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24jamf | how do wet dreams work? | What is the neurological process the brain goes through? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24jamf/eli5_how_do_wet_dreams_work/ | {
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"You dream about having sexual pleasures, you get a boner, you spill happiness, and then you wake up exhausted and depressed.",
"I thought I'd quickly Google this to maybe give some preliminary answer. But there is indeed a strange lack of causal description of what goes on when \"Nocturnal emissions\" occur.\nAlso, my new favorite words are Nocturnal emission.",
"Oh jezz, firstly, the testicles do NOT create semen, they create sperm. The prostate creates semen and finishes the maturation of sperm so everything is ready for ejaculation.\nEdit: The epididymis matures the sperm, which then goes to the prostate to make viable sperm-containing semen.\n\nSecondly, we know that nocturnal emissions, or wet dreams, are directly related to the amount of time you go without ejaculating/masturbating. The longer you go without ejaculating, the more likely you are to have a wet dream.\n\nThe exact reason we have wet dreams isn't known. The best theory at the moment is that it empties out your prostate so a new fresh batch of sperm and semen can come into being. Sperm doesn't live very long and semen doesn't support sperm much longer either, so by removing the old and replacing it with a new \"batch\" is our best understanding as to why. However, I should note that sperm and semen are constantly made, not just when you're aroused. Another idea is that wet dreams keep the muscles and nervous systems involved in ejaculation fully operating and prevent them from becoming weak with non-use. And also as a trigger to associate the area with pleasure for first-time users. Of course, it could be a combination of all of these.\n\nWhat we do know for sure, is that nocturnal emissions are normal and harmless. \n\nSorry, I did an ELI12",
"Your subconscious can't tell the difference between real and imagined experience. ",
"As a female who was looking for an answer...\n\nYou guys did not help out at all."
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5yydbe | why do governments choose to privatise and outsources public services? | I'm UK based but an analogy from any western country would suffice. I'm curious as to why this would benefit a country and if it's actually just a money making scam at our expense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yydbe/eli5_why_do_governments_choose_to_privatise_and/ | {
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"the myth is that by privatizing previously public sector industries efficiency, productivity, quality price reduction [due to competition] and the trickle down economic benefit [which comes from rich people [who have monopolies] spending and creating business] will all be positive results for the public. the reality is that it is a money making scam that benefits only the rich within society. this is because [the rich control the representatives in a representative democracy because they finance the pollies campaigns](_URL_0_). Remember the [golden rule](_URL_1_)",
"If you're well off, paying for those services yourself would mean you pay less than the taxes you pay to fund them because our taxes are set up so that the rich pay more, since they can. The entire point of this is to make sure that even the poor can receive basic services. If you don't give a fuck about anyone but yourself then you'd rather pay for just your own service and let everyone else go without. You could even get yourself a much better service since you have more money and let others have a much worse service. If you give a fuck about other people then you want to make sure that even if things go badly for someone in life they can still access services they need, and this means paying more taxes if you're well off. \n\nThis is the basis behind most of the left/right economic differences. \"Do you give enough of a fuck about other people that you're willing to get less so that everyone can get enough?\"\n\nOh, and don't say fuck in front of your mum, I forgot you're 5. ",
"Delivering public services well is a continual balancing act between efficiency, which is generally best delivered by someone with a profit motive (privatisation), and social responsibility, which is generally best delivered by someone without a profit motive. \n\nTypically a service will be delivered publicly until it becomes so bloated by risk aversion and attempting to foresee and allow for every hard case that it becomes unsustainable. Then it gets privatised (or quasi-privatised through joint ventures or outsourcing) and stays that way until the wrong corner gets cut and someone dies/slips through the cracks/whatever. Then it gets brought back into public hands, if that's possible, or subjected to additional supervision and regulation, to restore its commitment to its purpose. And so the cycle starts again. ",
"In the UK it's not usually a choice. The national government passes a law that says the local governments must privatise those services.",
"Back handers, selling off public assets in the interest of making mega bucks for your rich friends. ",
"Because privatization means competition, businesses have to compete with one another to provide you with the best services possible, the government often holds on to - and later releases stored goods and services that are in abundance to release them when there's a shortage, sometimes the government simply hands back control to the free market when it's no longer required for them protect it. ",
"In theory:\n\nMonopolies are bad for customers. Companies are incentivized to charge more and do less when they have a monopoly. There's nothing a consumer can do about it. Competition is the thing that incentivizes a company to become more efficient and responsive to customers in order to not lose them. \n\nGovernment-run services are essentially monopolies. ",
"Privatization does several things (Plus and minus): Firstly, the government gets a big jolt of cash that it can use to please voters in the immediate term. They can use the money to quickly fix or implement changes that would ordinarily need funding. Secondly, they can get out of union contracts and other expensive work rules. Often it is hard to fire a government employee that isn't performing well. This isn't a problem in a private company. Often government employees have very good benefits and retirement plans. Not so in private companies.\n\nOn the down side, privatization takes control over pricing out of the elected officials hands and into the private company. The cost of services often goes up. Secondly, the objectives of the company are not in alignment with the electorate. For example, private prison companies (running prisons) hire lobbyists to advocate for longer prison sentences and thus more customers! Private prison companies like it when prisoners aren't paroled. They also like it when prisoners that are released return to a life of crime and are arrested again. That is one example of how privatized service really works at cross purposes to what is good for society and there are others.",
"Privatisation allows for a quick cash for the government with the idea that private industry can provide the service more efficiently and cheaper because it forces competition. It also encourages innovation and removes the government from the equation but often results in stagnation and higher prices because of price fixing by the industry where profit drives the business instead of service.",
"The electricity & gas situation annoys me no end. This is a business where he only thing that matters in terms of cost price is how much you can buy at once. \n\nIt's the exact opposite of a business which should be privatised. If one organisation is buying all the fuel for the entire country it gets a much better rate, so to purposefully split it up & claim its better for the consumer is madness. \n\nEven more so when you consider that the wholesalers & retail end of the chain are almost all owned by the same parties, so creating false competition & circumventing the rules to implement price fixing is easier than almost any other area.",
"My understanding is that corporations are more efficient than governments, which together with market competition (can't have competition unless it's privatised) should lead to better service and/or lower cost."
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5sbmwa | why do musicians make weird poses when singing or playing an instrument? | Is it just showman ship or is there some other reason? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sbmwa/eli5_why_do_musicians_make_weird_poses_when/ | {
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"I suspect that it's the effect of the music, which makes you want to dance or jump around. The crowd is doing that, and the music makes you want to participate. But you can't, because you're playing an instrument, so you just do the best you can.",
"Well, sometimes you develop quirks when playing your instrument. Apparently I make some weird faces while playing guitar. I'm sure showmanship is part of it for some."
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1oqhy8 | who is ann coulter and why is everyone so cautions about her ama? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oqhy8/eli5_who_is_ann_coulter_and_why_is_everyone_so/ | {
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"Ann Coulter is a right-wing conservative pundit who has a lot of commentary that pisses people off. It ranges from outrageous to just ~~factually wrong~~ *morally twisted or intellectually dishonest* , and she *sometimes* ^^^(edit) makes stuff up.\n\nPeople are cautious because she is the type of person to go on reddit, start a bunch of shit, then take that to her TV show and brand Reddit/the internet as something really negative in order to promote her/FoxNews's agenda.\n\nTherefore everyone is being advised to STFU and be careful with what we post, because all we need is Ann Coulter spouting off on TV about how a bunch of anons on Reddit are trying to start a *muslim communist liberal terrorist assault on Conservative *Christian America, and we get flooded with people who are fans of hers.\n\nEdit: read [this](_URL_0_) and do some googling and you'll get the picture. The short and ugly of it is that we don't need the kind of publicity that she would bring, and the community in general is bracing for her AMA to be a shitstorm. We might be wrong and the whole thing end up really pleasant and surprising, but you don't see a wave of shit incoming and stand there with an umbrella and say \"I'm sure this will be fine.' You build a fucking tall ass wall, then grab your umbrella and wait.\n\nEdit Edit: As people have noted, she is well educated, well written, and probably knows *exactly* what she is doing, which makes her all the more dangerous. She may not believe what she says out loud, but she has an agenda, and we should be aware of that during the AMA. That's all.",
"She's one of the public media faces of the far-religious-right political conservative scene. As for why everyone is so cautious, I'd suspect it's because they're pretty sure (and rightly so) that a forum as liberal as reddit often tends to be is not going to be the place to have a rational discussion with someone who has at various points: supported the use of torture, referred to the slightest liberal political leaning as 'treason', and backhandedly ('I'd get in trouble for saying it, so I won't say anything at all...') called a candidate in the 2008 Presidential election a faggot.\n\nI suspect her AMA will end up being like trying to have a reasonable discussion with the most insane over-the-top 'God 'n' gunz is all Uhmurka needs!' pseudo-conservative forum troll, because that persona is basically her entire schtick.",
"Ann is the media equivalent of a WWE wrestler. She's a IRL troll and she's very good at it. I personally don't believe she has a personal ideology about these topics. She just knows she can stir the shit and people will talk about her (Watch her on Bill Maher's show. He understands her.)\n\n",
"She is entertainment. I think even amongst own supporters, no one values her opinions as particularly thoughtful or insightful. Instead she is liked by the faux news faithful for her ability to voice ignorance in a somewhat well spoken manner. Of course, that bar is not very high considering the general mouth breathers faux normally rolls in for commentary and opinion. \n\nIt's a pity really. I always thought that she had potential to be something better than the caricature that she has let herself become.",
"She is a media whore who makes money by writing and saying outrageous and frequently very offensive things about various races, ethnic groups or political figures. She is your typical racist anti-semitic homophobic uncle that everyone avoids at family gatherings, the difference is - your uncle is not allowed on TV. The best thing to do would be ignore her AMA, she is not a serious pundit, even Rush has more integrity, and that is a very low bar.",
"She says a lot of very controversial things.\n\nPersonally I think she doesn't believe a lot of them and just says them for attention and money.",
"Because the majority of reddit is ~~very~~ somewhat liberal, and Ann Coulter is a conservative that makes a living being blunt and controversial. \n\nI do wonder, however, what the response would be like to someone who is equally ridiculous from the political left. Say, Michael Moore? ",
"When's her ama??",
"In case i miss it someone please ask her what it was like dating jimmy (dynomite) walker.",
"She is a troll and trolls need to be ignored. ",
"I'd never heard of her until today (being English) so decided to youtube her and came to her [Paxman interview](_URL_0_). While her beliefs are completely disgusting and twisted... that woman can argue effectively \n",
"She is only the sexist woman EVER",
"[this is Ann Coulter](_URL_0_)"
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7aovex | why aren't video game graphics as good as current animated features, like zootopia? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7aovex/eli5_why_arent_video_game_graphics_as_good_as/ | {
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"Movie graphics can be created over a long time and polished for release while game graphics are created on the spot. Movies are also rendered in giant computing farms while games run on personal hardware. It is the difference between needing to make a video frame every few hours vs 60 per second.",
"A movie doesn’t have to deal with changing inputs and scenarios like a video game does. It all has to do with how fast the computer processing the game is capable of loading the environment, other characters etc.",
"Think about what is necessary for good graphics. A computer must run a specific amount of calculations to render whatever frames it needs to. The quality of the graphics is determined by the quality of the frames, and the speed at which they are generated.\n\nIn animated movies, the calculations are done at Disney supercomputers and over the course of many weeks. Contrarily, the graphics for video games are generated on your not-so-great home computer in an instant.",
"Video games have to be rendered in real time, at a decent frame rate in consumer hardware\n\nBut when making animated features, it doesn't matter if an individual frame takes hours to render on very expensive hardware. This opens up the possibility of more advanced lighting techniques, more detailed models and textures, and so on.",
"Each frame of a film takes like 90 hours to render. These frames are given amazing attention to detail and are worked on by hundreds of people. In a game, the characters have to move freely within a live environment. It would be impossible to give the same level of detail to every frame of a game because the game has a million different possible paths, whereas a film has one. ",
"For a few reasons. \n\nFirst, video games have to be a lot longer than a two-hour movie to sell. So you have to animate all of that other extra stuff going on, usually with a MUCH lower budget. And you end up reusing objects and toning down on special effects as a result.\n\nNext, hardware. They use \"rendering farms\" for animated movies, not just your gaming PC or console. Here's a quote from a How to Train Your Dragon 2 story about how big a difference this is.\n\n > It took a fleet of cloud computers in data centers more than 90 million render hours to render the 129,600 frames in the final film. **If one computer had worked on the rendering task, it would have taken 10,273 years to complete**. But DreamWorks had so much computing power on hand that it could render those frames inside of a week or so for the last cut.\n\nAdd to this that most games have to also run on middle-grade gaming hardware, and you have to cut down on the bells and whistles a lot.\n\nAnd finally, movies lock you into a single scripted path throughout. They can perfectly set up every scene because they're dictating every single thing about it, and so they can make it gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Games have to take into account all the infinite angles that the player's view can give them... so they simply can't be as perfectly and gorgeously set up.",
"They have to be rendered in real-time by consumer-grade hardware that costs a few hundred dollars tops and has to fit in your home entertainment center. Hollywood features are rendered by a team of professional artists on massive banks of server-style computers that can fill an entire building, over the course of months or years."
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5opr7l | who decides what is fake news? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5opr7l/eli5_who_decides_what_is_fake_news/ | {
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"You got exactly the right question.\n\nIn the original meaning of the term, nobody decides. There is objective truth and there is untruth. If the latter is reported as if it were truth, that is fake news.\n\nProblem: everyone and their mother is adopting the term \"fake news\" to mean \"anything that goes against my personal belief\"."
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bu1enp | if every light emmiting diode is also a solar panel, why dont smartphones have the ability to charge via the sun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bu1enp/eli5_if_every_light_emmiting_diode_is_also_a/ | {
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"Mainly because they aren’t very efficient being used that way. It’s the same issue with microphones and speakers. They technically can be used interchangeably but a microphone makes a terrible speaker and a speaker makes a terrible microphone. LEDs are just better at emitting light. Also, solar panels are so bad at emitting light that the light they do emit isn’t even visible.",
"A common misnomer is that people refer to LCD's as \"LED\" displays. This is incorrect, as the only LED's in those displays are the ones in the backlights; They're still LCD's, they just don't use cold-cathodes to produce the backlight.\n\nWith that being said, the LED's do not get direct exposure to sunlight. Therefore, they do not receive enough light to generate any usable power.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nNewer phones use OLED screens, which could potentially generator power. There have been early attempts at using OLED screens as solar panels, but their attempts seem to have gone no where. These were also just plain screens without a touchscreen layer or screen protector. The more layers you add to a solar panel, the less efficient it gets. If it were possible, one flaw would be that the battery would be both heated by the sun and from charging it. A hot battery reduces its life expectancy and slows down charging."
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28svz6 | why are chimneys at nuclear power plant so big? | I know that they are not a common chimneys but anyway. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28svz6/eli5_why_are_chimneys_at_nuclear_power_plant_so/ | {
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"Those aren't chimneys. They're cooling towers: _URL_0_ . Conventional plants use them as well; they're used to dispose of all the waste heat from the process of generating power."
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2s4fcj | what are the differences between all these awards show ? | The Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Emmys, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Academy Awards, the People's Choice awards .... There are so many different ones and I'm not so sure what the differences between them are. It seems some of the categories overlap as well. What's the difference between all of them ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s4fcj/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_all_these/ | {
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"Each award belongs to a different group.\n\nThe Grammys for example are given out by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for outstanding work in the music industry.\n\nThe same group gives out the: Emmy Awards (television), the Tony Awards (stage performance), and the Academy Awards/Oscars (motion pictures).\n\nThe specifies for each award are on Wikipedia.",
"The Grammys are for music and The Tonys are for Broadway-type stuff. The Oscars is the same thing as The Academy Awards, and they are for movies. I think the rest are for movies and tv shows.",
"To be honest, they're all a bunch of crap. It's just another excuse for Hollywood to pat themselves on their backs, and for the award show owners to make money on TV advertising.\n\n- Grammy awards .... music business, voted on by music industry insiders\n\n- Golden Globes .... movie and TV awards, voted on by the hollywood foreign press\n\n- Emmy awards .... TV awards, voted on by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences\n\n- Tony awards .... live theater (Broadway), voted on by theater insiders\n\n- Academy awards (Oscars) .... movies, voted on by various movie Academy members, but done by branch (directors vote on best directors)\n\n- People's Choice .... vote on various things in music, TV, movies, voted on by anybody",
"The main difference is who votes on the winners - critics, peers & colleagues, fans, etc. Also they get good TV ratings so there are more and more of them popping up."
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3hj050 | why do tornadoes occur more often in open areas than in the city. i am assuming there are factors besides there being more open area in total. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hj050/eli5_why_do_tornadoes_occur_more_often_in_open/ | {
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"It's just the odds. Cities take up an incredibly small percentage of the total amount of land. And sometimes they do hit cities, as people in Moore and Joplin and Birmingham can attest to.\n\nThink of it this way... take a taco out to a parking lot. Put it in the middle. Walk to the edge of the parking lot, and, with your back to the taco, throw a rock over your shoulder as hard as you can. Think your odds are good for hitting that taco? Nope. Same with a tornado.",
"yeah and maybe the reason they are open spaces is because the amount of tornadoes caused people to not build big buildings in that area"
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8f7xng | what happens in your body when you instantly sober up after witnessing something traumatic if all the alcohol is still there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8f7xng/eli5_what_happens_in_your_body_when_you_instantly/ | {
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"It’s all about the adrenaline. You’re not actually sober but adrenaline causes you to be more alert and have extra energy giving you the sense of being sober."
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76640g | what is the relationship between natural resources and economic growth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76640g/eli5_what_is_the_relationship_between_natural/ | {
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"Complicated. At best.\n\nHaving access to abundant natural resources certainly seems to *contribute* to \"economic growth\", but it's hardly the only factor. \n\nThe best economic results come when a particular economy can engage in large-scale \"resource extraction\" for *domestic* use. Think coal in England during the nineteenth century, or natural gas in the US over the last decade. In both cases, access to large quantities of a particular natural resource was an economic benefit for the particular regions that contained it, but the \"real action,\" as it were, comes from the fact that those resources were being consumed by industries in the same country. The resource extraction regions benefit from vigorous demand for resources, and the more industrial regions benefit from having ready (and therefore *cheap*) access to necessary natural resources. Everybody wins!\n\nBut those two things don't necessarily go together. Take Japan, for example. As far as natural resources go, Japan got a raw deal. It's an island nation (archipelago, really). It has no mining industry to speak of. Never has. It has a *tiny* (and massively protected) agricultural sector. It catches an absolute crap-ton of fish and other seafood, but its fishing fleets go all over the Pacific, and it *still* imports something like half of its seafood. \n\nAnd it's *still* got the second-largest economy in Asia and the third-largest in the world. Exactly why that should be is an interesting question, but clearly, having bupkis in terms of natural resources hasn't slowed it down much.\n\nBy contrast, consider Africa. *Abundant* natural resources of *many* different kinds. Minerals. Agricultural land. Fossil fuels. Precious stones. And almost uniformly *crappy* economies. There are historical reasons for this, to be sure. But look at the Middle East too. Those countries tend to be pretty rich, sure. . . but they're *highly* dependent upon oil extraction, to the point that a lot of them are in increasing trouble what with oil prices hovering stubbornly around $50/bbl. If this keeps up much longer, the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis, etc., could be in real trouble if they don't find something else to do with their economies. Because right now, it's basically \"oil\" and \"tourism.\" And if it wasn't for the former, the latter wouldn't be *nearly* enough to keep things going. They might well be worse off than many African nations, many of which can at least grow *some* of their own food. ",
"As u/rdacidson24 said complicated at best.\n\nLacking resources tends to hinder growth, having too much also tends to hinder growth. There is something called the resource curse where having abundance of a natural resource tends to cause a country to not grow as well as others. The main cause is over-investment in the resource sector at the expense of others, which ties the country to the resource even though demand for any resource changes over time.\n\n_URL_0_ for more on this."
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4n3ua0 | when japan unconditionally surrendered to america, why didn't america just take japan and it become an american territory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n3ua0/eli5_when_japan_unconditionally_surrendered_to/ | {
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"Because America wasn't trying to capture territory. Remember, Japan attacked America first @ Pearl Harbor. That's why USA and Japan went to war. Japan eventually had enough and surrendered, which ended the fighting. ",
"After the war, America was heavily involved in Japan's fate. We wrote their constitution, which prevents them from having a military. America occupied Japan for a few years as the country resettled. Japan effectively became an American ally because we didn't give them much choice in the matter. Even today, Japan is dependent on America's military force for protection, (though their \"self-defense force\" is more powerful than most countries' military forces) and we remain close allies.\n\nBut yeah, after the war America took control over Japan's destiny.",
"After WW2 there was an Occupation phase that lasted until 1952, during which the USA did basically run Japan. The problem with the idea of just \"taking\" Japan was that it's really hard to run a country without the consent of the people of that country, and even if the USA could technically do that, it runs counter to American principles of freedom and self-determination. \n\nSo when I say the USA \"ran\" Japan, it was always with the goal of restoring it after the ravages of war and installing a parliamentary democracy. You could argue that the USA's success in Japan and (with the other Allies) in West Germany gave the false impression that that could work in the Middle East too ... ",
"Another thing that needs to be noted in this thread is why the United States wouldn't have wanted Japan as a territory. The Philippines was a US territory before the war and shortly after it, but the US didn't want to keep the Philippines because it qualified to become a state. If the Philippines did, then all the Filipinos would take over about 1/3rd of the votes in the House of Representatives. So, to apply this to Japan, if the US incorporated Japan into the union, in the best case scenario the Japanese would eventually control a large portion of voting power, and in the worst, and most likely case, there would be rebel fighting until the Japanese would break off again. Occupying Japan and forming the restructuring was the best way to end for both involved. ",
"As others have noted America effectively did control japan for quite some time.\n\nThere are two reasons America doesn't directly control japan anymore-\n\nOne, it doesn't need to- America has bases on Japan, particularly Okinawa, so there isn't any additional strategic military value to more direct control. On the economic side an independent Japan is more likely to get America more money in the long run (eg if America taxed japan, you'd likely see japanese resentment leading to less production + costly repression requirements)\n\nTwo, America wants allies, not territories generally. It's got plenty of space at home so it doesn't need colonies, what it needs is allies on the world diplomatic/economic stage, and if necessary in a war. Hence giving the Japanese independence, to get their gratitude - rather than having to spend resources suppressing an unruly populace with a totally different culture to your own. it also has the side effect of making your side seem better in the Cold war - eg people wanted to live in west not east germany, because the west germans had their freedom back after some time, whereas the east germans had to bow and scrape to the soviets \n\n",
"World War Two was not a conflict of nations, but of ideologies and visions for the world in stark contrast to one another. \n\nCommunism saw itself as about creating educated bureaus to improve the lot of the working man. When communists acquired territories in the war, they added them to the central bureaucracy, incorporating locals as well as educated scholars from their own countries to form a new bureau that answered to the old one, creating a unified people's front.\n\nFascism saw itself as the great re-awakening after the collapse of civilization at the end of WW1. It felt that military service, colonialism, warfare, and powerful acts of patriotism made a country strong and great, like it had in the empires of old, like Rome, or the Holy Roman Empire, or the German Empire, or the Edo Empire, and so on. They would take land and massacre, enslave, or simply control the people there, putting their own ethnicity first in a war between races.\n\nDemocracies saw themselves as the unwilling participants in these wars, fighting for no other reason than peace and self-defense, and then to stop these ideologies of violence and hate. They maintained that a truly democratic government would almost never vote to go to a real war because total war is always abysmal for the people, who have nothing to gain from it. Unlike Fascism, Democracy isn't interested in acquiring lands or putting down native peoples, but about the people who live in a place now deciding policy that suits the people. Unlike Communism, Democracy doesn't see itself has having to create a unified central global administration, instead believing that people will generally vote for peace.\n\nAs a result, Democratic powers not only did not claim any lands which did not vote to join them in the war, but they actually let a lot go, with Britain and France dismantling many colonies after the war as a newfound understanding of Democracy flourished, and it's role as keepers of peace and mutual prosperity.\n\nDespite that, maintaining influence has been important for America moving forward from the war as part of a formal and informal set of anti-soviet power blocks. Japan was initially forced to accept reforms after surrender, but they voted on and ratified the constitution suggested, and have maintained close ties with America to protect themselves from China and Russia, rather than because America forced them to.\n\nThe essence of the Democratic ideal is to have no desire for colonies or conquests, but simply to maintain a world order that allows people to live free. It's difficult sometimes for our enemies to understand, and sadly this decade it's looking like we ourselves are forgetting. But that was the lesson of the war, and at armistice time they adhered to it, making Germany and Japan the friendly and wonderful democracies that their people have always truly desired to be.",
"Basic cost/benefit. The U.S.'s goals would have been to:\n\n- Establish military power (naval and air bases; ready ground forces) that contains the USSR and prevents it from expanding into the Pacific\n\n- Ensure Japan does not become a threat in the future\n\nWhat the U.S. did was the least to achieve those. It was the dictator of Japan for some years after the war, but you really can't run a country as a dictator forever without incurring a lot of costs. You would need \"secret police,\" nightly round-ups of disloyal citizens ... all kinds of terrors to control the population. It's simpler to just allow 98% of the country's life to be run by the Japanese. If the U.S. wants to maintain control, it has its base, and clauses in the constitution. \n\nThink of it as if Japan had taken part of the U.S. in WWII. Say, Oregon, Washington, Northern California, and parts of Western Canada. If the people in those territories were today under the authority of a Japanese ruler, they would have never stopped resisting. But if Japan merely had a few naval bases and airfields, while locals were in charge of governing, there would be less resistance, and the Japanese might be able to feel that their homeland was defended through those bases."
