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59l15b | why does society in general not appreciate highly skilled music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59l15b/eli5_why_does_society_in_general_not_appreciate/ | {
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"You can intricately craft a piece of cheese to look like a house, doesn't mean it will sell on the market. What sells is not related to intricacy, manual dexterity or even compositional skill. It's just what people want or are told to want.",
"Because the value of art is entirely subjective. People don't necessarily want highly skilled music.",
"People listen to music for all sorts of reasons. The level of technical skill is pretty low on the list for most folks. \n\nRegardless, I urge you to branch out in music some more. I just went to a sold out metal show at a major theater last night... Some damn well crafted music with lots of technical difficulty there. Everyone can listen to all music on Earth these days. You can't wait for things to come to you. But trust me good music is still alive and in much more than just bars. ",
"Recognizing skilled musicianship is *itself* a skill, and one that relatively few people are trained in. The qualities that we dub \"skill\" might be things like physically demanding playing, or logically intricate composition, but neither of those is obvious to the untrained ear listening to a recording.\n\nEven among those who can recognize and appreciate that skill, skill alone doesn't have a causal relationship with the facets of a piece of music that people seek. Someone might listen to music to get pumped or to relax, to focus or to relish nostalgia, to feel happy or sad - and none of those are necessarily related to any great skill.",
"TL;DR: Being a successful musician is more about communication, and personality than the music itself.\n\nIt's all in how you define a great musician. You're looking at it solely in terms of performance skills, and / or the ability to understand complex music theory. However, to a truly great musician, their performance skills, and understanding of music theory are really just tools they use. So, there's nothing that prevents \"the greatest guitarist of all time\" from making it big time, but the question is are they really that great a musician?\n\nIt's often said that the audience doesn't give a damn how hard it was to play. This isn't completely true. The audience cares how effective the song is at conveying something to them, be that an emotion, a message, or just a desire to dance. Complexity can be used as a tool, or it can be ignored.\n\nThere's more to bieng a successful musician than bieng able to play very challenging pieces, or even write very complex melodies. It's more about the effect the music (and their stage presence/persona) has on the audience than the music itself. So, it's not that society doesn't appreciate highly skilled music, it's that a lot of people underestimate the skill of popular musicians.",
"The same reason why anheuser busch still has 90% of the beer industry market shares. When almost all craft breweries make better beer. The same reason why subway does so much better than that kick ass Jewish deli downtown. The same reason people drink cinnamon shnapps mixed with redbull over a scotch on the rocks. It's because good taste is a SKILL and it takes TIME. It's why you won't see a 16 year old girl listening to jazz while drinking a dirty martini. It takes a desire to educate yourself on quality anything. Woodworking, vehicle engineering, art ect. It takes DESIRE, which is the biggest problem. having to go out of your way to rent or read books. Track down and conversate with people that have knowledge in that field. It also takes MONEY to go out of your way to learn something in and out. I could go on for hours on the subject but I don't want to be in a Reddit hole all night. But I think it boils down to being uneducated, having inheritly bad taste, and not caring that Justin beiber is being force fed down your throat everyday. I can already hear your comments on this, especially the last part. \"Opinions blah blah blah, you're an elitist blah blah blah\" "
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5tf25m | why do some companies print their products expiration date in code instead of an easy to read format? | _URL_0_ for an example | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tf25m/eli5_why_do_some_companies_print_their_products/ | {
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"Which companies specifically? So far I have only ever seen clearly readable expiration dates like \"end of 10/2019\" or \"23.10.2017\".",
"That's not an expiry / best before date. It's a lot number. \n\nIn case of complaints etc. it allows the company to know which production batch the pack is from. This allows them to investigate any problems more easily and trace where units have gone if they need to recall a batch due to e.g. finding out there was a problem with one of the ingredients. ",
"It's a lot number, mostly because the product doesn't have a proper expiration date (they are NOT required to have them for most products).\n\nAnyways, usually you use lot numbers to include more information than a simple date, for example, if you have 5 factories, each with 5 production lines, and they can each produce different products, the lot number will usually include specific production dates, locations, and details that will assist in doing a recall (where simply a date isn't enough, it doesn't identify what vat it was in and in what factory). Frequently they'll use base-36 numbers in it to shorten the code as well (so they use day of year instead of month and day, converted to base 36 so it can be printed in 2 characters)."
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4ev2y0 | why do some people born and raised in new york develop the new york accent and others don't? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ev2y0/eli5why_do_some_people_born_and_raised_in_new/ | {
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"I believe you get the accent when everyone else around you has it. Some people are born in NYC but, there parents and their friends parents aren't natives."
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10aykb | why do we borrow money from china and give it to countries like pakistan | How exactly is the juice worth the squeeze? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10aykb/eli5_why_do_we_borrow_money_from_china_and_give/ | {
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"We don't do anything similar to that.\n\nWhat you're referring to is bond sales and foreign aid, two topics that are merely tangential to each other.\n\nForeign aid is a topic in diplomacy and international relations. It's got both moral and pragmatic dimensions to it. On the one hand, the moral argument goes that those who have more should do more. It's pretty simple, and no different really from the basic moral arguments for charity or generosity … or even hospitality, when you get right down to it. The pragmatic argument is that foreign aid prevents conflicts.\n\nDeficit spending is a *completely* different kettle of fish. It basically works like this: There are two ways, generally speaking, in which governments can fund their activities. One is taxation, and the other is the sale of bonds. All extant governments (worth talking about, anyway) use both of these methods in combination. Taxation is just what you think it is: taking money from the populace through the authority of law. But there are obvious downsides to that approach, both philosophical and economic. So taxation only gets you so far.\n\nBonds, however, are clear-cut. When a government wants to spend some money — whether it be on buying an aircraft carrier or paying the salaries of a police force or building a school to replace a madrassa in, yes, Pakistan — it issues a series of bonds and sells them on the open market. Anybody can buy bonds. In the United States, about half of all the outstanding Treasury bonds — nearly $8 trillion worth — are held by the government itself, one agency buying bonds from another in order to move money from bank account to bank account. So those really don't count, in any meaningful sense.\n\nOf the rest of the bonds, the largest share — about $4 trillion — is held by *us,* the American people, in one form or another. Over $1 trillion of that is held by individual US citizens who have bought and own US Treasury bonds as personal investments. The rest is held by domestic institutions, like mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, state and municipal governments, commercial banks, credit unions and so on.\n\nAnd the other quarter? That's held by those same kinds of holders — institutions, private citizens and governments, and most prominently central banks — in other countries.\n\nSo what about China's share? China's central bank holds about a quarter of the foreign-held US Treasury bonds — the largest share held by any one party, but just 8% of the total sovereign debt.\n\nAnd *why* does China's central bank hold US Treasury bonds at all? Because US Treasury bonds are more valuable than yuan. The Chinese central bank can do a better job of managing China's economy if it converts as much of its cash reserves into negotiable instruments of stable value, and US Treasury bonds are the most stable negotiable instruments on the planet. If the US didn't sell Treasury bonds, China's central bank — as well as the central banks of Japan, Brazil, the UK, Switzerland, Taiwan, Russia and all the other economies that currently use the dollar as their preferred reserve currency — would just go shopping for the next best investment and put their money into that instead.\n\nSo long story short? The US sells Treasury bonds — \"borrows money,\" if you like, though that's a really misleading way of looking at it, since it implies we're talking about personal debt — because there's a *huge* demand for them, and the revenue from bond sales lets the US do more each year than it could do if it relied on tax revenue alone. Since the American people generally agree — at least right now — that their government should be doing more rather than less, the sale of bonds is a very lucrative way of funding all those extra activities that we couldn't do if we just spent tax dollars.\n\nAnd yes, one of those *myriad* extra activities is building schools to replace madrassas in Pakistan."
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1thw43 | what is "exactly" happening to your body when you get up to quick from lying down? | And by that i mean, when you get up to quick from lying down which causes your vision to be dizzy and everything around you feels distorted for a short while. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1thw43/eli5_what_is_exactly_happening_to_your_body_when/ | {
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"When you're lying down, your heart is not pumping very hard, since most of your blood is on the same level (it doesn't have to pump much blood upwards, against gravity). When you suddenly get up, then your body is upright, and most of the blood starts flowing downward, due to gravity and your heart not pumping very hard. It takes a little bit for your heart to start pumping harder to fight gravity.",
"This is called Orthostatic Hypotension. This is basically low blood pressure, seeing as you are laying down, your heart doesn't need to beat that fast because your blood is only being pushed along, but when you stand up, gravity will pull the blood down from your head, causing the dizzyness and everything around you feels distorted for a short while. then you heart beats faster and you blood vessels constrict to compensate for pushing the blood vertically through your body in order to keep you brain supplies with blood. This is a normal thing that happens to everyone, but with severe cases it can be a sign of an unhealthy heart. Look here (_URL_0_) for more details."
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2eonhd | this christopher langan quote | "You can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics"
Is he saying that mathematics can give answers, or does is this just him saying that God doesn't exist and there is proof in math?
I'm hoping this quote has a deeper meaning to it...
bonus: any other intellectual quotes that do have a deeper meaning that you can share with me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eonhd/eli5_this_christopher_langan_quote/ | {
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"It means that he's a bit out of touch with reality.\n\nHe's created a complex \"theory of everything\" that lets him \"logically\" prove the existence of God. You can logically prove *anything* if you start from the wrong initial assumptions.\n\nIt's intellectual masturbation.",
"It's a dude stating his personal belief. He believes in God, he believes in math, and he believes there's a correlation between the two of them. \n\nAs for your bonus, have some [Alan Watts](_URL_0_), courtesy of /r/alanwatts."
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5iwxb6 | why medical professions are the highest paid? | not to put down medical professions, but other professions don't even come close to how much they earn.
[here's a list of the top paid jobs in america](_URL_0_) for instance, the list is pretty gridlock on medical professions.
I always thought lawyers, policemen, firefighters were paid just as much but I was wrong
edit: not sure if economics flair or other | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5iwxb6/eli5_why_medical_professions_are_the_highest_paid/ | {
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"It's all about supply and demand. Becoming an expert in a particular field of medicine requires a lot of school and a lot of training, so there are relatively few people who are able to do the job, but doctors are in high demand since everyone gets sick and medical care is incredibly important to people. Compare that to something like a police officer, for which there's a fairly large amount of demand but basically any able-bodied person is able to do the job, and you can see that the pay doesn't need to be anywhere near as high to fulfill the need.",
"They are in high demand and short supply. It takes *years* of very expensive schooling to become a licensed medical professional, and you really do not want to settle for a surgeon who is cheaper but sub-par. Most other professions, even if they take a lot of years to be *good*, you can still do it while you're getting there, and the learning process may take a lot less [expensive] formal education and more getting paid to do it while you learn.\n\nThat means medical professionals can charge more for their services because you need them, and you need it done well. Just like you can charge more for gold because it's rare, and in the case of electronics, other cheaper metals can't do the job. But it also means medical professionals *have* to charge more because they have a lot more student debt than many other professions. Sure, when you just look at their income it's impressive, but when you look at their loans coming out of medical school, it's a lot less impressive. ",
"Being doctor requires a lot of expensive, time consuming training. Most doctors are in their early 30s before they complete their education and can begin practicing. That constrains the supply of doctors, and the growing and aging population increases the demand.\n\nIn comparison, law school is easy. Currently there is a glut of law school graduates who can't find jobs in the profession.\n\nI think cops and firefighters in big cities can probably do very well if they max out their overtime, but if you average out their salary across all the cities in the US it probably drops a lot.",
"A fair question might be to ask if there are other developed nations where physicians are in similar demand, yet have compensation similar to other essential services.",
"In addition to the supply and demand answer in this thread, there is a catch with how that list is written. The different types of doctors are listed separately. That means instead of just taking the top 2 spots (doctor and dentist), they take the top 21 spots. Comparatively, CEO is just one job. Lawyer is just one job (instead of prosecutor, criminal defense lawyer, environmental lawyer, etc.) \n\nAlso, don't forget that pretty much anyone can start a small business and call themselves a CEO. There are a lots of struggling lawyers. But the top paid CEOs and lawyers make way more money than the top paid doctors. It's just that the average doctor makes more than the average CEO, lawyer, or any other profession, and that list shows averages.",
"It's because there's artificially limited supply of doctors via government mandated residency caps. \n\nQualified people can't just easily become doctors, like docs from overseas. \n\nIf you limit supply, demand goes up. \n\nThere's no restriction on other jobs."
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czoe6l | why is gun prohibition different than drug prohibition? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/czoe6l/eli5_why_is_gun_prohibition_different_than_drug/ | {
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"Well, we haven't tried it in the 'states so everything anybody tells you is gonna be \"in theory\". In general, it is harder to make guns than it is to make drugs. You can't grow a gun from another gun's seeds, or distill it from grocery products. It takes very little technology and know-how to grow pot or make booze when compared to smithing a gun. Not only this, but things like gunpowder (at least the smokeless modern stuff that makes mechanically complex semi-automatic weapons possible) are really difficult to make at home. Could you make a musket from some pipe and some stump remover? Yes. Would it be dangerous? Probably more so to you than to the people you're shooting at. In terms of imported guns (\"from mexico\"), there is no way that current supply lines could bring in enough guns and ammo to stock an entire country's worth of criminals. Guns are big, bulky, and made of metal which is easier to detect than organics. Twenty pounds of gun is worth a lot less than twenty pounds of coke, and it takes up way more space. Certainly, well-off baddies with real power would be able to get guns, but your average thug couldn't."
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42eell | why does soap cut through grease? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42eell/eli5why_does_soap_cut_through_grease/ | {
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"Water is polar, and grease is not. Therefore, rinsing a greasy object won't do much, as the water will run over it and not interact. Soap is amphipathic, meaning one end is polar and the other is non-polar, allowing it to bind to both. The soap gets carried away by the water, dragging the grease along with it.",
"Soap spent many years enlisted in the military. Soap remembers the day he met his recruiter, remembers shaking his hand. Soap remembers the first day he was dropped on alien soil. He remembers the fires all around him and the screams of his fallen brothers. Soap also remembers running away from his comrades under fire and deserting the battlefield. He remembers very vividly the time he spent in prison when he got back. He remembers pulling his gun on the man at the bar who tried to fight with him. He remembers that mans face every night when hes asleep. His face still haunts soap. He also remembers loaning $10 to grease to get those headphones he liked. Grease didnt pay him back so he cut him.",
"Water is a polar compound. What that means isn't something you can easily explain to a 5-year-old, and it kind of doesn't matter in this context. Just know that water is polar. \n\nGreat is nonpolar. \n\nLike dissolves like, meaning water will dissolve other polar stuff, like salt and [sugar](_URL_1_) and vinegar (aka, acetic acid). Water *can't* dissolve nonpolar stuff, like grease and wax and oil. This is why you have to shake a bottle of oil and vinegar dressing before using it. Nonpolar stuff can only dissolve nonpolar stuff. For example, a styrofoam cup is nonpolar, so if you put it in a bucket of water, it wouldn't dissolve. But it *will* dissolve if you put it in a bucket of acetone.\n\nSince grease is nonpolar, you can't just run it under the tap and clean your dish. That's where soap comes into play. [Soap has a polar head, and a nonpolar tail](_URL_0_). The nonpolar tail is able to dissolve the grease because both are nonpolar. But they don't like the water, so all the tails group together. The polar heads like water, so you end up with a tiny sphere of soap called a micelle. Inside the micelle are all the nonpolar tails, and a little bit of grease. This happens millions or even billions of times when you're washing something. And, when you rinse the soap away, you also rinse the tiny globs of grease away."
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1y6ytk | what are the silica gels they put in new clothes and why are they telling me not to put it in my mouth? | I'm tempted to do it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y6ytk/eli5_what_are_the_silica_gels_they_put_in_new/ | {
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"It dries stuff out. It is apparently an irritant but I don't see anything super dangerous in the [Material Safety Data Sheet](_URL_0_). It will not be pleasant though."
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32kd22 | how come when you wish to play a game on a system like ps4 all you need to do is put the cd in the system it plays, but, when want to play a game on the computer you have to first download and install everything from the cd on to the computer? | Haven't had a computer that wasn't a tablet in probably 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this was no longer the case. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32kd22/eli5how_come_when_you_wish_to_play_a_game_on_a/ | {
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"PS4 installs games on the hard drive just like PC. Its just because discs are slow. Loading from your HDD/SDD is gonna be faster",
"Back in the day, consoles lacked hard disks to install games onto. During that time, games were run from the disk. This causes MUCH longer load times as it takes forever to read data from a CD/DVD/Blueray compared to a standard hard disk.\n\nDuring the PS3/Xbox360 era hard disks became much more common and console users were able to install games and get better load times. The old legacy way was preserved so that people could play in the manor that they were accustomed.\n\nThis process happened decades ago for PC games. Long before the invention of the CD-rom computers had hard disks to install games onto. You could still play some games without installing them (I did this with Civilization 1), but the experience was better if you installed.\n\nAt some point before CDs were common, games outgrew floppy disks. A high tech 3.5\" disk only holds 1.44 mb. Most games took 3 or more disks, so at that point you basically have to install.\n\nSo PCs had the requirement to install while consoles were still using cartridges. "
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6bl5j1 | why is licorice, a very herbal and unfruity flavor, so often included with fruit flavored candies? | Things like Jujyfruit, jellybeans, etc
I'm not anti-licorice, just perpetually perplexed by this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bl5j1/eli5_why_is_licorice_a_very_herbal_and_unfruity/ | {
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"It's also full of sugar. I suppose it adds a nice contrast, like coffee in most boxes of chocolate.",
"It's a matter of taste, and history of it being prevalent. Cardamom is another example of something more on the herbal side of taste that has been used forever in candies. Coffee has been used to flavor candies for a very long time as well. \n\nIt's one of those flavors people seem to either like or not, I dislike black licorice, but I have family who absolutely crave it. Tastes from person to person vary wildly. I like basil on a lemon custard, some would find that grotesque."
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3rcbkr | how is television broadcasting structured in the usa and what do terms like "syndication" and "networks" mean? | As a non-American I find it difficult to wrap my head around the way TV broadcasting works in the US. I keep on hearing terms like "syndication", "networks" etc. and am confused as to what they mean or why these structures exist. Bonus question: What's with broadcasting stations in the US always having these weird four letter acronyms like WKNY? Cheers! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rcbkr/eli5_how_is_television_broadcasting_structured_in/ | {
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"You have many local stations that are often independent of any large companies those stations have those wierd four letter callsigns. Those are almost always affiliated to one (or even multiple, that might happen in very rual areas) of the large national networks, what that usualy means is that they will show the networks progamming during primetime and might use the networks programming to fill any gaps they have during the rest of the day. Syndication is when one of those small stations buys the rebroadcast rights to a show and runs it as part of their local programming.",
"When we say television network, we usually mean a network that can be received over the air. Networks like ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox send a satellite feed to local stations, or affiliates. This feed will have ads that the network has sold. The affiliates then broadcast it in their area, and will insert ads that *they* have sold. Most of these stations are not owned by the network, but are separate companies who have signed a contract giving them the exclusive right to broadcast the network's shows in an area.\n\nSpecifically, US law limits how many broadcast stations any one company can own, so it's impossible for a broadcast network to own all of its affiliates.\n\nSometimes the word \"network\" is used to describe a channel completely distributed by satellite and cable companies. I won't go into that because I imagine you're familiar with that concept.\n\nAs for the letters, it's the call sign of the station. Every broadcast facility in the world has these -- every TV station, every radio station. But in the US, these stations are *required* to identify themselves by their call sign at regular intervals, so most stations incorporate the letters into their branding as a key part of their identity. In many countries, broadcast stations aren't required to identify themselves with their call signs -- but they have them per international agreements.",
"In the USA, the commercial broadcast stations more or less operate as individual business and broadcasting entities. Most stations affiliate with a network. Many are owned by non-network media conglomerates, some are owned by the networks. If a cable or satellite TV provider has a dispute with one of the conglomerates, you will sometimes see all the stations owned by the conglomerate pulled from that provider, until the dispute is settled.\n\nA network is an entity which provides a schedule of programming to them and other stations like them, but only for part of the day (usually morning (to 9 or 10, afternoon (soaps), evening, late night, and a national evening news.\n\nSyndication is what the individual TV stations often use to fill time.\nThe simple explanation is that syndication is were production companies sell lower cost programming directly to individual stations, rather than provided by the network. It can be first run (judge shows, some talk shows, some game shows), or re-runs (shows that have ran at least 4 seasons.)\n\nThe letters are call signs. The stations are required to identify themselves by the callsign, so they can identify transmitters. The call signs are assigned by the FCC, (typically K west of the Mississippi, W to the east). Stations could choose vanity callsigns, quite often the NYC an LA stations W/K and the network.\n\nWhy stations/networks? mostly a business thing I guess, keeps stations local and accountable to to the community, and local jobs.\n\n \n\n"
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9o9af5 | can someone eli5 these time-is-an-illusion theories | I keep seeing this in Pop-science magazines. That time is an illusion, created by our consciousness, as an attempt to order the world. But I can't make head nor tail of the articles.
