are really interested. even though the article says always that further investigations are needed, there seems to be correlation between transcription rate and fitness! \n",
"I'm no expert, but I've read that sperm don't swim to move forward so much as swim to maintain their place in the moving seminal payload. Therefore sperm- > egg travel is not actually in any way a force in natural selection and the 'best' sperm don't 'swim' any faster or otherwise better to get to the egg.\n\nIntrasexual competition and intersexual mate choice are done on the level of individuals within the species; competition between gametes is not something I am aware of.",
"There used to be a belief that sperm with an X chromosome were larger and slower than sperm with a Y chromosome. \n\nIt appears to have been refuted\n_URL_0_",
"As far as I know, no, the DNA carried by the sperm doesn't effect the performance of the sperm. The biggest factor is the age of the sperm, too young or too old and it's not going to win the race.\n\nBasically which sperm makes it to the egg is mostly down to luck. We're truly a product of random distribution.",
"If I'm remember my Uni correctly, the first sperm to reach the egg aren't the ones who fertilize it. There's a coating on the egg that is dissolved by the head of the sperm, and it takes multiple sperm to dissolve it. If an egg has 50 locked doors, the sperm who unlocks door number 50 is the one that fertilizes the egg. Something like that. ",
"There may be a different resilience to the acidic environment of the cervix. \n\n_URL_0_",
"There is data to support that the amount of DNA that the sperm cell is carrying will affect it’s chance of fertilizing the egg. For example, a sperm that is carrying an extra chromosome 21 (i.e., Down syndrome ) is less likely to fertilize an egg compared to another sperm carrying a normal chromosomal complement.\n\nSource: genetic counseling student",
"There is a evidence for a model called \"selfish spermatogonial selection\" which suggests that sperm carrying mutations in certain genes do grow faster, however these mutations actually cause developmental disorders. It's an issue that increases with age, and can explain why some genetic diseases increase in frequency with the age of the father.",
"I feel like the journey of sperm and the eventual winner to choose the egg is an ideal situation, picking out the best one for fertilization.\n\nMy reasoning is a bit anecdotal: I have noticed that “test-tube babies”/ IVF children are always, always less attractive than natural-born. Every IVF baby I’ve ever met has been extremely homely and not the sharpest tool in the shed.\n\nI know people with personal connections to IVF will argue about me on this, but it’s true. Anyone have any idea *why* it seems to be this way?"
]
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"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440662/"
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"https://www.nature.com/scitable/popular-discussion/679"
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rvumw | how do transformers work, what do they do, and why do we use them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rvumw/eli5_how_do_transformers_work_what_do_they_do_and/ | {
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"Electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin. An electric current running through a wire creates magnetism. A wire moving through a magnetic field creates electricty. There's not much of a difference between a generator and a motor.\n\nIf you switch from DC to AC, you get some more interesting & complex electromagnetic fields. An AC current moving through a coil of wire creates an EM field. Another coil of wire placed next to that will start generating an electrical current. It's technically called \"induction\" but for our purposes, it's a little bit like radio.\n\nA transformer is just two coils placed next to each other. By picking the right size coils on either side, you can \"step up\" or \"step down\" the voltage. A good example is the standard 'wall wart' that runs most electronics. You get 110 volts out of the wall but you only need 12 to run your laptop - a simple transformer takes care of fixing this.\n\nIf you want a visual explanation... Imagine you have 2 fans facing each other. One of them runs, the other just sits there and spins. If you have different sizes of fans, the 'passive' fan will spin faster or slower than the 'active' fan.",
"Basically they are just robots, but in disguise. ",
"Assuming we are speaking of the right transformers, since you are 5 years old,\n\nElectiricity is used, only because it can \"carry\" energy over long distances instantaneously. \n\nHowever, if just two wires are used to carry electrical energy, a lot of problems can arise. Like if you try to sell your book in English, a lot of people in the world such as Chinese/Japanese etc. may not understand. A transformer is like a translator that automatically translates it to Swedish, Spanish or Korean according to the countries your book goes to.\n\n1. Different areas have different electrical requirements, eg, volts, ac/dc etc.\n\n2. Additionally, minimum waste of energy is seen during high voltage and less current.\n\nFor these two reasons, a translator or transformer is required.\n\nA transformer has two coils next to each other from either end. The sending coils' curent makes it magnetic. This makes the neighboring coil magnetic as well and then that magnetism produces current in it. The different aspects of current can be changed via different sizes of coils.\n"
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3xakaj | how are tracking numbers created and how long will it be until ups, fedex and usps run out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xakaj/eli5_how_are_tracking_numbers_created_and_how/ | {
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"Tracking numbers are randomized numbers and letters, typically in a HexDec system that allows for 16 character numbers, and are typically like in UPS's case, 18 characters long following the 2 character preamble.. This equates to a combination that is as follows:\n\n18^18 = DAMN! or 39,346,408,075,296,537,575,424. That alone give you so many different numbers, that it is impossible to run out of tracking numbers. \n\nFor USPS, they use a 20 digit Number system with the first 4 numbers predesignated.\n\nso 4 + 10^18 = 1000000000000000004. That is exactly 1 Sextillion combinations.\n\nTl;DR; we can track everything.\n\nedit for the UPS snob at the bottom."
