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31bp5t | how is the iranian nuclear deal bad for israel? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31bp5t/eli5how_is_the_iranian_nuclear_deal_bad_for_israel/ | {
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"Because Israel is afraid we are cutting the Iranians slack or are willing to negotiate. Let's face it, Iran would probably be a lot better ally to the US than Israel because not everyone despises Iran in the Middle East. They are probably afraid that these kind of talks may be bad for their international significance.",
"I would encourage you to read this [amazing post](_URL_0_) answering this question a few days ago. The short version is that Israel benefits from being the only regional power, and Iran will become more powerful in the region with a stronger economy.",
"Well, since Iran funds groups trying to destroy Israel, like Hamas and Hezbollah; and Iranian leadership has been stating for years, including during these recent negotiations, that they intend to destroy Israel, that might be a reason Israel is afraid of Iran. "
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2xqbjq | i'm currently watching jurassic park. how do we/they know that the t rex's vision was based on movement? | I guess I should ask whether or not it's true that scientists believe the T Rex could only see by movement. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xqbjq/eli5im_currently_watching_jurassic_park_how_do/ | {
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"T Rex's vision wasn't based on movement. There's actually a joke about it in one of the latter movies. \n\nThe theory is based on an examination of the T Rex's brain cavity, but was later debunked. T Rex would have had good vision overall, as it was a hunter/scavenger.",
"It's not true, it was just part of the movie. Certain predators are more aware of movement though. ",
"That's movie psuedo science, much like the supposed intelligence (and size) of raptors. \n\nApplication of a method called perimetry has suggested that the dinosaurs actually had rather good fields of vision and genetic tracking to modern relatives of the dinosaur suggests acuity was high as well. Tyrannosaurus had a narrow skull and overlapping binocular vision, suggest to be potentially greater than a human's.",
"All i can say is i had a pet tree frog. As far as i could tell, it had absolutely no idea when i dropped a dead bug into its terrarium. It would only notice/eat live bugs that moved. In fact, many reptiles have been known to starve to death surrounded by food. \n\n\nMy frog was exactly like a T-Rex in this respect. ",
"In the book they explain that they didn't really have enough complete DNA for some dinosaurs so they spliced in some likely substitutes. Frog DNA was mentioned, IIRC, which might have given the TRex frog vision which is motion based. ",
"They don't, that was made up for the film. That scene in the movie also ignores the T. Rex's sense of smell, which we can tell based on the size of the nasal cavity.",
"Its mentioned and debunked in the books, the movie didn't bother to include the part debunking it."
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2hlwsm | what happened to the income growth in the us in 1983 and 1991 to make this graph go crazy? | This [graph](_URL_0_) show the growth in income of the US households from 1947.
As you can see something dramatic (the chart says it's following a recession) happened around 1983 and 1991 to make the top 5% seperate dramatically from the median.
But what happened exactly and do we see the same happen after the recession in 2008?
EDIT: For clarity | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hlwsm/eli5what_happened_to_the_income_growth_in_the_us/ | {
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"Supply Side Economics took hold (Voodoo Economics/Reaganomics) which primarily focused on providing lower taxes to rich people, though Reagan did also tax the middle and lower classes.\n\nMilton Friedman's theory of corporations, first published in 1962, gains more acceptance (The only moral action a corporation can take is make a profit, period).\n\nNew and complex financial instruments are introduced, and suddenly stockbrokers and financiers are no longer paid average wages like they were before. Suddenly, they are now worth millions.\n\nWith stockbroker pay increasing, as does CEO pay.\n\nAfter the 2008 recession, none of those things happened. Though supply side theory and Friedman's theory are still spouted, dozens of critiques and complaints about the results are published, even if both still have plenty of followers. There were no sudden changes in CEO pay or a new class of bankers established, the old classes remained. No significant tax breaks either."
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1bbpe6 | why do we talk about breeds of dogs, which are grouped by their physical appearance, as having different behavioral and mental characteristics within each group - but it's totally unacceptable to suggestion doing the same thing with different human races? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bbpe6/eli5_why_do_we_talk_about_breeds_of_dogs_which/ | {
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"Because different breeds of dogs *do* behave differently.\n\nRemember that the reason breeds of dogs exist in the first place is because they were specifically bred, by humans, for a reason.\n\nSome breeds came about because people picked the most violent dogs they could find, and bred them with each other in order to create breeds of fighting dogs. Other breeds came about because people picked the most compassionate, intelligent dogs they could find, and bred them together to create breeds of helper dogs. Clearly those breeds will have very different characteristics and behaviour, because they were specifically bred to have different characteristics and behaviour.\n\nWith humans, there has been no such artificial selection that's led to different races. Different races have come about naturally, and despite some superficial physical differences, there's very little, if any, difference in the range of behaviours in people of different races. Every race contains some violent people, some nerds, some sociable people, and so on.",
"The variation within dogs is because of specific breeding. Within each population of dog, there is a certain consistency, or homogenity. But this is only true for purebred dogs. Other dogs, with combined races, do not follow any discernible specific patterns. Very few people have decided to breed within race for homogenity. Though each \"pure\" race might have different behavioral and mental quirks, these are not quite as varied as breeds of dog, and the distinction of race is slowly becoming irrelevant in the modern world.",
"When people talk about racial differences between humans, they almost invariably assume that whatever differences exist are innate to the races. And that's simply untrue. Different breeds of dog were specifically bred to exhibit different natural tendencies, whereas differences between humans are far more linked to geographical culture. For example, asians might tend to think about things in different ways to white people, but it's not a biological difference in the way that it is with dogs. It's because that's the way they were brought up.\n\nIt's racist to ascribe to biology, that which is more readily explained by culture.",
"The genetic variation within a (human) race is much larger than the average variation between races. It's not even close to the variation between breeds of dogs.\n\n[Here's an article on it](_URL_0_)."
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54im21 | freeze-drying food: what is it and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54im21/eli5_freezedrying_food_what_is_it_and_how_does_it/ | {
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"Essentially drying out the food through removal of all the water so that it can last longer (by preventing the growth of any mold or bacteria and stuff).\n\nFood is firstly cooled down in a deep freezer and ice crystals form. Some compounds have a property that enables them to convert directly from their solid state to a gaseous state (sublimation). While water normally does not do this, under a low pressure, it can be forced to do so as the boiling point of water is decreased. So applying a little heat after that causes the water to sublimate. \n\nThere may be other processes after this to remove the water that hasn't frozen to ice. But this is generally it before the food is packaged.",
"Water cannot exist as a liquid in a vacuum. In other words, if ice were to melt in a vacuum it would sublimate directly into a vapor, in a liquid state it would \"boil\" off. The product is frozen (usually colder than -40) and is then placed into a chamber which is then sealed. A vacuum is drawn on the chamber (measured in millitors). The temperature is gradually increased to \"melt\" the ice, which goes directly to vapor. This vapor is then transferred to a seperate chamber, the walls of which are cooled to a very low temperature. It then converts back to ice as it adheres to the wall of the chamber.\n\nEventually all (well, most) of the water molecules are released as vapor from the product and recaptured as ice. Most freeze dryers (the fancy term is lyophilizer) also have a mechanism that will create a seal on the packages containing the product. So, release the vaccum, open the chamber and you have a water-less product vacuum sealed in a \"freshness pouch\" type of package which prevents reabsorption of water from the air."
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6gtc3u | how can flies instantly turn around mid flight while planes still don't ? | Notice how can those big flies fly so fast in a direction and then instantly change their direction and revert with a very small turn, how can they do that and why haven't we made planes that can do that too ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gtc3u/eli5_how_can_flies_instantly_turn_around_mid/ | {
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"It's impossible to make a plane that flies the way an insect does, with quick turns and stops. Planes simply weigh too much and move too fast. The laws of physics don't let them shed that momentum energy fast enough to turn around tight enough.\n",
"The forces required to change the direction of a plane in this manner would be so large that they tear the plane apart.\n\nFor the same reasons: a rat can fall 10 ft. and walk away, but a human would likely have broken bones - the force required to stop a human after a 10 ft fall exceeds our bone strength.",
"Inertia and the fact that scaling up things doesn't work out linearly.\n\nFor one, a fly weighs virtually nothing, and as such it takes a tiny amount of energy to bring it to a stop.\n\n[The square-cube law](_URL_0_) also puts many hard limits to how manoeuvrable we can make big things when compared to flies. If we just upscaled a fly to be the size of a plane, it would immediately collapse under its own weight. Tiny and gigantic things can't be compared easily like that.",
"On top of the physics of making that much weight change directions, their is the propulsion method. \n\nPlanes fly by using an engine to propel them fast enough that airflow over the wings provides lift. Engines tend to push in a straight line (some combat aircraft have engines that can be aimed to improve maneuverability). Control surfaces disrupt airflow to fight against that straight line and allow the aircraft to turn.\n\nBees and other insects are basically \"ornithopters\". They use their wings for lift as well as propulsion. Since the two functions are combined, maneuverability is virtually limitless, within the limits of physics others have already covered. ",
"Many people have rightly commented about the weight difference of flies vs planes as a reason for the flight differences. Another factor is the fact that flies' wings aren't rigid. They can swivel their wings in the sockets giving them greater maneuverability."
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44wioe | can swallowing phlegm when you feel sickness coming on make you sicker? | It seems like spitting phlegm out when I'm starting to feel sick shortens the duration of feeling sick. Is it possible to become infected as phlegm passes through your digestive system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44wioe/eli5_can_swallowing_phlegm_when_you_feel_sickness/ | {
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"No, the acid in your stomach will destroy most infectious bacteria/viruses. There are very few bugs that can survive the acidity of the stomach. ",
" > Is it possible to become infected as phlegm passes through your digestive system?\n\nIf you are starting to feel sick, you're infected already. Getting rid of the bacteria swimming around in your spit isn't really achieving anything of significance, other than potentially exposing other people to your illness. You're not going to spit out enough to become 'unsick.'",
"Adding to the correct answers, swallowing too much mucus can make you feel sick/nauseated, not because of the microorganisms, but because it causes some degree of gastritis",
"No, the germs are already inside you. However, the mucus constantly draining down your throat can irritate your throat and lead to more discomfort. "
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3xdqj5 | why do states need capitals? | I watched how the states got their shapes and learned all of their capitals, but no one ever explains why states have capitals in the first place. Does it in some way improve their economy by informing people which city they'll most likely have the most fun in or be the most economical to live into? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xdqj5/eli5_why_do_states_need_capitals/ | {
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"In the USA, the state capital just means the city where the state government has located its top offices, such as the state legislature. It doesn't have much more meaning than that.",
"The state government consists of actual humans, who are tangible things with a fixed location in space. It is convenient to have coworkers physically near each other. So, the state legislature needs to meet somewhere; the governor will also be most effective there. It's expensive to move the government around a lot, so you pick a city and put it there. That is the state capital: the city where the state government is based. It has nothing to do with fun or cost of living. ",
"States still have a lot of powers and responsibilities delegated to them by the federal government and the constitution, plus they have their own state governors and legislators to handle state-level matters. All of that requires them to have workers, and workers need a place to work.\n\nNow, why the individual capitols were chosen depends on the state. In my state (Pennsylvania), they only selected Harrisburg because they were kicked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia by the first couple sessions of the continental congress, and they were able to acquire the land in and around Harrisburg at a good price. It had nothing to do with economics or entertainment. Harrisburg can't compete with Philadelphia or Pittsburgh in those respects.\n\nSimilarly, Albany can't compete with New York City, Springfield can't compete with Chicago, and California has a bunch of cities that have overtaken Sacramento in many respects.",
"States are governed by their own state government. That state government needs to be located somewhere... like in a city. That city, that seat of government, is called the capital of that state.\n\nIt's like with a country and that country's capital and that country's seat of government, but on a smaller scale.\n\nFor the U.S., Washington DC is the capital city of the country... where America's government is located.\n\nFor the state of Massachusetts, the center of Massachusetts' government is in the city of Boston... that state's capital.\n\nFun and economy don't necessarily have anything to do with a city being a capital city. Amherst, MA could be thought of as very fun, but it is not the capital city of Massachusetts. Trillions of dollars flow through New York City, but New York City is not the capital city of New York State. Albany, NY may not be the funnest city in New York State, but it is the capital city.",
"It's purely just where the state government is located. In fact it normally isn't the biggest or most fun city, it's normally one that was decided on to be reasonably accessible by the entire state. The capital is normally never the biggest city in a state, NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston for example are not the capitals of their respective states.",
"Because the USA is a federation of states, which means that all of the states are independent governments bound together by the federal government. Just like the federal government, these state governments need a place to meet.\n\nThe capital isn't always the biggest city, but in many states it is. New York City is the largest city in New York by far, but the capital of New York is Albany."
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2g5rvo | how do terrorists know who is sunne and shia? | I understand the differences in customs between the two but why doesn't a person learn both in great detail and pretend to be whichever doesn't get them killed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g5rvo/eli5how_do_terrorists_know_who_is_sunne_and_shia/ | {
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"Let's pretend for a minute.\n\nOne of the core tenets of Catholicism is that the fruit in the Garden of Eden, from the Tree of Knowledge, was an apple. But the same fruit is believed by Protestants to be a Pomegranate. This one simple little thing that has no real bearing on modern life, it's just how you were raised to believe.\n\nNow imagine you are driving through the New York. There are plenty of Catholics and Protestants and without asking, you can't tell them apart. On this drive, you get pulled over and surrounded by a group of men with military-style guns. They ask you to name the fruit that the serpent gave to Eve. If you say Apple and they are Protestant, they will kill you. If you say Pomegranate and they are Catholic, they will kill you. You have no idea whether the men who are pointing guns at you are Catholic or Protestant. What is your answer?\n\nNow imagine you live in a country with a poor educational system, and as a Catholic, you've never heard of the Fruit being a Pomegranate.\n\nThis is just one of the ways the terrorists sort people out."
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60pody | how youtube got very popular? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60pody/eli5_how_youtube_got_very_popular/ | {
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"Back in the early 2000s, there was actually a lot of competition in the video hosting world, but it's hard to call any of it \"good\" by today's standards. Some sites were plagued by crappy UI, others charged for hosting, many suffered from poor reliability and lots of outages, and most were plagued by poor buffering and long load times. \n\nSome of the best video hosting sites only catered to a specific niche (porn, comedy, or established media outlets), and those sites either limited the ability of the average user to upload videos, or created content themselves. \n\nYoutube was one of the first sites that more-or-less welcomed all content creators, had a relatively clean UI (for the time), and offered exceptional reliability and uptime. There were other sites that could have filled that niche, Youtube was the right product at the right time, and the market chose it as a winner. Just as there were tons of facebook-like services before facebook won out, sometimes a company gets lucky with timing and momentum takes over. \n\nEqually as important, arguably, was Youtube's acquisition by Google. With the force of Google behind it, Youtube had a ton of cash to improve the platform, promote it, and attract a large market share. "
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44x55c | if the fbi find that hillary did do something illegal, what are possible sentences/outcomes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44x55c/eli5_if_the_fbi_find_that_hillary_did_do/ | {
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"I doubt there will be any punishments levied against her, honestly. It takes deep pockets to become president and Hilary has the deepest ones right now. ",
"If she were charged and convicted of mishandling classified information, well Petraeus got two years of probation and a $100K fine. That's the upper end the news reported crimes. As a first-time offender in a situation without an espionage or financial element, jail time seems unlikely.\n\nIt would be very bad for her political career and job prospects, but I don't see bars in her housing future."
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3yab9c | what's the science behind a broken heart and why does it physically and mentally hurt? also, is there a reason why some feel the effects way longer than others? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yab9c/eli5_whats_the_science_behind_a_broken_heart_and/ | {
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"This gets asked about a lot, you can use the search function for a more complete answer.\n\nEmotional and physical pain occur in very close regions of the brain, which is why emotional pain can \"feel\" real. \n\nSimilarly, some people have higher pain tolerance than others. \n\nAnd some people have different emotional makeups than others. There are many factors involved in getting over something like that. "
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9xbrk6 | how does the ext4 filesystem work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xbrk6/eli5_how_does_the_ext4_filesystem_work/ | {
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"Both NTFS and FAT is fixed designs which had all its featured set when they were designed and it is hard to add or remove features or change the behavior. However the EXT family of file systems were designed with extendability in mind. So the mandatory structures offer very little features in itself but most of the features is implemented as extensions. This means that if people want to add, remove or change features they can do this and still be backwards compatible with other systems that do not support the same features. This means that a lot of people have added these optional features to the file system over the years which can make it more complex but much more powerful. It also gives the administrators of the machines more flexibility in how they want the file system to be like. Different applications might require different features or parameters and with EXT this is possible to do.",
"This isn't really an ELI5 type subject. It's long and deeply technical. A less open question like \"what is an inode\" would be a better fit.\n\nExt4 is well documented on the [kernel wiki](_URL_0_)"
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2lxji2 | why is it cheaper to buy food in larger quantities? | The other day, I bought some Reese's puffs and I bought the bigger box cause it was cheaper. The 12 oz. box cost 19 cents an ounce while the 28 oz. box was 14 cents per ounce. Why is buying the larger box cheaper, in terms of cost per ounce, if it's more food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lxji2/eli5_why_is_it_cheaper_to_buy_food_in_larger/ | {
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"Basically you're paying a premium for having smaller sizes.",
"The packaging costs for small sizes to large sizes of many products are not really that much. In fact to package three to four standard size units is much more than packaging the same amount of product in one large container. ",
"One of the reasons is that it gives an incentive to spend more. If someone is going to buy 1 box of cereal, would you rather the customer to spend $3.92 or $2.28? Percentage wise, your profit might be lower than the smaller size, but you might end up making an extra 25 cents from that one sale. \n\nAnd the grocery store business is all about the extra nickels and dimes."
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8rpph6 | when you charge a device from your car, is it pretty much "free" energy? if not, how much does it cost compared to plugging it in at home? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8rpph6/eli5_when_you_charge_a_device_from_your_car_is_it/ | {
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"No. It comes from your car battery. The cost just comes from your gas bill rather than your electricity bill.\n\nIn fact, considering that cars are less efficient than giant power plants burning coal, you are spending *more*. But even so, the costs of charging your phone will be in the dollars per year, so it won't matter much.",
"When you charge your phone in a gas powered car, it uses electricity from the car’s generator or it’s battery (which is also charged by the generator). Putting load on the generator makes it resist movement a bit more which in turn means your engine has to do more work and uses slightly more gas.\n\nI don’t have numbers but since there’s several steps involved where energy is also lost as heat, it’s probably less efficient than charging from your home’s electricity and also more expensive.",
"I don't know about costs, but there's no such thing as \"free\" energy. That electric charge is coming out of the fuel in your tank via the alternator.",
"_URL_0_\n\nGood breakdown of all the numbers."
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3twct1 | why do cookie dough packages say 'do not eat raw cookie dough', but everyone does anyways with no consequences? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3twct1/eli5_why_do_cookie_dough_packages_say_do_not_eat/ | {
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"Raw cookie dough has raw eggs in it. Raw eggs may contain salmonella, so there is a chance you could get sick. ",
"For the same reason you see on a bag of peanuts. \n\nPEANUTS\nWARNING: CONTAINS PEANUTS.\n\nLiability. If they don't warn you that a bag that says peanuts on it, actually contains peanuts on it, and someone has a peanut allergy, boy is that company in trouble!",
"Cookie dough (sold specifically for making cookies) has raw eggs. Raw eggs could have salmonella. It's rare, but it happens.\n\nThe stuff you get in cookie dough ice cream most likely has pasteurized eggs in it. ",
"All packaged cookie dough is made with pasteurized eggs and is safe to eat raw unless you have a weakened immune system + hit the bad cookie dough lottery. \nIce cream cookie dough is usually not made with eggs, as eggs are just there for baking and to add a little moisture to the dough. If not baking, the egg can be substituted with water, vegetable oil or milk.\n\nHome-made cookie dough is the most dangerous to eat, because the eggs you buy at the store are not pasteurized. Still very uncommon but more likely to get you sick than frozen cookie dough. \n\nAlso the yolk of an egg is safe from salmonella, only the egg white needs to be cooked, which is why you can eat a sunny-side-up egg with raw yolk but cooked egg white. The salmonella is from the shell of the egg, which only the white touches and a barrier is formed between the white and the yolk.\n\nBut even raw eggs are pretty damned safe. Higher chance of getting injured on the way driving to the grocery store to buy eggs, then by eating the eggs raw.",
"Ok so I just did the math. \n\nAccording to the [CDC] (_URL_0_) The death rate of non-typhoidal Salmonella in the U.S. is 0.0375%.\n\n According to the [people that have the most to benefit from Salmonella infected eggs] (_URL_1_) one in 10,000 eggs has Salmonella, which is 0.01%. \n\nCombine those and your chances of dying from Salmonella from a single raw egg is 0.000375%. \n\nTo put that in perspective 0.010345% of the population dies in auto accidents every year. So you're Almost 30x as likely to die in a car crash than to die by eating a raw egg. So go ahead, eat all the cookie dough you want, you're more likely to die by getting hit by a bus on the way back from the market. "
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2gliew | do soldiers suffer from hearing damage due to the explosions and gunfire they are around constantly? | People who shoot guns as recreation often use hearing protection and ear plugs. Do soldiers get any protection for their hearing at all? Have they ever had any hearing protection in any past war? Considering the various intense battles and engagements that have gone on in WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc you would think that the returning vets would be deaf or close to it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gliew/eli5_do_soldiers_suffer_from_hearing_damage_due/ | {
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"Soldiers go through hearing tests upon joining the military, before and after deployments and before you get out. And yes, the military provides very good earplugs that are required when necessary but a lot of people don't wear them. -Afghan vet."
