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6upqz6 | what are the cognitive mechanism that drive us to consider suicide? wouldn't the act of thinking about ending our existence be selected against or at the very least incredibly repressed? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6upqz6/eli5_what_are_the_cognitive_mechanism_that_drive/ | {
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"When your limbic system is taking over your frontal lobe, the innate disposition of fearing demise is receded and the only thing left to relax the soul is taking your own life unfortunately. It's more of a mental illness as being suicidal is a minor state of psychosis, therefore all sorts of rational thinking is thrown out the window and what a normal person would usually express (fear of death) is now an emotionless entity.",
"*I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins* - J.B.S. Haldane\n\nReproducing is not the only way to pass on your genetic material. Your kin also carry some of your genes, so mathematically, dying to save two siblings or eight cousins is just as effective as surviving yourself. Also, if you are past the age of reproduction and child-rearing, dying to allow your offspring to survive is also a good genetic strategy.\n\nFor this reason, suicide would not necessarily be completely selected against. Also, given the suicide rate in developed countries is around 1 in 10,000 per year, I would say it is pretty repressed, and usually the result of some pathology.",
"As a general rule, suicide tends to occur in moderately late life (20 and upwards). In most prehistoric societies, people would already be having children by that point. \n\nOnce you've already had children, there isn't really much selective pressure left to act against something, even if it kills you. It's part of the reason we have more infirmity in old age - we simply don't have (much) selective pressure at this point, beyond kin-selection.\n\nIn addition, suicide is very rare and may primarily be driven by various aspects of modern life, which didn't really affect our prehistoric ancestors. If this is the case, it's simply too recent for there to be any kind of meaningful selective pressure having acted against it. \n\nAny mental selection against is very closely related to natural \"survival instinct\", which is already a stunningly strong instinct. So killing yourself already is a very repressed action, and one that is only done by people in the most extreme of circumstances. It isn't a decision they take lightly. We already need to have some degree of capacity to ignore this desire to survive, as demonstrated by the poster belows quote \n\n\"I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins - J.B.S. Haldane\"\n\nThere are advantages to being able to forfeit the natural desire to survive in certain instances, primarily for the good of the group (also sometimes because if running has a 0% chance of survival, its worth having the ability to give the fighting option a go). It's hard to have the capacity to ignore (in some cases) survival instinct, and to not have the ability to commit suicide. They're very closely related (and in some cases - a suicidal defence to allow others to run), they're the same thing. Selection has made it a very rare trait, but it's hard to see how it could remove it completely without removing other advantages for the group",
"It is incredibly repressed. 13 out of 100,000 people kill themselves every year. Most people consider it for long periods of time before attempting. Most have difficulty carrying through with it. People fear death. It has been selected against.",
"For me, the pain of living almost outweighed the desire to escape that pain. The only reason I didn't is because I didn't want my cats to go to a shelter. So I got help for their sake. It was a long and arduous process. I was in my early 40s. ",
" > Wouldn't the act of thinking about ending our existence be selected against or at the very least incredibly repressed?\n\nIt is repressed. Suicide is almost always tied to some sort of mental illness (ie, biologic systems not functioning properly).\n\nSimilarly, cancer(before birthing the next generation) is selected against, but people still get cancer."
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8l63wz | the initial creation of betting odds and lines? | To be clear, this is not what does money line mean, or 7/2, etc. etc. I am familiar with the meaning of them all, but got to thinking:
Say the world series matchup is determined, and five minutes later odds are live. What just happened? Is it just an agreement upon sportsbooks? Is there some sort of panel? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8l63wz/eli5_the_initial_creation_of_betting_odds_and/ | {
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"This is the one place where bookmakers rely on their knowledge of the sport and the betting audience, as a bad initial line can wind up losing them money. Essentially it is a guess, but as bets start flowing in, the line can move very quickly. \n\nFive minutes might seem like a short period of time, but gamblers are looking to place their bets immediately after the line opens, hoping to get a favorable bet in before the line adjusts for the masses."
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3tjsur | why do a 20 minutes nap is better for your body than simply "20 more minutes of sleep" in the morning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tjsur/eli5_why_do_a_20_minutes_nap_is_better_for_your/ | {
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"Naps are not good for everyone. Many people, myself included, cannot nap as it will mess up their sleep schedule for days. ",
"If you're tired/sleep deprived, naps generally quickly allow you to enter REM sleep which is the best \"value for time\" type of sleep. If you sleep for 20 mins extra it could be REM sleep but also need.",
"i can't answer the 'why' part of your question, but there is definitely something to the 15-20 minute power nap thing.\n\ni used to stretch out on my back and just zonk out on the floor in the middle of the afternoon...but the trick was that when my body woke me back up, i *HAD* to get up off the floor...and i felt rejuvenated and ready to go.\n\nif i tried to continue napping, even for just another 20-30 minutes, i would *always* get up and feel groggy and sluggish.\n\n15-20 mins auto wake-up nap = great\n\n30-45 mins nap = crappy\n\ni hope you get a medical answer to this, because i would like to know, too.",
"I'm sorry, but this sentence is bugging me. Shouldn't it be \"Why is a 20 minute nap better for your body than simply taking 20 more minutes of sleep in the morning?\"",
"Think of mobile phone battery. \nNight sleep = full charge. An extra 20mins on charger doesn't make it 120% charged. \n20minute nap sometime later in the day = quick charge when battery is low. It will bump up the battery charge by 20% so the phone doesn't shutdown at 4pm. \nSleep-deprived = phone never got time to charge to 100%, so an extra 20min in the morning will let it charge some more towards 100%.",
"When you go to sleep, your body and brain in particular goes through various cycles of different kinds of sleep. These cycles repeat throughout the night. If you interrupt the sleep before the cycle really gets going, or right after one complete one is finished, you tend to wake up feeling refreshed. If you wake up in the middle of the a cycle, it takes time for your brain to switch back over to \"awake mode\" and you feel tired and groggy until it happens. "
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4y5p0v | how does a vpn change my location and ip address, even though i'm still going through my router? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y5p0v/eli5_how_does_a_vpn_change_my_location_and_ip/ | {
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"It creates a tunnel to the vpn router from your provider and all your info goes out from there. Along with everyone else's data so it is very hard to track at that point.\n",
"A VPN will create a connection between two machines over the internet and send other traffic over that link where it is routed to the open internet on the other end. Think of it as a mail forward service. You can send an envelope within an envelope to your mail forward service and they will take off the outer envelope and send the inner one. When they receive a letter for you they will not open it but just stuff it in another envelope and put your real address on the front and send it to you. A VPN service works very similarly. Your ISP only see packets going between you and your VPN provider and all others only communicates with your VPN provider and don't know that they are sending all the traffic to you.",
"I'm not an expert myself, but I think some people here are giving incorrect information. They seem to describe how Proxy works, not VPN. Yes, with proxy you send your request to another computer and it relays that request to the destination. The destination sees the IP of the proxy, not yours. \n\nOn the other hand, when you join a VPN you are simply assigned by your VPN provider a separate IP to use when sending data over that VPN connection. And that's the IP that the destination sees. ",
"Imagine if the post office always put the sender's address on every envelope.\n\nYou want to send a letter anonymously so you send the letter to a friend that opens envelope, takes the letter inside and posts it himself with the same content. The sender's address on the envelope is now that of your friend's rather than your own.",
"i'm just gonna illustrate this. all IP are illustrated on purpose.\n\nYOU:IP=100.10.20.139 (IP map to area = USA, LA)\n\nVPN:IP=49.100.23.244 (IP map to area = Thailand, bangkok)\n\nIP address are mapped by it's number (IP address). you can check via some online tool such as _URL_0_, it will tell you that ip belong to which ISP and itself tell you the area it was mapped to.\n\nwhen you connect to a VPN, you are basically using that IP to surf and do whatever work you want. just imagine you are connecting to another computer in another country, using it to do your work. the things that you are doing is then transferred to your computer. it acts like a middle-man.\n\nnow what your ISP can see is that you are connected to this VPN service but it doesn't know what you be beyond that.\n\nthe VPN is connected to another ISP which thinks that it is doing a lot of activities and usually are illegal stuff.\n\nthis is traceable if that VPN service give up on you to court. \n\nit is not as though untraceable as what every one says."
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5f7zg2 | why does depression make you want to do the opposite of things that would make you feel better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f7zg2/eli5_why_does_depression_make_you_want_to_do_the/ | {
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"It's not about 'doing the opposite' of whatever would make you feel better. It's the natural result of a lack of energy (physical) and motivation (emotional), coupled with the fact that most healthy behaviours (exercise, socializing, preparing nutritious meals, etc.) require energy and effort, which are in short supply. It's like your body is permanently set to energy-saving mode.",
"One of the symptoms of major depressive disorder is anhedonia - this literally means an inability to experience happiness. So it's not doing the opposite from things that will make one happy, since *nothing will actually make you happy*, so why put in the effort?\n\nIt might actually help to understand depression if you think of it as \"anti-happiness\". You don't try to be miserable. It's just not a choice you have. "
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8v1a73 | brief cold sensation when feeling hot water | I wanted to check the water temperature of a filled bath, so I put my hand and part lower arm in it to feel whether it was too hot or too cold. The water turned out to be too hot, but for the first second or so it felt really cold. It literally felt like I put my hand in ice water, before the burning hot water hit me (might not even have been that hot, but the switch from cold to hot made it seem that way). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v1a73/eli5_brief_cold_sensation_when_feeling_hot_water/ | {
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"Your body needs to know if something is too hot or too cold so it can help you to get out of danger. Your skin and other parts of your body have sensors that are supposed to tell your brain when something is happening when you touch something. These sensors are called nerve endings. There are special nerve endings for telling when something is hot and another set of nerve endings for telling when something is cold. These are called thermoreceptors which is a big fancy word for temperature detectors. There are heat receptors and cold receptors. Normally, when you touch something hot, the heat receptors tell your brain that you touched something hot and your brain can help you get away by moving your hand. And the same thing happens when you touch something cold when the cold receptors tell your brain something is too cold. Basically, they tell your brain what type of danger is happening and your brain figures out what type of pain that should be. \n\nSometimes when you touch something too hot, both types of receptors send signals to the brain and your brain may think the cold signal is louder for a few seconds. Scientists have studied why this happens and they have two ideas. One idea is that both the cold and heat receptors share the same path to get their signals to the brain and sometimes the brain can get confused as to which type of pain signal it heard. Another idea is that sometimes the heat and cold receptors can do the job of the other type. So if something is too hot, the cold receptors can help to send the danger signal to the brain even if it means your brain can get confused because it’s more important to know there was danger. ",
"I swear I was having this showerthought literally 1 hour ago. Thanks for quenching my curiosity :)"
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2vaclr | if i drop down a 1 kg rock into the mariana trench would it hit the bottom of the trench? if not, where would it stop falling? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vaclr/eli5_if_i_drop_down_a_1_kg_rock_into_the_mariana/ | {
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"It's more a matter of density, than weight. Water is a curious thing and even at very high pressure it doesn't get significantly condensed.\n\nLet's say we take iron for example, in order for it to be suspended in water, the water would have to be 8 times denser than normal. Even to achieve 2 times the normal density of water we would have to apply a force of 11,000 kg/cm square to it. Provided that was practically possible (only theoretical), we would get a pressure of that order at a depth of 110 km [[1]](_URL_0_).\n\nSo to answer your question, the stone would sink to the bottom, because it would be denser than water. This might be an over simplification but, the pressure the water exerts on sunken objects (which I assume you think would stop the rock from sinking) is equal in all directions and it doesn't affect the sinking.\n\nPS: this doesn't take the ocean turrets into accounts."
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"http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-17-2004-54210.asp"
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3vc0fw | why do we feel phone vibration when there is none but don't feel it when it is there. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vc0fw/eli5_why_do_we_feel_phone_vibration_when_there_is/ | {
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"For the first part:\n\nGenerally, when we feel some kind of \"phantom\" vibration (when we think we feel our phone vibrate, even though it doesn't), this can be attributed to something else going on in our body that we can mistake for a vibration. This could be anything from blood moving through a certain area to a sudden itch next to our phone to an accidental misfiring of nerve cells, making us think we feel something when we don't (could even be a muscle twitch). We tend to notice these feelings more when they're next to our phone in our pocket because we are aware of the phone being in our pocket, and any sensory input from that area isn't forgotten nearly as quickly as, say, a muscle twitch in an arm.\n\nIt might also be that you're expecting a text or email so much that your mind becomes convinced that your phone buzzed when it hadn't. The mind is weird that way.\n\nFor the second part:\n\nSometimes when our minds are so focused on something else (a conversation, or a movie, or something) we fail to notice other sensory input like our phone vibrating. Also, sometimes the phone gets so tangled in our pocket that we fail to notice the vibration, or sometimes the phone drifts away from our leg in our pocket, and when it vibrates it's not actually completely touching the leg at the time."
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4lov8x | how does our body know what tastes good/ bad and what smells good/bad. are we born with this instinct or is it something we learn | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lov8x/eli5_how_does_our_body_know_what_tastes_good_bad/ | {
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"There are several systems that work to 'teach' flavor to humans. Starting with the [amniotic fluid]( _URL_0_), babies begin to taste some of the flavors in the mother's diet. \n\nNext, human milk contains casein a protein which (in other mammals/ not yet observed in humans) breaks down into [Casomorphin](_URL_1_). This endogenous morphine causes newborn mammals become addicted to milk. The milk (of humans and other mammals) has the flavor of the mother's diet, so when the offspring is old enough to interact with solid food, they have been trained to accept the flavor. \n\nIn humans there is additional training and socialization, for children to accept the avaliable food souces. "
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casomorphin"
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5hljo5 | how do these home wifi mesh networks work? | **Some examples:**
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_0_
My first thought was that these were simple powerline adapters turned access points, but I can't find anything to confirm that. Instead all of these products advertise a "mesh network" are these just fancy repeaters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hljo5/eli5_how_do_these_home_wifi_mesh_networks_work/ | {
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"There's a few ways to create a wireless Mesh, you need a background of how WiFi works to understand what is going on.\n\nWith a range extender you are creating a 1:1 mapping of an existing wireless access point and manually pointing it to another access point. This access point \"connects\" to the AP that has network access and creates a wireless bridge for its users. Essentially your remote users connect to the extender and your connector sends that data to your network connected access point. The problems with this is that your are creating wireless congestion on the channels you are using and creating an extra hop/latency for those remote users.\n\nA \"mesh\" network takes the technology of a range extender and adds in some automation. The idea now is that the device can detect other wireless nodes within the same network and connect to each one and act as a wireless repeater, potentially for multiple access points at the same time. The implementation from a WiFi standpoint is still the same thing. Your remote user connects to a Meshed access point which has a wireless connection eventually to get to the networked AP whether it is through another meshed access point or directly to that AP. You are still adding wireless congestion and you are still adding hops.\n\nThe key differentiation here is that with Mesh you can add more than 1 range extender easily and the network can help self configure (identify other mesh devices of the same brand) and perhaps self heal if one node goes down. Everything else is marketing fluff. It's important to note than in both scenarios you are adding \"coverage\" with the understanding that you are losing performance. Some mesh networks use a dedicated 5Ghz mesh connection between APs and use 2.4Ghz for client connectivity since the 5Ghz allows more performance for the AP- > AP connection, but this severely limits the performance of the client, end user."
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"https://lumahome.com",
"https://eero.com/"
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675u07 | is it actually possible for an adult woman to make her boobs larger without surgery, pregnancy, or significant weight gain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/675u07/eli5_is_it_actually_possible_for_an_adult_woman/ | {
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"You can do this with certain hormones. I wouldn't recommend it because a woman should never need to increase her breast size. (Larger breast size is associated with back pain, among other things, and does not lead to greater production of milk.)\n\nAs for the supplements specifically, most of them are probably fake. Some may be real. Check ingredients lists for any active ingredients that may lead to hormonal changes."
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bbqryn | what's the difference between classifying internet as title ii or title i? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbqryn/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_classifying/ | {
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"Title II is the \"Common Carrier\" standard like the phone company. \n\nAnyone operating a telephone service has treat all calls equally and cannot give priority access. Otherwise, they could charge you twice as much per call for mom and your girlfriend than calling anyone else. \n\nCompanies laying new phone lines and infrastructure are mandated to share, but are allowed to charge strictly regulated usage fees to any other companies looking to piggyback off of their lines. \n\nTitle I is for \"information Services\" companies, like cable and TV companies. Their communications are one-way, so there doesn't need to be as many regulations. \n\nThe Internet blurs the line between the two. It can be used for two-way like I'm talking to you right now, but it also can be used for streaming video from your cable provider. ISP's would prefer it to be less regulated, and users would benefit from it being open. \n\nIf Internet Service Providers can be classified as a Title II provider, the FCC will be forced to mandate that all internet traffic be handled like phone calls, selling data access at the same price for everyone. \n\nA good counter argument is Netflix and Youtube. The 4 major Video streaming services account for over 50% of the total data used during the US Primetime. Without Title II protection, ISP's could charge Netflix more for being such an extreme user. After all, if Amazon's delivery trucks accounted for 60% of our highway traffic, it would make sense to levy an extra tax on them for the use and abuse of our roadways. \n\nThis sounds reasonable at first, but then consider that ISP's like Charter are often attached to their own streaming platforms. They have a profit incentive to set Netflix's bandwith to dialup speeds on their own network, while charging double for their streaming service that also happens to be the only one that works on their networks...which is also the only network in town."
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37p1xl | why cant an electric car self charge itself when runnin? like how a bicycle rund a light from the wheel friction. | ELI5: why cant an electric car self charge itself when running? like how a bicycle running a light from the wheel friction. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37p1xl/eli5_why_cant_an_electric_car_self_charge_itself/ | {
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"Because of Conservation of energy, you are losing energy when you convert motion to electricity for the car, in other words you do not get the same amount of energy back, you are losing it every time the cycle repeats. ",
"A mechanism like that works by essentially braking the bike, taking out energy from the system. If you installed a dynamo like that to an electric car, you'd be emptying its batteries only to charge the batteries. Not only would the car go slower, but much of the energy would leave the system as heat. As a result, you'd just waste energy.\n\nHowever, systems like this do exist, but they only work when you are braking."
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3tib1e | how can income inequality be fixed, or even lessened? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tib1e/eli5_how_can_income_inequality_be_fixed_or_even/ | {
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"Equality is something we strive for, but short of an idealist realization of utopian communism, we're never going to get there.\n\nAnd I think it's ok, as long as people who want to work can, and as long as working has more benefits than not working. But the idea of getting insanely rich is an incentive that drives people to essentially bug-test the economy by trying to exploit it, therefore showing us what needs fixing, or it incentivizes people to invent things, educate themselves, work hard, and all the other things that have to happen for humanity to move forward. ",
"We could create some kind of economic legislation that meant that the lowest salary in any organisation could only ever be a fixed percentage of the highest salary. Say, 10%, so if the CEO wanted to earn £250,000 PA, fine, but they'd be paying the cleaner £25,000."