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1ractz | i'm new to reddit and i just got res. why do so many awesome posts get thousands of downvotes and just a couple thousand more upvotes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ractz/eli5_im_new_to_reddit_and_i_just_got_res_why_do/ | {
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"It's covered in the faq.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > How is a submission's score determined?\n\n\n > A submission's score is simply the number of upvotes minus the number of downvotes. If five users like the submission and three users don't it will have a score of 2. Please note that the vote numbers are not \"real\" numbers, they have been \"fuzzed\" to prevent spam bots etc. So taking the above example, if five users upvoted the submission, and three users downvote it, the upvote/downvote numbers may say 23 upvotes and 21 downvotes, or 12 upvotes, and 10 downvotes. The points score is correct, but the vote totals are \"fuzzed\".\n\nI've only seen an admin come out and give the actual votecount [once](_URL_0_) and then it was the much more reasonable 20 to 1-ish ratio."
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"http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_how_is_a_submission.27s_score_determined.3F"
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2avhj9 | why don't flys leave after encountering life threathening situations such as me waving and beating on all the stuff in the house trying to demolish them? | This really amazes me. Shouldn't they be scared shitless ? Are they really just here to annoy me ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2avhj9/eli5why_dont_flys_leave_after_encountering_life/ | {
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"Some might say it's because they're stupid, but I think it's because they're smartass little fuckers who know there's a pretty good chance we'll get tired of flapping around before we actually hit them.\n\nAlso, I don't think they can remember the way out anymore. That's probably got something to do with it.",
"Consider the possibility of relative time. A fly lives an average of a month according to _URL_0_. That means that when you wave your hand at a housefly, if it takes three seconds of thorough waving and the average human lifespan is ~50 years, that breaks down to more than an entire day, relatively, that your hand is waving at them. That means your hand is pretty slow compared to the fly and the fly's memory. You're an immediate threat at that time, but for the other giant swaths of time that you don't notice the fly, you're just food. The risk that you'll kill them is real, but much more rare than you'd imagine, and definitely worth the risks."
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1y7ili | how somebody names the last name of a road. e.g. central **avenue** does the ending have to do with physical traits, or is it if it rhymes it's good? | For example, I live on Graney Court. Is there a physical trait that makes it a Court? Or, could it have been named Graney Avenue, and it wouldn't make a difference. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y7ili/eli5_how_somebody_names_the_last_name_of_a_road/ | {
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"Some cities will have guidelines, e.g. in Manhattan, \"Avenues\" run north-south and \"Streets\" run east-west. Other times it's purely arbitrary.\n\n*Most* of the time, a \"Circle\" will have two entry points on the same street. \"Courts\" and \"Ways\" are often dead-end streets."
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4azek5 | what's the difference between internet explorer and microsoft edge? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4azek5/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_internet/ | {
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"Edge is a totally new browser, being written from scratch. It is not \"IE12\" as some people like to refer to.\n\nGiven that it is 100% new, it is faster, lighter weight, has better support for newer web standards, more secure, and doesn't have any baggage from 20+ years of legacy Internet Explorer code. Being that it is all new it is letting them do things they couldn't do before because they had to worry about backward compatibility.\n\nBecause of it being brand new, it is still a little limited in functionality. Many people point out how the current public versions don't support extensions, but that will change soon as the preview build does. Also it is limited in other things like you can't search your history, and favorite management isn't good at the moment.\n\nThat said, Edge is a fantastic browser overall, and is regularly updated to keep making it better.\n\nIE11 still exists on Win10 machines to provide legacy compatibility, as some sites require special plugins that Edge will never support (like ActiveX)."