]
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[]
] | |
de8z3m | why can't you see through lead with xray machines | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/de8z3m/eli5_why_cant_you_see_through_lead_with_xray/ | {
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"Lead is very dense and absorbs the x-rays. Other materials that are even more dense would be even more effective, but lead has the advantage of being A] cheap, and B] not radioactive.",
"You can't see through a lot of things with x-rays. Bone is one of them, which is why x-ray machines work in the first place. The rays are harmful in large amounts though, so technicians need a good shield. Lead is a dense and cheap metal so it doesn't have to be particularly thick to stop x-rays. But being able to stop x-rays is not itself a special property."
]
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5kxez9 | how has self-driving car technology advanced so quickly? 5-10 years ago, i would have never expected some many promises about driverless cars by 2020. | These rapid advancements also make driverless tech sound much less complicated than it really is. How are there so many breakthroughs in such a short amount of time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kxez9/eli5_how_has_selfdriving_car_technology_advanced/ | {
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"Basically machine learning has fueled most of these rapid advancements. A lot of money has been funneled into A.I. / machine learning across a lot of different sectors. So now we have more people working on the problems that need to be solved. So there's a much larger pool of people to hire from. And every major car company is hiring. Once they saw some of the success Google was having they all jumped on board pretty quickly in fear of being left behind. This has also driven down costs on the hardware side. [LIDAR ](_URL_0_) is getting chepaper and easier to produce. But, I think it mostly boils down to the machine learning advancement imho. ",
"Basic Answer: The baseline technology* behind driverless cars is nothing new. What has changed are:\n\n* High performance computing\n\n* Cheaper data storage\n\nWhat this has allowed is people to effectively design algorithms that take inputs from data heavy sensors and design/develop around them. \n\n*by baseline technology I am referring to general AI algorithms + the sensor/input- > manipulation- > output- > evaluation/feedback model(s).",
"Most inventions improve on other inventions. The really complicated inventions like driverless cars need *lots* of other inventions to all be invented first before they can work. People have had the idea for driverless cars for a long time, but the other inventions either hadn't been invented yet, or they were far too expensive to be affordable. In the last few years, a lot of these other inventions finally got cheap enough for companies to decide it was a good time to invest in putting them all together.",
"As other commentors have said there are two major factors at play as the idea of a driverless car has been around for decades.\nThe first is having all of the available technology to build a system where a driverless car can function. Since modern cars are almost all electronically controlled and monitored now and computers can handle all of the data safely and quickly more automated functions exist that couldn't have worked ten years ago. Even something simple that is automated like the doors locking at a certain speed or the windshield wiper turning on by itself when it rains are all things that couldn't really work fifty years ago because the underlying technology wasn't available.\nThe second reason is while driving seems fairly natural for those that have been doing it for a while the human brain makes it possible by being able to instinctively understand things that a machine normally wouldn't. For example we know if something like a car pops up in front of us while we drive we should apply the brakes, for a machine you would normally need to have declarations on different factors and anything outside of what we 'teach' it to know it won't know. Advances in programming, algorithms and basic AI now make it possible for the system to make near 'instinctive' actions and are in most cases able to take even more variables into the equation than people can which makes driverless technology even safer in the long run."
]
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74bsb3 | what is the difference between saas and cloud computing? | Hey guys, I'm kind of stumped onto the difference between SaaS and cloud. I thought they were the same thing but some companies offer SaaS as well as Enterprise cloud services. Can sommeone please explain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74bsb3/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_saas_and/ | {
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"SaaS(Software as a Service) can apply to local software with a networked license. Many commercial software packages make you pay by the seat and there is an annual renewal, if you don't pay for the seats next year then your license is over and you can't use the software anymore. This software could be something cloud based like an email service or a business management portal, or something used locally like AutoCAD or MATLAB\n\nCloud computing can include software as a service, but something like Amazon Web Service is closer to Hardware as a service, letting you use as much or as little hardware as you need to meet your specific goals and only charging you for what you used.\n\nOne of the big selling points of Cloud Computing is no longer needing your own physical servers, you can just buy as many time slices as you need off of Amazon and they'll spin up and spin down capacity as the load changes while you would have needed to have enough hardware to support the maximum load if you were hosting locally."
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920ah1 | what does junk food actually do to our bodies that’s so bad? | For example Mc Donalds. I know can cause cardio vascular diseases, fatty liver disease and cancer, but why?
What does it actually do to my body that’s so damaging? It’s easy to say it’s bad for you but without knowing how it’s also easy to forget. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/920ah1/eli5_what_does_junk_food_actually_do_to_our/ | {
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"LOTS of different things\n\nHigh sodium foods increase blood pressure by increasing sodium content in blood, which draws more water into the blood to balance it, straining your blood vessels\n\nHigh calorie foods lead to increased body fat, which stresses joints, and the heart because it has to work harder to support a larger body\n\nHigh fat/cholesterol literally leaves deposits of fat in your arteries which can clog them\n\nThese foods also lack many nutrients you need, leading to a deficiency in vitamins and minerals",
"If you do strenuous physical exercise to nullify calorie gains form junk food, there really isn't a loss unless you neglect other nutrients and vitamins.\n\nThe reason certain foods taste good is because they provide a huge caloric boost which was necessary in tough times. Sugar is super packed with carbohydrates, which is useful. \n\nIt starts getting bad and \"junk\" when the WHOLE body system is not maintained. If you're not getting the right nutrient mix, if you're not working off the extra calories, the body will continue to store more gunk.\n\nA roofer doing heavy manual labor can get away just fine eating a bag of doritos and downing a soda if he gets a nutrient packed full meal/s at home. However, an office worker who sits all day in front of a computer will have to be super mindful of what he eats since it's super hard to out-exercise a bad diet since he's sitting all day. Even an hour a day exercise routine cannot keep up with the calorie gain from consistent junk food. \n\nSoldiers rations typically have chocolate in them. It's super calorie dense, provides necessary fat and nutrients and all that rucksacking/marching will burn enough calories to justify the calorie gain even though chocolate bars are seen as junk food.",
"The main issues are that they are high calorie, high carb, high fat, high sugar, but otherwise contain few actual nutrients. Eating excessively can result in those things primarily due to weight gain.",
"There is nothing magical about McDonald's, it is just food. However, it is extremely calorie dense food that is delicious and super cheap, and the way their menu and marketing works make it difficult to not overeat. The vast majority of people eat way too many calories in a meal at Mcdonalds. For example, the standard big mac meal is over 1000 calories, or about half of what you need for a whole day.",
"Fast food must be cheap, so ingredients are not fresh nor of any good quality. Make your own burger and you'll be fine.",
"Thread summary:\n\n* High in sugar. [Processed sugar](_URL_3_) contains an insane amount of calories per gram -- this makes it easy to eat way more calories than you need, leading to weight gain. In addition, consuming all that glucose causes high [glycemic load](_URL_7_). (By comparison, drinking a few shots of hard liquor one after the other can cause you to become stumbling drunk, while drinking a 6 pack of beer -- containing the exact same total amount of alcohol -- over the course of a day will not cause this extreme overload response.) In the same way, it matters not only how *much* glucose you take in but also how *rapidly* you take it in.\n\n* High in sodium. The kidneys have to [maintain a balance](_URL_2_) between the various electrolytes in the body and excessive sodium consumption disrupts this balance, straining the kidneys. Excessive sodium consumption can affect blood pressure, although there are many other factors that also matter to BP and sodium sometimes gets blamed too much.\n\n* Highly acidic. The processed-food diet available from fast food restaurants tends to be highly acidic. This makes the whole body acidic which, once again, strains the kidneys which are in charge of [maintaining the body's overall pH balance](_URL_1_).\n\n* Inflammatory. The sugars and trans-fats in junk food contribute to [inflammation](_URL_6_) throughout the body. Even if the inflammation is not so extreme as to be bothersome (ala arthritis), it is a load on your immune system. This will cause you to feel tired overall and will make sleep less restful.\n\n* Low in nutrition. The body's cells can synthesize many of the molecules that your body needs, including proteins, polymerases, and other nutrients. But the body can also directly harvest [nutrients](_URL_4_) from the food you consume, relieving your cells of the need to perform all the synthesis internally. A good diet should seek *nutrient-dense* foods and avoid \"empty calories\". We all enjoy eating some chocolate truffles now and then but you should think of those calories as \"squeezing out\" the nutrition from your calorie budget. If your ordinary calorie budget is around 1,800 calories per day, then consuming 1,000 calories of candy (which is not a lot of sugar, by weight) leaves just 800 calories for nutritious food. Of course, this is over-simplified but it conveys the general idea.\n\n* Cheap, low quality food. Junk foods and fast foods are produced with two primary factors in mind: convenience and price. Even flavor is not always important to junk food producers. To make food fast and cheap, junk food producers will choose the lowest quality (cheapest) food that can be sold to consumers while not alienating them from being repeat customers. In short, you get what you pay for. Consuming low-quality food not only reduces your nutrition intake, it also has a degrading effect on the body, even your DNA! By way of metaphor, imagine listening to an old-fashioned radio where you had all that static noise and you had to \"tune in\" the radio station you wanted to hear. You can think of the radio station as \"nutrition\" and the static as \"anti-nutrition\" or stale, low-quality food. The more static you put into your body, the more quickly it degrades cellular functions, including DNA transcription ([mutations accumulate in your DNA over the course of your lifetime](_URL_0_)). You want to \"tune out\" the static and \"tune in\" the radio station!\n\nWe think of our digestive system as a simple in-out function ... food goes in, excrement comes out, and the body retains some portion for nutrition. In reality, your body is made up of trillions of cells and each cell is its own little \"eating machine\" -- your [metabolic system](_URL_5_) is far more complex than the digestive system. While no ordinary person can keep all that information in their head, the point is to understand that your body is a delicate machine -- in fact, trillions of delicate machines all held together. If you happened to own a Ferrari, you wouldn't pour sludge into the gas tank and drive it through the mud... so don't do that to the poor cells that make up your body. They're more finely tuned than any Ferrari!",
"This is a good question that those IIFYM should ask. You see when you eat stuff like McDonald’s, you are just having something that is composed of macronutrients, these include your protein, carbs and fats. Now the issue is that these foods lack in micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. You need these things to be able to digest and utilize your macronutrients, in addition to other things such as bone health, immune health, skin and more and more. So your body is more than likely going to take those macronutrients and it won’t have the resources to make muscle and it will make fat instead. In addition to this, the lack of micronutrients will make you more liable for diseases and whatnot."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_%28naturally_occurring%29",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid%E2%80%93base_homeostasis",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_balance",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Health_effects",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... | |
5gwjnu | the conflict between the government of columbia and the farc rebels. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gwjnu/eli5_the_conflict_between_the_government_of/ | {
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"I'm not as well versed in Columbia as I am in Taiwan, but I think I can give a brief primer. Though take anything with some grains of salt. \n\n[The Colombian Conflict](_URL_1_) started in the 1960's but its roots go back to the 40's.\n\nIn the 40's there was a [popular politician](_URL_7_) who was assassinated. This sparked a \"low intensity civil war\" in the countryside between left wing and right wing paramilitaries fighting on the behalf of the two major political parties (the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party). This conflict, called [\"The Violence\"](_URL_10_) cost almost 250,000 people their lives in the ten years it waged. The liberals were largely backed by rural appeasements who wanted more land and other reforms in the countryside. These groups managed to [control decent sized parts of the country for the war.](_URL_2_) It ended with a general amnesty for all fighters after [this dude](_URL_9_) launched a coup and said that everyone fighting should stop fighting since the fighting was killing too many people. Most of the groups disarmed but several left wing fighters were cheesed off that none of their complaints were being addressed. [This Guy] (_URL_13_) got so mad he went back to those parts of the country the rebels had controlled and got a bunch of friends and decided to form an army to overthrow the government and get the people to try the hot new ideology called communism. They did this after the government started attacking a bunch of villages that might be hiding communists. \n\nThe 60's, when FARC really got its start was a fertile breeding ground for people being mad at the government since the government was being ruled at a time when [both parties secretly/not so secretly agreed to swap who was in charge every 4 years so they could keep all the power.](_URL_3_) There were also several other left wing rebel groups that sprung up at this time. Some fought in the countryside, some fought in the cities. By the end of the 70's though the government destroyed some of these groups and others went into periods of not doing much stuff. \n\n[Then in the 80's the plot of season 1 of Narcos happened](_URL_14_). Various rebel groups got tons of cash from drug lords and from selling drugs and renewed some of their conflict. Before the palace siege the government had managed to bring several to the negotiating table, after the attack though, the government cut contact. FARC had had some successes and had [even started their own political party](_URL_12_, and had a ceasefire with the government. In 1987 FARC broke the ceasefire when they attacked a military unit. \n\nIn the 1990's, thousands of members of the FARCs political party were murdered. Survivors fled back to the jungles and the group decided to renew its efforts at the war. This was largely funded through drug trafficking and kidnappings. In the late 90's they also threatened, extorted or killed town councilors mayors and other government officials. They also launched several successful attacks on some government bases, killing or capturing dozens of soldiers and humiliating the government.\n\nIn the 2000's the war got bloody as the government rammped up attacks on the left wing rebels. Meanwhile [right-wing paramilitaries](_URL_15_) made a resurgence and began killing thousands of people they thought were rebels or sympathized with rebels. The paramilitaries were eventually curtailed somewhat, and FARC attacks went up and down depending on the year.\n\nIn 2012, the government and FARC began [negotiations for peace](_URL_0_). Contentious issues are things like, what should happen to the former FARC fighters? should they be criminally liable for their actions in the war? Can they participate in politics? How many reforms will the government commit to? These still need to be addressed.\n\nHow it can end? Who knows, there are a large numbers of factions and opinion in Columbia. Many people are pissed at FARC (seeing as they are the largest rebel group, they are seen as the leaders) for the decades of war, the kidnappings, the murders and a number of other atrocities committed. The recent peace deal that was rejected would have given FARC automatic seats in Congress, which annoyed many.\n\nThis is jsut a brief overview of Columbia, it doesn't even begin to touch on other aspects of this war and conflict with FARC and other groups. Some other things of interest:\n\n[FARC basically rules](_URL_4_) [entire parts of the country](_URL_6_)\n\nThe people in general are pissed at a lot of the left and right wing paramilitaries for the horrors of what happened [a scandal in the late 2000's saw a number of politicians indited for working with some of the right wing forces](_URL_11_). \n\n[Decades of US involvement in Columbia](_URL_5_)\n\n[Pablo Escobar and his cartel played a huge role in the war in the 80's and 90's](_URL_8_)"
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_conflict",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquetalia_Republic",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_\\(Colombia\\)",
"https://www.wola.org/files/images/1402grps.png",
"https://en.wi... | ||
84ljxj | what is confirmation bias and selection bias? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84ljxj/eli5_what_is_confirmation_bias_and_selection_bias/ | {
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"Confirmation bias is when you pay attention to information that supports your existing views and ignore information that doesn't. \n\nJust about everyone does this to some degree. Most common example is a person with left wing views exclusively watching/reading left wing news sources.",
"Confirmation bias means that you pay more attention to things that you confirm what you already believe.\n\nFor example an optimist will notice and remember many instances of people being nice to him and this affirms his worldview that somehow most people are nice and fair. Some people might also be rude and treat him badly, but he ignores them quickly.\nA pessimist can experience the same interactions but will focus on the rude people. It confirms him that everybody is evil and out to get him. \n\nThe optimist thinks he is lucky because he found five dollars on the road but forgets that he stepped in dogshit. The pessimist considers himself unlucky because he stepped in dogshit and forgets the five dollars he found.\n\nSelection bias is making general assumptions that are not true for the general population because the people you selected to look at were special.\nExample: You could say that going to the hospital is extremely dangerous because ~~most people die at hospitals~~ most people who die die at hospitals. This assumption is of course false. People die at hospitals because sick and injured people go the hospital.\nFor your *observation* \"People die at the hospital\" you only **selected** a small special group, namely people who were already so sick or injured that they went to the hospital. This is selection bias.\n\nWhile the hospital example is easy, there are many examples that are way more common and actually believed by people: I can't count how many times I went to business talks where some successfull entrepreneur told us that the most important thing to become rich is to take risks. However the problem is that we only heard those for whom taking risks worked. Those who didn't become rich by taking the same risks were not invited to speak. So just because the guy became rich by taking risks doesn't mean that **we** would become rich by taking risks. This form of selection bias is called survivorship bias, by the way.\n\nAnother crass example of survivorship/selection bias is from WW2. The US military wanted to reinforce its bombers so that more bombers survive their bombing raids. So they looked at their bombers and thought \"There are parts where our planes have many bullet holes, we must reinforce those parts.\" However, one smart guy intervened and said \"Guys, the planes who were shot there **returned**. We should reinforce the parts where **none** of the returning planes where shot because it means that *the planes that were shot there didn't return*!\" Classic selection bias: By looking at those planes that returned, you don't immediately know what makes a plane come actually return."
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ynzny | the federal reserve's dual mandate | Please explain what this means. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ynzny/eli5_the_federal_reserves_dual_mandate/ | {
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"This basically means that the fed has the job (mandate) of keeping employment high (making sure everyone has a job) *as well as* keeping inflation low (making sure prices don't rise quickly). Its referred to as a dual mandate because of having responsibilty over the two aspects. Other central banks might have one job or the other.",
"The Federal Reserve is supposed to be an independent and apolitical system with the job to implement monetary policy such that we maintain full employment and stable prices. The general goals for these are unemployment ~5% and inflation ~3%. You may think that the goal should be be both at 0%, but that would be bad for reasons I won't get into. The way The Fed influences these numbers through monetary policy is by adjusting the money supply and interest rate at which they loan money to banks - also a topic for another discussion.\n\nThese two general goals (the Dual Mandate) are often at ends with each other. Having more money cheaply available would make it easier to hire people (lowers unemployment), but will result in increasing prices (higher inflation). The vise-versa also holds true.\n\nAs a side note, this conventional method does no always work out. For example, the current interest rate is essentially zero, yet unemployment remains too high and inflation a bit low. So what is The Fed to do?"
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ay3jlh | . how do sports betting likes work? arent there two different betting lines? points and over/under? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ay3jlh/eli5_how_do_sports_betting_likes_work_arent_there/ | {
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"It's called **sides** and **totals**.\n\nWhen you bet a **side**, you pick who you think will \"cover\". (Cover is sort of like winning the game except that the underdog gets a bonus.) For example, suppose the Patriots are a good team and the Browns are a bad team. If the Patriots are playing against the Browns, you might see that the Patriots are 21 point favorites. This is written as \"Patriots -21\" and pronounced \"Patriots, minus twenty one\".\n\nIf you bet the on the Patriots, then the -21 implies that you agree to subtract 21 points from the Patriots score. If the real life final score ends up being Patriots 27, Browns 7 then you would lose the bet. That's because the 27 minus 21 is less than 7.\n\nIf you bet on the Browns, you would get +21. You agree to add 21 points to the Browns score. If the real life final score is Patriots 17, Browns 0 then you would win the bet.\n\nWhen you bet a **total**, you guess whether the total score would be above or under a certain number. For example, the bookmaker might declare the \"total\" of the Patriots vs Browns game to be 44. You can guess either Over or Under that number.\n\nIf the final score is Patriots 22, Browns 21 then people who picked Over would lose. Bettors who chose Under would win."
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4hugcc | why is sleep so comfortable shortly upon waking(especially when you have work/school/etc)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hugcc/eli5_why_is_sleep_so_comfortable_shortly_upon/ | {
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"When you wake up in the morning, you get something called sleep inertia. It's the groggyness you feel up to two hours (usually half an hour) after you have woken up. \n\nIt's a \"false\" kind of sleepy, which makes you want to stay in bed. This combined with how comfortable your warm, soft bed is, makes it so darn hard to get up. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nedit: a word.",
"An object in motion tends to stay in motion, while an object at rest tends to stay at rest. ",
"Well, in one situation you're trying to fall asleep. In the other you're trying to wake up. And nobody wants to go to work or school.",
"That's because of the obligation factor, the 'I have to' is the killer. Think about it, same time of the morning, same cozy bed, but if this time it's YOU who decides to go out for a walk that would not be a problem.",
"I know what you're talking about. Sleeping in on the weekends/days off never ever feels as good as clinging to an extra ten minutes of zzz's on a workday. The one time the universe really lets you enjoy this kind of sleeping in is inclement weather (snow days, rained out events). That beautiful moment when you wake up for 10-20 minutes to find you can unexpectedly crawl right back to bed.\n",
"When you dont move for a long time your muscles start to relax. Thats why in the morning every position feels comfortable and when you are trying to get to sleep you should focus on not moving for the same muscle relaxations. ",
"Philosophically speaking: it's because your consciousness, from the day before, died, and a new you (that happens to have access to the other person's memories) has been reborn in the morning. You are fresh, new, and actually need to orient yourself in order to even remember the stressful burdens which plagued the last consciousness, weighing it down. The sudden urge to escape back into the mindless void, is only natural. "
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"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8919196",
"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1999.00128.x/abstract"
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30onyz | why do hard boiled eggs give you gas but eggs prepared in other ways ie: scrambled do not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30onyz/eli5why_do_hard_boiled_eggs_give_you_gas_but_eggs/ | {
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"You have a false premise. The thing that gives most people gas from eggs are the sulfur compounds found in them (that is also what gives the rotten eggs their smell when the spoil). Those compounds are present no matter the preparation (though there are far fewer if you only use egg whites). \n\nYou may personally get less gas from other preparations, but that is not a statistical trend. ",
"Probably because you can eat more in one sitting. "
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7xivcj | what would happen if our blood was always oxygenated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xivcj/eli5_what_would_happen_if_our_blood_was_always/ | {
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"The blood is a way to transport oxygen from the lungs to other part of the body. The efficient way is to remove as much as possible of the oxygen in other parts of the body. If the blood that returned to the heart would have 50% of the oxygen you would need to double the blood flow to transport the same amount.\n\n\nIf you would what the blood max saturated the whole time you would not be able to transport any oxygen to the rest of the body. Then you could not us it in the metabolism and you would have no energy available and you would die. This would be the same as if your hart stopped to beat.",
"They'd be pretty much the same downsides as stopping breathing. The oxygenated blood is carrying oxygen from your lungs to other parts of your body, and the deoxygenated blood is returning to your lungs to pick up more oxygen. If your blood stayed oxygenated then the oxygen would just be taking a trip around your body and coming back to the lungs where it started, which wouldn't be much help to the rest of your body.",
"You would eventually die. Your blood serves to transport oxygen to the organs in your body and to transport carbon dioxide away from the organs. In your lungs, carbon dioxide is released and new oxygen is taken from the air. Since the same part of your blood, hemoglobin, is responsible for carrying both substances, it wouldn't be able to transport carbon dioxide if it were permanently (through some voodoo magic I assume), oxygenated. \n\nThe buildup of carbon dioxide would end up being fatal.\n\nN.B. there's more to it than just hemoglobin but for an ELI5, it should suffice.",
"That would be like if you got on to a plane. Flew to your destination then the plane landed. And then immediately took off and returned home without anyone getting off. \n\nOr if a semi truck dropping off food at a grocery store went to the grocery store. And then left without unloading any of the food. \n\nWhich is useless. "
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3fm4wj | if i point a laser pointer at the moon and move my hand around very fast, what would happen to the speed of the dot on the moon's surface? | Pretending the beam doesn't defocus on its way: Imagine I move my hand in such a way that the dot moves over an angle as big as the angle of the moon in the sky, and let's say it's the moon itself I point at, so that in the time I move my hand the dot moves over the moon's surface once.