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6ss8lp | why can't we artificially make photosynthesis work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ss8lp/eli5_why_cant_we_artificially_make_photosynthesis/ | {
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"The chain of chemical reactions that occurs in photosynthesis is INSANELY complex, as is synthesis of the needed compounds in a lab. Nature has had a 4 billion year head start on us, so why not just use that? Algae farms are probably as efficient as it will ever get",
"Well technically we can hook up solar panels to a fuel cell and bind co2 and release oxygen, it is just a fuckton more expensive than just throwing a plant seed in the ground. ",
"Why would we need to? \n\nWe already have artificial ways of harvesting energy from the sun that are much more efficient than photosyntheses.\nIt's called a photo-electric cell. Solar energy. There are also many other ways we harvest energy from sunlight.\n\nThe only thing that would be interested in artificial photosynthesis is an artificial plant. Turns out plants are all set and aren't interested in or need any help from us."
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2rfmah | in digital photography, why does sensor size cost more than pixel count? why does the the 24.3 megapixel d610, cost more than twice as much as the heavily cropped d5300 at 24.2 megapixels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rfmah/eli5in_digital_photography_why_does_sensor_size/ | {
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"A larger sensor means that the photos taken at a higher ISO will have less noise. This means that in bad lighting conditions you can take better pictures with the D610 than you can with the D5300.\n\nHowever this is not the only thing that separates between the two cameras - you can see a list of advantages the D610 has over the D5300 [here](_URL_0_). ",
"far better depth of field on full frame sensors...way better bokeh on backgrounds..."
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"http://snapsort.com/compare/Nikon-D5300-vs-Nikon-D610"
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2sy7hp | how do countries like sweden burn their trash for power without polluting toxins into our environment. | I've read about Sweden burning their trash for power, and how they have been importing waste from other countries. They say they are burning it at such high temperatures that it doesn't pollute the environment, but I don't understand this. How does burning something at high temperatures stop it from polluting.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sy7hp/eli5_how_do_countries_like_sweden_burn_their/ | {
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"The polluting toxins are hydrocarbons and such that are too stable to break down at normal combustion temperatures. Increase the temperature enough though and even the toxins start breaking down into harmless compounds such as carbon dioxide and water.",
"The amount of work is weighed to the profit of the sorting. Metal is sorted and sold. The gases goes through normal filters, electric filters and scrubbers."
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"http://www.iflscience.com/environment/less-1-swedens-trash-ends-landfills",
"http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/17/is-burning-garbage-green-in-sweden-theres-little-debate/"
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4u4tmx | what makes certain names like "ethyl" and "mabel" sound like 'old people' names? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u4tmx/eli5_what_makes_certain_names_like_ethyl_and/ | {
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"Because the names have fallen out of favor, and fewer people are getting those names. As a result, you associate those names with old people, because probably everyone you've ever met with that name is old.\n\nLikewise, if you know a female named Madison, she's almost certainly under 30, and probably under 20. It's a young-sounding name because it became popular as a first name relatively recently.\n\nIf a name is consistently popular generation after generation, it won't seem young or old. You have no idea how old someone named \"John\" is just by their name.",
"Those names were very popular in the 30s and 40s, so most people with them are very old.\n\nThere are sometimes new kids named stuff like that. Gravity Falls has a \"Mabel\".",
"They *are* \"old people names.\" For example, 238 girls born in 2012 in the United States were named Mabel. In 1917 that was 3499 girls, despite the fact our population is much bigger now. In the present, it's predominantly the elderly that are named Mabel. The names that we perceive are \"old\" were at one time fashionable, but then fell out of fashion, and characterize that generation.",
"I'm sorry to be pedantic, but I couldn't hold back: the name you are thinking of is \"Ethel\". \"Ethyl\" is (roughly) the term for a part of an organic molecule with two carbon atoms and five hydrogen atoms. Now *that* would be a new name :)"
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2pmao5 | why do we use "x" as a variable when there are twenty five other letters in the alphabet | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pmao5/eli5_why_do_we_use_x_as_a_variable_when_there_are/ | {
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"These guys seem to have a good grasp on it:\n_URL_0_\n\n > I have read different accounts of why the letter x is used to denote the unknown in algebraic equations. Renee Descartes might have been the first to do so, but why? Is it because its easier to write the letter x, or are there other reasons? Perhaps a brief review of the history of algebra will lend credence to different explanations. \nAlgebra has its roots in the Middle East where sciences including mathematics and astronomy flourished in the Islamic world in the 700-1450 period. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi (780850) was one of the major mathematicians of his time and the author of a number of influential books. One of his major books is on arithmetic and another on algebra. In fact, it is his transmuted name ‘algorithm’ which we now use to refer to the step-by-step procedures for solving a problem. His algebra book is titled \"Kitab al-jabr wal-muqabala\" which translates to \"the book of calculation by completion and reduction.\" The Arabic word \"al-jabr\" is the origin of the word \"algebra\" which describes the process of moving terms from one side of an algebraic equation to the other to find the value of an unknown. Incidentally, another major figure in the field of algebra is the famous Omar Khayyam (10481131), a mathematician and poet, who made significant contributions including describing algebraic equations whose general solutions were obtained some 400 years later. \nIn algebraic equations, one solves equations to obtain the value(s) of one or more unknown(s). The word for \"thing\" or \"object\" (presumably unknown thing or object) in Arabic - which was the principal language of sciences during the Islamic civilization - is \"shei\" which was translated into Green as xei, and shortened to x, and is considered by some to be the reason for using x. It is also noteworthy that \"xenos\" is the Greek word for unknown, stranger, guest, or foreigner, and that might explain the reasons Europeans used the letter x to denote the \"unknown” in algebraic equations. ",
"The language algebra was first invented in, Arabic, has a symbol that means \"thing\" or \"object\" looks a lot like a Latin alphabet X. It was translated into just an X and worked just as well.",
"X is by convention a specific sort of variable, it represents the \"unknown thing\" in an equation - the value you are solving the equation for. Other letters of the alphabet are commonly used for other sorts of variables. \n\nAs for why X is used for this particular purpose, [check out this video](_URL_0_) for one possible explanation. Another possible answer is because René Descartes did it, and everyone else followed suit.",
"The use of variables in equations, and even the word \"[algebra](_URL_0_)\" itself were developed by Arabs. Using \"X\" is a result of some weird translation issues coming from the Arabic word for \"thing\".\n\nIt's also convenient because, as other posters mentioned, the letter X is fairly uncommon & visually quite distinct from our numbers & mathematical operators.",
"Algebra was invented in Arabic. The Arabic word \"al-shayun\" means \"the unknown thing.\" Arabic numerals and algebra were introduced to the Christian world in Spain (where Muslims, Jews, and Christians were all living and waring together). \n\nSpanish scholars couldn't translate \"shayun\" and they couldn't spell it out because Spanish doesn't have the \"sh\" sound. So they used the Greek letter χ (chi) to represent that word. When it was translated into Latin, χ was written as the letter x.\n\nThus the original Arabic sentence \"solve for the unknown thing\" became \"Solve for x.\"\n\nY and z became the 2nd and 3rd variables centuries latter simply by mathematicians working their way through the alphabet.\n\n"
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js0eq | how a drug goes from needing a prescription to being able to buy it without a prescription | I just saw a commercial for Allegra D or one of the special Allegra pills and it explained no prescription necessary any longer...how is this possible what changes... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/js0eq/eli5_how_a_drug_goes_from_needing_a_prescription/ | {
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"Like you're five? Because the grownups who make the drug (Sanofi) showed the grownups who regulate the drug (the Food and Drug Administration) that the drug is safe enough to take without needing the advice from a doctor. The drug itself does the same thing only now you don't need a prescription from the doctor. People get easier access the the medicine, the drug company gets to sell a lot more drugs, and pharmacies make more money because they're selling more OTC items.\n\nFor more see _URL_0_",
"There are different phases of testing. First drugs are tested on bacteria or yeast, then on mice, then perhaps on humans, and if the drug is safe for many years and seems to not be able to be abused, then the company and FDA may want to market it without a prescription.",
"Also, OTC does not equal safe for ALL groups of people. Certain medications (cold medicines, etc) are not good for those with various conditions like high blood pressure. Always check the drug facts on the box or bottle for information regarding individuals who should not take a given drug. When in doubt, ask the pharmacist if the drug is suitable. Pharmacists do a lot more than put pills in bottles. ",
"5 year olds don't have an attention span. In short:\n\n- Drug needs to be on the market for a long time (material time)\n- Drug needs to have wide access (material extent)\n- Drugs need to be well tolerated (low side effects)\n- Drug need to be self administered (Think of how stupid Uncle Joe is. He needs to be able to use this, too)\n- Drug needs to be able to be self-managed (When to start/stop taking a drug)\n\n\nOnce the above are met, a prescription drug that already has marketing approval can apply for what's called a Monograph, or what you see on almost any drug product (What the drug is, what it's used for, for the side effects are, and how it's used). \n\nIf a drug is found to be Safe and Effective, it can get OTC status.\n\nMore [here](_URL_0_).",
"Like you're five? Because the grownups who make the drug (Sanofi) showed the grownups who regulate the drug (the Food and Drug Administration) that the drug is safe enough to take without needing the advice from a doctor. The drug itself does the same thing only now you don't need a prescription from the doctor. People get easier access the the medicine, the drug company gets to sell a lot more drugs, and pharmacies make more money because they're selling more OTC items.\n\nFor more see _URL_0_",
"There are different phases of testing. First drugs are tested on bacteria or yeast, then on mice, then perhaps on humans, and if the drug is safe for many years and seems to not be able to be abused, then the company and FDA may want to market it without a prescription.",
"Also, OTC does not equal safe for ALL groups of people. Certain medications (cold medicines, etc) are not good for those with various conditions like high blood pressure. Always check the drug facts on the box or bottle for information regarding individuals who should not take a given drug. When in doubt, ask the pharmacist if the drug is suitable. Pharmacists do a lot more than put pills in bottles. ",
"5 year olds don't have an attention span. In short:\n\n- Drug needs to be on the market for a long time (material time)\n- Drug needs to have wide access (material extent)\n- Drugs need to be well tolerated (low side effects)\n- Drug need to be self administered (Think of how stupid Uncle Joe is. He needs to be able to use this, too)\n- Drug needs to be able to be self-managed (When to start/stop taking a drug)\n\n\nOnce the above are met, a prescription drug that already has marketing approval can apply for what's called a Monograph, or what you see on almost any drug product (What the drug is, what it's used for, for the side effects are, and how it's used). \n\nIf a drug is found to be Safe and Effective, it can get OTC status.\n\nMore [here](_URL_0_)."
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5r84zy | what is the difference between shell, bash, zsh and terminal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r84zy/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_shell_bash/ | {
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"* shell - a program that provides a command line interface to the operating system, especially with Unix/Linux\n* sh, csh, ksh, bash, zsh - examples of specific shell programs\n* terminal - used to mean a keyboard and monitor that could connect to a remote computer...now it usually means a program that runs a shell in a window",
"A shell is simply a textbased userinterface to controll different actions on\nyour computer.\n\nZsh and Bash are different implementations of a shell. There are also tons of\nother shells like the very simple sh, Microsoft PowerShell, csh, fish, ...\n\nA terminal nowerdays is a program that lets you use your shell in a user\nfriendly way, offering you the possibility to select, copy and paste text,\nusing your mouse, giving you a scrollable buffer and so on"
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62nj14 | why do our palms/wrists and chest sometimes tingle when we're feeling sad? | What's the physical/psychological process behind it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62nj14/eli5_why_do_our_palmswrists_and_chest_sometimes/ | {
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"This is called \"heartache,\" perhaps you've heard the word.\n\n > During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen. When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea.\n\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nAs for your palms/wrists, that's quite unusual, but some people report that pain in the chest also shows up as pain in the shoulders/arms/hands because the nerves are close together."
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16tyxc | - why all those africans who had their hands chopped off at the wrist with machetes are alive, but people who slit their wrists with a razor blade aren't. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16tyxc/eli5_why_all_those_africans_who_had_their_hands/ | {
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"Well first of all many aren't, plenty of people who lose hands die and plenty of people who slit their wrists fail. A lot of it comes down to treatment, if the arms can be sealed with pressure/cauterization etc. the victim will survive. Cutting in that manor is much easier to fix than lengthwise cuts (which many attempting to kill themselves use due to it being much harder to stitch shut). Remember the wrist cutters want to die, whereas those that lose hands do not.",
"The risk of death you're thinking about here is blood loss.\n\nIn the case of an cutting hands off, the people doing the cutting do something to stop the blood loss. (The whole point is to make the person live without hands. If he were sentenced to death, they'd just kill him.) For example, if you burn a wound with something hot enough it can stop bleeding. (We call this 'cauterization'). I don't know what they actually use to stop the bleeding in these cases, and it probably varies.\n\nIn the case of someone committing suicide, they want to die by blood loss, so they don't do anything to stop the bleeding. In some cases, they do things to make the bleeding happen faster. I won't say what, because people might use that information to hurt themselves.\n\nInfections can happen in either case, too, but that's a separate topic.",
"Real life isn't like movies, Son.\n\nWhen an arm or hand is cut off, it doesn't shoot out blood like you might see on a movie that Daddy doesn't really want you watching anyway. Instead what happens is the larger veins and arteries retract and cut off a majority of the blood flow. Yes, if someone did not receive any assistance after this... but they would likely die from shock before blood loss even became an issue.\n\nWhen people slit their wrists, that's a different issue. Many times, people are apprehensive and don't cut deep enough, which means that they do bleed, but the same systems that saved the life of the man who got his hand cut off come into play and save their lives too.",
"Your blood vessels are able to adjust their diameter. Imagine they are vacuum hoses- long, cylindrical and have rings along their lengths. These tubes can get smaller and bigger by expanding or contracting the rings along the hose. If you chop a length off the hose (like amputating a hand) the rings closest to the wound automatically contract to reduce or even stop blood flow. If the hose is cut length wise, those rings are cut as well and the hose is unable to stop leaking. Further, when they try to contract the rings actually make the injury worse by pulling the wound farther apart.\n\nSource-I'm a Paramedic\n\nEDIT- If bleeding of any kind isn't stopped the patient will eventually die. Also, the vast majority of wrist cutters aren't trying to kill themselves. Cutting across their wrists (across the road), not lengthwise (down the tracks), causes superficial bleeding and usually stops before EMS arrives."
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dt6idw | how come your hearing is better when you have been in silence for a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dt6idw/eli5_how_come_your_hearing_is_better_when_you/ | {
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"Your hearing isn't better, so much as your concious mind is focuses much more on individual sounds. Our brains naturally tune out a lot of stimuli, especially if it's repetitive, to minimize neural load and energy usage. Being in a silent space for awhile causes our brains to focus much more on sound in order to listen for ANYTHING that might hurt us. Once you reenter a loud area, much of our brains focus is on sound input.\n\nIt's kind of like when you close your eyes for a minute before turning the lights out, so that your eyes adjust to darkness faster. It's a way to re-tune one of your senses."
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ce4xz9 | what does the "cap space" in nba actually mean, and how it is used and calculated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ce4xz9/eli5_what_does_the_cap_space_in_nba_actually_mean/ | {
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"There is a maximum amount of money teams can spend on salaries in a given year, which is the salary cap ($109 million for the coming year). If a team spends more than that on player salaries, they will be punished.\n\n\n\nI feel like any explanation beyond that is going to need to go beyond ELI5",
"All of the teams in the NBA (and many other pro sports leagues) agree to limit the amount they pay their players to a certain total, this is called a salary cap. This helps prevent teams with lots of money from buying up every good player while smaller market teams can't afford to compete.\n\nNext year's salary cap is set at about $110 million which means that if you've already committed $90 million to paying players that you have already signed to contracts, you have $20 million of cap space left to finish building your team.\n\nThe NBA salary cap is what's called a \"soft\" cap, meaning that you can exceed it if you want to, but you will be penalized by having to pay the league a lot of extra money."
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1qvemi | how would normal military weapons fare in space combat? | How would things like bullets and missiles work in space if they were attached to space ships? Would they be as effective as they are within Earth's atmosphere? Would they no longer function as well in zero gravity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qvemi/eli5_how_would_normal_military_weapons_fare_in/ | {
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"You could probably use bullets or missiles, but the missiles would be more convenient. The issue is that the distances and relative speeds are so great. Otherwise it is just a matter of finding an intersecting orbit and dropping a bucket of pebbles out the airlock. Hitting anything of note at such speeds can be enormously destructive."
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4lus8e | what is sentience in animals? where do we draw the line, i.e. what is the simplest animal still considered sentient? | Edit: Seems like the exact definition of 'sentience' is perhaps a bit harder to pin down than expected for an ELI5 post. To narrow down the question a bit, can I ask that we perhaps stick to the current state of the science? Sure, our definitions and stuff might change in the future as our understanding does - but surely there is a general scientific consensus of some sort right now?