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pg8lz | korean unification | Why wasn't the koreas get unified the same way germany got unified? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pg8lz/korean_unification/ | {
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"1.) **They hate each other. A lot.**\n\n2.) There's a lot more than just a wall. The border they have is the most fortified border in the world. Mines, attack dogs, spotlights, snipers, the whole works. \n\n3.)Who wants to do it? Not the Koreans. If the Koreans don't want to, there isn't a point. The division was by the Koreans themselves.\n\nThe German split was imposed on them by outside parties, Germany itself wanted to unify, and because a lot of people had family on either side and were constantly going back and forth to visit. ",
"Basically:\n\n1: South Korea is a properous Democracy, they don't want to absorbed in North Korea which is a brutal dicatorship\n\n2: North Korea is a brutal dictatorship, if they were absorbed into south Korea, the leadership would find themselves in the Hague for human rights abuses, assuming a Mob didn't murder them first, for the people in power it is more profitable not to be unified."
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467f9d | why should everybody go to university or college? shouldn't it be just the brightest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/467f9d/eli5_why_should_everybody_go_to_university_or/ | {
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"Because most jobs of worth are requiring you to have a degree. And no, having a lot of people with degrees does not devalue them. They are only devalued if the requirements to obtain said degree are lowered. They have not been. In fact most degrees now require 50% more credit hours than they did 20 years ago. ",
"I don't think anyone is seriously arguing for 100 percent college attendance. We still need janitors and short order cooks and welders. However, there are a lot of folks that are trying to make it so that if you're smart enough and willing to work hard enough to stay in schools, cost will not be an impediment to your college attendance, and wouldn't leave you literally crippled with debt. ",
"Absolutely. Best best and brightest isn't the same as richest. Free university with very high admissions standards would reach the best and brightest. Expensive and low difficulty reaches only the idle rich.",
"Techincally, only the brightest and those willing to put all the hard work get the useful degrees.\n\nI don't know in the US, but in Spain there are degrees which will land you a job as soon as you put your feet outside the uni and degrees that will be useless outside of the uni. Usually, those degrees that are useful are harder, and the others are ludicrously easy. So you got this.\n\nGovernment should push to give everyone the same oportunitties to get a degree, because its on the core of a democratic government that each and everyone should have the same oportunitties (at least on the paper) and because, let's face it, not everyone wants to spend the effort and the time (not even talking about the money) to get a degree.\n\nAlso, how do a government value \"who are the brightest\"? There's people who is better on some fields and people who is better on other fields. What happens if someone is \"bright\" in math but despise it? If someone has a bad time on school but is actually a bright guy?",
"Yes and fuck no.\n\nHaving a higher education does not devalue the education in any way, it follows supply and demand so you can argue that with more supply of people having a certain degree will make the degree worth a bit less.\n\nThink about it like this which is a hypothetical, there are 10.000 people with a degree in computer engineering, now you also get a degree in computer engineering, the supply has increased by 1/10000 which is nothing more or less.\n\nSecondly a university degree will give you a far deeper insight into a certain field and there is a high chance you will find something within that field that you will find to be very interesting. So now you have an interest in learning more about something, so instead of watching the third episode of simpsons you will read or study it simply because its fun. And you will spend time thinking about the subject turning it this or that way in your mind because you are interested. And it might happen that you actually make a breakthrough in the field.\n\nFor example Albert Einstein one of the most renowned physicist of all time, was working as a clerk when he wrote 3 papers which changed physics in ways no one had ever thought about before, if he had not done that there is a chance we still wouldnt have GPS, we wouldnt have discovered gravitational waves, its possible we still wouldnt even think of atoms the way we do. All because a Clerk in a patent office had a degree in physics.",