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28uh67 | if our bodies are products of evolution, how could our bodies have evolved the ability to release amounts of dmt upon impending death? | So from what I've gathered, our abilities and features are modeled around that which we survive to reproduce. What then, would be the evolutionary advantage of our bodies releasing the DMT chemical upon our certain death? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28uh67/eli5_if_our_bodies_are_products_of_evolution_how/ | {
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"Not all characteristics are byproducts of evolution ",
"It's not hard to imagine an advantage. You don't want other members of your species to be near you when you die, because a weak and dying organism will attract predators and scavengers. ",
"Do you have a source? I suspect you're just wrong that it happens in the first place. ",
"Our unevolved brains may have reacted differently to DMT, e.g. it could have been a life saving event to get flushed with it. At one time we had tails, and we kept the tail bones. Today we are sensitive to DMT, but the reason why remains a mystery...\n\nHowever, DMT is a neurotransmitter, our bodies have used it in a productive manner for millions of years. (In small quantities)",
"It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with evolution. Some things are just accidents, and the massive overdose of DMT at the very end of life might be one of them. There is no end-of-life purpose, it is just the result of the pineal gland shutting down.\n\nThe real question is what is the purpose of the pineal gland producing DMT at all. DMT is associated with dreaming, and dreaming is thought to be essential to our psychological well-being. That's about all that is known.\n\nThere probably is an evolutionary benefit to our bodies producing DMT which science hasn't yet determined, but it is no doubt related to living, not the moment of death.",
"Not everything has an advantage. As long as it doesn't hinder survival of the species it can stick around. "
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3357rw | if a person has an artificial heart, when do they die? | If it's just a piece of machinery, how does it stop "beating"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3357rw/eli5if_a_person_has_an_artificial_heart_when_do/ | {
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"It doesn't. Stopping of the heart is not the definition of death. Death is scientifically complicated. The practical definition in hospitals is the cessation of brain activity. This can be caused by any number of problems aside from anoxia. A beating heart isn't going to save you if you have no functioning liver, or your intestine can no longer extract nutrients from food, or your lungs have critically reduced capacity. "
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oimf7 | how cigarette filters work, and what they filter. | Edit: thank you for all the answers. and for getting this to front page.
Someone stated that it filters out all the stuff that wont kill you. what are those things? are they good for you? why even put them there in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oimf7/eli5_how_cigarette_filters_work_and_what_they/ | {
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"The [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) for cigarette filters is very clear and concise.",
"Like any filter, a cigarette filter is a series of small holes the smokey air has to pass through before it reaches your lungs. A cigarette filter looks like cotton if you unroll it. The holes in the filter are large enough to let air and small particles of smoke through through, but small enough to catch chunks of smoke and prevent tobacco from going into your mouth. They can also have holes poked in the sides to let in outside air with each puff so that the smoker gets less tar and nicotine. But, if you plug the holes with your lips or fingers while puffing, you are not reducing tar and nicotine intake, so you can get just as much \"bad stuff\" from a low-tar cigarette as you can from a regular one. \n\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nEdited for clarity.",
"Some filters have three layers: two layers of that cotton-like thing on the ends and a bunch of little carbon bubbles in the center, so they essentially work just like a gas mask.",
"I've held smoker's lungs and healthy lungs. Having done that I'm inclined to say the filters don't work. But then again, it could be a lot worse. ",
"Fun fact: Between 1952 and 1956 Kent cigarettes used a form of asbestos to make their filters. All the taste with twice the cancer. ",
"Similar question, I smoke unfiltered rollies, am I screwing myself up (more than standard cigarettes)?\n\nFor what it's worth, they are stronger so I smoke less of them, and the tobacco is supposed to have less chemicals and foreign stuff (I don't know if that actually makes a difference).",
"In two words: very little.\n\nThey're to improve public image about health, and all the carcinogens and tar pass straight through them, with perhaps a tiny percentage less tar."
]
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6eqmco | why does our brain have trouble visually distinguishing groups of objects greater than 4? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6eqmco/eli5_why_does_our_brain_have_trouble_visually/ | {
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"A million years ago, your ancestors didn't need to be able to rapidly count to more than four. Without a real economy, the biggest mathematical demand on them was to know if there are more than three or four leopards ahead, it's time to get the hell out of here. Our relationship with numbers is very recent in our evolution and there just hasn't been substantial selective pressure to be able to instantly count large groups."
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67oa1l | - what information does a police officer use to choose between giving a ticket or a warning? | I was pulled over recently for going the wrong way on a one-way street. I never said a single word to the officer, and he still let me go without any ticket. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67oa1l/eli5_what_information_does_a_police_officer_use/ | {
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"They can see your record by searching your name and licence number. \n\nIf the court wants to see you (outstanding warrant) or your car was reported stolen or doesn't match the plates, arrest.\n\nDoing something clearly dangerous or you've been warned in the past, ticket.\n\nMinor violation with no warnings, you'll just get warned.\n\nMost of these are subject to \"police discretion\". Unless the law or courts specifically say that the police must do something (uncommon, most common are bench warrants: \"the judge wants to see you\"), the police department can have its own policies or leave things up to an officer's judgement. "
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u5eck | i live in the country. eli5 how there is a well hundreds of feet beneath my house and how it provides me with a continuous source of fresh clean water | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u5eck/i_live_in_the_country_eli5_how_there_is_a_well/ | {
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"There are layers of rock underneath your feet. Rain is absorbed by the soil when it falls and is pulled down by gravity. Passing through all this soil filters the water, but some contaminants can't be removed this way. After a long time it will be meet rock that it can't find its way through and accumulate in the spongy rock above the impermeable rock. This is large deposit is called an [aquafier](_URL_0_).\n\nYour well reaches down into the local aquafier and uses an electrical pump to pump fresh water up to a holding tank. Water from the surrounding rock then rushes back in to refill the drier rock around the well. The accumulator tank will keep the pump from running all the time and gives the rock time to reset so the pump won't run dry.\n\nThere can be multiple layers to an aquafier. In many cases the deeper water levels haven't seen the light of day in thousands of years and is therefore uncontaminated, this is called *paleowater* and takes hundreds of years to recharge."
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st1dw | how will cispa affect routine internet usage as it exists today? | I am a fairly heavy user of the internet, particularly downloading/listening to music, watching online videos, using reddit/other similar sites, etc. I know some extreme basics of what CISPA is, but can someone give me some easy-to-swallow insight on it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/st1dw/eli5_how_will_cispa_affect_routine_internet_usage/ | {
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"Short answer: as an average internet user your habits won't change.\n\nLike your 5:\n\nEveryone in your class signs up to get books form the library. There are all sorts of books, some cost some money some don't. Some are bad, some good and some are in between. \n\nEveryday you and everyone in your class writes down your name next to the books you want. Now this list means i know what book you and everyone else read. Normally at the end of the day the teacher puts the list in a file cabinet and she is the only one that knows what names have looked at which books.\n\nNow something bad happens and the principal wants to see the list. Before CISPA, there was a very specific list of reasons why he could ask for this list. On top of that he had to ask for specific names and or books on that list, and the teacher was obligated/encouraged to not show him any part of the list that didn't have to do with the the bad thing that happened.\n\nWith CISPA, He can give a vague reason for wanting the list as long as he is sure to say the words \"school security\" and now the teacher has to give him the list.\n\nSo this doesn't seem all that bad, the principal just wants to see who took out the bad books and besides its for \"school security\" plus there's nothing that says that your teacher can't keep blocking the names that don't have anything to do with the original bad thing. BUT, now she is not obligated to hide that information, and the permanent markers she uses to blot out names is kinda pricey, so maybe she'll just give him the entire list. \n\nThis is worrisome because you just happened to have decided to check out some pg-13 material.You want to keep it private because as a student that should be your right. But now the principal, who happens to decide a whole bunch of stuff about what you get to do in school, plus he's friends with a bunch of people outside of school,r decide that they want to punish you for something else. Now they have the chance to use your honest reading habits against you.\n\nBut since you dont think about these things everyday,, and are generally a good kid who reads good books you won't change your reading habits\n\n**The Lesson; Dear Reader**: The principal has a lot of power already to get info, probably more than we are aware of, but at least right now there has to be at least a semblance of an iota of respect for a students privacy, CISPA is just one more chip at the block which can lead to a much bigger crack.\n\n\n \n\n"
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3ihdiy | why does germany seem to be the only country doing well as part of the european union? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ihdiy/eli5why_does_germany_seem_to_be_the_only_country/ | {
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"When you [compare performance side by side](_URL_0_) most EU countries are on a pretty similar trajectory to Germany. The only country which is doing horribly is Greece and the others that are doing poorly (Portugal, Spain, Italy) also had large public sector debts that Germany didn't have at the onset of the crisis. \n\nMost of the countries in the Eurozone, even some that had substantial debt burdens like Ireland are doing well as part of the EU. It should also be noted that even Greece's GDP is still higher than it was when they joined the eurozone."
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5mt4s4 | how do car tires deal with a change in air pressure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mt4s4/eli5_how_do_car_tires_deal_with_a_change_in_air/ | {
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"The changes in airpressure are tiny compared to the difference between the pressure inside and outside the tire. \n\nThe pressure inside the tire is over three atmospheres, outside it is only one. At the highest drivable road (around 5000 meters) the outside pressure would be 0.5 atmospheres, meaning the overpressure has gone from 2 to 2.5 atmospheres, a change of 25%. This is well within the safety margins of any tire. \n\nThe sort of changes we get at normal altitudes due to weather isn't even worth considering, as they are within a few percent of an atmosphere. "
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1cs8oj | what is a "vector" image? | I often get confused when people at my work place ask for "vector". Starting design myself, it gets confusing because people do not know the meaning of what vector really is or at least I get confused from .ai, .psd files and so on.
So how can I explain what vector really is? And is it only limited to adobe programs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cs8oj/eli5_what_is_a_vector_image/ | {
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"a vector image is a scalable image format, that is, the image is recreated from a formula or equation depending on the size needed for display (vectors are mathematical objects that can be scaled, that is, stretched or shrunk by multiplication).",
"There are two general kinds of computer graphics: *raster* graphics and *vector* graphics.\n\nImagine a big piece of graph paper.\n\nA raster image says how each *square* on the paper should be colored — as in, \"square 3,2 is blue ... 3,3 is purple ... 3,4 is purple too ... 3,5 is black ...\" and so on. Everything in a raster image is in terms of pixels, which are the squares on the graph paper; each pixel is given a color.\n\nA vector image is, instead, instructions for how to draw lines and shapes among the *intersections* on the paper — as in, \"draw a triangle from 1,2 to 4,5 to 0,3 and fill it with purple.\" A vector image does not talk about individual pixels at all; only about shapes (lines, triangles, circles, and so on) and which coordinates they are placed.\n\nOne big difference is that vector images scale smoothly whereas raster images do not. If you want to make a vector image 2x bigger, you just multiply all the coordinates by two. If you want to make a raster image 2x bigger, you have to average all the colors of the pixels to make the in-between pixels. This makes it fuzzier, whereas a vector image stays sharp."
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3e6mb3 | if sweating is a required process to regulate internal body temperature, why don't antiperspirants and deodorants cause health issues? | The body has to remain a certain temperature in order to function properly. Sweating is one of the ways the body tries to cool ourselves down if the body is too warm. Antiperspirants stop sweating. Why don't they cause us to fall ill? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e6mb3/eli5_if_sweating_is_a_required_process_to/ | {
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"You apply them to specific areas, under arms, where the sweating will promote bacterial growth much sooner resulting a a noticeable smell much sooner than other areas. ",
"Simply because you don't apply antiperspirant all over your body. We put it on in our pits as that is a place where it's easy to sweat and also for the moisture to allow bacteria (which smells) to grow. If you don't sweat under your arms, you can still sweat on your face, back, arms, legs, belly, etc. ",
"Because you don't sweat from only your armpits. The back of your knees do more than enough to pick up the slack, same with swamp-ass.",
"Antiperspirarents somewhat limit sweat, but they don't block it altogether. Unless you're in a critical situation where you need all the possible sweat you could make to cool off, you'll probably be fine with the amount of sweating left.",
"Deodorants wont do anything, they just cover the odor.\n\nAntitranspirant are not harmful if you don't cover yourself completely with them. You shouldn't use them all the time tho since apparently it's could be detrimental, don' put it if you intend to to a big effort too, you'll just transpire from elsewhere."
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5zyxgw | what determines whether a man "shoots" his ejaculate, or moreso dribbles it out? | Hormonal? Musculatural?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zyxgw/eli5_what_determines_whether_a_man_shoots_his/ | {
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"Ejaculation is a process by which muscles squeeze out an amount of semen that has been produced over the past few minutes. If the muscles squeeze harder, or if there is more semen to shoot, the pressure will be greater and the semen will leave at a higher speed.\n\nThe pubococcygeus and bulbospongiosus muscles contract during orgasm to force out the ejaculate, so their strength is the most dramatic influence. Hormones likely affect semen production, as likely does length of time aroused, time since last ejaculation, and hydration of the man. Length of penis may also have some effect, as the overall exit velocity will be based on force and the distance over which the force is applied."
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27yatd | how can 20 year old movies like jurassic park and terminator 2 have really convincing special effects, whilst the cgi in newer films looks completely unrealistic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27yatd/eli5_how_can_20_year_old_movies_like_jurassic/ | {
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"Because they're not CGI.\n\nMost of the close up dinosaurs in jurassic park were animatronic, Terminator 2 used CGI, but also lots of prostetics.\n\nRandom trivia:\nIn the T-rex car scene, the t-rex was not supposed to break the glass, and the screams were real.\n\nEDIT: Rephrasing of the comment, People seem to have misunderstood it.",
"Well to be honest there are some movies that are just one big special effect ( Gravity or Life of Pi ) that look extremely realistic.\n\nCGI is basically an art form you can think about it like painting a picture. If you rush an artist and only pay him little money your picture will look stupid even with the newest tools like Photoshop.\n\nWith CGI this problem is even bigger you need to perfectly fit to the movie scene (shadows, color, size, clipping, ...). And that isn't even enough to make effects look right you need to know about physics and construction to make your imaginary effects look like they could be real.\n\nIf you want a realistic dinosaur your artist needs to learn the anatomy of a dinosaur, he needs to learn how dinosaurs move and he needs to make very detailed model (every pump in the skin has to be there to make it look real). And you usually need additional footage from the movie scene to make any reflections perfect. So basically you get what you pay for.",
"Which CGI looks unrealistic in films today? \nI think the CGI in most films out now are pretty damn good. \n",
"I think in CGI in general isn't so much about the quality of the individual elements so much as how they use light / elements to mask the effects.\n\nJurassic Park is a perfect example. While some of the CGI has held up really well, a lot of the daylight scenes look really dated. A lot of this may have to do with modern HD transfers of SD films, but daylight scenes like initial dinosaur encounter at the beginning where they drive up on the field of Brontosauruses.\n\nSimilarly, movies like Pacific Rim use night and rain (just like JP did for the majority of the movie) to mask the CG.\n\nOf course like everything else there's just some CGI that's better than other CGI. Look at video games-Crysis was released in 2007 and is still one of the best looking games ever made nearly a decade after its release. Very few games have surpassed it, it was just very well made (even if terribly optimized). \n\n*Edit* Clearly I was mistaken on the SD to HD part",
"3D Artist here. Physical models they take a lot of skill, a skill that alot of people don't tend to take up these days which requires a big team. For example, if you were to build a cityscape that works as an opening shot, you would need someone to design it, someone to build it, someone to paint it realistically, someone to put the whole thing together, someone of a lighting expert, an electrician, a camera man to film it, basically... a lot of guys to do that one scene. And then theres the time to do that, and its not an overnight job, it takes alot of time.. and time is what directors/film studios dont have, or more to the point, dont want! In a day of age of having things fast fast fast they need that scene, made, shot, processed and is where CGI comes in... basically all those things that are needed to build that cityscape can be done by one guy and wouldnt take half the time. Problem is when you dont have the time, you do a half arsed job and as a result you end up with shitty looking clearly obvious CGI scenes, dont get me wrong, they arent totally shitty, they are still very good, but it just looks fake, your brain knows its fake and therefore it takes you out of that scene completely and tension, emotion is lost.\nTL;DR - Lacking of physical models/scenes with budget and time constaints makes for shitty CGI hence the unrealism.",
"The technical limitations of the time forced people to rely heavily on makeup and props. CGI even in its most basic form was likely more expensive, so it was used like an exacto knife. It takes a different talent, but once you paint a physical prop to behave like a specific material, the eye will believe it. Think about all the furniture and windows in action movies, they're made of cardboard and plastic but the illusion is believable. Making a CGI table that smashes, no matter how advanced the technology, would undoubtedly look \"more fake\".\n\nAs some others have pointed out already, nowadays it's the exact opposite: in terms of time and cost, you're better off delegating to CGI. However, it takes very little to break the CGI illusion, often in subconscious ways. Movies that protect the illusion throughout 90+ minutes are few and far inbetween. The amount of CGI required to tell the story also makes a huge difference, if it's just 5 minutes at the end of the movie it's likely less noticeable than a nonstop crappy CGI shot fest.\n\nA good example of this are the first Matrix and its sequels. With a bigger budget, Reloaded and Revolutions have more 100% CGI shots, typically of Neo doing awesome things. Those scenes look too much like CGI. The first one was more careful about it and looks better as a result.",
"2001 was made in 1968 and still looks great, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari still looks pretty good even though it's almost a hundred years old, in the end it comes down to how much effort the people behind it are willing to put in. Steven Spielberg and James Cameron were obviously passionate about making their films look great and had the talent to realize it, Spielberg would have heavily researched the look and anatomy of the dinosaurs and put a lot of effort into making them realistic through special effects and the make up of a shot. Compare that to [this snippet from Alex Cross](_URL_0_) which is a terrible movie, put a good team behind that and it could have looked great now or ten years ago or fifty years ago. ",
"3 words: Stan Winston Studios",
"Also those movies use practical effects like giant robots too (the T Rex) ",
"Jumanji. Need I say more?",
"To add upon everyone's comments, look at a phenomenon called uncanny valley. Basically there's a point where things look very good but our minds reject them because we notice the tiny flaws. We are very attuned to seeing minor differences, especially in faces ",
"The nostalgia critic did a 10 minute video on this if you want to see it",
"The movies with bad looking effects now are the ones with less of a budget. the CGI in terminator and jurassic park were very good for their time because they were movies with a high budget. compare them to movies today with high budgets and they don't look nearly as good",
"Go rewatch T2 and JP. If they were released today they would get blasted for having poor effects.",
"I personally feel part of it is perspective. in the 80s when animatronics were king and practical effects were ideal, what you were seeing on screen was actually being filmed in mostly real time. it may not always look the greatest. but when I watch terminator 1 or Robocop (original) I know its going to look exactly as I remember. but in a few years avatar is going to look like piss, because cgi will have advanced even further. just like how ps1 looked so amazing at first, and then ps2 came out and there was no going back.",