The angular speed of the beam over the moon's surface is the same as the angular speed of my hand, but its linear speed is much higher. Now let's pretend I point at a celestial body either far away enough or big enough for the dot to hypothetically reach light speed when it travels over its surface... I know this can't happen. And now I'm wondering what would happen to the dot instead. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fm4wj/eli5_if_i_point_a_laser_pointer_at_the_moon_and/ | {
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"laser isnt one single light, the laser is same as any other light its photons movingindividualy just with laser they are focused and streamlined at single point insted of spreading, so nothing would happen, since it isnt one single thing but tons of individual photons.",
"Vsauce on youtube did a video on this called 'the speed of dark' ,it's really cool you should check it out",
" > to hypothetically reach light speed when it travels over its surface... I know this can't happen\n\nActually it can.\n\nRemember, the dot is not a single object moving. It's a pattern of impacts by photons, each of which moves at the speed of light. \n\n",
"It theoretically could move faster than light in a sense. But it is not considered actual ftl because no information is transmitted. "
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1er38f | who is abraham? why is he linked up to so many religions? did he actually live for a very long time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1er38f/eli5_who_is_abraham_why_is_he_linked_up_to_so/ | {
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"[Abraham](_URL_0_) is a man from the stories of the Old testament. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are called Abrahamic religions because they all use those stories. (Christianity and Islam are based on Judiasm)\n\nOne of the most famous stories is of god commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac to show devotion. (stopping the ritual at the last moment)\n\nAbraham was also the person whom god made a covenant with, promising the holy land to the Jews.\n\nAbraham likely did not exist. However if he did, would certainly have not lived as long as some of those stories claim.\n\nEdit: spelling",
"Abraham is a major figure in the Old Testament, which is the holy scripture for Jewish people. He established a convenant with God and God gave him and his descendants Israel, established the practice of circumcision, etc. Abraham is pretty much considered the \"founder\" of the Jewish religion. He has important stories in the Bible, such as his faith being tested by God telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac (God stopped him at the last minute) and with the story of Sodom of Gomorrah (two sinful cities that were destroyed), after Abraham plead with God to spare the cities if he could find ten righteous people there. Abraham is considered a prophet, the first Israelite and essentially the most faithful guy ever.\n\nHe is linked up to Christianity and Islam as well. Both religions came out of Judaism, and therefore believe in most of the same stories. Muslims believe in all the prophets and such mentioned in the Old Testament like Moses, Noah, Abraham, etc, and they even believe in Jesus too, if not in the same way.\n\n > Did he actually live for a very long time?\n\nNo man has ever lived 175 years. It would be *incredibly* unlikely that someone did thousands of years before modern medicine was invented.\n\nIt is quite possible (probable?) that Abraham had never existed. "
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euphwx | why is it so rare for a woman to be charged as a sex offender even if there’s more than enough proof? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/euphwx/eli5_why_is_it_so_rare_for_a_woman_to_be_charged/ | {
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"BeCaUsE a WOmaN cAN'T rAPe a MaN! /s\n\n\nSeriously if the victim is a man, then they'd be much more hesitant to come forward for fear of ridicule.\n\n\"Oh you claim to have been \"raped\" by that 5'3\" 115 lb woman, hehheh, sure thing buddy, we'll get right on that.\""
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1irpb1 | how do people go 'traveling around the world' out of high school (with basically no money), or out of college (with huge debt)? | Did a *quick* search and couldn't see anything similar... sorry if it's been asked before.
*****
I've got quite a sizable stack of savings and it still seems highly un-feasible... How do so many 'kids' manage to do it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1irpb1/eli5_how_do_people_go_traveling_around_the_world/ | {
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"Parents paying, and/or savings and travel on the cheap . You'd be surprised what you can do on the cheap if you're willing to stay in hostels and eat street food (and shit liquid as often as not). \n",
"A lot of people on those sorts of trips are staying in very cheap accommodation and doing activities/work/volunteering most of the time. \n\nA few of my friends are going travelling for a couple of months during a gap year, and they expect (though whether it becomes a reality is yet to be seen) the stuff they carry in their bags to be more expensive than the rest of the trip combined, aside from the initial return plane tickets to Thailand which their parents are paying for. \n\nedit;dat grammor, ",
"I always ask myself this. But I think it's studying abroad, take out loans, parents pay, they have rich friends, where they go is cheap and third world, they work when they get there/volunteer. Personally as much as I want to travel right now because I'm young and in college I just don't know if I could do it these conditions. I wouldn't want to be eating shitty cheap food all the time and I want to stay at moderately nice places especially if I'm going to a dangerous third world country. Yeah you're there but is it worth it if you're not able to do fun things because you don't have money? I just rather travel with money so get more out of it and stay somewhere I feel comfortable and safe. Also would rather travel on my own terms rather than study abroad even though it's a good idea, I just think it's too late for me I'm almost graduating. Like I said though I rather use the money to travel with people of my choosing, place of my choosing with my own agenda rather than pay to go to school somewhere else. I rather just not study while I'm traveling haha. ",
"Well, the way I've been able to travel is to live a spartan existence for long enough to save a couple of thousand dollars. In fact, I'm aiming to take a couple month long backpacking trip next summer--so I just bought a van and will be living in my van for 10 months in order to save up for my trip.",
"There are several programs that allow you to find housing around the world for very little.\n\n_URL_0_ here you stay on farms doing a little work while you stay there\n\n_URL_1_ Here you can see people who have volunteered their couches up for a temporary place for weary travelers to stay\n\nThese are 2 off the top of my head, results may vary depending who you stay with",
"I just graduated high school and am leaving for 3 months in Eastern Europe to backpack. I've payed for everything, leaving me with almost no travel money. It's easy to do if you give yourself no other choice but to leave!",
"Hitch hike, cycle, walk.\n\n_URL_2_\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_\n\nYou can live and travel once at your destination for incredibly cheap if you understand that some corners have to be drastically cut in your creature comforts.\n",
"Cheap hostels, couchsurfing, living frugally. I had a four week vacation in Europe for ~$2700 including all costs.",
"i recently lived in spain for a month after my senior year of highschool a lot of it is graduation money and being willing to volunteer during the day with programs such as VOLUNS but get ready to eat shit food and take ryanair flights definitely doable though\n"
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"www.helpx.net"
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1eqnfk | can anyone explain to me the appeal of loud mufflers on little, shitty cars? | I hate those things. I don't get it. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eqnfk/can_anyone_explain_to_me_the_appeal_of_loud/ | {
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"Remember when you dug into the cabinets in the kitchen, got out the pots and pans and beat them loudly together? Didn't you feel a rush of joy at controlling the noise, at the power from that control? The loud muffler is just a bigger noise, so a bigger audience.",
"They make shitty slow cars sound like loud fast ones. It appeals to teenagers with shitty cars.",
"Lots of engines are restricted by rules called \"emissions regulations\".\nBecause we don't want cars producing too much smoke or making too much noise, the engine isn't actually putting out as much power as it could.\n\nA larger and noisier exhaust is one way to remove a restriction from a car like this and make it go a tiny, little bit faster.\n\n\n[... but gains are negligible compared with cost, and people who fit sports exhausts to rust-buckets are either champions of free-market capitalism and support local after-market auto businesses, or are colossal attention-seeking faggots.]",
"My exhaust had snapped from the backbox and it caused it to sound loud like one of those. Being a 19 year old in a 1.0 Vauxhall Corsa it was an embarrassing time. ",
"Its like when you used to attach baseball/football cards to the back of your bike so that they would rub on the spokes and make it sound like a motorbike or something better than it is.",
"When saying \"appeal\" I think OP is referring to the kids with civics and fartcans, not a damaged pipe or muffler.\n\nAs to why people do it. \"HEY LOOK AT ME!\" is the reason why."
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1vixxo | why do i sometimes run out of breath and get tired while walking slowly up stairs, but i feel fine after running at a good pace for 10km? | I don't smoke nor do I have any health issues. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vixxo/eli5_why_do_i_sometimes_run_out_of_breath_and_get/ | {
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"walking up stairs your body is quickly thrown out of homeostasis (simply put, a steady state where it is supplying organs and muscles with the blood it needs). Because you're only thrown out of homeostasis for a few seconds, the body starts to adapt, raising blood pressure and opening more blood vessels - which the action of your moving legs helps drive the blood around the body. Your body is still attempting to adapt and then you stop, but your blood vessels are still wide open and are now struggling to push blood back to the brain and lungs.\n\nIn a 10k run your body reaches a homeostatic state while running, so you aren't as tired after your run. But after a run you keep moving...If you were to stop dead after a hard 10k though, you would likely faint for the exact same reason. "
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3vkoyc | why when cooking something on aluminium foil in the oven you can pull it out with your bare hands, but when using a baking pan you would badly burn your hands if you tried the same thing. | Just made jalapeno poppers on aluminium foil, as opposed to a baking tray. Every time aluminium foil is used in the oven, I can grab the foil, pull it out with bare hands, and I don't get burned. Why is this different than a baking tray? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vkoyc/eli5_why_when_cooking_something_on_aluminium_foil/ | {
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"A tray has more mass so it carries more heat energy (it also took longer to heat) to deliver to your skin.\n\nYou could compare it to a car and a house, a car will warm up quickly in the sun but won't keep you warm in a blizzard. A house on the other hand will keep you cool during the sunny afternoon and keeps out the cold much longer than the car as well.",
"Because the foil is extremely thin, it doesn't hold a lot of heat. Also, because metals conduct heat very well they get rid of heat quickly too. The foil is really hot, but when you open the oven and cool kitchen air hits the foil, it cools the foil very fast. The baking tray is so much thicker that it has a lot more heat to get rid of, so doesn't cool fast enough for you to touch."
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2060nu | how is it that the u.s. never seems to have enough money to adequately address its own issues, but whenever an international issue arises, the u.s. is able to immediately offer huge sums of money and significant resources to a foreign country? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2060nu/eli5_how_is_it_that_the_us_never_seems_to_have/ | {
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"Because the US government is not subject to fiscal constraints. That is, they always \"have enough money\"; the only question is whether or not they want to spend that money.",
"Because they usually only give a few hundred million or a few billion dollars to a foreign nation. Internal US finances are in the hundred of billions and trillions. Foreign aid accounts of about or less than 1% of the US budget. ",
"Bear in mind that \"huge amounts of money\" can exist on entirely different scales. A lifetime of paychecks for me is pocket change compared to a day of military service in Iraq, which in turn is chicken feed compared to the national debt.",
"Political decisions mostly relies on two aspects: how clear/concentrated are the benefits and how clear/concentrated are the costs. \n\nIn your example, most international subsidies / foreign aid donations are one-off expenditures in lump sum; or a short burst of donations (think disaster-support, 'peace-bribes' running over 1-3 years etc. Oftentimes it is petty money for the U.S. Economy and the goal is fairly clear. \n\nHowever, most domestic costs (what you described as \"own issues\") are a continuous stream of costs, running endlessly - (think lower taxes, healthcare, pensions, improved school funding, army-budgets) meaning, benefits are often fluffy or way into the future; and costs are often high and here-and-now - oftentimes the beneficiaries (think healthcare/retirement/tax rebates) are very reluctant to let go of their temporary benefits, making these policies very difficult to unmake/roll-back (they are 'sticky' or 'entrenched policies'). Most state budget issues are (its easier to raise budget for the army than to cut it, it's easier to increase pensions than to lower them, cut taxes than raise them etc). \n\nIn other words: It is a lot easier to get political approval of one-off funding for something easily explained and comparatively small in size (Let's give South Sudan $25 mio to support schools), than something continuous, difficult to sell and comparatively large in size (lets raise pension benefits for blue collar workers or lower taxes on people making less than $125,000/year). "
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9vad5s | why is it that directly after i do cardio my abdominal/waist area appears to be less toned but then goes back to normal after a few hours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vad5s/eli5_why_is_it_that_directly_after_i_do_cardio_my/ | {
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"Just a wild guess but since cardio excercise requires a lot of breathing and the diaphragm that controls your lungs is located right above your gut, it could be that that the intense pumping action is pushing your gut down and outtwards.\n\nAlso, depending on your activity, you may not be using your abs as much to maintain an upright posture so they could be more relaxed.",
"A lot of people are saying bloating. But what about cardio causes the bloating is what I’m asking I guess. ",
"After exercise, the increased blood flow and chemicals made cause muscles to swell up, which will make them look bigger, but less sharp and defined."
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5zmb5p | imaginary time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zmb5p/eli5_imaginary_time/ | {
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"[Wikipedia sums it up pretty well](_URL_0_):\n\n > If we imagine \"regular time\" as a horizontal line running between \"past\" in one direction and \"future\" in the other, then imaginary time would run perpendicular to this line as the imaginary numbers run perpendicular to the real numbers in the complex plane. Imaginary time is not imaginary in the sense that it is unreal or made-up — it simply runs in a direction different from the type of time we experience. In essence, imaginary time is a way of looking at the time dimension as if it were a dimension of space: you can move forward and backward along imaginary time, just like you can move right and left in space.\n > \n > The concept is useful in cosmology because it can help to smooth out gravitational singularities in models of the universe, where known physical laws do not apply. The Big Bang, for example, appears as a singularity in \"regular time.\" But, when visualized with imaginary time, the singularity is removed and the Big Bang functions like any other point in spacetime.\n\nWe don't have evidence of its existence. Today, it is still just an idea that helps deal with certain mathematical problems we encounter in physics. Whether it's the correct solution to those problems or not is not yet known."
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1qbxij | if heterochromia is just having different colored eyes, why does the nih list it as a "rare disease"? | Does having heterochromia put you at risk for diseases or something? I just don't see how such a benign thing can be classified as a "rare disease." I understand the rare part, but my issue is with the disease. What exactly is bad about this?
Here is the entry on it from their website (_URL_0_). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qbxij/eli5_if_heterochromia_is_just_having_different/ | {
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"A \"disease\" is any abnormal condition. Heterochromia might be benign, but it's still out of the norm which is why it's called a \"disease\"."
]
} | [] | [
"http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/gard/8590/heterochromia-iridis/resources/1"
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[]
] | |
6holgy | why is so much porn "step-father" or "step-brother" based in the last few years? | I've noticed the trend for a while now. It seemed to start a lot more in books, especially cheap ebooks on Amazon, and then it seemed to take over a lot of porn. Dad/step daughter or Stepbrother/sister. What caused that trend? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6holgy/eli5_why_is_so_much_porn_stepfather_or/ | {
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"I may be a little off since I'm at work and I don't want to google information on incest porn.\n\nAs far as I know, it's a way of skirting laws. There are some laws that prohibit \"simulated\" incest porn, but this doesn't apply if they don't pretend to be blood related. Another reason you're seeing it is they are taking after a trend of actual incest porn trying to \"hide\" as \"fake\" incest porn. Makers of actual incest porn would try to label their videos as \"so-and-so does such-as-such to her NOT brother\" or \"her STEP brother\" to make it seem legitimate, while implying that it's still incest. Like if you saw a sign in a head shop saying 'for \"TABACCO\" use only' with pot leaves drawn on it. So simulated incest porn started to copy this trend, naming their videos in a similar fashion.\n\nBut let's pretend I don't know anything about this."
]
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f4e7k0 | how do my car tires gain air while i drive? | I turn on car. Indicator light tells me I need air in tires (26psi). I drive for 30 minutes. Indicator light is now off and I'm at 30psi. How have my tires gained air without me putting air in them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4e7k0/eli5_how_do_my_car_tires_gain_air_while_i_drive/ | {
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"The friction from driving on the road has heated your tires. The heat in turn has made the air inside of the expand, increasing the pressure inside the tire.",
"The tires heat up, causing the air to expand and thus increase the pressure.\n\nThis is why you always check and adjust your tire pressure when the tires are 'cold'.",
"They have not gained air; they've gained air pressure. The higher temp caused by the friction of driving causes the increase in pressure. A properly inflated tire should gain 10% pressure; a tire that has too little pressure will start low and gain a lot from the extra friction of the sidewall of the tire flexing more....this is a bad thing. Set your tires to the pressure suggested by the sticker inside the driver's door of the vehicle when the tires are cold."
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31bayy | why has it become such a sin to wear socks with sandal? | It all seems to me like it's a big ass circlejerk. But I would like to add that I have never worn sandals with socks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31bayy/eli5_why_has_it_become_such_a_sin_to_wear_socks/ | {
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"If its hot enough that you're wearing open shoes, then why the hell are you wearing foot warmers? That's what I get from it anyway.",
"It's the equivalent of wearing a fanny pack or having a mullet. To each his own.",
"Because people like to be judgmental and feel superior to others. That is why they decide what other people should or should not do when it does not impact them. Whether it be socks and sandals, or what music is good, or any other fad or fashion."
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5u48s3 | how do business that hire illegals not get in trouble? how do they expense the labor costs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u48s3/eli5_how_do_business_that_hire_illegals_not_get/ | {
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"A lot of illegals have phony SSNs. The IRS doesn't (or at least didn't) care, so long as they were getting their money. Nobody was checking.",
"* illegal aliens are using fraudulent documents\n* they pay them cash under the table (not hard if you deal with a lot of cash, like a restaurant or a bar)\n* they don't hire the illegal aliens, they hire a contract company who provides them...which goes the another contractor, which goes through another contractor (common with agriculture)"
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1c1ypw | how the virgin mary is related to holy trinity? | I have heard that the Virgin Mary is somehow part of the Holy Trinity and without her the Holy Trinity cannot be understood.
The Fleur-de-lis (_URL_0_) is symbol used in heraldry. The three leaves stand for Holy Trinity and the base stands for the Virgin. The Holy Trinity cannot exist without its base, i.e. the Virgin.
Can somebody explain the idea behind this?
Note: I was brought up in an Eastern Orthodox family. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1c1ypw/eli5_how_the_virgin_mary_is_related_to_holy/ | {
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"Mary is not an actual part of the Holy Trinity. Trinity starts with tri- as in triple. The Holy Trinity is the three persons that make God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There are no other parts to the trinity.\n\nThe link between Mary and the Holy Trinity is that she gave birth to Jesus (= the Son in the trinity) who was concieved (but not in a sexual way) by the Holy Ghost."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis"
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[]
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5szkz0 | how do scientists fire just a single elementary particle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5szkz0/eli5_how_do_scientists_fire_just_a_single/ | {
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"Usually they do not. For example the Large Hadron Collider emits protons in bunches of 100 billion. [source.](_URL_0_)",
"They don't, but they do clever things like fire a very small stream of them (lets say photons, particles of light) and then put a bunch of \"filters\" between the beam and the target detector. In many cases there are filters which only let light with a particular polarization through, and if you work it correctly according to the power of your beam, you can work out a system that lets a SINGLE photon hit your detector each time you \"fire\" it. \n\nThis is how you can see shot noise build up to form a full image, or watch individual photons form, over time, interference patterns on a plate. \n"
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"https://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/collisions.htm"
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1z7rpl | what was the legal significance of the recent gun law victory in california? how will that change things in the rest of the country? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z7rpl/eli5_what_was_the_legal_significance_of_the/ | {
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"The law in question required (otherwise qualified) citizens to show \"good cause\" to obtain a concealed carry permit. The law left interpretation of the \"good cause\" provision up to the government. (For the law students here, that should be a big red flag.) San Diego was refusing to accept applications which listead \"self-defense\" and \"personal protection\" as \"good cause.\" (Incidentally, \"open carry\" is illegal in California for practically everyone but law enforcement and military.)\n\nThe 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the Federal, not state, court of appeal for California) ruled 2-1 San Diego's permitting requirements were unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The Court reasoned that, in conjunction with the state's open-carry ban, San Diego effectively prohbited law abiding citizens from bearing firearms in self-defense. (Note: California's other concealed carry requirements, such as a showing of \"good moral standing\" and the passage of concealed carry courses are presumably fine.)\n\nThis is a fairly significant ruling from what is historically a left-leaning jurisdiction. Implicit in the 9th Circuit's reasoning is that the 2nd Amendment right to *bear* arms is literally just that—a right to carry a firearm on your person. While many if not most gun cases before this focused on *ownership,* the court here is saying that the 2nd Amendment doesn't just protect gun *ownership,* but also the possession of firearms in public spaces.\n\nKeep in mind the court doesn't seem to be saying that *concealed* carry is a constitutional right, but there must be *some* kind of right to carry a gun, if the 2nd Amendment is to have any meaning. So according to the 9th Circuit, every state should give its citizens a right to carry openly or concealed (or both).\n\nThe state has filed for an *en banc* review to have the case heard by all nine justices (as opposed to the usual three-judge panel). However that shakes out, I'll guarantee that the losing party will appeal to SCOTUS. For what it's worth, I expect SCOTUS to take that appeal, and rule consistently with the 3-judge panel here.\n\nEdit: Never thought I'd be guilded for droning about Second Amendment cases. I guess law school is paying off after all!"