Edit: Thanks for all the responses - seems like this is possibly a more complex topic that can bet a straight 'ELI5' answer. I also appreciate everyone giving input, even though this topic prompts answers that are borderline argumentative, opinionated, etc. (that's just the nature of something as abstract as sentience, and I hope the mods have been forgiving). It truly is strange to think that something which we are all experiencing right now can be so difficult to pin down, even by hordes of scientists, philosophers, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lus8e/eli5what_is_sentience_in_animals_where_do_we_draw/ | {
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"I don't think there's any generally agreed-upon definition of 'sentience'. I've heard some people claim that it covers the ability of an agent (which may be an animal, or a robot, or whatever) to change the way it acts in some complex way based on sensory inputs from its environment. On the other end of the scale, I've heard some people use it to refer to actual awareness of the agent's own existence (that is, the agent must be able to think about itself as a distinct thing). There are probably several other lines inbetween that get drawn by different people.\n\nPersonally, I use 'consciousness' to refer to true self-awareness, and 'sentience' to refer to the ability of an agent to *subjectively experience* sensations. To explain more clearly: When you look at something orange, you not only receive a stimulus to your nervous system from the orange light hitting your eye, you actually have a *mind* that *sees orange.* There is a subjective viewpoint (your own mind) to which the orangeness actually appears and has a certain look, related to but conceptually distinct from the actual properties of the orange object. To be sentient is to have this kind of viewpoint. (Note that, although you are fortunate enough to also be conscious, able to think about your own existence, it does not seem necessary that any sentient agent also be conscious. On the other hand, it *does* seem necessary that a conscious agent also be sentient, insofar as you couldn't possibly think about your own existence unless you had a subjective perception of your own thoughts.) Equivalently, this also means that a sentient agent is one that has a *worldview,* that is to say, it holds in its mind a theory about how the world is.\n\nLet me take a moment to describe a particular anecdote in zoology that illustrates what a lack of sentience means (and thus, what sentience means). There is a kind of wasp that reproduces by laying its eggs inside a paralyzed caterpillar, so that the babies can eat the fresh caterpillar meat after they hatch. (Gross, I know. Supposedly these same wasps were one of the reasons Charles Darwin abandoned religion, saying he found it inconceivable that a loving God would create such a horrifying creature.) But the wasp doesn't just leave the caterpillar lying around; rather, it digs a burrow in the dirt, then goes and finds a caterpillar, then drags the caterpillar back to the burrow and hides it inside before laying its eggs, to keep the eggs away from predators. When the wasp has brought the caterpillar to the burrow entrance, it leaves it outside briefly while it goes in the burrow and checks to make sure no other creature has occupied it while the wasp was away. Then it goes back out and drags the caterpillar in. However, scientists found that when they moved the caterpillar a short distance away from the burrow while the wasp was busy checking it, the wasp would come out, drag the caterpillar back to the burrow entrance, and then *check the burrow again,* even though obviously not enough time had passed for any other creature to sneak in. The scientists were able to do this dozens of times in a row, and every time the wasp brought the caterpillar back to the entrance and then wasted its time checking the burrow again. The wasp, it seems, was acting entirely on an inflexible 'script' that involved following up 'bring caterpillar to burrow entrance' with 'check burrow for invaders', and being forced to move the caterpillar again (even a relatively short distance) was resetting this 'script'. No creature acting on a *theory* about the state of the world (such as whether the burrow is occupied) would make this sort of mistake. We refer to the wasp's actions (and behavior like it) as 'tropistic', that is to say, occurring unthinkingly in a certain way.\n\nMore abstractly, I propose the following as a conceptual generalized test of sentience, which I refer to as the 'food button test': Put a creature in a cage. Put an electrical button in the cage such that, when the button is pressed, a piece of the creature's favorite food is automatically dropped into the cage. (Keep in mind that the button itself is unlike anything the creature normally encounters in nature that is associated with accessing food.) What will the creature do? A tropistic creature, like the wasp, may accidentally bump into the button (and subsequently devour the food), but because its 'script' doesn't involve buttons, it will never *deliberately* go back and press the button when it's hungry. However, a *sentient* creature is able to perceive the button, and after accidentally bumping into it at first, it notices the association between the moment the button is pressed and the moment when food is dropped into the cage, and develops a theory that the former might be causing the latter. Even if it's uncertain at first whether there's a connection, after repeated successful tries it will learn to go back and press the button every time it's hungry. Its ability to actually think and learn about the button (even though the button is unlike anything it encounters in nature) sets it apart from a creature that merely follows a 'script'. (It may be useful to note that learning to escape a maze is a very similar task to learning to press a food button.)\n\nSo, to rephrase the second part of your question, we can say: Which animals could, at least in principle, solve an appropriately constructed food button test?\n\nWell, we still don't *entirely* know, but we can make some pretty good educated guesses. Just about all mammals, with the possible exception of the [naked mole rat,](_URL_0_) have little difficulty solving the test, or otherwise exhibit behavior from which we can assume that they would easily pass the test. The same goes for basically all birds, most or all reptiles, and at least some amphibians and fish. On the other hand, *almost no* invertebrates display this sort of cognitive capacity. All insects, all crustaceans, all snails and slugs and clams and jellyfish, they all seem to act entirely on 'scripts', like the wasp. Even the complex behavior of ants and bees is the cumulative effect of hundreds of interacting individuals, each of which *on its own* behaves unthinkingly and entirely on reflex. The notable exceptions are the coleoid cephalopods- that is, octopuses, squids and cuttlefish- which display high intelligence and easily pass the test. The one other *possible* exception is the portia spider, a tropical hunting spider that eats other spiders of many different species and seems to exhibit on-the-fly learning abilities absent from other arthropods.\n\nAs for what, in a neurological or algorithmic sense, distinguishes sentience and consciousness from tropism, sadly we still don't know. Figuring this out would be a huge benefit to the progress in what is known as 'strong artificial intelligence', that is to say, writing computer programs that can not only solve problems effectively, but can adapt to new types of problems they weren't explicitly designed for. To put it another way, we already know how to write programs that act like a wasp, but we still don't know how to write programs that act like a bird or an octopus (much less a human).",
"I hope this gets some attention because it really opened my eyes to the questions we rarely ask ourselves about animals. \n_URL_0_",
"Be careful with these types of questions. Wittgenstein might say this is an example of a word game where we are asking a meaningless question because we are limited in what our senses can uncover as a universal truth. Sentience is a label ascribed to a certain mutual feeling we are able to feel and generally consider part of the human experience. Although science is a strong tool to uncover similarities and make predictions ultimately the question you asked cannot be given a meaningful answer because of the unreliability of human experience. We can measure and try to observe similarities both on a behavioral and molecular level and of course these studies can be of great use but it is unlikely science will ever be able to provide concrete truths to elusive word games. As soon as we are safe to assume one small condition fits sentience we bring into question other aspects of the definition because ultimately it is a human definition. Similar questions include whether free will exists, is there a god, what does it all mean? We have to be careful not to accept any answers here as truth because there are aspects of this which are inherently unknowable. \n",
"One of the tests used for self-awareness is checking whether animals recognize the image they see in a mirror as themselves (mirror self-recognition test). Anaesthetized animals have a small sticker or similar mark placed on them somewhere they can't normally see. They are put in front of a mirror when they wake up. If they investigate or try to remove the mark, it's considered a sign that they recognize themselves as an individual.\n\nSo far, we've only seen that apes, dolphins, orcas, magpies, and one elephant are capable of recognizing themselves as individuals by this method. \n\nIs that sentience? That's a much tougher question. It's difficult to design tests of sentience for animals who don't have a developed language (or at least one that we understand). I'm not sure that animals have memories that are sophisticated enough to remember themselves and their actions in a particular past event; and I'm not sure they are able to use that information to imagine situations they might face in the future and what their actions might be. \n\nIs even this sentience? I'm not sure about that either, and it's a much bigger question than we're going to be able to address in an ELI5 post. \n\nEDIT: Cheers, everyone. Great points from a couple of people that this test relies heavily on vision, and therefore skews against certain species. I'm not claiming that self-awareness is the same thing as sentience, or that the mirror test defines sentience - but I think they are related. This is a tough question for an ELI5 because it gets into some very deep and difficult-to-answer philosophical questions like \"What is sentience?\" and \"What kind of test could I run to confirm the presence or absence of sentience in a being that doesn't have access to language as humans know it?\" You could probably spend a doctorate discussing those questions, and I most definitely don't have the answers...",
"Just as an aside, sentience is just the ability of an organism to sense the world around them, so pretty much every living thing is sentient. Sapience is the ability of an animal to show self awareness. ",
"[The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness](_URL_0_) concludes that \n > The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including **all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses**, also possess these neurological substrates\n\nHowever, the report states that the field of Consciousness research is still evolving, so we can't definitively determine the simplest organism still considered sentient, though the report does address some 'simpler' organisms:\n\n > Neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).\n",
"Sentience has been observed in every animal with a central nervous system. So the line is drawn at like shellfish.\n",
"I thought it was that most mammals are sentient but not all animals are sapient. To be sentient, you just need to feel emotions. So dogs, cats, and most mammals are sentient but not necessarily sapient; they can intelligently feel emotions but that's about it. A sapient animal has to be able to reason and that's what we see with the mirror test.\n\nThe problem with the mirror test is that most animals are not readily exposed to mirrors. One mirror test was conducted with a pig that previously had no exposure to mirrors. Aftet being taught what a mirror is, it consistently passed the mirror test as well. Also, humans fail the mirror test at roughly 6 months and under, despite consistently passing the mirror test when older than that.\n\nCan we say that individual animals may be more intelligent than the rest of their species? Probably. Were the magpies passing the mirror test because they were readily exposed to mirrors or because they're intelligent?",
"There's a lot of good answers covering the current ideas around sentience, but I'd just like to add to the other comments that we really don't know what cutoff to use, or even if there is a sensible cutoff. Sentience is about internalo experience, something that is extremely difficult to measure internally - we can be pretty sure about humans because we *are* humans, and there's no reason to think our experiences aren't broadly similar to other humans, while other animals with completely different brain structures are much more difficult to make such logical leaps about. Having said that, there's been some recent research to suggest that the cut off is much lower in complexity than most might intuitively believe it to be, with some new research suggesting that even bees are capable of many of the thought processes attached to the concept of sentience (it says consciousness but describes things like awareness, which are also aspects of sentience): _URL_0_",
"Want to be even more mind blown, think about certain ants and others where the organism is not considered the single ant but the entire group of ants.\n\nThere is no \"current state of science\" regarding this as this is squarely philosophical. Where I do see this argument semantically torn apart and reconfigured is in the discussion of what \"machine learning\" and \"artificial intelligence\" specifically entails, especially regarding general intelligence.\n\n",
"r/vegetarian r/veganfoodporn seems like a good place to convert people lol. it bothers me that people think animals can't think just because they can't speak our human languages. ",
"Depending on the definition of sentience that you're working from, this is either a really complicated question, or a relatively straightforward one. I studied neuroscience, where this was a pretty relevant and frequently discussed topic, so I'll try to cover both for you.\n\nTo start, sentience and sapience are different and commonly confused.\n\n > Sentient - able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste\n\n > Sapient - possessing or expressing great sagacity - (having or showing an ability to understand difficult ideas and situations and to make good decisions)\n\nAt its core, the brain as an organ evolved to take in sensory information, and put out some sort of response. At the simplest level you have single celled organisms with (for example) simple eyes that can detect shade or chemical gradients, which triggers an automatic response to follow that gradient and move towards/away dark or light. As organisms become more complex and have more cells you can do more complex computations. For instance microscopic worms can recognize the conditions that generally occur with food, so they have a couple of neurons that when a specific pair of sensory inputs line up again, will then fire a notice saying \"Hey, these two things have previously come with food.\"\n\nSo to answer the explicit question you asked, almost every single animal would be considered sentient because they can all sense the world in some way. Being unable to sense anything tends to be disadvantageous and result in a pruning by natural selection.\n\nHowever I think the question you were really getting at is sapience, and how \"human-like\" in thought are animals. Which is an incredibly complex question. Recognizing that your brain was originally designed to take in information, and output action will help make sense of this, because the only thing that really sets ours apart is the level of abstraction that we can do. By forming an internal representation of the outside world, we don't need to physically have something in order to understand it. Language is a symbolic representation of the world around us. \"Tree\" is not a tree, but the abstract English representation of a physical thing. There's a huge number of things your brain does that factor into our sense of sapience, but many operate at the same automatic level as a single celled organism that pursues or avoids light. Our ability to recognize and record faces is handled automatically, our ability to tag names and recognize physical objects is an automatic system. Damage to any of those systems causes agnosias where people can't recognize or remember faces and objects.\n\nMoving to animals, things don't really get much clearer. There are fairly complex animals that show [fixed action patterns](_URL_0_) which are high level modifiable behaviors that once started cannot be stopped by the animal until complete. There are also instincts (strong debate regarding their presence in humans) that many animals are born with, these are drives to behavior that is encoded into their brain. The most obvious examples are the most basic because everything without them dies, but fear of death, hunger, and thirst. You don't need to learn to fear death and injury, only the things that might cause it. For an animal example of instinct cats have an innate reaction to bird shaped shadows, as wild cats are frequently eaten by birds of prey (large hawks). Even if they've never been outside a simulated hawk shadow will elicit a fear response and the cat will attempt to find cover. What's interesting is that other shadow patterns don't do anything, meaning the specific hawkwing shape is genetically remembered.\n\nSo. Where do we draw the line between sapience and non-sapience? Currently, at least in science, we don't because that line is a neat circle around homo sapiens. Other primates have shown a lot of behaviors that are arguably sapient, but currently it's very difficult to understand what exactly is going on inside their head. Primates are clearly intelligent, and share many core behaviors like social structure, group conventions and tool use, and are the most likely to be sapient. But we just don't know yet. Like the horse that was believed to do math, but just learned the pattern of its owner because that's what would reward it, it's possible that much of the complex behavior they learn from us arises from the complex use of basic survival systems that let them find and exploit food sources.\n\nBut maybe that's all sapience is? The complex use of basic systems.\n\nTL;DR: Every animal is arguably sentient in that it can sense the world around it. Sapience (Humanity) is a far more complex question, with much fuzzier edges.\n\nDisclaimer: The sapience of animals is an extremely controversial topic, and there is a massive spread of research on the topic. Most of what I said is deliberately vague because this is ELI5 and a hotly debated topic on the forefront of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. There's tons of information out there, and if you're interested I would highly recommend exploring it, but be wary of anything that declares to know everything. Not all animals are sapient, but some animals are probably somewhat sapient. But then again sapience as an idea may be a meaningless construct. It's complicated.",
"No, I wouldn't say that there is scientific consensus, because it's not really a scientific question.\n\nScience is all about making useful predictions. If you fully define A and B sufficiently for the statement \"if A, then B\" to be meaningful, science is all about answering the question \"is it true that if A, then B\". That's a testable question.\n\nThe question of sentience is something of a [semantic dispute](_URL_0_), an argument over definitions. Sentience depends on undefined concepts like subjectivity. You haven't defined A, so you can't answer B. Because of that, \"If A, then B\" isn't a testable statement, and so this isn't science, and there isn't a way to make a test or produce a \"right\" or \"wrong\" answer.\n\nIf you were to define the concepts that sentience depends upon precisely, then you could answer the question...but then I think that probably the question of sentience suddenly reveals itself to be not really an interesting question.\n\nEven if you defined sentience in such a way that a pocket calculator was sentient, it wouldn't change anything about the world -- someone who wanted a more-complex definition of sentience could still get by by saying \"things that are sentient and have X level of sophistication in their understanding of the world\".\n\nThat doesn't mean that the question is not an interesting one. It makes you think hard about exactly what you *mean*, and what in the process would be involved in creating a useful definition of sentience. But you won't wind up with a \"right\" answer, because there isn't one.\n\nWhat I will say: there is some degree of understanding of the world that is a gradient. A pocket calculator's understanding of the world is very simple. A human's understanding of the world is much more complex. There may be beings out there in the universe that are so much more-sophisticated and knowledgeable that humans look like pocket calculators. Somewhere on that scale of sophisticated understanding, one may very well want to draw a line and say \"this is sentient\" and \"this is not sentient\". However, that's a question of definition.",
"Better question is does increased intelligence = an understanding or having a code of morality.\n\nDolphins are supposedly smart, but they love their gang rape and death beatings.\n\nChimps are supposedly smart too, but they have no issue going bananas, biting your dick off, ripping off your nuts, and making short work of your phalanges.",
"To take it the other way, is it possible to be human and non-sentient?",
"Because this is ELI5 and not AskScience, I'm going to appeal to authority and quote a TED talk Jane Goodall gave in March 2002:\n\n > What we find is that over these 40-odd years that I and others have been studying chimpanzees and the other great apes, and, as I say, other mammals with complex brains and social systems, we have found that after all, there isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It's a very wuzzy line. It's getting wuzzier all the time as we find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was just human.\n\nNot saying it isn't a question worth asking, especially in regard to computer science, but if someone who's worked with clever animals longer than I've been alive doesn't know where to draw the line, I think it's fair to say that there's no one uncontroversial answer.",
"I don't know why it matters. Other than understanding consciousness, I don't see anything to gain. I just see more of a reason for people to justify harsher treatment of animals in society. \n\nI can't give you a scientific answer, but to me personally, I always considered anything capable of love sentient. Which is basically all animals.",
"Sentience is the ability to perceive or feel things. In its most common usage, however, sentience is synonymous with being able to speak or understand language. Depending on how you define sentience, it could either encompass most of the animal kingdom, or only human beings."
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3lhhwx | what is the difference between "fresh" and "stale" air? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lhhwx/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_fresh_and/ | {
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"I'll give my best guess since there's no good answer here...\n\nI suppose it's dust and dirt and whatnot, from wood and living things and other materials that degrade and give off particles. Like how water starts to taste \"old\" after a while, because it accumulates dust from the air as well as particles from its container if applicable.\n\nFresh air probably just feels better to breath as well, because it's cool and contains lots of faint smells. Circulation distributes different smells and humidity around so it is not full of all the same junk.\n\nPerhaps things like sun and rain contribute to the pleasantness of outside air as well?",
"The open space called the outside is such an expansive area that it is hard to dilute the levels of certain molecules and atoms. \n\nIn your room lets say every door and window is shut and you don't have any plants. The CO and CO2 levels will rise and O2 will fall making the oxygen in the air less obtainable."
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6oin1r | is it true that the human body cannot handle extreme acceleration? if yes, why is that so? | Are our bodies "biologically wrong" to handle high levels of acceleration? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6oin1r/eli5is_it_true_that_the_human_body_cannot_handle/ | {
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"Ever get punched? That's a strong acceleration. Jumping off a building, hitting terminal velocity, and slamming into the ground is also an extreme acceleration. \n\nPart of you is being subjected to a strong force, which is changing your speed/direction, and that part of you is then pushing on other parts of you. But the other parts of you have to be brought up to speed in order to move out of the way, and while that is happening, the 'already accelerated' part of you is being smashed against it, and smashing what it is touching. It in turn is slamming into more of you behind it. Your body is deforming by the acceleration, because it isn't uniform, and this damages and ruptures structures. \n\nIf you can accelerate everything at once, at the same rate, then it won't hurt you at all, but that's hard to do. How do you speed up your blood with your body? How do you accelerate your brain with your head? Anything that isn't getting the same push, is potentially getting shoved around inside or against you.",
"Acceleration manifests as weight\n\nYou can survive 10G sustained face on, but you will likely pass out. The result of this experience is your body feeling 10x heavier pushing you back into your seat.\n\nUntil the invention of rockets your body has no chance to experience high g forces and there was no reason to select traits to make us G resistant, those traits wouldn't be valuable until 1940s with fighter pilots.\n\nYou don't blow your early game points on late game traits, otherwise you won't live long enough for it to matter. It was a worthless criteria that had no effect on reproduction so it wasn't selected for"
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5h2yv0 | what is preventing the usa from having an airline company that provides ridiculously cheap domestic flights, similar to those of ryanair, wizz air, and easyjet in europe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h2yv0/eli5_what_is_preventing_the_usa_from_having_an/ | {
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"This is a good video about why budget airlines work in Europe. It touches on previous failed attempts in the USA. It might shed some light on your question. _URL_0_ - 8.27mins ",
"We did for almost a year, but they ended up filing bankruptcy _URL_0_\n ",
"We have some pretty cheap airlines between very specific city lists... check out Frontier or Spirit. Frontier I know goes between a select set of cities for like $30 to $70. The discount is not quite the same order of magnitude as something like Ryanair, but it was low enough to be surprising to me. There's no service and you pay for luggage, etc. but if you're just looking to spend a weekend in Vegas you could do worse.",
"Lack of competition in the form of rail, unlike Europe. I'd also venture to guess that a lot of American airports are at a pain-point distance from each other in terms of drivability, whereas maybe less so in Europe - particulally in the central part of the US. Literally flyover country.",
"Ryanair does not \"offer a multitude of flights for less than $10 USD\": It sells a small handful of flights at that price, and the vast majority for way more. And even for the few sold at that price, you have to turn yourself into a pretzel to avoid all of the hidden fees which typically inflate your ticket price to cost just as much as a traditional airline, and then some.",
"How can it be a good idea to charge $10 for a flight anywhere, a cab down the street is $10. "
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99dib2 | what happens after illegal immigrants commit serious crimes while in the united states? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99dib2/eli5_what_happens_after_illegal_immigrants_commit/ | {
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"No. In fact, if someone fled to their home country, we have a process to retrieve them called extradition. ",
"The most common outcome would be they serve their prison term, and are deported after that has been completed.\n\nIf the punishment would be probation, they'd probably just get deported, and if the punishment is death, they will get their appeals and then be executed."
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61478p | new bill allowing isps to sell my data | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61478p/eli5_new_bill_allowing_isps_to_sell_my_data/ | {
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"US but since there are no borders on the internet it has a global impact where any traffic flows over US owned networks.\n\nSee also: _URL_0_\n\n"
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ai4jfp | how does water spontaneously evaporate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ai4jfp/eli5_how_does_water_spontaneously_evaporate/ | {
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"If you had thousands of bouncy balls in a big room with high walls, a few balls would occasionally get bumped out by the other balls. ",
"The state of matter is essentially the arrangement of molecules. If the molecules are close together, it's solid, if they're further apart, its liquid. If they're even further apart its gas. These molecules keep colliding with each other. So you've got water and air molecules that just keep bumping into each other all the time. Due to these bumps, they transfer energy (kinetic energy to be exact). This raises their temperature, and they can move further apart. The surface of the liquid is where the most energetic molecules are. They are the easiest to *break away*. Just above the surface, there's water vapour. And there's water vapour in the atmosphere. The molecules keep moving from the liquid to the atmosphere and back (this is called dynamic equilibrium). This is what evaporation is. ",
"How does sugar spontaneously dissolve in water?\n\nThe water molecules go in and grab onto the sugar molecules and start carrying them around in the solution. The important thing to know here is that even though the water looks stationary, if you could see the individual molecules you'd see they're bouncing all over the place in constant motion. There's just so many of them and they're so small that on aggregate they don't appear to have any motion.\n\nIt's the same with air. Air is a bazillion tiny little molecules that are constantly flying around and bouncing off of everything and each other. Sometimes they bump into something that they can grab onto and they do and they carry it off with them.\n\nThere's other, more complicated reasons too, but that's a simple way of looking at it.",
"For fluids or gasses, temperature is just a measure of how fast the atoms or molecules in the substance are moving. Also, it is just an average. Some of the atoms will be moving faster. A very small amount will be moving fast enough to become a gas, meaning you get evaporation. "
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5qen89 | why does water from a faucet seem to increase in pitch the longer it runs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qen89/eli5_why_does_water_from_a_faucet_seem_to/ | {
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"OK so I'm gonna the water is pouring into a basin or a bucket or something. The sound you hear is the vibration of the air above the water. Think of this air, from the top of the water to the faucet, as an air column. As the water level rises, the air column shrinks. This means that the wavelength of the sound in the air changes, and becomes shriller and shriller as the amount of water increases."
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2br6ir | why do short-track sprint cyclists go so slow for most of the race? | I've watched a few races recently and they always seem to go as slow as possible until the last lap. I (kind of) understand that there is some sort of strategy involved (the person in front can block the person behind them) but I assume that they train hard enough to sprint for the entire race if need be. Wouldn't it make more sense if they just went all out and the fastest person with the most endurance wins? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2br6ir/eli5_why_do_shorttrack_sprint_cyclists_go_so_slow/ | {
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" > Wouldn't it make more sense if they just went all out and the fastest person with the most endurance wins?\n\nThe person in back can draft the leader, though. It's a short race, but it's long enough that that will give them an advantage in terms of freshness by the end if they went 100% the whole time.",
"There are a lot of kinds of cycling races, and many of them do require either endurance (road races and pursuit), all-out speed (time trial), or some combination of both (points race).\n\nThe sprint is a unique event, and it rewards strategy as well as pure athleticism. Endurance isn't the issue because it's only 3 laps. Being behind the other rider gives you a burst of speed that you can use to pass him, because you're getting much less air resistance when someone is in front of you blocking that air. So you don't want to be in front going into the last lap. Riders found out that the strategy of going slow for the first two laps, staying behind, and then accelerating suddenly from behind the other person works better than just going all-out for all three laps, so that's why it became standard."