"Everyone should be given the chance or opportunity - whether they actually go or not is completely up to them. I don't see how it would devalue what a degree is since you're not changing the requirements for attaining the degree. \n\n > Shouldn't governments be pushing for only the best and brightest to go to university?\n\nHell no. For one, how do you determine who the best and brightest are? We already have both general and specialized entrance exams, plus agreements between community colleges and universities for transfer students. Also, limiting higher education to only the best and brightest would have the affect of *lowering* upward economic mobility by removing a major avenue for personal betterment. Sure, you could go learn all the same things on your own, but without a degree it doesn't really help you on the job front.\n\n",
"Education has value because it enables a person to do things they could not otherwise. The degree should not be valued because it is rare but because of the skills, knowledge, and abilities it conveys.\n\nThere is no point in limiting something of value simply to keep it rare. Given the ability to improve civilization generally, we ought to use it the best way we can. So the limits on providing education should be those that arise externally, such as costs we cannot afford or that do not return more value than the costs, not limits we create such as restricting education opportunities. So we should endeavor to provide education to fill market demand.\n\nIt may be that the market is saturated in some areas, and that a degree is not worth its cost. In that case, we should not be funding more in that area or should seek to reduce costs. Note, though, that the total value of a degree includes not just what the person produces for society but also the improvement in their own life. Making many people’s lives better is valuable.",
"Thats the system we have in Germany. Basicly there are 3 diffrent school types after elementary school. Only one of the schools offers a degree that allows the attendance at an university. People who finished their degree at the other schools will start an apprenticeship or finish their degree to attend university through trading school. This leads to the degrees being worth more and not requiered for every single job. The majority doesn't attend university here. ",
"**Everybody having a chance to go to university isn't the same as accepting everyone**, however, those accepted shouldn't have to decline because their social status doesn't allow them to pursuit their goal (since as you say, you want the brightest and best, i.e. the first accepted).\n\nHow many getting accepted should ideally be determined by the amount of a given education the country needs in its workforce. It's not good for a country to have a lot university graduates than they have qualified work for, that means some people weren't working and paying taxes but learning something they will not be applying in their future work life, it also devalues the degree for the students since they will be unsure they will get a qualified job afterwards.",
" > If everybody is given the chance to go to university (or college for the Americans) doesn't that devalue what a degree is? \n\nYes. The degree itself is no longer a guarantee of a job, like it used to be 20-30 years ago.\n\n > Shouldn't governments be pushing for only the best and brightest to go to university?\n\nthat's philosophical and up for debate.\n\nPersonally I think there is too much pressure to \"Go to college or be a failure\" Plenty of welders, electricians, plumbers, hell even garbage men make serious bank. Sure it's more physically demanding work but it's good work with good pay.",
"I feel as though any society benefits from a more educated and informed populous. Higher level of education is associated with improved health outcomes and improved life satisfaction. Not devaluing by any means the life decision of those who choose not to go to college, but considering every individual (in democratic societies) have an equal vote/voice in the political process, I see it as only beneficial for that voice to be expressed with the highest level of knowledge backing as possible. ",
"Everybody shouldn't go to unis and colleges. There's this thing called trade schools that is really unappreciated these days but really needs to be more of a thing.",
"Having a more educated population is good for everybody. We should encourage everyone to go to university/college\n\n > doesn't that devalue what a degree is? \n\nThat's why just the brightest get masters degrees. \n\n",
"If everyone went to college, then a Bachelor's degree, for example, would become the new high school diploma. At that point, you'd need people with more advanced, or multiple degrees to really excel professionally.\n\nAll things being equal, society would very likely be much better off if everyone was educated at a college level. ",
"I think the argument is more about allowing everyone access to a higher education if they so choose. It's kinda fucked up for a government to say \"You're too stupid to continue your education.\"",