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5npv7d | what causes prolonged drowsiness/grogginess several hours after waking up? | For the most part I get between 7-8 hours of sleep a day and about an hour after waking and moving around I am awake and good to go. However, a few times a month I will wake up and for upwards of 4 or 5 hours after waking, my eyes are heavy, mind foggy, constant yawning and needing to stretch like Im just getting out of bed.
Why and how does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5npv7d/eli5_what_causes_prolonged_drowsinessgrogginess/ | {
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"I'm pretty sure this has to do with quality of sleep not quantity. Sleeping for 8 hours but constantly waking up is no different than 5 or 6 hours of *good* sleep. It also depends on your circadian rhythm - which can change due to environmental factors/life changes and hormones. With that said I think if you're used to getting up at 11am with 8 hours of sleep, but you're forced to get up at 8am with 8 hours of sleep you may still feel groggy. This all theory though and I don't really have any supporting evidence to back it up.",
"Just to clear up some myths going around here: \n\n > The interesting thing is that the brain doesn't record events that happen when you wake up if you were only awake for less than 3 minutes.\n\nThis is kind of ridiculous--your body doesn't randomly shut down whenever it wants. How much you remember during sleep entirely depends on the stage of sleep you are in. You don't remember much in N3 or REM sleep. You remember quite a bit in N1 sleep.\n\n > Not being hydrated\n\nYou don't become catastrophically dehydrated overnight. Humans aren't delicate creatures who wilt overnight--we're *made* to sleep. Excessive confusion as a result of dehydration is a medical emergency.\n\nWhat you are describing is called sleep inertia. There are lots of possibilities:\n\n- Incomplete sleep--waking in the middle of a sleep cycle rather than at the end of a sleep cycle\n- Hormones--if you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, for example, you still have a lot of melatonin in your system\n- Depression\n- Alcohol use\n- Sleeping medications and other medications\n- Irregular sleep schedule--going to sleep and waking up at very different times like if you did shift work\n- Sleep disruptions and poor sleep quality overall\n- A condition or disorder like sleep apnea"
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5n9u1y | how does a song get transported across an aux cable from a phone and get played in the car? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n9u1y/eli5how_does_a_song_get_transported_across_an_aux/ | {
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"You're phone or other music player stores the song as bits. When you play a song it converts the bits into electrical pulses. These pulses are sent through the aux cable and to the speaker. At the speaker the pulse causes movement (via electromagnets) in the speakers pushing air to make the soundwaves you hear"
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4zkwup | why do fruits/vegetables change color as they ripen? | For example, bananas changer from green to yellow and tomatoes change from green to red (usually). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zkwup/eli5_why_do_fruitsvegetables_change_color_as_they/ | {
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"The fruits that didn't do this failed to pass on their genes as the seeds were not eaten by animals and dispersed elsewhere. This provides variation and replication that natural selection needs to work on. \n\nHow this happens? As it ripens, chlorophyll is broken down by enzymes to other pigment molecules. These molecules reflect a different part of the spectrum of the sun's light. So you get green, red, orange etc. "
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qdue6 | why when i stare into a mirror i eventually don't recognize my own face. | I was tipped off by a friend that if you look into a mirror in a dimly lit room and just gaze at yourself you after a bit (couple minutes) sort of disassociate and don't recognize your own face. I don't really know how to describe it better than that but it's a bizarre sensation. What psychologically is going on here? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qdue6/eli5_why_when_i_stare_into_a_mirror_i_eventually/ | {
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"Its called Jamis-vu (a less famous variant of deja-vu). To put it simply, the parts of your brain responsible for storing the information of what you look like are repeatedly activated over and over again when you look at yourself. This numbs that part of your brain, and it eventually temporarily loses its ability to recognize your face fully. Same idea as saying a word over and over, and it seeming to become a bunch of meaningless sounds.\n[Vsauce did a great video on the subject.](_URL_0_)\n"
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSf8i8bHIns"
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5e0ayf | why sine matches up with cosecant and cosine matches up with secant? | So Sine matches up with Cosecant and Cosine matches up with Secant, but couldn't they just have named them differently so Sine matched with Secant? Or is there a deeper reason they're named like this?
Edit: I made this question a little too ambiguous, it's more of a question about their names rather than the math behind it. What I mean by "matches up": sin(x) and csc(x) are reciprocals of each other, and they share points at pi/2, 3pi/2 and so on. Same for cos(x) and sec(x) respectively. But is there a reason why they named it as such? My question is, could they have named Secant Cosecant with it having the same values as it did before? If not, what is the reason they are named like this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e0ayf/eli5_why_sine_matches_up_with_cosecant_and_cosine/ | {
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"\"Matches up with\" is entirely ambiguous. Sine matches up with secant, if you want it to. There is more than one way to form pairs (or triples)."
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57jfay | what are the technical details of the hybrid cloud? | I have been a DBA for almost 20 years and I work for a hosting company that had started supporting the cloud. Basically the cloud offerings are VMs. They get deployed fast with software. User picks what they want on a web page. Pays. The software copies a VM that meets their needs and changrs some settings( such as memory, cpu, storage) are changed in the VM. VMs will have licensed software such as oracle, mysql dba, app servers, etc... They get what they paid for. All the servers are connected to SANs for storage( mainframe that just managers hard drives) .
For more advanced setups, the technical staff gets involved to customize stuff.
I have seen references to google and Amazons "hybrid cloud". All I see on the web is dummed down bullshit that doesnt tell me anything useful. There is no real technical specification for cloud. Most companies use virtual machines. Can someone provide details on what is meant by "hybrid" that is technically detailed?
This forum isnt for really technical posts. To keep the mods from deleting this please keep the first level response kind of readable to non techs. They can always followup wirh questions. Ill reply with more technical questions if I have them.
Looking for technical responses. Not the marketing garbage with silly acronyms that are all over the web. Its seriously difficult to find anything useful through the bullshit.
Any techs on here work on hybrid clouds?
Mods: this is a little more detailed than we normally get, but I asked that they not go too far down in the weeds in the top thread. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57jfay/eli5_what_are_the_technical_details_of_the_hybrid/ | {
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"At its most basic level, a hybrid cloud infrastructure is a private cloud service and a public cloud service that cooperate.\n\nThe private cloud service runs some kind of cloud management software based on CMIS and intended for hybrid cloud infrastructure. Meaning: it's not just your cloud connected to a public cloud... they have services between them that allow them to cooperate in specific ways. (Offloading of storage, balance loading of resources, etc.)\n\nIn order to be more specific about the details of that interoperability you would have to dig into the documentation for those hybrid cloud enabling services... NemakiWare, Joyent SmartDataCenter, etc."
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3sqwpz | if everything is eventually made of quarks, how do we end up with different objects? | Like, I just don't understand the concept. If I have a pile of dirt, no matter how I organize the dirt, I still just have dirt. So why are quarks any different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sqwpz/eli5_if_everything_is_eventually_made_of_quarks/ | {
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"Well yeah, but look at what's in your dirt...if it's [mostly large silicate grains](_URL_1_) you get one kind of dirt, if you have a lot of water and decaying organic matter, you get [another kind of dirt](_URL_2_), and if you have really fine grains and a lot of metal oxides you get [yet another kind of dirt](_URL_0_).\n\nLikewise, all atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If you have just one proton, you have hydrogen. If you have 79 protons (and some more neutrons) you have gold.\n\nSo you have different [kinds of quarks](_URL_3_). Exactly which ones you put together determines what particle the quarks are making. For example, if you put together two \"up\" quarks (which have an electric charge of +2/3) and a \"down\" quark (charge of -1/3) you get a positively charged proton (because 2/3 + 2/3 - 1/3 = +4/3 - 1/3 = +3/3 = +1). Two downs and an up make a neutron (-1/3 + -1/3 + 2/3 = 0 charge).",
"There are six different types of quark, but to answer your question we only need to know about two - the up quark and the down quark.\n\nIf you put 2 up quarks and 1 down quark together, you get a proton.\n\nIf you put 2 down quarks and 1 up quark together, you get a neutron.\n\nNeutrons and Protons group together to form the nucleus of atoms. \n\nThe number of protons in an atom's nucleus determine what sort of chemical element it is on the periodic table. Just 1 proton and you've got Hydrogen, 2 and you've got Helium, 8 and you've got Oxygen, 79 and you've got Gold, and so on and so forth. 94 of these elements exist naturally (we've made more in labs but they fizzle out of existence real quick).\n\nSo now you've got 94 elements to play with you can start grouping *those* together to get different molecules... put two hydrogens with an oxygen and you've got water.\n\nNow you've got molecules, you can start grouping *those* together to get different *compounds* such as the Amino Acids which make up the proteins which make up you.\n\nHopefully you can see how the amount of different things you can make is getting exponentially bigger which each level up.\n\nTo apply your dirt analogy it's more like, if you put enough dirt together and bake it in an oven, you get a brick, if you put enough bricks together you get a building, if you put enough buildings together you get a city, and if you put enough cities together you get a civilization. "
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85oykz | how come there are different ways to defend yourself depending on the type of bear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85oykz/eli5_how_come_there_are_different_ways_to_defend/ | {
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"I think it’s mostly the same except for Pandas and Koalas. Koalas you just punt and Pandas you act like you want to reproduce with them."
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2mn2yi | when you see an image of a galaxy in space, densely packed in a spiral disc, what are all the other stars in the frame a part of? are they part of the galaxy you're taking the photo from, or do 'loner' stars float through space not a part of any galaxy? | When you see an image of a galaxy in space, densely packed in a spiral disc, what are all the other stars in the frame a part of? Are they part of the galaxy you're taking the photo from, or do 'loner' stars float through space not a part of any galaxy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mn2yi/eli5when_you_see_an_image_of_a_galaxy_in_space/ | {
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"text": [
"They're part of the galaxy you're taking the photo from, which in most cases is the Milky Way galaxy.",
"Some of them are stars which are part of the galaxy you are taking the picture from, and some of then are entire other galaxies that are so far away they show up as dots and so look like stars."
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2ngl3m | why does a facial hair, that is "pulled", "plucked" or "tweezed" out, grow back? | Why does a facial hair, that is "Pulled", "plucked" or "Tweezed" out, grow back? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ngl3m/eli5_why_does_a_facial_hair_that_is_pulled/ | {
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"text": [
"The follicle in the skin grows the hair. If you pull out the hair, the follicle grows another one.\n\nIt's not like pulling out a plant; there is no seed or root. The hair itself is not really even alive; just the follicle is. \n\nEDIT: If you pull out a hair by the root, the white bulb you see is made up of follicle cells, but the hair-producing part of the follicle is (usually) not damaged. "
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c309cq | how does black tea help a sunburn? | A quick google search says without much detail that it is due to the tannic acid in tea, but I do not understand how that reacts with a sunburn to cause relief. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c309cq/eli5_how_does_black_tea_help_a_sunburn/ | {
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"There are compounds that help to pull the heat out of your skin, and compounds that help prevent and repair skin damage. This works for any kind of burn, not just sunburns.",
"Worse burns, and frequently with sunburns, the area gives off heat for a good while. With average kitchen burns, I agree the skin feels back to normal pretty quickly, but it’s still giving off at least some warmth. I think the teabags work in two steps. The bag itself should be cool, so it’s helping to transfer the heat out that way, and the heat goes deeper into your skin than you can feel by touch. The second part is the theobromine, which is a vasodilator and anti-histamine, and will both help the area cool down from the extra resources your body is sending to the wound."
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15ryxl | why movie review websites, like rottentomatoes and imdb, have vastly different scores/ratings for movies when 10's of thousands of people vote? as sample size gets bigger shouldn't they be close to each other? | Every time I go to look up reviews on a movie I got to IMDB and RottenTomatoes. Just last night we looked up reviews for "Looper" and RottenTomatoes out of 104,336 people it got an average of 4.1/5 or 87%. I wen't to IMDB and out of 128,000 it got an average of 7.8/10. What's the cause for such a big difference?
Thanks in advance for the help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15ryxl/why_movie_review_websites_like_rottentomatoes_and/ | {
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"4.1/5 is 82%, so it's not all that far off from the 78% of IMDB. The 87% figure is the percentage that gave it a positive rating.",
"Different demographics. RottenTomatoes' users are likely a bit snootier and place a greater emphasis on critics' opinions. IMDB is more of a catchall.",
"I think the answer actually has to do with how the rating systems work on both sites. IMDB takes the average score of all the votes from 1-10. This is a rating of just how good the movie was. On Rottentomatoes however, critics only have 2 options. Fresh or rotten. RT tabulates the percent of reviews considered fresh(watchable). This is more of a rating on how watchable a movie is. Therefor if 10 people gave the movie a 70% then on IMDB the score would be a 7/10 and on RT the score would be 100%.",
"4.1/5 = 8.2/10 That's not a big difference to the 7.8 taken from the IMDB.\n\nFurthermore 100,000 is not that big of a sample when taken from the entire population that potentially watches movies. The two groups of 100,000 could very well have completely different backgrounds. "
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34c5rt | do textbooks change that much to justify buying a new book each year? | Why do classes make it mandatory to buy the newest book? Is there really that much of a difference in the newer version that allows them to do this? Can't it be regulated by somebody? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34c5rt/eli5_do_textbooks_change_that_much_to_justify/ | {
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"No. Most of the time, publishers just shuffle a couple of chapters around and correct a few spelling/factual errors then call it a new version.",
"Who buys books? \nSteal them online",
"Colleges will often have a contract with a textbook publisher. Textbook publisher mandates that all classes must require the newest edition of the textbook, and get a deal on them and some supplemental teaching material in return. Theoretically it could be regulated, but seeing as going to any given college is totally optional, you can't really make the case that people are being forced to buy the books.\n\nIn my experience, though, there are a number of subjects, like physics for instance, that at an undergrad level haven't changed in the past 100 years, so most professors don't care if you bring an older edition of the book. However, one time this topic came out and someone brought up that topics like contemporary politics/global policy does change often enough that textbooks get outdated quickly.",
"There are a number of different incentives. The basic issue is that over time, as textbooks have gotten more expensive for various reasons, it has become routine for students to take very good care of their textbooks in order to resell them to another student in the next year, rather than keeping them as a reference. The situation we think of as *normal* is:\n\n(1) Publishing a huge number of books in one run is cheaper per book. (2) Publishing multiple editions of the same book \"breaks\" compatibility between the various editions, which makes the book less valuable to people who want to have what other people have. (3) Making changes to improve (and then proofread and copy-edit) a book is expensive.\n\nSo as a result, \"greedy\" publishers would, under these three conditions, refuse to make needed improvements to their books more often than, say, once every two decades -- because, rather than spend money on improving the books, they would rather do a few huge, cheap print runs of the same old textbook and give people the reliability of a stable reference.\n\nBut if you reversed any one of those conditions, you can see how the equation might change! For example, if it were cheaper to print a new run of books every year? Or someone else was paying them money to improve their textbooks, instead of vice versa? In this case printing and improving stayed the same, but the value of compatibility changed: if people aren't buying it new anyway, then rather than lowering the value of the book, breaking compatibility *increases demand*. So at that point it starts to make sense to revise textbooks much more frequently than before.\n\nI'll add an additional point - It's typical at American universities that tuition is more than $20k for 8 classes; plus another solid $20k in living expenses, so on average your total costs per class are about $5k. Now add to that 40 hours of classtime and 120 hours of studying: even if you are going to value your time at the pitiful rate of $10/hr, that time is worth around $1,600, agreed?\n\nSo if you (or your parents, or the government, or donors who have given money to establish scholarships) are paying to take these courses you must think they're worth somewhere around $6,600, probably more. And then professors are shocked to hear students complain about the prices of books, textbooks, printing, and so on. From the point of view of the professor, if the best textbook costs $200 more than the cheapest textbook, that shouldn't *really* be a problem, because since it costs so much *to take the course at all*, it makes sense to pay about 3% of that to make sure the course is *really good*. The attitude of students is a little like a guy who buys a brand new car, and then decides that since it was so expensive he's going to save money by skipping some of the oil changes. -- I understand that in many cases students need to pay for their own books out of pocket, but have someone else pay all their other expenses. But you still probably agree that your education is worth what it costs to provide, don't you? And if it is worth that, isn't a much smaller sum worth it if it makes even a small difference in the quality of the course?"
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boxpeb | when do we feel like electric shocked or being electrocuted when we hit our elbow? | Edit: Why | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/boxpeb/eli5_when_do_we_feel_like_electric_shocked_or/ | {
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"On your elbow there's a nerve called the \"Nervus ulnaris\" and it lies just below your skin and a little bit of fat. When you hit the nerve directly with something or hit the area it produces an overreaction that shoot to your hand and causes the tingly feeling that you know. Another spot is the area around you knee that the doctor hit with a small hammer to check for reflex activity.",
"The reason you feel electric shock when you touch electricity is that it is exciting your nerves very quickly.\n\nYou can also excite nerves by compressing them. If you compress a large portion of a nerve very suddenly, it has the same effect upon how it works as if you electrified it.\n\nThe \"funny bone\" of your elbow is a large nerve that is near the surface of your body. There isn't a lot of muscle over top of it. That makes it easy to hit, which compresses it, which excites it, which tingles."
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6jhhv3 | how do comic book story arcs work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jhhv3/eli5_how_do_comic_book_story_arcs_work/ | {
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" > Is every story arc in a different universe?\n\nno. Arcs can be like different seasons of a TV show - same characters, but a focus on a different theme or plot. An arc can be contained within a single series, or can be a storyline that crosses multiple series. \n\nIf a storyline spans multiple titles, there are likely multiple writers working together. There will often be one editor in charge of the story to help maintain continuity, and there will likely be some conference between the writers and editors at the beginning of the project to map out how the story will flow between titles."
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4p4mkr | why are lettuce and spinach perishable items when they have spent half thier life outside a fridge anyway? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p4mkr/eli5_why_are_lettuce_and_spinach_perishable_items/ | {
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"Because the half of their life out of a fridge was spent with their roots in the ground continuously getting nutrients to maintain and protech their cellular structure. The instant they're removed from that source they start degrading and refrigeration slows the process down."
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2rheyv | why is the "actual" download speed on my computer much different from my "speedtest" speed? does it get divided up depending on the connected devices or is it the same speed for all devices? | For example, if I download a file, it will reach about 2 MBPS throughout the download. But if I do a speed test, it will reach upwards of 50 MBPS. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rheyv/eli5_why_is_the_actual_download_speed_on_my/ | {
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"If you're getting those speeds from _URL_0_, but not other websites, there's a couple things you should know.\n\nFirst, Speedtest uses the closest and fastest Ookla provider in order to minimize the distance the packets have to travel. Usually you never have to leave you local service provider or internet branch.\n\nSecond, Ookla speed test providers are typically on very fast connections themselves, so there is little to no server-side latency.\n\nLastly, in the same way that you have bandwidth limitations, so to the providers you are using for websites. Yes, even Google has bandwidth. These web services providers will limit the speeds allocated to single connections in order to provide the best overall experience to all of their customers and users.",
"Just double check that you're comparing the same thing before doing something like complaining to your ISP about lack of speed. \n\nA _URL_0_ speed will be in megaBITS per second (Mb/s), but a download from say your web browser will be in megaBYTES per second (MB/s). \n\nEven accounting for 8 bits = 1 byte there's some difference in the speeds you're seeing. Maybe check with your ISP as to exactly what connection speed you're paying for. The Speedtest speed will be pretty much the best case scenario connecting to a server near you, real world speeds you'll see when downloading a large file from somewhere not near you won't be near that maximum."
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8q9nrq | what is actually happening when you panic and your "heart stops" for a half second and get that pain in your chest and why does it happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8q9nrq/eli5_what_is_actually_happening_when_you_panic/ | {
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"Your heart seems to stop but its actually just changing how fast its beating. This feels like an abrupt pause if it happens fast enough. This happens many times a day, you just don't notice it most of the time.\n\nThe pain that comes is a result of the fear caused by noticing and misinterpreting the change in heart rate. You involuntarily contract the muscles in your upper body, and involuntarily inhale at the same time. Since you're trying to do two things at the same time that are impossible to do at the same time, the result is discomfort.",
"Or you’re having a PVC (pre ventricular contraction) where the ventricles in your heart contract sooner than they should. Results often in decreased perfusion to your body for that single beat or short run of PVCs ( < 3). It can feel like your heart is fluttering. This happens randomly in people, because of electrolyte imbalances, or even electrical issues with the heart. Generally is not a problem clinically though."