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4dhs34 | how is the decriminalization of all drugs in a country beneficial? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dhs34/eli5_how_is_the_decriminalization_of_all_drugs_in/ | {
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"1) It frees up police resources to better utilize their time. Fewer court dates, less paperwork, etc... Police departments are still free to take down dealers and distributors, but are no longer concerned with catching the average user.\n\n2) Speaking of the average user, it frees them up to seek treatment without fearing jail time. This theoretically reduces the number of addicts by getting them help.\n\n3) it reduces prison populations, which saves everyone a little money.",
"How has the criminalization of them been beneficial? Every prohibition of drugs I know of has resulted in an increase in the undesired usage of the drug. The economic impacts are severe, and government costs are enormous. What positive actually comes from criminalization? \n\nThe British pushed opium into southern China, from India, which caused some problems. But then the Chinese government criminalized opium, and the situation exploded. The Chinese economy began to fall apart, and war erupted. \n\nThe U.S. criminalized alchohol, and then bootlegging became rampant. Unregulated production blossomed, leading to alcohol becoming even more dangerous than before. Organized crime took over the market (unsurprisingly) and got a foothold it's never lost. \n\nThen we did it to other drugs. Why are we surprised that the same things have happened? Organized crime is stronger than ever before, violence increased dramatically, our borders have become weaker, the health risks of drugs have increased dramatically, addiction has gotten worse, and it's even harder to find help. \n\nAt the same time, Nicotine is still legal. One of the most addictive drugs, and less people are consuming it in the United States than almost ever before. While significant health risks have remained, new technology is helping to reduce those, while continuing to ween people off dependency. \n\nWhat good is drug criminalization?",
"Because criminalization of drugs does not prevent drug use. Pot, heroin, etc have been criminalized forever in many countries, yet usage is still widespread. The result is that the market for these drugs is entirely in the hands of organized criminals. They have turned it into a multi-million dollar industry that battle in the streets with guns, resulting in thousands of murders per year. It has empowered Mexican cartels to the point that they overpower police in many towns south of the border, spurring illegal immigration, poverty, and crime. All we have to show for it is the largest prison population in the world, continuing the cycle of poverty and crime for millions. And yet *still*, all these drugs are as easy to find as ever.",
"It changes the primary goal from \"How do we prevent this\" (proactive) to \"What can we learn from this,\" (reactive) which is essential to understanding the motivation behind some of the causes like wanting to alter your reality. Understanding that better helps you cure the imbalance or even helps you understand many other things brain related. \n\n",
"First, some basic information: Demand for drugs will always exist in any society, regardless of whether or not those drugs are legal. This means that in any population, there will exist people who will want to and do use drugs. Some of these people will have problems with addiction and drug-induced behavioral problems, but the vast majority of these people are normal, hard-working individuals with normal social lives and happy/functional families. It is also important to understand that *drug use is not inherently bad*. People have been using drugs for spiritual and recreational purposes for literally thousands of years; it has ~~only~~ been within the last century, with the global exportation of the American neoconservative drug policy, that drugs have taken on this lopsided reputation as \"bad\" and \"dangerous\". Ironically, the primary danger for drug users and other people comes not from the drugs themselves, but from the police who enforce drug laws, the overly harsh laws themselves, and the drug cartels who produce and sell the drugs on the black market.\n\nSecond, what this does: These people becomes criminals in the eyes of the state when a behavior they engage in is made illegal. It is important to recognize that these people are not criminals because they hurt someone, or because they stole something, or because they destroyed something. These people are criminals only because they violated a set of moralizing laws that are literally designed to give the government [an excuse](_URL_2_) to interrupt and crackdown on [\"undesirable communities\"](_URL_0_).\n\nEnforcing drug laws and putting these \"criminals\" in jail requires a lot of money. Several things happen as a result of this enforcement:\n\n* Police spend significant money, time, and resources apprehending non-violent drug users.\n\n* Non-violent drug users have their lives ruined with misdemeanor or felony charges. They are often coerced into accepting a plea deal under the threat of an extreme and disproportionate punishment.\n\n* Cultural changes including the dehumanization of drug users, \"tough on crime\" laws with inhumane and disproportionate punishments, economic and social stratification / discrimination against drug users, and creation of an \"internal boogieman\" which can be used by the State to smear dissident groups or political rivals.\n\n* Increased policing of communities and neighborhoods with high proportions of drug users, and subsequent distrust/hatred/fear for police by the people within those communities and neighborhoods.\n\n* Swollen prison populations encourage the proliferation of the private prison industry, which lobbies for drug laws with longer and more severe punishments, and harsher enforcement of those laws. \n\n* As illegality has not stopped demand, illegal producers and distributors operate on a black market to satisfy the demand. These producers and distributors are already operating illegally; they are not opposed to using violence in their business operations. \n\n* These black market operators have no kind of safety or health regulations. Illegal drugs are not safe; they may be laced, or cut with other compounds, or they may be a different drug entirely. This increases the risk involved with consuming drugs, especially drugs with sensitive margins of safety for the dosage. \n\n* The prohibition of scientific study into the banned substances, which limits the development and use of any potential medical or chemical application they might have.\n\nBasically, by criminalizing drugs, the State creates justification for the wanton use of militarized police on any undesirable political, social, or racial group. This enforcement mechanism is hugely expensive, costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives every year. Millions of non-violent people get put in prison for non-violent \"crimes\". The entire law enforcement operation degrades the populations trust in law enforcement and the rule of law.\n\nNow, on to the meat and potatoes of your question. How can decriminalization of drugs possibly be beneficial? There are three distinct categories of benefits that decriminalization (or, even better, full legalization) provides; ~~legal, financial, and social~~ government/police, individual drug consumers, and communities. \n\n~~**Legal Benefits**~~ **Government / Police**\n\n* The State is not spending enormous amounts of money waging a nation-wide war against drug users. This money can be used for other purposes; police work against violent criminals, social programs, education, community centers, etc. \n\n* Police resources can be better focused on apprehending violent criminals and other elements in our society that pose an actual threat.\n\n* Legal drug industries provide an absurd amount of tax revenue. This money call also be invested in social programs, education, community centers, etc. \n\n~~**Financial Benefits**~~ **Individual Drug Consumers**\n\n* Non-violent drug users are not given misdemeanor or felony charges for non-violent \"crimes\", which would impede their ability to get a job, vote, and support their family. \n\n* Regulated production of drugs improves safety by ensuring quality and consistency of the product. This reduces deaths caused by accidental overdoses and prevents people from consuming laced or dangerously altered substances.\n\n* Legal access to a regulated product encourages safer use, and discourages contact with black market dealers who, by selling multiple drugs besides marijuana, are the purported \"gateway\" of late 2nd millennium youth drug education lore. \n\n~~**Social Benefits**~~ **Communities**\n\n* Material advancements in the socioeconomic position of communities with endemic drug use or police antagonism. \n\n* Scientific study into drug compounds has yielded numerous medicines and other therapeutic substances. The sales of these medicines helps millions of people, and generates billions of dollars in revenue (and taxes). \n\n* Improved Public-Police relations; when police are not enforcing unnecessarily laws, they are not aggravating and antagonizing otherwise innocent drug users. This promotes community cohesion and appreciation of the rule of law.\n\n* The incarcerated population will shrink significantly, reuniting families and social circles *and not interrupting / destroying them in the future*.\n\nEdit: Changed the category titles to something more encompassing, and appropriately re-ordered (without changing the wording) the specific bullet points. \n\nThese are general trends that are observed when drugs are decriminalized. Note, this isn't true for every place at every time that decriminalizes drugs; these are simply the most ecologically obvious factors. If you're trying to inform yourself about drugs and the legal efforts that dealt with them, it's important to understand that common cultural conceptions of drugs and drug users are often highly inaccurate. The publics conception of addiction and medical care for addiction is largely misinformed (influenced in no small part by a government trying to legitimize its anti-drug policy); the reality is that apprehending, prosecuting, and imprisoning a single drug user is often more expensive than offering medical treatment to 5-10 drug users with serious addictions. [Dr. Carl Hart](_URL_1_) and [Erowid](_URL_3_) are great sources for real, accurate drug information. ",
"So you refuse to do drugs because they're illegal, or do you refuse to do drugs because you're aware of the personal, financial and medical risks.\n\nI'd guess that it's more personal reasons than legality reasons, so the law isn't working as a deterrent.\n\n\nIf they're made mainstream they can be wrapped in quality control and governance. No more deaths from cocaine cut with laundry detergent, etc.\n\n\nIn New Zealand and other countries, prostitution is legalised within licensed premises. It looks after the girls health and safety, and the guys, and it's taxed, benefitting the local tax bureau. There's still illegal prostitution and is still caught by the cops, but there's an avenue for legitimate use, giving a release and outlet those that seek that lifestyle.\n\nIf there was the same for any/all drug use, I'd argue it'd be better for everyone. The drug users that benefit from health and safety.. Guaranteed clean needles, quality control of certified suppliers, the drug quitters that can safely find assistance, the non users that are affected in a number of ways, and obviously the taxes and police/court resources that are freed up to catch actual criminals.\n",
"It's interesting to remember that decriminalised and legal aren't the same thing.\n\nI got a speeding ticket three years ago and I've had two parking tickets in the last ten years. These are times I broke the law and got punished but... This has not resulted in me having a criminal record, I have not had to disclose these convictions to any employers, I didn't get fired from my job, it won't bar me from working in any particular employment sectors, I'm not considered a 'criminal'.\n\nWould there be any benefit to society, the offender or the police and justice system by criminalising these offences? No.\n\nIn my view the same is true of drug use. The only reason weed ruins lives is because if you get caught with it the criminal justice system will ruin your life. ",
"In addition to what other people commented, the criminalization of drugs caused a problem that is often overlooked: the use of synthetic drugs that mimic the effects of the sought-after illegal ones to skirt around the laws.\n\nThese substances, known as designer drugs or research chemicals, have little to no testing done on them, so nobody knows what their effects are, be it immediate, short-term, or long-term. It's a cat-and-mouse game between the producers of said substances and the drug law enforcement agencies. Since most drug policies work on the principle of a substance being legal unless explicitly made illegal, producers just have to change the molecule a bit to make it legal again, but that means completely changing the effects of the substance.",
"Those who are addicted to a drug whose possession and use is criminal often fear seeking treatment. Slipping deeper into addiction, they begin associating with other criminals - and that association will go beyond drug use to other criminal behavior. They often end up engaging in very risky (and often more criminal) behavior to gain access to their drug(s).\n\nThose who are addicted to a drug whose possession and use is not criminal do not fear seeking treatment. With assistance they can ensure that even if they do not stop using, they do not slip more deeply into addiction and criminal behavior.\n\nAs a society, it is almost always cheaper to pay for therapeutic intervention and counseling instead of policing and jailing. Many also consider this the more ethical choice though it should be said that some believe that drug addicts deserve punishment for their moral lapse.",
"Vancouver has already started and Toronto is already on the way.\nSpeaking on hard drugs such as Heroin, going into a treatment facility guarantees clean needles and helpful advice to quit.\nTalk to any heroin, meth addict (to name a couple) they will tell you how extremely hard it is to stop. Some advice a old friend once told me. DO you know how expensive it is to kill someone? Not very if you know a couple addicts. Thats how serious it can be.\n\nAlso, why throw in money to the black market. Why support a family of six with a meth factory in the basement. I'm speaking strictly about hard drugs. Face it. People who want to do it, are going to do it. And all it takes is for you to walk to the nearest parc and talk to a couple people. Boom you have crack. \n\nEDIT: Also there are a list of other reason ; court time, paperwork, police work..how about building less private jails? Or civil forfiture. ",
"First off its important to know that Decriminalization does not equal legalization. If you are caught making or selling the drug you can still get in trouble, but if you are caught with small amounts of it you are fine. \n\nAs for why decriminalization is starting to be viewed in a good light, there are a few reasons:\n\n1) With the current system even having a small amount on one's person is enough to be fined or arrested. This means that non-violent people are being arrested and thrown into a prison system alongside violent offenders that is vastly overcrowded and underfunded. While in prison these people are not being productive in society and are subject to violence, STD's, and abuse. In addition if we are incarcerating every Joe Blow that is found with a joint them is a net loss of money since the province/state needs to basically fund Joe Blow's stay in jail. By decriminalizing minor drugs such as marijuana (which is constantly being proven to be less harmful then tobacco products) you are going to relieve the strain on your prisons and keep otherwise perfectly fine people in the work force and society. \n\n2) As it stands now the \"war on drugs\" is not working. If someone really wants to find some crack, they are going to find some crack. If someone wants to sell some crack, they are going to find buyers for said crack. If there is a will, there is a way, and if there is money to be made someone will make it. By spending huge amounts of money, time, and effort in a fight that we were never going to win we are wasting resources that could be better used against violent crimes, drug education, and making sure our police officers are well paid and given good training. \n\n3) The war on drugs ironically has helped the drug makers. By making it harder to buy the prices were driven up, and higher prices for the same product mean more money in criminal hands. If anyone could walk down the street with a baggy of weed and not get jumped by the cops then people would be much more choosy about who they purchase from since they know that they won't be in trouble. As an example, if Joe Blow wants a baggy of weed he goes to his regular guy, Joe Moe, and gets told it costs $25 (tbh I have no idea how much a bag of weed costs). However Joe Blow knows that John Doe is selling the same baggy for $20, so now Joe Blow can go to John Doe for the cheaper price and not have to worry about Joe Moe ratting him to the police in response to his loss of business. Suddenly Joe Moe has no leverage over Joe Blow, and has to lower his prices to be able to compete. This lowering in prices goes up the chain and pulls money out of the criminals pockets. \n\n4) Even if you decriminalize it you can still restrict and regulate it, and regulation=taxes. You could tax someone as a seller, or as a buyer, or perhaps you can hand out special licenses to select buisnesses who are then legally allowed to sell a restricted product (which is, of course, taxed). Does this mean that a criminal organization could start a legitimate business selling drugs? If they follow the legal proceedings and are legit in the selling of their drugs then I would hardly call that criminal anymore, and its not like such organizations don't already have their hands in the pockets or are pulling the strings of none-drug related businesses anyways. Suddenly the government has another inflow of cash (and if police estimates are correct it is a HUGE inflow), and that cash can be used for stuff that people actually want/need like good infrastructure, a well trained police force, affordable health care, and other nice government things. \n\nNow does this mean we should decriminalize ALL drugs? Probably not, as some drugs are lethal or make people violent while on them, but for many of the \"lighter\" drugs such as magic mushrooms, weed, and hash oil it won't be much of an issue. Looking at places like Vancouver and Colorado where weed is either generally accepted/outright legal we can see that the city/state is gaining a large source of revenue and the only downside is that people are getting the munchies. ",
"Because then the government can sell the drugs legally to people in proper doses and put the very shady and violent drug dealers out of business because their prices are much higher than the government who can easily produce any drugs they want with high quality. Basically, it gets rid of organised drug deals and turf wars related to the drug market and overall makes the drug users far less likely to suffer from extreme overdoses and violent outbursts.",
"Government has no right to tell me how i can alter my consciousness. Mind your business. Why does the govt pick and choose whats drugs are ok? Alcohol and tobacco are ok. But this drug and this drug are not...its silly."
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70gl2z | how can i go from feeling fine at 11am to sick with a high fever at 12pm an hour later? do viruses/bacteria really work that fast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70gl2z/eli5_how_can_i_go_from_feeling_fine_at_11am_to/ | {
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"It is not the the bacteria or virus causing the fever, it is the body reacting tot it. And yeah, your body is really fast when it comes tot fighting potential disease.",
"Not an expert but maybe it has something to do with the way buggers can exponentially multiply. Like maybe you got a little while before and that hour is when the bug load hit a threshold. Doubling a population of germs can pretty quickly go from 2,4,8,16,32... To pretty enormous numbers once you get up there in the count. Then one division might throw you over a threshold",
"Remember, the vast majority of effects we associate with being sick are not caused by the virus or bacteria in question, they are caused by your body in it's attempts to fight off the infection. Inflammation, fever, nausea, etc are all part of the immune response. Basically your body flipped a switch from \"All clear!\" to \"Danger Will Robinson!\" and so yeah, that can happen near instantly."
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1r68yn | why do some parts of your body turn brown (genetals, butthole)? | Can someone explain to me why some parts of our bodies get darker but others don't? Scrotum, Labia, Anus???...Butthole. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r68yn/eli5_why_do_some_parts_of_your_body_turn_brown/ | {
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"I'm pleading that every post on here is sarcasm. ",
"**[Actual serious answer]** Sex hormones can activate melanin production on your genitals, armpits, etc. This is why those parts of you darken as you undergo puberty.",
"I noticed that after a stopped masturbating after a chronic masturbation addiction, my penis lightened in colour considerably. Almost to the same colour as the rest of my skin. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with that but anecdotally it seems that masturbation darkens the penis somehow. \n\nI've noticed that my penis tans a lot faster than my other skin though. Weird. "
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3p6ffa | why don't the chinese just make a skyscraper sized air purifier like the one i have in my room to solve their smog problem? | I have a air purifier, made in China, that filters my room's air 10 times in an hour. Why don't they just make an enormous one the size of a building to clean their smog? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p6ffa/eli5_why_dont_the_chinese_just_make_a_skyscraper/ | {
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"Link to air purifier? It depends, on how yours works.",
"Your room is an enclosed space. The air circulates easily. \n\nThe outside air is not enclosed. It circulates globally, but local airflows arnt easy to purify. The smog my be reduced in a certain area, but you'd need multiple systems to cover a large enough area.",
"Consider the volume of air in your room to the volume of air outside. Imagine how many rooms full of air there are within just one square mile and compare that to all the smog that China has. Now consider how much coal they would need to burn to power just one giant purifier and how that would impact its cleaning effort.",
"That sounds like a pretty bad-ass landmark, and similar systems for carbon sequestration have been proposed in design circles for some years now. However, it comes down to cost. It's not profitable to build a giant air filter. Also, given the massive amount of air in our atmosphere, one building would have almost zero impact. Think about it this way, there are thousands of coal stacks smoking up the place. One building trying to take all that crap back out of the atmosphere isn't going to be very effective. It would be more effective to build the filters on the power stations and adopt more clean energy sources. Also, the energy it takes to run it would produce more pollution. Unfortunately it's not such a simple problem. ",
"this is why china is going to build 110 new nuclear plants. to power that damn skyscraper sized air filtration system.",
"They have tried and planned for purifiers before however the cost of maintenance and number needed made the entire process inefficient.",
"They already have something like this in the Netherlands. \n \n > While the prototype is currently in Rotterdam, Roosegaarde aims to eventually roll out other models in Beijing, Mexico City, Paris and Los Angeles. \n\n_URL_0_",
"LPT: For any question beginning on \"why don't they...\" lines, the answer is always \"because it's too expensive.\"",
"Back in my day, we called those trees. And you didn't have to build them. They just showed up on their own. ",
"Other than the technical difficulties, why would china government give a fuck about that? Don't forget it's a country that would mask tragedies but celebrates the \"helpfulness\" of the rescue team, deny all dark deeds(4June FTW), to name just few.\n\nIf the government really want to lower pollution, it can start from emission regulations first. Giant air purifier would just be too costly to maintain",
"Because China doesn't give a fuck about the air quality. Why would they build something? \n\nTrade negotiations required China to install air scrubbers in their dirty coal power plants. China installed them. Trade negotiations said nothing about actually turning them on, so they are off. China doesn't care. ",
"Because having giant filters is a non-starter, and using charged current to clean the air creates ozone, which would be a problem from a skyscrapper sized filter.",
"It would take burning twice as much coal to generate the electricity manufacture it, so they'd be behind the game as soon as started.",
"Let's assume your room is 5m x 5m x 3m = 75m cubed\nAlso assuming your filter machine is 0.5m x 0.3m x 1m = 0.15m cubed. So each cubic meter would require 0.002 cubic meters of filtering machine.\nSo lets take Shanghai for example with area of 7 billion m squared and lets say around 500m up into the air. That will require a filter machine that sucks 3.5x10^12 m^3 of air. \nThis machine would be 7 x 10^9 cubic meters in volume. To give you a perspective, the empire state building is only around 1 million cubic meters. This air filter would have to be 7000 times the empire state building which is not a plausible feat even with today's engineering and just be too expensive to build. ",
"I think they're working on something like this.\n\nHere are some sources\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_\n",
"Can you imagine trying to clean/change the filters...?\n\n > \"Hundreds crushed to death yesterday amid the calamity that was \"weekly filter change day.\" Officials point out that less then half as many died as last week.",
"There's a lot of people knocking OP down. Sounds like a good idea (at least the intent) and Studio Roosegaarde also think so! \n\nThey are planning on deploying one in Beijing: _URL_0_",
"Because the planetary atmosphere is incomprehensibly huge, and all of it is interconnected. \n\nAccording to the numbers I found online, we have 3998910000000000000 m3 of air in the atmosphere (or at least I think that conversion from 5.1 x 10^18 kg of air is right). \n\nThe largest such air purifier built is 23 feet tall and purifies 30000 m3 per hour.\n\nIt could, if my math is correct (which is always chancy, as math is not my strong suit) take that 23 foot tower 15.2 billion years to run the atmosphere of the entire world through itself once. Assuming you could somehow assure that no part of the atmosphere circled back before it got the end of the queue, which you can't. \n\nThere's a much easier way to clean up the atmosphere. We let mother nature do it, after we stop pumping filth into it. We've been pumping filth up there now for centuries, and cleaning it up will take a long time as well. And will happen never, if we don't stop polluting.\n\nWhich is why it is absolutely crucial we retire all the filthy coal plants, make the factories clean and stop using combustion engines. It's the only way to clean up the atmosphere.\n\nThe global warming will already make over 400 of our largest coast-bound cities uninhabitable in the next 100 years. New Orleans, Miami and a buttload of others are already irretrievable. We won't fix calamities on that level with some air cleaners. ",
"Let's say you built an air purifier, or several of them, that was big enough to clean china. \n\nThe only way the purifier is carbon-negative (meaning it removes more carbon than it emits) is if the electricity used to power the machine came from a carbon-free process.\n\nthis image: \n_URL_0_\nshows China's energy sources, taken from an excellent blog on TESLA vehicles and the story of energy at _URL_1_, it shows the majority of China's energy comes from burning coal.\n\nSo building and running a huge air purifier would not take away carbon unless it ran on energy that was 'clean', or non-carbon producing. China would be putting more carbon in the air building and running these huge machines than could be removed by running them.",
"first, it will be way more easier and effective to put the air purifier directly at the source of the smog. Directly at the chimney of the coal power plant that power more than 80% of China. It is what is done in most developed countries that still rely on coal power (like Germany).\nBut for that you need to have and enforce environmental laws and regulation, and Chinese government had prioritized business over environment.\n\nSecond, who will paid for the skyscraper sized air purifier ? For the waste it will generate/recover ? Who will build it ? What is the business model ?\nthe only viable model for environment problem is make the polluter paid for the environmental impact.",
"So many bullshit answers in this thread it's just ridiculous. The answer is they are working on doing exactly this (though not the same as your small air filter). [These pollution cleaning towers will be the tallest buildings in the world](_URL_0_)",
"Because the cost of producing enough energy to run such a huge machine would probably produce just as much smog as the machine filtered\n",
"yes, one kind is called 'tree' they are green and the size of a building. \n\nWhen people realize that public good is important and dare to spend money on such things, they could make mechanical filters, it wont probably profit in money therefore it can be a public investment. But doing that shows that people want clean air, and if you are the government you can also do that in other ways. Like building alternative energy power stations and instate stricter pollution ordinances.",
"Cleaning up the air is easy compared to figuring out what to do with all the pollutants you collect. If you can somehow grab all the pollutants, including the ones in the upper atmosphere, you need to put them somewhere safe. Bury it in the wrong place and the pollutants escape and pollute the ground or just go back into the air. If you could manufacture the pollutants into solid hard blocks you'll be onto something, but you'll need a shit ton of space to store the blocks.",
"Well, they did. There are billboards in China that instead of advertising anything are air filters full of algae. \nThe algae-filters acts like trees but can be places in less convenient places such as on the sides of buildings. \nHow many there actually are, I have no idea, but they are out there.",
"How about a giant fan that blows all the smog out of the city?",
"You have a skyscraper size air purifier in your room?! I, sir, am green with envy. ",
"It is clearly possible. However. It comes down to math. It is 10000x times less costly to pollute less, than clean the air afterwards. In fact it probably would be incredible pricy to clean air in a city enough to make a noticable difference. Where would you put the purifyer if you would build it? close to the biggest contaminant? Or why not \"on\" that contaminant... wait, it would become a filter at the release-level...\n\nThe second argument is that the enteties responsible for pollution should pay for this, not goverment. \n\nIn reality, its about creating laws and control-organs on goverment level. To ensure that filtering is done when releasing gasses. Not making bigger and better purifiers that only would lead to more contamination since there would be more \"room\" for it. Less smog = less complaints. Less complaints, less focus on the \"real\" problem.",
"It isn't a matter of ability. If China cared about air quality, they would impose standards to prevent it from getting fucked up in the first place. They don't care.",
"They can't because the order of goods from US and the rest of the world are tall. They have to work hard to make them, otherwise Opium War happens.",
"Hey I'm a façades engineer so I might have the answer. They do exist. They're called smog fighting façades. They work more like a catalytic converter on your car using precious metals to remove harmful chemicals from the air. \n_URL_0_\n\nAs for why the Chinese don't use them? They don't really care about the safety of people or the environment from what I've seen so I doubt they'll spend the extra money for this. \n",
"Why have you got an Air Purifier in your room? What are you doing in there? Having an industrial revolution?",
"Can you imagine how much those skyscraper-sized purifier refills would cost?",
"You have a skyscraper sized air purifier *inside* your bedroom? That's a lot of room! Think of all the activities!",
"Hey! A little late to the party, but I just want to mention one thing about air purification that you may find neat-if you put some titanium dioxide nanoparticles on a skyscraper's windows, the windows actually purify the air around the building. I'm unsure if most of the buildings in China utilize this technology, but it's just a cool trick I learned from a nano class I took.\n\nSource: Learned in a class and right here _URL_0_",
"You don't understand how an air purifier works. It doesn't magically purify air. It sucks in air and usually uses electric charge/filters to either remove or convert air pollutants into a kind of solid dust that is captured.\n\nA massive skyscraper sized purifier designed to purify an entire city's air will likely create 50 kmph winds in the city. To prevent this, you will need numerous small inlets all over the city with closed conduits to transfer the ai to the purifier. This makes the system very expensive and inefficient.\n\nAll the waste dust and dirt will likely have to be handled. In general, it is much more cost effective to NOT create the pollution in the first place, rather than clean it up.\n\nIf people are not willing to pay for the much cheaper solution of preventing pollution, it is too much to expect them to pay for the much more expensive solution of cleaning up the mess.\n",
"You have a skyscraper sized air purifier in your room?",
"Money is the main reason for why they don't.\n\nHuge building size filters are not the right answer, as they are not technically air purifiers, only another money pit that doesn't do enough to actively offset any real quantity of pollution. One big purifier won't work either but if they have a multitude of small purification enhancing changes around the city it would help greatly. \n\nA good thing that should be used more frequently is to paint roofs with a Titanium Dioxide mixed paint which reacts to sunlight to create air purifying molecules, though this would only help greatly in a massive execution from multiple homes and businesses.\n\nAt the end of the day the real answer is cutting down on emissions and letting nature do its thing. Greenery eats up carbon dioxide and creates fresh oxygen while electrical storms create ozone which breaks down most types of pollutants in the air.",
"Well beyond the logistical and structural problems its because there primary power source is coal. To power those massive things they'd need to burn a hell of a lot more coal which would generate more pollution rendering the devices moot. This is also why Chinas recent announcement that it's building a large amount of new nuclear reactors is a wonderful thing.",
"Best word I can think of is cubic loading. A 2000 cubic foot room might have 2 square feet of filter. If we wished to keep this ratio then a 200 ft high square mile volume would require about 5.6 million square feet of filter. That's 1000 filter sheets each 75 feet by 75 feet. It might be possible but it would be one hell of a facility... every square mile.",
"They'll make one and then Dyson will put out a more expensive one they'll say works way better. ",
"It's easier to stop it at the source. A giant air scrubber would fill up with bugs, birds, dirt, water, and whatever else is in the air that's supposed to be there.",
"Why don't they just put them on the tops of the smoke stacks? Filter the source..",
"While we're at it, why can't we just construct a stadium sized freezer to generate iceberg sized ice cubes and solve global warming? I mean, why not?",
"Think of it like standing in a big swimming pool and use a bucket to remove the dirty water.",
"They would have to care. IF they cared, they would have already put air cleansing equipment on all factories causing the pollution in the first place.",
"Well first off all, there's no reason to build something so big that will require heavy-duty construction and tons of wasted effort and material on reinforcing the structure etc. If you want to go the \"use an air purifier\" method, build thousands of refrigerator-sized units and scatter them everywhere, including on top of existing skyscrapers if you want.",
"How in the hell does a question like this get over 3800 votes?!\n\nI'm...at a loss for words."