"I am of the opinion that Fellowship of the Ring is honestly the best CG ever used. At no point in that movie do you realize you are seeing CG - it's all very realistically made. What angered me about the new Hobbit films is that they used CG for the orcs - whY?!? In the originals they used very good makeup for the orcs and only used CG for large area scenes in which legions of them were needed - or for creatures which COULD NOT be made by animatronics/makeup like the Balrog and Shelob. That's tasteful, but endemic CG for EVERYTHING is the biggest failing of contemporary movies. ",
"I feel like a lot of these explanations, while insightful, kind of beat around the simple answer. Money. It always comes down to money. The effects aren't worse today. There are films coming out all the time with stunning cgi. They're the ones that had money and time. The ones that didn't look awful. \n\nJurassic park has amazing effects because they paid for amazing effects. And a good deal if it was animatronic as people have pointed out, but the mistake is comparing animatronic or practical effects to cgi. They're two different things, and honestly, both can be done amazingly well... And both can be done horribly. For all the simply stunning and jaw dropping moments in Jurassic park (and yes they do hold up in my opinion, even today) there are countless films with animatronics that look absolutely laughable. Just like there's amazing cgi (half the time you probably can't even identify everything in a modern movie that's actually cgi, trust me, there's a lot of it) and horrible cgi. And it all comes down to money and time. \n\nAs one final note I'd also like to add that almost all effects are better received when used in moderation, whether cgi or practical. When the whole movie is effects it kind of wears down your suspension of disbelief. \n\nSource: I do that cg stuff\n\nTL;DR: dat cash",
"Because you're watching Syfy at 3am?",
"because movies in the 90s was a perfect blend of practical effects enhanced by computer fuckery, but eventually cgi technology evolved to the point where practical effects weren't necessary any more, and since (1) they're often really expensive, and (2) studio execs really really love money, they got dropped\n\nand now all movies are cartoons",
"Most people seem to be getting this wrong.\n\nJurassic Park and Terminator 2 used a lot of special effects (puppets etc). Those are different from visual effects where a computer does the work. \n\nAfter Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 film companies used computers a lot more for effects for various reasons.\n\nComputers are very good at making special effects, and they are improving the whole time, BUT, once you've seen a slightly better effect your brain will notice it missing on previous effects. \n\nSay you just watched REDDIT ATTACKS 3. The special effects are great and the lighting on some Reddit-monster's face is done brilliantly. It really scared you and since you really enjoyed it so you decide to watch REDDIT ATTACKS 1 & 2, but this time your brain notices that the lighting on the Reddit-monsters isn't there and isn't fooled. It feels fake to you because something that should be there is missing.\n\nSo because the special effects are constantly improving, the old ones don't work as well because you spot the tiny little things that are missing. Wolverine's claws in the Xmen films are good examples of this.\n\nSource: I did a degree that covered this about a million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth.\n\nEDIT: Wife (in the film business) pointed out I got special effects and visual effects the wrong way round. Special Effects are in camera (they happen at the time of recording) visual effects are afterwards.",
"Because James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.",
"Perfect example is the original LOTR trilogy was fantastic and had great graphics compared to the Hobbit series, and it was filmed a decade before. ",
"The CGI dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park are pretty unconvincing IMO. Especially on blu ray.",
"A lot of it depends on the object that is CGI, and how much reality you have to compare it to.\n\nFor example, dinosaurs look great because nobody has actually seen a dinosaur. Every image of a dinosaur ever has been an artist's rendition. However, explosions are easy CGI to call-out because most people have witnessed a variety of explosions and instances of fire on live television or in person. ",
"I think it's because nowadays, you only notice the CGI when it's bad. \n\nBoth Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire are loaded with CGI but no one even notices. \n\nIn the movie gravity, in all the exterior shots, only the actors faces were real. Everything else was computer generated. \n\nCG is so good now, it's everywhere and you can't even see it, whereas in Jurassic Park, there are like 12 minutes of CG and it's obvious. ",
"dont forget 2001: A space odyssey! \n\nthat had some of the best special effects, and that movie was released before we even went to the moon!",
"T2 would get laughed out of theaters if released in 2014. Take off the nostalgia glasses.",
"CGI is a tool, not every craftsman that uses the same tool will produce the same quality end product.",
"this was in 1986 (THE FLY)\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFAR MORE TERRIFYING than crap CGI.\n",
"Movies now have a strong over reliance on CGI. Good CGI is when you don't even notice it's there. For example, I was watching a TV show the other day (Game of thrones) and birds flew by the window behind a character. If you weren't really paying attention you would think they were real. But they were definitely CGI inserted to make the scene feel more alive. Small things like that can be a great asset when it comes to CGI. \n\nJurassic park of course was a ground breaking movie when it comes to CGI, but it also had more practical effects in it. So, there wasn't a total over reliance on CGI.\n\nOn the flip side, the Star Wars prequels unfortunately had a strong over reliance on CGI and it ultimately had a negative effect on the movies. At times, it felt more like watching a cartoon than watching a movie. \n\nAlso, studio's can make a movie and roll out new CGI fests year after year, completely neglecting the script and it's turning a LOT of people off to movies. I for one am fed up with the over reliance of CGI. ",
"I personally think there is a lot in the way the tools are used to enhance a film. Movies like JP and T2 used CGI as a sort of last resort to generate effects after make-up effects and practical fx proved to not be good enough. Sometimes directors are just a bit idiotic and think its an extremely good idea to just not go the hard way and go into CGI prod right away; without even trying PFX and grime.\n\nFor me it's the difference between a putrid film and a great one. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is a short making of of Inception of how they made the no-grav fight scene in the hallway. Nolan could've taken the easy road by just greenscreening it and fix it in post prod, but he decided to take the hard way and it bloody well payed off. ",
"As a post producer i have to say that part of what makes those old films better is that they did not count on 100 % on computer generated special effects, a lot was done on set with make up and robots, miniature models, stop motion animation, puppets, etc good compositing technique helps disguise whatever they did not want. Since most of it isn't computer generated it tends to blend better and look more real than a full blown out CGI movie. Also it takes less time to make the movie since the FX are already shot, it take a whole lot of time to render good quality FX.\nAs a post producer, you know you've done a good job when nobody knows what you did in the movie, is more about what you don't see then what you do.\n\nEdit:\nAnd the budgets are just ridiculous, i can get payed better working in a kiosk in a mall, im 35 and i don't even have a savings account, its probably different for me, i work in latin america and we basically end up doing movies FX almost for free, we tend to survive more on post for tv commercials, which big agencies like BBDO or Y & R, MCcan erikson , etc tend to pay the work almost a year later, making you basically finance them for the work they hire you to do, in the end you hardly make a profit and end up making ends meet.\n\nI used to love my job but this working conditions are making me hate my life and what i used to love so much.\nThey say if you like something do that as work and you'll never work a day in your life, for me its been more like they killed what i loved and made me a slave. Working up to 5 days a week without leaving the office, not seeing you family or friends, realizing you have no social life or people you know outside your work. :( its horrible working environment)",
"The older films only use CGI where its impossible/impractical to use real special effects. Nowadays CGI is cheaper so gets used more then it should. \nAll the new films which use CGI well go back to this and use more practical tricks. This is a [interesting](_URL_0_) read. \nJurassic Park for example used a puppets, models and animatronics. \nTerminator 2 used more real special effects then you'd think. All the people the T-1000 copies are really identical twins including Linda Hamilton, there is a lot more if you look into the making of T2 you'll be surprised. \n",
"Jurassic park was almost all done with animatronics. ",
"Top comments explain it pretty well, but I wanted to add that I thought the mix of CGI and physical props for the special effects is what made Jurassic Park look so nice.",
"Practical effects just look more real because they don't have that air of weightlessness to them. They move with heft (I feel like CG can never quite get movement right). ",
"One of the BIG reasons is that most realistic special effects, like the films you mention use a blend of effects, not just CGI. Mechanical models, puppets, makeup, pyrotechnics, etc as well as the CGI. \n\nIt is part of the reason why films like Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, the Original Star Wars trilogy, etc look so realistic but something like the **new** Star Wars trilogy looks a bit unrealistic because it relied so heavily on CGI.\n\nAlso I can't remember the effect but there is something to do with how the human eye works that means if something is too perfect, as CGI often is, your brain recognises it as fake. Whereas something made out of real material, rather than computer generated, has all the natural flaws that occur on real things.",
"You need to explain what titles look extremely unrealistic, because a lot of time it is an artistic choice to make something too flash, either that or they didn't pay top dollar for a good FX artist. If you would like to see some great VFX and practical effects go see Edge of Tomorrow, it was gorgeous, although a lot of it was practical (the explosions at the beach)",
"You're remembering it wrong. Rewatch those movies again and tell me the cgi looks real. ",
"You say that newer CGI looks unrealistic, but I don't agree with that. I think you'd be surprised just how many things in movies are CGI including landscapes and what not. It's pretty crazy what CGI can do these days. \n\nEDIT: Here's a good example of what I'm talking about - _URL_0_",
"This is the kind of question that bothers a lot of us who work in film. Nearly 90% of major motion pictures use CGI, including television shows, and it's unnoticed. Sure, creatures, spaceships etc. will be heavily scrutinized, but you won't even question whether a film was actually shot in New York, when in fact it may have been set extensions and matte paintings, or a period piece where all the cars are replaced with CGI models of 1960s cars and people.\n\nHave you seen Cloverfield? It was overlooked by the Oscars for visual effects. The argument I heard was \"oh, there was only 10 minutes of the creatures at most.\" A shame, because only one week of shoot was actually in New York and the rest was on set in Los Angeles. Virtually the whole film was, well, virtual, with shaky-cam to make the work even harder.\n\nGeneration Kill, the excellent HBO series about the war in Iraq, was full of visual effects, and yet it looked like a you-were-there documentary. Even seasoned-pro guys couldn't tell what was real or not.\n\nDistrict 9 is a film where the creatures would have been extremely difficult to pull off without CGI. Same with Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but those are the benchmarks that get the praise, while the virtual worlds that are created for the non-scifi or fantasy worlds are ignored because they're so good they go unnoticed. That's the real, successful convincing CGI.",
"The Uncanny Valley. \n\nBefore it was all about quick cuts at the right time so your brain could trick itself into believing what it just saw. These days however the CGI is \"so good\" that we see all the grotesque little details. This allows our brains to pick apart what were viewing, \"Why are his pores more defined then mine?\" Or \"Eyes don't move like that.\" etc. ",
"It all depends on the movies budget",
"wow, there are some smug responses here for a pretty good question. \"You're one dumb five year old, ain't ya buddy?\"",
"You have to keep the confirmation bias in mind\n\nYou only notice the cgi when you notice it\n\nHalf of the shots in the movie are edited you just didn't notice it",
"Those movies also didn't DEPEND on the CGI for the appeal of the movie, instead they had actual plots (at least the good ones that people remember anyway). It seems so many movies trump up their special effects these days but lack in story, so it's harder to suspend your disbelief because of a crappy story or bad continuity.",
"There were practical effects films back in the day that looked super fake and there were practical films that looked flawless. Same for CGI films. Like any art, there are good and there are bad. Your perception is twisted because nowadays 95% of motion pictures involve mostly CGI versus back then when films were mostly practical effects. If you care about something and get talented people and treat them right then you'll get a good realistic film. If you don't then their heart won't be in it and they won't do as good a job. It's push and pull, cause and effect. ",
"The films you mentioned relied heavily on hand modelled props by artists, instead of a pipeline of cg effects artists. Couple this with intelligent shot design and editing makes for a more subtle interruption in your fake detectors. These professionals worked within the limits of their skills and knowledge delivering shots that were the best they could muster. The shots were designed with these limits in mind in contrast to current cgi which is almost ridiculously over imagined because almost anything seems possible. It seems that a lot of current productions don't seem to know their limit and the illusion gets lost somewhere in the complicated cg pipeline. There is also a decline, in London anyway, of dedicated physical based fx artistry as it is all maya, houdini, simulators, mo cap etc. It boils down to the idea, these days it's not credible at all because of the anything is possible attitude. Gravity worked because it's not such an outlandish situation to be in.ptp. Whereas flying through the sky on a rope of spider silk, the illusion is over the minute you sense how bad this is portrayed.",
"Jurassic park and T2 look like shit nowadays",
"Why do Van Gogh's paintings look so much better than mine when I am using paints and brushes created with far superior technology?!\n",
"This is only possible because the CGI guys are paid so little for doing so much, without even getting credited or recignized for their hard work. They often work for a fixed budget - and when the director decides he wants to do a scene differently, they have to start over again and work overtime. \n\nThat's why it's cheaper and therefore more often used than practical effects today.\n\nIt's really always a delight to see a modern movie relying more on practical effects - CGI is perfectly fine in moderation, when it blends in. But there are even the most basic effects which simply always look better if it's done practical. \n\nCGI-blood can never replace strapping exploding packages of red color on the actor's bodies.",
"lol! \"DAE practical effects and too much CG THESE dAYS? le wrong generation xD!\" loving that circlejerk, op obviously gets it\n\num most of those films were built on practical effects, im not sure where you are getting the CG was way bettter than some stuff now, sure it looks great, but you are delusional if you think the CG back then is immensely better.",
"You only \"see\" bad CGI just like you only \"see\" bad toupés. There's a shitload of awesome CGI out there, but you don't even realize it's fake. ",
"Personally, its the death of the wonder and mystery of movies. Jurassic Park and Terminator, as had been noted, relied on older techniques of filming objects and people who actually exist outside of a hard drive, this does two things.\n\n1) It allows for the director and special effects team to come up with a blend or composite between their live costumes and the CGI enhancements which adds to the sense that there is something actually there.\n\n2) It adds an element to those movies that is severely lacking it its CGI contemporaries: the \"How did they do that?\" buzz is what I call it. That little rush of excitement and wonderment you get from watching a movie and wondering how they made it look like AHNOLD had a metallic skull beneath his flesh. \n\n\nNowadays you see something cool, even as common as an explosion and think \"meh, that's just CGI.\" and move on to the next scene.",
"The dinosaur shot in Jurassic park where they first look at the park in shock is not a good shot anymore. The animation is a bit stiff. Same with the T1000 walking out of the fire. They both look old. Modern day animation is a lot better and so is the rendering. ",
"Because Stan Winston. ",
"If you ask me. The T1000 Is pretty crappy by todays standards. But the first time I saw it in the theaters, that was real.",
"There is a good chance you probably are not aware of at least 80% of the CGI in modern movies and series, just because it is so realistic. Therefore, your perception needs adjusting because it probably stems from overgeneralizing based on seeing low-budget movies with bad CGI.",
"Everyone on here is trying to explain this in terms of technology behind the scenes, time, money, skills, and software. Because an artisan making physical props can create something more \"real\" than CGI looks. \n\nWhile these elements do play a factor, it's not exactly what makes the SFX convincing to the viewer before a screen. What it really comes down to, in my experience, is the disconnect between VHS quality and HD Video. Watch a 90's movie on VHS, and then watch it on Blu-Ray, you will see what I mean. Because VHS is inherently lower image quality, the edges of the special effects are harder to discern, and everything looks real as a result (not to mention everything we're willing to believe when we were kids). Watch an 80's or 90's movie in HD today, and you will be likely disappointed by how the SFX stand out, because the edges are so crisp and clean, you can trace the mattes or strings or what have you. Meanwhile, modern CGI is being produced in HD quality from the start, so it is built from the ground up to look good on Blu-ray. Conversely, if you tried watching a copy of Michael Bay's Transformers on VHS, the effects would look pretty terrible.\n\nThis principle is why UFO videos were once considered convincing, because the threshold of image quality was so low that the faked effects were indiscernible.",
"shitty and Lazy directors who continue to churn out sequels and cash cow movies at a fast pace because they know Americans will pay to see them no matter how bad they are. I miss the days when a Hollywood Blockbuster used to be satisfying to see. ",
"That's because special effects 20 years ago used a lot of tangible, physical props and costumes with a little cgi or camera work mixed in. Now, they just skip all of the physical props and locations and go straight to cgi. ",
"I suspect that the look of the cgi in the matrix films may have been deliberate. \n\nThe innovation of \"bullet time\" (which was truly an innovation), contrasted against claims of poor digital rendering make me believe the texture of the digital rendering was deliberate. Many of the cgi scenes were very good, and some appeared very obvious, so why? I think it was deliberate. \n",
"Because animatronics is now a lost art form and studios traded their mechanical engineers for computer artists.",
"Chalk it up to three factors:\n\n1. Both films were directed by incredibly talented film makers who intimately understood how to tell an effective visual story and what both the strengths as well as weaknesses were of the new technologies they were dealing with. There's a reason both Spielberg and Cameron are considered good directors--this is a hugely important skill. Showing just enough to the audience to get them from point a to point b while keeping enough hidden that they're in suspense as to what happens next. A lot of newer film makers rely on either the wow factor of what you're seeing or your passion for the source material to patch up any flaws in either their capacity to tell the story or flaws in the visual effects. \n\n2. Closely linked with 1, each of these films also featured a large amount of practical effects. Jurassic Park only used CG dinosaurs where it was absolutely necessary--when one of the dinosaurs was doing something they couldn't get their animatronic puppets to do or in wide shots where we needed to be sold on the fact that this was in fact a real creature. One example of this can be found in Fellowship of the Ring: by use of green screen compositing and forced perspective, the movie spends two hours selling us on the idea that the hobbits are smaller than the humans. When Boromir tackles Frodo near the end, attempting to take the ring by force, there are no effects in the shot whatsoever. It was Sean Bean and Elijah Wood wrestling on the ground as two similarly-sized human beings. Because we've been convinced for two hours that they're different sizes, we never notice the change. Nowadays it's vastly more common to avoid the practical effects completely, so the grounding in reality that these give us is frequently lost. There are exceptions, though: Peter Jackson and Christopher Nolan are both renowned for continuing to use many practical effects in their films and it does a lot to sell the believability of what they put onscreen.\n\n3. Both Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 got lucky in that they showed us movie creatures we had never seen before and thus had nothing to directly compare them to. When a movie shows us a CG tiger or person, we know how tigers and people are supposed to move, so we have something to directly compare those characters to, and hence they look fake to us. As previously mentioned in this thread, these are here characters that tend to fall into the \"uncanny valley\" where a character that is meant to look real doesn't look real enough to satisfy our perceptions and we have a very unsettled reaction to them. The more film makers try to tackle things we've actually encountered in real life, the harder it becomes to satisfy our ability to compare them to what we've actually seen. \n\nPlease forgive typos--typing on tablet :-P",
"Physics. The guys doing CGI today are good at rendering but horrible at physics, so the CGI looks cartoonish. ",
"Jurassic park looks convincing because they had a much larger budget which allowed them to bring in real dinsaurs rather than using digital effects or animatronics which wouldn't have been able to look all that realistic for the time period ",
"Not sure if it's mentioned. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you seen Final Fantasy movie, you know exactly what it's like. ",
"The uncanny valley gets deeper as time goes on.",
"Puppets. Cuz, Spielberg.",
"The first Die Hard was an amazing action film that still holds up. \n\nNo modern action film chalked full of CGI can compare. They all suck. There is so much fast action/split second cuts of CGI in modern films that they all turn into an intense blur which bores me and which I cant recall once I am out of the theater. ",
"Budget, those movies had huge budgets",
"Jurassic park and Terminator had mix of practical effects and CGI. Also the CGI wasn't used constantly being used, keeping the audience from uncanny valley affect. Also most of CGI wasn't of straight up humans . \n\nJurassic park dinosaurs. Terminator robots that melt and loose half their face. ",
"Google, the uncanny valley",
"You simply don't notice good CGI in modern films. You DO notice the bad CGI, however. There are plenty of CGI shots which fool us all the time. Even out TV shows use green screens and CGI and fool us. The good stuff looks seamless ;)",
"because Michael Bay",