If they were saying that the way we perceive time was a construct, I could almost understand that. But they do *seem* pretty insistent that it's time itself which is am illusion. I'll never understand that unless it's explained like I am five. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9o9af5/eli5_can_someone_eli5_these_timeisanillusion/ | {
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"e7sg4vx",
"e7sh776"
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"score": [
2,
2,
3,
2
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"text": [
"This doesn't make sense to me because as humans, we perceive time based on proven theories. i.e. the Earth revolving around the sun and the 360 degree rotation of the Earth on it's axis.",
"Honestly, this is one of the best explanations I've heard for it:\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\n\n(Actual Explanation starts at 1:05, clip is from Agents of SHIELD)\n\nI think when people say time is an illusion, they are referring to how we perceive the fourth dimension as time. I find this, with his visual aid, really help me understand the basic idea of time.",
"Quantum mechanics is a really well proven theory, and it has made exquisitely precise predictions which have been validated. It seems super good, except for one thing, it's inconsistent with general relativity. That's a bummer, because general relativity has also made a lot of precise predictions which have also turned out to be correct.\n\nFrom a math perspective, the cause of one disconnect is that GR operates on a 4-dimensional spacetime with 3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time. QM operates in a different sort of 3-dimensional space, filled with quantum fields, but not time as a dimension.\n\nThere are a limited number of way to \"fix\" this, and one of them is to say \"What if QM's right and the Universe is 3-dimensional?\". If you take that position, then what's this \"time\" element of GR? The Quantum Loop Gravity folks are among the folks going down that road, trying to find a replacement for GR without time in the equations. \n\nIt's possible, but not generally accepted, that QLG is right; so there is no reason to even think about this unless you're a pretty esoteric theoretical physicist. That doesn't stop Pop-Sci folks from writing articles about it, and mostly managing to confuse of their readers. You could stop reading this rubbish, but that's just my personal opinion.",
"Dude, awesome question. I'm not qualified to answer but here is my two cents. \n\nTime is a human invention that we use to describe and quantify change. It's an incredibly powerful and intuitive invention because it fits so well with how our brains experience change but it nonetheless doesn't have any physical meaning. You can't grow time, or synthesize it in the lab. All you can do with it is use it to describe what is happening to you and around you. But outside of human consciousness what happens? Without the need to talk about the present, past, or future things go on forever. Sure, the earth orbits the sun a bajillion more times and mountains crumble then our star blows up. But then the cycle repeats. Maybe forever. So, without a conceivable beginning and probably no end how can time be real?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOb1Yghbpxk&ab\\_channel=MichaelK",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOb1Yghbpxk&ab_channel=MichaelK"
],
[],
[]
] | |
2r3ph5 | difference between all of russia's sub-divisions...federal subjects, oblasts, krais, etc. | The differences in autonomy, dependence, government organization and so forth, as they relate to the Russian Federation. All seems very convoluted. Wikipedia of little help.
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r3ph5/eli5_difference_between_all_of_russias/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnc6cis"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"Republics, krais and oblasts are three main kinds of federal subjects.\n\nRepublics are national states, they have presidents instead of governors, have a secondary official language (Chuvash, Tatar, Dagestani...), have their own **constitution** etc, they are basically their own countries that are not owned by Russia and can leave at any moment (not really).\n\nOblasts and krais are not considered their own countries, they are simply parts of Russia. There is no legal difference between [krais](_URL_0_) and oblasts, it’s just flavor."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krai"
]
] | |
2ngofg | why didn't nasa leave the space shuttle in space docked to the iss? | If the problem with the Space Shuttle program was that it was very expensive to maintain the shuttles after every re-entry and it needed a lot of fuel why then on the last mission of each shuttle did they not just leave them docked on the ISS and take a Soyuz back down. Or ust on a few missions i.e. leave 1 or 2 shuttles up there.
It would have been a great way to expand the volume of the ISS (even if most of the shuttle wasn't pressurised they had stuff like spacelab which they could change to permanently fix to the shuttle for example) and it would be really cool to have a bunch of Space Shuttles permanently docked! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ngofg/eli5_why_didnt_nasa_leave_the_space_shuttle_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmdgdqn",
"cmdgmyt"
],
"score": [
3,
7
],
"text": [
"well, [this](_URL_0_) is how space shuttles were docked to the ISS. doesn't look like it would leave a lot of space for other modules.\n\nbesides, i don't see what the benefit of docking a shuttle to ISS permanently. The ISS is buildt to fit modules, who perform very specific tasks, while not drawing enough power. \n\nLiving space isn't really something that is relevant on a space station.",
"The shuttles were not designed for long durations in space, the heating systems, power systems, life support etc were only supposed to last for a few weeks at a time, then be taken apart and serviced on the ground.\n\nSpace station components on the other hand have to be designed to be taken apart and serviced while still in space, with the tools that the astronauts have to hand."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.ergaerospace.com/images/data/images/iss1.jpg"
],
[]
] | |
7su3k4 | how long is a sleep cycle and how many does the average person need? | I frequently stay up way too late for various reasons and want to find out how many sleep cycles the average person needs to wake up feeling rested. I have heard that once you build up a sleep debt, you can’t really get rid of it, so I figure I should at least determine what a healthy number of sleep cycles would be. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7su3k4/eli5_how_long_is_a_sleep_cycle_and_how_many_does/ | {
"a_id": [
"dt7hi6i"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"A sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes and during that time we move through five stages of sleep. The first four stages make up our non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and the fifth stage is when rapid eye movement (REM) sleep occurs.\n\nTo clarify, over the course of the night, the body will go through this five-stage cycle four to six times, spending an average of 90 minutes in **each** stage.\n\nIt’s worth calculating your sleep efficiency to determine whether your sleep patterns are harmful or helpful for the day to come. \nWe consider 85% as normal and really good sleep efficiency is above 90%. \nFor example: You go to bed at 11 p.m. It takes you 25 minutes to fall asleep, and you wake up 3 times for 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 5 minutes again. You wake for the day at 6 a.m."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
2txlnp | facebook knowing what i search on another computer. | Today I was looking a some fence post on a computer, I got home and looked on my news feed on Facebook (on my mobile device) and see an advertisement from Lowes showing the exact same fence post I was looking at and going to buy. Does this mean that even if I'm not physically logged into Facebook on that device, meaning that I don't have a tab open with Facebook it is still grabbing what I do online? Furthermore it almost seems like Facebook is now a web ID. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2txlnp/eli5_facebook_knowing_what_i_search_on_another/ | {
"a_id": [
"co38hb5"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Ah, this is simple. Basically, if you have signed into Facebook on that computer then boom, you're tracked. If you have not but have used sites that also link through to your facebook, then BOOM, tracked again. If you have used google and you have facebook then you have used programs/apps that will track, store and replicate data on a different computer.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nDon't think you logged into to anything.. Most people are not even aware just how much data is tracked and kept associated with your identity.. You are watched through cookies and other \"temp\" data every single time you do anything online.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nScary.. But really it's all about targeted ads and better tailoring to a user, their service.. Also the NSA may creep in once in a while but totally only if you're a terrorist.. Shit I just used two keywords in one post..\n\n & nbsp;\n\n[Interesting Article](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/09/opinion/ghitis-google-privacy/"
]
] | |
8bt87c | when one eye gets irritated, why is the body's reaction to blink both eyes instead of winking the irritated one? is there a reason winking is a manual function? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bt87c/eli5_when_one_eye_gets_irritated_why_is_the_bodys/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx9fpv0",
"dx9j5bj"
],
"score": [
11,
3
],
"text": [
"Without going TOO deep it’s just an innate, automatic, “consensual reflex” to protect your eyes. When one eye blinks the other should too. \n\nWhen someone has an eye injury we usually patch it/cover it to protect it, that way your body’s (other eye’s) automatic response to “flip out” and over-blink to remove the threat to its partner is suppressed so that the injured eye isn’t being further irritated bye the over-compensation. \n\nThat’s why winking takes effort, it’s an voluntary choice you commit to either eye. \n\nHope I explained that decently. ",
"You're asking a \"why doesn't\" biology question, so it's hard to give a definitive answer, but...\n\nBlinking probably evolved very early in vertebrate eyes--perhaps simultaneously with eyelids. Autonomic responses are very deeply wired, and there has probably never been any selective pressure (evolutionary advantage) for automatic winking. Blinking works well enough to protect mammalian eyes, and costs virtually nothing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
dn4pum | why do most of us still have to work 5 days a week if productivity has been increasing for decades - shouldn’t we all be able to produce what the world needs and earn a living in only two or three days? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dn4pum/eli5_why_do_most_of_us_still_have_to_work_5_days/ | {
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"text": [
"Because most of the added economic value goes to the share holders, managers and upper class. They live way better than the upper class lived 100 years ago, but the middle and lower class have almost the same quality of life.",
"purely opinion:\n\nTL;DR; Possibly a complex subject, but in short instant gratification (I want things now) and greed to increase profits (I want more of what I already have) which is instilled by social norms.\n\nI want more..\nLet's take a company for example, if you work 5 days a week 8 hour a day, you can produce 1 item per day. So that is a total of 5 items a week, if each item costs $1 to make and is sold for $10. Your output for the week amounts to $50 (total revenue) - $5 (cost to make) == $45 profit. If you only worked 4 days a week the company would produce one less item a week and scale this up over a year + number of workers in that company, this could amount to a lot of missed profits.\n\nI want it now..\nNow let us look at I want things now, if people are working less for instance a UPS delivery driver. Your Amazon order might not be delivered in 2 days for prime shipping. Would this effect the company's I want more.. output? Therefore, you'd have to work more days in order to meet the same output.\n\nCulture,\nCapitalism promotes the harder I work the more I 'could' achieve. Thus, it is brainwashed into society to work more and more to achieve greater things. If we produced just the bare minimum would our society slow or would development stop? But this contradicts social norms and human nature forces us to want the best of the best for ourselves, almost a survial instict.",
"For several reason\n\n1) Our Standard of living increase over time. Our lives are better than the live of people 100 years ago. Now of course depending on where you live the additional wealth could not be distributed equally. \n\n2) The number of days and hours we work per week did indead decrease over time.\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) \n\nHere you can see that most industrialize countries from around 60 hours a week which was usually 6 days a week, 10 hours a day in the late 19th century, dropped to around 40 hours a week (5 days a week 8 hours a day). And these days we see an increase of job of 37.5 hours per week or even 35 hours a week.",
"In short, many other factors have increased too. Great, you’ve figured out how to make Widget 1.0 faster, but now you want to make Widget 2.0 another 50% better/faster/cheaper, and more people want it. And the cycle goes on.",
"In short - consumers today need stuff 24/7 so staff need to be available to supply demand. \nDoes anyone remember half day Wednesday where shops closed at midday and working on Sunday’s didn’t happen ? That all changed with the internet our great grandfathers would be horrified at how little time we spend with family today .. it’s all about work now no time for fun or family and so the family has mental health issues and people cannot cope .. the world is a mess. We seem to have forgotten the fundamentals to living healthy and mindful"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours"
],
[],
[]
] | ||
4kzt17 | why does sour cream water up when we leave it alone for a little while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kzt17/eli5_why_does_sour_cream_water_up_when_we_leave/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3j3f9a"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Just stir it back in. It's essentially the same thing as whey, the liquid part of milk that is left over after milk is curdled into cheese or cream. It just separates over time, at a guess I'd say the solids are heavier and settle down and the liquid floats to the top. You can dump it but I find the sour cream is more dry and stiff if you do, breaks the nachos and we can't have that. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
oxvhf | carried interest...break it down for me, and why should i care? | _URL_0_
After reading the article above, it really didn't convince me to care, or really break it down. I suppose I'm a stupid five year old. :)
Someone did a really good job of explaining [shorting stocks](_URL_1_)--something like that would be cool.
But the more compelling question: why should I care? Why is it a good/bad thing?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oxvhf/eli5_carried_interestbreak_it_down_for_me_and_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3kxp58"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"I will try to explain. I used to work for a very small private equity fund. I wrote this fast at work.. please excuse the typos. \n\n\nThe main parties in a private equity transaction are (i) the management team of the underlying company in which the fund is investing, (ii) the investors in the fund, also called limited partners and (ii) those who manage the fund also called the general partner.\n\n\nThe general partner typically gets 20% of any profits returned to the fund (this is the carried interest… they fund has a 20% carried interest in any profits the fund makes). Also, the fund managers will charge a 2% management fee. This is the most popular structure of a PE fund. Around my former work place we called it a “two and twenty” structure. I won’t get into management fees, but think about it… assuming a $100 million dollar fund, at 2%, the management team gets paid $2 million per year (no matter what the outcomes of their investments are).\n\n\n\nEXAMPLE:\n\nLet’s assume you own a pizza shop (the target company). I (the PE Fund and general partner) heard about your pizza shop and decide to do some research on it. After doing a bit of research, I think you are managing the pizza shop poorly. Since I (the fund and general partner) happen to be a pizza expert, I think I can buy the pizza shop from you, make it more profitable and then turn around and sell it for a profit. \n\n\nI offer to buy your shop for $100 dollars. You agree. Since I only have no money to my name I go out and borrow from my friends (limited partners). My friends agree to give me the $100 bucks to buy your pizza operation. A year goes by and I turn the pizza place into a cash-cow-pizza-making-machine. Pizza Hut approaches me and offers me $500 bucks for the pizza shop. I oblige and sell the operation for $500. (this is pretty basic, there are also mgmt fees involved and such)\n\n\nHow will the $500 be split up? Well, under the typical private equity partnership agreements… $420 will go to my friends and family (the limited partners) and $80 will go into my pocket as carried interest. The $80 is my carried interest. It is my success fee for finding the target company, making it more profitable and selling it for a profit. \n\n\n\nWhy should you care?\n\nWell, currently carried interest is taxed at 15% (the same as long term capital gains). People are basically saying that the general partners and fund managers are making too much money on these private equity transactions and; therefore, the tax rate should be higher for such investments. \n\n\n(Note: Let’s say I bought 1,000,000 shares of google stock a long time ago at a $2.00/share. Today it’s trading at about $570.00. When I sell the stock I pay 15% taxes on my investment…the same as carried interest) Is that too much or too little?)\n\n\nQuestions??? \n"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/24/mitt-romneys-sweetest-tax-break-the-dirty-little-secret-of-car/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jgz4a/eli5_short_selling_stocks_explained/"
] | [
[]
] | |
3zzdmo | if a person has a lazy eye does the eye look at whatever its pointed at? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zzdmo/eli5_if_a_person_has_a_lazy_eye_does_the_eye_look/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyqa1cg",
"cyqaams"
],
"score": [
20,
11
],
"text": [
"Yes, but most of the time the brain will learn to ignore the input from that eye. Without this suppression, the person would always be experiencing double vision since the two eyes are looking at different images, which is obviously very visually disturbing and why it is often suppressed. If this happens at a young enough age while vision is still maturing, that eye often will not develop vision properly and will not be able to see as well as the normal eye, however. ",
"I have this condition. What happens is that information from one eye reaches the brain slightly slower than the other eye. To compensate, my brain chooses to only process the information from one eye at a time, resulting in monoscopic vision. Some people have a dominant eye that they use all the time, while others like me alternate between both eyes. The \"lazy\" eye is blocked out. Strangely enough, this isn't always the case and sometimes both eyes behave normally.\n\nTL;DR - Nope, the \"lazy\" eye is as good as dead."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
abixgz | why do people see themselves as uglier than they actually are? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abixgz/eli5_why_do_people_see_themselves_as_uglier_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"ed0kpmk",
"ed0let8",
"ed0lr8q"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"Because we are our own biggest critics. \nWe look for our tiniest flaws. We look for the smallest imperfections that others don't really pick up on. Then we tend to judge ourselves by those little flaws. Nobody's perfect ",
"I also find I forget what I look like. Or I remember a more idealized version of myself. Or something. There is always a moment of adjustment when I first look into a mirror.",
"My answer is more specific than your question but I hope it helps. \n\nIf you think you look horrendous in pictures and better in the mirror, it’s because you’ve never seen your true self. What you look like in your head is actually your mirror image, which is flipped. When you’re confronted with a photo of yourself, you’re looking at a reversed image of what your brain recognizes as your face. The difference is startling to your brain. \n\nIn some study (forgive me can’t find link) they showed subjects their camera image and mirror image. Almost all subjects rated the mirror image as more attractive. But when their family and friends were presented those images, they chose the camera image as more attractive- the one their brains are used to. \n\nIf you think you’re ugly in the mirror too, my guess is that you’re looking for flaws, which strangers or loved ones wouldn’t do. But I don’t know the actual psychology behind that. Another guess for me is that since most people think they’re generally above average in all regards, when they look at themselves and see “average” it hurts the ego and makes them feel much more ugly than they are. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
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] | ||
xb1l1 | why does my internet perform much better on a test than when actually downloading something? | On _URL_0_, my download speed was around 60 megabits/sec. However, I'm currently downloading an actual file at around 1.15 megabytes/sec. I know that 60 megabits needs to be divided by 8, so I should have 7.5 megabytes per second, but I'm still missing 6 megabytes. Halp? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xb1l1/eli5_why_does_my_internet_perform_much_better_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5ksigs"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"There are a number of possible reasons:\n\n1) The server you are downloading from does not support 60Mbps speeds.\n\n2) Your ISP detects that you are running _URL_0_ and gives you maximum speed for it. But, less speed for everything else. This is actually pretty common. Try a lesser known Speedtest through https, to see if this is your issue.\n\n3) Cable ISPs give you \"up to 60Mbps\". This mean that your internet will get noticeably slower when more people in your neighborhood are online. And, you will likely never get the full speed except on _URL_0_.\n\n4) A combination of the above."