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9egyrj | in ancient times, how did people know if people truly who they declared that they were? | In terms of royal ambassadors or members of courts and parliaments, when someone asks, “who goes there?” or “what business do you have with the lord?” how do the guards or officials know whether the other person is lying or not if they’ve never met them before and banners or papers and officials seals can be forged or duplicated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9egyrj/eli5_in_ancient_times_how_did_people_know_if/ | {
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"99% of the time, any foreign dignitary would have given weeks of advance notice before they arrived. They would be accompanied by courtiers, guards, servants, tons of luggage, chefs, and all sorts of other people and things, all of which would be marked with the correct seals and paperwork. Pretending to be a member of the royal court, or of the noble class, would be difficult in any convincing manner. It was a **big** affair. \n\nAnd the receiving party would have made a great deal of preparations for them. Parties and feasts withstanding, the courtiers of the receiving party would have already learned all of the likes and dislikes of their guests, the proper introductions, manners, and all of those little formalities. \n\nCombine that with all of those noble families actually knowing each other throughout their lives, having partied with them for years, having learned about them during their adolescence (because they absolutely couldn't be caught in a socially awkward situation, that would be a huge faux pas), and so much more.\n\nIt's not like they just threw some farmers together to receive a noble guest. It was a big deal. \n\n**It was** possible to pretend to be some very minor, distantly related member, or even a member of some exotic court (a Jamaican prince to England during the 15th century, maybe), but you'd have to be a decent actor with some decent forgers. ",
"The biggest way was by being rich and educated.\n\nIn a world where most people were illiterate farmers, wearing nice clothes, knowing how to ride a horse, being able to speak in the official, aristocratic accent, being able to read, wearing fancy clothes and jewelry, knowing who was who in the circles of power, and having a retinue of servants and armed guards was pretty rare. It would take an incredible amount of effort to create a decent imposter.\n\nWhat's more, the average guard on gate duty wouldn't just let someone in. They would send for a superior, who would send for a superior until they found someone who was able to validate this person's identity.\n\nAlso, royalty was pretty inbred. Chances are any emissary sent would have relatives in service to the king. In fact, that would be a reason to send a particularly emmisary. ",
"Keep in mind that some of the \"normal\" rules of today likely still applied. eg. who you know and who knows you. Communities exist where people know one another. People and organizations have a reputations in the community and we tend to go off that. Of course, that doesn't really apply in cases where no one around has any clue who a person is. Day to day though most of us deal with people in our extended circles. \n\nOf course it would be way easier to fake some things and start all over in a new region. I'm sure that kind of thing was rampant. Still, we underestimate the power of community. It's not always practical to just up and move somewhere else. Nobody will know who you are and may be reluctant to deal with you.",
"They didn’t always. Photos didn’t exist, realistic portraits weren’t painted of most people and didn’t get reproduced and shipped around to verify identity, and news didn’t travel very fast unless it was urgent.\n\nHe wasn’t a powerful person, but back in the 16th century a French peasant named Martin Guerre abandoned his wife and son and returned several years later. His wife said it was definitely her husband, and they then lived together for several years and had more children. It turned out that he wasn’t actually Martin Guerre but someone pretending to be him.\n\nThe two men had heard from others that they appeared similar, and Fake Martin heard about Real Martin’s life from others. With that knowledge, he went to Real Martin’s house and successfully faked his identity for years, though some people were suspicious of him.\n\nBecause cameras did not exist and Real Martin wasn’t rich enough to be painted, no one was able to say with certainty that Fake Martin was fake, up until it turned out that Real Martin had lost a leg since he had left. Real Martin later turned back up and Fake Martin was executed."
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2nt1u0 | how can apps like shazam recognize music, movies, and tv shows when there are millions of each out there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nt1u0/eli5_how_can_apps_like_shazam_recognize_music/ | {
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"It's just frequencies. Just like you are using a website that at the very basic level is just zeros and ones. \n\n\nIt listens to the frequency, and finds some shit that hits the same combination of frequencies. "
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2sjkhc | why do some posts generate link karma while other's don't? | For example, submissions to this subreddit don't generate link karma when upvoted, or at least not that I've noticed. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sjkhc/eli5_why_do_some_posts_generate_link_karma_while/ | {
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"Some posts are link while others are text post. \n\nText posts act similar to comment karma. \n\nYour score it for links. "
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2geka7 | why can't a computer program, program itself? | If it has the database of programming language, why can't we have a program that we tell what we want it to do, and it determines a way to program itself to give us those answers?
Edit: Clarification of what I mean. I need to know the answer to this algebraic equation. There are programs that can calculate it, I know. Why aren't there programs to write a program to calculate it? It seems like that we could have computers programming in more complex ways than we could imagine. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2geka7/eli5_why_cant_a_computer_program_program_itself/ | {
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"Here's one reason (among many). Human languages are very imprecise. If you tell a computer program what sort of program you want just by speaking to it in your natural language, it could only have a very vague idea of what you want. It's hard enough to tell a human what program you want.\n\nYou'd need a very advanced AI to do this. It would have to know a lot about the world to be able to \"fill in the blanks\" and figure out what you really want. Just like a human has to do.\n\nThere are experimental programs that do this kind of thing, but only in a really basic way. To make a computer program which could make any other computer program based on someone just speaking to it naturally would require an AI approaching the intelligence of a real human. And if you do that, what's to stop it taking over the world and destroying humanity?\n\nOk, that last sentence was a joke. Or was it?",
"Software developer here. I kind of think we're getting that way, as it is. Not quite to the point where we can just say \"make me a coffee, and if you don't know how, figure it out.\" But we're closer!\nI don't tell a computer where to line up pixels on a screen anymore, nor do I tell a computer how to interact with another one over the net; I just do something like \"get me a list of products, and put them on a webpage.\" Then there's a bit of formatting, and boom, basic webpage for selling stuff.\nSomewhere along the lines someone had to make all of the lower-level functions that give me the data and build the webpage, but it's getting quite easy to develop functional work, and quick.\n\nIn another sense, compilers do this sort of work, already. They transform my simple function requests into all the work that a computer has to do to make that into a reality, and push the bytes down the line. Pretty cool, in my books!\n\nAlso, I'm sure someone will chime in with something interesting about AI."
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1y1sc9 | how has the world not ended from "2053" nuclear bomb explosions? | According to [this video](_URL_0_), there has been over 2000 nuclear explosions on earth in the last century. How is the amount of radiation not destroyed us all or harmed the earth irreversibly in some notable way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y1sc9/eli5how_has_the_world_not_ended_from_2053_nuclear/ | {
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"Many were underground or over the Ocean which absorbed the radiation and neutralized it. There are parts of the world that have been irrevocably changed by nuclear weapons, but they were also parts of the world we didn't really care about. Small uninhabited islands in the middle of nowhere as an example.\n\nAlso this should put into scope just how big the planet is. Humans have to work pretty hard to have a noticeable impact.",
"The world is relatively much larger than the explosions, the explosions often happen in the same few places, and far away from populated areas (or far underground)",
"The earth is really big. Most of those explosions were purposely done far away from where they could harm people."
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292n4h | why do we need bees? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/292n4h/eli5_why_do_we_need_bees/ | {
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"Let me answer by asking another question. Are you going to pollinate all those flowers and plants yourself?",
" > [According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these under-appreciated workers pollinate 80 percent of our flowering crops which constitute 1/3 of everything we eat. Losing them could affect not only dietary staples such as apples, broccoli, strawberries, nuts, asparagus, blueberries and cucumbers, but may threaten our beef and dairy industries if alfalfa is not available for feed.](_URL_0_)\n",
"without bees, there'd be some poor illegal immigrate mexican out there in the fields with a qtip or paintbrush pollinating every flower by hand. ",
"Well you see Blackbird027, when two people love each other very much, they often interact with each other in a way which makes a third person (let's not get into the how, that's a talk for when you're older. If people didn't do this with each other, then no new people would ever be made and humans would die out. Plant work the same way, except they can't move around to find other plants to fall in love with and make new plants. That's where the bees come in. Bees visit one flower and pick up their pollen, then visit another flower and introduce the first flower's pollen so the second flower can make seeds. That is how flower babies are made.",
"Watch, Bee Movie. It explains pretty well.",
"Everyone has pretty well covered the need for pollinators, but why honey bees?\n\nThe answer to this is that European honey bees are generalist pollinators that can feed on and service a staggering variety of plants compared to most of their wild cousins. Only bumble bees compare. Most solitary bees are very narrowly specialized to a few species, and the same is true of most non-bee pollinators, such as moths, butterflies, and flies. That said, there are a few crops of which lesser known bees are the only pollinator\n\n(It's also worth noting that honey bees are the only good sources of honey and beeswax. We do have plenty of substitutes for both, so that doesn't really lend as much importance in the modern world as pollination, but it's still there.)"
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czepm5 | why doesn’t light, tv, etc. flicker or get switched off and on if ac current is used for domestic purposes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/czepm5/eli5_why_doesnt_light_tv_etc_flicker_or_get/ | {
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"The outlets are charged with alternating current, but most electronic devices run on direct current. Many of these devices will have an AC Adapter for a cord, which converts the AC power to DC, or they'll just have a transformer included into the body of the device.\n\nBecause the energy is converted, it doesn't create a flicker in the workings of the device.",
"Light does not flicker b/c:\n- older bulb stays hot and lit during the brief periods of zero current\n- LED bulbs might flicker, but they flicker too fast for you to notice.\n\nTV and other larger appliances convert AC into DC when AC would create a flicker\n\nElectric motors (like fans) can work directly off AC. When current goes one way, it turns the motor half the turn, when current goes the other way it turns it the other half the turn, and then cycle continues.",
"Old incandescent and fluorescent lights do flicker, and so did CRT displays. They just flicker so fast that it's imperceptible for most people. You can actually see this in old long exposure photographs of urban landscapes. Lights appear as dashes. This is also one of the reasons why people got headaches and bad eye strain using CRT computer monitors if the refresh rate was set too low. \n\nModern LED lights (and modern TVs) run off DC power. AC is converted to DC using a bridge rectifier (a series of diodes), then a smoothing capacitor stores energy to ensure a constant voltage is supplied regardless of what point the AC cycle is at. That's pretty much how all DC devices that are powered from the wall work. \n\nWe still use AC power because it's more cost effective to transmit long distances, since you can use a simple transformer to step up and down the voltages. It's also far easier, cheaper, and more efficient to convert AC to DC than the other way around.",
"Devices that use AC current, such as incandescent lightbulbs, heaters and motors do in fact have a 'flicker' effect. In the case of motors, this is necessary as a push-pull effect is more efficient. With heaters and lightbulbs, you won't notice it without something like a high speed camera. Even when you do use a high speed camera, the 'flicker' effect is very small. This is due to the nature of those devices, the filament/heating elements do not have enough time to cool down when the AC sinewave reaches 0VAC. [Watch this video to see the flicker effect](_URL_0_)\n\nMost other electronics turn AC power into DC, and their capacitors (A capacitor is like a tiny battery) help keep the DC power stable despite the AC power constantly shifting."
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2wz4xz | if i have two micro usb ports charging my phone, will it take half the time? | I made a post I deleted, because for some reason I asked if it would take twice the time to charge. Silly me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wz4xz/eli5_if_i_have_two_micro_usb_ports_charging_my/ | {
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"No, not really.\n\nCharging a battery heats it up. The faster you charge it, the hotter it gets. A little heat is OK. A little more shortens the life of the battery. A little too much makes it leak, burn, or explode.",
"Short answer, maybe.\n\nA well behaved USB port will provide 5V and up to 0.5A of current.\n\nIf you used two ports at the same time you'd still have 5V but with a maximum current of 1A.\n\nMany phones are able to take advantage of higher currents when they're available, so it will charge faster.\n\nHowever, many USB ports *aren't* well behaved. This especially true for ports intended for USB charging, which are capable of delivering anywhere from 0.75A to 2A on their own. It is very unlikely that your phone is capable of using that much current at once to safely charge, so there's no benefit to using more than one port.\n\nOf course, either way, in some cases if you supply the phone with more current than it expects to be available you can cause damage to the phone and/or the battery. This is why phone makers recommend you only use the charger they provide."
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1y4605 | why are frozen fruit and vegetables cheaper than their fresh counterparts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y4605/eli5why_are_frozen_fruit_and_vegetables_cheaper/ | {
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"Shipping. It is much harder to keep fresh fruit intact in transit than its frozen counterparts. A lot of the fresh fruit will be ruined before it arrives. "
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a1r9pj | how does counting between seeing lightning and hearing thunder tell you roughly how far away a storm is? | I remember as a child always getting told this but never understood why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1r9pj/eli5_how_does_counting_between_seeing_lightning/ | {
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"Light and sound travel at different speeds. The light from the lightning strike will get to you almost instantly, but the sound of the thunder it causes travels slower. The counting method bases the assumption that the lightning is close to the center of the storm, so by counting the time it takes for the sound to reach you, you can estimate how far away the lightning strike was.",
"Sound travels at a set speed through air. Light also travels at a set speed, but it’s much much faster. \n\nLight travels so fast that it’s not worth worrying about how long the light takes to get to you from a lightning bolt. A staggering 186,282 miles per second. It has some travel time, but it’s negligible, and we wouldn’t be able to count it without instruments anyway. \n\nSound, though, we can work with. It travels at “only” 767 miles per hour. It travels 343 meters per second, or a little more than 1125 feet per second. That’s still quite fast indeed!\n\nSince there are 5280 feet per mile, that means it takes a little under 5 seconds per mile (4.6 seconds). \n\nSo if you count the time it takes to hear thunder, every 4.6 seconds it’s 1 mile farther away. Every 1 second it’s 1125 feet away. ",
"Light is so fast you can consider it comes without delay, sound takes about 3 seconds to travel a kilometer. So count the seconds, divide by 3 and that's the rough estimate of distance in kilometers (or divide by 5 and that'll be miles, a unit of distance used by several backwards countries)"
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33xhvh | why does natural light cause more glare than natural light on a screen? | Something I've noticed and was never sure why.
Has it got something to do with frequency? Can it be explained by quantum mechanics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33xhvh/eli5_why_does_natural_light_cause_more_glare_than/ | {
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"Can you clarify what you mean by 'natural light on a screen'?"
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2vasx1 | why do we still use tires that require air? aren't the shocks and suspension in cars better now that we don't need air filled tires? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vasx1/eli5_why_do_we_still_use_tires_that_require_air/ | {
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"Cost is probably a big issue too. Filling a tire with liters of air is a lot cheaper than filling it with litres of rubber",
"Durability would suffer. \n\n\nAir compresses. This allows the tire to deform and then return to it's original shape much more easily. Since your tire is doing this constantly as you travel along, durability is a factor. \nCompressed air never wears out. Springs or spring steel spokes will eventually succumb to metal fatigue. \nOf course they may last so long that this isn't an issue. \n\nTraction would be an issue with a solid tire. \nIt also allows the tire to deform slightly to create a contact patch along the bottom and it rolls over uneven ground. With other schemes, you only have so many places with pressure against them, whereas air will push on all surfaces inside the tire equally. \nEver have a wiper blade that always seems to miss streaks on your windshield even with new blades? This is a simple spring loaded system, and probably not a good comparison but you get the idea. \n\nAlso I've never encountered a rubbery material that wouldn't eventually retain some impression of it was compressed long enough. \n\nI could see them developing flat spots along the bottom if a vehicle was stored for too long.\n \n\nWeight is also a factor. Unsprung weight (aka tires and some suspension components, brakes etc) are detrimental to handling. Let's say you hit a pothole. The tire drops into the hole a bit, and then rebounds upward as it hits the side on the way out. \nThe heavier the wheel and tire is the further it is going to be launched upward before the suspension can dampen out the movement, and push it back down to the road. \n\nThis is only a fraction of a second, but during that time you've got one wheel that isn't gripping the road. If it happens during hard cornering, it could be the difference between losing control or not. \n\n\nI could go on, but I'll end with this. \n\nWill someone eventually develop a tire that works better than what we're currently using? \n I'm sure they will, but it'll be tough to make it work well and be as cost effective, as what we now use. \n\nEven when they do first become available I suspect they will be mainly used in situations where punctures are likely, rather than on the average passenger car. ",
"Even the best suspension systems can't compete with the comfort, performance and efficiency of the best suspension system PLUS air-filled tires. Air-filled tires are simply very good at absorbing shock when needed, but staying firm and efficient the rest of the time. They are also cheap and relatively light weight. A wise man once said, \"The greatest bargain in all of suspension is the air in your tires.\""
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bpk2bs | what happens to pest insects physiologically after having been sprayed with raid or black flag, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpk2bs/eli5_what_happens_to_pest_insects_physiologically/ | {
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"Depends on the pesticide, but most of them are neurologically toxic and/or are desiccants. For the neurological pesticides, think nerve gas for bugs. For the desiccants, think rapid mummification.",
"A lot of commercial pesticides are made with nicotine or some other neurotoxin, so that’s why many of them twitch.",
"The most common insecticide sprays(Raid, hotshot, etc. ) are pyrethroid based agents. These block sodium channels from closing which leads to seizures and death, hence the twitching. The extent to which they have any significant toxicity in humans is unclear since we breakdown the pyrethroids quickly and our sodium channels are not very sensitive to their effects. Cats, however, have less of this ability and can get sick.",
"How do the borax chemicals work on them? Like *Terro* ant poison.",
"Raid, for example is only a little bit of poison, and a whole lot of oil (it's very similar to WD-40). Raid is 99% \"petroleum distillates.\" When you spray a bug with Raid (or WD-40, for that matter), the oil flows easily into the bug's breathing tubes, and prevents breathing. The poison part of the spray helps keep the bugs from coming back (especially ants). \nInsects are killed quickly by oil applied to them. Spiders, not so much -- spiders have a form of actual lungs (called \"book lungs\") and are a lot harder to kill just by squirting some oil on them. (I once used a 1000 mw laser to kill a black widow) \nEven the really long range wasp killing sprays are mostly oil."
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3d4elo | stack overflows | I have a vague understanding on what it is, but I don't understand how it can be exploited to someone else's benefit. How does a stack overflow help people with malicious intent break into systems? How are they able to tell what they're affecting outside the stack? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d4elo/eli5_stack_overflows/ | {
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"Roughly speaking, an overflow error allows one to get code in a different segment of the memory than it should normally be allowed.\n\nAn ideal situation (for the bad guy, anyway) would be like this: He causes an overflow error that allows him to inject some code into the memory location of a program of higher privilege, possibly even the operating system itself. That code--say, code that would cause a keylogger to run as if it was a high-priority system file--would then run the next time that program accesses what *should* be its own area. Boom, keylogger runs.\n\nAs for how? Careful, careful analysis and a good bit of luck.",
"Let's imagine a stack of your activities in a typical day.\n\n* Wake up\n* Prepare for the day by showering and eating breakfast\n* Go to the office\n* Do your morning tasks like checking e-mail\n* Browse Reddit\n* Go out to lunch\n* Do afternoon work\n* Browse Reddit\n* Go home\n... and so forth.\n\nNow let's picture your stack at mid-morning, with the current activity at the bottom.\n\n* Awake for the day\n* Spending the day working\n* At the office\n* Browsing reddit\n\nYou are currently in a stack of nested activities. For each of these activities, when you are done, you go back to the previous larger activity above, and continue. When you finish browsing reddit, you go back to continuing being at the office. When you finish being at the office, you continue your work day by going home. And when finish your time devoted to work, you continue your waking hours.\n\nAs a human, you know what to do in each of these cases - what activity to go back to continuing. But a computer program has to explicitly specify this, and it does this with a return address to jump to.\n\nNow, suppose that while you are browsing reddit, you start reading a fascinating ELI5 answer. It is so engrossing that it has taken over all your thoughts, and when you are finished, you forget that you have to continue working and go home and finish your day at work. Instead, you decide to go to the bar. You abandon your work, and forget to go home and sleep. And while you are at the bar, you end up meeting some bad guys who steal your house keys.\n\nThat fascinating ELI5 answer was a stack overflow exploit. It overwrote your mental return address, and made you go back somewhere else. Once you were in the bar with your house keys, it could control your actions.\n\nIn a computer, it's not difficult to inspect the stack frames (activities) in a running program, and figure out where in the frame the return address is. If the program receives user input, that input data might be stored in memory allocated within a stack frame. But if the program is carelessly written, it might be possible for that input to exceed its allotted memory, and overwrite part of the previous stack frame, including the return address. By overwriting the return address with a different address, the program returns somewhere else. And that somewhere else might be a location within that same malicious input string. To the processor, it doesn't matter if the data is an input string or executable instructions, it just executes them. If that section of the string contains data which is equivalent to processor instructions, they will be executed. And if the program was running with a privileged account (with the house keys in its pocket), those can be instruction to hand over the keys.\n\nNow that you understand how a stack overflow exploit works, you owe yourself a treat. Get up right now and go down to the local bar for a drink."
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3xxi20 | a long time ago, it was normal for males and females to be topless. how did it come to pass that only females need to have tops? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xxi20/eli5a_long_time_ago_it_was_normal_for_males_and/ | {
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"Female breasts are sexualized much more than male breasts. My gut is it has to do with their association with reproduction/child rearing and males being attracted to that as a perception of having more viable/healthy offspring in the same way that attractive/more muscular guys are more sexualized for their perceived genetic superiority/ability to protect and care for children. \n\nTotally not an expert, just my guess based on various documentaries/sources I've seen over the years on attraction/sexuality.",
"okay, so...\n\nFor starters, it's still perfectly normal in some cultures for women to be topless as well. Hell, in some cultures, nudity is the norm for both sexes. In other cultures, *situational* nudity is normal - in Finland for instance, people would be actually shocked if you wore swimwear in the sauna (indeed, most saunas outright forbid clothing while you're in the bathing area), and they have more saunas than bars. In Hamburg, large areas of the public parks are given over to nude recreation (*\"Freikorpkultur\"* as the Germans have it - \"Free Body Culture\"). You go to the French Riviera and topless sunbathing is the norm rather than the exception. Hell, bare breasts were fashionable among the French nobility during the 18th century. \n\nIn the US and Britain however, not so long ago it was just as shocking for a man to go topless as a woman. In fact there was a concerted campaign by men, the equivalent of \"Free The Nipple\" to earn the right to go without a shirt in public spaces.\n\nIn New York City, women have the same legal entitlement to public topfreedom as men (although admittedly the NYPD are often unaware of this fact) and the same goes for many Canadian cities. In California, IIRC, even public nudity is not actually illegal, though the police might treat it as a mental health or public disturbance issue.\n\nNow, am I saying that women are getting equal treatment here? No. Clearly and demonstrably they're not. But it's pure convention and culture. I once read an article where an African woman from a culture where being bare-chested is just as normal as wearing a shirt would be to you or I was hugely amused by the obsession \"white men\" apparently have with breasts: \"They are like babies!\" she said.\n\nThere's no biological reason for it, even if the female breast *is* a secondary sexual characteristic. Which, by the way, is itself partly a matter of fashion. In Norman times, a man's calves were his most important secondary sexual characteristic, rather than his shoulders, chest, butt or beard. In the USA, the sexual focus on women is their backside - in most of Europe, the focus is on breasts.\n\nALL of these things are... fashion basically. Cultural norms, changing conventions. Who knows, in three hundred years it may be that nudity is the norm and people will be wearing holsters and bags and little else. That's unlikely, because clothing really does have its practical benefits...\n\nbut the point is that your question can be answered by simply saying that it came to pass purely through prejudices, opinions, fashions and taboos, often (but not universally) with a religious component (nor a specific religion)."
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cdzyq4 | how do you store medicine properly when it's hot?. | In most medicine it's written to store in a dry place at a temperature that doesn't exceed 'x' degree. But what do you do when it's hot? You can't put medicine in the fridge because it's humid and cold and you can't keep it outside because it's hot. I don't see any solution beside AC which costly. Today it's 35C where I live and my local pharmacy has medicine on-shelf without AC. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cdzyq4/eli5_how_do_you_store_medicine_properly_when_its/ | {
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"The perfect choice would be a small fridge that you can set to 15 to 20°C. Wine fridges can do that I believe.\n\nBut realistically there isn't much you can do. Buying an AC would be so expensive that it'd be 10 times cheaper to just get new meds should they really break down. You can put them in a cold room. Maybe put them in a box and place them in the cellar *(that is, if you want to run down 5 stories every day first thing in the morning and before going to bed)*. And that only works if you can leave the meds at home. If you have to take them with you because they're demand meds or because you have to take them every 4 hours you're screwed. Have fun in the 40°C bus and while standing in direct sunlight for 15 minutes.\n\nI assume it's also some safety thing for the companies. Yes, the ingredients might break down at a certain temperature. But if they write 30°C on it I don't think it'll be completely broken down at 31°C. I'm sure they leave a margin so people can't sue them if it should really break down.",
"It's not that humid in your refrigerator. Particularly inside the air-tight bottles of medication. You can't leave the bottle open with refrigerated pills once you take it out, due to condensation, but inside the bottle inside the fridge, all is golden.",
"Your refrigerator is not humid, it's cold, but the all the humidity inside the refrigerator condenses on the evaporator coils. That's why you need to store vegetables in the crisper drawer"
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f57hgk | how does all the water stay in one place after a tsunami/flood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f57hgk/eli5_how_does_all_the_water_stay_in_one_place/ | {
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"Water isn't nearly as viscous as you might think. In bigger scales water behaves somewhat like jelly. When a large area, lets say NYC is flooded by a tsunami and it starts flowing back into the ocean, it takes a long time for water to flow from Central Park back into the ocean because of the distance. Also the water would have to flow around obstacles and looses energy all along which is slowing it down too.",
"First of all, most disaster films greatly exaggerate what happens and tailor the effects to what the director wants, not actual science. Check out documentaries or some of the videos on YouTube of floods in progress for a better idea. Second, the water leaves relatively quickly, leaving behind a ton of debris and destruction. The water leaves but anything too heavy to remain entrained in the flow of the water falls below a critical velocity, falls out of the streamflow, and settles to the ground. That includes large stuff like trees and houses, medium stuff like bodies and boats, and small stuff like pieces of dirt and gravel. The water will dissipate quickly because it always follows the path of least resistance. If the ground is inundated, it just flows along the top of the ground until it can sink somewhere else. If you look up the after pictures of tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes, they don’t look that dissimilar despite wind, not water, being the primary engine of destruction with tornadoes.",
"Usually, they don't disperse out further because of rises in altitude. You might only go in a mile or few miles and get 50, 100, etc. feet above sea level. Some momentum will carry water above the wave height, but it'll lose momentum and start to pull back toward sea level."