"Special effects even today, tops a lot of CGI. Cgi has the problem that its very often way to clean. A good example of this is THE THING, the new movie, the CGI effects are HORRIBLE, The original The THING, has way better effects, because those are actual special effects.\n\nI dont understand why people love CGI. sure CGI has its place, but ill take good old special effects any day.\n\nBut also, today many actors are lazy. I mean good luck finding an actor who will sit for 3-4-5 hours in the makeup chair like Arnold did for Terminator 2. Thats 3-4-5 hours before even start shooting, then he had to hit the gym before and after filming as well. Say what you will about Arnold. but his dedication is Legendary.",
"Practical effects. Most of the stuff is actual props on camera. In the first Jurassic Park most of the dinosaurs were actually people in costumes. They looked real because there was actually a thing there. Sure it was plastic and foam painted over, but they looked far more realistic than anything a computer could make then(for the amount of screen time they had)\n\nA good modern movie to show this is both The Dark Knight and Inception. Nolan goes out of his way to use practical effects. (Spoilers) in Inception, in the 2nd dream layer(the hotel) when the whole hotel starts rotating, Nolan actually had a hallway built that spun around. It looks realistic because it is. If that exact same scene had been shot on green screen, it would look completely fake now. \n\nAlso, compare Spy Kids 1 and 3. Not exactly world renown for their visuals and effects. But each movie had it's own extremely wacky location(Floops castle and Game Over respectively). But for some reason, Floops castle looks so much more realistic than the completely CG video game world. Because the castle was an actual set instead of a green screen. Sure the set info the first spy kids was probably all painted foam, but it still looks 10x better than the rubbery, you-know-it's-CG video game world. \n",
"For me it's that you are being shown a magic trick, and if it's blatantly cgi then you know how the trick was done. It's not clever or magical it's just pixels. But when props, puppets, matte paintings, in camera effects, compositing, stop-motion, and cgi are used, your eye doesn't go directly to the obviously shiny out of place effect. \n",
"20 year old? Phssh. [Try a 46 year old movie.](_URL_0_)\n\nTo answer the OP. Direction and cinematography.",
"They don't. Also, the CGI you notice is stuff that's obvious CGI. Like when the camera is zooming around.",
"Ithink the orcs in lotr looks way better than the ones in hobbit.",
"I mean, good special effects can be amazing. But the shift from animatronics to straight CGI is probably the reason you notice this. In older films they used models and puppets and so on, where as now that can all be knocked out by CGI. In the old movies, something real was creating the scene, whereas in newer movies, cgi makes the scene. \n\nOne time this stands out for me is when I Am Legend decided to use CGI for the monsters rather than a person in makeup. Maybe im exaggerating, but for me, it ruined the movie. The monsters were immediately not scary, because you KNEW they werent actually there. Its the reason I like Guillermo Del Toro, he loves to use puppets and animatronics and I think that adds authenticity. CGI is usually the easy way out. ",
"There is a lot of talk about budgets and the uncanny valley, but I think the problem is simpler...\n\nELIF: Imagine you (and everyone else) only have only eight colors of crayon. Some drawings are pretty good and some are even pretty realistic, but everyone understands you only have a few colors this is like movies before CGI, people were limited but very creative and could make impressive effects with little technology.\n\n Now, imagine everyone suddenly has 64 colors! You might get excited and use all the colors at once to draw things you couldn't draw before but that might look strange to people used to just nine colors. If you were really good with the nine colors, you might continue to use the nine colors but add the other 55 colors just a bit to enhance your pictures. This is like Jurassic Park, they used old methods they were good at and added little bits of primitive CGI to enhance it.\n\nFinally, imagine you have the 120 crayon box, plus the glitter crayons, every color of play doh and some legos. You could make just about anything! but what if you aren't very good with play doh. Also, your favorite color is blue with shimmering silver glitter so you put blue with shimmering silver glitter in every drawing. You also stop using the original nine colors because it was more work mixing them then picking out fuzzy wuzzy brown or banana mania. This is like the current CGI. Some movies are very good and you don't notice, but others try to do things with CGI they aren't good at it because they have the tools but don't have the talent. If they stuck with the original tools it could have been more believable. \n",
"Because Stan Winston was a demigod",
"I would like to add an additional aspect: the actors. When you have old fashioned props, the actors can see something there and it makes the acting more believable. This in turn makes the props more believable because we empathize with emotions we can pick up more easily from the actors. It didn't matter that Yoda looked like a muppet, Mark Hamill treated it like a real thing, which helped our suspension of disbelief. Then you have CGI Yoda that is much more articulate, but more difficult for the actors to interact with, which makes him seem out of place. \n\nThe only movie I can think of that really ignored all stigmas was Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, which had some insanely brilliant acting and direction in order for the real actors to physically interact with the cartoons often. ",
"True Lies, from 1994, has some of the greatest special effects. Arnold in the jet is seamless ",
"When you said \"20 years ago\", I felt old as fuck.",
"Basically because Spielberg and Cameron are perfectionists. CGI was in its infancy at the time, and both Spielly and Cameron pushed ILM to keep perfecting and perfecting until it was as good as it could be with the available technology. Today it's like fast food - just because it's quick, easy, cheap and available doesn't mean it will be good.",
"[This might explain it for you](_URL_0_)",
"Fast, accurate, or cheap. Pick two.",
"This is my theory:\n\nThe early adopters of CG had to work within its restrictions - which is a classic way of creating something great. These artists/directors knew the limitations of CG and worked around them. For instance, the one thing that CG couldnt do in the early 90s was render a detailed 3D surface with complex materials - you could add colour, shadows and reflections really easy but not complex models or organic textures - hence the really flat stain glass window scene in Young Sherlock Holmes which is basically some vectors with a shiny colour map on it. Notice in T2 and Flight of the Navigator the surface was a purely reflective metal - a really easy type of texture which just involved simple models and reflections. The storytellers were able to do this because they knew that it was the limitation of the medium. \n\nIn Jurassic Park, all the animals have reptilian skin, which is very opaque - the light just bounces off it - colour and reflections.\n\nAs soon as directors started thinking \"HEY! We can do ANYTHING in CG!\" it started looking shitty, because, guess what, no - you still can't do anything in CG - and when you have a director who thinks you can you're gonna get a shitty looking FX shot. But when a director knows the LIMITATIONS of a medium, then they can use it with pin point precision. Personally, I think that was done recently with Gravity. ",
"Because they use real props. It's easier to make real things look more realistic than things drawn on a computer, because they are real things that interact with real sets and real actors. With CGI, you have to do a lot of work in a vaccuum, you have to pay exacting attention to details of lighting to make it convincing, and it never actually moves the environment, gets wet, or gets dirty. The downsides are that physical props are both more expensive and more limited in the range of action they can express, which is why Hollywood has moved away from them.\n\nWorth pointing out, you also only notice CGI when it's bad. Good CGI doesn't look like it's CGI, it looks real.",
"Terminator 2 has a scene where you can clearly see a piece of string pulling Arnold robot's arm as he crawls across the ground.",
"I read this Cracked article yesterday and I'd say it has some relevance to the question _URL_0_",
"I think it's important that the visual quality of cameras and movies have improved with time, so subtle things that you can notice as CGI today are mainly because you can notice such things in high resolution. Also, with the abundant use of CGI, you are more likely to notice it now in comparison to real people/objects. I'm guessing if we went back to film those movies with current cameras, current technology, but used the same practical/technical effects, you could much more easily point out which scenes were practical versus digital.\n\nBut I would suggest going back and watching those old movies to make sure you are actually remembering it correctly, that the \"CGI was really convincing\" in comparison to newer CGI being \"completely unrealistic\".\n\nAlso, movies made during that time/era were using more practical effects than special effects. CGI was pretty expensive and time consuming to do, since the tech was pretty new at the time, so many film makers would blend practical and technical effects. Jurassic Park 1 was mostly practical effects, with actual dinosaur models made, or people in raptor suits. They've talked about how they had to pause the shoot because the T-Rex would start shaking/wobbling because it was too wet, and they had to dry it off.\n\nOther comments on Terminator 2, how they used practical effects of twin actors instead of CGI, are really good examples as well.\n\nHowever, if you're nitpicking on TV movies, like Sharknado or most of the SciFy movies, then it's because they're on a budget. Green screening or digital monsters are much cheaper and faster now than building an actual monster prop. Not to mention, green/blue screening done well takes a considerable amount of time and talent to pull off properly.\n\nTLDR: Lost of old movies used practical effects, with a minimum of digital effects. Newer movies cameras capture in a higher resolution so digital artifacts are easier to pick out. Most of the time you notice CGI because it's done poorly.",
"Those two movies relied heavily on practical effects as opposed to CGI. \n\nNowadays CGI effects are so easy and cheap to do that it trumps practical effects nearly every time. ",
"Why is everyone using whilst all of the sudden? ",
"This might be too much of an oversimplification, but it is ELI5, so: lighting.\n\nBasically, lighting it really complex. Every surface you see (especially if you have decent depth perception) is lit by dozens of things at any given time. Did you ever do those chiaroscuro black and white things in art class? All black and white and no texture (unless you were good at it). Well, real life is the opposite of that. Every single fiber of your clothes, hair, and face is being lit at all times. Not just from light sources directly, but indirectly from light bouncing off of other surfaces.\n\nSo in CGI, this is THE problem. Lighting each and every surface in a physics-accurate way requires a LOT of math. So we take shortcuts. Back in the 80s we took a ton of shortcuts because computers were slow. Nowadays we take less shortcuts, but still quite a few.\n\nSo when you see something in a move and say to yourself \"that looks like CGI\", it's because it's not lit in a physics-accurate way compared to the other things in the same scene (real people). It may look good on a pc demo, but standing next a real actor who has the real physics going on for every single hair and skin pore, it just doesn't hold up.\n\nYet.",
"Looking at lord of the rings, a lot of the special effects were done with models rather then computers. Minas Tirith was a 7 story model with microscopic detail on everything, then they can go through and just add minor touch ups with CGI that ends up making a very convincing shot. ",
"We actually asked a similar question this week to a guy who is pretty much an authority in the subject: Oscar winning VFX Supervisor Jim Rygiel [VIDEO](_URL_0_).\n\nHe has a phrase: \"Haze It Up!\" Forcing effects crews to add atmosphere, smoke, debris to any shot. A real galloping heard will kick up so much dust it would be hard to see, but often times a VFX artist will be so proud of the CG animation that they don't want to obscure their work. \n\nYou can really tell when Jim Rygiel is on a movie. He just did GODZILLA which looked really convincing. He did LOTR but not The Hobbit, and between those you can see the exact difference OP refers to. Basically it all comes down to CG artists so proud of their animation skills they refuse or don't take the time to consider how that CG character would interact with elements in the natural world. ",
"Star Wars and Indiana Jones proved that practical effects kick CGI in the dick",
"I think our eyes can sometimes separate the imposition of computer generated material from filmed material but with practical effects they blend seamlessly because they were present on the film together at the time. Our eyes can detect very subtle differences much of the time. \n\nTalent varies so much between FX houses and makeup artists, too, and the budget and time allowed for some films over others can make a huge difference.\n\nPersonally, I find the most convincing effects to be practical effects that augmented just a little with computers.\n\nThat said, nostalgia helps. I recently watched T2 again and some of the practical effects were hokey too. At the time I was blown away but there were numerous moments the other night where I went, \"oh, that's not as good as I remember.\" For example, when the T-1000 crashes the big rig, you can clearly see a dummy being thrown around in the truck rather than a person. ",
"As a visual effect artist I feel like I can hopefully answer the question. \n\nThe simple answer is quality of work. Back then, the infancy of computer graphics it was created by people who are dedicated, passionate and know their stuff. However the industry today has many many people who are just here because they thought they would make a lot of money, which is not the case, they are not doing it for the love, not putting everything into it means you get sub par work. \nAlso back in those days movies have very little vfx shots, by shots I mean basically whenever there's a cut. I think in T2 there was 60 to 90 vfx shots and Jurassic Park has maybe a bit more 100 or so. That means more time to work on each shot, more TLC going into each shot to make it look as good as possible. Now technology has made it perhaps faster to create vfx shots but the complexity of the shots has increased as well. For example a typical movie with some vfx could call for anywhere between 150 to 500 shots, while a vfx heavy film could have upwards of 2500 shots that requires computer graphics. More and more work to do in shorter and shorter amount of time results again, in poorer quality work. \n\nAlso the audiences now are much more savvy than the audiences back then, granted the two movies mentioned here still holds up very very well. \n\nThere are many things needs to be done on set for vfx to be done properly in post production, however many directors and producers forgo a lot of that, making post production harder. For example things like wire harnesses, it used to be thing wires that don't show up much of film but now days they simply use bungee cords because it's easier and safer, but that means someone has to clean that up before it can be used in the final film. More time cleaning up plates, less time working on the cool stuff. \n\nAlso a lot of times producers don't seem to care if the visual effects (special effects are practical stuff) are done properly or not, since they are the ones paying for the whole gig they do have the final say, even over directors. \n\nHopefully that clears things up. \n\ntl;dr less is more. ",
"It can't be overstated how much of the SFX work in Jurassic Park was an art, not a science. You can give a movie a higher budget and better technology and it won't come out looking as good because the people behind the effects just didn't have the guiding voice that the people in Jurassic Park did. Spielberg is an amazing director who knows exactly what he wants. Him and guys like Cameron are the reason the effects in those movies look as good as they do years later.",
"Is it ironic that JP and T2 are pretty much the first two movies to use CGI to great effect?\n\nI believe Blade Runner was the last great optical effects movie.\n\n",
"This is what ruined the hobbit for me, the large amount of cgi just made the whole film unbelievable and disney/cartoonish.",
"How can 20 year old songs be really great, whilst the auto tune and vocoder effects in newer music sound like complete shit?",
"To add on top the other reason also realize that every TV show and movie you see has VFX in it. But you never notice it. \n\nIt would really be difficult if not impossible to name a show that doesn't have any vfx.\n\n(Vfx artist for film and TV)",
"Rose-colored glasses here. Jurassic Park was cutting edge at the time and looked amazing just like Gravity looks like they're really in space now. Go back and look at the Brontosaurus scene from JP now (especially in HD) and it looks awful. Cheap CGI is still bad but more people get it right nowadays than they used to. I still wish they did more animatronics though. We know they have the money.",
"Because Jurassic park used real dinosaurs. ",
"Among the may other reasons already documented here is the rush to digital capture instead of film. Film has a dynamic range and tonal scale unmatched by even the best digital capture and recording. The old movies not only blended a lot of \"real\" things with CGI, they had to do it on film which helped heighten the illusion.\n\nSource: 40 year film photographer who mourns the horrid look of new movies.",
"Add Fifth Element to that list. I watched it again the other night, and can't believe how strong it is...truly the Blade Runner of my generation.",
"Blade Runner is the best example of pre-cgi special effects done well. \n\nIn the 90's there were animatronics companies whose entire purpose was to make more realistic looking hippos/gorillas/dinosaurs/whatever... CGI is cheap because it's cheap. With CGI you're not paying six people to do makeup on a puppet and the difference in effort shows. \n\nThe original xenomorph from alien? That was a guy in a suit. The original JC's The Thing was a puppet run by something like 14 people (it had the most puppeteers during the dog enclosure scene). \n\nProps in films used to actually physically exist, which made it simple to light scenes properly and everything just fit naturally because it wasn't green screen magic, it was gritty and real. ",
"OH SHIT.\n\nThank you for reminding me about those two.\n\nI really have to show them to my niece and nephew before they're too old to not be terrified by them.\n\nAnd don't act like I'm a terrible person... You know full well 8 year olds love dinosaurs and murderbots. ",
"because people back then use to make movies to entertain and took the time to make a great movie, while today (not saying this for every film maker) people like to throw a movie together as fast as possible just for a huge payout.",
"Budgets, time, a care for the craft, etc. But really it's the last one. As the film \"Moon\" has a tiny budget compared to Transformers but its special effects look better. Filming miniatures reads better than an image that is 100% fabricated. Like Yoda in the original trilogy for Stars Wars. Yoda is a muppet and it's actually there. Yoda in the prequels is 100% CGI'd and looks horribly fake.",
"The shortest answer is bad filmmaking.\n\nBasically how the filmmaker/director shoots things can have a huge effect on how much they have to rely on technology, and therefore how believable the scene reads. While Jurassic Park used cgi, it also used a lot of props/robotic dinosaurs where it could, which eliminates a lot of the CGI challenge in some scenes, such as figuring out how to render lighting, shadows, movement, and textures to read like real objects in the scene. Worse filmmakers will simply throw a bunch of money at a huge CGI budget because they assume the technology exists to magically make anything look real on a computer, when in reality this is still very hard to do, and is less likely to work out the more you rely upon it.\n\nIn other words, the less they rely on CGI from scratch, the better the final outcome usually is. Even a very CGI-heavy movie like Avatar needed to provide its artists with assets from the real world in terms of motion capturing and object placement, yet some parts can still feel fake because there was so much they had to do.",
"They made the movies for entertainment not money.",
"Cause CGI blows \n\n",
"They used the effects judiciously instead of going apeshit like George Lucas in the new Star Wars. ",
"It's all about lighting. Actual props reflect real light, which our brains are really familiar with. As a result you can tell the difference between an actual object and a simulated one. They just haven't gotten lightning down yet. Once the lighting is mastered, CGI will start to become indistinguishable from actual props.",
"Your brain makes [this silly shit](_URL_3_) seem really compelling and scary compared to [this awesome technical achievement](_URL_2_) because [she makes you believe that she's fighting to save her son's life](_URL_1_) whereas [the fuck do you care about this guy](_URL_0_)?\n\nThe difference is the acting & direction. \n\n",
"Terminator 2 was all balls. still the best movie ever. im sorry no matter how awesome the technical effects of transformers are...those films are dollar bin trash. \n",
"Less is more.",
"20 years ago, most studios were using puppets and animatronics. While these props obviously weren't actual life forms, they were still real, so the environment (read: lighting) interacted with them in the most natural of ways. They were actually there, as opposed to today where CGI is added in afterwords, so making it look perfectly natural is incredibly difficult, especially with limited time and a limited budget.",
"Well Jurassic park was real to start with ",
"You know the one movie that drove me crazy was Independence Day. The whole movie looked great never noticed the special effects. Until the end of the movie when they showed all the alien ships burning. It looked like one of those old fake Electric Fireplace logs. ",
"In some cases, the SD quality vs HD makes a huge difference.\n\nI had hard time re-watching LOTR in HD after re-watching the SD/dvd-rip many times. HD version had much sharper images and better colour saturation, but those ended up making CGI elements become quite apparent and look unrealistic, while SD version had everything well 'blended' as it was softer and a less saturated overall.\n\nSame with T2, Jurassic Park, Blade Runner and BSG. I almost prefer watching them at dvd-rip quality..... \n\n\n",
"Because practical effects (puppets/models/etc) hold up far better than computer-generated ones most of the time.",
"I think also you'll notice bad CG, it sticks out. What you won't notice (or appreciate) is all the seamless effects strewn through ALL films. Even your shitty romantic comedy will have green screen or object/wire removal. These effects however are intended to be invisible. \n\n",
"I'm a diehard Terminator 2 fan but a majority of the cg doesn't hold up. Not to mention most effects were done practically (makeup, squibs, etc.) whereas today these would be done digitally (I'm looking at you *Walking Dead* and your terrible CG gun shots). Jurassic Park however holds up wonderfully. Again, more practical effects than you'd expect (raptors were guys in suits). ",
"LISTEN HERE LITTLE BILLY THE REASON IS BECAUSE ANIMATRONICS ARE DONE IN REAL LIFE AND CGI IS DONE ON A COMPUTER. REAL LIFE STILL HAS BETTER GRAPHICS THAN A COMPUTER. ",
"In old movies they *actually blew stuff up*. Nowadays people use CGI.",
"There's less effort put into CGI effects. That makes it look terrible.",
"People generally started to use CGI way more liberally and lazily as better computer technology has made it MORE cost effective than props in many places, and also because production companies working on a budget and using it as a crutch rather than an opportunity don't build the programs from the ground up any more. When they used it in Jurassic Park, there was NO professional software at all for rendering lighting and shapes, so they had to make that from scratch, with the scenes of just that film in mind. However, now that the few pioneers have done all that groundwork, people rarely make their own software anymore. Many companies still actually use the original software FROM Jurassic Park, and other early works, because that is just easier, and (at the right price) available. So some of the core programs that people use to render EVERYTHING were originally made for the specific lighting specifications of one scene of a T-Rex in the rain at night. Or a gooey terminator.",