"Not everyone should go to a university. Everyone should go to (or go into) some form of formal training outside of high school for whatever field you want to work in. If you want to be a tattoo artist, get an apprenticeship etc., if you want to be a mechanic then start an automotive program at a community college, you get the idea. Figure out what you want to do, and then go to wherever it is you need to in order to learn how to do that.",
"A university education is for enriching and developing the mind. Not just acquiring a degree so you can have a more distinguished status. So what you are really asking is: \"should all minds be enriched and developed?\" Yes, yes they should. We need every mind functioning at the highest level it can, even if some are higher than others. And not just for jobs but for general culture, art, and a harmonious society.",
"If you are meaning the push some presidents give for free tuition I have a feeling colleges will need to be more picky and competitive and not accept anyone with a 2.0 GPA who can cut a check (myself).",
"A more educated society in general is an awesome thing. How fucking stupid does it sound to say \"No, not everyone should go to college, because then MY degree has less value!\" Why does it have less value? Because standards are rising? Because in order to distinguish yourself, you have to go to graduate school?\n\nFurthermore, going to college IS NOT ABOUT THE DEGREE, it's about the EDUCATION ITSELF. It's an opportunity to learn, expand your sense of consciousness, and further explore the boundaries of human understanding. Despite the circlejerk, EVERYONE should be entitled to go to college, because getting a college degree is not indicative of anything other than \"this person has *attended* a higher education institution.\" A degree means nothing; the genuine education itself received is everything.\n\nAlso, the \"best and brightest\" will generally rise to the top regardless.",
"Raising the education level for the general population will mainly produce positive results. Take the time period of late 1800s-1900s when public schools were becoming a thing. Instead of most people just being home schooled. Besides with the march of technology, in a couple of generations, many job wont exist anymore or can be done by a machine.",
"This thread greatly confuses me... Everyone should be allowed to go to college, because everyone deserves the right to pursue knowledge. It isn't a matter of \"getting a job\" to me, or \"the value of a college degree.\" Those are side products of attending college. The core point is to expand your education. Given the option, I'd seriously forgo my job to just stay in college indefinitely, as there's always something new to learn. "
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egbrnz | if a power strip has multiple usb ports, why can't they all charge at max power at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/egbrnz/eli5_if_a_power_strip_has_multiple_usb_ports_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"fc5jn89"
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"text": [
"Apologies, but this sounds like a question specific to your power strip that you are asking for a ubiquitous answer for. \n\nA power strip with USB ports can be designed so each port could output whatever power the designer desired and USB supports. \n\nYour specific power strip probably has something like a 5V 10W supply shared amongst all USB ports. Regardless of how many USB plugs are available or how many things you have plugged in, if it can only supply 10W, you'll only ever get 10W out. Maybe that is a 2A draw for one phone or a .5A draw for 4 phones."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
42qsow | if the iss has to periodically boost itself to stop it entering the atmosphere, what stops the moon doing the same thing? | I appreciate that the moon is a LOT further away but would have thought that if under the same gravitation influence then the same would apply? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42qsow/eli5_if_the_iss_has_to_periodically_boost_itself/ | {
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"czcdfhe",
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"text": [
"The major reason the ISS has to boost itself up is not because of unstable gravity, but because of the atmosphere. Even though the gas at the orbit of the ISS is so thin that it's a vacuum for most purposes, it still causes drag that slows down objects in orbit. For low orbit objects like the ISS, it's a serious technical problem that needs to be solved.",
"The ISS is in low earth orbit. There are still wisps of atmosphere at this level and they cause a small amount of drag. This drag causes the ISS to lose a little speed, so also height and it therefore requires occasional boosting. The moon is so far away there is essentially nothing to drag on it. In fact it's getting further away from earth by a few centimeters a year.",
"The Moon is actualy (very) slowly moving away from earth (about 4 cm per year). That is caused because of the tidal forces between Moon and Earth. The bulge of water (and the ground to a smaller degree) is not exactly below the moon and that slowly transfers energy form the Earths rotation to the Moons orbit."