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535gbb | why are different eye colors more common in caucasians than other races? | In short, why is it nigh impossible for blacks or Asians that don't have an ounce of European in their blood to have blue eyes?
Edit: Thank you everyone for your answers! Can I no longer mark these as explained? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/535gbb/eli5_why_are_different_eye_colors_more_common_in/ | {
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"All people alive today who have blue eyes share a common ancestor who had the mutated gene that caused it sometime between 6 and 10 thousand years ago in the caucus mountains. Not very many Africans or East Asians have any ancestors that lived in this place, but Arabs and Persians do, which is why you'll sometimes see blue eyes from them as well.",
"The original colors for human eyes are brown, with black hair. As our ancestors got out of Africa and started dispersing, the different light conditions made changes. Lighter skin, hair and eyes. They are a random mutation, but they are adaptative/harmless in cold climates, and differences are attractive, counting for the descendancy with these traits.",
"Technically speaking, everyone has blue eyes. Some people don't have that blue covered with brown. \n\nNew laser treatments can actually remove that brown layer to reveal the blue underneath. \n\n_URL_0_",
"European descendants typically have blue/green eyes. Blue eyes have limited melanin, which is found in those with darker skin or those that stay in typically sunny countries. This shows us that those who no doubt stay in colder climates, with light skin (therein, low melanin), can have a good chance of having light coloured eyes such as green or blue. \n \nAll blue eyes shared a common ancestor-- it was likely just a gene mutation initially (it happens, google studies of Drosophila flies (eye colour) and you'll see). \n\nFirstly, eye colour is a genetic trait, usually carried on the X chromo. There are many genetic rules to eye colour (i.e., blue is often recessive vs green/brown, green can be dominant when vs blue, however is recessive when vs brown. Lel)\n\nSo therefore, when someone of European decent/or someone with blue or green eyes has an Asian partner or black as you say, (or even just someone with brown eyes), their brown eye gene will be dominant over the persons blue eye gene = there's a high chance their baby will have brown eyes (there are other exceptions, but I'm just speaking generally here). It all comes down to your partners eye trait gene essentially, hence why you can also see cultural eye differences depending on different countries. \n\n \n > > \"The fairer the complexion the more likely one will have blue eyes. On the other hand; those from African or South America decent tend to have brown eyes which makes sense with the darker skin pigmentation.\"\n"
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3qbm4b | if the republican party is as racist as many people claim, why is ben carson so popular among conservative voters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qbm4b/eli5_if_the_republican_party_is_as_racist_as_many/ | {
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"The hard part of your question is the \"If\" part. I'm fairly non-political\nmyself but I sometimes hear self identified Democrats claim Republicans are racists. I also know Democrats that seem a bit\nracist themselves. So you should consider the source of the claims\nyou hear and mostly take it as political spin as opposed to reality. ",
"Without getting into the merits of whether or not they are racist, racists have always liked black people *who agree with them*. \n\nFurthermore, I don't think that anyone has ever claimed that the *entire* Republican party to a man is racist. Carson has something like 20-25% support at this point - there's plenty of room for racists.\n\nFinally, it's worth noting that Carson has not been nominated yet. It'll be interesting to see if the [Bradley Effect](_URL_0_) comes into play. A person who is racist might say they like Carson, but not actually pull the lever for him when the time comes. Remember that racism is mostly subtle these days. It's not people talking about \"mud people\" and the purity of the White race, it's resumes with the name Leroy getting less callbacks than identical resumes with the name Blake. ",
"Not all republicans are racist but the Republican party is the one most likely to pander to racists. ",
"Those voters want to be able to look at their liberal family members at Christmas dinner and say: \"See.....I know I called our current President a Muslim terrorist and Kenyan....and have taken monkey stuffed animals to political events.....but I ain't no racist....see, I like that Ben Carson fella\".",
"You can't say \"Republicans are racist\". That's not true. Some Republicans are racist, but so are some democrats. \n\nThe problem is republican policies tend to pander to racist ideas. Example: voter ID. Voter fraud is a non-existent problem. Or at least, so small a problem that it is for all intents and purposes non-existent. BUT, the law disproportionately impacts the poor and minorities. \n\nIt doesn't take a wild leap to imagine republican support for voter Id, in the face of **no** evidence of voter fraud, is entirely predicated on suppressing minority voter turn out. That's not \"burn a cross on your lawn\" racist, but it's racist nevertheless. \n\nNow, that doesn't mean an individual republican is actually racist. The republican party can do racist things without individual republicans being racist. That's a VERY fine distinction, so fine that some would argue that if you don't abandon the republican party for doing racist things, that makes you a racist. I think that philosophy lacks nuance. \n\nNow, as for Ben Carson. He's been pandering to the republican base a lot. He rejects climate science; he thinks we should drop the income tax for a flat tax; he's got a batshit ideas about the education system (\"I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do. It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding on that basis.\"); he's said some ugly things about gay marriage... and so on. \n\nHe's well educated and reasonably articulate - compared to, for example, Herman Cain, who was almost a parody in and of himself. \n\nAnd he definitely seems like a reasonable alternative to Donald Trump. Now that Trump actually looks like he could be the nominee, republicans are starting to say to themselves \"what have we done?\" \n\nLong story short - you can't just say \"Republicans are racist\" and any conclusions you draw from there are automatically wrong. ",
"Because the vast majority of Republicans are not racist.\n\nJust because most racists are right wing doesn't mean most right wing people are racists.\n\nBen Carson is a prime example of what they think every black person should do. Overcome racism and a growing up in poverty to become a brilliant neurosurgeon. Why can't you people all just overcome loads of adversity and become genius doctors? Lazy. That's why.",
"Without getting into whether the Republican party is racist, even among people who can fairly be described as racist very few are \"racist fundamentalists\" who literally hate everyone of some race. Most are perfectly fine with \"the good kind\" who clearly defy their stereotypes.",
"I'm a middle aged white dude from the south. I have seen racisim, in fact I was raised with it. Since I was in the third grade when my best friend (Dante) was not allowed to come to my birthday party I new it was wrong. I am a conservative and always have been. I do not judge a person by thier color but by thier attitude towards me. If you show a racisist contempt of me then I have no use for you. If you treat me with respect You will receive the same. So that being said I will vote for candidate that puts forward the ideas and principles that I agree with. Sometimes the biggest racisists are the ones playing the race card.\n",
"He is like racism camouflage. \n\nMost U.S. racists love to soft pitch their racism (I'm not racist, but.....), so Ben Carson really helps their cause. He thinks all of the ignorant things they do, but is black. ",
"It's ultimately not really that relevant to whether they are racist or not. It's just another version of \"I'm not racist because my neighbor / coworker / mailman / gardener is black.\" Sure, they may know or like some black people, but that doesn't refute the notion that they may hold racist views. ",
"It's typically Liberals that view Republicans as racist, and Republicans that view Liberals as lazy hippies. They're both perceptions that are continuously perpetuated by each other, and they're both unequivocally wrong. That seems like a matter of opinion, but they are both in fact wrong about each other most of the time.\n\nThis is going to sound awful, but Ben Carson is viewed as an Uncle Tom type. People with far-right conservative views that hold racist beliefs will LOVE a black person that will validate their beliefs and make them feel like they are right because, well look, they have an educated black person on their side!! I don't condone any of that kind of thinking, but in my mind I believe that's why they have made Ben Carson popular among themselves. I also hold on to the belief that Ben Carson is a dumbass with a medical degree.\n\nIt's silly, I think there are 12 year olds that should have voting power over these types of people.",
"There's a common racist trope of \"the *good* black people.\" Most racists do not believe that *all* black people are bad, they just think that *most* of them are. So when they see someone like Ben Carson, who is wealthy, a doctor, well-dressed, doesn't speak in a stereotypically \"black\" accent, and holds the same conservative values as them, they see Carson as \"one of the good ones.\" Carson doesn't fit with what their idea of \"most black people\" is like, so despite their racism, they can like Carson. "
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814yro | how come mammals are the only animals that produce milk? and not other animals (such as birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, etc)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/814yro/eli5_how_come_mammals_are_the_only_animals_that/ | {
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"Because it is part of the huge risks mammals take on with live birth. All the animals you listed don't really take care of their young with the exception of birds and some species of the others. The reason for this is because it doesn't take much energy to develop and lay eggs so you can produce a lot of eggs and just lay them forget about them and hope some of your offspring make it but if not hey you got another mating season.\n\nLive birth is different, you have to carry your baby to term and have it develop which is a huge investment in resources and time and could potentially put you in danger by affecting your running performance, hunting performance etc. and if you fail in raising your young or making it to term with the pregnancy you must wait for the next mating season and wait for the process of developing young all over again. So a way to help guarantee that your young will grow up is to give them milk, a super energy dense liquid to help your young get the energy it needs and hopefully survive since you already spent all this time investing in your young you should invest some more so it didn't go to waste.\n\nAlso just compare the number of young produced and you will see why live birth is risky. The biggest litters are produced by the simplest mammals with the biggest being from tailless tenrecs with an average of 15. That's pretty average for reptiles and amphibians usually lay hundreds of eggs.",
"Frozenice gave a great explanation of the evolutionary tradeoffs, but I wanted to explain it from another angle.\n\nWhy did only they evolve this ability but no other animals? Well, this is how a lot of adaptations go in terms of evolution! One organism develops a trait that allows it greater fitness in its environment, and its ancestors inherit that trait. A lot of times that trait will only crop up once--but sometimes it's so successful that its descendants multiply and become extremely diverse, like mammals. There's no \"why\" in evolution, except \"it helped them and they multiplied\". \n\nNow, a trait that's extremely beneficial in various circumstances, like wings for flying, or fins for swimming underwater, will sometimes evolve separately in two relatively unrelated branches. This is called convergent evolution. The classic example is bat and bird wings--the most recent common ancestor of bats and birds did not have wings, but the ability to fly evolved independently in each branch because it was helpful for them. But some things didn't--why can bats echolocate but birds can't? Why do birds have hollow bones to make them lighter but bats don't? Because those mutations never showed up in the other branch, and they got along fine without them.\n\nMilk only exists in mammals because it arose once in the ancestors of todays mammals, and nowhere else. Would crocodiles be more successful (ie, have more babies that survived to have more babies) if they could produce milk? Maybe, but they're doing just fine without it. If someday a similar mutation arises in crocodiles and it helps them thrive better, then they'll have nipples too.\n\n**EDIT:** jazzb54 below gave some great examples (that I didn't know about) of non-mammal animals that have evolved things quite similar to milk. So this adaptation has arisen multiple times, although through different mechanisms! ",
"The assumption your question is based upon is not 100% accurate. There are other animals that make \"milk\" for their young. This article has an example:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo it seems that there is a bit of convergent evolution going on in regards to \"milk\"."
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3mubrz | how smoking cigarettes can become an addiction if smoke don't get into blood? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mubrz/eli5_how_smoking_cigarettes_can_become_an/ | {
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"Uh...what?\n\nWhere do you think the nicotine and other stuff goes when you inhale it? Any gas you breath in diffuses into your blood."
]
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[]
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27waut | why do screen cracks always span the screen? | Today I dropped my phone. Again. As I picked it up, I noticed that there were no cracks that ended without hitting another crack or reaching the end of the screen. None the cracks (and there were a lot of them) ended abruptly in the centre of the screen. This is also something I noticed when I broke the screen on my old phone and another phone. Anyone care to explain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27waut/eli5_why_do_screen_cracks_always_span_the_screen/ | {
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"text": [
"The energy from the impact will travel until it is interrupted or the energy runs out. This means it will either stop where the screen ends or at the presence of another crack."
]
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[]
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1puisj | why does the news always focus on negatives/conflicts of our society rather than positive stories? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1puisj/eli5_why_does_the_news_always_focus_on/ | {
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"The news is for ratings. Eventually you'll find a random jem on good stations. And cnn and fox have good writers, but they get paid for crap and bury it in the entertaining trash.",
"Because negative news is more important than positive news. You generally don't hear good news and think, \"something has to be done about that\". This is probably also the origin of the aphorism \"no news is good news\".",
"Because no matter how many people complain about the negative stories and say there should be more positive stories they will still change the channel when a positive story comes on and complain that it's boring and then they'll watch the mass shooting story on another channel. "
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6jqcjz | why can't us corporations use technological superiority to equalize the gap between manufacturing in countries with cheap labor and manufacturing in the u.s.? | I just watched the [How It's Made](_URL_0_) on Legos, and saw that their factory is entirely automated. It requires only two people to monitor the entire factory.
As I understand it, manufacturing in countries with cheap labor is way cheaper. What keeps U.S. corporations from making plants 100% robotic, equalizing this gap? Is it technical difficulty, upfront engineering expense, regulations, or something else? I'd imagine it's easier to build an extremely high-tech factory in the U.S. than in China. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jqcjz/eli5_why_cant_us_corporations_use_technological/ | {
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" > Is it technical difficulty, upfront engineering expense, regulations, or something else? \n\nAll of the above (mainly the first two). This automation has actually been happening, although there are hurdles. Certain processes can be hard to automate, particularly ones that need really fine motion/dexterity, or don't quite follow an exact pattern.\n\nIt's also not as cheap as it sounds. You still need technicians to be able to maintain/repair them etc. The initial investment relative to labor is *huge*, so you need to sell a lot, or for a long time, to make it back. That said,it's getting cheaper every day, and more and more competitive.\n\nOne other thing are supply chains. Production has been in other parts of the world for long enough that supply chains tend to be really efficient. It's not unheard of for a Chinese company to send a prototype over to a supplier and expect pieces to come out the next *day*. It makes the inertia to resist moving even stronger.",
"The biggest difference is regulations - specifically environmental/pollution abatement laws. \n\nEven a company using plastics to make legos will have some pollution/chemical by-products etc - in china - they can dump those in the earth with no fees or restrictions.\n\nIn USA - the EPA would eat the company alive if they tried to dump that stuff in the earth."
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=87&v=zrzKih5rqD0"
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6ix17w | how did people years ago bake cakes? | I mean I have a modern oven which allows me to precisely set the temperature. Some kinds of cake don't mind being baked a few degrees colder or hotter, but others seem to be very sensitive and the temperature needs to be precise. How did people years ago bake cakes if they couldn't even precisely measure the temperature, let alone set it to a fixed value? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ix17w/eli5_how_did_people_years_ago_bake_cakes/ | {
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"It's true that in centuries past oven temperature could not be measured as accurately, but each baker would know their own oven through experience. Bake 1000 pies in one oven and you would be able to judge it pretty well despite any slight differences",
"Your conventional range oven is nowhere nearly as precise and accurate as you think. Within 50-100degrees is pretty good. Maybe your high end convection oven is better.",
"There are recipes from medieval times that say to cook for the length of saying so many lords prayers or so many contritions. A cook can certainly time something using that method. ",
"Repetition. To give you a modern day example, I have a grill on my deck. I know that a steak takes about 3 minutes on each side with one burner on high and one burner on medium. I never look at the gauge or even the clock : put steaks on, lay the table, flip, tidy up, remove steaks, pour drinks and call family and hey presto the steaks are ready and it's dinnertime. \n\n",
"There is a show in Netflix right now called The Great British Bake off. It explained that before baking powder/soda, people used yeast to make cakes rise! It was pretty interesting as id never really thought of that before. Obviously it is tricky working with yeast, so it was much harder to bake cakes. Between the complexity and the scaresness of sugar, that's most likely why cakes were a specialty item."
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3mfss9 | why is it lawmakers can tie unrelated issues into bills they are hoping to pass? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mfss9/eli5_why_is_it_lawmakers_can_tie_unrelated_issues/ | {
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"I too would like to know this. We have yet another budget crisis looming and there is already talk that republicans will only accept a budget deal if it includes defunding PP. \n\nIt's a freaking budget, why are they dealing with things that are not budget related. \n\nIf you want to defund PP, then write a fresh bill for it and have a vote. Instead they hijack the system to get what they want or else give shuts down. \n\nI'm really only mad because in these shutdown times, our national parks, forests, museums, etc all get shut down too. \n\n",
"This is known as a \"rider\", and is allowed in some legislations but not in others. And since what is \"unrelated\" is to some degree a matter of interpretation, it can be hard to make up rules that definitely prevent it.\n\nThe only legitimate reason to allow it seems to be that **it can reduce veto powers** as a part of the \"checks and balances\" that support the separation of powers.\n\nThis is what's happening in the USA: the Republicans have the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, so they can pass pretty much any bill they like. The Democrat president, however, can *veto* any bill he doesn't like. Adding a rider to a budget bill (which the president kinda *needs* to pass) is a way for Congress to get around this veto power, or at least make the president think *really* hard about how important the issue is for him.",
"Because how congress conducts it's business is almost completely up to congress, and they make use of omnibus bills.\n\nIt should be noted that we haven't had a budget since 2008. Democrats refused to pass one while they had the reins, and Republicans also failed in that responsibility once they got into power. So now we fund our government on \"continuing resolutions\", and this is why we must pass another one or face a government shutdown every few months. They do this because the last budget we passed was enormous, and they get about one trillion more than normal to spend every year. Ever wonder how the national debt doubled so quickly? That one trillion meant for a single budget has turned into an extra trillion every year, so long as they keep passing continuing resolutions."
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23qf3q | why do we use udp when tcp exists? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23qf3q/eli5why_do_we_use_udp_when_tcp_exists/ | {
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"UDP: entire message not guaranteed to be delivered but can get partial delivery. UDP is also a much faster transfer method since it does not check to see if it was deliverred\n\nTCP: entire message arrives or it does not. TCP is slower because it has to check to see if the message arrived and resend if it did not\n\nboth have their advantages and disadvantages. UDP is used a lot in walkie talkies and radio messages because it is more important to send the message as fast as possible even if it isnt guaranteed to be delivered",
"There are some use cases where losing data is better than waiting for data to be resent. Real-time voice communication, for instance. When you drop a few packets with UDP, you get a bit of static. \n\nBut if you were to lose TCP packets, the entire voice stream stops completely until the missing packets could be re-sent, and then continues on. Which means that you're now listening to what the person said a fraction of a second ago, so now you either have to deal with ever-increasing lag time as missing packets push the conversation more and more out of sync, or you have to slice out a bit of the conversation completely so that you can catch up to being in real-time again.",
"pretty much what everyone here said, UDP is great when you don't care if they get it. i would add one more thing:\n\nbroadcasting. the ability to send one packet to everyone listening on a certain broadcast ip is pretty frikken cool. it's unique to UDP and let's you send out messages to a large group of people all at once rather than a large group of people one at a time.",
"I'm just going to add my 2 cents here as well and say another reason for using UDP over TCP is the overheads associated with TCP i.e. the additional checks and packets being sent back and forth to ensure a correct transmission.",
"Well, if you're pondering this question, you might find it educational to read about [SCTP](_URL_0_), which is a recent and uncommon alternative to *both* UDP and TCP. It provides guaranteed delivery like TCP does, but:\n\n* It works on \"messages\" like UDP does (TCP works on byte streams).\n* It allows applications to choose whether they want to receive messages in the order they were sent, or not. (TCP, on the other hand, always delivers bytes in the order that the sender sent them.)\n* It allows a single connection (or rather, \"association\" as they call it) to contain multiple independent channels. (TCP requires multiple connections for this.)\n\nSCTP is arguably better than TCP for most Internet applications. For example, if you're trying to retrieve a web page with 5 photos, HTTP will send the data for each image over TCP, one after the other. If one of the packets for image #2 is lost, then the TCP stack in client machine is obligated to hold up all of the later data until it manages to contact the server and ask it to retransmit that packet—which means that the browser cannot display the other images, even if the data for them actually arrived successfully.\n\nIf the web was implemented with SCTP instead or something similar, the server could send each of the 5 images over a different SCTP channel, and the missing packet on channel #2 would not prevent delivery of the packets for the other channels."
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6m86em | why does the paint job on ceilings always have those spikes? | Edit: _URL_0_ Things like this | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m86em/eli5_why_does_the_paint_job_on_ceilings_always/ | {
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"You mean popcorn ceilings? It's an easy way to hide imperfections in drywall. ",
"In the UK this is common in homes built roughly prior to the year 2000 and is known as Artex. It's basically only used because it's difficult to get a perfectly smooth surface and so it hides imperfections. And I guess it was fashionable! My house, built in the 1940s, has different patterns in each of the rooms.",
"Certainly not always. But it is a popular effect. It a texture created intentionally to reduce echos, to make the ceiling look more interesting, and to mask small imperfections in the ceiling.",
"These are all good answers. I would like to add a few more things from the perspective of a house painter. If you don't need to do this, don't. It's very hard to patch and it looks very dated. Spending the money on a good dry waller should ensure your ceiling is even. This stuff is almost never painted which means it's a bitch to paint later, and it's very difficult to remove if you ever want that flat ceiling. Again, it looks super dated. I've never liked the stuff.",
"Carpenter here. \n\nThe main purpose behind textured ceilings is to hide any \"waviness\" in the floor joists, or bottom chord of the roof trusses. \n\nWood is an imperfect medium, and dimensions will vary slightly from piece to piece. \n\nTrusses are also built with a slight crown in the bottom chord, so that as the load (i.e. Plywood, shingles ) are installed they, in theory sink to being straight. \n\nTrusses are installed at 24\" centers, so a variation in height is more noticeable than on 16\" centers like walls and floor joists. Though, if one floor joist is really bad it is very noticeable. \n\nThe texturing feature allows the eye to not catch any up and down in the drywall attached, or cast obvious shadows. \n\nThere are many different styles of texturing, and varies by region, country, and preference. \n\nAs a professional, I take the time to make sure my ceilings are flat, because when your paying 5million+ to build a custom house, painted ceilings look better. \n\n\nHope this helps. "
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7boiol | how denatured alcohol may cause blindness is swallowed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7boiol/eli5_how_denatured_alcohol_may_cause_blindness_is/ | {
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"It contains (or rather, can contain) methanol which is poisonous to the central nervous system. Methanol poisoning may result in blindness, coma, and death. Denaturing alcohol does not chemically alter the ethanol molecule. Rather, the ethanol is mixed with other chemicals to form an undrinkable solution.",
"Denatured alcohol means theres an ingredient added to pure alcohol to make it non consumable. In this case the other chemical is mainly methanol, which is poisonous in addition to causing blindness."
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bdsce9 | - how does the brain access basic knowledge instantly but not memories ? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bdsce9/eli5_how_does_the_brain_access_basic_knowledge/ | {
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"Nobody really knows yet how the brain actually \"stores\" anything. But what we know is that you don't \"access\" memories like you do files on a computer but you \"reconstruct\" them. Every time you remember something, you draw a new picture \"from memory\" of what happened. This is why memories tend to change over time and also one reason why eye witness accounts are unreliable.\n\nThe process is less complicated for hard facts like what a triangle is and for things you use / recall regularly and more complicated and more prone to error for memories which are complex and which you don't use very often.",
"The answer is probably that basic information is brought up much more often, so it's easier to reach. You may notice that knowledge you use very infrequently is harder to recall quickly. By the same token, memories that you think about very often are easier to \"pull up\" (although this is no guarantee that they're accurate).\n\nWe don't really know how this works on a neural level.",
"Imagine you are a mailman who has to deliver mail from one town to another, but there are no roads. The first time you deliver mail, the ground is pretty rough. After you deliver mail for a while, you notice that you’ve slowly been making a path, and it’s become easier to drive along the path.\n\nYour brain is similar. When you want to recall a memory, you are sending mail down a path. The more often you use that path, the easier it becomes to use the path."