]
} | [] | [
"speedtest.net"
] | [
[
"Speedtest.net"
]
] | |
1lhmod | why does it seem easier to drag or push something along the ground than it does to carry it? | When helping a friend move, I noticed that it was preferable to drag or push heavy boxes than it was to carry them (even the ones that aren't terribly awkwardly shaped.) Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lhmod/eli5_why_does_it_seem_easier_to_drag_or_push/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbzcfj4",
"cbzf5ws"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"When you drag/push, you can use your body weight to help by leaning into it when you push or leaning away from it when you drag. Also, you don't have to combat gravity and only have to worry about moving the box laterally. ",
"Because your muscles have to work just to hold up weight against gravity.\n\nFrom a physics perspective, supporting a weight requires no work/energy. You can leave a box on a shelf and the shelf will hold it there without requiring power or energy to do so. Work is force times distance and, since the shelf is not moving the box any distance, it's not doing any work. But human muscles are inefficient and when they're exerting a constant force just to hold something stationary, they still use energy and get tired. They have a zero work output but require energy input and the difference comes out as heat.\n\nNow dragging a box along the ground is going to have more friction to overcome than if you just carried it and that will make for harder work. There's a balance to be struck between the effort required for a person to pick up the object versus the extra work required to overcome dragging friction. How big and awkward is an object to pick up and what are the friction characteristics of the object and the surface it has to be dragged over? People tend to be good at finding the easiest way by trial and error. Or they bring a trolley."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
3jquzq | how do fox shows like the simpsons and family guy get away with slagging off fox so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jquzq/eli5_how_do_fox_shows_like_the_simpsons_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"curi8ci",
"curj4is",
"curmv3p"
],
"score": [
11,
4,
2
],
"text": [
"I would say because they are two of Fox's most popular shows, therefore they make them alot of money, so they would rather be the butt of a few jokes every now and then than cancel the shows and lose money. ",
"James L. Brooks (A producer) negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content.",
"When the Simpsons and family guy first started fox was so desperate for a new original show they gave up a lot for them. Including jokes being made about them or questionable content/remarks "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] | ||
5okb2u | why are there people against the development of renewable fuels and energy sources? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5okb2u/eli5_why_are_there_people_against_the_development/ | {
"a_id": [
"dcjxlkt",
"dcjxp38"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because they've bought into the notion that these are simply leftist plots to destroy the economy, and that without fossil fuels, everyone will be out of work and we'll be back to using flint-knapped spears and living in caves. Because, of course... humanity couldn't possibly develop industry based on around new energy sources, and there would never be new jobs. \n\n\n",
"pretend you have a lemonade stand, you have to go out, find the ingredients, mix it, and you make a product that people need because it's hot. You open several lemonade stands because more and more people want/need your lemonade. Then, someone comes along with a lemonade stand and all they have to do is hold up a bucket and lemonade just falls in, you'd be mad because they would soon take your business especially since everyone finds out that while you're collecting and mixing ingredients you're shitting all over the sidewalk, the store, the lemonade stand and them and they only found out because the person who opened the other lemonade stand pointed it out "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
4a8ks1 | canadian investing. bonds, tfsa, rsp, etc... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a8ks1/eli5_canadian_investing_bonds_tfsa_rsp_etc/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0yal48"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Eli5. \n\nCanadian bonds: you loan money to the government who invests in canadian businesses, in exchange, the government will guarantee interests of a few percents come good times or bad times.\n\nRRSP: you give your bank money that you will only get back when you retire(in exchange, the government will take the money you deposited in that year and take it off your year income come tax season. \n\nTSFA: you give the money to a bank and the **MONEY YOU MAKE OFF THIS ACCOUNT** will not count come tax season. \n\nSo Ben gives money to dad so he can buy some groceries, in exchange dad promises to give back more money.\n\nDavid puts money in a piggy bank and tells his dad it's for his first car when he gets out of school. In exchange, dad will tend to help him with a bit more money when he needs it. \n\nSteeve puts his money in helping his friend run a lemonade stand, since the friend gives him his money back and he saves it. Dad feels he earned the extra money so he stays silent about it and keeps. Buying him stuff."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
31xbtd | - why taking long showers or brushing your teeth with the faucet open waste water? | First of all, I don't waste water, I am truly concerned with my impact on the environment. That being said... I really don't know why people say that taking long showers, or brushing your teeth with the faucet on wastes water. The way I see it is: once used, the water travels back to the sea/river and the process starts again. The explanation IM guessing is that because the filtering process consumes energy, the filters work on gas and that contributes with the greenhouse effect and that is harmful for the environment. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31xbtd/eli5_why_taking_long_showers_or_brushing_your/ | {
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"The source of your clean water and the location where your wastewater ends up are rarely the same. Water treatment plants can recapture SOME wastewater, but the rest is lost, dumped into the sea (where we don't get drinking water from) or downstream for the very reason that we don't want sewage in our water supply. It depends greatly on where you live, but commonly fresh water comes from snow melt and rainfall replenishing natural or man-made aquifers, and not being drawn from a river.",
"It doesn't waste water as in the water is gone. But it wastes precious potable water. Lots of people on this Earth don't have access to safe for consumption water. Letting ours just go down the drain for nothing is exactly like throwing away good food.",
"The water might come from a fresh water source like a river or lake, but end up in the ocean and become salt water"
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90dbxc | seriously, what's the appeal in the "illuminati" triangle eye design? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90dbxc/eli5_seriously_whats_the_appeal_in_the_illuminati/ | {
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"It's not the design of it that makes it what it is, it's the history of its use. Somebody started it - now it's a thing. That's just how memes are.",
"It's not on the US money \"for the lulz\". The eye in a triangle symbol is **The Eye of Providence** and represents the eye of God watching over us, a symbol with roots back to the 17th century.\n\nIt's on the Great Seal of the US, the coat of arms of many countries, and also was used by the Masons. The connection to the Masons is where the later illuminati & conspiracy bullshit comes from, but the Mason's didn't put the eye of Providence on the Great Seal of the US, the Masons started using the Eye of Providence as a symbol *after*",
"\"The Eye of Providence (or the all-seeing eye of God) is a symbol showing an eye often surrounded by rays of light or a glory and usually enclosed by a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing the eye of God watching over mankind (or divine providence).\"\n\nLifted directly [from Wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically, the eye is meant to symbolize the omnipresent nature of God, and the triangle symbolizes the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Over time, the triangle was stylized into a pyramid, and light beams were added around the eye.",
"I once had a client who was a big conspiracy theorist. I was building a mobile app for him so I put the pyramid image from the dollar as a 1% transparency layer overlaying the main page graphic, so that you could only see it if you tilted the screen a certain way.\n\nProbably not the answer you were hoping for, but I'm drunk and this reminded me of that. Never did find out if he saw it or not but it was part of the app for a couple of years."
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2hp8qf | the concept behind the new finding that, mathematically, black holes "don't exist". | Does this just mean that they really shouldn't exist? Or that they really don't exist and we've been looking at something else all these years? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hp8qf/eli5the_concept_behind_the_new_finding_that/ | {
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"It's not a new finding. It's a claim that has not been peer reviewed.\n\nI could blog that I'm the highest paid actor in the US, and then disable comments on that blog post.\n\nThe tl;dr on that paper is that they posit when stars collapse (would normally be in the process of creating a black hole), the amount of Hawking Radiation they emit would make them lose so much mass that they couldn't become a black hole. \n\nThat's the new bit, the amount of Hawking Radiation, and that difference being enough to stop the formation of a black hole.",
"Yes, a good question; I'd assumed Black Holes were like negative numbers, a useful concept - but with a physical correlative. Please enlighten, someone.",
"I did not hear anything about that \"finding\". Do you have a link to an article or post explaining the foundation for that claim? I'd like to take a look.\nWould have to be pretty damn solid to disprove black-holes.",
"The idea is that black holes form when a star's gravity outweighs its fusion and it collapses into a supernova. This leaves behind insanely dense objects called neutron stars. But, if the original star was big enough, it will collapse even further into a black hole. Stephen Hawking predicted and was validated in his prediction of Hawking Radiation, which is energy given off by the black hole. E=mc^2 tells us that mass and energy are basically the same thing, which means black holes are effectively losing mass. The paper in question suggests that the amount of radiation is too high, and the black hole should never form in the first place because it gives away enough of its mass that it wouldn't collapse into full black hole status.\n\nIF the math holds up and isn't an error or a misunderstanding of how Hawking Radiation works, then the calculation suggests that stellar-mass black holes (meaning similar mass to the sun) should form in some way we don't understand yet. This is likely not the case, as there are lots of other mathematicians that seem pretty confident in calculations done for the last several decades.\n\nIn either case, this should have no bearing on larger black holes, which form through other means. And, just to put this to rest, it doesn't mean black holes don't exist. They are physical objects in space, and we can observe them. We have pictures. The Hawking Radiation and the accretion discs around them are super visible. Black holes are real.\n\nYou also might hear about something Hawking said last (?) year about how black holes don't exist. This was a soundbyte. What he meant is that the event horizon (the distance from the black hole past which everything, including light, gets sucked in) is funkier than we thought. We used to think everything that goes into a black hole stays there forever. Hawking did some math that suggests it comes back, eventually, and that the event horizon as we previously understood it doesn't take full account of quantum effects. Again, black holes are real. They're just complicated and weird. \n\nYou might also hear people saying that this changes our understanding of singularities, which means we have to rethink the Big Bang. No. We. Don't. As I read on a cosmology FAQ from a UCLA professor, \"a black hole is a singularity through all time at a single point. The Big Bang was a singularity through all space in a single moment. They're nothing alike.\" Yeah. Have fun with that one. And even if the singularities were similar in concept, the scale of the mass of our sun is a liiiiiiitle different than the scale of the universe. This paper will affect nothing of Big Bang Theory.",
"\"[the paper] has not been subjected to peer review. Earlier this year, she published a paper with approximate solutions.\" \n\nIt doesn't seem to be proven, and not even peer reviewed yet. This could be wrong.",
"1. IIRC The idea mentioned 'that information cannot leave our Universe \nis a Paradigm rather then a Law.\nRemember that time 'stops', (Reverses?), at an event horizon.\n\n2. Black Hole 'Hawking temperatures' get lower, not higher, as the mass increases. It's the small ones that \"can't exist\".",
"Based on our current understanding of physics, the numbers work out that black holes will not form.\n\nThis doesn't mean that black holes don't exist. It just means our current theories are likely flawed."
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big5cm | how do radio waves "carry" so many different types of information? (e.g. for tvs, navigation, computer networks, communication, mobile phones, etc.) | Having a hard time wrapping my brain around this one | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/big5cm/eli5_how_do_radio_waves_carry_so_many_different/ | {
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"The key is to understand that a carrier wave can be changed by the signal you want to send and that on the receiving end, the signal that was used to change the carrier signal can be obtained again.\n\nThe progress of changing the waves is called **modulation**. There are a few different ways it can be done.\n\nA common type of modulation is **amplitude modulation** (AM). In amplititude modulation the amplitude, the height of the wave, is changed according to the information we want to send. Sending bits, ones and zeros, a higher amplitude could mean \"one\" and a lower amplitude could mean \"zero\". On the receiving end, the signal is received and changed to changes to something humans can understand.\n\nAnother type of modulation is called **frequency modulation** (FM) which means that the frequency is changed similarly to the amplitude with AM. In layman's terms, the frequency of the wave shows how rapidly the wave moves up and down.\n\nAM and FM are quite simple types of modulation. In wireless communication the router and network cards use far more complicated forms of modulation, mostly **Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex** (ODFM). ODFM is a type of modulation that uses multiple carrier waves of different frequency to simultaneously carry information. Explaining ODFM in detail is very difficult because it would very soon involve some complicated mathematics.\n\nEdit: Rearranging paragraphs."
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2cs86b | what's the best way to protect my computer and my identity from hackers and "dox"ers? | I play a lot of online games, and I recently discovered how easy it is to snag someone's IP address from merely playing with them. I know that there's not much you can do with it, but you can still get DDoS'd and I would rather know how to protect myself against these malicious people. I understand that, by playing, I kind of accept and acknowledge the dangers, but at this point, I really don't want to quit playing because of paranoia. Understand?
I feel I'm computer literate, but only in the basic sense of the word; I studied computer programming in college for a year before switching my major to something less technical. I'm able to keep my computer free of malware, and I'm quite careful when it comes to websites I visit. I've never been phished.
I have a friend who had his identity stolen a few years ago, and the thought of it happening to someone closer is just terrifying. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cs86b/eli5_whats_the_best_way_to_protect_my_computer/ | {
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"The way that I've done it (which has so far done well for me) is the normal procedure for not acquiring malware.\n\nDon't use paid-for antivirus software, Microsoft Security Essentials (which is now windows defender) does a fine job. That's as much as I can give you, though, just keep doing what you're doing and you should be fine. I doubt that anyone would DDoS you of all people, since typically that is reserved for higher-priority targets.",
"\"doxing\" is usually done by looking up information on the Internet. For example, if I wanted to dox you, I would look through your Reddit posting history and note down any useful information that you unwittingly provide. I would then search Google for your Reddit username, hoping to uncover accounts on other websites which may provide more information. In fact, I just did that and it took me about 3 minutes to find your YouTube channel, your twitter account, your Playstation network account, your Google+ account, your Minecraft forum account and several others. Fortunately you don't have much of interest in any of these accounts.\n\nTo avoid doxing, you should be very careful about what information you're willing to reveal online. Don't willingly fill out profiles with things like your location, age, e-mail address, links to your twitter account etc. Try to avoid using the same user-name everywhere, and if you must put some of your personal information online (e.g. on Facebook, on a job search website, on your YouTube channel etc.) then try to separate your online presence into two completely distinct entities: your anonymous presence for things like forums or gaming, and your personal presence for sites that you're willing to give personal information to. Make sure there's as little as possible to link these two identities together; you don't want some random people on Reddit to find your personal Facebook page. For those sites that you do give personal information to, and for those which support it, ensure that the security settings are turned up high.\n\n---\n\nAs for DDoSing, sometimes being open to that possibility is unavoidable in peer to peer gaming, but it's not really that big a deal and not something to worry about. The worst case scenario is that you really piss off some script kiddie and he points his botnet at your IP for a few days. Even then, sometimes you can get a new IP just by disconnecting and reconnecting to your ISP by resetting the modem. The vast majority of kids who would threaten to actually DDoS you probably don't even have the capability to do so, or even understand what it means; they probably think that if they just ping your IP a lot then that'll be sufficient when in reality it wouldn't even be noticeable on your end."
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30ibkh | why have intel and amd no presence in the mobile market? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30ibkh/eli5_why_have_intel_and_amd_no_presence_in_the/ | {
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"when apple made the iPad, which is basically the windows of tablets (meaning that it is the default one most people have), steve jobs begged intel to make a 5 watt version of their atom processor but they refused. so he went to the company that makes ARM processors and basically told them what he wanted and they made it.",
"Because embedded CPU manufacturers already had a presence and technology in the mobile field. They already had designed platforms for low-energy, cheap integrated processors when smart phones became popular. ARM Holdings and Qualcomm are the two big guys, with Motorola being a runner up.\n\nThey're already ahead of the game, so AMD and Intel are content in their current industry.",
"Intel is getting into the phone market with their latest Atom processors < _URL_1_;\n\nIntel also have their new Quark processors < _URL_0_; for very low power applications like watches.",
"The more power efficient architecture wins in the mobile-market where high-performance is not a requirement.\n\nIntel and AMD use the x86 architecture which is CISC based.\nCISC can do a lot of multi tasking on a single core but needs more power to do those tasks.\nRISC can only do one calculation each cycle this means for it to do multi-tasking it needs more cores but it overall takes low power.\nMost mobile processors use the ARM architecture which is RISC based and highly power efiicient.\n\nIn total Intel's architecture was built on the idea of high-performance not power efficiency.\n\nThe present day x86 processors typically use 20nm or 34nm manufacturing processes and typically use 25 watt or more power but to make the x86 processors more power efficient the only way is to miniaturise the transistors so they use less power. Intel was able to build processors with about 5 watt power requirement by using 14nm manufacturing process in their Atom and Core-M range but that is not enough to compete with the the highly power efficient RISC architecture. \nThe most high end 3-Ghz octa-core Armv8 processors need only about 3 watt of power compared to x86's 5 watt requirement. Mid-range ARM processors only use 1 watt of power.\n\nIn RISC there is no need to highly miniaturise the processor to obtain efficiency as they are already efficient and they are easy to design because of single memory pathways. \n\nIntel or AMD will only be able to gain more market in mobile processors if they get license to the ARM architecture and develop ARM architecture processors.\n\nAMD already licensed ARM architecture and soon planning to release its Desna range of ARM processors."
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1eb5rb | vatican secret archives | Why does it exist ?? Are the protecting something?? Are they hiding something ?? What could that possibly be ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eb5rb/eli5_vatican_secret_archives/ | {
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"They aren't very secret. My ex had access to them as a historian (while I wandered around Rome, which was a blast), and so do thousands of other researchers.\n\nIt's mostly just private papers. Personal letters to and from popes, accounting stuff, diplomatic correspondence, that sort of thing. Nothing earth shattering except to academic specialists in a few pretty narrow fields.",
"It's an umbrella term for \"Vatican important stuff that's not open to the general public.\"\n\nLots of people have access to different parts of the secret archives, you just need a reason. The Vatican (or at least the last few popes) have been remarkably good about letting researchers have access to these documents, as much or more so than most secular governments. \n\nThese archives contain everything from papal diaries to political correspondence, in fact there was a letter penned by one of Abraham Lincoln's assistants, signed by Lincoln himself, addressed to the then-pope, found in the archives recently (for example). \n\nThe secret archives are, for the papacy, like the attic is for your aunt, sure, there's probably some cool stuff in there (maybe a hidden gem here or there), but for the most part it's your cousins science projects and English homework from 1st grade on. "
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5kunpj | why exactly do we have a "dominate hand" and what purpose does it serve? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kunpj/eli5_why_exactly_do_we_have_a_dominate_hand_and/ | {
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"Think of your body like a role playing game. As you do things with your arms you get skill points. Now you can either split those points up between your left arm and right arm and have 2 average arms, or you can dump most of those points into one arm and have a really good arm and a mediocre arm. \n\nThe body doesn't waste time and energy learning the same thing twice but some people can use both arms equally well. "
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2wc3rf | two of my cats are mother and child. they are both adults and interact with each other in the same way that my other cats do. are they still aware of their maternal bond? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wc3rf/eli5_two_of_my_cats_are_mother_and_child_they_are/ | {
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"In short - we can't know for sure. We can extrapolate animals' knowledge or awareness of kinship bonds by things like preferential 'kin selection' but it seems like this is easier to ascertain in more strictly social animals. \n\nAs for the whole inbreeding thing - if these were wild cats a young male would disperse and *that's* how incest could be averted."
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dsy2xt | when you lower your cholesterol, where does it go? | When people have high cholesterol, and they take steps to lower it, such as eating less animals, dairy, etc., where does the cholesterol go? Does it leave the body or stay in the body in a different form? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dsy2xt/eli5_when_you_lower_your_cholesterol_where_does/ | {
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"Cholesterol is used by many of the cells in your bodies to make hormones, vitamins, and other things that aid in digesting food. So it doesn't really GO anywhere. Your cells transform cholesterol into other useful things. It's when we have an excess that your body starts storing it in its fat form, usually in your arteries.",
"Cholesterol means a few different things. At the most basic it is a chemical that is the basic structure for many hormones (testosterone, estrogen, etc) and also serves to strengthen cell membranes.\n\nThe \"cholesterol\" often referred to in the blood is a mixture of cholesterol, fat, and proteins that is responsible for transporting fat throughout your body for energy in little droplets, because fat is not water soluble. \n\nHigh Density Lipoprotein (HDL) is considered \"good cholesterol.\" It is essentially an empty sphere/container with relatively little fat molecules inside. Low/Very Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL/VLDL) are full of fat molecules and considered \"bad cholesterol.\" If LDL and VLDL levels are too high in your blood, they can stick to the sides of your arteries and cause immune cells to try to remove them. This process causes a lot of inflammation which further closes off arteries and attracts more LDL/VLDL. The type of fat matters too: saturated fat is stickier than unsaturated fat. Think about a stick of butter versus olive oil running through your veins.\n\nBut LDL and VLDL are still necessary to deliver energy through out your body. When you exercise or otherwise burn energy, LDL and VLDL drop off fat molecules in your muscles and then become HDL. HDL is then re-filled most commonly in your liver from dietary intake of fat.\n\nSo lowering \"bad cholesterol\" is more about fat/caloric intake and exercise than cholesterol intake."
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6wylbm | how can small spiders, ants and other insects walk on vertical surfaces as if they were horizontal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wylbm/eli5_how_can_small_spiders_ants_and_other_insects/ | {
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"They have stiff hairs, natural adhesives and little claws that enable them to walk on vertical or upside down surfaces.",
"At the microscopic level, even the seemingly smoothest of surfaces can be quite rough, riddled with bumps and fissues. I can't comment on the physics, but for the biology, spiders and other invertebrates can take advantage of these as the tips of their legs are home to [claws and semi-flexible hairs](_URL_1_) (the latter often arranged into 'adhesive pads') that can hook onto these irregularities and help them climb.\n\nWhat's more, they take advantage of the fact they have multiple legs. Using legs on opposite sides of the body to hook onto a surface, they pull their legs together to increase friction between their leg pads and the wall, enabling them to generate enough force to even hold up something twice the weight of the animal ([source](_URL_0_)).\n",
"Because the friction forces keeping them in place are higher than the gravitational force trying to pull them down.\n\nOn a smaller scale, the relation between friction and gravitational forces become very different compared to what we are used to, because gravity is proportional to volume and friction to contact surface. \n\nAn animal 100 times shorter than us will weigh about 1/100^3 less than us, but the friction will only be 1/100^2 less, or relatively speaking 100 times stronger compared to if you were to put your foot on the wall to try to stick there.\n\nThat's sometimes not even enough though, but it's enough to makes friction enhancing strategies like suction cups or Velcro-like hairs viable, while that wouldn't be enough for us to stick on a wall.\n\nInsects can do lots of things with seemingly no effort at all, simply because they are so small and almost unaffected by gravity, jumping many times their own size, falling from high without getting hurt, flying.... slightly larger sized animals need to be highly specialized to do these things, like birds can fly and lizards can walk on walls. But large animals like ourselves just can't, even if we use tools for help our muscle power just isn't enough compared to our weight.",
"There's the size factor like all of the other comments say, but there is also the effect of intermolecular forces between the atoms in the wall and the feet of the animal. More specifically: [London dispersion forces](_URL_0_:) "
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2qm898 | why do american sports leagues like nhl and nba have canadian teams? | I'm obviously not from North America, and this intrigues me. Thanks in advance guys! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qm898/eli5_why_do_american_sports_leagues_like_nhl_and/ | {
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"Good question. The NBA expanded into Canada to try to loosen the popularity grip Hockey has over the country; but it was not aware that the NHL had a solid working operation. MLB did the same when they created the Montreal Expos and Toronto Bluejays. It turns out that Canadians really do love their hockey and as a result one of the two expanded NBA franchises moved from Vancouver to Memphis, hence the Memphis Grizzlies (how many goddamn grizzlies are there in Memphis? NONE!).",
"Well, the NHL is easy to answer because the NHL didn't expand into Canada. The NHL actually started in Canada, when it was formed in 1917 out of the remnants of what was the NHA (National Hockey Association) with 4 teams; The Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators and the Quebec Bulldogs. This organization later absorbed several U.S. hockey leagues, so technically the NHL expanded into the U.S., not the other way around. =)\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs for the NBA, they were just looking for new territory to expand the game. They know there's a lot of basketball fans in Canada, so they figured they'd try a couple of teams up there. The Vancouver team was a bust, but the Raptors seem to be holding on fairly well. ",
"The \"National\" In National Hockey League, is talking about Canada not the U.S. So as far as the NHL is concerned it is a Canadian league with U.S. sports teams. Another factor is that 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, so there is a fair amount of crossover. Hockey remains king in Canada but Toronto is a U.S. like city so there is Baseball, and Basketball. Teams in Montreal and Vancouver have folded and moved, in the past decade, which seems to have stopped the conversation of further expansion in Canada. ",
"The real answer is money. The NBA expanded into Toronto and Vancouver because these are two massive cities with lots of money. Vancouver didn't work out but Toronto is going strong. Toronto can sell seats and advertisements/sponsorships. The NHL is similar, but reversed. Having started in eastern Canada and North-eastern US, the NHL is expanding more through the US in search of money... Eg. LA, Anaheim, Dallas and most recently Las Vegas (not yet, but they are likely going to expand there).",
"NHL and the NBA are business associations that exist for the purpose of making profit. They've expanded into Canada (NBA) and the USA (NHL) when it is profitable for them to do so."