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bg1odo | how do movie makers such as marvel studios keep their upcoming movies a secret from us? | Thousands of people are working for Marvel Studios. You mean to tell me that these employees can keep secrets to their friends? And if they spill the beans. What is their punishment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bg1odo/eli5_how_do_movie_makers_such_as_marvel_studios/ | {
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"Marvel has an army of lawyers and probably a stack of NDA's that takes employees three days to sign it all. Anything and everything handed out should have an employee's name plastered all over it. Punishment is heavy fines and/or possibly jailtime."
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16bxvt | why don't doctors offices and hospitals list prices like a restaurant? | Just broke my first bone. Thanks for any replies. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16bxvt/eli5_why_dont_doctors_offices_and_hospitals_list/ | {
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"Because they don't offer specific plates like a restaurant. The cost of dealing with a broken bone is not even close to constant; it depends on which bone it is, *how* the bone is broken, and a million other things about your personal health.",
"because it's all free. oh wait...",
"Also depends on your health insurance [speaking about the US], what type you have, what kind of agreements your insurance provider has with their network, prevailing costs in your area, etc. \n\nNo broken bones in my life, thankfully.",
"Because health care was never meant to be paid by people who worry about the cost."
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429fld | why is the windows task manager able to close programs almost instantly while right clicking to close a program on taskbar doesn't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/429fld/eli5why_is_the_windows_task_manager_able_to_close/ | {
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"When you right-click on the taskbar and choose the \"close\" option, Windows sends a signal to the program asking it to close itself. If the program isn't responding, then it won't respond to that request, either.\n\nWhen you kill a program from the task manager, Windows forcibly ends the process without asking the program to close itself. You normally don't want to do this, because it prevents the program from running any \"housekeeping\" tasks before it closes (like saving temporary data to the hard drive), but it's useful when the program won't respond to user input anymore.",
"To simplify it greatly, when you click the X in the title bar of an application or use the context menu's close button, you're asking the program nicely if it'd pack its bags and exit on its own terms. However, the task manager is like a bouncer that will kick your trouble-making program out forcefully by telling the OS to kill the program's process without any care in the world for what it might have been doing at the time.",
"As an analogy. Clicking x or close is like telling you kid to go to their bedroom to sleep. \n\nNow this kid normally turns off the lights and passes out. But today their stuck in their room, glued to their phone on Reddit. \n\nTask manager close is like you taking their phone, tucking them in, and giving them some Nyquil to pass out. \n\nFinding the process under \"Processes\" and ending that is like smothering them with a pillow until they pass out",
"X or close at taskbar = sir, kindly please leave.\n\nEnd process at task manager = get the fuck out! \n\nedit: a word. ",
"In most programs, there is code for when the x is clicked to exit.\nIn Python, \n\n exit()\n\nis used. However, if the program is not responding, it is not possible for it to exit via the X as it isn't aware that you have even clicked it.\n\nTask Manager can force close programs because it does it via the system, not the program.\n\n\nHope this helped :)",
"ELI5 version: closing it by clicking the X on the window or on the task bar is gives the application time to clean up. It's like telling a child that it's time to turn off their console/portable/TV, but allowing them the time to save their progress or finish an episode. Ending the process from the task manager just kills the running program. You usually only do this when asking nicely doesn't work, much like a parent might reach over and turn off the power on the TV or game console if the deadline is reached and the child is still playing or watching.",
"When you click on the 'x' it's like when your daddy asks you nicely to pick up up your toys, brush your teeth, put on your jammies, and get into bed so I can read you a bedtime story before you fall asleep. When you are a good lil girl and do it all nicely when you're told, it goes pretty quickly. When your a bad lil girl it takes a really, really long time (and can feel like forever to daddy). \n\nPrograms sometimes don't listen to their parents like good boys and girls and go to bed like they're supposed to. That's when their parents take their toys away, the teeth brushing might get skipped (or forceful and messy), nobody gets story time, and your put into bed whether you want to or not. It's not fun. It's not good for the program. This is what happens when task manager forcefully closes a program.\n\n----\ntoys: recourses like stuff stored in memory - the OS just yanks them away instead of the application giving them up freely\n\nteeth brushing: saving state to files, in some cases corrupting files\n\nstory time: if it's an app that uses the network, no network communication to let the remote service know that the program is ending (steam, spotify, etc.)\n\n----\nFun fact - when you click 'x' and a program is hung the OS actually knows that your program isn't responding to your request. But it waits to see if it'll recover. If you get insistent and click the 'x' a lot, or start clicking on the window after clicking the 'x' the OS eventually will take the hint that your want to close the program and start doing it for you, but not before it kicks off a bunch of diagnostics to send data about the app back to the app developer so they can fix the problem that caused the unresponsive program. Killing an app through task manager bypasses all of these sometimes slow steps which is another reason it's faster.\n\nsource: used to work on this crap at one of those big OS companies.\n",
"followup question why, when i click DO NOT TRY AND RESOLVE etc, i have to click cancel on the followup before it actually closes?",
"I figure this would be a nice time to share this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nOne of the best little apps I've downloaded.\n\nWhen you press Alt-F4, it's like pressing the close button (asking it nicely to close on its own terms). Pressing *ctrl+alt*-F4 with this app kills the active process immediately.\n\nI use this shit all the fucking time. Especially when closing somethign like Battlefield, which takes an eternity to close... no more! Makes rage quits 10,000x more gratifying.",
"Same reason unplugging your computer turns it off faster than clicking \"shut down\".\n\nYou're literally killing it instead of asking it nicely to finish up whatever it needs to do and shut off.",
"Closing a program in Windows via the X button at the top-right or the task-bar close option or Alt-F4 sends a message to the program saying \"WM_DESTROY\" and then the program can do whatever it needs to do to clean up when being closed (saving a file to disk, closing a network connection, etc).\n\nIf the program is frozen, then that WM_DESTROY message may never get received by it (in Windows a program has to ask for these messages, if it's stuck in a loop or waiting for something to happen then it never gets to the point where it asks for the messages).\n\nIn the task manager, it doesn't send that command. It removes that program entirely from the operating system's message manager, so it no-longer receives any messages, then it removes the program from executable memory.\n\nThis has problems where it can leave network connections open, loses saved files, and in some cases keep a DLL in memory despite it not being used.",
"X and right-click close are like taking the day after pill too late, end task/end process is like getting an abortion.",
"Clicking the red X or right clicking on the taskbar is like allowing someone to commit suicide on their terms. Closing from the task manager is like blowing their brains out before they get the chance to.\n\nEDIT: Soprano here. This is suitable for my 5 year old.",
"Eli5\n\nThere are things in a program called signals. Now I know the Linux version but Windows is similar just different terminology. \n\nTERM means a program gets a message \"please stop working and exit\" the program gets to execute code. If the program is stuck due to some bad coding there's nothing it can do. Thus is made for a graceful exit like please finish writing to disk and close. \n\nKILL is a forced stop. The program never receives a signal and the operating system just stops the execution by taking it off the queue to go to the processor. It releases all associated memory. The program effectively disappears and doesn't even have a chance to finish up.\n\nThe X is the TERM the task manager is the KILL",
"Imagine non-responding program being person who lost consciousness. \nWhen you click close on taskbar you are ordering this person:\n\n-- Hey dud, get out!\n\nBut when you call Task Manager dude, you are telling him:\n\n-- Get this guy to the ~~cemetry~~ hospital",
"I like to go to Windows command line and execute TASKKILL. It's sort of like playing a DOS version of Assassin's Creed.",
"Because task manager doesn't fuck around. Task manager don't play no games. Task manager is tired of your shit and it's done.",
"ELI5: \n\nRight clicking to close says: \"Mind stopping?\"\n\nEnding processes in task mgr says: \"You're going to stop now\".\n\nOne asks a question, the other gives a command.",
"To simplify it, but perhaps not too much...\n\nImagine all your programs as people in a house, during a party\n\nClicking the X on the window is like asking them to leave, but they can refuse. Usually this is for good reason, you wouldnt want to accidentally erase that word document you were typing, would you?\n\nHowever, if the app is stuck/frozen, it won't even answer the question (hence, \"Not Responding\"). Sometimes they respond, and they'll close almost immediately if everything is saved properly. Other times, it might refuse, often if you might need to save something, and it'll ask you.\n\n Imagine this as the program asking the house owner, \"why should I leave? I have this this and this and I'm enjoying the party\", instead of him leaving the house immediately. \n\nTask manager is an extreme scenario of this. When you end a task in task manager, its killing the process. Literally, that's the technical term for it.\n\nInstead of asking it to leave, it instead just kills the person, except this is in a digital context, so its (usually) okay with the system because its self-defence. That's why you have to go through multiple steps to forcefully close an app this way, its only necessary in an emergency. Just don't kill that powerpoint youve been working so hard on, and you'll be fine.",
"Not an explanation but a tip: I use [SuperF4](_URL_0_) for that. When i play Cities Skylines for instance, it always stops responding when closing normally. So instead of going to the taskmanager to close it, i simply press CTRL ALT F4, kills any program you want to leave instantly. ",
"Alternate explanation with scenarios. \n\n\n**X button (normal)**\n\nUser: *clicks X*\n\nOS: Hey task, could you close yourself up?\n\nTask: sure! Everything is saved, and I'm ready to close\n\n**X button (save dialogue upon attempted close)**\n\nUser: *clicks X*\n\nOS: Hey task, could you close yourself up?\n\nTask: Wait, I have unsaved documents! User, would you like to save this document. \n\nUser: OK\n\nTask: *saves*, okay I have now saved the document. I'm all finished OS, peace out. \n\nOS: bye\n\n**X button (not Responding)**\n\nUser: *clicks X*\n\nOS: Hey task, could you close yourself up?\n\n*a brief moment passes*\n\nOS: Taaaaask?\n\n*another brief moment passes*\n\nOS: Damn it, he's not responding to me. Hey user, this task is not responding, should I check Microsoft to see why he won't work, just kill him myself, or keep waiting for him?\n\nUser: I think I'll choose to keep waiting [for this scenario]\n\n**Forceful kill (task manager, killing not responding task, etc)**\n\nUser: *triggers killing of task*\n\nOS: *fires loaded shotgun at Task*\n\nTask: *dies as soon as shot by OS*\n\nOS: Here you go user, I took care of him for you. You're welcome.",
"When you close a program through normal means, either through the program or from explorers \"close\" button, it's like turning off your computer with the shut down button.\n\nIf you go to task manager it's the software equivalent of a hard boot, you're messily stopping the program with few to no regards to process or protocol!",
"The task manager is a more senior than your close command from the task bar. It's sort of like a hard shutdown, like pulling the plug on your computer rather than properly shutting it down. ",
"Hitting the X is like asking a rowdy drunk to leave a bar, it probably won't work.\n\nThe task manager is a bouncer and forces it out",
"This is probably well-answered by now, but here's a good, actually ELI5 answer:\n\nThink of a program running like it's a plant. The process of a plant blooming (or a program opening), is that it starts as a seed, grows up, opens up, and is finally its full plant form. When you close a program, you're going backwards in that progress, almost like watching a plant bloom in reverse. \n\nSo when you close a program normally, that process goes fine, but sometimes it gets stuck. When this happens, ending a process in Task Manager is like pulling a plant up from its roots instead of waiting for it to un-grow.\n\nYou're going straight to the source and killing it, instead of waiting for the natural process to occur.",
"Clicking the X or right click-close is asking the program nicely to close. It can then ask you if you want to save anything you haven't saved or anything like that.\n\nUsing the task manager, Windows forces the process to stop immediately and you'll lose any unsaved work."
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2drcq6 | why is it that in older houses the light switch to the bathroom is in the hallway? | It's like this is my house, my aunt's house and my grandmother's house. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2drcq6/eli5_why_is_it_that_in_older_houses_the_light/ | {
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"Wet hands?\n\nI was told this, and never questioned it. \n\nInteresting question",
"Wet hands, but more specifically because now we have GFI recepticles that negate the danger of water+electricity by tripping a breaker before you dead yourself. ",
"So you can turn the light on *before* you walk into a room?\n\nSo you can turn the light OFF on your little brother while he's taking a dump -- and there's not Thing One he can do about it!!\n"
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6ei5wc | why do regular citizens vote for the president, even though our vote doesn't elect the president? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ei5wc/eli5_why_do_regular_citizens_vote_for_the/ | {
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"The president isn't elected in a direct popular vote, but the popular vote in each state determines how many electoral votes each candidate gets.\n\nOriginally this was designed so that the states would decide the president, but the states all decided to allocate their electors by popular vote. It's been that way since the 1830s.",
"Well, one could say that we indirectly elect the president. Citizens' votes determine which candidate a state will vote for overall. Whichever candidate gets the more of the citizens' votes in a given state will \"win\" that state, meaning that candidate will get that state's votes in the electoral college. The electoral college then meets to vote for the president, but it is now assumed that electors in the electoral college will vote in accordance with the will of the people in the state they represent. \nFor example, say the Democratic candidate for president wins 60% of the votes in Minnesota. Minnesota's representatives in the electoral college would then cast their votes for the democratic candidate. When the electoral college was set up, electors were there to make sure the citizens didn't elect an unqualified ideologue. Now, many states have laws that impose fines on electors that do not vote for the candidate that won the majority of votes in the state.\n\nIn many cases, the electoral college results will line up with the results of the popular vote, so for a long time we didn't really even think about the electoral college except as this weird extra thing we did in our elections that generally didn't do much. But, because each state has a different number of votes in the electoral college -- determined by the number of representatives a state sends to congress (in Minnesota's case, two senators and eight representatives total 10 congressional representatives, and thus 10 electoral college votes) -- it is possible to win certain strategic states with a good number of electoral college votes and lose other, more populous states, but still win the 270 electoral college votes required to become president. This could mean losing states like California but winning Wisconsin; more people might have voted in California, but by winning Wisconsin and a combination of other states, a candidate can get enough electoral college votes without needing to win the popular vote."
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49apw3 | if we looked at something 14 billion light years away, something that existed during the time of the big bang, what would we see? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49apw3/eli5_if_we_looked_at_something_14_billion_light/ | {
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"We already do that! It's called the cosmic background radiation. It is closer to 13 billion years old though. You can find pictures of what cosmic background radiation looks like when shifted into the range of normal color vision. It's mostly uniform heat. ",
"Also, because the universe is expanding, something that's 14 billion light years away is actually much younger. The observable universe is about 90 billion light years across."
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czbeu7 | why do airlines utilize linear inches (the sum of the length, width, and height) to set the size limits of checked luggage as opposed to other methods like volume, or maximum dimensions (like they do for your carry on)? is there a mathematical or automation benefit to the 62 linear in limit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/czbeu7/eli5_why_do_airlines_utilize_linear_inches_the/ | {
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"Because it's a lot easier for a passenger to take a couple straight measurements and add them than to accurately calculate volume. There are fewer size constraints for checked luggage than in an overhead bin, so they don't need to be as precise with maximum dimensions, and the linear inch can give a reasonable enough volume measurement. It's about minimizing hiccups/surprises at the airport, which can cause delays and other problems for both the airline and the passenger.",
"Because for a given \"linear inches\" there is a maximum volume. Yet, for a given volume, there is no maximum linear inches.\n\nTell me your maximum volume. I'll get that much gold and hammer it into an *absurdly* big square of leaf, and command you to stow it on your little jet.",
"People are terrible at judging volume.\nMax size for a carry on bag is 9 in x 14 in x 22 in. \nIf you said 2700 cubic inches or 12 gallons people wouldn't really know what that means.\n\n\nAlso volume itself means nothing. A 2700 cubic inch volume could be a 14 in x 14 in x 14 in cube or it could be a 337 inch long 2x4."
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27ndhx | what is "patent protection" for drug companies and how does it work? how was it established? | I was just talking to someone about a drug that is about to lose "patent protection". I thought the concept was really interesting and googling kind of confuses me, it begins to explain copyright and trademark logos and not how this concept directly relates to drug companies.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27ndhx/eli5what_is_patent_protection_for_drug_companies/ | {
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"For drug companies in particular...\n\nThey dump an intergalactic amount of money into R & D, to invent new drugs. This money comes straight out of their pockets. As a for-profit company, BigPharmaBoy Inc wants more profit than cost... and R & D is a huge cost. So... they want their New Drug X patented... so they can get as much of their money back in selling New Drug X.\n\nEventually, when New Drug X looses its patent protection, Generic Drug Maker Co and everyone else on Main St can now make New Drug X and sell it at a lower cost. Hooray for you when you're sick, right? Right. Bad for BigPharmaBoy Inc because they can't make as much money on selling New Drug X? Yes.\n\nAnd the cycle for inventing a new drug starts again."
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3anaxt | - why, in the wild, does rigor mortis set in an animal carcass in just a few hours, but the meat from my butcher stays 'fresh' and limp for days? | Is it the 'hormones'? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3anaxt/eli5_why_in_the_wild_does_rigor_mortis_set_in_an/ | {
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"Rigor mortis is not permanent. \n\nDepending on several things it does goes away & the body relaxes after a few days (typically 72 hours or so).",
"Rigor mortis isn't permanent. The muscles will eventually relax out of rigor. So the answer to your question is that they already went through rigor.",
"If it's a good butcher, the carcass will have aged for a week or so before it's cut and put out for you to buy, so it's already been through rigor and back. It you kill a chicken and try to cook and eat it while in that state, it's often tough as shoe leather. ",
"Rigor mortis is caused by muscle cells being unable to relax. To \"relax\" a muscle cell requires ATP, and when you die ATP is not produced anymore and rigor sets in when ATP runs out. Now that is essentially a permanent situation and only ends once the cells begin to break down essentially rot. \n\nSo if you were to actually get truly fresh meat it would still be in rigor. But most meat is actually aged. All beef you get is aged, unless you slaughter your own cows, it makes it more tender and taste better. And many fish you get from the store aren't exactly fresh too, some is actually frozen and thawed to be sold; this kills any potential parasites in it. \n\nAnd even if your meat isn't aged or frozen think about how long it takes to get from farm to table. It has to be slaughtered, cleaned, butchered, transported to the distributor and then to your store, and then sit waiting for you to pick it up. That's more well than 24 hours. Also if your meat is super fresh and still in rigor when it gets to the butcher, the act of breaking it down into steaks will destroy the muscle as an organ and it will also oxidize the cells and speed up the breaking down process relaxing the cells.\n\ntl:dr its not hormones, what we consider fresh meat isn't fresh. And most likely the processing the meat went through made it better tasting and safer to eat.",
"Rigor mortis is a muscle contraction. To relax the muscle you need energy too, and the muscles store energy in the form of glycogen. After death and rigor mortis the body start using the stored glycogen to relax the muscles and the meat gets soft again."
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32nnyu | the likelihood of getting oral herpes from sharing a straw, razor, or cigarette with someone. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32nnyu/eli5_the_likelihood_of_getting_oral_herpes_from/ | {
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"0 Unless they rub whatever object aggressively over their cold sore, and then immediately hand it to you and you aggressively rub it over your lips. "
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7l8llf | what would happen(aside from massive power losses) if we removed all dams? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7l8llf/eli5_what_would_happenaside_from_massive_power/ | {
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"Dams are holding back massive bodies of water that form from blocking a river. There would be massive floods and then a new river path would form."
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2mjkxb | how much power does putin effectively have? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mjkxb/eli5_how_much_power_does_putin_effectively_have/ | {
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"Russia has a long history of dictatorships, from Catherine the Great to the Czars to Stalin and so forth, to mention a few of the more well known. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were a bit different. However, Putin is simply pretty much a dictator. When you can change the constitution so you can be President once again, that is pretty powerful, and pretty effective power. The people and the military let it happen, so it would appear he and his minions have things well in hand. Of course he in cahoots with the very rich, just like POTUS. So he is an open door for them to become biilionaires, and in turn he is able to fulfill every sociopathic desire he so chooses.\n\nSo, in short, I would say he can pretty much continue doing just what he likes, even though he will have to play nicer with the world, unlike some of his more badass predecessors."
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2ic0bd | how does saudi customs deal with muslims coming from countries that disagree with saudi arabia/are banned from travel? | For example, I was born in Israel before my family moved back to Canada. As a result, my Canadian passport identifies that I was born in Israel. As a result, I can't travel to Saudi Arabia, which bans anyone with an Israeli stamp or evidence of ties with Israel into the country.
Now suppose I converted to Islam and became devout. Then at some point, I would be required by my religion to travel to Mecca and complete the Hajj at one point in my life. If Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia won't let me into the country, what happens then? Does Saudi Arabia reject a persons right to complete the Hajj? Do they have rules specifically for the Hajj? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ic0bd/eli5_how_does_saudi_customs_deal_with_muslims/ | {
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"They would probably reject your claim to have converted to Islam and might ban you from entering the country. Saudi Arabia, however, doesn't ban people from countries that \"disagree\" with Saudi Arabia, the ban only applies to Israel. ",
"I would ask Canadian government to change the birthplace to Palestine",
"You would be required to perform pilgrimage if you could. If you are too poor, cannot leave your sick child, Saudi Arabia won't grant you a visa, etc, etc, it's not your fault you can't go and you would not be held accountable in the religion. All the same, it would be a shame that you couldn't go. I'm sure that if Israel wanted to send someone to spy in Saudi Arabia they could get them a passport that didn't have an Israeli stamp on it. You could always ask the S.A. embassy and see what they said, just out of curiosity."