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2pnbwc | if the medicine bottle says "take one or two pills every four hours", doesn't that mean i can take one pill every two hours? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pnbwc/eli5_if_the_medicine_bottle_says_take_one_or_two/ | {
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"No. Think of it like baking a pizza. If the instructions say to bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, and you bake it at 800 degrees for 10 minutes, then you're going to have a crispy mess on your hands. Not to mention a very powerful oven. ",
"No, you'll be starting a second dose before the first has run is course. Most [all probably] medications don't work linearly, they release a lot of the medication at once and keep a small amount coming as the pill dissolves and the primary effect wears off. To take another dose too early would be the same as just taking twice as much all at once. And depending on what you're taking bad shit will happen. "
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3918yb | easter island head bodies | How are we just learning about the bodies? Haven't we known about them for a while? Why didn't anyone try and check for bodies earlier? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3918yb/eli5_easter_island_head_bodies/ | {
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"Archaelogoists have known about the bodies for years. People have been studying the Easter Island statues, called Moai, since the 1950s. However, the majority of the standing statues were destroyed in various civil wars among the native population. Most of the ones that survived were the rejects, which were abandoned on the side of the mountain where they were originally built. These sank into the ground over time, and when outsiders arrived to the island, for the most part only the heads remained. Photographs were taken of the heads and spread through the general public, which led to people believing that the statues were only the heads. \n\ntl;dr: It isn't that no one knew or tried, it's just that the general population doesn't care enough to correct its widespread belief.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\n[Source 2](_URL_1_)\n\nNot the most respectable sources, but they will help if you have other questions."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai",
"http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/easterisland.asp"
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59a1p7 | why there are differences in average heart rate between inspiration and respiration? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59a1p7/eli5_why_there_are_differences_in_average_heart/ | {
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"Do you mean inspiration and expiration? Your brain links the respiration centre to the cardiac centre, and so slightly increases heart rate when you breathe in. It's subtle, but noticeable. \n\nAlso, if you stop breathing, you will feel your heart rate depress and really slow. It also does this if you go underwater. Blood is also redistributed to the brain and heart as priority in these low oxygen circumstances. This is centrally controlled and overrides the local demand for blood flow coming from muscles and respiring tissues. ",
"Your heart rate increases with inspiration. When you inhale, the negative inspiratory pressure decreases filling of the left side of the heart. Less filling means less time before the next contraction, so a higher heart rate."
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7o1glf | why are people screaming fake news when yellow journalism has been around as long as we can remember? are they different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7o1glf/eli5_why_are_people_screaming_fake_news_when/ | {
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"Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [Why has the term \"fake news\" become so popular lately? Didn't we already have words for that - lies and/or propaganda? ](_URL_1_) ^(_13 comments_)\n1. [Why did it take until 2016 for fake news to enter common slang terms and become part of popular culture? ](_URL_2_) ^(_._)\n1. [ELI5: Why was \"Fake News\" added to the dictionary this year when its just made of two standard words being used appropriately? ](_URL_0_) ^(_6 comments_)\n",
"Yellow journalism was about publishing sensationalistic stories for the primary purpose of selling more newspapers. \"Fake news\" carries the implication of lying to distort the truth for ulterior motives.\n\nWhen used by certain people, \"fake news\" is being used in an attempt to discredit the free press so that dirty politics can go on unhindered - very much the same way the Nazis called the opposition the *lügenpresse* (lit. \"lying press\")."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/7jt3pn/why_has_the_term_fake_news_become_so_popular/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/7fxkvb/why_did_it_take_until_20... | ||
5lvbmz | exactly what level of technology is required to have true virtual reality gaming? | As hard as I try not to make this reference. But, how difficult would it actually be to make a virtual reality experience on par with Sword Art Online?
**Note**
Not that game specifically, but similar in virtual reality capabilities. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lvbmz/eli5exactly_what_level_of_technology_is_required/ | {
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"For a truly complete VR experience, a *lot* more. Probably some sort of direct neural interface, especially if you want a game that an do things like stab you without making it permanent.\n\nFor an enjoyable, immersive experience? We are probably already there."
]
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3bj708 | what is the difference between martial law and national emergency? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bj708/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_martial_law/ | {
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"In what country? Given you're mentioning a parliament we can't even make the usual Reddit assumption you're an American and given there's a huge collection of entirely distinct and sovereign states with parliaments we can't assume you mean any particular country. \n\nLaw varies enough we can't say anything in general about it really. "
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btnlty | are the emissions of the hydrogen vehicles neutral to the environment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btnlty/eli5_are_the_emissions_of_the_hydrogen_vehicles/ | {
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"The amount of water vapor they produce is trivial compared to natural evaporation. It's basically neutral, yes.",
"They get the hydrogen from water, typically using solar energy. When it turns back into water it's just reverting back to it's original form. The environmental effect is negligible. You have to remember the air can only hold a certain amount of water before it precipitates so adding more water to the system doesn't have a large effect."
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e8k97a | what does a machine learning software engineer do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e8k97a/eli5_what_does_a_machine_learning_software/ | {
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"Many things can be automated. Things that can be automated can often be improved and optimized for more efficient operation. In the past, much of of that optimization was done by humans, using limited streams of data. \n\nMachine learning is intended to automate the data collection, while allowing the system that’s being controlled to optimize itself. \n\nMachine learning software engineers would be writing code to make all of that happen."
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ei3inm | how are massive fireworks, like the ones we see during new year countdowns, prepared or animated, and rehearsed? how do they know if things will go exactly as planned? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ei3inm/eli5_how_are_massive_fireworks_like_the_ones_we/ | {
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"Most of the time with large firework events they are all hooked up to a computer of sorts. That computer is then hooked up to tons of fuses all lined up in the right order.",
"The Royal Institute has a [YouTube video](_URL_0_) from a professional fireworks technician that explains fireworks and shows pretty well. It's a long watch, so the TL;DW is that planning and rehearsal is usually done virtually on a computer and then that computer fires the fireworks using electronic detonators based on a timing script. There may also be some manually fired ones, but they still follow that pre-planned script.",
"Computer simulation. I saw a demo by an automation company a few weeks ago where they had a lottery machine made up from their products, but before it was actually built they’d made such an advanced physics model of the unit that they already knew exactly what errors they’d see with the ball placement.",
"So a lot of the answers center around computers but what about in the old school days before advanced computers? I remember watching a video of a dude with a giant torch and he knew which ones to ignite. Am I imagining things?",
"How did it work before computers? Stopwatches and coordination?",
"No one is explaining how they actually construct the firework and pack in the explosives in such a way that it makes a heart, star, or just a circle.\n\nHow is that done?\nJust trial and error until someone gets it right and then everyone uses that same schematic?",
"In terms of what the actual firework will look like, e.g. shape/colour/flare etc. there are demonstrations for buyers. There was one near my hometown in Australia where the night was basically a long display of individual fireworks for buyers and then at the end there was a cool show using all the products",
"In 2012 San Diego accidentally launched all of their 4th of july fireworks in 30 seconds It was supposed to last 45 minutes \n\n[Link](_URL_0_)",
"At Disney world, the largest buyer of gunpowder behind the military, they always do a full rehearsal the night before. (This also helps alleviate crowds on the day of by giving them an opportunity to celebrate the day before.)",
"Display firework tech here. The shells are labeled from the factory with what effect they will be. We then design the show on a computer by taking into account run time, theme, shell availability, and client wishes. The show is then time coded for each shell, and if music is involved we would time that out at that point. All that info gets loaded onto separate firing boxes that are connected with long fuses to each rack of firework shells. Those boxes are then slaved to a master console that is the master timer and is were the tech will actually push the button to fire the show. Sometimes depending on what equipment we have, the master console may be an actual computer that controls music, any lighting effects, and the fireworks; other times it’s just a box with a timer, transmitter, and fire button. I had the opportunity this summer to see how Walt Disney World does their firework shows and they are very far ahead of anything I’ve used in the past.",
"Hey, this is my job!\n\nHere is a quick and dirty:\n\nMost shows aren't actually choreographed, so it's not too important. Someone (the sponsor) plays music in the background and we shoot for however long they hired us to (say 15 minutes). For these, we usually have an [e-match](_URL_2_) connected to a time chain for the mortars. An ematch is a a device that is wired into one of our [field modules](_URL_3_) (a hub where we can wire devices that is wirelessly connected to our remote control) and a time chain is a fuse that normally fires 10 mortars, each seperated by 3-4 seconds. So essentially this allows us to push a single button that fires 10 mortars over 30 seconds. We could individually match (fuse) mortars to fire each individually, but that is a lot of time and a lot of extra money. We will put specially effects (comets, mines, cakes) on individual cues to have precise control over those. For these non-choreographed shows, we plan it our before hand timewise, and then just shoot it manually and adjust as we go. Kinda seat-of-the-pants shooting.\n\n\nFor choreographed shows [like this](_URL_1_) the entire show requires everything to be individually matched and tied in to an assigned cue which is expensive and a lot of work (which is why most of our customers don't do this). What's really cool about these is we do have CAD (called Finale IIRC) that lets us build and play the show on our computer before we do it. When we're happy, it prints out a product sheet for us and a connection sheet that tells us where everything should go and what module and cue it should be plugged into. It also gives a CSV of timecodes and cues that we can upload into our firing system remote, so we can just hit play and it autonomously plays the show for us. Also, the firing system has an integrated music box to, so it plays the music itself while we shoot the show, that way the timing is exact. And our system interfaces with professional audio equipment, so we usually are plugged into our sponsor's audio board and are the ones playing the music and shooting the show.\n\nThings don't always go as planned, as products can be incorrectly marked or shoot faster or slower than what the box labels say. Some stuff just also blows up when it shouldn't (I have a lot of video of this) so safety is number 1 priority with us. We're required to wear certain PPE and we must have fire suppression equipment on hand. Sometimes our electronic firing system fails so we have to hand light. Here is a [video of us](_URL_0_) training apprentices on how to handlight...which is as it sounds. Flare on a stick to make the booms go boom. This is really unsafe though, and we try with all our might not to do it, but sometimes if stuff goes wrong, we don't have options, so we still train people how to do it. This whole video is cool, because it is a big enough show that we have 4 firing locations, of which 3 are electronic and the 1 we're at is handlight.\n\n\nedit: Also, usually there is no rehearsal so we only get one shot to get it right. The only exception to that is indoor shows. In our jurisdiction we must fire the entire show for the Fire Marshall before we get approved and get the permit to perform it publicly indoors."
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3o1xra | how come professional boxers perform in the ring, from a match against one opponent to another, a lot less than they used too? | I recently saw a top post about sugar ray robinson. After looking at his boxing matches, he would sometimes fight less than a week after his previous one. It seems like now, professional boxers prepare months in advance for one fight. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o1xra/eli5how_come_professional_boxers_perform_in_the/ | {
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"It probably has to do with the level of the fight. The sugar ray stats you were looking at - were they when he was famous, or when he was still making his way?\n\nFamous fighters fight other famous fighters, and have big, high stakes fights that draw large crowds. \n\nAmateur boxers have to fight more often, against other no-names to A) try to make a name for themselves and B)actually keep making money to support themselves. \n\nTl;dr when you have fame, and you make $50M/fight, you don't need to fight week after week. At that point, it's better to do all you can to try to win, across a fewer number of fights. "
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4yynlq | what do the different bit rates for mp3s actually do? | For example: Is a higher bit rate always a better sound quality also is there a limit to this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yynlq/eli5what_do_the_different_bit_rates_for_mp3s/ | {
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"In the spirit of ELI5, here's an analogy.\n\nA full orchestra is at least 90 musicians (plus the conductor). It sounds fantastic, but it's very expensive.\n\nYou want to record an orchestral piece of music for a soundtrack using fewer musicians, to save money.\n\nTo do this, you remove stuff that people aren't likely to notice.\n\nFirst you remove the most redundant - like the 6th player in the 1st violin section, since there are 5 other violinists playing exactly the same part.\n\nYou could probably remove more than half of the orchestra just by removing duplicate players who are playing exactly the same part as the person next to them. The \"balance\" is wrong now - i.e. the trumpets will now be drowning out the violins, but you can fix that in a recording by amplifying the violins more.\n\nAfter that, though, if you still need to use fewer musicians, you're going to have to start eliminating players who aren't technically redundant. So you might cut the brass from 10 down to 6 players even though there are a few times when they were actually playing all different notes. Overall the sound will be pretty similar and nobody will notice.\n\nThat's the idea with an MP3. Software tries to squeeze the sound into less space by looking for patterns and eliminating parts of the sound that you're unlikely to hear.\n\nThe bitrate is analogous to the number of musicians allowed. A high bitrate means more musicians, it will sound more authentic, but it will cost more (take up more space on disk). A low bitrate means cutting more corners and it won't sound quite as good but it will be cheaper (take up less space on disk).\n\nIn the extreme - an MP3 less than 128k or an orchestra with fewer than 20 musicians - it will sound dramatically different, almost comically so.\n",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is what bit reduction actually does (in general for any audio format). Increasing bitrate increases precision in the audio file, as the other responses have pointed out. Whether it sounds better or not is subjective, but typically it does tend to sound better (or at least closer to the original sound).\n\nmp3 formatting isn't as straight forward as the difference shown in the link, but the concept is the same. What you may be able to hear is that lower bit rate audio will sound distorted (higher harmonics are introduced leading to a harsher sound).\n\nThe highest available bitrate for mp3 format is [320 kbit/s](_URL_1_) .\n\nThere's a lot more to this, but I wanted to get as close to an ELI5 answer as I could. The other responses may be able to shed some more light on this."
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7uo54e | why do smart phones shut off in cold weather before they’ve reached 0% battery? | Recently I’ve been out in the cold and my iPhone has shut off with about 40% battery remaining. Is this a simple answer such as it’s too cold for electrons to flow in the battery? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7uo54e/eli5_why_do_smart_phones_shut_off_in_cold_weather/ | {
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"I'll provide a brief answer.\n\nPhones today are powered by lithium-ion batteries. They rely on the flow of ions (something like electrons, except bigger, slower) through an oily-gel like material (makes them even slower!) across two 'plates' as they discharge to power the phone.\n\nWhen it gets cold, it gets harder to move (just as you'd find it harder to move in the cold) and after a certain threshold, the battery just seizes up and ions just don't move fast enough to provide enough current for the phone. The phone shuts down.\n\nThis threshold temperature is rather cold, in the -30 ~ -40 C. but depending on the battery, conditions that you were out in, initial conditions and whatnot, you may see it shut off at relatively warmer (~ -20 C) temperatures as well.",
"I got my battery changed free when my iPhone started doing that. There’s a recall on some 6S phones for batteries. "
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8pmkov | why do so many numbers involve repeating decimals | I thought maybe I could figure this out on my own, but google sent me to some academic sites that were over my head. I'm not a stranger to math, but I haven't really used it since college. Anyway I solved a simple probability problem for someone recently (what the odds of rolling at least one 4 or 5 on x number of dice) and I noticed the answers came back with recurring decimals. Why? I understand in base ten 1/3 becomes 0.333.... but beyond that I don't really get it. It happens all the time. Like I said college was a long time ago but ELI5? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pmkov/eli5_why_do_so_many_numbers_involve_repeating/ | {
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"It's just the way that those fraction interact with our base-10 system.\n\nLet's say you want to divide 10 by 3. You get 3 with 1 left over. Then you get .3 with .1 leftover. Then you get .03 with .01 left over. Because the remainder always has the same relationship with the quotient the pattern continues.\n\nSame way with ninths. One ninth is .1111 repeating, two ninths is .2222 repeating, and so on. This is also a simple-to-understand (albeit not rigorous) proof that .99999 repeating equals 1.\n\nNot every repeating decimal has such a simple pattern. For example, one seventh is .142857142857142857142857.....\n\nIf you remember how do to long division by hand I would recommend trying it for yourself and you can see the patterns.",
"A rational number is a number that can be expressed in the form a/b, where a and b are both integers and b is not 0. An irrational number is a number that is not rational.\n\nWhen writing numbers in decimal form, any rational number will either terminate or repeat at some point. Any number whose decimal expansion does not terminate or repeat is an irrational number.\n\nThe numbers involved when you calculate those particular probabilities are naturally expressed as fractions, since they are \\ < number of desirable outcomes\\ > /\\ < total number of outcomes\\ > . So, when these fractions are rewritten with decimal notation, they will either terminate or repeat.",
" Our number system is based on 10's, and percentages are based on 100's (which is a power of 10). This means that it divides cleanly by 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10 (and their multiples), but not as cleanly by other numbers. Fractional values like are often used in probability (like with dice, where the most common factor is going to be 1/6, the odds of rolling a given number) don't always correspond to this base\\-10 system. 6 is one of those numbers that doesn't go cleanly into 10 or 100. So many of the results of probabilities will not divide cleanly into a percentage, and will be expressed as a repeating decimal. Or we'll just express them more cleanly as fractions \\- 1/3, 5/6, etc.",
"Not entirely sure what exactly you're asking, but I'll do my best.\n\nOur number system is in base 10, and 10's prime factors are 2 and 5. Because of this, dividing by any number that can't be factored into some number of 2s and 5s will give repeating decimals. If we look at dividing by the numbers 2-20, we see that we have frequent numbers that divide nicely, but they quickly become farther apart. 1/2, 1/4, 1/5, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16, and 1/20 all give terminating decimals, but all the ones in between will give repeating decimals. The further you go through the numbers, the greater the distance between numbers that divide nicely.\n\nHopefully that's what you were looking for."
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3ll7ta | the criminal process and how does it work after being arrested? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ll7ta/eli5_the_criminal_process_and_how_does_it_work/ | {
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"Once you're arrested, you're taken to the police station or a detention center. There, you'll be \"booked in.\" \n\nContact information is taken down (full name, address, next of kin, etc.), any medical history (they need to know if you're seizure prone for instance, or if you have a history of suicidal thoughts/attempts so they can keep you safe). Any money you have on you will be secured and they may give you a debit card with your balance put on the card so that they're not in charge of your cash. Any other belongings (phone, wallet, etc.) will be catalogued and locked up for safe keeping. You'll be fingerprinted and photographed. \n\nIf you're wearing a belt and/or a bra, they will be taken. Shoestrings as well. They don't want you using anything to harm yourself or another person. \n\nFrom there, depending on your charge, you will either be placed in a holding cell to await a hearing with a judge regarding your specific charge, or you will be placed with the general population of inmates at the jail. There is nothing to do in your cell except stare at the walls and contemplate what you've done to arrive at this point in your life. If someone is in there with you, then you can both contemplate your individual circumstances if you like.\n\nDo not get yourself arrested. You'll have a bad time."
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3onkbm | do film companies pay theatres to show their movies, or do theatres pay film companies for the rights to show their movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3onkbm/eli5do_film_companies_pay_theatres_to_show_their/ | {
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"It's a shared pool that works out roughly like this, the ticket price is split between the studio and the theater at a percentage \n\n1st week: 90% studio / 10% theater\n\n2nd: 80/20\n\n3-5: 60/40\n\n...etc\n\nSpecific movies and specific studios may have deals that alter the percentage for each week and timeframe, it's all negotiated, and these are estimated but it's a good rough base of how it works. The theaters still collect all the money on concessions, that's where they make the bulk of their profits. ",
"Theaters pay them, either for a one time fee, or (and most common) studios get a % cut of ticket sales, usually 90% of opening week sales, 80% of second week sales, and so on, most likely stopping at 50/50."
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6kgtl4 | why is there no meaningful talk about managing population growth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kgtl4/eli5_why_is_there_no_meaningful_talk_about/ | {
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"Because every time someone has screamed about an overpopulation apocalypse, they've been dead wrong. Developed countries are already at zero or negative population growth and developing countries will get there too eventually.\n\nPopulation is already expected to naturally level off later this century."
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5qpomg | why do birth certificates have the adoptive parents instead of the birth parents? | It's a certificate of live birth, shouldn't it have who actually gave birth to the child instead of who adopted the child? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qpomg/eli5_why_do_birth_certificates_have_the_adoptive/ | {
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"It's more important for legal purposes for the government to know who is responsible for raising the child than for who is biologically responsible for them, and that's really what a birth certificate is meant for. The government doesn't care whose genes are in the kid, they just want to know who is legally responsible for them. ",
"In addition to what was said, many states allow for biological parents to remain anonymous. "
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ltrxp | eq in audio apps | What is it, and how do I use it to get better sound? I understand that low frequencies are bass sounds.
Also, when should I use it? I understand that audio engineers spend a lot of time making the record sound right. Do I know better than them?
ELI30 is acceptable as well. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ltrxp/eli5_eq_in_audio_apps/ | {
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"Equalizers are basically just increasing or decreasing the \"volume\" (or gain) of different frequencies. This is usually done to tailor to the listener's taste (more/less bass/treble) or to compensate for the environment. That said, raising volume can introduce distortion. I always try to lower the EQ channels rather than raise them as I find the sound can be much cleaner but you will have to raise the overall volume a bit.\n\nBelow is a link to a forum post I bookmarked years ago. The guy describes his iTunes EQ settings. I have set those EQ settings for a number of people and everyone has noted that the sound is a lot cleaner. I find it to be a good \"all-around\" EQ setting.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: Clarification.",
"Equalizers are basically just increasing or decreasing the \"volume\" (or gain) of different frequencies. This is usually done to tailor to the listener's taste (more/less bass/treble) or to compensate for the environment. That said, raising volume can introduce distortion. I always try to lower the EQ channels rather than raise them as I find the sound can be much cleaner but you will have to raise the overall volume a bit.\n\nBelow is a link to a forum post I bookmarked years ago. The guy describes his iTunes EQ settings. I have set those EQ settings for a number of people and everyone has noted that the sound is a lot cleaner. I find it to be a good \"all-around\" EQ setting.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: Clarification."
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77v9tf | how does an oven heat to 200°c, yet we don't get burnt by the air when we open it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77v9tf/eli5_how_does_an_oven_heat_to_200c_yet_we_dont/ | {
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"Air is a fantastic insulator and, lucky for us, transfers the oven's heat relatively slowly. If you don't linger, it doesn't have time to burn you. It is also why it takes so long to preheat.\n\nInterestingly, broiling is more dangerous because it adds radiant heat which can essentially bypass that insulation.",
"Air is a very poor conductor of heat. When you put your hand in a 200 C oven, it starts to heat up, but much more slowly than if you dipped your hand into a pot of 200 C oil. So long as you don't keep your hand in the over for very long, you will not get hurt.",
"I don't agree with the answers talking about conductivity and insulation. It's more about heat capacity.\n\nTemperature is not the thing that burns, heat is. In common usage those are the same thing, but in physics there's a difference. Think of heat as being the total energy in something, and temperature as being the amount of energy per molecule (those are incorrect and imprecise definitions, but this eli5).\n\nThe air from the oven has a high temperature (lots of energy per molecule) but being a gas, not many molecules, so not much overall energy. That hot air comes in contact with you, but doesn't have enough energy to hurt you.\n\nThe amount of a energy (heat) a substance needs to raise its temperature is called heat capacity. Air and most gases have very low heat capacities. Water (and people) has a very high heat capacity."