]
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[],
[],
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55wune | how do you outgrow food allergies? i out grew my lifelong dairy allergy at 21. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55wune/eli5_how_do_you_outgrow_food_allergies_i_out_grew/ | {
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"text": [
"Allergies are still being studied but we know that you don't have to be born with the allergy and that you usually become sensitized to the allergen in early childhood. Your body may become sensitized when small exposures introduce the allergen and your immune system becomes primed to attack it. This can be dangerous because what gave you a mild itch before, might now put you in the hospital with no warning. \n\nWith subsequent exposures over many years, the immune response may fall and the reactions become less severe. \n\nSometimes you develop the allergy much later in life so it's an ongoing process. I became allergic to nickel metal well into adulthood and a single exposure can give me burn marks for weeks afterwards. Which sucks because nickel is everywhere in belt buckles, buttons, watches, coins, etc. ",
"I am not an immunologist, but I have a few milder allergic reactions. An allergist told me that I seem to have a sensitivity to particulates and some chemicals especially scent bearing (benzene ring bound aromatics? I don't remember). Anywho, this doesn't make me qualified to speak on this really, but, from what I've read, the immune response isn't entirely understood in that we can say, aw yes that did it or that does this. That is to say, they have found correlations and some causations, but there's still some problems that can't be answered. For instance, they just released a study showing that we probably should be introducing babies to peanut based foods while they are breast feeding by having the mother pass some of those proteins to the baby as well as early on in their development. I guess they found the bodies of kids who are not exposed to it are identifying the protein as a threat but their bodies are not attuned to responding well and yadda yadda cytokine storm and stuff. Whereas some people get exposed to too much of a substance, although not an abnormal amount for some other people, and subsequently start giving off immune responses to the offending allergen. Those are some general guidelines, but our bodies behave in stranger ways than we currently understand. Why you were allergic to milk, meaning not lactose intolerant but rather actually allergic to milk protein, and are now healed is beyond me. My poor mother-in-law has had similar situations her whole life and no one has had a good answer as to why once in a while certain things on her panel will disappear and reappear later. It has even been excluded from exposure. ",
"I am not an expert at all, but the theory regarding allergies that so far made the most sense to me is that roughly every seven years or so your body changes (hormone levels etc.) and that can also cause to more or less suddenly have new allergies, as well as lose existing ones.",
"I have read somewhere that there are actually clinical treatments for food allergies. They start off by giving the patient something non-allergic then mix some of the allergy-inducing food into it.\n\n* Example, you are allergic to peanuts. For the first treatment, they will give you cereal with NO PEANUTS (control variable). After a set period, they will now INTRODUCE YOU TO THE ALLERGEN; after 1 week of eating cereals with no peanuts, they will now give you cereal with 0.01g of peanut (smallest plausible value is used, this is just an example) for 1 week. \n\n* If you don't show any allergic reactions, they will now INCREASE THE PEANUT CONTENT (for example, up to 0.1g), and continue from there until you can fully tolerate the allergen."
]
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[],
[],
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a4n2tv | why can't we breathe with one lung and exhale with the other to maximize effectivity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4n2tv/eli5_why_cant_we_breathe_with_one_lung_and_exhale/ | {
"a_id": [
"ebfw2u7",
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7
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"text": [
"Because both lungs are operated by the same muscle. Apart from that, you would need two independent air vents so you could inhale and exhale at the same time, we are equipped with one.",
"1. Both vent through the trachea. Inhaling exhaled gases wouldn't provide enough oxygenation over time. \n2. The diaphragm spans the entire chest cavity and is incapable of contracting on only one side at a time. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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4cpa9z | why are button batteries so expensive? | they are so teeny-weeny small yet so expensive | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cpa9z/eli5_why_are_button_batteries_so_expensive/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1k94me",
"d1ka1tm"
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"score": [
5,
3
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"text": [
"Very often, miniaturisation *does* make things more expensive. \n\nHowever, I think you might simply be shopping in the wrong place. You can get packs of 20 LR44 button cells for well under $10 (or even 100 of them for slightly over $10) - it's a matter of shopping around. ",
"Common button cells contain silver or mercury for the cathode reaction. As silver is an expensive metal, and mercury a fairly expensive one too, the cost of production rises, and so the cost to consumers is too"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
26xvts | why do we have the urge to spit (and feel better after doing it) while we are running or doing some sort of physical exercise? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26xvts/eli5_why_do_we_have_the_urge_to_spit_and_feel/ | {
"a_id": [
"chvizlp",
"chvjox0"
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"score": [
4,
2
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"text": [
"When you're exercising your body starts reallocating water, due to being under physical stress. So your saliva ends up being thicker.",
"When you exercise your body prioritizes the muscles you're using during the exercise and you also lose a significant amount through sweating, to the point where you are so dehydrated your body stops contributing water to make saliva (so it's thicker). This is what gives you the urge to spit, and is also why when you spit after a run it's gooey and drips from your mouth.\nThen you drink loads of water and water balance slowly is restored (yay)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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24lanf | what are the disadvantages of a high torque but low horsepower engines? | For example: diesel engines tend to be very torque, but only at a very limited set of RPMs and quickly lose torque when revved too high. This means they have very low horsepower.