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shy89 | what do governments do with money or assets they seize? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shy89/what_do_governments_do_with_money_or_assets_they/ | {
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"In the US, it goes to an asset forfeiture fund and the police/prosecutors office can do what they like with it. \n\nPossessions are sold for cash and sometimes used for victims restitution but more often are directed back to the forfeiture fund. \n\nThis has been a problem in almost every jurisdiction, but down south they had a department that would pull people from out of town over in a traffic stop, see if they had anything worth seizing (like 'too much money in your pockets' claiming it must be drug money), and then placing the funds/car in the fund. Because the people were from out of town it was a hardship to go back to court.",
"Depends entirely on the government, and where it falls on the spectrum of corrupt to well-functioning.\n\nIn lots of places, it ends up going to a minister's nephew or mistress or something.\n\nIdeally though it would be used in a way that benefits the public, usually by counter-acting the reason it was seized to begin with."
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1j7kz5 | how is it possible that desert abuts to the sea, like in namibia? | I am asking because of this [post](_URL_0_) from /r/pics.
I mean, why are there no plants? Yea sure it's salt water, but that must evaporate and rain down there, so that plants can grow; which is obviously not the case. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j7kz5/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_desert_abuts_to_the/ | {
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"Sure the sea water evaporates, and ultimately comes back down as rain. But it doesn't rain down immediately above the place it evaporated from. It gets carried by high atmospheric currents, sometimes for hundreds of miles, before the conditions are right for clouds to form and rain to fall.\n\nIn fact the Namib Desert is one of the driest places on this planet, sometimes getting as little as 2mm (0.08\") of rain *per year*. This is because the prevailing wind in this region is from the east, which means that the damp air of the Indian Ocean has dropped nearly all its rain over the rest of Africa by the time it gets to western Namibia. So there's no rain left to fall.\n\nWhen the wind turns and comes from the Atlantic it tends to turn to fog rather than rain. Some of this fog does condense onto the desert to form dew, but it's still tiny amounts of liquid, and so the Namib Desert remains too dry to be habitable for almost all creatures.\n\n"
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87b3fs | how does the cloud act benefit internet users? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87b3fs/eli5how_does_the_cloud_act_benefit_internet_users/ | {
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" \"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a littletemporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.\"\n\nWe basically live in a country that has forgotten this. ",
"The positives are that it clarifies that US government agencies can use US court orders, including secret FISA court orders, to get US companies to give them data on you without regard for where in the world the data is stored. On it's face, that's a simple clarification of what was probably already the law.\n\nHowever, it implies that Russian government agencies can use Russian court orders, including secret \"Putin says so\" orders, to get Russian subsidiaries of companies to give them data on you without regard for the fact the data is stored in the US. This was clearly not allowed before. Only US court orders were good in the US before.\n\nThis is not to say that the Russians will try this, or that they will succeed. However, in general the US doesn't make \"our laws regulate the whole world\" policies so this Russian interpretation might be considered legal.\n\nThe positives are that if you're a company with data centers all around the world, and the US government ask you for data, and you give it to them THEN you have a much better defense if your customers sue you. That's what the tech companies wanted, so that's what Congress gave them."
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3s9zce | what's the purpose of screensavers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s9zce/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_screensavers/ | {
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"Back in the day of CRT displays if you left an image in place long enough it would burn into the phosphors on the front of the display. So instead of turning it on/off (which also causes problems) when you walk away for 5 mins they would blank the screen.\n\nThen someone got the idea of displaying something (probably to let people know it was still on) and then people used it as a venue for funny shit (e.g. After Dark).\n\nLCD/LED displays don't really need screen savers other than to shut off the inverter (via DPMS).",
"To prevent burn in. If an image is displayed for to long the image will \"burn\" into the screen. It can't be overcome buy the new \"re-wright\" of the screen. The phosphorus are permanently visible.",
"In CRT and plasma monitors, a still image that was on the screen for too long would permanently burn into the screen. Screensavers showed a moving image when the computer wasn't being used, preventing this from happening.\n\nThey are not necessary with most modern screens, but are still commonly used. It's better to configure the computer to turn off the screen after inactivity instead, to save energy.",
"Screensavers were duct tape for old displays.\n\nOld displays would go bad if the picture didn't change.\n\nScreensavers saved screens by changing the picture if you left your monitor on."
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8tln8d | why are many asian written languages word or idea based whereas most european written languages are sound or phonetically based? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tln8d/eli5_why_are_many_asian_written_languages_word_or/ | {
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"Writing has only been invented a few times in the history of the world. Most writing systems use some sort of sound symbols (an alphabet or similar). Chinese is very unusual in that it uses symbols for ideas or words instead. Their neighbors in Japan, and to a much lesser degree Korea, copied this. It's really the one large exception.",
"It is generally believed that writing systems began as picture-based systems before transitioning to a system of abstract symbols which correspond to words, and from there to a system of abstract symbols which correspond to individual sounds. You can see traces of this early picture-based writing in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian pre-cuneiform writing, and Ancient Chinese oracle-bone script. Not all languages, however, found it necessary to make this last step to sound-based alphabetic scripts. Chinese is a well-known example of this, but outside of China and its immediate sphere of influence this style of writing is less common in modern Asia than many westerners believe.\n\n* Japan uses a combination of borrowed Chinese characters and a native system where each symbol represents a syllable.\n* Korean similarly used a hybrid system until Sejong the Great developed the present-day writing system in the 15th century, which is primarily alphabetic but also shows syllable boundaries by grouping the letters of each syllable together into a \"block\".\n* Vietnam is another example of a country which formerly used borrowed Chinese characters, but today they primarily use the Latin alphabet with diacritics to indicate special features like tones.\n* Many central- and northwest-Asian nations use the Cyrillic alphabet, the same alphabet used for languages like Russian and Ukranian, due to Soviet influence. Others make use of lesser-known alphabetic systems, like the Georgian and Armenian alphabets.\n* India and southeast Asia use a wide variety of different scripts, mostly belonging to the Brahmic family. These writing systems are \"abugidas\", an interesting form of writing somewhere in between the syllable-based and alphabetic methods.\n* Many nations in the Middle East use Arabic, or occasionally other systems derived from the old Aramaic script, such as the Hebrew alphabet. Arabic and Hebrew both originally used a system where each symbol represented a consonant and vowels had to be inferred from context, but both have since developed methods for notating specific vowel sounds. Mongolian originally also used a system descended from Aramaic, but converted to using the Cyrillic alphabet during the Soviet era."
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46vws3 | why is there way more snow in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere? | Even at the bottom of South America there is little to no snow during winter (excluding on mountains) even though it's not far above Antarctica. Why is that ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46vws3/eli5_why_is_there_way_more_snow_in_the_northern/ | {
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"Because it's surrounded by ocean, so has a maritime climate - which doesn't get all that cold.\n\nThe northern hemisphere has large land masses, which lead to continental climates, which can get very much colder because they don't have the thermal damping of the oceans.",
"Because there's WAY more land in the northern hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. And that land is WAY further north.",
"For reference, the southern tip of South America is about far south as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England (UK) is north. 55S vs 55N.\n\nThat's nearly all of Scandinavia that's more northern than South America is southern. The 55N latitude also cuts through Labrador and Newfoundland and Alaska, so anything about that is ocean in the south.\n\nAnd as /u/skipweasel said, water both heats up and cools down ~~faster~~ slower than solids (think of a mug, and water in the mug) so landmasses with weather that comes from the ocean have cooler summers and warmer winters than places where the weather has to travel across land, which tend to be more extreme.\n\nWhich is why the European settlers of the US struggled so much with New England weather, because they were expecting it to be Mediterranean. (New York is on the same latitude as Greece, Spain, Sardinia and Turkey).\n\nFrom where I'm standing (UK) it's less, South America is abnormally warm (it's roughly equivalent to the north of Scotland, which seems legit for the amount of wind and ocean), but rather, North America is abnormally variable."
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axk3vy | how does store bought chocolate milk stay mixed so well and not separate into a layer of chocolate like homemade sometimes does? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axk3vy/eli5_how_does_store_bought_chocolate_milk_stay/ | {
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"Emulsifiers. Look at the ingredients: other than milk products, sweeteners and cocoa butter the other ingredients in a store brought chocolate are pretty much emulsifiers. \n\nWhat are emulsifiers? They can make oil and water combine and stay that way. In fact most kitchens have an amazing natural emulsifier in their fridge (American) or on their counter or both! The egg. Or more precisely the egg yolk. See any recipe for home made mayonnaise. \n\nIf you don’t see any emulsifiers listed then either a) they didn’t use any and rely only on tempering (see below) and good quality cocoa butter or b) you live in a country where it’s not compulsory to list E numbers for chocolate (yep there is a chocolate lobby and cocoa butter is expensive, so...)\n\nNote another important way chocolate stays firm is the dark, secret art of tempering. Tempering chocolate instills fear in all but the greatest pastry chefs. All store brought chocolate is tempered in the right way. We temper by raising the temperature of the “raw” chocolate and dropping it rapidly to a specific temperature. You might see pastry chefs scrapping and manipulating melted chocolate on a bench top: this is to cool the mixture down fast enough. And why are we doing this? To make certain crystals form and dominant in the chocolate. These crystal structure is rigid enough to handle room temperature but delicate enough that at body temperature, like in your mouth, the chocolate melts. \n\nSource: Live in Belgium. \n\nEdit: yep E numbers are European but the numbers are used around the world eg E300 additive will be labeled 300 (in say Australia). \n\nEdit^2 : probably not just emulsifiers - other comments explain it better",
"The answer is **Additives**: emulsifiers, stabilizers and thickeners like Carrageenan that keep the product from separating and thus keeps it homogenous. \nThey are not necessarily unhealthy and can be found in nature like egg yolk in mayonese which has a natural emulsifier called Lecithin (which is Greek and means \"egg yolk\")",
"So now that we have the answer, are there any potential health effects associated with emulsifiers? Like carrageenan and whatnot?",
"Store bought mass produced have extra ingredients (emulsifiers) that bind the fats and water based materials together.\n\nProfessionally bakery made and restaurant made chocolates are trickier. They require being mixed at a specific temperature so that they do not separate. The temperature depends on the product being made. Truffles for example, need to mix the fat and water based materials at a certain temperature (when the butter is room temp, where is it viscus, soft and mailable but not quite liquid or it will separate from the water based/chocolate materials). Other chocolate products get mixed at different temps, often depending on how hard the created material is to become and which fat is being added.\n\nTLDR: Mass produced = emulsifiers. Pro made = balancing temperature, materials, and texture.",
"Most likely they use carrageenan to increase the stability. But also homogenisation does a part as explained somewhere in the comments.\n\nCarrageenan has got sulfate, SO2-, that binds with calcium, Ca2+, in the milk. This creates a kind of bridge and will result in a network of carrageenan particles with the cacao incapsulated. This network prevents the cacao to sink to the bottom.\n\nI know this because I have done some tests on it for my education (Food Technology). There was one group that added 10 times more carrageenan to their chocolat milk, the result was a very thick gel (i.e. strong network).\n\n(English is not my native language, so sorry for some mistakes)\n\nEdit: extra info: carrageenan is extracted from edible red seaweed.\n\n2nd Edit : spelling mistake",
"The answer is homogenization.\n\nYes emulsifiers help, but the real trick comes in at the homogenizer. This is a machine that uses pistons to force the particles into each other at a huge pressure (120 bar plus) and forces them to “stick” together.\n\nThis is also used for normal milk, otherwise the fat/cream would separate from the milk itself\n\nAnother thing that helps the chocolate milk is how the powders and whatnot are mixed, this is usually done with inline circular mixers which blends this all in very well and very fine. This is to aid mixing, but also if something like cocoa powder is too course when entering the homogenizer it will eat the the rings even if they are made out of tungsten or ceramic.\n\nSource: Recently commissioned a chocolate milk line",
"Not emulsifiers. Chocolate particles are still too big to hold up against gravity. The secret ingredient is carrageenan (E407), a gelling agent extracted from red seaweed. At tiny concentrations, it forms a very weak network with the chocolate particles. This network is strong enough to prevent settling. ",
"The answer to the OPs question can be explained by Stokes law. Basically, uniformity (homogenization) and viscosity (a thickener like carrageenan) and other constants, like particle size, are all variables in the formula. There’s similar formulas that use the stokes law principle at it pertains to milk i.e. creaming rate.\n\nWhile this isn’t really ELI5, I’m just shocked at the inaccuracy of the top comments as it pertains to the OPs question ",
"Edit:\n\nIgnore this. My page didn't load comments properly, I was trying to answer OPs questions. But it looks like OP got lots of responses.\n\nThe comments in this thread are more useful than the older one.\n\n**Original comment:**\n\nSame question: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_).",
"Food gums or hydrocolloids, thing of your chocolate milk as a really weak gel. \n\nSource- I’m a food scientist. ",
"Emulsifiers are in a lot of foods. Look for the word “lecithin” on the label. It’s soy and is used to keep solids wetted and in suspension. It’s used in ice cream. ",
"I had a biology teacher tell us that the emulsifiers are made from algae. He claimed to work at a plant making dairy products."
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d7khvn | how can a usa political party declare that it won’t hold primary elections for president? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d7khvn/eli5_how_can_a_usa_political_party_declare_that/ | {
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"Because a political party is basically a private club: they can set their own rules about how to choose their nominee, because all they're really doing is deciding who they want to promote. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to be *happy* about their decision, but there's nothing illegal about it.\n\nIn this case, the GOP have basically decided that Trump is their guy this year. In some ways, that seems restrictive -- because, you know, what if you're a Republican and you don't like Trump? -- but on the other hand it makes a certain degree of sense. Filing to run for President isn't particularly tricky. Are the parties honour-bound to go through the expense of a primary system even if the only other person running is someone who is never going to win -- or perhaps just wants to force the party to jump through all these hoops to waste their time and money? For example, even though in 2012 the Democrats *did* have state-by-state primaries, [in most states Obama ran unopposed](_URL_0_). (Four states -- Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Virginia -- didn't hold Democratic primaries at all that year, for that very reason.)\n\nMoreover, not running with a party doesn't mean you're suddenly not allowed to run for President. You can run as an independent (in fact, that's a lot closer to what the Founding Fathers intended; Washington especially was not a fan of the idea of political parties). All it means is that you don't have the tremendous publicity machine of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party behind you. In practical terms, that's all primaries are for: determining which person from a given party is going to receive the benefit of the party's political apparatus. Primaries are a good way of making sure that the person the party puts forward is one that will please most of their voters... but there's nothing stopping them from ignoring that system absolutely.",
"Anybody who meets the legal requirements can run for office. \n\nPrimary elections are not constitutionally protected elections.\n\nA political party is just a bunch of members of a private organization deciding to vote for who their candidate is going to be. It's not part of the actual voting process. If a candidate loses a primary election they are still perfectly capable of being a candidate for the position as an independent or representing another party.\n\nIf a party decides to not have a primary election then they are free to do so.",
"Political parties are not an official part of the US political system. They are private clubs who are built on the premise of shared political goals. As private clubs they can use whatever method they want to choose a nominee for President, and can even choose multiple if they want to do so. In addition to this any individual who meets the requirements can also run on their own without any party backing them."
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2ae3t7 | how we do know, objectively, that elephants are as smart as everyone says? | We always hear about how smart elephants are, and how similar their brains are to ours from a developmental standpoint. How do we know that? What evidence is that based on? Even the validity of human IQ tests are debatable, so how can we quantify intelligence in other animals? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ae3t7/eli5how_we_do_know_objectively_that_elephants_are/ | {
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" > Even the validity of human IQ tests are debatable, so how can we quantify intelligence in other animals?\n\nThe \"validity\" isn't really debatable, although it is often phrased that way.\n\nWhat people really contest is their accuracy, and whether they are accurate enough to assume someone who scores a 120 is smarter than someone who scores a 110. No one seriously contests that someone who gets a 160 is not going to be smarter than someone who gets a 60.\n\nAnd that what we see when we compare animal intelligence, huge differences. We know that elephants have a high brain to body mass ratio, and that they do well in tests designed to measure learning. One might quibble over whether an elephant is smarter than a dog or a parrot, but it is pretty clear they are smarter than a squirrel."
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2lhkmk | how do scat porn actors not get sick from eating all that feces? | Im sure you're familiar with this so i dont need to provide examples, but how do people eating all that poo not get e.coli or hepatitis? Do they, but are just not known? Is the cdc doing anything about it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lhkmk/eli5_how_do_scat_porn_actors_not_get_sick_from/ | {
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"Well, it has to contain those germs. Healthy human poo itself is not objectively prone to giving you diseases. That being said, I don't know how much 'screening for poo disease' your normal scatological porn producer pursues. ",
"Also, I doubt the CDC is actively getting involved in any way with the scat porn industry. If anything, they've probably published a statement or warning about the dangers of ingesting fecal matter and left it at that.",
"(Oh god why do I know this)\n\nLike most porn a good chunk of it is fake. A lot of times its fake poo.... So the actress or actor will douche clean and then basically have someone put a substitute up there. \n\nI believe this is what they did for 2 girls 1 cup"
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20tfeu | what's being a citizen/citizenship ? | My english teacher ( my 3rd language ) asked me about a little paragraph to explain to students, a little help would be awesome, thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20tfeu/eli5_whats_being_a_citizencitizenship/ | {
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"In America, it more or less comes down to paying taxes, following laws, and having certain protections for paying those taxes and following those laws. If you're a male over the age of 18, you also promise to help fight wars if the country asks you for help (the draft).\n\nWe have a pretty passive definition of citizenship here."
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5fiz42 | why are humans so upset by being wrong? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fiz42/eli5_why_are_humans_so_upset_by_being_wrong/ | {
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"The core of human psycology is based on assumptions and paradigms. In the modern world, this takes the form of ideas and opinions becoming a part of one's identity, and so when the identity is questioned, the person feels threatened.",
"I think the core of it is if I can be wrong about this then I could be wrong about other things. If I'm wrong about other (serious) things then that's potentially a huge problem. (Relating to our physical survival and ability to propagate our genes and so on, major biological urges that drive almost everything we do) That's a little BS evo psych maybe and I didn't explain it that well but basically our feeling of competency is very important to our sense of security and sense that we're going to survive and prosper.",
"**Ego** The way you think of yourself and your own understanding of who you are. \n\nWhen you're proven wrong, you feel challenged and your perception of yourself feels stressed. It's **cognitive dissonance** because what you experience is that your observation of reality doesn't match up to your beliefs about yourself, because of that you experience inner resistance. ",
"Apparently my first question didn't go into enough detail, so let's put some more (pointless tbh) words around this. \n\nMost animals live in the moment. If they make a \"mistake\", then it's forgotten to the most part as soon as it happens. (they do obviously learn, but it's the line between learning and adapting and dwelling on this). They act on instinct in the moment. \n\nHumans dwell on the past and worry about the future. We rarely act directly on instinct - instead we may get an urge to act on instinct, which is then immediately replaced with an evaluation of what has happened before, and what might happen now. ",
"some posters have described the mechanics of the feeling, but the reason is, we're social animals. being wrong is losing status. you alluded to this by asking why other animals get over it easier. it's because their peers don't remember and hold it against them. either their mistake kills them, or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, it's not remembered by animals with less cranial muscle than us. or if it is, they lose status, and suffer the consequences, including \"feeling bad\" to help them remember not to do the same thing again.\n\nand some people get over being wrong faster or easier because they are more mature. they realize they will make mistakes if they are going outside of their comfort zone, they try to learn from them, and they have confidence that even if they lose a little status in the eyes of their co-animals, they can make it up and then some later.",
"Humans aren't. Some humans are, and that has grown to a wide majority overt the past few decades due to horrible academic practices and a culture of making people think intelligent is memorization or that being corrected is an act of harm or pain.",
"The human brain's decision making process doesn't work the way you probably think it does. \n\nWe are not rational beings, in the sense that when we have to make a decision, we do not actually stop to look at facts, weigh the options, then make a decision. Instead, we typically will instantly instinctively subconsciously gravitate to a particular stance on an issue based on our individual beliefs and experiences, then form a logical argument to support this decision. It's a subtle but important distinction.\n\nWhen something challenges your preconceived notions, you'll create more and more logical justification to defend your initial position, even when presented with evidence that objectively undermines that initial position. This happens to everyone, no matter how smart and intelligent you are, and smart people can actually be more vulnerable to it because they are so good at arguing their way around contradicting evidence.\n\nWhen you get proven wrong, though, your illusion of reality that you've been trying to defend has been shattered. You're still being defensive about your opinion but can't back it up anymore, so people tend to just get angry instead. That's where cognitive dissonance mentioned by others here comes into play.\n\nThis all is very important while having an argument with someone. You typically can't actually just present your argument and expect anyone who doesn't already agree with to, well, start agreeing with you. \"Truth bombs\" and whatnot will usually just piss off the other person and make them double down on their position. \n\nOn another note, it probably isn't accurate to assume that animals don't get angry when they're wrong. At the least, different animals probably have very, very different psychologist from each other, and such a sweeping generalization likely isn't accurate for many species.",
"Not all humans are upset by being wrong. \n\nOur human system is built in such a way that it tends to project feelings we experience in our body onto the external word. \n\n*That tea tastes good.\nThat coffee is bitter.*\n\nBut this isn't accurate. While we may have those evaluations in our system, they are not intrinsic qualities of those things. We make this mistake because our human system is built in such a way as to project our feelings into our environment so that it *seems as if* our evaluations are a property of our environment. \n\n\nWhich is why we can get into arguments about whether a movie was 'good' or 'bad', or coffee tastes 'nice' or 'disgusting'. We tend to mistake our evaluation as a property of the thing, rather than an experience in our own body. We don't realise that the coffee is just sitting there being coffee, it doesn't have a property called 'nice' or 'bitter'. Those are feelings an individual experiences in their own nervous system.\n\nWe can make the same mistake with ideas. We don't tend to think, \"That idea *seems* right according to my existing perceptions\". We are more likely to think, \"*That person* is right\". \n\nWe can do the same with ourselves. If I make the mistake of thinking that the accuracy of my knowledge is somehow a property of me, I may feel good when *I'm* right, but it will also make being wrong a bad thing — I don't want to be bad, so I will do things to stop myself from feeling as if I am 'wrong' or 'bad'.\n\nIt's all based on a mistaken perception that we can unlearn. If we can see that ideas have nothing to do with us as people but are changeable, we can become free from this mistake and focus on *the idea* much more easily without any feeling of being defensive or thinking that a good idea says something about us.\n\nSo, while this projection tendency can cause issues, it is incredibly useful. We wouldn't be here today without it. If our ancestors ate poison berries it was vital they knew that the horrible taste was coming from *those berries*. Similarly, if they had to consciously figure out what in their environment was giving them tremendous fear, it may have delayed their escape from the sabertooth tiger running at them.\n",
"According to Metzinger's self model theory of subjectivity, cognition (related to consciousness and maybe personality and \"self\") is the manifestation of a numerical model of the world that runs on your brain. \n\nWhen there is a bug in that model, the executive function reacts in a way that causes negative feedback to encourage the brain to build a model with no bugs. Thus the negative feelings related to frustration. \n\nI generalize and extrapolate here. Neuroscience doesn't unanimously say this. \n\nBut I like the idea of the internal world model. It's probably true to some extent. It certainly seems to work that way in my brain.",
" > Most animals, if they screw up, just sort of accept it and go about their lives again regularly\n\nthis is a proven fact?"