"Mixed mediums.\n\nWhat you see now is pure CGI, so it's harder to trick your brain. Before CGI was used to help establish an illusion, and now it's just sort of used for convenience.",
"Models and Props. \n\nLord of the Rings is an excellent Example, an INSANE amount of that trilogy was Models/Miniatures (Big-atures for those of you who watched the Appendices). \n\nAnother reason is the amount of real world effects that go into an effects shot the more realistic that effect will look. Like Casting a magic fireball in a movie, if you have real world wind and debris, or a Greenscreen Baseball that is taking it's place on set. When you put all these small details together with a CGI fireball, all the little details (like reactions of debris or props on set add too the realism cause your mind expects them to be there. When they're not, cause it's CGI either it's added digitally, or if you pay attention, your mind thinks there's something wrong or missing, you might not be able to put your finger on it, but you know it's missing. \n\nIn essence, there's a alot of small details that are very very very very hard to replicate with the same level of detail in a computer without making the visual effects way too expensive to be practical on a budget. ",
"People were already at level 57 with practical effects and there CGI effects are only at level 8",
"Because the good special effects are ones you don't even realize are fake. Watch any TV show with a good budget, and you won't know where it went, but I assure you, the things you think are real aren't. Many visual effects these days are in fact SO good, you really can't point them out.\n\nMany movies go overboard on visual effects, in attempts to put the story in landscapes and places that don't or can't exist, or with characters who are equally unlikely. This puts a strain on the team to create something photorealistic which has never been photographed. Unfortunately the \"organic\" part of life is hard to replicate.",
"Well you see, Jurassic Park is so old that there was actually no CGI used. The story is a documentary, and all those dinosaurs were real.",
"I'll chime in considering I've worked on and off in VFX for the better part of a decade and I'll use the example of the Alien films to illuminate what I think gives us this perception that CG looks stupid and unrealistic and why we're seeing it.\n\nAlien. Aliens. Alien 3. Alien Resurection. Prometheus.\n\nThe first Alien film was made in the 70's. Its story telling is indicative of the times. Very play-like. Real characters. Strong characters in tough situations. Philosophical debates. And the effects were all practical. Real fog. Real mechanical Alien. Lots of pre-planning. The limitations of what could be shown, without blowing the illusion of puppetry and effects, to me enhanced story aspects. Mood and tone had to pull our emotions into the story.\n\nAliens brought us into the 80's era. Flat characters. Platitudes. Blockbuster-style storytelling. Focus on the one-liners. \"Get away from her, you bitch!\" \"They mostly come out at night... mostly.\" And even though most of the effects were real, we did see some compositing. Check out the shot of the ship landing from Alien and the callback shot in Aliens. Cameron added some blue screen particles to enhance the sequence. Today, it looks like shitty 80's blue screen. But I want to get to this point later.\n\nAlien 3 saw more CG. CG Alien walking around the base and climbing up walls. Ripley is now a weaker character (this kid I loved died so let's have sex, doctor). She started to conform to fit the plot points and suspense grabs of the film. It wasn't a great film, but we start to see the things that appear \"fake\" come out more. And they become important parts of the storytelling. The story can't continue without these shots.\n\nAlien: Resurrection was an abhorrent piece of shit CG fest. From the top, everything looks fake. Bad CG camera moves. Terrible final shot. Flat characters. Outlandish plot. Just totally WTF. Without CG, that movie would be unwatchable.\n\nOver time, what these films show is the swapping of story and characters for effects. For spectacle. We've gone from using visual effects to attempt to enhance shots to making a film that couldn't exist without VFX. That's how major motion picture filmmaking changed over the years. There was a shift to use more visual effects to achieve the storytelling the directors were looking for. We moved away from expensive puppets and clever angles.\n\nBut why? Well, a couple of things lead to this. A director now can look at a piece of film after the fact and make a choice. \"That landing shot wasn't turbulent enough. We don't have the budget to reshoot it and I can't live with it. So let's composite in some dust.\" A director is now not limited by the technology, just the timeline and budget. \n\nSo that means now it's no longer about if we want the Alien climbing the wall shot. It's about \"how do we get that shot.\" So the storytelling can include more ridiculous sweeping angles and wide shots with full CG characters. We can see more because the limitations are less. Does that mean we should? Does that enhance the visual quality? I think those cheats used early on to hide the use of effects helped us suspend our disbelief so that we didn't focus on \"that cool effect,\" but on the characters and story. The effects kept us in the moment. In Alien: Resurrection, the effects/CG builds were the moment. \n\nSo earlier films used practical elements, which our eyes can naturally tell are real. But the filmmakers also used storytelling tricks to keep our eyes away from the effects. As CG was introduced, our eyes were meant to see the effects. Thus, they are given more time for us to critique. Just look at that fight sequence in the final Matrix movies. Those CG Smiths look so fake! Plus, we're just not believing these overwhelming shots.\n\nI think we went from a mode of filmmaking that required excessive planning to \"we can fix it later.\" The Iron Man movies were shot before planned out or even scripts were final. And with this type of guerrilla-meets-post-production filmmaking is where we can see a lot of things that look \"CG.\" There ends up being more problem shots with more green screens. More \"we should add this or try this instead\" shots. And the fixes become the problems. They either get pixel-pushed to death to polish poorly shot turds. Or, things start to look really clean... almost too clean that what's real starts to look fake.\n\nTo me, VFX is meant to enhance a film, not make it. So as we're watching films today, we know we're watching CG. We've grown with its development. We know Hulk looks fake smashing Loki in The Avengers. It's because we can see all of Hulk. And in real life, no one's really going to believe that superhero look actually exists.\n\nBut I left out Prometheus. WTF? Well, this is where my thinking about the use of VFX and CG has changed in the past few years. I think we're heading into an era in which we're really being able to blend CG/VFX and footage realistically. I can point to movies where I know things are on green screens, but I could bet most people wouldn't even suspect it. And there are shots where I can't even tell what's real anymore. The skill level, the technology, prevalence of the industry, and competition have all gone up to increase the VFX quality. I think Prometheus is a great example of it. Given its place in the sequence of five films, we should have expected the spectacle of CG to go up and the storyteling way down. Well, the storytelling was better than Resurrection and the CG spectacle was crazy. But we saw an appropriate tone and mood come back. Design was very important. Things got better. And how many people thought that the android's head in the end was CG? Or the alien? Nope! It was animatronic. It just was so good, we suspected it to be CG. And now, these lines are all getting blurred. But did we buy the CG ship when both ladies were running away from it? Nope. I think that has to do with my previous point: that if we see everything, it starts to feel stupid. We're pulled out of the story and we're left to focus on the effects.\n\nLastly, I want to point out that there are residual effects. Films like Prometheus are visually stunning. But films with smaller budgets or tighter deadlines don't have the ability to use CG or VFX to their maximum potential. So they're stuck with teams that can afford to make the Sharknado.\n\nTL;DR: It's a mix of \"ooh I want this\" VFX-dependent filmmaking and \"let's fix it in post\" filmmaking that give us films that look animated, technology/work that is just starting to reach its potential, and a change in storytelling that urges us to pay attention to the effects.\n\nVFX and CG have the job of Jason Borne. It's not their job to fit the story. It's their job to be invisible. We're getting there.",
"its basically props vs computer generate artist renditions \n\nhaving a physical model vs looking at a computer image.",
"I'll also add that Independence Day still looks great today even though there are a few scenes here and there where the ships look like crap. Overall it's still nice to look at."
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y1n8h | aristotle's poetics | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y1n8h/eli5_aristotles_poetics/ | {
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"Aristotle’s Poetics from the 4th century B.C. aims to give a short study of storytelling. It discusses things like unity of plot, reversal of situation, and character in the context of Greek tragedy, comedy and epic poetry. But it still applies today. It is especially popular with screenwriters as seen in many script gurus’ how-to books.\n(Summary by Robert Foster)\n\n[**Download or Stream online**](_URL_0_)"
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"http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/book/poetics-by-aristotle"
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1k63nx | why is the susan g. koman foundation bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k63nx/eli5_why_is_the_susan_g_koman_foundation_bad/ | {
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"Donors gave time and money thinking the Komen Foundation would continue paying for breast exams and mammogram referrals at Planned Parenthood locations, but pressure from far-right organizations made them suddenly defund these programs.\n\nYour donations would be better served in the hands of a women's health organization that actually cares about women's health, rather than political agendas.",
"They aren't bad, they just aren't as good as they'd have you think.\n\n1. Some think the amount of money spent on underwriting events and administration is excessive. This is money that doesn't go to research.\n2. For purposes of advertisement, companies donate to SGK in exchange for permission to show the ribbon on their products, even if their products are unhealthy.\n3. They will sue you at the drop of a hat for any perceived infringement on their IP, to the point (in many people's view) of excessive litigation.\n4. They financial support for planned parenthood due to the fact that they provide abortion services. This despite the fact that PP also provides mammograms and other breast health (and other general women's health) services. This was done at the behest of former VP Karen Handel. She is now running for Senate."
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3ky3es | steam trading cards, what do i do with these and how.. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ky3es/eli5_steam_trading_cards_what_do_i_do_with_these/ | {
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"You can make badges when you collect a whole set, which will net you a profile background and emoticon from the game and a coupon for another game. You can also sell them for a few cents(most of the time) on the steam market. Last option is to do what a lot of people do: ignore them entirely. "
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64trvu | how do makers of animal skin clothes prevent the material from rotting | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64trvu/eli5_how_do_makers_of_animal_skin_clothes_prevent/ | {
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"Chemistry is the simple answer. Through exposure to heat and chemicals, the structure and properties of the animal hide can be changed to make it resistant to water and rotting. There are a number of different processes that can be used, and this wiki article has a pretty good overview of the main ones:\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's the tanning process that allows animal skin products such as leather to last without rotting. The process removes most of the tissue that would otherwise decay through use of various brines and chemicals that eat away at the tissue while preserving the fibrous material."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_(leather)"
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11bqcv | squatters | How can they just show up in someone's house and live there without repercussions? I saw a segment about squatters on Inside Edition and they said that it is illegal to forcibly remove a squatter, but as far as I know, where I live (Texas) you are legally allowed to use deadly force if someone is trespassing on your property. Am I correct in that? I'd assume you can't just shoot a squatter in some of the less pro-gun states, but it seems ridiculous that you can't beat them to a pulp, throw their stuff out, and do it again if they come back. And to me it's even more ridiculous that you can't just call the police and have the squatter arrested.
Gah! This whole thing pisses me off. I hate that some low life, degenerate piece of filth can just ruin someone's life and house without consequences. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11bqcv/eli5_squatters/ | {
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"They can't. Squatting is illegal, and you can call the police and have them arrested. You just aren't allowed to use physical force yourself, because squatters do not necessarily pose any threat to you. That's just a basic principle of law; you aren't allowed to be violent against someone who didn't at least threaten violence."
]
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9wiori | what is different about o-neg blood that means it is a universal donor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wiori/eli5_what_is_different_about_oneg_blood_that/ | {
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"Your immune system looks at markers on the surface of cells to determine if they are yours(Self) or something else (Non-Self). If it sees a marker it doesn't recognize, it assumes it to be an invader and attacks. If it sees no markers then it just ignores it\n\nYour blood can have 3 markers, it can have an A, a B, a +, and any combination of those to give you A-(just A marker) to AB+(All 3 markers) to O-(No markers)\n\nSince O- blood has no markers then everyone's immune system will treat it as Self and ignore it.\n\nAB+ blood has all the markers so it's treated as Non-Self by everyone except other people who have AB+ blood",
"Basically your blood has little markers made out of ~~proteins~~ sugars called antigens that tell your body that it is your blood. Those markers are basically the bloodtypes with A having its own, b having its own, Ab having both a and b, and O having none. Your body only react to antigens that your body doesn't have. If you have type A blood then your body will freak out if you receive type B. If you have type AB though your body will recognize A, B, And AB as \"your\" blood and wont react to it. type O is unique because it doesn't have any antigens in it. This means that receives type O- Wont react at all, because there is nothing to react to. This also means that someone with Type O- can only receive O- blood. \n\n",
"So the A,B, and positive descriptions of blood describe the types of antigens and antibodies in both the blood cells and the plasma. If you introduce blood with different antigens than a body normally has the immune system will recognize it as foreign and attack it, making the person sick.\nType O- blood has no antigens or antibodies in it so isn’t recognized by any immune system as foreign."
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ab02qe | automata, automatons, robots, androids and machines, what exactly is the difference between them all? | I keep coming across these different words and every time I try to look up the difference it only confuses me more because everyone is contradicting everyone.
From what I knew, a machine was just a mechanical device that could do something (like a washing machine, right), a robot was basically that, but kinda more complicated (like those vacuum cleaners that go drive around on their own, right), androids were robots that looked like humans and automata were somewhat different from androids but I never had a specific idea. "Automatons" was a different spelling of "Automata", right?
But apparently I'm wrong about every one of these because those car-assembly-arms are both robots and machines, automatons are sentient human-like mechanical contraptions, and... I don't even know what to make of what automata and androids are.
Source - too many forums and other websites to memorise.
I'm confused, someone please help me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ab02qe/eli5_automata_automatons_robots_androids_and/ | {
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"Machine = any device created to perform a task\n\nAutomata/automaton = a subset of machines that perform a task automatically.\n\nRobot = a subset of automaton that performs a complex series of tasks.\n\nAndroid = a subset of Robot designed to resemble a human. "
]
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[]
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3rep21 | with variables such as tides and waves, how do scientists measure sea level changes of just millimeters in height? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rep21/eli5_with_variables_such_as_tides_and_waves_how/ | {
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"Hundreds of measurements taken at hundreds of locations, averaged out over time and compensating for seasonal shifts. With all of that taken together, you can get a pretty good estimate of average increases.",
"Statistics!\n\nIn order to establish a fact you need to make observations. There are mathematical proofs you can use which show how many observations you need to make to establish the amount of variability in a fact, its error bars and so forth. By understanding these mathematics scientists can create methods of observation that are best able to correctly observe a particular fact. (This is why the methods section of a scientific paper is crucially important and is frequently the first part of a paper that gets read by others in a field)\n\nWith ocean depth, you can take measurements of the average depth of the ocean in a number of places using buoys and pulleys or interferometers, or some other method that can establish a length and take the measurement. Make a enough measurements and you can figure out establish any value to a strong degree of precision.\n\nWith sea levels, we know how much water, approximately, is in the top millimeter of ocean across the planet. Take the total surface area of the Earth, which you can approximate using geometry and a stopwatch by testing how long it takes the sun to set over the ocean for someone standing vs someone lying down. Then subtract the total land area of the Earth, which you can find using satellite imagery, and again, this is tricky so scientists spend a good deal of time figuring out how to do just this. Then you use the size of the Earth to calculate the volume of water that goes into the top millimeters of seawater and you compare that to your models of glacial melting to add more datapoints to the already disturbing and depressing science of climate change.\n\nThen you drink to forget. Alcohol, not ocean water."
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6059i3 | how do snow fences prevent snow from building up on roads? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6059i3/eli5_how_do_snow_fences_prevent_snow_from/ | {
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"It's actually the signs with the fences that does the job. They say \"no snow beyond this fence\".\nEveryone knows that snow is notorious for rule-following behavior.",
"As the air moves through the slats, it has to slow down to get through. This pool of slower moving air, on the upwind side of the snow fence, is carrying some snow with it. The slower air can't haul as much snow, so it drops it there instead of dropping it in the road.\n\nOn the downwind side, the air has lower pressure, and the lower the pressure, the less it can carry, so any snow that does get through the fence has a second chance of hitting the ground."
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3h6qlt | if it is so ingrained in our instincts to find a mate and pass on our genes, then why do we get so nervous asking people out? | See title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h6qlt/eli5_if_it_is_so_ingrained_in_our_instincts_to/ | {
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"Because the most important thing for you is at stake : passing on your genes. \n\nSource : am human ",
"We have surrounded ourselves with a lot of social customs that get in the way of our instincts. This social niceties are what is blocking your impulses. Think about your instinct which is to see a person you are attracted to and want to mate with them. They likely feel the same way, either about you or about someone. We have deemed it necessary to not disclose that information immediately. People who disclose everything are considered creepy. This is for western cultures. Many societies don't have these social mores and they work differently.",
"I think it is probably because we are afraid (nervous, anxious) that our attempts may be rejected. It happens with animals- they can reject a potential mate if they don't feel all that good about them.",
"It is also part of our instincts to be part of a functional social group---which is almost as necessary to our success as propagating the genes in the first place. So, yea, you want to produce some offspring, but you also fear messing up your spot in the social hierarchy and being ostracized. \n\nAlso, just remember this is all pretty oversimplified stuff. Biology is complex and messy and rarely has clean answers on these sorts of complex behaviors---even more rarely is that answer universally applicable. ",
"Because, unlike animals, humans have evolved to have the ability to think in more complex ways that causes us to do something without the reason of survival, such as art or music. This also means that we can regret decisions and are self-conscious of ourselves. Without this self-consciousness, you would probably go ahead and mate despite how society looks at you. In the end, it's you that's holding yourself back because insideyou is a duel between wanting to appear normal and wanting to fulfill your instincts."
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1zzsig | why doesn't washington d.c. have representation in the house or the senate? | I live in Maryland, and I see this brought up like clockwork, but nothing ever gets off the ground. If a politician suggests it they're pretty much laughed out of the room.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zzsig/eli5_why_doesnt_washington_dc_have_representation/ | {
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"Because they aren't a state, they are a District.\n\nThe same reason that they don't have a governor. The District of Columbia was founded because the capital was to be independent from any state or binds from them so no state could claim authority over it.",
"DC does have a representative in the house. It is currently Congresswoman [Eleanor Holmes Norton](_URL_0_). The district also gets 3 electoral votes in Presidential elections."
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"http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/130119132714-plate2-story-top.jpg"
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[],
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2lbmx4 | how can people call political races with only 1% reporting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lbmx4/eli5_how_can_people_call_political_races_with/ | {
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"Exit polls. Also they are not officially calling the race. ",
"There's information other than the official tally which is available earlier. Exit polls, for example, and polling in the leadup. If such information makes it seem like a foregone conclusion, media outlets will call the race. It doesn't have any official meaning; it's just a media outlet saying that they have some degree of confidence that that's who the official winner will eventually be revealed to be."