Would this cause slower acceleration than say a car that has the opposite characteristic? (low torque but can rev very very high and thus squeezes out high horsepower)
Say there are a few cars assuming the weight is the same, and the engineer is free to choose the best gear ratios for the car:
1. Reaches very high torque at 1k rpm, but redlines at 3k
2. Reaches peak torque at 7k, redlines at 10k. (A very peaky curve)
3. Reaches peak torque at 2k, torque curve is flat until 5k and slowly drops off a bit until redline at 7k.
Of these 3 engine characteristics, which one will have the best acceleration? The best top speed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24lanf/eli5_what_are_the_disadvantages_of_a_high_torque/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch8duvf"
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"text": [
"You would think #1 would have the best acceleration to start out from a standstill, and in theory it would. However, in a car with high horsepower at high RPM you would typically just rev up the engine and drop the clutch. You can actually get the best acceleration out of a performance car by breaking the tires just barely loose from the road (not peeling out, just a small amount of slippage) so this all works out very well.\n\nYou would definitely get the best top speed from the high-horsepower engine. And it would likely be the fastest overall, as long as you were okay with lots of gear shifts and burning out your clutch and replacing tires on a regular basis. But this is what performance cars are for - having fun.\n\nThe flat torque curve car would perform very well and be much easier to drive. This is similar to a Corvette - a high performance daily driver car.\n\nYou might think that with enough gears you could make a high performance car out of the high torque engine, but it just doesn't work like that. Horsepower is a measure of actual power delivered to the driveshaft and is equal to torque times RPM. Having 500 lb-ft of torque at 1k RPM only delivers half as much power to the wheels as 100 lb-ft at 10k RPM. \n\nLow-RPM engines with a lot of torque are best at pulling heavy loads. Think of a train for example - if you put a high-RPM high-horsepower engine in a train and tried to rev up the engine and drop the clutch you would just sit there in the station burning rubber (iron?). Same thing for towing a boat, pulling a trailer, etc. Steam engines (like a train..) and electric motors (most trains nowadays are diesel-electric...) have max torque at 0 RPM which is exactly what you need to get a heavy load started moving.\n\nAnyway, back to cars. The main \"problem\" here is that there is only one way in a combustion engine to get high torque at low RPM, and that is a high engine displacement. That means more weight. There are however many ways to get higher horsepower at high RPM, that don't require you to put a big heavy engine block in the vehicle. Of course most or all of these upgrades do nothing to detract from the large engine's torque at low RPM so you get the benefits of both.\n\nSo if you're talking about performance cars here is the choice:\n\n1. Big, heavy engine with lots of low end torque but not a lot of high-tech, expensive, tweaky (unreliable...) components to get high horsepower. These cars tend to have good initial acceleration but so-so top speed and mediocre handling due to the heavy engine and low technology overall (Camaro, Mustang, classic American muscle cars)\n\n2. Small, light engine with turbo / supercharger, intercooler, DOHC, variable valve timing, fancy intakes and exhaust manifolds, 4-5 valves per cylinder, etc. Emphasis is on weight savings, high horsepower, and handling (Supra, Lotus, some Ferrari and Porsche)\n\n3. Large, heavy engine with high low-end torque AND many technological upgrades for high-end horsepower as well. These would be your \"supercars\" and are usually prohibitively expensive for most people (McLaren, Lamborghini, high-end Ferrari and Porsche, some would argue the Corvette especially the old ZR1)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
38spex | how did astronomers calculate the orbits of planets in the early 20th century simply by observing via telescopes? | What kind of math is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38spex/eli5_how_did_astronomers_calculate_the_orbits_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"crxiogz",
"crxj2hm"
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"score": [
2,
7
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"text": [
"Yeah, these were calculated in the early 17th century. You can read about some of the math involved in the [wikipedia entry](_URL_0_) about it.",
" > simply by observing via telescopes?\n\nHow do you think we do it today? ;)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion"
],
[]
] |
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