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2q5asw | how can a bank be fined for billions of dollars and not have a criminal charge of some kind for the people involved? | All I remember is the headlines Jp morgan fined 13 billion, BoA fined 17 billion. You would think man someone is in big trouble somewhere!
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q5asw/eli5_how_can_a_bank_be_fined_for_billions_of/ | {
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"Part of how corporations work is that a corporation is legally considered to be a person. So the corporation gets slapped with all the legal consequences, the individuals who own and run the corporation are pretty well-protected, but there are some crimes that are so bad that the corporation *and* the leadership are punished. In this case, the government just only went after the corporation with fines, not the leadership/ownership with criminal charges. \n\nWhat's the reason? That's a little more controversial. Maybe there wasn't a legal reason to do so. Maybe the government is in bed with the bankers and made sure they wouldn't be charged criminally. We don't know. ",
"One reason is that criminal charges require \"proof beyond a reasonable doubt,\" but civil charges like fines only require 51% of the evidence to support the charge. For the government, a lower burden of proof makes the case much easier (and faster and cheaper) to win."
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2ret1a | why do services like facebook and google plus hate chronological feeds? fb constantly switches my feed away from chronological to what it "deems" best, and g+ doesn't appear to even offer a chronological feed option. they think i don't want to see what's new? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ret1a/eli5_why_do_services_like_facebook_and_google/ | {
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"Facebook does so because they charge people (mostly companies, but you can pay as a person also) to get their posts at the top of your feed.\n\nActually, if you are a company, Facebook builds their site so that your views will drop over time unless you pay them.",
"This isn't THE reason, but it's a factor: if one of your friends decides to be obnoxious and post 50 updates in an hour, they'll flood your feed. If facebook gets to decide what's important, they can filter out a lot of that junk.",
"They don't care what you want. They design their websites to keep you on the site as long as possible. Any change which keeps you on the site longer and doesn't annoy you enough to get you to stop coming there is a win for them.\n\nIf you have to wade through other things to find the new posts, that's better for them.",
"Facebook's own justification is that most people subscribe for more content than they can possible read in one sitting. Facebook tries to give you an optimal slice of what you're subbed for, rather than just throwing it at you randomly. Whether or not is complete BS is up to you, but I figured it's worth posting what they claim to be doing.\n\nEdit: B-con linked to a comment by jedmund that's more articulate than mine. Linking it here:\n\n_URL_0_",
"You can use Facebook Purity to keep it switched to chronological. \n[link](_URL_0_)",
"Not really an answer as to why, but an easy way to avoid the \"top/best\" stories. Just bookmark facebook after you've switched over to most recent. Saves you from having to manually switch over each time. ",
"Professional online community manager here. I don't have any special insight into what Facebook is doing, but I know the space and I'm pretty confident I understand their reasoning.\n\nCurating a \"Most Recent\" Facebook feed is a LOT of work. If I have 250 Facebook friends and my feed looks exactly how I want it to look, and then I add some friend from high school who posts inane bullshit 45 times a day, this person can literally make my entire Facebook feed unusable, because every time I log in I'm going to have to go through 15 posts of theirs for every one post of anyone else's I see—and it's all stuff I don't care about anyway.\n\nEvery single friend I add to my Facebook list has the potential to ruin my entire site experience in this way. In effect, in order to keep my Facebook experience positive, I have to spend a few days evaluating my feed, updating my settings, and tweaking in order to get an experience that I actually enjoy. And it's not easy or simple—I have to learn Facebook's system for tweaking how often I see posts from certain people. I have to flag certain people as close friends or family members because I specifically want to see their stuff, and flag other people as distant acquaintances to reduce how often I see their stuff. And that doesn't happen immediately—I need to spend time reading their content in order to figure out whether or not I want to read their content.\n\nSo the people at Facebook think, \"This is a lot of work for a casual Facebook user. We want to make this as effortless as possible, so checking your Facebook just becomes a habit. We want people to log in to Facebook and have it just magically show them exactly what they want to see. What if, rather than forcing people to curate their feeds themselves, we take our super-educated team of specialized engineers and behavioral analysts, and we create a system that allows Facebook to _learn_ what kind of content people want to see, and then we can show that sort of content to them automatically? That way every time they log in to Facebook, it will already be showing them exactly what they want to see—and they won't have to mess around with settings or anything! And on top of all that, it opens up a new revenue stream for us, because we can make sure there's always at least one ad in the stream when they log in.\n\n\"The trick is, the only way we're going to make sure that our algorithms are doing a good job at predicting what people want to see is if people USE them. So let's gently encourage our users to use our curated stream of posts rather than the \"most recent\" posts, because that way we can see how people interact with it and figure out whether we're doing a good job. We'll make it the default setting, and over time we'll make the \"most recent\" option harder and harder to find.\"\n\nThe fact is, Facebook started shutting down the \"most recent\" options when FarmVille became a huge thing, because everybody's \"most recent\" posts on Facebook were nothing but useless game posts. Half of Facebook thought those posts were annoying and useless, and the other half (and maybe I'm being generous) loved them and needed them to finish their game. FarmVille was paying the bills for Facebook, so they didn't want to lose the FarmVille players, but they didn't want to lose everyone else, and have Facebook just be a shell for people to play FarmVille in. So they were forced to make guesses about whether or not you were the type of person who wanted to see FarmVille updates, and decide whether to show them to you based on your preferences. Once that was done, applying these same principles to other updates was a no-brainer.\n\n**TL;DR: You may not believe it, but if you ACTUALLY saw ALL of the Most Recent posts on your Facebook feed without any sort of curation on Facebook's part, Facebook would suck and you'd never use it—and neither would anyone else. It would kill their business.**\n\n**EDIT: I know you can just unfollow people you don't like. I do it all the time. When you do it, you're teaching the Facebook algorithm to better anticipate what you like and what you don't. But imagine trying to teach your grandmother how to do this, and you begin to see the problem. To a tech-savvy audience, this isn't a big deal, but to people who don't \"get along\" with technology, that's a lot to ask from a casual user—especially because you HAVE to do it before you start to have a positive experience with Facebook. That's huge—it's a tremendous effort just to get people to sign up for an account for something, and that tiny bit of extra friction will drop your signup rate by a tremendous percentage. Imagine how many MORE users you'd lose in the signup process if you had to spend half an hour tweaking your settings before the website even started to become usable.**",
"Because content is posted way more often to most people's feeds than they're able to check. If a friend of mine gets engaged or posts an awesome video, I'd like to know about it. But if it's 8 hours between the time that they post it and when I check Facebook next, a purely chronological feed might mean that I never see that post, since I may never scroll down that far.\n\nI agree that the option for a purely chronological feed would be nice to have, but there are also quite a few advantages to a curated feed as well.",
"Quite easy. FB wants the posts which generate the most actions to be seen more then \"boring\" posts. You can test this like that. Post something with the text: \"Congratulations!\" and it will stay in your friends newsfeed at the top for about 6hours to 3 days. Because the word \"Congratulations\" indicates something emotional, which often causes many actions on this post (likes, shares, comments, clicks). And posts with many actions can be easy to sell ads on. Profit.",
"The only thing Facebook cares about is revenue. They've made the decision that makes them the most money.",
"Most FB users follow an excess of 100 pages. If each of these pages is posting daily as per best practice, it would annoy the living fuck out of users and piss all over the key principle that social networks are for organic relationships, not advertisers. \n\nThe algorithm formally known as Edgerank is something they have in place to try and ensure you mostly see content from pages or people you are actually interested in. \n\nI guess you could say that the system they have in place is the lesser of two evils. \n\nEverything FB does isn't to snatch more money out the platform; it's important they maintain a balance between usability and monetisation or they'll go tits up like Myspace did\n\nEdit: Saw an opportunity to smack a semi colon down. Smacked a semi colon down",
"Companies like Facebook are analytics driven, and generally optimize for user engagement.\n\nFacebook experimented with showing differently sorted feeds to different groups of users and found that users who got shown chronological feeds ended up less engaged (less likely to keep logging in and interacting with content) on average.",
"Holy hell this drives me nuts. \n\nOne of my best friends from undergrad works at Facebook and I have pestered him about this several times. (This and the supposed need for a separate messenger app.) He swears up and down that they have data that shows that users really do want and enjoy and prefer the top stories as opposed to the most recent stories.\n\nFacebook does let you toggle your feed to most recent. I've noticed some tricky nonsense, though - It seems that they are moving old stuff to the top if it was recently commented on. I check that app maybe once a day and it's annoying to see the same stuff at the top that you saw yesterday. ",
"My solution: Put the people you want to see stuff from in chronological order onto a single list, then add that list to your favorites and use that as your main feed. I use the built-in Close Friends list, but you can use whatever you want. It will then give you a straight chrono list of everything (*everything*) the people in your list do every time you open it. Bonus: it skips the nonsense from Pages that you've liked and gives only actual people.",
"Add \" ?sk=h_chr\" to the end of your Facebook bookmark. Takes you to most recent feed every time. ",
"People seem to think about their FB/G+/Twitter accounts as THEIR accounts that THEY are adding THEIR information to.\n\nThis is not true. Your Facebook account belongs to Facebook. The content you're adding belongs to Facebook. The content you view (which is all belonging to Facebook) is displayed to you by Facebook.\n\nSo they can choose to have you see whatever of their content they wish in whatever order they wish with any redaction or censorship they wish. All the tools you have to edit what messages you see and from whom are a bone they throw you.\n\n--------\n\nSo in short - No. They don't want you to see items in chronological order. They want you to see the messages that are 'best' for you to see (more profitable to FB, more flattering of FB, more popular on FB, etc) before you see anything else.",
"You know how people bitch and moan about people posting \"stupid\" statuses and updates they don't care about? Well, the solution is to bring you information that is relevant specifically to you. The trend is to \"personalize\" the Internet for *you* instead of presenting you with an otherwise overwhelming amount of information.\n\nYou see it everywhere: in social media, news, and search results. There is a shift towards cultivating the mass amount of information available to you, *for* you. If you have 800 friends on Facebook, it's significantly more difficult for you to chronologically view *everything* that's happened. Using algorithms based on your likes, shares, page views, and general preferences, Facebook \"curates\" the information coming at you and presents to you the most relevant information. There is an insane amount of information available to you. If you were shown every status, every comment, every picture, everything that your friends posted in chronological order, it could be overwhelming or disinteresting to you.\n\nThe same thing happens when you use Google as well. The search engine \"learns\" from your searching patterns & preferences, then extrapolates \"who you are,\" and returns appropriate search results. For example, if a sports fan searches for \"panthers,\" they're likely looking for information on the football team. However, a nature-lover would likely be looking for the animal.\n\n**TL;DR there is a lot of information available to you, so the goal is to present you with relevant news to your interests**\n\nFor more information, see:\n_URL_0_\n",
"Game Theorists just did a video about this. He went into detail about how Facebook and Google analytics work. \n\nEdit: [Here's the video](_URL_0_) ",
"This is why I stopped using the mobile app, they completely removed the option to put 'new' first, so I'm staring at the same shit thats 4 days old.",
"[This is actually](_URL_0_) really easy to do in G+ last I checked. FWIW, I think one of the biggest reasons for sorting on G+ is that they know that about 50% of what happens in a stream is boring crap, since they don't get nearly so much revenue from advertisers and the like. ",
"Facebook has said that for the majority of their users there are over 1,000 items that qualify to be in your feed at any moment in time.\n\nIf they just provided you with a chronological feed many, many (many) things would simply pass you by. It would be like a fire hose. It's by far the least useful way of algorithmically choosing content.\n\nInstead, like reddit, they use a variety of factors (like comment and like activity) to prioritize content to be presented on your feed. ",
"Social networks are sustained by interaction, it helps them to both grow and retain members. The more they grow and the longer they retain members the more people are exposed to their advertising.\n\nUsing Facebook as an example, they (currently) push what they deem to be most interesting to top in order to increase this interaction between it's members: if a post quickly gets 10+ Likes it might be a safe guess that it's something cute/funny/controversial and might be of interest to lots of people. \n\nThe more people interacting the more chances there are of a conversation starting and this keeps people on the site and increases exposure to advertising. \n\n\n\n",
"Everyone's talking about marketing and business, but I have an answer based on the plain old quality of your experience, and I'm going to use reddit as the example.\n\nIf you go to _URL_1_ then you see all the questions that people have upvoted recently. The more upvotes, the longer it stays up top. It's weighted by how \"relevant\" it is and how recent it is. If you go to _URL_0_ then it's just plain chronological. In general, the questions that make it to the top are more interesting. You end up with new-ish content that has some semblance of quality.\n\nIf it was just sorted by upvotes, Obama's AMA would still be at the top of your front page. If it was sorted chronologically, you would never really see any big stories breaking because they'd be drowned out by new content. As it is, you see big stuff pretty quickly regardless of how infrequently you log in. Similarly for facebook, you would never see your friends' big stories if they posted it more than an hour before you logged in. It would be drowned out by other friends' recent crap.\n\nBusiness decisions factor in too, but if it were just chronological then the experience would suck.",
"They want you to see their feed items so that they can inserted ads and promoted content in a more easy and lazier fashion. Twitter took the time to get ads inserted in the chronological feed because they knew their feed was their bread and butter and fudging that up would be bad news for their company",
"What sort order do you prefer to use on Reddit?",
"The facebook modus operandi is to try and make your newsfeed so that the things people are talking about the most are what shows up the highest.\n\nThe hope is that you will have \"liked\" commercial entities, and of course these things, being liked by thousands of people, will have far more people making comments on commercial entity postings than anything else in your newsfeed will with your few hundred friends.\n\nConsequently the hope is that your newsfeed will be dominated by commercial postings.",
"It's not just them. Music service Deezer forces your albums and artists to be sorted by \"recently added\" and even once you change to A-Z (like most normal fucking people) it still defaults back.",
"There are times when you might want to view all Reddit comments for a thread in chronological order, but the reality is that this is a crappy experience most of the time. Showing nested comments according to karma is better, and so that's the default. Just offering s comparison.\n\nAs to why Facebook doesn't just make it a user option: I kind of wish they would just for those times when I want it, but on the other hand I realize it would be difficult to pull off. On Reddit, everyone sees the same thread. It can be stored in memory cache until it changes again, improving performance and scalability for all. But each individual's Facebook stream is different. Having to generate lots of different \"optional\" versions of it for each person times hundreds of millions of people would present enough technical challenges that there would need to be a really, really good reason for it. It's not impossible, but is it really worth it?\n\nImagine for a second that everyone is on chronological-sort. Sure, it will show you \"what's new\" right at this second but ten seconds from now that post will scroll off the page. Not new anymore. Chances are that you will be the only person ever to see that post because you were online and loading your feed the second it was created. You won't have conversations with anyone else about the post because no one else in the author's friend list was loading their feed during that second to see it. And if you \"like\" it, that will have no impact on anything ever. You might think you'll finally see all posts, but you won't, because there are too many and they fly down the page too fast unless you're refreshing constantly.\n\nFB tries to show you stuff it thinks is going to be more engaging to you. Maybe it doesn't work great. Maybe it doesn't work as well as Reddit karma. But \"just show everything by order of time\" isn't really a great solution to this problem.\n\n",
"Also, an important point to consider is that both FB and G+ make money on advertising, and to make money on advertising, people need to SEE the advertising, and to SEE the advertising people need to spend more time on the website. The \"top posts\" view was created to ensure that no matter how long you scroll, there will always be something \"new\" and \"interesting\" to keep you scrolling for longer. The \"most recent\" option is just that — most recent. It does not guarantee that what you see is interesting or engaging, and thus it's likely that you'll go off the site sooner rather than later, and neither FB or GP actually wants that.",
"It is all about usage, particularly 'activity'.\n\nBasically the best way for something to go 'viral' (even talking the small scale here) is for it to be presented up front while it has momentum.\n\nExample: You post a funny picture of your dog that is somewhat likely to get comments from your friends. Friend 1 likes it, Friend 2 posts a comment, Friends 3-5 like it. Now it keeps getting bumped, everyone else sees it, sees the activity, and feels the need to chime in.\n\nThis drives more traffic for Facebook and helps keep the 'casuals' apprised of what is going on (and keeps the vast majority of their users - the casuals - commenting regularly because what surfaces on their feeds is what is already popular and 'good').\n\nJust look at reposts on Reddit. Most of it comes down to how many upvotes came in quickly, and once a ball is rolling it picks up momentum and keeps users active and gives them something 'interesting' at the top rather than having to wade through stuff.",
"The irony is most people who comment on this thread found it through the \"hot\" tab and not the \"new\" tab.",
"Facebook has found more \"optimal\" feeds, but they are often too good that the customer ends up using Facebook less.\n\nFacebook intentionally doesn't make it's feed \"perfect\", so that you spend more time on Facebook and generate them more ad revenue.",
"The same reason Reddit doesn't. They take things they think you will be interested in, and throw it at you. \n\nGet rid of Facebook and it won't be an issue. ",
"Social Media is what I've studied for the last 6 years, so I'm going to give your question a shot! \n\nFacebook relies heavily on their equation called \"Edge Rank\" ... \nEdgeRank = Time + Previous Contact + Engagement \n\nThe variable broken down: \nTime- The time something was posted\nPrevious Contact - how often have you stalked, liked, tagged or commented on that particular person\nEngagement - How many other people have liked, or commented (it's why babies / engagements show up so often) \n\nEach of those variables is assigned a number 1-10, the scores are then added together and you get a number out of 30... the higher the number, the more likely it is to be displayed. If it's displayed more often the engagement variable continues to grow, so it continues to get shown. \n\nHope this helps. ",
"I HATE HATE HATE top stories feed mode on FB. I am constantly switching it back to Most Recent.\n\nI think they had top stories for people who have hundreds of friends. I keep my FB to only real friends (mear 75 folks)",
"[This is the real reason](_URL_0_):\n\n\"When information is organized in a list, it’s trivially easy to scan it, but with Timeline your eye has to dart around and try to combine the layout into an understanding of what the person’s been up to. It induces cognitive strain . . .\"\n\nThe layout has changed since that was written, but the main idea still applies. Facebook wants to make it difficult for you to determine when you've \"finished\" looking at everything new because that's when you log out and do something more productive with your life. They also want ads to blend into user content more naturally. If items are organized chronologically, it's too easy for users to pick out (ignore) ads and too easy for them to know when they've reached the point where they last left off. Both of these are bad for the bottom line.\n\nTL;DR: $",
"Facebook (and Google) are not trying to provide you a service. Their business model is to sell access to your feed to advertisers. \n\nOnce you understand that you and your personal information is the commodity being sold here, then it will make more sense why usability features like this are lacking. It's designed that way. ",
"I think I remember reading somewhere that its because people are more likely to look through their feed if it isnt posted in order. That makes people spend more time on facebook, and makes them view more ads",
"It's like Reddit. They want you to see what's most popular, to give you what they think is the best content, so you spend more time on their website. Although I do see the problem here. It's very confusing.",
"Facebook's business is about showing you what they think is most important to you. Their feed will put stuff they think you're more likely to like at the top of your feed. ",
"Because the only thing better than some shit your users wrote is some shit a sponsor wrote that they're paying you money to promote.",
"While most people will tell you their best guess about FB nobody uses G+ and we're thus completely in the dark, the 30 people who use G+ should get together and do some tests, i bet there's all kinds of on unholy A-B testing constantly going on and if majority of users, say 20 of them, indicates in some arcane way what they prefer, 10 of them will get the \"chosen\" option, while other 10 get the \"new competitor\"... ad infinitum",
"What i hate even more is when people \"I know\" comment on some shit, or their own post and it ends up back at the top.",
"Actually Google+ sorts the posts you see chronologically by last interaction. Meaning each time someone comments, it gets back to the top. So Google+ feed is always in reverse chronological order.",
"I hate the facebook mobile app. It's such garbage, and less useful now that you need a separate app to access messages. There's no longer any way to change from \"top bullshit\" to most recent on mobile. \n\nAlso, along with Twitter, for some reason the app thinks it's convenient to forget where I was in the feed and jump back to the top. So many times I have screamed out loud, \"I was fucking reading that!\" \n\nEdit: Figured it out, it's under the \"Feeds\" subheading on the More/Settings tab.",
"I simply want ALL post most recent on top in chronological order. Why can they not do that!",
"Same reason reddit's home page isn't chronological, showing the latest posts first, they want to show you the stuff they think has the best chance of grabbing your attention",
"Facebook's feed is worthless. I can't use it really, and barely anyone I know posts useful stuff anymore. All I see are millions of silly posts that made it in my timeline because some retard I barely knew in High School liked something. I strongly believe this is the death of Facebook – the simply fact that you can't see only what your friends post and the pages you like. Ads should be marked and just put clearly within that feed, and everything would be good. But this situation destroys facebook and makes it trashy platform for videos and useless links for people who have nothing better to do than watching and liking those.",