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[],
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2evc8f | how is it that "seizure therapy" dogs can detect seizures in advance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2evc8f/eli5_how_is_it_that_seizure_therapy_dogs_can/ | {
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"Nobody is entirely sure. Obviously they can sense *something*; it might be a smell (common theory, but we've never found the chemical responsible) or a subtle change in behavior.\n\nDogs can have seizures themselves and are very sensitive to the well-being of pack-mates. It makes sense that they can notice warning signs. \n\nRoughly one in five have a natural talent for noticing and alerting. If a patient's seizures are common enough, training is possible. Alert dogs must be trained for their human specifically. Assistance dogs have more general training and might not alert reliably.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I'm not too entirely sure but I used to care for a boy and hus breath would ALWAYS start smelling kind of funny from hours to minutes before a seizure",
"An ex-colleague of mine is an epileptic. He can often predict his seizures roughly a day in advance, because he noticed he makes typos more often.\n\nNothing *really* noticeable, but according to him, he mistypes more often the day before he gets a seizure.\n\nIt could be confirmation bias on his part (we all have those days where we seem to make more typos), but there is probably some truth to it that there is *some* externally noticeable effect."
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2glp5s | why do older phones interfere with the radio/tv when they get a text? what else would make the radio /tv audio make that sound? | It's like a static noise and a "womp womp womp" type of noise. I noticed it years back when it used to happen to the tv right before my friends shitty Nokia brick phone would get a text. I hadn't heard that interferences in a long time since smart phones got popular, but it happened a few times while I was watching a dvd on my laptop last night, and it didn't correlate with my phone getting texts. I'm trying to figure out what causes it in general and what caused it last night, because a grown ass woman like myself shouldn't be afraid to look new her bed haha | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2glp5s/eli5_why_do_older_phones_interfere_with_the/ | {
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"[It's not because of a crappy phone, it's the lack of shielding on the speaker.](_URL_0_)",
"Older phones (well really older networks) used what is known as TDMA, or time division multiple access. They still transmit the signals using several hundred MHz (mega hertz) radio waves, like newer networks. This noise picking up on a speaker wouldn't do anything, and even if the speaker could play it, it's way beyond human hearing, too high pitch for any animal to hear. \r\r\rBut what the TDMA means is each users get to talk over the frequency channel for small intervals. Person one gets a short amount of time to talk to the tower, then person two, and so on until it's back to person one. This swapping between users though doesn't occur at MHz frequencies though, it occur in the low kHz range. Speakers can play this range, and humans can hear it up to 20 kHz. So what you phone is going is emitting MHz radio waves, but pulsing them on an interval in the kHz so it only talks to the tower on its allowed interval. Combine this with poorly shielding speakers/amps and the pulsing will get picked up and cause the speaker to vibrate with it, and hence causing you to hear the cell phone signal. \r\r\rNewer phones don't do this because they use different networks that don't use TDMA, and hence don't pulse radio waves at audio frequencies. "
]
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"http://mentalfloss.com/article/17586/why-cell-phones-make-speakers-go-blip-blip-blip-buzz"
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2jqlwv | the theory that what i perceive as color could be different to what you see it as | I've always been confused that I can see red differently that you see red or so it goes | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jqlwv/eli5the_theory_that_what_i_perceive_as_color/ | {
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"A child looks at a tomato and we tell her it is red. So...they wavelength that the tomato reflects becomes the definition of the word red to this child. Same thing to every other child. What we can't know is that our perception is experienced the same as all other people, only that we've standardized our vocabularies. If I were to look through your eyes, would the world look the same? Or...have we just established the same vocabulary for what are worlds experienced quite differently? ",
"Imagine I am the first human, and I look at the sky, and see the blue we all assume we see now. I name the colour of the sky \"blue\".\n\nThe next day, I meet the second human. His name is George. George looks at the sky, and what he sees is actually my green. But I tell him \"this colour of the sky is called blue\".\n\nSo he calls it blue and so do I. If I could magically retain my own perception of blue WHILE simultaneously looking through George's eyes, maybe I'd be amazed that he actually sees green skies. \n\nIn my mind, \"blue\" is associated with something blue. In George's mind, \"blue\" is associated with something green. When I'm looking at the sky, I see blue and call it blue. When George is looking at the sky, he sees green and calls it blue, because he doesn't know that it's green. \n\nMaybe when we look at green, George is actually seeing blue but calling it green, and I'm seeing green."
]
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574yd6 | what would happen if i ate nothing but sugar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/574yd6/eli5_what_would_happen_if_i_ate_nothing_but_sugar/ | {
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"You face a similar problem to people who are massively obese and try a starvation diet- in those cases they have *energy* from fat stores (in your case energy from sugar) but lack intake of vitamins and minerals.\n\nLack of vitamins and minerals, especially calcium, magnesium, and potassium, is going to mess with nerve conduction, and you're going to have heart palpitations and tremors, extremely painful muscle cramps, kidney failure, and death from cardiac issues or multiple organ failure. That'll kill you far sooner than the eventual scurvy, beriberi, and other vitamin-deficiencies.\n\nI'm assuming you're also drinking water, because otherwise the answer woulds be \"die of thirst in three days\" which mostly looks just like the hypokalemia from no potassium anyway.",
"You would die from one of a number of reasons (assuming no medical intervention).\n\nThe stuff you get from food is divided into Macronutrients and Micronutrients.\n\nMacronutrients are protein, fat, and carbohydrate, from which you get calories (energy). Carbohydrates (sugar is a carbohydrate) are your bodies primary fuel source, and is what you brain likes to run on. Protein is used to build and rebuild a lot of your bodies cells, notably muscle. Fat is used to build and rebuild basically everything protein doesn't cover, like skin, hair, teeth, nails, etc. \n\nIf you cut to just getting carbohydrates, the lack of protein and fat will kill you eventually.\n\nMicronutrients are your vitamins and minerals. There's a lot of them, and they each have different uses in your body, but you don't get any of them (I think) from plain table sugar, so if you got all of your calories from plain table sugar, the lack of micronutrients is going to kill you eventually.\n\nHaving said that, a diet high in sugar *can* be OK for you, if properly managed. [A nutrition professor in Kansas lost almost 30lbs eating a diet of 'junk food'](_URL_0_). This is heavily because, as noted in the article, he consumed a multivitamin and a protein shake every day. He lost weight because, despite what some might have you think, there is no such thing as 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' food. Gaining and losing weight is 100% about calories in vs calories out: 1lb of body fat is about 3,500 calories. If you use 500 calories more a day than you consume, you will lose 1lb of fat in a week.\n\nAs for the how long and what would happen? Good question! Unfortunately I don't a have a good answer to your first question. As for your second? Basically, every single system in your body will shut down, piece by piece, until you are dead.",
"Well. It would be pretty ugly to be honest. Caution : Long post ahead.\n\nI couldn't find a lot of literature about what would happen, because nobody seems to have tried it yet, even on rats. But it doesn't end well. Here's my best explanation based on my understanding of the human body.\n\nFor the purpose of science though. We'll assume that the average man weighs about 60 kilograms. Which would put the daily requirement at about 2400 kilocalories (kcal). (Rough estimate given average working conditions and physical activity)\n\n100 grams of sugar is about 387 kcal. We'll round off the numbers and put your daily requirement of sugar at 620 grams.\n\nNow, as for how long you would survive, the question is tricky. You've got to take into account, muscle mass, fat stores and overall functioning of all your organs. Assuming you've got enough of all of these, you'll be fine for a while.\n\nNow, as far as energy requirements go, your body needs glucose. Sugar, happens to have two molecules in it : Fructose, and Glucose.\n\nBoth of these are absorbed just fine from your gut, but here's where the story starts to diverge.\n\nFructose is mainly metabolized in the liver. There aren't a lot of other places that are equipped to handle this molecule. Glucose on the other hand, is used by all the cells in your body.\n\nGlucose usage is easy enough, your cells are well adapted to utilizing it, and they'll make quick work of it. Any excess circulating glucose will be pushed into cells by Insulin, which then goes to work telling your cells to store it for the winter, and turn it into fat.\n\nFructose is similarly processed in the liver to glucose, and subjected to the same process.\n\nNow it's here that the problem starts.\n\nYour body does these things using cellular machinery that has an expiry date. Atoms move away, molecules break and damage all the time, and everything needs replacing eventually.\n\nThe first problems will come in your cells that divide rapidly. Namely the hair, the gut cells, and the blood stem cells.\n\nAll cells need a good mix of carbohydrates (sugar,starch, glucose), proteins (from meat, eggs) and fats (fatty acids, cholesterol).\n\nNow, fats can be generated from your body, but there are some fatty acids that are considered essential, meaning they can't be synthesized directly. These fats have to come from your diet, and in their absence, you can't make certain fats that keep your cells together, or allow for specialized functioning such as generating an immune response, keeping blood vessels open, or sensations of pain and so on.\n\nProteins need little building blocks called amino acids. There are about 20 that make up our proteins (Some say 22 now), out of which, 11 are considered essential, meaning they can't be synthesized in your body.\n\nAnd there are also vitamins, and other minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and so on.\n\nSo you need amino acids and fats. Where are you going to get them from ? Meet the delightful process of autophagy.\n\nYour body will start to break down the reserves that it has, meaning it'll start to get proteins from your muscles, and fatty acids from your.. er..fat.\n\nSo your muscles will start to thin out and you'll begin to weaken. Your fats will also start to break down and you'll begin to thin out. This takes time though, because Insulin by default prevents your body from breaking things down directly. It's called an anabolic hormone for this reason.\n\nYour bones will thin out as well in an attempt to maintain blood calcium levels, which you need in order to keep your heart beating and your muscles twitching.\n\nYour liver may swell up to meet this excess metabolic demand, and your kidneys will have a hard time getting rid of all the waste products from all the protein your body is breaking down and remaking. Assuming either of these organs don't catastrophically fail, you'll make it through for a little longer.\n\nWith time however, your body will start to run out on stores, and it'll first attempt to reduce it's requirements by atrophy, making everything shrink in size, after which real damage will start to become very permanent.\n\nWhen your body starts to run into deficiencies is when you get sick. Pick an entity in the object, you name it.\n\nFats run out : Your cells don't work as well. Your brain slows down, your body gets damaged really easily, your heart will have a hard time working properly.\n\nProteins run out : Your blood fluid will start to leak into your tissues and skin, making you swell up and grow a belly, and putting a lot of strain on your heart and kidneys.\n\nIons run out : You can die pretty fast from an imbalance of these. Sodium dilution from all the extra water and cells ? Coma.\nPotassium loss from a lack of dietary supplementation ? Cardiac arrest. Oh and your gut shuts down at this point too.\nCalcium depletion ? Tetany and paralysis.\n\nVitamins run out ? Bleeding from everywhere into everywhere (Vit K), night blindness (Vit A) , gum bleeding from scurvy (Vit C), a lot of neurological problems if you start running low on Vitamin B complex.\n\nAssuming by some miracle you've made it this far, your blood cells will start to look really weird and turn all sorts of shapes and sizes once your body runs out of iron. But that's unlikely. That a person will survive this long as it is.\n\nAnd you could break a lot of bones if you happen to fall at any point of time. And bleed profusely and get horrible infections you can't fight off. And all that sugar in your gut would make you gassy. And zero fibre would mean your poop would be all sorts of gross.\n\nSo yeah.. Maybe lay off the sugar. For the sake of science.\n\nSorry about the long post. It's hardly complete, but it's a brief introduction into what could go wrong if you don't have a well balanced diet. I'm new to reddit. So if there's a way to edit this so that it doesn't flood an entire screen, I'd love to know !\n\nTL;DR\n\nAs long as you've got water and carbohydrates for your brain, your body can survive for sometime.\nDepending on how much activity you do, you either die quickly or slowly.\nIt will slowly eat itself to generate important proteins and fats needed to keep your cells working.\nA lack of vitamins, ions and minerals will cause lots of problems, but with the exception of an ionic imbalance like potassium causing a heart attack, they probably won't directly kill you either, just make things really difficult and painful along the way.\n"
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33kipo | whats happening in the brain that allows me to instantly recognize that song i hate on the radio and scramble to change the station? why can't shazam or sound hound work that fast? | also, if there was a device that i could attach to my radio, that could recognize songs i hate and just hit any other station button, i would buy it .. up to 30$ i would buy it.
bruno mars ... that latest one where oh fuck just thinking about it makes the hair on my neck stand up its so irritating. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33kipo/eli5_whats_happening_in_the_brain_that_allows_me/ | {
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"Music is just patterns of sound. The human mind is possibly the most advanced pattern-recognition device in the history of the world. By contrast, modern computers suck at pattern-recognition to the point where even simple tasks like Captcha will stump them.\n\nOh, and of course there's the obvious problem of how will an external device even know which songs you hate? Are you going to sit there and make a list of every song that you don't like, and trust yourself not to forget any? Uh no.",
"The difference between something like Shazam and you is that Shazam is browsing through a library of songs that is over 11 million deep. assuming each song is 3 minutes on average, that's over 64 years of continuous music. Quite literally, you would die before you could listen to every song Shazam has to browse through.\n\nYou, on the other hand, are listening to a radio station that maybe has a few hundred songs going at the same time. When you hear a song come on, you don't have to wonder if it's a gospel hymn from the 30's, you know that it's the same song they've been playing over and over for weeks. \n\nAs for a device to block songs you hate, most internet radio services like Pandora or Spotify allow you to flag songs you don't like and they won't pop up again."
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ce2xog | how can a single speaker, such as earphones, produce highs and lows at the same time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ce2xog/eli5_how_can_a_single_speaker_such_as_earphones/ | {
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"Different sizes of speakers are 'specialized' for different frequencies. That does not mean that a single speaker can not output a broad band of frequencies.\n\nEvery tone, every sound is a combination af various different frequencies, and the sum of those is a weird mess of a signal, and it works the other way round, every messy signak is just the sum of several sine waves with different amplitudes and frequencies (search for Fournier Transform).\n\nPractically any speaker can turn every signal into sound, but depending on size, mass and corpus some frequencies are amplified better (search for resonance), multi speaker designs are therefore capable of better sound quality. To smoothen the loudness of a single speaker electronic low or high passes are set, adjusting those is what you do on an equalizer. If you had no electronics adjusted for the speaker size you would hear the resonant frequencies very loud and others barely.",
"A sound wave has a single pressure value at any given point in time, so a single speaker can reproduce almost any sound wave by moving in complex ways. After all, a microphone or eardrum is picking up sound the same way- one pressure level at any given instant. The pressure can change like a sine wave which is a single frequency. Or it can be complex and contain many frequencies. For instance, a [square wave contains many odd harmonics](_URL_0_) of the fundamental frequency.",
" [This figure should help explain it.](_URL_2_)\n\nA shows 4 waves each with different frequencies and C shows what you get when you combine those waves together. (Ignore B and D). A combination of different sound waves creates a single wave with a unique pattern. So instead of a speaker moving in and out by same amount (wave amplitude) at a steady rate (wave frequency) it does a mixture of varying amplitude and frequency to create one sound wave that sounds like what you get when you combine lots of different sounds. \n\n\nCopy pasted this from last time I answered a similar question - [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c7lm6z/eli5_how_are_we_able_to_hear_multiple_frequencies/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c7lm6z/eli5\\_how\\_are\\_we\\_ab... | ||
2g127l | how is an app like snapchat worth more than a nationally recognized brick and mortar store like family dollar? | I don't understand, shouldn't the physical assets alone be worth more?
Snapchat is valued at $10bil and Dollar General put in a $9.1bil bid on Family Dollar. A store that I have seen in almost every state I've been to.
There are 8,100 Family Dollar locations, most of which have land and other physical assets. It has an annual revenue exceeding its valuation. Regardless of its declining business model, the liquid assets alone are a lot. No matter what happens, this isn't going anywhere.
Snapchat could die tomorrow with very few assets to make up for lost money. MySpace is a great example, except it was never valued anywhere near $10bil. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g127l/eli5_how_is_an_app_like_snapchat_worth_more_than/ | {
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"It deals with investors and debt. While Family dollar is physical and Snapchat is digital, Family dollar has debt that is greater than Snapchat's debt. Assests- debts+investors=total worth. Also, more investors are investing in technology and the cloud that physical good stores.",
"A company's value is based on one thing. The amount of income people expect it to earn in the future. People are putting a high value on Snapchat because they don't know, but believe the possibilities for Snapchat are somewhere between Facebook and MySpace. \n\nFamily Dollar has a low valuation (absent the current takeover) because it doesn't earn very much and doesn't grow very much either. "
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3qo0zx | if steroids were around since the 1930's how do we know older players didn't use them? | With records being tarnished from the "steroid era" in baseball, that seems to imply that we're sure older players didn't use them. How exactly do we know this since steroids were invented in the 1930's? Also, there were other things like amphetamines around as well back then. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qo0zx/eli5_if_steroids_were_around_since_the_1930s_how/ | {
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"It is likely that older players used steroids, but the steroids athletes could use in the 1930s weren't as effective as the steroids athletes use today. ",
"Older players didn't use steroids because they used much stronger performance enhancing drugs such as speed.",
"The incentive wasn't there at all. The reason we have roided up freaks of nature now is because you can make more than some small countries with a good contract. You know how much Babe Ruth made in modern dollars? $80,000. The league minimum for the MLB today is $507,000. Babe Ruth, quite possibly the most famous baseball player of all time, made less than 1/6 what the worst player in the game makes today.\n\nYour average ball player had nowhere near as much to gain, and being a scrub level player didn't pay well enough to justify doing that to yourself. Finally, look at them. Looking at football players from that era and it looks like accountants that decided to dress up. "
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709zkf | i always read about towns or outposts being "important strategic locations" in war histories. what exactly makes somewhere an important strategic location? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/709zkf/eli5_i_always_read_about_towns_or_outposts_being/ | {
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"There are way to much things, so I cant awnser what exactly makes something important.\n\nFood & Water supply for your armies: Somentimes an amry cant just walk past a city/fort/castle because they control the surrounding famrs etc and would harras your supply line.\n\nNaval stuff: So even if you have way more ships, they can always operate some sea missions from this island/port. \n\nPassages: Like a well defended fort on a land bridge or some mountain passway...\n\n\n",
"A strategic location is one that acts as a choke point or area that restricts access to other larger locations. For example, The Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal are important strategic locations because they provide the only access in and out of the Mediterranean. On land, castles and forts were often built on hills or major river crossings that made it impossible for the enemy to pass.",
"Location, location, location. Crossroads for easier troop/resource movement. Towns on major roads to prevent enemy movement and ambushes on friendly convoys. Towns with bridges (see all of France WWII). Areas with fertile and abundant farmlands for food, and access to freshwater.\n\nAny location can be \"strategic,\" it just depends on what kind of strategy are you trying to employ? Offense, defense, guerrilla, etc. tactics all have advantageous locations that they need to be successful. ",
"There are way to much things, so I cant awnser what exactly makes something important.\n\nFood & Water supply for your armies: Somentimes an amry cant just walk past a city/fort/castle because they control the surrounding famrs etc and would harras your supply line.\n\nNaval stuff: So even if you have way more ships, they can always operate some sea missions from this island/port. \n\nPassages: Like a well defended fort on a land bridge or some mountain passway...\n\n\n",
"A strategic location is one that acts as a choke point or area that restricts access to other larger locations. For example, The Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal are important strategic locations because they provide the only access in and out of the Mediterranean. On land, castles and forts were often built on hills or major river crossings that made it impossible for the enemy to pass.",
"Location, location, location. Crossroads for easier troop/resource movement. Towns on major roads to prevent enemy movement and ambushes on friendly convoys. Towns with bridges (see all of France WWII). Areas with fertile and abundant farmlands for food, and access to freshwater.\n\nAny location can be \"strategic,\" it just depends on what kind of strategy are you trying to employ? Offense, defense, guerrilla, etc. tactics all have advantageous locations that they need to be successful. "
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6svjx4 | why are manufacturers putting sucralose in everything, including non-"diet" drinks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6svjx4/eli5_why_are_manufacturers_putting_sucralose_in/ | {
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"It reduces the amount of sugar required to make a drink taste the desired sweetness which reduces the caloric content which makes it appear healthier/less unhealthy."