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2rms6j | why i constantly feel the need to pop my knuckles | I'm trying to resist the urge to pop my knuckles because the sounds really irritate my girlfriend. I can barely make it through a day. I just want to pop them so much, and constantly! One time doesn't hold it off all day, I'll just want to do it again in ten minutes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rms6j/eli5_why_i_constantly_feel_the_need_to_pop_my/ | {
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"Just read this and felt an inescapable urge to crack my knuckles. Thank. ",
"I do it both compulsively and therapeutically. I'll do it when I'm nervous but often I simply have sore hands and it helps.\n\nThe real question is, do I do it because my hands hurt or does my brain make me think my hands hurt?",
"I do remember sitting in my professor's office and cracking my knuckles. He game me this evil look right away and said \"you should not do that. It cannot be good for you.\" Then I found the following from somewhere.\n\n*Cracking your knuckles does not actually hurt your bones or cause arthritis. The sound you hear is just gas bubbles bursting. Cracking your knuckles (or any of your joints) can have therapeutic benefits. When you crack one of your joints you are pulling the bones that are connected at the joint apart from each other. This process stimulates your tendons, relaxes your muscles, and loosens your joints. Chiropractors do this for spinal joints when your back is sore and stiff, but you can do this on your own for your knuckles, toes, knees, neck, etc. Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Cracking your knuckles will never lead to arthritis (despite what your mom keeps telling you), but scientists have discovered that it can cause tissue damage in the affected joints. Knuckle-cracking pulls your finger bones apart which stretches your ligaments. Too much stretching of your ligaments will cause damage to your fingers akin to the arm injuries sustained by a baseball pitcher who throws too many pitches. In addition to making your hand really sore, this ligament damage can also result in reduced grip strength. How does this work? Your joints, the places in your body where you can bend, are where your bones intersect and are held together by ligaments. These joints are surrounded by a liquid called synovial fluid. When you stretch your ligaments by pulling the bones apart to crack your knuckles a gas in the synovial fluid escapes and turns into a bubble. This process is called cavitation. Cavitation ends when the bubble eventually bursts, producing that popping sound we know and love. After that, your joints won't be able to crack for another 25-30 minutes while the gas gets reabsorbed into the synovial fluid.*\n\nThis was more than 10 years ago. I am 32 now. Somewhere along those years I stopped cracking my knuckles. I do not know when, or how. Maybe you will stop at one point as well :)"
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a3jgii | when the usa aquired alaska from russia, why was the border between alaska and canada effectively a straight north-south line until the very southern portion and then it suddenly juts eastward? | _URL_0_
see that link for the nice easy to see border! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3jgii/eli5_when_the_usa_aquired_alaska_from_russia_why/ | {
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"Alaska was never densely settled, and in the 19th century settlement was limited almost entirely to the coast. The inland part of Alaska was practically devoid of people on both sides of the border. Without a natural feature to follow, and with no people to complain, drawing a straight line is the easiest way to draw a border.\n\nAlong the coast Russians settled on the seaward side of the mountains, but never went inland as the colonies were primarily concerned with fishing. As Canada expanded West across the plains the border eventually came right up against the coastal Russian territories."
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acj2gr | with modern communications why do banks still do 7 day holds on checks? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/acj2gr/eli5_with_modern_communications_why_do_banks/ | {
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"Because banks are dicks and they make money by using your money to invest and make profit. ",
"In some cases it’s simply because ACH regulations require it. Sometimes a transaction does take way longer for one reason or another Sometimes you’re transacting with a rinky-dink bank that actually does take days to submit or process ACH transactions. Or a foreign bank, international financial regulations can make things complicated. Or maybe there’s probate law involved, or potential fraud. These things could also delay the processing of a check. Because these issues vary so much, the rule has to be applied to all transactions. The bottleneck on check transactions is primarily regulatory or legal, not technological. ",
"The better question is why checks are used at all. In large parts of Europe the are are almost never used. For example i Finland they have not been offered to individual since 1993. I have no seen one in Sweden since the early 1990s.",
"Checks? Haven't used one in a decade."
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c8n7gg | can i run a modern computer game on a supercomputer e.g. summit with its 148,6 petaflops, why/why not? | The world's fastest supercomputer is the American Summit with its 148,6 petaflops. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure it's fast. The supercomputers are used for AI, various mathematical models and other research fileds in need of massive computing power. But what about say Minecraft or Fortnite, can I run those games on a supercomputer? What would that mean in terms of game experience? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8n7gg/eli5_can_i_run_a_modern_computer_game_on_a/ | {
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"It depends what operating system the computer uses. As the computer probably runs on Linux, then the answer may be yes, but there might be problems with drivers for a gamepad, whether it has a graphical user interface etc. It might also not have a graphics card, so the processing power could be incredible, but the 3D rendering could still be awful.",
"A supercomputer isn't really comparable to a single desktop PC. Really they're more like lots of servers connected via a very high speed network.\n\nIn theory you could build a supercomputer from more or less standard PCs, maybe running some custom version of Linux. If that was the case, you could play a game on one of them. \n\nBut then you'd be playing the game on one specific \"node\" rather than the supercomputer as a whole. Games are not designed to spread their processing workload across many computers, and even with an extremely fast network it might not even be that useful anyway because of the time it takes to transfer data between them.",
"Petaflops means 1,000,000,000,000,000 Floating Point Operations per second.\n\nYes you can easily run games on them, you can simply install a VM and use a portion of it's calculation power for simulating a regular computer. \n\nGame experience should be like any other high end PC that outstrips the games requirements. The limitations will then come from the game itself."
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ak497u | why do your fingers get al raisin-y when wet? and why does the rest of your body remain normal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ak497u/eli5_why_do_your_fingers_get_al_raisiny_when_wet/ | {
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"This is an evolutionary tactic to help us grip and hold things in water. Since your fingers are doing most of the holding they're what is most liable to pruning. Your toes also do the same for the same reasons ",
"So there are actually nerves that cause this to happen! If you damage those nerves, your fingers and toes don't prune. Wrinkled fingers grip underwater things better. Wrinkled toes may also give better footing when wading in streams.\n\nDefinitely not ELI5, but a cool case here: _URL_0_. Kid had a nerve injury and they could tell the affected fingers were the ones that didn't wrinkle.",
"Interesting. I had always thought that because skin is semi-permeable, when we soak in water for a while, our cells swell with water from the hypotonic environment. In order to avoid bursting cells, our skin increases its surface area, which is why the wrinkles appear. That’s always what I thought, at least. "
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lj6e8 | gaddafi | Can someone explain, like I'm 5 what rules of the Geneva Convention Ghaddafi went out of his way and infamously broke, and what he actually did that gave him such a bad worldwide reputation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lj6e8/eli5_gaddafi/ | {
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"Gaddafi was a left wing leader, and many well-meaning people in the rich countries supported him when he took power. This turned out to be against their better judgement, as it had with the Soviets before him - he took some very good ideas and gained power in a backwards country.\n\nHe took the common path for left wing dictators in a right wing political climate, losing more and more of his original principles, retreating into conspiracy theories and oppression of his people, even abandoning the good things he had started off doing. When dictatorships of the left and right started to fall across Africa, the now fairly mad colonel refused to step down, regardless of what his people wanted.\n\nHe accused the west of inciting violence in his peaceful regime and went into denial about the will his people had for change. He sent his remaining loyal troops to kill innocents (\"non-combatants\"), starved the people of Misrata (many to death) and commanded that doctors should be killed if they treated rebel soldiers. Importantly, he is the only leader in the history of international justice who would be brought to trial with evidence of him personally ordering the atrocities.",
"The world just wasn't ready for a man who [dressed that fabulously](_URL_0_).",
" > Can someone explain, like I'm 5 what rules of the Geneva Convention Ghaddafi went out of his way and infamously broke, and what he actually did that gave him such a bad worldwide reputation?\n\nAbout 6000 years ago the first civilisation developed. A civilisation is a form of society where people are specialised in certain tasks/jobs. One of these is \"soldier\". Soldiers are people who fight for a government. They are supposed to only fight against other soldiers, though i doubt any army can claim not to have broken this rule. \n\nIf you are a person who fights but not for a government you are called a terrorist. Terrorists generally have less training, equipment and other resources. A terrorist is \"someone with a bomb but no plane to drop it from\". Since they are much weaker, they prefer to attack easy targets - civilians. \n\nThe Geneva Conventions are meant to protect the 'weak' - civilians, prisoners of war, the wounded. Gaddafi (no \"h\") actively supported terrorism - he helped people who aren't soldiers blow up planes and supposedly helped plant a bomb in a disco (no evidence). And since Libya isn't the US, Israel or any other Western country, he was called out for doing so. Even more hilarious is the fact that in retaliation to the disco bombing the US had their soldiers kill a bunch of civilians.\n\nGaddafi also oppressed his own people for many many years, torturing, killing or otherwise silencing any opposition. And he helped the worst dictators in Africa, from Idi Amin to Bokassa to Taylor. \n\nGaddafi did other bad things too. He actively opposed Berber culture, claiming they were a fabrication. Berbers are the native people of north-west Africa, who lived there before the Arabs came in the 7th century. Foreign conquerors tend to dislike natives, just look at what happened to the Irish, Basques and Palestinians (Gaddafi also expelled 30.000 of the latter).\n\nIn his later years (90s) Gaddafi also made Libya increasingly conservative. Homosexuality is against the law, you have to stay \"pure\" until marriage, alcohol is forbidden, et cetera.\n\nTL;DR: Gaddafi's death is the best thing to happen this year.",
"Gaddafi was a left wing leader, and many well-meaning people in the rich countries supported him when he took power. This turned out to be against their better judgement, as it had with the Soviets before him - he took some very good ideas and gained power in a backwards country.\n\nHe took the common path for left wing dictators in a right wing political climate, losing more and more of his original principles, retreating into conspiracy theories and oppression of his people, even abandoning the good things he had started off doing. When dictatorships of the left and right started to fall across Africa, the now fairly mad colonel refused to step down, regardless of what his people wanted.\n\nHe accused the west of inciting violence in his peaceful regime and went into denial about the will his people had for change. He sent his remaining loyal troops to kill innocents (\"non-combatants\"), starved the people of Misrata (many to death) and commanded that doctors should be killed if they treated rebel soldiers. Importantly, he is the only leader in the history of international justice who would be brought to trial with evidence of him personally ordering the atrocities.",
"The world just wasn't ready for a man who [dressed that fabulously](_URL_0_).",
" > Can someone explain, like I'm 5 what rules of the Geneva Convention Ghaddafi went out of his way and infamously broke, and what he actually did that gave him such a bad worldwide reputation?\n\nAbout 6000 years ago the first civilisation developed. A civilisation is a form of society where people are specialised in certain tasks/jobs. One of these is \"soldier\". Soldiers are people who fight for a government. They are supposed to only fight against other soldiers, though i doubt any army can claim not to have broken this rule. \n\nIf you are a person who fights but not for a government you are called a terrorist. Terrorists generally have less training, equipment and other resources. A terrorist is \"someone with a bomb but no plane to drop it from\". Since they are much weaker, they prefer to attack easy targets - civilians. \n\nThe Geneva Conventions are meant to protect the 'weak' - civilians, prisoners of war, the wounded. Gaddafi (no \"h\") actively supported terrorism - he helped people who aren't soldiers blow up planes and supposedly helped plant a bomb in a disco (no evidence). And since Libya isn't the US, Israel or any other Western country, he was called out for doing so. Even more hilarious is the fact that in retaliation to the disco bombing the US had their soldiers kill a bunch of civilians.\n\nGaddafi also oppressed his own people for many many years, torturing, killing or otherwise silencing any opposition. And he helped the worst dictators in Africa, from Idi Amin to Bokassa to Taylor. \n\nGaddafi did other bad things too. He actively opposed Berber culture, claiming they were a fabrication. Berbers are the native people of north-west Africa, who lived there before the Arabs came in the 7th century. Foreign conquerors tend to dislike natives, just look at what happened to the Irish, Basques and Palestinians (Gaddafi also expelled 30.000 of the latter).\n\nIn his later years (90s) Gaddafi also made Libya increasingly conservative. Homosexuality is against the law, you have to stay \"pure\" until marriage, alcohol is forbidden, et cetera.\n\nTL;DR: Gaddafi's death is the best thing to happen this year."
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2jbylv | machine (clothes) washers | Could someone please explain to me how a machine washer is more than beating the dirt out of your clothes and then rinsing your clothes in the same dirty water? How does using detergent take dirt away? How does the spin cycle do anything more than use your clothes as a filter for all the dirt in the wash water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jbylv/eli5_machine_clothes_washers/ | {
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" > Could someone please explain to me how a machine washer is more than beating the dirt out of your clothes and then rinsing your clothes in the same dirty water\n\nWell, for starters, most washers would rinse the cloths in fresh water. It drains and fills more than once per load.\n\n > How does using detergent take dirt away? \n\nDetergent, like all soaps, binds to the dirt preventing the dirt from binding to the clothes. Then when the soap is washed away, so is the dirt. Soap is like a thousand little cadges for dirt.\n\n > How does the spin cycle do anything more than use your clothes as a filter for all the dirt in the wash water\n\nMost of the time the spin cycle happens after the rinse cycle. So the water is no longer considered dirty. The spin cycles only use is to attempt to drain the clothes as much as possible. All of the washing work is done by that point. ",
" > rinsing your clothes in the same dirty water? \n\nIt is not the same dirty water. There is a washing cycle, the dirty water gets pumped out, then fresh water is added for rinsing.\n\n > How does using detergent take dirt away?\n\nDetergents are able to \"surround\" particles of dirt, fat, and other things that make your underwear smelly, and carry those particles from your underwear to the water in your washing machine, to be eventually pumped away to the sewer.\n\nSoap and other detergents specifically do this by having one part of their molecule structure [polar](_URL_0_) so that it is good at bonding with water, while having a long unpolar tail consistent of carbohydrates that make them good at bonding with fatty stuff and dirt.\n\nSo the detergents sort of attach to the dirt, solve it in water, and then the water + dirt is pumped away. Afte rthat, you get a rince cycle with new water, and the spin cycle is designed to remove as much of the rince water from your washed underwear as possible, so that the dryer has less water to evaporate.",
"**Detergent** - The primary function of detergent is to break the bonds that make water very cohesive (think of how water beads up). This allows the water to get into smaller spaces and between dirt and fabric. Most detergents also include agents that break bonds in things that commonly stain or dirty clothes. By breaking up these bonds, the detergent loosens the dirt's hold to the material and mixes it into the water.\n\n**Rinsing** - After the wash cycle, most of the dirt is suspended in the water and travels with it when it drains. The rinse cycle uses fresh water and the idea is that the dirt and detergent which are still on the clothes will get mixed into the new water and removed. Each rinse cycle (if you have a washer with more than one) uses new water and leaves behind less dirt and detergent residue.\n\n**Spin** - The spin cycle is to remove the water that is left in the clothes after completely washing and rinsing. At this point, the vast majority of the dirt has been broken down and carried away. Spinning removes the large volume of water that is still suspended in the fabric. It's the equivalent of wringing out the clothes.",
"Most machines also spray fresh water over the clothes during the \"dirty water\" spin cycle to help rinse even more dirty soapy water away."
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1mxbjy | television syndication | How does this work, exactly? I know that a series usually requires 100 episodes in order to be syndicated, but what does it mean? How is a good thing for the cast? What is involved? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mxbjy/eli5_television_syndication/ | {
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"When a network makes a show, the producers and the network hope to make enough shows to sell to a local market. This is called syndicating the show. A local TV station might air it at a different time slot than the show originated, and also do it every day instead of once a week.\n\nEvery time the show is shown, the original producers, network, and the cast all get a piece of the royalties that the show is worth for being run on that local market. \n\nThat is why it's important to a series to get more than one season of episodes, typically 3 or more, and if you can get 4 and 5 and get up to 100? That's over 3 months of every day running. \n\nBank. Nice little extra bank made on the original production. Everyone wins.\n\nWhat's more, the syndicated show may get an extra audience it didn't get on network, and if they get hooked in half way... the show can be repeated and start over again.\n\nThe station gets advertising, and from that pays for the show, and more royalties get sent to the various people."
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4ro0l8 | why do free range eggs have harder shells than the "conventional" kind? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ro0l8/eli5why_do_free_range_eggs_have_harder_shells/ | {
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"Free range chickens have a more varied diet which contains more minerals. Or in short, because they eat bugs. ",
"I don't mean to hijack, but since we're on the topic- I've heard that free range eggs are not necessarily so, that there is a bit of deceit or exaggeration involved. Anybody here with inside knowledge or source of the real deal?",
"my experience isn't really the same, I notice that the thickness of the shell varies between eggs bought at the supermarket too, and my parents have chickens in their backyard who are free to roam through the garden and fields(with goats), their shell also varies.\n\nbut my guess your experience is due to how much calcium the chickens ate. the eggshell is made from calcium carbonate, so if the chicken doesn't eat enough calcium they'll have less available to make eggshells.\n\nthose observations can be usefull btw, once I saw my father crushing eggshells and mixing it with the chickenfeed, so I asked him what was up with that. he said he had noticed the eggshells had been a little thin lately, so he fed them eggshells so they would ingest more calcium. ",
"You're probably thinking of \"farm fresh.\" Eggs bought from a hobby farm where the chickens are able to \"scratch\" and basically live their life eating everything, not just grains, have more nutrients in their diet which allows the chickens body to put more nutrients into egg laying. A chicken that's allowed to scratch basically eats more of what they're supposed to be eating and also gets \"more\" excersise than a chicken left in a cage"
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186zkz | how can blind peoble "feel" colors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/186zkz/eli5_how_can_blind_peoble_feel_colors/ | {
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"do you mean like when they put their hand on a picture and can tell if it is a sunny sky or snow covered field?",
"Not sure where you've heard this",
"I have not heard of blind people \"feeling\" colors, but I did recently hear about a study that showed blind people could still identify emotions in photographs of people. _URL_0_\nWhile most of the sensory input goes to the visual cortex which is the part of the brain that lets us see things, some information may be going to lower levels of the brain even if your eyes are not sending info to the visual cortex. This stray info may allow blind people to sense things that we think of as needing to be seen."
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3t3m1c | why did pirates get scurvy but eskimos don't | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t3m1c/eli5_why_did_pirates_get_scurvy_but_eskimos_dont/ | {
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"Inuit and Eskimos got their vitamin C, deficiency of which causes scurvy, from the animals they ate; whale, seal and caribou supplied them with enough to keep healthy and avoid the disease. ",
"Sugar and vitamin C both are treated similarly in the blood. When you have large spiking amounts of glucose (from a diet rich in grains and sugar and vegetables) you need way more vitamin C to compete. Eskimos ate almost exclusively meat. They got enough vitamin C from this meat. Meanwhile, pirates also ate some grains and, thus, didn't get enough vitamin C to counter all that glucose...and git scurvy.",
"Eskimos got their vitamins and minerals from eating the organs and the marrow etc from the animals they caught. You can get everything nutritionally that a human needs from eating the whole animal, wheras pirates mainly ate salted preserved meat and fish which had low vitamin c compared to an animals liver or kidneys",
"Also eskimos ate a lot of liver, one bite of a polar bear liver and boom you are set nutritionally , I know this sounds like a joke but I'm serious haha source: literally just went over this today in nutrition class\n",
"Alaskan here, a lot of plants that grow here(Alaska) have vitamin c. Dandelion, saxifrage, willow leaves, sourdock, rose hips, and fireweed. \n\nAlso plenty of berries(fruits). Blueberry, nagoonberry, salmonberry, cloudberry, crowberry, wingarat, kuvluk, and juneberry. \n\nI figured I'd comment since people kept on the whole meat thing. Dry foods is a major staple as it last longer in the winter. Meat tends to louse it nutritional value as it's stored. So gathering plants was a better long term.",
"One very interesting blog article that explains history of scurvy, and how knowledge of the cure was lost for some time due to advance in medicine: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"I remember seeing a documentary where Inuits were hunting narwhal; their blubber has as a high a vitamin C content as oranges apparently!",
"Eskimo's also got so much Vitamin D from seal meat they didn't have to develop the pale skin of other other people so far north.",
"Narwhals skin is very high in vitamin C. They seek them out and kill them for this reason. ",
"and then white bread was introduced to the inuit populations and they all got the diabeetus",
"I'm a little drunk thought this was in /r/jokes \nI spent a solid few minutes in real confusion...",
"The primary reason is fresh food vs preserved food.\n\nA lot of folks are bringing up specific foods that the Inuit ate that had vitamin C in them, but the the thing they all share is that they were fresh and contained enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy.\n\nThis is also why the people in Shakleton's failed Antarctic expedition didn't get scurvy, they relied on fresh food their during their ordeal, whereas Scott relied on preserved foods and got scurvy. Just to prevent scurvy doesn't take much vitamin C. Many of the specific foods people are mentioning are extremely high in vitamin C and are potentially effective for curing scurvy but are overkill for preventing it.\n\nHere is an interesting [blog post about the scurvy issue](_URL_1_) in general.\n\nThe [Scurvy Prevention page on Wikipedia](_URL_2_) has this to say:\n > Fresh meat from animals which make their own vitamin C (which most animals do) contains enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy, and even partly treat it. In some cases (notably in French soldiers eating fresh horse meat), it was discovered that meat alone, even partly cooked meat, could alleviate scurvy.\n\nIf you really want more there is a book [The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C](_URL_0_) that goes into a great deal more depth.",
"[This guy](_URL_0_) Says it's the fat, [gotta get the fat.](_URL_1_)",
"Narwhals. Their blubber is the best source of vitamin C in the arctic. Pound for pound comparable to oranges.",
"You only need 6-10mg a day of vitamin c to prevent scurvy. Various animals and organs in the Eskimo diet had vitamin c in it.",
"Hey guys random somewhat-northern canadian outdoorsman here - Aboriginals and Indians got their Vitamin C from many sources - berries, pine needles brewed into a tea, etc. However in tundra environments there is a strong lack of wild plants and berries that have vitamin C. In the tundra there is an abundancy of lichens - one of which Gray Reindeer Lichen, can be boiled down into edibility and was a good source of vitamin C for Inuits. There are also other small shrubs and plants that can be brewed into teas that contain some vitamin c. Pirates would get scurvy because they would straight up not eat anything containing vitamin C for extended periods of time, having a diet of only fish for months is gonna give you scurvy. Many people believe Inuits only eat meat but they actually supplement their diet with wild herbs as well."
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34zhxt | if water is so difficult to heat, why do we use it for central heating systems? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34zhxt/eli5_if_water_is_so_difficult_to_heat_why_do_we/ | {
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"Because it's also difficult to cool. Water just doesn't like transferring energy, so once the water is heated, you can use it to heat a lot of air",
"Water isn't difficult to heat, it has a high thermal capacity. What that means is the energy it takes to raise air by 20 degrees would only raise the temperature of water by about 1 degree. The amount of energy used would be exactly the same. The problems occurs when you need to transport that energy. For a house with a furnace it's not an issue. The furnace heats the room it's in, the maybe one or 2 more floors above it. Very short paths for the hot air to take. An apartment building has multiple floors and rooms to heat which involves very long runs. If you heat up air and try to pump it 1000 feet away, it would be cold before it reaches it's destination. \n\nYou can think of thermal capacity like it was a bucket, but every bucket has a small leak in it. Air is like a tiny bucket. If you needed to fill a fish tank on the other side of your house you could do it with only a little be of loss but to run up 5 stories and down the hall, your bucket would be empty before you ever got there.\n\nWater would be a massive bucket I could fill with so much energy, I can transport it a very long way and still have most of it with me when I got there. "
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5g70vb | if you took red and blue light and made violet is that the same as true violet light? | This is something I've been wondering for a while. I know that visible light is spectrum of wavelengths of light and that violet light is around 400 nm in wavelength. However if you took red (700 nm) light and blue (475 nm) light and made what we perceive as purple is that a true 400 nm wavelength of light? Does the light energy mix together to make that 400 nm light?
If it isn't, then how do we know that any purple colored light is truly 400 nm or just very tiny amount of red and blue mixed to look purple? I already understand that red and blue make purple is sort of a trick our eyes do because of how the way the cones in our eyes perceive light. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5g70vb/eli5_if_you_took_red_and_blue_light_and_made/ | {
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"Nope - it's not the same thing. The photons would still be two different wavelengths. But when reflected off of a white surface...\n\n > I already understand that red and blue make purple is sort of a trick our eyes do because of how the way the cones in our eyes perceive light.\n\nYou've got it. The reason that a 400nm violet laser looks the 'same color' as when our eye sees red and blue coming from the same place, it purely an artifact of our poor brain making the best out of a crazy world.\n\n[Further reading.](_URL_0_)\n",
"Red and blue mixed does not make violet. It makes purple (AKA magenta). Violet and purple are different colors. Violet is not displayable on color monitors. Purple does not have a dominant wavelength.\n\nAnother example is yellow. Yellow does have a wavelength, but it can also be simulated by mixing red and green. Our eyes can't tell the difference between true yellow and a red/green mix. That's because our retinas only have three types of color sensing cone cells. It is called tristimulus vision. \n\nThe range of displayable colors is called the [gamut](_URL_1_). Color monitors can't display any single wavelength colors because the primaries are not on the outer edge of a [chromaticity diagram](_URL_0_). "
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],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut#/media/File:CIExy1931_srgb_gamut.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut"
]
] |
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