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5gfpr5 | how do movie studios get very famous actors for terrible movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gfpr5/eli5_how_do_movie_studios_get_very_famous_actors/ | {
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"Being famous doesn't always translate in to being rich. Nicolas Cage's money difficulties are the stuff of Hollywood legend now, and he's accepted roles that would have other actors running away screaming. Even talented, well-respected actors need to work e.g. look at some of the things that Sir Anthony Hopkins or Sir Ben Kingsley have done recently. ",
"Either the actor is not recognizing the movie as bad, or he’s lied to (“we’re not making one of the bad ones this time!”) or he loves the role and does it for fun.",
"There are also stories of when an actor does one movie to fulfill a contractual obligation. Or they do a crap movie to secure financing for a vanity or personal project. Also, release dates don't necessarily match when they were filmed.\n\nI think it was Liam Hemsworth who had a year with multiple movies, where the breakout film was released first, with lower quality films that were made earlier came out after. So it appeared that a big star had made a bad movie or two, but in reality, he filmed those before he was famous.",
"1. Money\n2. contractual obligation - an actor may have a contract for X films with a studio, and doing this film completes the contract, which gives him money, but also frees him to work on a better project at another studio\n3. horse trading - the studio might say, \"do film X and we will support your dream project, film Y\"\n4. bad judgement - it's not always obvious at the beginning of a project that it will turn out bad\n5. desire to work with a certain writer/director/actor\n",
"/u/warlocktx gave most of them but there is still at least one that he forgot to mention :\n\nSometimes, the actor needs this movie to tell other directors that he is still in business and so that they don't forget about him. This actor will never do a bad and unkown movie, always a bad and successfull movie because at least it's publicity and not even a bad one since he has so much background that compensate that movie.",
"I know about this one! I've directed a few really small films ($500k budgets) with relatively famous actors and worked as a cinematographer/cameraman on other mid-tier films ($1m - $15m budgets) with actors such as Nic Cage, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, 50 Cent, Val Kilmer and many others. \n\nThe answer is we pay their rate, plan the entire movie around their schedule, and shoot all their scenes in 1 - 7 days. I shot a Bruce Willis film where we literally had him for one day. We would shoot the master and his side of the scene and then come back weeks later to shoot the other actors with his stand in.\n\nI can get almost any actor if I just pay their rate. Except for the very top tier guys they all have a rate. The rumor was Bruce got $5m for his one day of work on the movie I did with him. Not many actors will turn down $5m for a day of work on a film that very few people will see anyway. Other sorta/used to be famous actors will work for much less. Like $50k/day for names you would recognize on a poster and which pretty much guarantees your film international distribution. ",
"We often focus on an actor's performance as what makes a movie a success, but really there are tons of people and things going on behind the scenes that are just as important. An actor usually signs a contract based on a script and maybe some of the other names attached. But we've all read about troubled productions where those things change. The director gets fired a month into shooting. The script gets rewritten multiple times by a revolving door of writers. The finished product may be very different from the original vision the actor signed on for. "
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6fs5h8 | why does everything sound louder when i'm trying to do it quietly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fs5h8/eli5_why_does_everything_sound_louder_when_im/ | {
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"You're trying to do it quietly because you're in a quiet place. In a quiet place, any noise you do make seems louder than it would it a place with some background noise to drown it out."
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5ionr7 | how can i visualise an image perfectly but have so much trouble drawing it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ionr7/eli5_how_can_i_visualise_an_image_perfectly_but/ | {
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"It's about psychomotor learning. Knowing to draw something is not usefull for being alive. It need to be learned.\nThe bunch of data who are the picture in your mind are not adapted for being drawed. Your brain need to learn : How to adapt and convert the data. How to manage the pencil. How to pre-visualize the lines needed in the paper.",
"Because you're seeing the whole image, and not its individual components. When you think of a face, for example, you think of eyes, and a nose, and skin, a mouth, maybe some hair, etc. What you're not thinking of is \"Eyes are made of a series of specific curves and lines that are arranged spatially in this specific way\", and your brain hasn't learned how to translate that abstract concept on an eye into a series of movements that reproduces it accurately.\n\nIt's like listening to a song and playing a song. Both involve music, but to play a song, you need a totally different understanding of its composition.",
"To draw you must coordinate great control over you central nervous system. It takes repeated efforts for your nervous system to recognize when it is and is not making straight lines. Plus, you are using color or dark graphite to make an image on a white background. Dark graphite is the color of shadow, therefore you can draw nothing but shadows. This takes time and tactics to draw what our eyes so easily recognize as shadow and light. ",
"Because you don't visualize it perfectly. It took me a while to figure this out when I had the same frustration as an art major. Our brains aren't wired for complete pictures. They're wired for iconography. So you visualize the really interesting part of the picture - probably the focal point - and some broad compositional elements but there's gaps between them and you don't notice because your brain is designed to ignore those gaps. Practice and instruction help to overcome this but art is a process of problem-solving. There's rules for making it work and as you learn them the gaps become less important, or at least easier to solve. \n\nI want to point out that someone else mentioned that art isn't about seeing so much as skill work and I'd have to disagree with that. You can't draw what you can't see and our iconography interferes with seeing things as they truly are. Most college level classes are designed to break through the iconography barrier. Learning how to see is way more important than muscle memory (which is another form of iconography). Getting you hand to draw what you see is pretty easy and just takes practice. Unlearning and overriding a survival trait is much harder! "
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a9rp9m | how are drug test detection times increased? | In light of the news on Jon Jones' latest drug test, I got curious.
From what I understand, new metabolites with longer half lives are discovered to increase detection times. However, the official statements are claiming that the drug tests are now able to pick up extremely small concentrations of the same metabolites. Is it one or the other? Or both? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9rp9m/eli5_how_are_drug_test_detection_times_increased/ | {
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"It's both, but I think new detection methods play a bigger role.\n\nFirst of all, we need what to look for. Let's say, some person takes a particular drug, which is then processed by this person's organism. Some portion of a drug may be not processed at all, and leaves the organism unchanged. This is a first \"marker\". Then, some portions of a drug may undergo different processes - some molecules are broken into pieces, some undergo addition of various atoms or atomic groups, that changes the properties of a drug. And these altered version of a drug also leave the organism - in one way or another. Thirdly, some of the drug (unlikely) or its altered version (more likely) can be stored in some part of the organism - in liver, or in fat tissue - and stay there for a long time. So one approach to increasing drug detection is studying its metabolic pathway (how the drug is processed byyour body). If we know that 99% of drug A leaves the body in 24 hours by urine - then the detection window of drug A is probably going to be about 24 hrs. But if we also know that compound A1, a derivative of drug A stays in blood for about 7 days - than, theoretically, we can detect drug A usage after 7 days.\n\nAfter we have established, what are we looking for (residues of drug itself, or its metabolites) and where (various body parts/liquids), then the analysis itsels kicks in. First approach of analysis humans tried were specific (or qualitative) reactions. These are chemical reactions that are specific to a certain compound or a group of compounds, and usually give a strong indication that the reaction is complete (change of colour or appearance of precipitation). These reactions have an advantage of being relatively simple, but their limit of detection (the smallest amount of target compound that can produce clear change of colour, for colour reactions) is not so great, as human eye can distinguish only so much colour variation. Moreover, biological liquids (blood, etc) are often coloured themselves, so it is harder to use colour reactions to detect something. A way to improve this is to use special equipment to monitor the change of colour. Simply saying, things of different colours absorb and reflect different portions (wavelengths) of light. By shining light of different wavelengths through a liquid, we can determine exactly, which wavelengths are absorbed, and which pass freely. The graphical representation of amount of light absorbed at different wavelengths is called a spectrum. Changes in spectrum after coloured reaction may be more subtle, so that a human eye cannot see them - but an instrument will. \n\nHowever, there is still room for improvement. If we isolate a particular drug, dissolve it in some solvent, that will not absorb any light in the working range, and then record its spectrum - we will have a spectrum of a pure drug, and thus, we can just look for said spectrum in any sample we receive. Seems easy - until you realise, that every compound has its spectrum, and they all interfere and overlap, and thus, are not very useful. The answer to this problem is to separate the target compound(s) from the rest of the sample. This is achieved by a technique, called chromatography. An overly simplified description of chromatography is that a liquid or a gas, which contains a mixture of target and ballast compounds (mobile phase), travels on a surface of very small particles (stationary phase). Compounds in mobile phase stick to the surface of stationary phase for some time, but the flow of mobile phase pulls them away, they stick to the surface of another particle, and are pulled away again, and so on. What makes this process useful, is that different compounds spend different time on a stationary phase, so some compounds will \"go\" faster through the stationary phase, and some will \"go\" slower, allowing us to collect fractions of mobile phase that contain somewhat pure compounds and then try shining light on them- trying to record a spectrum. This has increased our limit of detection even more.\n\nBut, there is a way to detect even smaller amounts of target compounds - mass detection coupled with chromatography. Mass detection is essentially breaking the compounds apart, by different methods, that can be more or less gently. More gentle ways produce smaller amount of bigger pieces, more harsh methods break the compound into lots of smaller pieces. These pieces are then placed in a strong magnetic field and their mass and quantity is recorded. This method is very useful, as compounds have a unique way of breaking apart, that depends on their structure, so the interference from other compounds is even less noticeable. \n\n"
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d5jut0 | how come my short, simple, easy to understand comments are always removed? am i not explaining this to you like you’re a 5 year old? cause i thought this was exlpain like i’m five. all my answers are legitimately not wrong answers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d5jut0/eli5_how_come_my_short_simple_easy_to_understand/ | {
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"There's nothing the bot hates more than Brevity.\n\nIt seems to be programmed to flush anything under a certain character/sentence limit, as if there are no questions with simple, succinct explanations.\n\n\nYou have to learn to start telling a story/embellish your replies like a middle-school essay, for it to see the light of day.\n\nNow we're in a tricky area, because being needlessly verbose is sorta evading the bot. \n\nIs evading the bot bad when the bot is wrong? It's just doing what the bot *trained you* to do.\n\n\"The bot seems to flush anything below a set character/sentence limit.\" Is a very correct explanation, which would get flushed by the bot.",
"The only answer I can see from you is \"Bacteria Weak, Human Strong\" and that is a bad answer for a variety of reasons. First is that it is not an explanation at all but just a bare statement. The subreddit is about objective explanations and there is no explanatory power in that response.\n\nAnother issue is that the subreddit isn't aimed at literal five year olds so such stilted, simplistic responses miss the point. The aim is to simplify complex topics, not treat the readers like children.\n\nAnd finally it is a bad answer because it is just wrong. It misses the point that soap is about letting water wash away oils not killing bacteria.\n\nSo yes, your comments are being removed because they are unacceptable top to bottom.",
"I mean, read the rules.\n\nLiterally the first rule:\n\n > The first thing to note about this is that this forum is not literally meant for 5-year-olds. Do not post questions that an actual 5-year-old would ask, and do not respond as though you're talking to a child.\n\nand the second.\n\n > The second thing to note is that this forum is meant for explanations, not for answers. Anything that has a simple, straightforward, factual answer is not appropriate for ELI5. There is more detail on this topic in Rule 2 explanation below."
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18paui | how does one stand in a bus? | It's really annoying. Every morning I have to take a schoolbus to college. Most of the time I have to stand and that's when it gets embarrassing. Every kid can simply stand there like they'd stand on solid ground while I go shit all over the place. It is very annoying and it gets even worse when I see that I'm the oldest guy (the kids on the bus are about 7 years younger.) I could really use some advice. Is there a secret balance-technique I am not aware of or am I just too weak to hold myself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18paui/eli5_how_does_one_stand_in_a_bus/ | {
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"Don't stand with your feet together. You are much easier to topple when your legs are together. Imagine someone is trying to push you over, you want to stand so you brace yourself the most. \n\nOffsetting your legs will help too. If you're having problems falling forward/back have one in front of the other. You might even want to sand sideways. If you're struggling side to side, turn your feet and make sure your feet are shoulder width or more. After that, it is all practice. Imagine you are ice skating. It sucks at the beginning where stopping and turning can lead to falls, but after a while of doing it, it feels natural to you. \n\nAlso, hold on to or lean against something. You don't always need to use it to keep you up, but the quicker you right yourself, the less you'll feel that you are topping over. ",
"Try getting a wider base with your feet (at least shoulder-width) and make sure you're holding on to something really tight (most buses have bars for holding on to). It also helps to anticipate the movements of the bus. If it's about to stop, know that you need to start leaning in the opposite direction to offset the force. ",
"Ever spent any time on a boat? The rule for moving around on a boat — which you learn after about five minutes even if nobody teaches you — is to always have three of your four limbs firmly planted at all times. If you're in one spot, secure your footing and keep a hold with one hand. If you're moving, use *both* hands as you move your feet. Three-out-of-four keeps you stable.",
"feet spread, one toward the front of the bus, one toward the rear, and lean into the front foot while the bus is moving and ease back as the bus slows or comes to a stop.",
"When you stand with your legs shoulder-length apart, you are pretty stable from side-to-side, and a lot less stable forward and back. You will want to stand with your feet like you are [riding a skateboard](_URL_0_) but instead are riding a bus. This gives you the best leverage for the start/stop nature of the bus. Hold onto something as high up as is comfortable in order to brace yourself for turning (which will rock you forward and back); maybe around where your elbow bends\n\n"
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4genz3 | how does the lymphatic system work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4genz3/eli5_how_does_the_lymphatic_system_work/ | {
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"Could you be a little more specific as to what you would like to know?\nHow it works to facilitate the immune response?\nHow it helps to circulate the lymph fluid?\nSomething else?",
"Medical student here. As corbincox72 noted, this is an broad question and difficult to answer as such. But, here's my attempt to describe what the lymph system is and what it is for:\n\nFirst and foremost, the lymph system serves as drainage for fluid in your body which is extracellular, but *not* contained within the arteries and veins. This is called the *interstitial fluid* or *lymph*, which actually comprises the majority of the extracellular fluid (the other kinds are *plasma*, essentially blood, and *transcellular*, normally minuscule amounts such as joint fluid: see the [wikipedia page](_URL_0_)).\n\nLike capillaries which carry blood, lymph capillaries originate from the spaces between cells in various tissues (be it fat, skeletal muscle, heart, the dermis of the skin, etc), and coalesce into larger lymph vessels. These drain into lymph nodes, which are organized around the body in characteristic drainage areas. See this [wikipedia diagram](_URL_1_) for examples of these drainage areas; each one of those boxes represents the area of the body which has lymph vessels that drain into lymph nodes that have that name.\n\n\nNote that a lot of things can be carried in lymph. Interstitial fluid, inorganic material like lead, microbes, parasites, viruses, and live tumor cells to name a few. These are all processed in the lymph nodes.\n\n\nThe lymph node is an immune organ, and is the place where the innate and adaptive immune systems interact with each other. It is here that your body learns how to identify molecules (antigens) specific to a 'foreign' object (be it microbes, fungus, inorganic material, cancer, transplanted tissue, or healthy tissue). T and B cells (the adaptive immune system, the cells responsible for learning) reside in specialized parts of the lymph node and sit dormant. When dendritic cells and other members of the innate immune system travel up the lymphatic channels to the lymph nodes, they trigger an alarm in the T and B cells and activate them; then, they present those antigens to the T and B cells and start the learning process. \n\n\nWhen lymph nodes get large enough to feel through the skin, this means they are mounting an immune response against an antigen. This is what happens when you get lumps in your neck due to infectious mononucleosus (Mono, or the kissing disease). This is also why doctors feel the armpits of women when looking for breast cancer - the lymph nodes which drain the breast are located in the armpit, and will enlarge because of the tumor cells that have drained from the original tumor.\n\n\nOnce the lymph has passed through the lymph nodes, it will drain into the venous system either by the right lymphatic duct or the thoracic (aka left lymphatic) duct. Then, that fluid and material is part of the blood. \n\nIt is important to note that interstitial fluid has to be *squeezed* into the lymph system; it can only enter when pressures are high enough. This typically occurs through movement; this is why our feet swell when we stand still for too long - interstitial fluid is pooling there.\n\nTo add to the complexity, the lymph system originating from the intestines has a special purpose. It also transports fats extracted from meals out of the abdomen and into the venous system via the left lymphatic duct.\n\nThis is simplified and misses much of the nuance (which I have yet to learn myself); however, I hope it was helpful to you!",
"Like veins are vessels which carry blood, lymphatics are vessels which carry leftover fluid in the body (they also pick up the fat you eat from you intestines). This fluid is pushed through the lymphatic vessels when you squeeze your muscles (when walking for an example). The fluid goes through lymph nodes all over the body. These are small lumps with white blood cells which recognize and kill bacteria etc. The fluid then contunies and empties into veins. The veins carry the fluid to the heart. Arteries take the fluid to the kidneys. Then you piss it out like a gentleman or gentlewoman.",
"Another medical student here. I'll try to answer it in the most ELI5 way possible. I'm going to use the analogy of a highway system.\n\nYou have blood in your body that moves from the heart to your entire body. Its most important job is to carry nutrients everywhere. However, to do this, the blood has to leave its highway (the arteries) onto the local roads through the tissue (capillary beds).\n\nNow that the blood has dropped off the nutrients, it has to get back onto the highway to go to the heart where it can get more nutrients. However, the on-ramp back onto the highway is exceedingly narrow. Just one lane.\n\nAll the fluid that left that highway is trying to get back onto the highway, but it can't.\n\nThis is where the lymphatic system comes in. It is a detour back to the heart. However, along this detour, there are many checkpoints (lymph nodes) where the police (B and T cells) make sure there are no criminals (viruses, bacteria, etc.). This is where the immune role of the lymph system comes into play. \n\nWhen you get sick, your lymph nodes might enlarge because it senses that there is some foreign toxin or thing that shouldn't be there.\n\nSo going back to our analogy. Now that the fluid has passed through all the checkpoints, it gets deposited back into the main highway and goes back to heart. From there, the whole process starts over again.\n\nHope this helps!",
"Also, you don't necessarily get lymphedema if you get smaller ones removed. Only if a cluster of important ones, or a large one is removed. \n\nAll the best for your dad! ",
"Your heart pumps blood through tubes that are a little bit leaky, like when you leave a paper to-go cup in the car all day and there's a puddle in the cupholder. \n\nThe liquid that leaks out has to go somewhere, so your body has drains, like the storm drains by the sidewalk that keep streets from getting too full of rain.\n\nAlso like storm drains, the liquid that goes through your body's drains carries gunk with it. There are places called nodes in your body where the liquid gets filtered. If dangerous gunk is found, these nodes call for help and security cells like policemen come and take care of the gunk before it can hurt you.\n\nSometimes one of these nodes gets overwhelmed by gunk and a doctor has to remove it because the gunk has taken over. When this happens, the part of the body nearby has a little more trouble draining liquid but there are ways to help make it easier, so it's not too bad.\n\nWhen the liquid is all filtered and clean, it gets added back to the blood so the blood doesn't get all thick and crusty like old ketchup."