"I've been marketing on Facebook for quite some time, therefore I have personal insight that most don't. \n\nFacebook uses algorithms to show you posts that they think you might be interested in. You will see more posts from people you've had a recent interaction with (messages, comments, likes), rather than seeing updates from every friend. The algorithm is determined by your browsing patterns as well. If you look at a person's profile often, you will receive more updates from them in your feed. \n\nThe above rules are also valid for page updates. However, Facebook is intentionally lowering the reach of posts by pages in order to drive up their revenue from advertising. Therefore, a page that is purchasing extra exposure will appear more in your newsfeed rather than posts from organic fanpages. \n\nThe algorithm is certainly more complicated than this, but I tried to keep it as much ELI5 as possible. Hope I cleared up something for you guys.",
"\"Fb purity\" will force Facebook to sort by newest all the time.",
"On a related note, anyone else notice how Amazon's sort by price never actually sorts by price? ",
"They're probably trying to keep you there longer. If they are efficient they lose money.",
"they would rather you see that your friends newborn has 200 likes, man. why do you hate children so much?",
"It's to keep you on the site for as long as possible to maximize ad revenue. \nSame concept as putting essentials in the back of a grocery store. ",
"Because in order for movements to go viral, you need to see things that were most commented on or liked. Otherwise nobody talks about the same thing.",
"Facebook seems to always know which girls I find most attractive and puts their posts at the top. No complaints here.",
"If you like chronological use twitter, if you like relevant use the others.",
"The reason that the system is so inefficient is because it was designed that way. These social media sites want you to sift through loads of information as they rake in the advertisement revenue. I remember reading how the old facebook timeline was so efficient it reduced the amount of time spent on facebook, resulting in facebook reconciling it.",
"For the same reason Reddit doesn't default to _URL_0_.\n",
"Google and facebook are ran by computers. They know what is best for you. Please stop thinking. ",
"Good Lord, this pisses me off to no end.. I'm constantly clicking recent stories not top stories..",
"Fb: \"Hey man, what are you up to? Meh, shit's boring. We're not gonna share that.\" \n\n...\n\nMe: \"What's new on fb?\"\nFb: \"A bunch of stupid shit that you could do with out. Check out these same articles shared by every source you follow and also that thing about your sister's new cat from two days ago\" ",
"I'm so old I remember when facebook was chronological. ",
"The same reason Reddit homepage isn't /r/new, it must have the best to keep you hooked in.",
"I have fumed over this since Facebook delved away from it. Pissed me off so bad I actually deleted my account. I then realised I don't actually have any way of communicating with 90% of the people I know off of Facebook... I then had to reactivate my account. I have since then just grown to stop giving a shit. Yes I comment on posts that are three days old, yes I miss many opportunities to chill with people, but fuck em... those people are only on my friends list cuz then I wouldn't get to make fun of their stupidity.",
"Everything social media does is for a specific, intelligent reason. When they do things like actively de-chronologize things like messages and \"wall posts\", that's to minimize the gap between people who are popular and people who have far less activity. \n\nHave you noticed how when Facebook started, one of the most prominent aspects was number of friends? When Facebook was still growing it was advantageous to embrace the popularity contest aspect in order to maximize market share. At that point MySpace was still big, and even Xanga and others had a piece of the pie. \n\nOnce Facebook achieved market domination they shifted focus to retention and deeper market penetration (or 'development' for the marketing terminology nitpickers). A key aspect of retention is stopping people from feeling alienated, inferior, unpopular, or any other negative feelings that may cause you to either a) delete your profile, or b) reduce your activity so it doesn't appear that you're trying and failing. \n\nThis is only *one* aspect of their strategy, but it is both significant and fun to think about! \n ",
"Look at Twitter. How many people read every single tweet in their feed? Do you go back and read old tweets, the ones made from the last time you caught up? I doubt it. \n\nInstead Facebook does a pretty good job at figuring out what would interest you.\n\nI flag my close friends and use the magic list to drill down my content to a more chronological style.",
"Pretty late so this will probably get buried but here goes\n\nMy friend actually works at Facebook on the Newsfeed team. No, it's not a diabolical scheme to get you to click more ads or whatever. They do, however, want you to use the site more (\"engagement\") and the Top Stories feed sees people use Facebook 20% more over time than those who don't. So for a tech company, it's a pretty straightforward business decision to implement that for everyone. \n\nKeep in mind that an algorithmically arranged feed is one of the reasons why Facebook is worth $100bn+ and Twitter is worth $20bn. Facebook has some influence over the content that does well on its network, whereas Twitter has none. And that can suck, for a lot of reasons.",
"Your irritating friend likes 50 pages on Facebook at 1 o clock.\nAnother friend announces his marriage at 2.\n\nWith chronological feed you would need to browse through 50 of X liked Y before you can see A getting married to B.\n\nSo facebook decides the most important news for you and displays that first.",
"**Former Facebook engineer here, I'm going to tell you about \"feed ranking\".**\n\n**tl;dr** It'd be like browsing \"new\" all the time, except you can't express your hate with a downvote. \n\n**ELI5** Your newsfeed content is determined by a personalized algorithm that selects the content you are most likely to engage with (i.e. like, click, share, comment, etc). If it was chronological, you would see 50 posts a day from your mom's friend sharing her stupid quizzes, and people hate it. Twitter is chronological - and after you follow 100 people, your feed is just a stream of trash.\n\n**History** When newsfeed first launched, it was strictly chronological. Then we realized it was too many stories a day for people to find the important ones - yet it was obvious that people only cared about a few out of the 500 friends they had - so work began to surface the more relevant stories to a person.\n\n**FUN FACT**\nIf you log into Facebook and refresh your newsfeed ALL THE FRICKEN TIME, then the algorithm will adjust to essentially show you chronological content... if it actually ran out of selection for good content. Few of you are that much of a FB junky, so you don't get to the real trash posts that nobody engages with (chain letters, etc).\n\n**MYTH BUSTING**\n1. \"Facebook does it so company's have to pay to be seen\" - ehhhh not really. Basically users don't want to see ads, but companies want users to see ads - the way Facebook handles this 'externality' is by charging advertisers to replace content users actually want to see. \n\n This was how we thought of it when ads were still on the right-hand side and not in the newsfeed. \n\n------\nIf you have questions, comment and I'll do my best to answer (if it's public knowledge).\n\nEdit: only actual post from someone on the inside, 2 points... reddit's new system isn't flawless either :P",
"Stop pretending that you know what's best for you.\n\nThe COMPANY knows what's best for you.",
"Because chronological view gives you all the shit you don't want to and never do look at ",
"Because they need the money of the companies that advertize.",
"Because of Money. \n\nIt used to be if you liked a brand you'd see all their posts. Then FB changed it so companies have to pay if they want all their fans to see their posts. Previously if you liked the History Channel you'd see all their posts, simple right?\n\nNow you only definitely see History Channel posts (even if you like the History channel) if the History Channel pay cash. Otherwise only a tiny percentage of the History Channel's followers see the posts.\n\nIf the feed includes everything in chronological order, it's obvious you aren't seeing everything. So companies prefer this murky version because it's easier to monetise. \n\nBonus fun fact: The only stats on how many see a post on Facebook are provided by Facebook, so you have literally no idea how many people have really seen a post. You give them money and they tell you if it 'worked.'\n\nSource: I used to sit next to the FB guy for the History channel and he was spending THOUSANDS make sure people saw posts.",
"Damn I must be young. Do people still use these media sites? ",
"Unless you have the max number of friends on Facebook (yes, there is actually a limit), you're feed won't change often enough to keep users interested if they only list things in chronological order. By sorting the \"most popular\", they can circulate things and keep people wanting more. ",
"\"Silly consumer, what do you know about what you want? Knowing what you want is our job.\" - Facebook Team",
"Just add ?sk=h_chr to your facebook bookmark and it'll automatically be chronological. ",
"Google and Facebook are too proud of their *\"relevantness algorithms\"* and push them as long as they can. Also that way they can present you their clients.",
"My name is Adam Mosseri—I’m the PM director who works on News Feed at Facebook. We don’t hate chronological Feeds, we just have found that, on Facebook, most people are more interested in Feeds that are personalized and ordered based on relevance.\n\nA few things to note: Every post by every friend of yours is in your News Feed (as well as in Most Recent). If you keep scrolling in either you’ll see everything your friends have shared. In fact Most Recent and News Feed are the exact same set of stories, just ordered differently. The average person has more than 1500 possible stories each day (not only friend posts but page posts as well and stories about people joining events, groups, etc) but reads less than a fifth of them. Our goal is to show people the content that they find interesting (we can’t truly know what people fine interesting so we infer what’s interesting based on what people interact with—if you tend to click on photos we show more photos or if you tend to comment on your sister’s posts we show more content from your sister). When we show people a chronological feed we’ve seen that people read less stories, miss many more stories from their friends, and comment and like on things a lot less. This suggests that chronological feeds on Facebook are less interesting and relevant for people.\n\nWe definitely hear feedback from some people that they prefer to see stories in chronological order, so we provide Most Recent as an option. This is not the default Feed to prevent people from getting stuck in this view and missing stories they care about."
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2p4aj9 | why isn't happy hour one single hour? | Why is it called happy hour when most restaurants have multiple hours when they offer the deals? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p4aj9/eli5_why_isnt_happy_hour_one_single_hour/ | {
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"Because it is hard to drink enough in one hour to wash the smell and taste of Corporate America off of you.",
"because its not convenient for people and restaurants wouldn't make any money and get annoyed customers because happy hour is so short.Also happy hour is different for people depending on when they get off work. Generally speaking its the few hours after you get off work every day.",
"Time speeds up when you are drinking 3 hour sober time is 1 hour drinking time.",
"In most places where the drink specials are longer than an hour, it's still called happy hour because you are only happy for one hour. After a few drinks you go from happy drunk to angry, dejected, semi-incapacitated drunk. But \"happy hour followed by two hours of mind numbing, bitter depression\" just doesn't have a good ring to it.",
"The term happy hour goes back a long way, and no one is really sure where the term comes from as applied to drinking. It was a term for an hour of exercise, used by Navy sailors in the 1920s and has been used as far back as Shakespeare in other contexts.\n\nAs for drinking, Happy Hours occur in the period between leaving work, and dinner. The most reasonable explanation I've heard is that from 5-6PM was the Happy Hour where people leaving the office would stop off at the nearest bar for a drink before going home.\n\nSince bars like making money, and people like cheap drinks, happy hour has been extended to afternoons, evenings, and reverse happy hours at night. Like many outdated terms, its just stuck around in the language."
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3wk3q6 | how do flea and tick preventative for dogs cover the whole body, when you only apply them to the back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wk3q6/eli5how_do_flea_and_tick_preventative_for_dogs/ | {
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"The chemical soaks in through the skin and carried throughout the whole body via the bloodstream ",
"The preventative is an agent that gets into the dog's bloodstream, but doesn't hurt the dogs. But it does make the dog's blood poison to fleas and ticks, so they'll die after feeding on the dog.\n\nIt's applied to the back so that the dog can't lick it off before the skin has a chance to soak it in and deliver it to the bloodstream."
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cvwzw8 | what determines when rain fall from the cloud. everyone says it’s when it gets too heavy but why do microburst of torrential rain happen then? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvwzw8/eli5_what_determines_when_rain_fall_from_the/ | {
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"This is because rain forming from clouds is a (this is the only big words phrase in this explanation) \"nucleation and growth\" process. In simpler terms:\n\n & #x200B;\n\nClouds are made of very small droplets of liquid water. They are so small they can float in the air. If a cloud gets pushed in, by wind or by getting colder, or it encounters dust on the wind, the tiny floating droplets can find each other and form into bigger, heavier droplets. This by itself doesn't start to rain, that only happens when the drops get big enough. With many clouds, a lot of drops this big form almost all at once, so you get a quick and heavy rain fall.",
"Clouds are made of water droplets. Within a cloud, water droplets condense onto one another, causing the droplets to grow. When these water droplets get too heavy to stay suspended in the cloud, they fall to Earth as rain.\n\nThe factors that cause torrential rain are similar to those that cause regular rain. As with any rain storm, the necessary conditions are moisture and atmospheric instability. Warm air holds more moisture than cooler air. Because moisture is a necessary ingredient for rainfall, a warm air mass can lead to longer, heavier rains than a cool one."
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f4sci6 | why can some illnesses go away by themselves while others cant? | If you get a cold the body can recover on its own, while other illnesses need medication. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4sci6/eli5_why_can_some_illnesses_go_away_by_themselves/ | {
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"In every case, your body’s immune system will try to fight the illness. Sometimes your body can do it on its own, and sometimes it needs the medicine to help it out when it’s too strong for your immune system to handle by itself. But in general, in both cases, it’s your immune system attacking it— not the illness going away by itself.\n\nPeople who don’t have a viable immune system can easily die from even a cold, and other kind of weak illnesses like that. When your immune system doesn’t fight enough, diseases will live in you indefinitely until they totally take over.",
"It depends on the cause and personal immune response of the infected person.\n\nIn general, viruses are very common so your body is more familiar with at least some variation of a cold causing virus and can adjust accordingly to help fight off the infections.\n\nBacteria, however, is less common and will sometimes (but not always) require the use of antibiotics to help your body fight off the disease. \n\nAdditionally, antibiotics *only* work on bacteria and have no effect on virus-infuced conditions, so they would only be prescribed for these cases. \n\nSo essentially, the viral conditions are the average joe shoplifters that your body deals with on the daily and doesn't need any extra help handling.\n\nThe bacterial or rare viral conditions, however, are the less common gunmen that come in and would require a call for backup from the police.",
"Some bugs like to live in you forever. Some bugs, especially from other animals, don't know how to live in you forever and can make you deathly ill.\n\nOn average people have 5 viruses that stay in your body forever.\n\nEven more foriegn bacteria stay in your tummy for life."
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82g30c | why is gdp going up or down seen as important for a country? | How does it affect people's everyday lives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/82g30c/eli5_why_is_gdp_going_up_or_down_seen_as/ | {
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"If the GDP goes up then some people are making more money, working more hours, or earning more profits. To the degree this wealth is distributed through the country, by wide-scale stock ownership for example, it benefits everyone's financial state and through that their lives. The effects are small, so don't expect things to be really different for 1% of GDP increase.",
"Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of how much stuff a country produces. It includes goods like food, clothing, electronics and cars as well as service industries like lawyers, doctors and accountants. \n\nThe more stuff a country produces, the more stuff the country's citizens can consume. So, if there is more food being produced it means that there is more food for people to eat.\n\nIf GDP goes down that means that there is less stuff for people to consume and it usually means that more people are going to go hungry or not have the things they need.",
"GDP is the total value of all the goods and services produced in that country.\n\nMore is better of course (except in rare cases where rapid growth is generated by unsustainable debt financing or inflation), there's more value and property to go around.\n\nThe goal is for the inflation-adjusted GDP to increase faster than the population, so that the \"per capita\" GDP increases - each person makes relatively more than they did last year and quality of life improves.\n\nWhen GDP decreases or fails to outpace inflation and/or population growth, the average wealth production is now *decreasing*, and the populace will get increasingly agitated."
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9j9xn8 | what does it mean when a manual car as an "agressive" clutch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9j9xn8/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_a_manual_car_as_an/ | {
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"An aggressive clutch has little slip so matching your engine RPM with your vehicle speed is more important and less forgiving. These clutches sacrifice comfortable drivability for greater strength for high powered vehicles. ",
"So you can think of a clutch as a clamp, right? You’re essentially clamping your engine to your transmission. Normal road cars have “soft” clutches, meaning the clamping force is relatively weak. It’s much, much easier to actuate the clutch smoothly, because it isn’t trying to squeeze very hard. However, when a car makes a substantial amount of horsepower, this soft, smooth clutch no longer clamps hard enough, and the clutch can slip. This is where you install a more “aggressive” clutch. It squeezes much harder and it can handle the additional power from the motor. It will not slip. However, it will squeeze with so much strength that it can be very hard to engage it smoothly. This is what makes it feel “aggressive”. "
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5j5t61 | shaking when you are extremely angry | Why do our hands and voices shake when we are really pissed off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j5t61/eli5_shaking_when_you_are_extremely_angry/ | {
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"When people get angry their body releases adrenaline(Adrenaline is mainly released in response to stressful events to prepare the body for the ['fight or flight'](_URL_0_) response.)\n\n This sudden burst of adrenaline increases the amount of oxygen in our blood and our muscles get contracted tightly which causes our bodies to shake\n\nThis is actually creates stress for our bodies, it is advised to breath deeply and calm yourself down in such situations",
"Fight of flight response induced by emotional distress causes the body to release adrenaline. The adrenaline increases heart beat, dilates the blood vessels and kicks your metabolism into over drive to prepare you to kick someones ass or run for your life. Being pumped up on adrenaline can cause shaking or jitters in the extremities as our natural response to increased adrenaline is movement. "
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qvgxe | reversible computing | I read the [wiki](_URL_0_) and this [article](_URL_1_) from a physics blog and I'm still not getting it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qvgxe/eli5_reversible_computing/ | {
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"Every time you do Boolean logic on a computer (such as use an AND gate) it's like Thunderdome for bits. Two bits enter, one bit leaves! But, what happens to the other bit? It is no longer wanted, so it is burned off as heat.\n\nMeanwhile, heat and energy issues are quickly becoming the major driving factors behind the progress of computers. Portable computers are very limited because they run on batteries. The whole deal with multicore is that higher clock rates need exponentially more power, but more cores just need linearly more. IIRC, Nvidia was recently saying they want to build an exaflop supercomputer, but with current tech it would require the entire electrical output of the Hoover Dam to power the chips and their cooling systems.\n\nSo, what can we do instead of burning bits? We could try to recycle them... We could set aside some memory as a \"bit bucket\" to pull from when you need a 1 or a 0. But, sometimes the bucket would be empty when you need bits or already full when you are trying to pawn them off. So, it would never be 100% efficient. A more elegant solution would be to make recycling bits an integral part of the computation. How it would work is in some ways just a small modification to how we already do function call stacks. \n\nCurrently, you call a function, it pushes variables [a,b,c] on the stack, that function calls another function that pushes variables [d,e,f,g] on the stack and so on. Eventually, you get to the final purpose of the computation, copy off the results to someplace permanent and start unwinding the call stack (returning from functions). While unwinding, you don't care about [a,b,c] or [d,e,f,g] any more, so the unwinding procedure just stomps the stack pointer back down and forgets your variables in the process.\n\nBut, here's a different way to get the same result that seems kind of silly. What if, instead of using instructions that perform \"a = b & c\" we used something like \"a, a! = b & ! c\". Then, when the function is done doing useful work, just for fun we have a second half to the function that is just like the first half in reverse. The mirrored second half would have instructions like \"c, b = a! ! & a\". This would reconstruct the earlier values b and c from the later results a and a!. Eventually, running each of the functions backwards in turn would end up unwind the stack.\n\nIt seems silly, because it would take twice as long to do just to get the same results compared to just stomping the stack pointer back down. However, this way at no point were bits created or destroyed! It's not effective yet, but eventually the energy savings of not burning bits will allow computers to run more than twice as fast as they would otherwise. At that point, it will become faster to do twice the work for the same results. As an added bonus, garbage collection for memory becomes trivial!\n\nLooking long term, information theory has proven that no matter how efficient computers become, there is a minimum amount of energy required to represent a bit in this universe. Therefore, even though it's going to be a giant pain in the ass to make the transition, *eventually* we are going to stop burning bits by switching over to reversible computing. Eventually, might be pretty soon..."
]
} | [] | [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing",
"http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26308/"
] | [
[]
] | |
er0jln | how are city streets, farm roads, plots of land, etc all laid out perfectly in lines, squares, and right angles? if not, why does it seem like all roads and streets make perfect squares from a plane? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/er0jln/eli5_how_are_city_streets_farm_roads_plots_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"fezs1bc",
"fezscs2",
"fezsken",
"fezsm3s"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
5,
9
],
"text": [
"You’ve never been to Boston, Ma or Providence, RI have you?",
"It was designed that way on purpose. You have two options, you can choose to allow the roads to grow out as needed or you can plan out your roads using a grid plan. Most of the US is set up on a grid plan, I am told a lot of Europe is the opposite, having been mostly built before the industrial period.",
"Because the cities were planned out that way. If you ever fly over Europe you'll notice that streets are anything but straight in older cities. That is because they were often planned around a castle and developed by house by house rather than a city planner making plans beforehand. \n\nHaving straight lines is the most effective way to go from a to b. When the Romans came to Europe they introduced long, straight roads which made transport (and thus, trade) more effective. This concept has been adopted since then.",
"Surveying the land was a big deal in the 1800s. Counties were divided into six-mile-by-six-mile townships. Those townships were divided into 36 one-mile-by-one-mile sections. Section boundaries commonly became roads even in a rural township (farmers needed to be able to get their goods to the silos by the train stations).\n\nI can see remnants of these section-boundary roads everywhere. The busy streets in my city are on these lines. Even newer suburbs that embrace curvy streets with lots of cul-de-sacs will have these straight old section-boundary roads every mile."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
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