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4an4bx | why is the question mark so universally used in all languages with the same function? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4an4bx/eli5_why_is_the_question_mark_so_universally_used/ | {
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"Most written languages did not originally have punctuation, since written language was mostly used for correspondence, memorizing events and keeping notes. The Greeks started writing down speeches and theater plays, and invented punctuation in order to codify the nuances that would otherwise get lost. This system was later adopted by other languages which lacked punctuation, which is as far as I know pretty much every other language.\n\n",
"The question mark, at least the modern punctuation of it has been popularized in the 13th century by Latin scholars, which coincided with an era of increasing book production that contributed to its spreading. Consequently, the mark spread among countries/cultures using the Latin letters, like the one we are using now. Because the usage of these letters are very common in the world, the spread has been very common.\n\nTwo theories on the mark's shape:\n\n1- It was originally said to be a mark above a dot, like a stroke which signifies a question. Within time, the stroke curved. \n\n2 - It derived from the Latin word \"quaestio\" (question) and changed over time, as explained beautifully in [this picture](_URL_0_).",
"The question mark isn't that universal in all languages. In modern greek it is the semicolon or \";\" instead of the \"?\".",
"I'd like to add that, in Spanish, we use two question marks– at the beginning and at the end, so we can know clearly what the question is. Like this: ¿*question*?"
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1oc7a5 | why is "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" considered a paradox? | To me, when I see it, it seems as if the vibrations that produce sound are still made, therefore it made a sound, and I'm not seeing any other valid interpretations. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oc7a5/eli5_why_is_if_a_tree_falls_in_the_woods_and_no/ | {
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"One of the definitions of the word \"sound\" is \"vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.\" If it can't be heard, is it really sound? I say yes, because it *can* be heard, but it just isn't heard. Other people might disagree.",
"It's not really a paradox, it's just a thought experiment about the difference between what we perceive and what is real. ",
"One of the definitions of \"sound:\"\n\n\"Mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 feet (331 meters) per second at sea level.\"\n\nNowhere does it say anything about being heard. To say it didn't make a sound because you didn't hear it, or a human didn't hear it is absurd. In fact, evolution tells us that the sensation of sound developed because there were sounds to hear, to warn us of danger, or to alert us where we could find water, etc. Sound came first, then hearing.\n\nSo, obviously a tree makes a sound if it falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it. Does the sun make light if no one is there to see it? Does it make heat if no one is there to feel it? Same questions, much easier to answer.",
"It isn't really a paradox.\n\nIt is a question as to the nature of \"sound\". Is sound simple vibrations in the air, or is it our brain's interpretation of those vibrations?"
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20cr2x | why an inch on a ruler is divided by 1/16 and 1/32 and not by 1/10? | I calculate mostly every thing by base 10. Even a centimeter is divided by 1/10. What is the purpose of dividing an inch by 16 and 32 instead of 10?
If the reason is to get finer resolution, we have cm and mm for smaller measure.
Also a bonus question: Why do some people refer to measure as 1/8th of an inch and 3/8th of an inch. It will be so much easier to understand if they just use the mm. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20cr2x/eli5_why_an_inch_on_a_ruler_is_divided_by_116_and/ | {
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"Inches are old imperial measurements; cm & mm didn't exist at the time. People tended to deal in 1/8ths, 1/4s etc. of inches which is why you see it divided that way on rulers. ",
"It's easier to keep on halving things than to divide them into tenths when you don't have access to modern tools. \n\nPeople use eighths of an inch because people in the US are more familiar with the size of an eighth of an inch than they are with 3mm.",
"It's leftover from hundreds of years ago, when we didn't have as accurate ways to determine lengths. But if you have something like a string, it's easy to divide in almost perfect halves, you just fold it onto itself. Take an inch, divide it in half, now you have 1/2 inches. Divide those in half, now you have 1/4th of an inch. Divide those in half, now you have 1/8th, then 1/16, and so on. Dividing it into 10 parts is trickier. You can divide it into halves, but then you need to divide each of those halves into 5 parts. So maybe your first division is 2/5ths and 3/5ths. How do you do that accurately?",
"Easier is relative. The fractions of an inch are just by diving the unit in half. 1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16 1/32 1/64 ect. \nWhen you grow up learning and using imperial units, it's not that hard to understand the units and sizes. ",
"\"even\" a centimeter, that's funny. The whole SI (aka metric system) was designed to be as close as possible to base 10. It is not a coincidence.",
"Because ball-park splitting something in half is easier than splitting something into 10ths. Sure, you can always go fetch a more accurate ruler (and most rulers come with mm marks anyway), but most of the time, you don't need to be precise."
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2bqvsk | how does something getting banned from war? | I remember an askreddit thread asking what medieval weapon could be used today and the top post was poison. He also said that poison was banned from modern warfare which I don't really get.
Do the two sides come together before fighting and start banning stuff? How does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bqvsk/eli5how_does_something_getting_banned_from_war/ | {
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"The Geneva Conventions.....Rules of War. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Part of the reason there is an issue with one of the leaders of some middle eastern country is the use of chemical weapons on civilians.\n\nIts just agreements for \"civilized\" warfare. I think the UN has the rules for warfare. Countries agree not to make or use certain things. It doesn't mean they will follow it. They will just have massive consequences if they break it. Like Muslim extremist using children. Not exactly smiled at. Then again, what can ya do. We're already killing people over there.\n\nPersonally I find rules to war funny. It makes war feel like a giant joke to those in charge when you have rules. It makes it feel like someones 'play time'. It's OK to shoot him in the face, drop a massive bomb on them, but god no, don't use a chemical weapon. That's just inhumane. Kinda makes it feel like there is no intention to just not cause war. Just...civilize it up a little so its not quite as bad.\n\nWhat?",
"NBA teams don't have to get together before each game and decide what a foul is because there's already an established rulebook. \n\nThere's a similar rulebook for war- the [Geneva Conventions](_URL_0_) are a series of treaties that set the basic rules and have been adopted by basically everyone. Other rules get added from time to time by other treaties or widely accepted customs. \n\nThere's a particularly strong aversion to poison (ie chemical weapons) because it was such a terrifying weapon in World War I."
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16quvx | why is there such a big difference in driving a car and steering a boat? | Usually, when you are in a boat, you only have to manage a throttle/break and the steeringwheel. But when driving a car you have all theese different components that you need to take into account, The clutch, transmission(if its manual) and so on.
Why not make cars easy to maneuver like boats? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16quvx/eli5_why_is_there_such_a_big_difference_in/ | {
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"If you have an automatic transmission, you only have gas and brakes and steering to work with. That leaves the boat with one thing less (break). \nBoats rarely goes as fast as cars, nor are there as many boats out there. \nBesides this water is way more dense than air, and have a lot more contact against the hull than the wheels of a car does with the road. \n\nSo when you cut the throttle, the boat brakes quite nicely by itself, where as a car keeps moving, designed for minimal friction, quite a bit. \n\nAre you also thinking about turning signals and such on the car? ",
"Actually like you're 5:\n\nFor throttle vs clutch/transmission: Inside the boat's motors transmission there is only forward, backward or neutral. Because water is soft, if you put a boat into forward, the water moves around the propeller a lot. However, if you put a manual car directly into forward (drop the clutch), the pavement/car would not move immediately, and the engine would stop. Automatic transmissions have different parts that do this automatically, but you may still feel a slight movement when you put the car in 'D.' Anyway, to compensate for this 'softness' on land that you get in the water, you have a clutch of some form that slips between the pavement and the engine (actually transmission and engine).\n\nFor steering, you have the same property of water, softness (really less friction and a bunch of displacement, etc.) that causes a boat to turn differently than a car. Think if you had an eraser and you drag it across a desk, it is difficult, versus if you drag an eraser across the water, it is easy. When you try to turn a boat, if it is going slowly, you don't have much push against the boat to cause a change in direction. When you turn your tires on the road, you have a lot of force to change the direction of the car. When a boat is going faster, the water is harder, think if you drag your hand slowly vs fast through the water, or hold your arm out the window in your car slowly, vs fast. When the water is harder, you have more ability to change direction, but still not anywhere near as much as a car. \n\ntl;dr:\nBecause water is soft compared to pavement, there are a lot of differences between how cars and boats throttle/break and steer. \n",
"Boats don't have wheels"
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3awwon | how can they possibly tell that mount everest moved by 1.2 inches/3cm as a result of the recent earthquake? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3awwon/eli5_how_can_they_possibly_tell_that_mount/ | {
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"Global positioning satellites my nigga. One of the ways they also measure the movement of the crust in the deep oceans, if you believe that sort of factual bullshit that is. Think of a beacon placed in the ground or a set of coordinates over an exact spot, relayed up to a satellite. [real talk] (_URL_0_)\n\n\n\"You got to diversify your bonds\"\n-Wu Tang Financial",
"Above us, there's a European radar imaging satellite named *Sentinel-1A*. It can generate very accurate images of land surfaces. Then, a software combine those images (before vs after earthquake) to create an [interferogram](_URL_0_) map where you can measure very precisely the land displacement (the color fringes).",
"Because it is now 3cm from where they left it. Just like if you put your toothbrush in one spot every single day for a thousand years, and then one day you find it in a slightly different spot - you notice stuff like that.",
"When I did my internship for an engineering company I did a bit of site surveying using a TOPCON system, the GPS could get data accurate to +- 50CM. Also I believe the more expensive units could get more accurate measurements. With enough measurements im sure getting an accuracy of 3cm is easily achievable. I should note that it could calculate measurements in the X, Y and Z direction.",
"I think a guy probably takes a REALLY long tape measure and measures how close it is to the nearest coast. And then compares that to the last measurement he took before the earthquake. "
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253qf3 | why is there always a lot more hype for mother's day compared to father's day? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/253qf3/eli5_why_is_there_always_a_lot_more_hype_for/ | {
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"i dont think theres a science to it as much as there is a stereotype to it. the stereotype is the stay at home mom who \"loves her kids\" and just wants some appreciation...in the form of shoes,flowers, and other general apparel and accessories.\n\nwhile fathers day is viewed as the day the father doesnt have to put up with his family and is a day to chill with the bros. on fathers day you'll only see stuff like tv's on sale, generally big ticket items.but then we also have the stereotype of the man not wanting gifts, just wanting drink and laze around.\n\nTL;DR. its easier to pawn off crap on mothers day because most items for sale concerning the stereotype are cheaper.\n\nmoms flowers- 20 bucks\n\ndads powertools-100 bucks \n\nmaking people feel valued based on there possessions-priceless.\n\nfor everything else there's mastercard",
"Because the Dads are usually paying for both of them...",
"People love their moms more or are more comfortable showing them affection. Because society is weird.",
"Mothers Day began in 1912. Fathers Day became official in 1972. Many people remember when there was no Fathers Day, and are fully aware that it exists not to celebrate fathers per se, but to create a balance with the existing mothers day.\n\nAlso, men are historically head of household, so \"every day is fathers day.\"",
"Mother's Day was started before Father's Day, and Father's Day was only started to compliment Mother's Day anyhow. But I think the reason that Mother's Day became more popular is because historically, and especially around the time that both were being established, there was a better chance that children were being raised solely by their mothers. Through WWI and WWII a lot of fathers were killed, leaving the mothers to raise their children alone, and at the time and for a period aftewards there were fewer repercussions for fathers who abandoned their children. Mothers on the other hand would face stronger social stigmas, due to the role they were expected to fill in society overall, and were possibly less likely to abandon their children anyhow on account of going through childbirth.\n"
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15my6g | what does incorporating your business do? and what i the difference between inc and llc? | What advantages does incorporating have? If the benefits are so great why do some businesses choose not to incorporate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15my6g/what_does_incorporating_your_business_do_and_what/ | {
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"Let's say I want to open a cookie making business. One of the first choices I will make will be which legal structure that business will use. I have options. I can choose from a sole proprietorship, a partnership, and a corporation. The differences between the three basically come down to liability and control. \n\nIn a sole proprietorship, I have total control of the business, as its sole owner, but I am also liable to be sued if, say, a customer gets food poisoning from one of my cookies. When I say I can be sued, I mean that customer can bring me, personally, to court and try to take my money. I do not, however, have to make financial statements publicly available, or turn in yearly reports to the government like I would had I chosen to incorporate. \n\nIn a partnership, I share both liability and control with my other partner(s). We can be sued still. We still don't have to publicize our financial reports. \n\nA corporation, however, acts legally like a person. It is taxed and holds liability for its actions. If my cookie poisons someone, but the company is incorporated, they can sue the company, but not me. That is one of the greatest advantages of incorporating. I also have the opportunity to issue stock, which makes fundraising much easier. The drawback is in the loss of control, and how much information I have to make public. In a corporation, decisions are made by shareholders, those who hold stock. If I hold 51% of my corporation's stock, no problem, I can still do what I want, but that is a hard position to maintain if I'm not at least half as wealthy as my company. \nI also have to file reports that accurately reflect the current state of my company, which means they have to be audited by an accredited auditor, which costs money that I could otherwise use to make cookies, like I want to."
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4s1siz | the "illusion" of free will. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s1siz/eli5_the_illusion_of_free_will/ | {
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"when you make a decision, it ultimately boils down to signals in your brain. your brain works the way it does for survival reasons, that's why seeing something deadly is scary. to have free will you would need the ability to override your brains default response, which it feels like you are doing when you turn down a piece of cake you want because you are on a diet, but you actually aren't. we don't fully understand how the brain works but we know it's just cause and effect, with no mechanism for people choosing the outcome of natural processes of science going on in the brain.",
"Alright, let's start here, the beginning of the universe. No matter whether you believe in intelligent design or random creation, think of this, there was a start. There was a point where a whole bunch of chemicals, atoms, particles, and random crap that started being.\n\nTechnically, you could trace everything. Everything began and caused everything else to happen. Your brain is just a series of chemical synapses, your existence is owed to years of breeding, but you could still trace everything back, every particle.\n\nWith this idea, randomness and free will are just illusions, since everything is pre-determined from the beginning of the universe. \n\nTake [this](_URL_0_) for example as a calculation of everything you perceive as random, and apply to that to the entire universe.",
"Free will means being able to do something on your own accord. I chose to do this with out any other action causing me to do it. The reason this is important is because if something causes you to do something, then it was the thing that did it, not your free will. Lets run through a scenario.\n\nLet's say you are riding a bike. Did you choose to ride a bike. Free will would dictate that you got up and decided, \"I'm going to ride my bike!\" The choice of riding your bike is in contrast to not riding your bike. So it would seem that you chose to ride your bike freely. But did you?\n\nWhen you decided to ride the bike, you did so for reasons. Either for physical workout, the fun of it, or because you need to go to the store to pick up beer. So it wasn't your choice that chose to ride the bike, you HAD to ride the bike to achieve the goal that made you want to ride the bike. So riding the bike was not free will.\n\nWell the reason could have been a choice. Either you could go get that beer or not. But again you chose to get that beer for a reason. You're thirsty, you crave it, you're a raging alcoholic, etc. So again you didn't choose to get the beer it is demanded of you to fulfill the goal preceding that one.\n\nLets say we don't get that beer. You decide you are not going to go get it, but you did it to fulfill a reason again. You're lazy, you don't have a bike, it's hot, etc. So you didn't not choose to go get that beer, you didn't to fulfill a need predicating that want.\n\nThis can be drawn back farther and farther, until we get to the moment you're born, which is not at all free will. You did not choose to be born, nor did you choose to grow up. But from the very beginning you have been subject to cause and effect. For every action you do, you only do it for a cause that the action could not control. and since your first cause was not free will, being born, then no action you have ever done was ever free will.",
"Okay, so in philosophy there are a few basic schools of thought on free will, and they argue from time to time. \n\nThe basic thing that is at the core of the free will discussion is the notion of determinism. Determinism is the idea that everything is predetermined. Everything we do is predetermined. The universe proceeds by necessity from big bang to inevitable end according to laws governing the motion of all things and we are just pieces of that inevitability. Now people can talk about science whether or not that seems true, but it doesn't really matter its an unprovable statement in principle. Believing the world is fundamentally, at its most basic level, necessarily deterministic is something that can never be proved either way, and people choose a position for themselves largely based on what feel right to them. \n\nOkay, so the free will debate breaks down like this \n\n* Hard Determinists, a group of people who believe that determinism is true and that means free will can't exist. If everything were predetermined and necessary outcomes of matter down to its most basic level we can't do anything else, and thus the choices we make are false choices and so our will isn't free. The problems that show up tend to be moral, how you can blame people for things they did if they had no other choice? There are notions in law that if someone is acting under compulsion either a compulsion of insanity or being forced by other people or by necessity into doing something bad that their responsibility is diminished. But if everyone is being compelled by the laws of nature, who can be held responsible for anything?\n\n* Compatibilists, a group of people who believe that determinism is true, but that free will doesn't require multiple possible outcomes of a choice. If you are presented with a choice of breakfast cereals, and there's one you despise and one you love, you choose the one you love. You're never going to choose the one you don't want. Because your will is free there is only one possible outcome of the choice anyway. We wouldn't want it to be possible to make a different choice. The nature of having will is to select among choices, the reason free will is important to us is because we want people to be responsible for our choices. So our choices by necessity flow from what we are, all the stuff and chemicals in the brain, all the science at play, but our will is still free. \n\n* Libertarians, people who believe free will exists and that free will is incompatible with determinism, so at some level the universe isn't fully deterministic. There are a couple different variations I know, there's the traditional soul version. Where there exists some non-physical soul, and that possesses agency of a person, its able to impart non-deterministic causes to us that we can freely make choices. Western christian tradition, in its purest form not really argued that much in modern philosophy. There are others like an event-causal libertarianism, which says that hey if quantum mechanics is fundamentally indeterministic then there could be events in the brain that aren't caused, not predetermined. If some of our choices are influenced by those, and the rest of our choices are influenced by learning from the other choices we make, then we could be capable of making decisions that follow from our desires but are not predetermined. \n\nThose are the main camps. In my view the question is a bit wrong-headed. Free will as an important metaphysical concept shows up with west as part of theodicy, dealing with the problem of evil in religion. The problem of evil is of the basic logical form:\n\n* Gods are good. \n\n* Gods are strong. \n\n* A strong good God would destroy evil. \n\n* There is still evil in the world. \n\nSo there's a contradiction and we need to reject one of the premises either god is not good, god is not strong, which seem undesirable to the religious, or we reject the notion that a good and strong god would destroy evil. The idea is humans can do evil, and god let's us do evil because free will is important. This is really the reason free will shows up as something we want and crave to begin with in the western world. This is the source of ideas about free will needing to have grand metaphysical implications. Instead of saying, \"I gave my friend 10 dollars out of my own free will\" and \"I didn't give my wallet to the mugger of my free will, he had a gun on me\". We need free will to answer to God. \n\n The philosophical debate is in a weird place, because its trying to allow us to morally answer and account to humans, but its participants still have this sort of notion that free will exists for God. The soul has become unpopular theory for free will, but we're trying to do the same thing, serve the same desire. The hard determinists by necessity don't believe in God, so why do they let free will as an idea be beholden to God? The event causal libertarians believe that we need the possibility of having made choices differently to judge morally, but then provide such a weak version of that non-determinism that it winds up being just checking off a box on what the old God filled version of morality of free will had, not actually providing a sort of principled difference that would satisfy the underlying desire people have that put the little check box there to being with. \n\nPersonally I'm with some the compatibilists, in that I think we don't really need to carry along all the baggage of free will. We can go around and use the term free will, we can apply praise and blame to people as people, as systems that make decisions. We can push to try fix those systems, just as we might try to reshape a tool by hitting it with a hammer, that is we can punish people as a means to attempt rehabilitation and not seek satisfaction in retribution. We can just forget about the whole theodicy thing long ago that dragged us down a path where free will had to be a special thing, a magical thing. We can let it be a mundane thing."