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b0j8c0 | how far up into space must one go before a compass stops working, and what do they use at that point for navigation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0j8c0/eli5_how_far_up_into_space_must_one_go_before_a/ | {
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"In the sense of it being a tool for navigation it would stop working pretty quickly, like before you leave the atmosphere. it might point north but that doesn't help you in a space ship. Once it leaves earths magnetic field it wouldn't do anything at all (no idea how big earths magnetic field is but farther than the moon)",
" The earth's magnetic field, like it's gravity, extends to infinity. The strenght of it decreases with distance to the point where it wouldn't have enough force to move the needle in a compass.\n Whilist close to the earth, spacecraft use special devices that interact with the magnetic field for orientation. When the field becomes too weak they use something called reaction wheels, or sometimes reaction control thrusters.\n While there are many devices to help orient a craft, some even using the magnetic field, to my knowledge it is not ever used for navigation as it only shows the direction to the closest pole, not anything usefull like altitude or speed or whatever.\n \n So back to the answer, the thing virtually all spacecraft use for navigation is gyroscopes, combined with a variety of other telemetry data and sensors, to provide accurate data for the mission planers to use.\n As many interplanetary missions showed, these are accurate within meters even at the largest of scales.\n\nEdit: my comment caused some confusion, so let me reitarate.\n Reaction control wheels, magnetic devices and rcs thrusters are used for attitude control, aka ship orientation.\n\n For knowing the position of a craft, most of the time gyroscopes are used, along with other sensors like accelorometers. Star tracking and some other means can also be used, but are not as common.\n Radio contact to earth and measuring the delay is also an option.",
"i love how \"explain like im five\" has now turned everything into \"explain to me like I'm an astrophysicist in the most complicated form possible\"\n\nlmao. oh reddit, never change",
"Most spacecraft don't need to know where they are, just to do a certain burn in a certain direction at a certain time, worked out and programmed before launch. Controllers will then monitor it from the ground using radar or signal tracking and make any corrections as they deem necessary.\n\n",
"It will stop working pretty much the moment you’re in “space“. If you have a perfect compass, it’ll keep pointing north, but north is not gonna be anything useful for you. "
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6lmehj | why is it significantly cheaper to fly throughout europe than it is to fly within the continental us? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lmehj/eli5_why_is_it_significantly_cheaper_to_fly/ | {
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"Europe is ~~smaller and~~ denser (in terms of population) than the US, which means a flight to a location probably isn't as far to start with.\n\nAlso because of Europe's density, airline travel has to compete with passenger train service, where the trains in the US are primarily for freight. ",
"You'd have to be more specific about what you're comparing to give a real answer, but be sure you're comparing similar distances to each other. The US is very large; London is about 1000 miles closer to Moscow than New York is to Los Angeles, so one would expect a flight from New York to Los Angeles to be more expensive than one from London to Moscow.",
"Just because there seems to a lot of confusion in this treat. Europe is not smaller than the United states. Europe [10,180,000 km²](_URL_0_), United States [9.826.675 km²](_URL_1_). And yes, the number for the US already includes Alaska. ",
"I would like to throw in that Europe has a robust rail system that also contributes to the travel competition. America has... well... Amtrak. \n\nNo real competition to Air."
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1zm24e | the four-color-map problem and how it was proven mathematically that a flat map on a plane will never need more than four colors | Obviously since we're talking about mathematical proofs, feel free to explain like I'm slightly older than 5, or as much older than 5 as you see fit in order to get your point across. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zm24e/eli5_the_fourcolormap_problem_and_how_it_was/ | {
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" > [The use of a program to prove the 4-color theorem will not change mathematics - it merely demonstrates that the theorem, a challenge for a century, is probably not important to mathematics.](_URL_0_)"
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1m0wka | why don't companies release their products (electronics) to the entire world at day one? | I know supply may be one of the reasons but they also have a lot of time to get enough units produced. After all they themselves decide the final release date. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m0wka/eli5_why_dont_companies_release_their_products/ | {
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"It's a way of limiting losses in case of a dud product, and a way of ironing out bugs. If you release 1 million units and 10% of them have a defect, you can deal with repairs. If you release 50 million units with the same defect rate, you're fucked. "
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1rjkp8 | if the storm we are currently experiencing is a nor'easter, why didn't it come from the northeast? | On the radar it looks like it moved up the coast from the southern states. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rjkp8/eli5_if_the_storm_we_are_currently_experiencing/ | {
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"Nor Easters are called that because they generally bring a strong North East wind. All Nor Easters have their origins in the gulf or mid Atlantic states and as they move up the eastern seaboard they gain strength. Depending on where the center of the storm(low) goes it could bring an intense blizzard or a heavy rain storm to a given location. "
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3e0fwe | how can a colour have no wavelenth? | I watched [This](_URL_0_) video, he say magenta doesnt have a wavelenth? how can this be üossible? or did i understood it wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e0fwe/eli5_how_can_a_colour_have_no_wavelenth/ | {
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"Some colors we perceive are actually a *blend* of two or more colors, each of which does indeed have a wavelength.",
"Your eyes have three different types of cones- cells that detect colors (unless you're colorblind- then you only have two). Each responds to a different range of frequencies: one responds best to red (well, the peak is more in the orange range), one responds best to blue, and one responds best to green. Magenta is the color you get when both the red and blue cones are lit up. But the green cell detects wavelengths in between red and blue, so there's no single wavelength that can light up the red and blue cones without also lighting up the green cone.\n\nInstead, magenta is made by having two different wavelengths of light being emitted at the same time.\n\nCyan and yellow are the other two primary colors of pigment by the way (cyan absorbs red/ emits blue and green and yellow absorbs blue/ emits red and green respectively). But since there are wavelengths that light up the blue and green cones without the red, and wavelengths that light up red and green without the blue, those show up in the spectrum.",
"Magenta doesn't appear on the rainbow for this reason. It is not a wavelength of light, but rather how we perceive the combination of red and blue wavelengths simultaneously and in equal amounts. Pink and brown are also like this. ",
"Only lasers come close to creating monochromatic light. Even rainbows are mixed with the background. Basically, every thing you see is a mixture of lots of wavelengths. ",
"If you look at a song, any song that has more than one tone or even an electric guitar, you'll see that it's actually a combination of many sounds, or tones, together acting simultaneously. It still sounds like a sound to use, but it doesn't really have just one wavelength. Same reason why brown is a color, but doesn't have a wavelength. It is a combination of red and green wavelengths together, _blending together as one_!"
]
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"https://youtu.be/iPPYGJjKVco?t=4m3s"
] | [
[],
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2hhx4h | where do our used smartphones go when we sell them back to our wireless carriers? | I realize the screen on my iPhone 4 is worth something, but the technology is 3 years out of date. How are they recycling these phones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hhx4h/eli5_where_do_our_used_smartphones_go_when_we/ | {
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"text": [
"we are not exactly good at this, just putting a new battery in your ancient phone and giving it to somebody, we suck at doing that and just throw the phones away\n\ni have like 4 phones that are perfectly functional, but cant even boot, because the batteries are not manufactured.\n\n\nNokia is awesome in this, the has a giant number of old and new phones that all use same battery.\n\nyou can still buy new ones.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCompatible with: Nokia 1100, 1101, 1110, 1110i, 1112, 1200, 1208, 1209, 1280, 1600, 1616, 1650, 1680, 1800, 2300, 2310, 2323, 2330, 2600, 2610, 2626, 2700, 2710, 2730, 3100, 3109, 3110, 3110, 3120, 3610, 3650, 3660, 5030, 5130, 6030, 6085 and more!\nCompatible with: Nokia 6086, 6230, 6230i, 6267, 6270, 6555, 6600, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6820, 6822, 7610, C1-01, C2-01, E50, E60, N70, N70 Music Edition, N71, N72, N91, N91 8GB, N-Gage and X2-01.Safe: Built in overcharging protection.\n\n\ni don't think any other manufacturer has EVER stayed with same cheap decent battery for as long.\n\none of the reasons why nokia is so popular in some countries.",
"They sell them to \"recyclers,\" who then ship them to Africa and China where people melt/strip them for the precious metals. Your electronics are full of valuable materials like gold, copper, and weird stuff like coltan, so there's lots of money in electronics recycling.\n\nUnfortunately, there's... also lots of toxic shit in your electronics, and the extraction process in these places is more \"dude throwing your Compaq onto a bonfire\" than \"pristine sciencey lab,\" but that's the world we live in."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-BL-5C-Extended-Li-Ion-Battery/dp/B0006HP7NC"
],
[]
] | |
eefoom | how exactly do pimps and sex traffickers get kids from the foster care system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eefoom/eli5_how_exactly_do_pimps_and_sex_traffickers_get/ | {
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"Most foster kids aren’t in facilities, they’re in residential homes in the community. While there are standards to being certified as a foster parent, the quality of the foster parents vary greatly. Also, tons of kids are in “kin” placement, which means a family member has them, and these placements aren’t subject to the same licensing procedures as standard foster homes. Often (in my experience working with kids, as a teacher, who are in “family” foster placements) there is a lot of resentment built up in the part of the family member “stuck” with the kid and as they become teens and “rebellious” their family often just gives up on them. The number of times I’ve heard a grandma or auntie say “she’s just like her momma” or “bad blood” about a “promiscuous” 12 year old is insane. These kids become easy victims, and their families don’t always keep track of where they are on a daily basis.",
"They don't come directly from the foster system, they are products of it.\n\nKids in foster care often lack the resources to get ahead and can have emotional problems that make it hard to get by. In the US, foster care doesn't pay that well, and many foster parents at are near poverty and use it for supplemental income. Even the most loving foster parents usually can't afford college, they often can't afford to continue caring for the kids after then turn 18 and lose their benefits. And that's the good foster parents, a lot of them are just a continuation of the kind of abuse foster kids are trying to get away from.\n\nThe result is a lot of desperate young adults suffering from mental illness and substance abuse, whose only economic resource is their young bodies. They aren't taken from the foster system, they \"choose\" to enter the sex industry, because their other options are often worse."
]
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[],
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b3w7ru | why do basketball teams draw so many fouls at the end of the game? | What is the strategy behind it?
& #x200B;
& #x200B; | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3w7ru/eli5_why_do_basketball_teams_draw_so_many_fouls/ | {
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"text": [
"Because of free throw shooting. With the clock low and being down, you’d rather them shoot free throws to win than drain the clock. ",
"Instead of having to actively defend against 3-pointers and easy layups, you take a chance by forcing the team with the lead to shoot free throws. There is a chance they will miss and you can quickly get the ball back, or at least if they make it you get the ball back anyway and have a chance to quickly move the ball down the court. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIt's a desperation move when the other team is ahead. ",
"Strategy is to stop the clock, hope team misses free throws, then get the ball back with time to score and cut into their lead. Even if they make the free throws on that possession, you've prevented them from dribbling & passing to run down the clock before shooting, and can try the foul on their next possession."
]
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[],
[],
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a0fp64 | what exactly is the clear liquid in a pimple? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a0fp64/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_clear_liquid_in_a_pimple/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It’s a liquid called pus which is made of an oil called sebum, dead skin cells, and bacteria.\n\nIf you want to go more into it, this Quora feed (or whatever it’s called) goes more in depth:\n_URL_0_\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-if-clear-liquid-comes-out-of-a-pimple"
]
] | ||
3ygtpb | what are the chances you would get in trouble if an armed robber entered you're house as you sleep, and ended up getting killed by a booby trap you set up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ygtpb/eli5_what_are_the_chances_you_would_get_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Excellent.\n\nBooby traps are illegal everywhere in the US. You would very likely be charged with murder.",
"Your* and the authorities could potentially charge you with premeditated murder because you set the traps with the intent to kill someone, regardless of whether it was a specific person or a random stranger. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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6u3u56 | why do americans celebrate columbus day despite columbus never setting foot in their country? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u3u56/eli5_why_do_americans_celebrate_columbus_day/ | {
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"He is considered the first European to find the Americas, which includes the US. It is also an Italian-American heritage celebration day in some parts of the country (Columbus was Italian).\n\nIt's not a big holiday, though. Unless you live in a big Italian-American state (New York or New Jersey), you probably won't get the day off work.",
"Columbus is often credited with establishing European contact with the Americas as a whole, even though he didn't discover the region or set foot in what is now the USA. \n\nColumbus Day was largely pushed on Americans by Catholics (and some protestants) who recognize Columbus as a key figure in the worldwide spread of Christianity. He is also celebrated by Italian-Americans of which there are many. \n\nGenerally, Americans \"celebrating Columbus Day\" just means they take the day off. People don't really celebrate Columbus outside of specific communities which are largely Catholic and/or Italian. Some states don't even officially recognize Columbus day. \n",
"Italian-Americans at the turn of of the century were heavily discriminated against, much like other immigrants today. Swarthy, womanizing, loud, dirty, and criminal they would say. Still to this day Italian-Americans are stereotyped as goomba mafiosos, or tan loud mouthed goons. They weren't considered \"white\" like northern Europeans. Plus they were Catholics, under the yolk of a foreign influence of great power and money, the Pope in Rome. \n\nChristopher Columbus being Italian and instrumental in the discovery of the new world was a safe icon for them to take racial pride in. The Knight of Columbus, the social club, takes their name from this idea. A fraternal order of Catholics, heavily Italian, to promote their identities. ",
"We also didn't start celebrating it until like the 30s...\n\nAnd even when I was in school in the 90s we were already doing projects like, \"Should Columbus be considered a hero for discovering new land for Europe to explore, or a villain who introduced disease that wiped out indigenous people?\" \n\nAnd many indigenous groups have been pushing for \"Indigenous People's Day\" instead of Columbus Day. ",
"Not all Americans celebrate it. In fact 17 States do not recognize it. \n\nFor those that do recognize it, it is either an Italian heritage celebration or it is a celebration for the \"official\" discovery of the continent. "
]
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2g1n0a | why companies need to store our credit card information. | Being possibly one of the millions who have been affected by the data breach at Home Depot, I'm seriously confused why they need to store our credit card numbers.
It seems to me these companies are putting consumers at great risk by storing financial information that is not needed.
If I'm wrong please correct me. It seriously baffles my mind.
And please explain like I'm stupid. I know its against the rules but a real simple breakdown is what I need. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g1n0a/eli5_why_companies_need_to_store_our_credit_card/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckerubx"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They don't.\n\nMalware on the register *captures* your card number as it's going by, and is later picked up from someone in China or wherever."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1qmn2v | how can obama unilaterally change a law | Obamacare was passed by both the House and Senate in 2007. Part of the law said health insurance policies that did not meet certain guidelines are illegal starting on January 1, 2014. ELI5 how Obama can unilaterally delay this law one year
Edit: Even [Howard Dean has the same question I do](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qmn2v/eli5_how_can_obama_unilaterally_change_a_law/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdeb20v"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The law actually allows insurers to continue offering some plans as long as they aren't changed. And those that are changed can be kept for another year (til 2015). But most insurers are just cancelling plans instead of extending them for another year to simplify their own process.\n\nBut he can't \"change a law\" unilaterally. A change to law requires congressional action. But implementation of the law is up to the executive (the president) and where there isn't clear process for something, the president can decide how to handle it."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPI7rABWI9c"
] | [
[]
] | |
2vm3td | while en route to an accident, an ambulance hits a pedestrian. does the ambulance stop to administer aid, or keep going to the accident? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vm3td/eli5_while_en_route_to_an_accident_an_ambulance/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Calls for backup. In my small town a long time ago this happened with a volunteer fire dept vehicle. They had to call in back up from the town next to ours. It was only a few miles. ",
"Where I am at, if the ambulance is involved they are required to remain at the scene to administer aid and to file a report. If it just something they witnessed then they notify dispatch of the incident and continue to their original call. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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7r7dmv | why is the standard deviation of the sampling distribution less than the standard deviation of the population? | I understand why it is mathematically (since you divide by the sqrt of the number of trials), but I want to know why you divide by the number of trials. It seems to me that with a sample there is just as big of a chance of the sample being as variable or even more variable than the population. Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7r7dmv/eli5_why_is_the_standard_deviation_of_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dsutjeu"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"You're getting confused about the sampling distribution of *means* and samples themselves. The sampling distribution of means is the distribution of *means*, each mean collected from a sample. \n\n\nI assume you're talking about this formula btw: σ(m)=σ/sqrt(n)\n\n\nThe σ on the right is the standard deviation of the population, i.e, how \"spread\" out the population can be, but the σ on the left is the standard deviation of *means*, i.e, how spread out the *averages* can be. \n\n\n\nAnd that makes sense intuitively no? The averages/means should be less variable than the populations themselves (that's the whole point of means in a sense).\n\n**TL;DR:** The std deviation here is talking about means and not the elements themselves, whereas the std deviation of the population is talking about the elements. If we were to take the standard deviation of sample, it tends to be bigger than the std dev of the population. \n\n\nIf you're looking for a mathematical explanation, check out the [variance sum law](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://onlinestatbook.com/2/summarizing_distributions/variance_sum_law.html"
]
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1mtuf3 | how have prices continued to rise if the average wage has remained stagnant? shouldn't the decreased purchasing power of the average person lead to a decrease in demand for goods, thereby lowering their price? | Basically, with more and more people finding it harder to buy as much stuff as they did 50 years ago, how do businesses continue to flourish when the prices of their items keep increasing? Who is buying up enough of these goods to keep the businesses afloat and able to maintain their prices? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mtuf3/eli5_how_have_prices_continued_to_rise_if_the/ | {
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"For one reason, while people's purchasing power has 'decreased' from stagnate wages, their ability to borrow money has increased. People are increasingly putting themselves into debt to afford these 'goods', thus maintaining the same level of demand. Housing prices have gone up drastically, but people are still buying at the same rate. Why? Because people are willing to take more and more mortgages to do so.",
"You are talking about a phenomenon known as Stagflation.\n_URL_0_\n\nThe normal market correction, the one you are posting should be happening is called Deflation.\n_URL_1_\n\nThis is scary because you can get stuck in a loop called a Deflationary Spiral. (Layoffs = > People can't afford as much = > People buy less = > More layoffs...)\n_URL_1_#Deflationary_spiral\n\nThe federal reserve has taken extensive steps to stop deflation from happening, mainly through very low interest rates and quantitative easing. Both of these actions increase the \"money supply\" and tend to inflate the value of the currency, thus preventing prices from falling.\n\nThere is extensive argument over the benefits of these actions because they have other consequences, like artificially inflating the stock market and disproportionately helping large financial institutions.",
"Good comments covered the question well. I just wanted to add that the only proven way to increase wages is not to ask politely. Either you are working for Henry Ford, and you don't have to ask, or you'll have to demand a fair wage.\n\nWhile this offends the libertarian principles we all aspire to, we need to realize that we currently live, not in a libertarian, meritocracy utopia, but a debauched market dependent upon ever increasing consumer spending. The big geniuses at the heads of tech firms are mostly people with better access and expertise at appropriating publicly funded technology, selling unprofitable prototypes to governments until they can find a way to profit off it, and then locking it all down with patents.\n\nTime to end the magical fantasy thinking around money, and start to realize that if we don't raise wages because it's right, then we raise it because it's in our self interest to do so.\n\nAnd remember, people don't produce their best work for more money. There us substantial proof for this."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral"
],
[]
] | |
3hk2gd | what is that weird feeling we all get when we accidentally miss a step or take a step thinking that it the ground should have been "higher" or "lower". | I hope you all know what I am talking about...I can't really describe the feeling its like a shooting ...heated tickle (?) that starts from the base of your head and spreads through your back. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hk2gd/eli5what_is_that_weird_feeling_we_all_get_when_we/ | {
"a_id": [
"cu830fx"
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"score": [
6
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"text": [
"Adrenaline. Your body briefly feels like it is freefalling and the panic response floods you\nEDIT : although I would have said that the feeling started from my stomach"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1062mg | american capitalism | What are some key things I should know about history and present day matters that pertain to American Capitalism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1062mg/eli5_american_capitalism/ | {
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"Adam Smith wrote a book called the \"Wealth of Nations,\" in which he explained an economic system that entails private ownership of production as means to gain wealth. He believed that this economic system, which was entirely unregulated by government, would be self-regulating and self-driven (People tend to desire self-benefit.). However, in their self-interest, their drives will also benefit not just themselves but also society as a whole by allocating resources in the most efficient way, thus reducing prices and maximizing utilities for everyone. Adam Smith called this idea of trying to benefit yourself, and also benefiting society in the process, the \"Invisible hand.\" \n\nAmerican capitalism uses the idea of this free-market, yet it also incorporates governmental regulation, so it's not entirely a capitalist economic system. Conservatives tend to favor less regulation, in hopes that self-interest and drive for individual gain will motivate people to work harder. Liberals, however, tend to favor more regulation, in their belief that no industry can be entirely self-regulating. \n\nLook, for example, at the current financial crisis. The crisis originated in what is called the housing bubble. Banks would sell homes in very risky situations to those who banks could not truthfully or consistently know would be able to pay off their debt for mortgages. They, then, sold these IOU's to investors, which went into the stock market. In this sense, a lot of the money that went into the stock market was entirely based on credit. In this case, there needed to be more governmental regulation of the transactions that transpired before the financial crisis we're having today. ",
"Apologies in advance for bias.\n\nFirstly, that there is a link between *individual* human rights and Capitalism - that it was recognition, enshrinement and enforcement of the former that lead to the successes and possibilities of the latter. It's the government's protection of an individual's right to Private Property, backed up by a culture that values individualism and creative prowess, that allows Capitalism to thrive in the USA. \n\nThat it initially grew from the values of individualism, from a desire and need to be independent from Britain and \"tyrannies\" of government, and a desire for individuals to have the freedom to exchange goods and ideas free from force or censure. (American styled Human Rights are inspired, in part, from Thomas Paine's \"The Rights of Man\"). \n\n\nErosions or Expansions of those rights, which affected the USA's current \"style\" of Capitalism, tended to occur after big events such as the Civil War, The Depression, the World Wars. Each event allowed the government to increase it's power somewhat at the expense of individual rights - a temporary emergency increase in taxes that was never repealed here, an extra department to regulate that over there. Sometimes the event expanded those rights - like recognizing more people had rights.\n\nNo doubt the move from a gold standard to a currency is a big one - maybe others can talk to that and more modern events.",
"If you want my cyincal take: America doesn't have a capitalist market anymore. It's so dominated by the multinational hoarding dragon corporations that small businesses, no matter how innovative or perfect their products, stand little to no chance when matched against their vast resources and legal departments. When compared to an ecosystem an ideal capitalist market should operate on the premise of survival of the fittest, but leading to the best ideas, products and services becoming the most profitable, leading to a diverse, competitive market that is good for consumers, and good for businesses that are smart and adaptable. Our market has been dominated by one species that plays dirty and leaves no room for anyone to overtake them. Even when some of them did fail, they essentially blackmailed the government to bail them out."
]
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[],
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4ax7av | why do we squint our eyes when we try to listen/hear something that is difficult to hear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ax7av/eli5_why_do_we_squint_our_eyes_when_we_try_to/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I believe it is related to us subconsciously trying to increase our ability to focus on the incoming signal of the sound by blocking out some of the other sensing signal noise e.g. Vision. So by squinting, we reduce the visual signals to our brain and it is better able to focus on the audio input aspects. Much like how you hear some blind people developing almost supernatural other senses, but on a much smaller and immediate scale. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
csg6rr | what is the yang-mills millennium problem? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/csg6rr/eli5_what_is_the_yangmills_millennium_problem/ | {
"a_id": [
"exeje0v"
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"text": [
"In Quantum Physics, particles sometimes behave as points, with a definite position, and other times spread out like waves. There are a number of theories around this phenomenon, including one named Yang-Mills. The problem with Yang-Mills is something called the \"mass gap\". In classical theory, Y-M predicts particles that have no mass and long-range forces. The quantum theory of Y-M needs to match the real world, with short range forces and massive (as in having mass, not huge) particles. \n\nIn order to work out the quantum theory for Y-M, we basically need a new kind of math. We have some approximations and simplifications, but it's kind of like knowing the simple form of the Pythagorean Theorem (a^(2) \\+ b^(2) = c^(2)) without knowing Trigonometry. It's great if all we have is right triangles, but once we get outside that, we don't have the fundamental equations or knowledge of Sine, Cosine and Tangent to work out the general cases. \n\nThe Y-M Millennium problem is essentially developing that new branch of mathematics that works for Quantum Theory."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
2iqkql | why does whacking vacuum sealed glass containers (snapple's bottles, jam jars, etc.) on the bottom make them easier to open? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iqkql/eli5why_does_whacking_vacuum_sealed_glass/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl4jcii"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You usually break any physical seal (dry food or vacuum) that was keeping it together "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
423kr3 | why does shipping something from the usa to nz have around triple the price of shipping a similar item from nz to the usa? | It costs me around $15 (NZ) to send an item from NZ to the USA, but around $30 US (which is about $45 NZ) to ship a similar size/weight item the other way. Is this perhaps due to some sort of taxes behind the scenes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/423kr3/eli5_why_does_shipping_something_from_the_usa_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cz7drdu",
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"score": [
10,
2
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"text": [
"No it is not an import tax thing, it has everything to do with the volume of things going what direction. There are a lot of tings that ship from NZ to the US. There are very few things that ship from the US to NZ.\n\nWhile you may think that ships would just move back and forth, that is not actually how shipping works. Ships will run a circuit of destinations, and shipments that have low volume must make up the cost with higher costs of shipping. ",
"Are you talking courier or regular post? If courier, than Dick is probably right. If regular post, it might have to do with the way [UPU](_URL_0_) works.\n\nBasically, you pay for intl shipping in your country and the receiving country picks up the rest. I can't say I'm an expert by any means, so that's more of an educated guess, but that might factor in as well for regular post rates."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union"
]
] | |
a6bjut | how does music/certain songs give you energy? | What's the deal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6bjut/eli5_how_does_musiccertain_songs_give_you_energy/ | {
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"What you think of as 'energy' is really controlled in your brain by many different chemicals. You can think of these chemicals like gasoline in a car (although some of them are more like the brakes in a car). So when something exciting happens, your brain triggers the gasoline (dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin) to release and it does things like make your heart go faster, make certain parts of your brain responsible for pleasure work harder, etc. We don't really know specifically why certain combinations of musical notes tend to do this for people but it has something to do with association of these combinations with memories that were created when we were very young.\n\nWe know this because the musical notes that make people in the west feel stimulated are different than those that make people in eastern countries like Afghanistan and China. There is probably SOME genetic factor involved but a lot of it is learned after we are born."
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6cmt8c | whats the difference in the manufacturing process of 30$ and 300$ headphones | They both are headphones, they both make sound. why the price difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cmt8c/eli5_whats_the_difference_in_the_manufacturing/ | {
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"Price doesn't have to have any connection to what it costs to make. Price is simply what someone is willing to pay for something. \n\nA high price can also have the effect of giving something more perceived value. \n\nThe headphones could come from the same factory and be made from the same materials but the price IS the difference. ",
"Assuming we are talking cost to make rather than cost to buy as /u/GotPerl points out - there's all sorts of stuff that can be different. \n\nQuality of the magnet and coil in the cones is probably most important. That's what gives them their frequency response range - the range of sounds that the thing can actually produce. 20Hz-20kHz is generally accepted as human hearing, so something that does 18-22kHz will more than cover you. The other aspect is how the headphones change the sound. Ideally you want headphones that play exactly what is put into them. Cheaper ones can have a bias towards certain frequencies.\n\nThen there's the quality of the construction. For example solid core wires are cheaper than stranded core, but if you flex the wire eventually there will be breaks. Stranded core can cope with this solid core can't. \n\nQuality of the padding and plastic used for the housing can be different too. Some headphones leave your ears a sweaty mess. \n\nAlternatively, you take a cheap ass pair of headphones and replace the plastic with solid gold. Suddenly they cost way more, weigh a ton and you don't really get any benefit. For any given pair of headphones it could be any combination of reasons for a price difference to the consumer. ",
"What you're paying for is the quality of the design, the quality of materials that would make the headphones more rugged and less likely to break under stress, the testing to make sure the headphones perform as designed, and the speed and efficiency of the manufacturing process (mass produced = less cost). \n\nFor a quality comparison, look at the difference between a pair of Grado [eGrado headphones](_URL_1_) and a pair of Grado's handmade [Heritage Series GH2 headphones](_URL_2_). \n\nFrom the design you can tell that one is made to be lightweight & portable, while the other is made of high quality materials like exotic rainforest wood designed to give the headphones a more warmer tonal quality. The lower end headphone drivers are matched a 1db while the GH2s are matched at .5 db, so this shows more work was done to [ensure the drivers match,](_URL_0_) so at higher volumes the headphones deliver a more balanced sound.\nWhile the [frequency response](_URL_3_) of the low-end headphones is standard 20-20k Hz, the GH2s show to perform at a lower bass frequency and a higher treble frequency (14-28K Hz), which is debatable as to whether you can actually hear frequencies in those ranges. \n\nSo are the $650 headphones \"better\" than the $50 ones? In terms of materials used in construction,design & durability, yes. More testing done to ensure a quality product out of the box seems evident, one is far more stylish while the other is more functional... overall they're going to perform about the same for the average listener. \n \n"
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"http://www.4ourears.net/gh2_p/4e-gh2.htm",
"https://www.turntablelab.com/pages/headphone-buying-guide-frequency-response-... | |
vc3mu | why does apple's "force quit" work so much better than window's "end task" | I've owned a computer with both types of operating systems before and I've noticed that whenever I need to do "force quit" on Apple it works almost instantly. On Windows I find myself spamming "end task" for ~20 seconds before the program actually closes. Anybody know why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vc3mu/eli5_why_does_apples_force_quit_work_so_much/ | {
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"Next time:\n\n1) Hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open up the Task Manager.\n\n2) Go to the \"Processes\" tab if you know the name of the exe, otherwise right click on the task and select \"Go to process\".\n\n3) Right click on the process and click \"End Process\".\n\nThat'll close it instantly.\n\nThe reason \"End Task\" takes so much time is that it essentially \"asks\" the program to exit, and if the program is frozen/hung, obviously it won't respond to the request. It's like the first 5 or 6 times your mom asks you to clean your room. However, \"End process\" essentially forcibly ends the process. It's what your mom does when she's tired of putting up with your crap and drags you to your room and forces you to clean it."
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4gbhpq | how is the show "to catch a predator" not entrapment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gbhpq/eli5_how_is_the_show_to_catch_a_predator_not/ | {
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"No, the show couldn't fall under this category.\n\nEntrapment requires the police to \"induce\" someone to do something they wouldn't have otherwise done. Simply providing someone an opportunity to break the law is not in any way entrapment, as the people involved would have likely committed the crime with someone else if it wasn't with the police.\n\nIt's the same reason it's not entrapment for police to do a \"bait car\" by leaving a nice car with the keys in the ignition in a bad neighborhood. Just because the police make it easy for you to break the law doesn't mean you're free to break the law.\n\nRelevant comic: _URL_0_",
"That's just the thing. The people on \"To Catch a Predator\" are already likely to commit the crime. No one forced them to have sexual convos with people they thought were children. They would've done it anyway, had most likely done it before. ",
"\n\"In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent\"\n#1. They don't use law enforcement agents to sway the suspect, they use decoys that are actual adults with young faces.\n\"induces a person to commit a criminal offense\"\n#2. The decoys are never the ones who actually invite the suspect over, the suspect is usually the one who asks if they can either come over or come pick the decoy up. \n\"that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit.\"\n#3.The suspect usually not only commits these crimes AGAIN once free, often they have been arrested before for the same or similar misconduct.",
"Entrapment basically means persuading someone to do a crime not giving them the opportunity.",
"Lawyer here!\n\nNot likely.\n\nInducement to commit a felony has not been extended to cover even explicit encouragement to commit a crime, much less that the crime was just facilitated.\n\nEntrapment is a very narrow defense, meant to protect against circumstances in which either the police created the crime (mailing someone child pornography then arresting the person for possessing it), or created a scenario in which the person's own judgment was overridden by the interference of the police.",
"Entrapment is when you get somebody to do something they *wouldn't* do.\n\nTCAP is a show wherein cops catch guys before something they *would* do.",
"Chris Hansen and everyone else involved with the show are *not* law enforcement, they're producers, actors, etc. They just contact the police when they have the person at their fake meet-up.\n\nEdit: Hansen even tells the guys that they're not police and have no authority to keep them there, so they can leave if they want to... But there are police right outside who *do* have the authority to arrest them. Always funny seeing that roller coaster of emotions as he explains.",
"The show in of itself got in hot water a few times legally but generally those of us who work online child exploitation are very careful with language and offer people multiple opportunities to walk away. \n\nWe even take steps further to prevent a \"fantasy defense\" argument where the defendant claims the online enticement was all he was actually after and wasn't going to actually carry out the act. ",
" > In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offense that the person would have **otherwise been unlikely to commit**.\n\nThat last part is the key. If you posed as a 15 year old and actively propositioned people for sex online, that is most likely going to be entrapment.\n\nBut if you let them come to you, that demonstrates they already had the intent to commit a crime, and had they found a real and willing 15 year old, they would have.\n\nThat said, many of the *To Catch a Predator* cases were thrown out on entrapment concerns.",
"In these chats its the predator that always initiates something sexual. And the long drive to the house as well as the alcohol they bring shows deliberation and intent",
"I gotta chime in on this.\n\nPerverted justice started this stuff.\n\nAnd some of that crew would get drunk with underage girls themselves.\n\nI used to chat in the same chat room as them. They were also major assholes, at least the guys, never paid attention to the girls.",
"Since I understood Perverted Justice is it's own organization, I am not sure if 'entrapment' fits the description. I am not a lawyer. However I think there was at least one time where someone from Perverted Justice came at one person 3-4 times when the guy said something like 'you are probably a cop, no thanks' a few times. I think there was was another time the case was thrown out because the emoitcons were missing from the app recording the chat, because emoticons do mean things. I could be confused, it was a couple of years ago and am working from memory.\n\nPersonally I think it is rather creepy to have one organization set the bait, have a LEO organization arrest and a for profit tv show shame them on tv, when they are not even necessarily found guilty. That is my opinion based on how I understand things are organized. I am not pro-sex offender, but I believe in the concept of justice. In my opinion this blurs lines in our system of justice.",
"They don't go around asking guys in chatrooms for anything.\n\nThey pretty much just wait in chatrooms. Guys message them, then after they tell the guy how young they are and they keep talking and it gets sexual, is when they invite the guy over. \n\nIt's illegal in and of itself to talk about sex to a minor let alone sending them pictures.",
"As some have said, the main thing is that it is not technically agents of the government during the luring.\n\nThe other thing is that it actually may be entrapment: at least a couple of the court cases were thrown out for this reason. The key element in those was that the pretend child brought up sexual conduct or meeting in person first."
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291w4b | why do we sometimes wake up accidentally when our bodies are still obviously tired? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/291w4b/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_wake_up_accidentally/ | {
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"It's more important to be able to respond to threats than to get a good night's sleep, and while modern life may be safe, this was not always the case.",
"It could be a breathing problem. Maybe you have a cold and you aren't getting enough air flow (What I am dealing with right now) or you have sleep apnea and you cut off your own airflow when sleeping and you sometimes stop breathing.",
"Because sleeping when a predator wants to eat you does not help you live and pass on your genetic material to the next generation. \n\nIts all about evolution and evolution doesn't make your body better it just makes it more evolutionary fit to your environment. \n\nEdit: Clarifying what kind of fitness "
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25ioou | why are we able to choosed how cooked the beef steak is, but not on any other kind of meat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25ioou/eli5_why_are_we_able_to_choosed_how_cooked_the/ | {
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"you can, from rare to well done its just that chicken and pork are manufactured differently than beef and have a higher rate of disease and more serious diseases than beef( or did at one time) and so most companies follow the governments recommendation of well done to avoid lawsuits and recalls ",
"Also, the reason you can choose how well cooked a STEAK is, but not say, a beef patty from McDonald's, is because the steak is a single cut of meat. So the insides of the steak have never been exposed to the air. I don't know why, but the bacteria that causes diseases from beef only exist on the outside of the beef. So all you have to do is cook the outside.\n\nAs for the patty, it is a lot of different cuts of beef, ground up together and made into a shape. So even on the very inside, is beef that could have been exposed to bacteria. So you must cook it all the way through.",
"Your premise is mistaken. Nice restaurants routinely ask how done you want your beef steak, your lamb, your venison, your bison, your tuna steak, your beef burger, and even sometimes your pork loin or pork chop. (I eat out a lot.) They don't ask for poultry because it's disgusting undercooked and may harbor bacteria."
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1e96o1 | why should i not store my ph meter in ro water, even though the ro water keeps it perfectly accurate? | Title says it all. RO water keeps my PH meter 100 percent accurate. Have not needed to calibrate in 6 months. Yet you aren't suppose to store it in RO water. How come? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e96o1/eli5_why_should_i_not_store_my_ph_meter_in_ro/ | {
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"Storing a glass pH probe in RO water strips the ions out of the glass, thus rendering the probe useless. If you've been storing it in RO for 6+ months with no need to calibrate it, I'd seriously question its reliability/accuracy.\n\nThey tell you to store it in buffer solution for a reason."
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8tzzxc | what are tonal languages and what are their differences from non-tonal ones? | My SO is an Speech Language Pathologist and mentions tonal languages often but I'm not fully understanding what that means. I'd love a good explaination of what they are and mean to communication as a whole. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tzzxc/eli5_what_are_tonal_languages_and_what_are_their/ | {
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"Some Asian languages are tonal (ex. Thai and Mandarin/Chinese, etc.). The varying tone changes the meaning (I.e. Flat, rising, falling, etc). Mandarin has 4 tones and depending on the tone it changes the meaning of the word. For example \"ma\" in mandarin can mean mother, horse or it makes a statement interrogative (a question). Most people however look at the context of the sentence to determine the meaning, especially with westerners learning Asian languages as it's extremely difficult for us to master tones. So if I said \"ni hui shuo zhongguo hua ma?\" Which means \"do you speak Chinese?\", obviously if the tone is wrong they realize I'm not saying \"your horse speaks Chinese\" lol. So again, context is key. Hope this helps.",
"Tonal languages are basically languages that change word meanings based on the tone used when saying them, even if you say the same word in the same sentence structure, kinda like when you ask someone:\n\n\"Do you like her?\"\n\n-\"sure. She's cool.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but do you LIKE her though?\"\n\n-\"um... idk, maybe...\"\n\nIt's commonly used in Oriental Asian languages like Mandarin Chinese, some African languages I believe, and I'm pretty sure a small portion of Indo-European ones as well. Not too up-and-up on specifics, but I know Mandarin is insane about it. You could say \"nu\" try try and mean \"female\", and accidentally say \"noo\" which might mean \"horse\".\n\nNon-tonal languages change the meanings of words based on context, sentence structure, and by changing the word itself usually, like with English, Spanish, Italian, German, etc.\n\nHopefully that helps you understand a bit better. \n\n",
"My favorite tonal language is Mandarin. In tonal languages, the exact same word (we'll use the Mandarin \"ma\" here) can mean entirely different things based on how you say it. \"Ma\" has four different tones, Mà (to scold), Má (hemp), Mā (mom), and Mǎ (horse). You form these tones by lowering or raising your pitch, or elongating the vowel sound. (_URL_0_ a short demonstration of this particular word and it's tonality)\n\nThese tones are incredibly important because a native speaker will quite literally be unable to understand you if you screw them up. They're so ingrained into their language that it often won't register that you could be mispronouncing a tone, you may end up saying something like \"how is your horse?\" and they'll wonder why you think they have a horse. Or, my favorite little Mandarin pun could be used, \"Mā mà mǎ\" (Mom scolds horse) can be shifted over to \"Mǎmà mā\" (Horse scolds mom).\n\nThis contrasts non-tonal languages like English, where we mess the tonality of a word for emphasis rather than to drastically change the meaning. Sometimes we'll say something like \"I really want to do that\", but we can use \"I **really** want to do **this**\" to emphasize. ",
"Think about upward inflection when asking question;;\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFamily guy, ~20 sec.\n\n\nExcept apply that to language, on a per-word basis, where instead of changing the meaning of the phrase into a question, it's changing the definition of each word. Tonal languages do this more than with just upward inflection; they also have downward inflection, as well as at least one static/steady tone (but usually also having steady low & steady high tones meaning different things too).\n\n\nEnglish is not a very \"tonal\" language because English speaking usually uses tone to imply change in punctuation (\"turning everything into a question\"), or otherwise change context (enthusiasm vs sarcasm), rather than to change individual definition of words.",
"Great explications, if your still confused then the scuttlebut around here is that your SO is a pro. Sooooo."
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30drp4 | why couldn't ted cruz have just gotten health insurance through an insurance company and not gone though the obamacare exchange? | I thought that the ACA just said an individual had to have health insurance or pay a fine, it didn't say you have to go though the Obamacare website. So why didn't Ted Cruz just get an insurance policy directly from an insurance company so he could be in compliance with the law and not be on Obamacare? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30drp4/eli5_why_couldnt_ted_cruz_have_just_gotten_health/ | {
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"Because if he has Obamacare, it makes him seem more credible when he complains about it and says he plans to overturn it.",
"During the ACA debate the Republicans tried to embarrass the Democrats by putting in an amendment that required all members of congress and their staffs to get their government provided insurance through the healthcare exchanges. Some version of that amendment made it into the final law. Cruz has simply stated that he's following the letter of the law, even if he disagrees with it.",
"To head off all the \"The law requires him to get it through Obamacare\" statements.\n\n- He could simply pay the tax, and go uninsured\n\n- He could have his wife use COBRA to keep her coverage going from Goldman Sachs\n\n- He could go buy private insurance\n\nOf course if he went COBRA or private insurance, than he would miss out on having 75% of it paid for by taxpayers. Or if he does, indeed, refuse the 75% subsidy, he will still be benefiting from lower rates as the government is able to negotiate lower premium rates than he alone on the *open market* ever could\n\nSo really this is about saving money... not following the law. \n\nThough one might say that a man of Mr Cruz's principles and wealth would forgo the savings and go get a private plan right? /s\n",
"Aside from what others have indicated, there is almost certainly a political angle in choosing to go through an ACA exchange. ",
"The real question is, why wouldn't or shouldn't he?\n\nJust behave you advocate a change doesn't mean you are not entitled to the gov't services your taxes pay for. I might not be crazy about a new highway I feel is unnecessary, but that doesn't mean I won't drive on it once it is built. ",
"No matter which way he chooses to go he loses. Cobra won't cover him all the way until the election if I understand so that's out. If he pays the fine and goes uninsured he will be labeled a crazy man for not insuring his family (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!). If he goes private individual (very expensive and who's to say what he can and can't afford) he will be yet another politician exempting himself from a law congress passed. That leaves us with the choice he made. It makes the best sense financially, he has skin in the game, and it avoids the attacks he would face if he choses any other option. The only attack the MSM has against him on this issue is \"why are you following the law you opposed\". ",
"He could buy it directly from an insurer, but that would be more expensive and less convenient. "
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2oho29 | what is the difference between driving while intoxicated and driving under the influence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oho29/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_driving_while/ | {
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"As far as I know, intoxicated is used for alcohol, while influence can be used for alcohol, drugs, or any other substance that disturbs your abilities to drive.\n",
"Some states use one terminology, some use the other.\n\nSome use both, in which case DWI is usually for alcohol while DUI is for drugs.",
"Each state and nation defines the terms differently. In my state, Virginia, there is no such thing as driving while intoxicated. The drunk driving law bans operating a vehicle while under the influence of drugs or alcohol."
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3qdxep | when did college become a default choice for young adults? | Everyone is asking "what college are you going to?" or "what are you going to major in?". ALL I WANT TO DO IS BREATH FOR 5 SECONDS | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qdxep/eli5_when_did_college_become_a_default_choice_for/ | {
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"After WW2 the GI Bill provided funding for the millions abd millions of returning troops to get a degree if they wished. So the late 40s and early 50s saw a huge spike in enrollment. Then it never really stopped growing. Because at the end of the day for many professions it is beneficial to have a degree and when most candidates have them those who dont became less competitive. "
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505ujw | how is it that our bodies can't mimic the effect of certain drugs on its own? | For example; We take anti-histamines to reduce the amount of histamine that our body produces to stop allergies. Or we take SSRIs to inhibit the reputake of serotonin by our body to stop depression.
My question is, if the above are examples of things we do to make us "well", how is it that our bodies can't do that on its own? I.e. How is it that our bodies can't just not produce as much histamine or not reputake as much serotonin on its own? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/505ujw/eli5_how_is_it_that_our_bodies_cant_mimic_the/ | {
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"They can do it, it's just that sometimes mechanisms are ineffective or hyperactive, which is why they need modulation to rebalance things. If it were impossible for our bodies to do them naturally, it would be impossible to make it happen with outside influence because the required machinery wouldn't even be there in the first place. \n\nYou mention serotonin specifically, so let me address neurotransmitters. I'm going to use acetylcholine for my example because that produces measurable action that you can easily observe. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter responsible for skeletal muscle contraction. There are receptors for it on the receiving cells in the circuit (aka synapse) that bind what they can and cause secondary changes within the receiving (post synaptic) cell. Once the signal is completed, it would be a very bad idea if you had a ton of stimulant in the synapse - you would have no control of your muscles, they would be contracting constantly, and you would have tetanus. There are enzymes or other mechanisms present in/near the synapse to either absorb or breakdown excess neurotransmitter - in the case of serotonin, it gets reabsorbed by the presynaptic cell. SSRIs slow this process down by blocking the reuptake receptors on the presynaptic cell to allow for a more optimal timeline for the desired effect in the post synaptic cell. ",
"Quite the opposite: the drugs are mimicking what our body is trying to do. Our bodies usually do exactly what the drugs are doing, just slower, and it takes resources and energy to do it. A drug doesn't take any of those resources, it's right there for you, and at a much higher volume than normal.\n\nYour body has blocks in place to prevent you from supersaturating yourself with chemicals, because most of them are harmful when there's too much. Usually this involves self-limiting productions - the more of something there is, the more it stops your cells from making more.\n\nSometimes that's out of whack because of a mundane imbalance, or because you're sick and your body is devoting resources to fighting the illness, or because the illness is interfering with natural production. Drugs mimic what your body should be doing so your body doesn't have to do it."
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6fwrqc | why do police officers and other officers and stuff like that have a backwards flag instead of a correctly oriented one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fwrqc/eli5_why_do_police_officers_and_other_officers/ | {
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"former Army vet here, so they do this on the military uniform too. Below is the army regulation along with a more descriptive reason as to why\n\n\n\n\n\nArmy Regulation 670-1, “Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia,” updated most recently September 5, 2003, addresses explicitly the proper and lawful placement of the U.S. flag patch on the Army uniform.\n\n The regulation states that when authorized for application to the proper uniform the American flag patch is to be worn, right or left shoulder, so that “the star field faces forward, or to the flag’s own right. When worn in this manner, the flag is facing to the observer’s right, and gives the effect of the flag flying in the breeze as the wearer moves forward. The appropriate replica for the right shoulder sleeve is identified as the ‘reverse side flag’.”"
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2dnqlu | if ma bell got broken apart for being a "regulated natural monopoly", why are cable companies allowed to function as monopolies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dnqlu/eli5_if_ma_bell_got_broken_apart_for_being_a/ | {
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"The Bell System existed as a monopoly for over 100 years before the government finally broke them up.\n\nThe cable companies are nowhere near that entrenched nor have they become essential to modern life. A decade ago, less than half of Americans had broadband internet. Their position is a *very* recent thing, from a historical perspective. We don't know if they're going to stay there or not.",
"One answer is corruption, the regulators of the cable companies are in the pockets of the cable companies.\n\nAnother answer is that no single cable company as large as Ma Bell was. After all, we're talking about companieS, plural. The cable companies are more like an oligopoly, which can still be bad for consumers but not the same as a monopoly.",
"because enough people in the US consider any government regulation to be commie socialism.",
"They didn't get broken apart for being a natural monopoly, they got broken up for how they used their monopoly. It's not against the Sherman act to have a monopoly, but many actions a monopolist attempts to leverage their monopoly advantages into other fields are against the law. ",
"The reason they were broken up in the first place was because they were a monopoly on the original POTS system. No other company could come in and use their system because it was patented, and Ma Bell wouldn't release the patents very easily thereby creating an anti-competitive atmosphere that prevented anyone else from getting phone service. After the breakup, the patents were dispersed and were made easily accessible. At that point was when the idea of the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) and Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) came into being. What this did, was it forced the ILEC (in most cases even now AT & T) to provide rack space, and a lot of times, cabling, for small start up companies that wanted to provide their own POTS service. This helped to boost the release of competition into the field of phone service until the invention of VOIP services that no longer needed POTS.",
"Phone companies are regulated under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. They're classified as \"common carriers\" and have to follow all sorts of rules and regulations. \n\nBroadband providers aren't classified as common carriers under Title II, and can pretty much do what they want.",
"Ma Bell was not actually \"broken up.\"\n\nATT was concerned it was going to lose an anti-trust lawsuit against it for owning Western Electric, which made all of the telephones in people's homes.\n\nSo it came up with the idea of breaking up the Bells and getting out of local telephone calls. It would stick with Western Electric, and continue to perform long-distance services, research, etc...\n\nBasically, if it had just stuck to providing local and long distance telephone services, it would've probably been fine. But the way it forced customers to use ATT telephone's made by Western Electric is likely what ran afoul of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.\n\nCable companies don't own the set top box or cable modem manufacturers.",
"Because *ma bell has got the ill communication*",
"Satellite and IPTV are considered competition so cable is not technically an monopoly. ",
"one simple answer: there's a LOT more money being used to buy off government departments and governors, congressmen, representatives, lobbyists, and other absolute scum to leech even more money out of americans.",
"Actually Comcast has already admitted to collusion with time warner by how they both agree not to compete in any major areas. This is against the Sherman act.",
"They have better lobbyists and give politicians more money.",
"Because in general, antitrust laws are not properly enforced in these United States.",
"Because the cable companies have better lobbyists on the payroll.",
"From my understanding they are technically not a monopoly, they just choose not to operate in each others territories. ",
"The real reason is because the laws regulating phone and cable companies are largely written by... the phone and cable companies. Thank your congress critter for the massive sums of lobbying dollars they receive.",
"Because of the government. ",
"You have got quite alot of interesting as well as correct answers already. Still, I think there is one point worth mentioning again:\n\nCable companies are not monopolies. They are oligopolies. The difference is that in a monopoly there is one company which has 100% of market share and therefor no competition; hence they can do alot of shady stuff without the fear of loosing market share.\n\nIn an oligopoly there are still different companies. At most places in the US people can actually choose between different cable providers. Thing is though, that these companies got together at some point and met behind closed doors, then they decided together that 'we will all offer the same shitty service and the same prices for those services'. So while there are technically different companies, in reality its kinda all the same making it feel like a monopoly; BUT there is no law against this.",
"Short and somewhat biased answer: because they have bribed the government into allowing it. \n\nThere is a reason that corporations pour billions of dollhairs into lobbying, it's because they get influence over legislation.",
"Because our governmental regulatory agencies have been taken over by industry people and no longer function in the interests of the citizenry. In business they call it 'regulatory capture'.",
"Former cable/satellite salesman here: Satellite TV service (Dish Network/Direct TV) is available pretty much anywhere you get a clear view of the sky, so technically none of the major cable providers are a monopoly since it is almost always an option. After working with several different companies I landed on Dish Network, not only is it cheaper, but you get way more bang for your buck. I have every channel available for about $40 less than I was paying for Charter Cable. ",
"It's also pretty hard to stop them from being monopolies because of the fact that you need infrastructure to serve Internet direct to a user. You can't go to Comcast and say \"you must roll out cable to these areas you don't service, right now\". \n",
"AT & T was a nationwide monopoly of all phone services.\nCable companies are not the same as that. For starters their are multiple companies in different regions, so it would be more akin to AT & T and the Baby Bells after the split.\nHowever current cable companies don't even have that level of a monopoly on the service they provide. (In the vast majority of the country). In most places you can get at least Dish and cable, in many places you can get Dish, cable, and Fios. Same for internet, you can get cable, DSL or fiber.\n\nThey do have local monpolies of cable service, and that was a to protect the investment of the infrastructure. Those times have probably passed though, and it would be best to open up competition.",
"Here is a picture of a Panel Phone that was like the one I grew up with in the 1960's-70's. My Dad removed the phone in 1983 with a kitchen upgrade. For my youth, this was the phone, the only phone in the kitchen. We had a folding chair by the phone if you didn't want to stand for the entire conversation. The cord length was like 6' max.\n\n[Panel Phone, 1960's](_URL_0_)",
"Another factor is that AT & T was broken up just at the beginning of the Reagan era, when there was nowhere near the anti-government, anti-regulation sentiment that has been growing for the 30 years since. Every American under the age of 35 has grown up with a daily drumbeat of \"government is always bad and regulation always kills jobs.\" Couple this with the explosion of influence peddling, and now add in corporate personhood (and now, special treatment under the law for corporate persons) and you have complete regulatory capture by monopolists and oligopolists. The Sherman Act may as well not exist at all.",
"Because technically they are an oligopoly which is legal. There is frontier and dish offered in my area so there ethnically other choices but not like with Buyin clothes or a car where there is a lot of competition. "
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1wxzug | why are there no photorealistic paintings from the early ages? | Even without photographs, couldn't they still make their subjects look hyperrealistic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wxzug/why_are_there_no_photorealistic_paintings_from/ | {
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"When I was in art school, they showed me a very rare portrait. It wasn't what you'd call photorealistic, but it was very realistic compared to the vast vast majority of art that survived from that time. Icons of a religious nature were a style, and people paid a hefty sum for that style. Photorealism wasn't sought in the same way, and the same efforts weren't made to preserve them.",
"Assuming you don't mean the realism of Roman/Greek statuary? Painting simply wasn't that big a thing, statues were the height of artistic acheivement.",
"How early are you looking for? Rembrandt's work is magnificent. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci is similarly stunning in its craftsmanship. Maybe not \"photorealistic\" but damn close. ",
"The ability to paint in perspective was not developed till the Renaissance - this is critical for a painting to look hyperrealistic. In other ages size and placement of things in a painting were not meant to show physical location or spacial relationships but rather power or hierarchical or spiritual relationship. So in ancient Egyptian works (for example) the pharaoh is always shown larger than others. "
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1iz8s0 | why will increasing the minimum wage not deplete the purchasing power | Can someone explain how increasing the minimum wage will effect everyone's wages. Theoretically, if we increase the minimum wage, won't that put more money in everyone's hands and thus increase inflation and prices for everyone. In a short time, wages of people who earn more than the minimum wage will increase to match the additional money in the hands of the low-wage earners. Prices will rise and the inflation-adjusted money in the hands of the minimum-wage earners will be back to the current rate. We would be only decreasing the purchasing power of the dollar by doing this.
For example, with a higher minium wage, walmart starts charging more for its products since it doesn't want to decrease profits. That leads to prices increasing and so salaried people start demanding higher wages. Thus salaried people get higher wages and the minimum-wage earners are back to where they were before.
Please decimate my argument and point out where I am going wrong. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iz8s0/why_will_increasing_the_minimum_wage_not_deplete/ | {
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"Everyone doesn't make minimum wage. There's no reason to believe that raising the minimum wage by X will cause everyone's pay to rise by X.",
" > That leads to prices increasing and so salaried people start demanding higher wages. \n\nWalmart raising their prices by 5 or 10% wouldn't make much of a dent in the finances of people getting big salaries.",
"Increasing the minimum wage will not necessarily help workers.\n\nNot that many years ago (about 20) I taught in a poor country. The school where I taught didn't have a PA system or an electric bell system to start/end classes. There was a guy who, among his duties, manually pulled a rope that rang a bell in the bell tower. It just didn't pay to invest even a couple of hundred dollars to automate this task. \n\nThat man was paid certainly far less than $10 a day. Was it a horrible, exploitative situation? he was very happy to have that job and the security and prestige it provided. The alternatives were distinctly worse. It was just a poor country, capital was very expensive and labor was very cheap. A watch would cost the same as in the US, and a haircut would be say 50 cents. You might see someone cutting a lawn, not with a manual lawn mower, but a scythe.\n\nThere was no minimum wage. What would have happened if you enacted a minimum wage of just a couple of dollars an hour? Now maybe it is economical to get that electric bell and a lawn mower. The person who was employed maybe goes back to the farm, maybe shifts to the informal sector, does laundry by hand for the school staff off the books.\n\nThe labor market is different from other markets, but not that different. If there is a clearing price, but otherwise willing buyers and sellers are required to transact at a higher price, the quantity demanded goes down and less labor is purchased.\n\nDoes that mean minimum wages are a bad idea? Not necessarily. If you set the minimum wage at or near the market clearing price, it prevents situations where an employer with a lot of local market power could take advantage. It tells employees, if they're not productive enough to earn that minimum wage, they should stay in school and become more productive, and employers that if their employees have low marginal productivity they need to become more capital intensive, invest more in tools to make them more productive.\n\nBut any time you impose a higher-than market clearing wage, you are pricing some people out of jobs. If you're not, the minimum wage has no effect. And the people who are going to lose jobs are the least productive, youngest, most disadvantaged people. Stores and restaurants can't hire (legal) delivery people, people get pushed into casual and black market (e.g.drug) employment, streets stay dirty while people remain unemployed and on public assistance.\n\nDoes a higher minimum wage ripple up to higher paid workers? The first-order textbook answer is, if you were already making more than the minimum wage and the new minimum is not a binding constraint, there is no impact. \n\nBut, maybe a little bit. Someone supervising 10 employees who are more marginally productive will themselves be more marginally productive, so employers should be willing to pay more. There's social pressure, the manager is 'supposed' to be better than the managed, will think he/she should be paid more, regardless of value added. So both labor demand and labor supply will tend toward higher wages for those jobs. But I don't think there is a big impact on most people making more than the minimum, or any impact once you get a couple of steps removed from the minimum wage worker."
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586zm8 | how does our brain decide that we like/dislike something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/586zm8/eli5_how_does_our_brain_decide_that_we/ | {
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"I'm not a brain expert, but I did study design in college.\n\nWe were taught what aspects of design could create emotional responses... colour, shape, texture, balance etc etc.. You can play with these in different ways and create a design (purely aesthetic in my case) that causes the viewer to have an emotional response.\n\nIt's my belief that when anything stimulates one or more areas of the brain, weather it's a joke, or a design, or whatever type of sensory input, we feel an emotional response. When that response is good, we like it. Much of the time we can't even readily say why we like it, but if you reverse engineer that which you like, you'll figure out why.",
"I'm a psych student, no expert by any means but I know some fundamentals. It's more complicated than this but basically the feeling of liking something is a spike in levels of a chemical called dopamine. There's an area of the brain called the reward center and when it's activated it releases dopamine which tells our brain we like whatever activated it. As far as why certain things activate it that gets much more complicated.",
"At its most basic, we like things that help us survive/reproduce, and don't like things that don't help us survive/reproduce. This basic drive can be chemically overridden by things like sugar, drugs, and hamburgers, so you gotta do stuff in moderation and by consulting wise old people.",
"A study conducted in Israel in 2014 suggests that people's preferences essentially boil down to conditioning, in a process very similar to that used by Ivan Pavlov to train his dog. In his now-classic experiment, Pavlov rang a bell every time he fed the dog. After a while, the dog began to salivate any time it heard the sound of the bell, anticipating being fed.\n\nProf. Yadin Dudai and Dr. Avi Mendelsohn conducted a study on 40 Israeli people. The subjects were shown a Japanese character for a very brief period of time, and they could choose whether to press the space bar or not. Half of these characters earned the participant a shekel (roughly equivalent to a quarter in US dollars) if they pressed the space bar, and the other half deducted one shekel from their winnings. If they did not press the space bar, nothing happened. On each subsequent play of the game, participants earned more money, despite intermediate tests showing they were not consciously aware of which characters were the \"money makers.\"\n\nThree days later, the participants were invited back to the lab and shown the \"money making\" characters, the \"money losing\" characters, as well as some new \"neutral\" characters, and asked which ones they preferred. The participants showed a strong bias towards preferring the characters which had earned them shekels during the game.",
"You are the brain. If you look at the thought process when you decide if you like/dislike something, you'll see the answer.",
"All likes or dislikes are derived from genetics or experiences. \n\nHow do you decide if you like or dislike something? Entirely depends on how the thing is introduced/who introduced it/results \n\n\n\nI never went swimming before. Dad says it's extremely hard and scary (huge influencer). Dad takes me on a rainy cold day. Dad throws me in. I almost drown. I hate swimming. < < < bad experience \n\nMy friends hate math but I love it. My teacher tells me it's super easy. He teaches me in a way I understand and paces me well. I find success on the basic stuff. I build and find success and love math. < < < good experience. Ask people who hate math if they liked their teachers. \n\nGenetics. Obviously controls how high the natural ceiling is on your abilities. We like what we are good at. Because being good at something makes a good experience. If I'm 4'6 I'm probably gonna hate basketball because my genetics limit me pertaining to the skills needed (height) which will lead to a bad experience (dislike)\n\nIt's not complicated how our brain decides what we like don't like. We like things that make us feel good and that we're good at or have had it introduced correctly. We don't like things we don't don't understand and can't figure out and be succesful in. \n\nThe real challenge in life and what separates the men from the boys is knowing this and knowing BAD experiences make us not like things but given another chance or more practice we can learn to like them and succeed aka people who know how to \"get back in the saddle\"! I.E it's silly but I hated mushrooms forever. First time I ate them they were soggy and slimy. Recently had a properly cooked shroom now I love um! "
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3cm3ah | why don't sound ordinaces apply to obnoxiously loud motorcycles? | I've had motorists purposely accelerate through my neighborhood as loud as possible. Or I've been outside and have had to stop talking till the motorcycle passes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cm3ah/eli5_why_dont_sound_ordinaces_apply_to/ | {
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"They might. The specifics of the sound ordinances will obviously vary between cities.\n\nObviously in this case they are very hard to enforce. By the time you report any disturbance the problem has driven itself far away."
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1t2kgo | why can i only get "true" surround sound through headphones that are connected via usb even though they still only have 2 speakers in the ear cups just like regular headphones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t2kgo/eli5_why_can_i_only_get_true_surround_sound/ | {
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"It's not true surround sound. For it to be true surround sound, there has to be at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) mapped to 4 quadrants around the listener. This provides 2 axis for the sound to move along rather than just one (it can go forward to back as well as left to right), thus making it a 2-dimensional sound (rather than 1-dimensional).\n\nCan you link to what you're talking about, specifically? My guess is they've got some fancy driver/firmware that proxies the sound channels from your audio application and mixes them down to a left and a right, with the \"front-to-back\" dimension merely simulated. It gives you a simulation of surround-sound, one that is better than just traditional 2-channel audio, but not \"true\" surround sound, since you don't actually get a front-to-back axis that you can manipulate. Since the speakers are so close to your ears though, it's easy enough to simulate, and (assuming I'm correct) since the driver is translating true surround sound channels down into two channels, it'll do a pretty decent job of it.\n\nThe thing is, this effect isn't only possible via USB headphones. You could just as easily write a system audio module (such as ASIO) which accomplishes the same effect with any standard non-USB pair of headphones. The reason I suspect the headphones you're talking about do this is for business reasons: so they force you to use their headphones to get the effect they created in software.\n\nYou could also accomplish this effect in the original production of the audio (some games do this dynamically) by using some clever mic placement. Check out this video with headphones on, it's just a standard youtube clip, no surround sound: _URL_0_\n\n*edit* Somebody else suggested that the magic is actually built into the hardware of the headphones, not part of a driver, but regardless, you could accomplish the same effect with a special driver to do the sound tricks the headphones are doing. Or with the recording tricks demonstrated above"
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3m8utg | why didn't pleagues come back to europe with explorers? | AFAIK european explorers and settelers brought disease to America that the indigenous population were vulnerable to. So it killed lots of people.
But was the effect not reversed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m8utg/eli5_why_didnt_pleagues_come_back_to_europe_with/ | {
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"They did! Syphilis, for instance, came from the New World and went back to Europe. The New World populations were historically and geographically more isolated and arguably had less hearty immune systems than the Europeans did as a result, and the European diseases were airborne or communicated by touch, which is why the native populations ended up way worse off.",
"Europeans had been in contact with people from Asia and Africa for thousands of years and all sorts of diseases had swept across the continent. Many Europeans also lived in dirty and cramped cities where things spread like a wildfire. That meant that Europeans tended to have pretty robust immune systems compared to the more isolated Americans."
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34665x | why can't turtles move quickly? | What makes them so slow? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34665x/eli5_why_cant_turtles_move_quickly/ | {
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"They are actually [really **really** fast](_URL_0_) when they want to be.\n\nBut you have to remember that they spend a lot of their time in water, and also are cold blooded. If they don't have a chance to sun bathe or warm up otherwise, their movements will be slow.",
"They are designed mainly to swim in the water and don't usually spend much time on land.\n\nIn general though they are as fast as they need to be. Evolution is about being \"good enough\" to pass your genes on effectively to the next generation and turtles have been able to do that over the past few million years so they are \"fast enough\".",
"If you really think turtles are slow, go fuck around with a 200# Mississippi River snapping turtle. Then count your fingers. No, just count your hands. ",
"Turtle story:\nMy family grew up with a turtle, Sam. Well our house has a balcony overseeing the mainlevel. So my dad went to clean Sam's tank, as he did every couple weeks. Thinking that Sam is a turtle, so he isn't going to go anywhere fast, left in to roam the big loft area. My dad came back maybe 5 minutes later, and Sam was missing. Of course our whole family went searching for this blasted turtle. We found him on the main level, on the other side of the house..The turtle LITERALLY must have jumped off the balcony to get to the main floor, and we found him happily hiding behind a wine cellar. \n\nTLDR: Turtles are not slow, they are fast ",
"I think you may be mistaking turtles with tortoises. [Turtles](_URL_0_) are actually capable of significant bursts of speed when it comes to survival. \n\n[Tortoises](_URL_1_) are the slow moving ones, and they move slowly because...there is literally no reason for them to move quickly. Fast movement requires a species have a highly efficient metabolism, and the demand for efficiency increases as weight goes up. Those shells aren't light. To be able to move quickly with one of those on your back would require the tortoise to consume a much larger quantity of food and water. As tortoises rarely live in resource rich environments, this isn't ideal. So...they go slow to conserve as much energy as they can from one food source to another. And when a predator comes sniffing around, they just stop moving and tuck in until its safe to keep moving. \n\ntldr; Speed is an unnecessary survival tool for something that wears heavy armor all day."
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1p8zww | what are the actual intelligence differences between cats and dogs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p8zww/what_are_the_actual_intelligence_differences/ | {
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"Intelligence is many factors- what you probably notice most is trainability, not intelligence.\n\nDogs are particularly tractable- they respect human leaders, crave attention, and enjoy fitting into a pack dynamic. This leads them to be very trainable which many people mistake for intelligence.\n\nCats are IMO equally intelligent, but don't much care about proving it every minute of the day. They are more loners, and don't always enjoy the same level of useless (like repetitive fetch games) interaction with humans as dogs do.\n\nDogs are easily trained and cats train their humans to serve them. I'll leave it to you to decide which demonstrates more \"intelligence.\"",
"Cats have a much wider vocal range than dogs do. French researchers claim that the domestic cat has a vocal range of as many as sixty notes, from a gentle purr to growls of varying intensity to the howl. Some studies show it is closer to 100 vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10. Some believe cats have learned to whine in a vocal wavelength close to that of a human baby because that is what the human brain responds to."
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94hq10 | how is it possible that humans know that the universe is ever expanding if we have a limited space called 'the observable universe' that we cannot see past? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94hq10/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_humans_know_that_the/ | {
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"Because we have observed and recorded things in space moving away from each other over time at a constant and predictable rate. However it is a theory and there will be a paradigm shift if new, solid and replicable evidence is found that contradicts what we currently believe to be true.",
"You can learn a lot just by observing a part of the actual universe. I’d imagine the distances inbetween whatever they are observing tell a lot through the time",
"You know how when an ambulance drives by you, the sound gets higher in pitch as it moves toward you, and lower in pitch when it's moving away? That's called the Doppler Effect, and it works the same way with light. \n\nScientists can tell that things are moving away from Earth, and away from each other, based on the \"color\" of the light they see from it (in quotations because they look at more than just visible light, so it's not technically the right word, but the meaning is the same). \n\nThe key thing is that the universe is expanding at every point in space, not just at the edges. It doesn't expand *into* anything, but rather, the actual *property* of distance in space is changing. Lucky for us, gravitational attraction is a much, much, much, much, much, much, much stronger force, which is why we don't see *galaxies* expand. \n\nFor a 2-D visualization, imagine drawing a bunch of dots on a deflated balloon, then blowing it up. Every dot (planet/galaxy/whatever) will get farther from every other dot. ",
"We don't know for absolute certain, but we know that space is expanding within the observable universe, and we have something called the Cosmological Principle, which says that in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, we assume that the universe is broadly the same everywhere. On that basis, we can generalise from the *observable* universe to the *entire* universe."
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567yzh | why are there more male criminals than female criminals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/567yzh/eli5_why_are_there_more_male_criminals_than/ | {
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"This is something people have been trying to work out for years. It could be to do with biological things such as testosterone, or sociological aspects such as gender roles and environment. The truth is that nobody truly knows, although chances are there are elements of all theories at play here.",
"Men are natural risk takers. Since evolution values the lives more than men, men tend to be more willing to take risks to bring themselves success, and crime is a *very* big risk in most situations. This is certainly not meant to excuse any behavior, and there are certainly more factors than that, but its a start.",
"How do you define criminal? If you're talking about someone who breaks the law, then we could make a case that it's probably more equal than we realize because many people speed, many people roll through stop signs, jaywalk, cheat on their taxes, etc. regardless of gender. But they broke the law, so they're criminals.\n\nIf we are talking about people who make a living doing crime, there are far fewer of those people than the media (and cable tv detective shows) would have you believe. Most of the \"criminals\" tend to be people living in poverty who break the law sometimes to get by or get ahead, but not usually to make a career out of it. You could make a case that men are more likely to fall into this category of criminal as a way of trying to achieve their hunter/gatherer instincts via the only avenue that might be available to them.\n\nIf you are talking about people who are incarcerated for committing crimes, it can partly be because judges and juries tend to put harsher sentences on men.",
"While everything stated is valid, there are also legal biases. It's pretty well established that the law is typically more lenient on women than men, which means a crime that may send a man to jail may not for a woman. Thus, the definition of \"criminal\" can also be applied differently.",
"Like with most things, it's down to a mixture of nature and nurture.\n\nMen may be more inclined to aggressiveness because of biological factors like testosterone. But in most cultures, there is an increased social pressure on men to be more aggressive and more physical, compared with women, who are generally discouraged from being even assertive and physical (though these days, assertiveness is being encouraged in women more frequently). Therefore, violent behaviour occurs more frequently in men than in women, though it is important to remember that women are not completely nonviolent.\n\nAdditionally, the law is generally more lenient with women than it is with men, meaning that men are prosecuted and sentenced more frequently than women are for the same or similar crimes."
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clxn2x | how does my brain/body make my jaw clench while i sleep, to the point of damaging my teeth? i get it has to do with stress, but how does this focus on my jaw muscles and not my leg muscles for examples? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clxn2x/eli5_how_does_my_brainbody_make_my_jaw_clench/ | {
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"Its not necessarily stress or anxiety related, it could be a number of causes like physical imbalance in your mouth, TMD, or sleep apnea. \n\nIt’s your muscle tightening up. Your legs also have muscles that tighten which is why you foam roll and stretch. Your jaw muscles function the same way. Supplements that help muscle relaxation like magnesium, massaging the area (kinda like foam rolling), and even Botox (which paralyzes that muscle) has been proven to help with teeth grinding or clenching in sleep. Once you find the source of your teeth clench or grinding to sleep you can pinpoint how to help it.",
"Speak to your dentist and ask to get a mouth guard made. I grind , I have temporomandibular joint disorder. It doesn't just affect your teeth it will end up causing really bad pain in the joints. You can also get medication for it - in the UK amitriptyline is prescribed.",
"It can also be a side effect of different medications. In my case, it is Wellbutrin. It’s a balancing act to get an effective dose without damaging side effects. I wore a specialized device to prevent the clenching. It’s different from an anti-grinding guard in that it’s designed to prevent your back teeth from touching, which in turn prevents the clenching. Having the dentist adjust my bite slightly so that my molars basically have little surface interaction has also helped tremendously.",
"People's bodies just carry stress so differently. I'm a massage therapist and I clench constantly, day and night, but it's funny how everyone is different and everyone carries stress in different places. Some people clench their jaws, so people's shoulders are always tight and tense, some people curl their toes or clench their fists. Couldnt tell you the reason.\n\nI will say my boss, a chiropractor has greatly helped with the pain, he adjusts my jaw and since it's been 4 years, my jaw is WAY better. Less pain, less popping and cracking, less getting stuck. Wasn't even aware adjusting a jaw was a thing. If you can afford it, give it a try! You might be sore at first but ice and self massage help. There are also massage therapists that are certified in tmj issues that can help you out too!"
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8mskae | does iud contraception, which can stop a woman’s period for years, render you more fertile later in life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mskae/eli5_does_iud_contraception_which_can_stop_a/ | {
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"No. It doesn't. You have the same chances.\n\nJust because the egg isn't fertilized doesn't mean it stays in you forever.\n\nIt might take a few months for your cycle to regulate after coming off something like an IUD. They are heavy hitters.\n\nBC also masks any fertility issues you may be experiencing.",
"No; infertility is almost never due to a person simply running out of eggs (I've never heard of it). That's not what causes menopause, either, btw.\n\nAssuming your cycles go back to normal after going off the IUD, you'll still be dropping one egg every month-ish.",
"There are two types of IUDs\\- hormonal and non\\-hormonal. In the hormonal one the progestin from the IUD creates a thick cervical mucus that sperm cannot penetrate. It also thins the lining of the uterus, which may make the implantation of the fertilised egg of the female \\(a critical step in the development of a healthy fetus\\) more difficult \\(though this fact is not fully proven yet\\). On the other hand, the non\\-hormonal IUD releases copper ions that are much toxic against sperm, decreasing their ability to swim. Should a person decide to become pregnant after years, fertility will return up to six weeks after removing the hormonal IUD and immediately after removing the non\\-hormonal IUD. Also, when you remove the IUD since the ovary is not really affected in any such way, within a menstrual cycle or so the uterus recovers and fertility returns to *whatever level it was supposed to be.* ",
"I believe what OP really means is whether she still ovulates (i.e., releases an egg) while using an IUD.\n\nIn which case the answer is yes, you are still losing eggs, even without a period.\n \nEdit: disregard as I am stupid"
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xj7qs | how does a cpu do 'math'? | I get that a CPU at its basic 'core' is responsible for taking data from one place and putting them in another place, and is also responsible for doing basic arithmetic; however, I still don't get how we take electricity, run it through capacitors and transistors and stuff and we get the processor to do math. Honestly, I don't even get how the processor can 'read' instructions at its most basic level. Can anyone explain these steps? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xj7qs/eli5_how_does_a_cpu_do_math/ | {
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"Option 1:\n\nEasy steps to DIY\n1: Learn Binary.\n2: Learn Boolean Algebra.\n3: Take computer engineering at your local community college.\n4: Enjoy sweet knowledge.\n\nOption 2:\nStep 1: See option 1.\nStep 2: Trust those who have done this. \n\nOption 3:\nBinary allows computers to do math with on off states of transistors. this (on off \"switch\") is called a bit of data, essentially the state being read as \"on\" is 1 because a voltage is at level A something being \"off\" is 0 because voltage is at level B (A and B being reference levels not absolute 1 or 0). Then lining a few of these up together you can have a byte (8 bits). example 01010101. following some rules software/hardware through programing or human input can change 1s and 0s to 0s and 1s. \nblah blah blah...\n\nAdding/subtracting for a computer is the same as for a human. what is 2+2=4 to you is just 10+10=100 to a computer. (again learn binary)\nsomething you should also realize is all simple math can be done with addition and subtraction, remember the carry the ten stuff in binary its cary the 2, 4, 8... Also there are some cool tricks to do multiplication and such, like just adding a zero to the right of a number doubles it. 100 is twice as big as 10. Calculus is a whole different question. An op-amp can be used to create a hardware integrator, (again take computer science or electrical engineering)\n\nTLDR: Computers do math the same way you do, it takes two values and operates them based on the desired instruction. They just \"speak\" binary (base 2) not decimal (base 10). To understand what its doing, just like you had to learn to do math, a computer has to be programed. \n\nThe really crazy part is look how big a computer use to be, a smart phone today has the power of all the computers in the world combined like 30 years ago and is infinitely smaller. Science for the win!",
"I'll just leave this here.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's too late for me to write a further explanation. \n",
"You have this thing called a NAND (Not AND) gate. It has two circuits going in and one going out. Electricity comes through the output of the NAND gate unless both of the inputs are on at the same time. Using combinations of this you can make different logic circuits like AND (output if both inputs are on), OR (output of one or the other is on), and so on. \n\nSo you store numbers in binary. On circuit is 1; off circuit is 0. 8 bit numbers go from 0 to 255, or 00000000 to 11111111. There's also a way to work with negative numbers called two's complement but I'm getting off track.\n\nSo now out of the logic gates up there, you make an adder. It takes like 16 circuits in, which is just two binary numbers, and outputs eight circuits, one binary number. The output is the sum of the two input numbers.\n\nAn ALU is a lot more complex than just an adder, but it's really just more connections from various logic gates.\n\nThen a CPU has an ALU, but also you add features like a way to automatically decode instructions which have been coded in to 1s and 0s. Once again, all logic gates.\n\nI'll be happy to answer what I can.",
"Transistors in digital logic circuits are used mostly as switches. You want the transistors to be either all the way OFF (no current flow) or all the way ON (lots of current flow). (They intrinsically are not digital, they are analog. You can also use them in-between OFF and ON, such as in an amplifier circuit like those driving loudspeakers in your stereo.) \n \n\nUsing just a few transistors, you can build very simple logic circuits to implement binary digital logic (called \"Boolean\" logic after the guy who invented it). It turns out that you can build any digital logic function with a combination of only three simple circuit types, such as AND/OR/NOT. By combining those simple circuits, more complicated circuits can be made (such as an adder, a multiplexer, etc.). You can use those circuits to make even more complicated ones. Like a CPU. \n\nIt's like if you had a bunch of little Lego blocks, and you could use those to make larger Lego blocks, and you could then use those to make even larger Lego blocks, and so on. Today's integrated circuits use more than a billion transistors to make something that is very complex, but it is built up out of very simple things.\nTransistors are great for building these things because they are small, fast, reliable, cheap, and don't use a lot of power. These are all important properties when you are trying to make something that uses a billion or more devices. \n \nWhen a CPU reads an instruction, it often does it from DRAM or SRAM memory chips inside the computer. It changes the voltage levels on some of its control pin outputs that tell the memory chips \"Give me the information at this address\". It provides the address by setting the bits on the pins that make up the address bus - high voltage means 1, low voltage means 0. The memory reads that address and sends back the contents that are stored there in a similar fashion. It toggles some control pins to say \"Here ya go\" and puts its data pins at the right voltages to represent the 1s and 0s corresponding to that binary data. The CPU now looks at the data bus pins and reads in that data into its internal memory. \n \nThe memory chips don't know the difference between \"instructions\" (commands for the CPU to do something) and \"data\" (numbers for the CPU to use with those commands). But the program that the CPU is running keeps track of command addresses and data addresses, so the CPU knows which is which and uses them appropriately. "
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3dtmss | how do stereo headphones distinguish between sound going to the left and right ears if everything goes through one audio jack? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dtmss/eli5_how_do_stereo_headphones_distinguish_between/ | {
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"The jack itself has several different contacts - if you look carefully at the tip of the headphone jack, you can see three metal areas separated by plastic bands. I think one is left, one is right, and one is the return/ground. Headphones with a built-in mic will have an additional contact area (which some jacks, for instance, on computers and phones, can interface with).",
"One audio jack but three parts on the pin (3 wires). Left channel, right channel and ground. ",
"If you look carefully at the jack there are what sometimes look like rubber bands. They separate the single jack into multiple jacks. \n\nOne is left, one is right, and one is a ground (to prevent damage from shorts/ surges).\n\nIt only looks like one piece of metal. ",
"there are 3 connections actually. Look at the tip of the connection, it segmented into 3 areas. One is left, the other is right, and the last is a ground."
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edqq83 | why aren’t there more alternatives to plastic water bottles? is it entirely economic or are there no good materials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/edqq83/elif_why_arent_there_more_alternatives_to_plastic/ | {
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"It's almost entirely economical, just because plastic bottles are VERY cheap. Also they are incredibly easy to manufacture and have a lengthy life span",
"Reusable water bottles are the most economic and environmentally friendly choice. There are bio plastics that are much kinder to the environment but there hasn’t been much widespread implementation. As of now plastic is actually better then a lot of other materials, for example glass has a much larger carbon footprint to produce.",
"Plastics were the revolutionary space-age material when they first became ubiquitous. They provided the answer to the analoguous question people were asking at the time: \"Why aren’t there more alternatives to glass water bottles? Is it entirely economic or are there no good materials?\". A PET bottle is extremely lightweight, low-cost and almost unbreakable under normal circumstances. It is a true marvel of modern materials science.",
"Because it is very very good for the purpose of making water bottles. Cost certain factors into how popular and good a product is. Plastic is strong, flexible, resists shattering, can be tinted, is relatively easy to manufacture, safe (mostly). Plastic liquid containers have saved a lot of lives (think about things like plasma bags and saline solutions in emergency vehicles or packaging and preserving food/drinks for people who go to difficult places) \n\nThere are good reasons glass replaced metal, clay and wood and also good reasons why plastic supplanted glass containers. There is a lot of work that can be done to improve plastic but dollar for dollar, it is also fairly energy efficient in terms of production. Hence it isn't easy to find alternatives.",
"I guarantee this is being researched every day. Like others have pointed out, we got to plastic because they used to ask this question about glass. And we got to glass because of tin, and clay, etc. \n\nThere have been big movements in the spaces where it can be more easily implemented. You’ll see people using reusable containers a lot more than they used to. But until we can find something that is cheap, easy to mass produce, clean, and environmentally friendly, we are kinda stuck.",
"Shops around me sometimes sell water in cardboard containers- \"boxed waters\". Not sure why it's not implemented more widely."
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