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4s0n9z | how does our immune system fight off large parasites? | By 'large parasites' I mean multi-cellular ones like: Tape Worms, Hook Worms and etc. Aren't the immune cells too small to kill the parasite? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s0n9z/eli5how_does_our_immune_system_fight_off_large/ | {
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"It's done by eosinophils which is a type of white blood cells that fights of parasites by (if I remember correctly) swarming the parasites and kill them with different chemicals. But even with the help of these our bodies aren't especially effective at killing parasites and that's why parasitic infections in humans almost always don't go away by itself. \n(Eosinophils is also responsible for causing allergic reactions)",
"Your body has types of cells which can recognize parasites and the substances they produce. These cells release toxic chemicals which damage and kill parasites - toxins are only released when these cells run into the parasite. These cells also release chemicals which attract more anti-parasite cells. This results in an increasingly toxic response, and eventual death of the parasite. Parasites often have mechanisms to evade detection or withstand the toxic chemicals your body produces leading to a tug-of-war. ",
"With difficulty. \nAs you state yourself, larger parasites are too large to be engulfed or phagocytosed by macrophages. Instead, the immune system resorts to making the parasite's life as difficult as possible. \nTo do so, a certain set of immune cells exist - Granulocytes. These cells are full with little packages full of toxic chemicals, and when triggered, the granulocytes will release these toxins. \n \nThankfully, most larger parasites don't really enter the body all that well but remain in the gastrointestinal tract (though parasites that do enter the body exist).",
"Thanks for the answers everyone!"
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5d6s79 | implicit bias & how it forms | I've heard this term mentioned several times recently and would like to know more about what causes Implicit Bias in the first place.
I most recently heard it referenced on NPR, where they explained that even people who aren't choosing to be racist (explicit racism) may have subconscious or reflexive racist beliefs, such as thinking that young black man are inherently more dangerous or violent.
What causes this? Is it a societal/cultural issue that can be improved? Furthermore, what are things I can do to try and prevent or change my own implicit biases? The way it's been presented to me so far makes it almost seem unavoidable. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d6s79/eli5_implicit_bias_how_it_forms/ | {
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"You seem to actually have a decent handle on it. It is subconscious immediate reactions that most of us seem to have to race.\n\nOne of the common ways they measure this is with a test where (if i remember correctly) you are seeing pictures and words flashed on a screen super quickly and asked to do a task like click a button if the word is positive and another button if the word is negative. Lots of the pictures have nothing to do with the words. But occassionally you have something like the word \"crime\" with a white face or with a black face, and the word philanthropist with a white or a black face. People on average are quicker reacting to those images that \"match\" the word. (For example, if they saw Happy next to a picture of a spider it would take them longer to recognize Happy as a positive word than if it were next to a picture of the flower.)\n\nThis seems to happen with races too. It is harder for people to recognize \"crime' as a negative word when paired with a white face compared to a black face, and are conversely slower to recognize words as \"good\" if associated with black faces.\n\nIt's an interesting experimental design.\n\nThere are others done such as rating identical interviews being impacted based on race of candidates, etc.\n\nThe point is that these are unintentional, and often the impact is subconscious.\n\nSo, what to do about it. Nonone answer, but some suggestions:\n\n1) Be aware it's a thing. If you are hiring a candidate and choosing A over B because they will \"fit the culture better,\" stop and think if race/gender is i fluencing that amorphous \"feeling of fit.\"\n\n2) seek out media that breaks stereotypes. The implication of these studies is that we get these biases based on continually having white=good, black=bad shown to us. Question news stations that give extra time to black perpetraitors and white victims. Seek out tv shows with positive black protagonists. Support movies that put minorities in leading roles (especially to prove execs wrong that people won't go see them). Or at least recognize that there is more than sour grapes when minorities complain about the lack of heroes that loom like them and their children.\n\n3) if you are in a position to influence systems, see if there are ways to minimize the influence of stereotypes on the decision. Cover the name of the resume until you've gotten a good feel for the candidate, etc.\n\n"
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70vns3 | what's exactly sudden death ? aren't all deaths sudden ? is it really something can happen randomly to anyone ? | Just being given this as the reason for a 20 year old friend untimely death | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70vns3/eli5whats_exactly_sudden_death_arent_all_deaths/ | {
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"A sudden death would be a death that was completely unexpected, such as being hit by a car out of nowhere and dying instantly, or being shot without expecting it.\n\nAn example of a not sudden death would be dying in a hospital after being given 2 months to live. It is expected and people know it will happen.",
"No, when you've been in the hospital for weeks trying to recover from an injury or illness, death isn't sudden. It might be a specific point in time, but the problem was a long time event.\n\nUsually \"sudden death\" is a term for people who were considered healthy and operational who die without a long time period event proceeding it. There are several dimensions to \"randomly\", as several things can cause it and they each have their own contributing factors."
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dtb98t | why is the wind extremely strong the more i close my window? | The further you close your window the harder it becomes to fully close. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dtb98t/eli5_why_is_the_wind_extremely_strong_the_more_i/ | {
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"It's bc all of the wind is pushing through a smaller and smaller area. So to have the same volume of wind, it pushes harder and harder",
"It's calles the Venturi effect check it out sometime. Its actually a really important concept in plumbing and HVAC design. When you have a situation where a volume of liquid (or gas, which behaves like liquids) are restricted on one side of an opening, pressure builds up on that side. As a result of that pressure, what does get through the opening moves at much higher speed.\n\nSo as the wind hits the side of your house, it's scrambling for some place to go, and the more you close the window, the more air gets pushed against your house rather than through the window (that's your pressure increase). Once the turbulent air finds the opening in the window it gets pushed through as all of the other air around is trying to get through the opening (increase in wind speed through the opening)."
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3tln82 | the effects drinking too many monster energy drinks | Just wanted to why people say I'm fucking my body up by having 2 to 3 cans of monster ultra zero weekly and how detrimental is it to the gains I'm making at the gym
Edit: I drink it for the taste as my body doesn't respond to caffeine. How bad is having that much artificial sweeteners weekly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tln82/eli5_the_effects_drinking_too_many_monster_energy/ | {
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"3 cans is about 450mg of caffeine. That's a lot, especially every day but if you're not experiencing negative effects and are otherwise healthy, then whatever.\n\nSee Mayo Clinic about possible effects of high caffeine dosages.\n\n_URL_0_"
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68uajz | what do you do when the check engine light in your car comes on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68uajz/eli5_what_do_you_do_when_the_check_engine_light/ | {
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"Generally, take it to your mechanic. Some auto parts stores may also provide services to read and tell you the code. There are also devices you can buy to read the codes.",
"It could be something serious, or it could be a small issue....that's the trouble with just having a light.\n\nIt basically means that the computer has recorded an error code. To find out what went wrong, you need to read that code.\n\nAuto parts stores will often read your codes for free. A repair shop or dealership can certainly read it, although it might not be free.\n\nYou can buy a code reader and read it yourself. Typically, the readers have been sort of expensive. I've seen $60 to $300.\n\nYou can get an adapter to connect to the OBD port on the vehicle, and then read the codes with a smart phone. I bought one for $25 and it connects to a phone via wifi or Bluetooth. It also allows me to have the phone display gauges while driving. You do need an app, which may or may not be free. \n\nEither way, once you get the code read....you will know what error message was generated. That might not tell you what to do about it....but from there you can find out more information on how to proceed. ",
"It's easy:\n\n1) Find out why the light is on. This could be a loose gas cap or a real problem. There is a [$14 code reader gizmo](_URL_0_ ) for this.\n\n2) Fix the problem. This of course depends on what th problem is.\n\n3) Reset the MIL (that's the real name of the \"check engine\" light). Your reader gizmo can also do this.",
"1) Get an OBD-II reader, which will cost $20 and let you read the trouble codes off of the ECU.\n\n2) Identify the issue through the combination of trouble codes.\n\n3) Fix the issue yourself, or bring it into a shop.",
"I go to pep boys, and use their code reader for free. Write down the codes. Go home and google said codes and find out what they are. Do another search on how to fix the code and decide if it looks like something I can do on my own or not. Discussion forums on your vehicle and youtube are good places to find out how to fix it.",
"Either take it to a mechanic, who will probably charge you $100 to read the code, or you can go by an auto parts store like Auto Zone or O'Reilly's and ask them to let you use their OBDII (\"oh-bee-dee-two\") reader. Turn your vehicle off, plug the reader into your OBDII port (it looks similar to an old computer serial port, usually located under/behind your steering wheel-area under the dash...you'd see it if you put your head by your pedals and looked up), turn the reader on, then turn your key on (don't start it). \n\nYou'll follow some prompts on the screen (make/model/year/etc) and it'll give you a readout of the basic problem with your car. The readout will be as detailed as the car computer/OBDII reader allow. Some, like with mine and my Honda, will give you very detailed information like \"Driver's Side Seatbelt SRS Sensor Malfunction\". Some, especially in early 2000s vehicles, will be pretty vague, like \"Emissions System Error\" which could be any of the dozens of various things relating to the emissions system."
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1bhbri | why does a 12 year old 100 pound kid and a 30 year old 6'6 250 pound man both take the same dose of tylenol, advil, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bhbri/eli5_why_does_a_12_year_old_100_pound_kid_and_a/ | {
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"Because the tablets are designed to give the effective dose to people in the middle of the bell curve of body mass and metabolism. The effective dose of drugs like that is pretty broad; a little more than you need won't negatively effect you. And simpler dosing reduces the occurrence of error.",
"Over-the-counter drugs have a high [therapeutic index](_URL_0_), which is a measure of the therapeutic dose versus the lethal dose. A high therapeutic index means there is a large margin between those two doses - meaning it is easy to get to a concentration where the drug is effective, but it is considerably harder to get to a concentration where the drug becomes dangerous.\n\nThat said, there _are_ different recommendations for administration of these drugs to children and adults - you may see commonly that children are recommended 1 tablet, while adults are 1-2 (basically, \"as needed, not exceeding x tablets\"). Especially for over-the-counter pain management, the key is managing symptoms, so you only need to take as much as needed to relieve your symptom (without getting a dangerous dose).",
"They don't. I'm a 6'1 250 pound male and if I need to remove a headache nothing short of 3 motrin will do it.",
"Part is it is that the organs through which these drugs are metabolized and discharged, are the same size in just about every adult. Various organs, such as your eyes, brain, heart, liver, and kidneys will stop growing after they reach a certain size. A bigger person would still have roughly the same amount of liver as a smaller person, so any dosage would put the same amount of strain on their organs, even though they have would have different morphologies. ",
"It depends on your weight, one time I went to the doctor and as a 6-3 215 guy the doctor said I could take like 900mg at once or so",
"As Dr. Cox would [say](_URL_0_).\n > It's regular-strength Tylenol! Here's what'cha do: Get her to open her mouth, take a handful, and throw it at her. Whatever sticks, that's the correct dosage.",
"Interestingly enough, I just had to debate with my wife why her taking 2 Aleve every day for months was a bad thing but me taking 3 a day for 10 days (on doctors order) was ok.",
"As you grow older you get a lot more bones and muscle and fat (also some other things, your parents will explain to you once you're a bit older than 5) - but your organs only grow a little.\n\nDrugs don't do much to bones, muscle, and fat - they mostly affect highly active organs, and adults don't have much more than teenagers.\n\nFor small kids like you, dosage is lower.",
"It's much safer to state \"1 or 2\" than to rely on people's ability to do calculations based on their body type.",
"Pediatric Pharmacist here:\nI would actually cap that 12 year old out at 450mg Ibuprofen"
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1611ut | why are diamond knock-offs (cubic zirconia / moissanite / asha) looked down upon so much? | Ok, so I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything about diamonds, but my fiancee and I are looking around at changing around her engagement ring (recently bought her one that she picked out, but the band is getting scratched, and I'm totally fine with her going with something else). In looking around, the price difference between actual diamonds and the 'knock-offs' listed above is insane!
I know that CZ can sometimes become cloudy after maybe a year's worth of wearing it, but for $30-50 for 1 carat of it, and to the human eye it still looks beautiful and is, according to wikipedia, "hard, optically flawless and usually colorless", why WOULDN'T more people go for this?
As I mentioned, CZ might not stay clear for very long, but I believe other gems such as Asha and Moissanite do. So I ask you all, why the hell are really expensive diamonds the thing to buy when the alternatives are far cheaper and, oftentimes, just as good? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1611ut/why_are_diamond_knockoffs_cubic_zirconia/ | {
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"Because it would be inconvenient to the diamond industry if people started buying cheaper things.\n\nNo, seriously. The diamond industry has developed the most successful PR campaign ever over the past 80 years or so; they've managed to convince nearly everyone both that diamonds are super rare and that you *must* have a diamond in your engagement ring.",
"Perceived rarity.\n\nThe diamond industry has built up an image of diamonds as being a rare rock of opulence. Society has further fostered this view of a rock as something precious that a man must give his woman if he truly loves her.",
"men are afraid of seeming cheap. i don't know why women want them or even if they do.\n\ni would definitely not buy a worthless rock for thousands of dollars. i'd rather buy a closet full of shoes.",
"I'm the fiancee in question. After much searching and research, I think moissanite is my preference. I really don't think it's tacky to buy an 'imitation of a diamond'. To me, I don't feel like I'm buying an imitation of a diamond. I'm buying a stone that is way more sparkly with more fire that just happens to look like a diamond. \n\nI've never really cared much about diamonds and have never felt like I absolutely needed one in my engagement ring. We were just curious as to why most people shun CZ or other 'diamond simulants'. I'd rather have extra money left over to put towards a down payment of a house or wedding things. At the end of the day, the only opinion I care about, in regards to my ring, is my own. But, we've made our choice! Moissanite it is! Thanks for the info.",
"Well, I don't know about other materials, but diamonds do have remarkable optical qualities due to their high index of refraction, and due to how hard they are don't chip or crack. \n\nThis doesn't account I full for the price difference though, which as far as I know has mostly to do with the \"rarity\" of diamonds.",
"The diamond engagement-ring business is one of the biggest scams on the planet. Diamonds aren't really very rare at all. Consider not falling for this marketing trap. \n\nThis is an old article, you might be the only person online to not have read it at this point. Some of the market conditions have changed, but the broad outlines are still generally true ...[Have You Ever Tried To Sell a Diamond? \n](_URL_4_)\n\nIf you absolutely, positively *still* have to have a diamond after reading that, perhaps consider buying at auction, for 10 - 15 cents on the dollar of \"appraised value\"; and then having the stone set for you. Customs-seizure auctions were how we used to go about this, before the whole blood-diamond thing reared its ugly head. Not sure whether still works or not. I have been told that estate sales or vintage jewelery are good sources for getting a \"deal\" on diamonds, due to their incredibly low resale value. \n\nSome general resources to help educate yourself ...\n\n[Pricescope](_URL_2_) \n\n[Truth about Diamonds](_URL_0_)\n\n[Whiteflash](_URL_3_)\n\n...\n\nFinally, consider some [other options](_URL_1_). \n",
"Why do people spend so much money on expensive cars? Nice Valentine's Day presents? Christmas gifts? It has sort of become human nature to think that the more money someone spends on us, the more they love us, and that the more expensive a thing is the better it is. ",
"Traditionally, an engagement ring represents a man's ability to provide for his wife, basically saying if I am serious and wealthy enough spend this much money on a shiny rock and give it to you, I am able to support you.\n\nDiamonds substitutes let a man appear to be a committed provider, when in fact he may not be as serious or wealthy as he appears. They turn a grand romantic gesture into a trick and a lie.\n\nAnd of course, the diamond industry is heavily vested in keeping this tradition alive. ",
"Diamond industry has concocted such a brilliant marketing scheme that it's essentially considered shameful to have anything else. Socially taboo even.\n\nJust a brief aside, I wouldn't call the other stones knockoffs, that just plays right into what the diamond companies want you to think of the other stones. They're alternatives or outright just different.\n\n"
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j4cux | li5 - could someone explain starcraft to me? | I've been trying to get into it but am finding it hard to wrap my head around it. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4cux/li5_could_someone_explain_starcraft_to_me/ | {
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"What exactly about it? The lore? How to play? Why people like it? How RTS games work in general?"
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5t858g | how are famines prevented so well in modern developed states compared to the frequent famines of centuries past? | What are the economic practices, political policies or technological innovations most essential in preventing transient, local crop failure from resulting in widespread famines in developed countries?
Why were famines so common in centuries past? Why are famines still a problem in developing countries and disrupted states? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t858g/eli5_how_are_famines_prevented_so_well_in_modern/ | {
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"We grow and absolutely incredible amount of food, and modern logistics, storage, and transport technology means that it can reach where it needs to go.\n\nSo even if crop failures in one part of the country occur, those areas can simply transport in food from other areas.\n\nIn fact - wiping out famine is no longer an issue of production. We make plenty of food. The issue is cost and logistics.",
"One of the biggest factors is transportation infrastructure. While there have certainly been innovations including drainage, fertilization, crop rotation, etc. which reduce the chances of widespread crop failure, sometimes Mother Nature conspires to cause such problems. With the ability to transport food over long distances both quickly and economically it is possible to prevent food shortages which otherwise would have greatly impacted regions in the past.\n\nTransportation is actually the underlying cause of most starvation in the world, either through lack of infrastructure or conflict preventing the delivery of food to the hungry. It isn't due to a lack of food resources but the inability to get it to those in need.",
"One factor is that we have a much richer scientific understanding of agriculture. We can take lots of measurements regarding crop quality, soil quality, and so on, and we understand what nutrients are required, which are lacking, which crops will grow well where and how to optimise production. We better understand what we have to do to protect soil quality long-term, even things that are counter-intuitive in the short term, and this prevents us from repeating the same mistakes that caused crop failures in the past.\n\nOn top of that, we know how to produce some really amazing fertilisers and pesticides. Pest epidemics don't hurt us like they used to, and if soil is lacking in some way in a given place and time, we can analyse it and produce a lot of things to improve it and solve its problems.\n\nThen there are our crops themselves. With selective breeding and genetic modification, we've created crops that are much more resistant to disease and damage, and much more efficient at extracting nutrients, yielding better produce more reliably.\n\nWhen you have a good understanding of how plant life and soil quality works, when you can produce fertilisers to optimise their growth, when you spend a lot of time breeding and modifying plants to make them efficient and strong, and when you create pesticides to ensure those crops survive, your food is much more secure and easy to produce well, and you're less prone to famine.\n\nOn top of all *that*, globalisation means that each region is always producing the foods it's best at producing and then swapping them with other regions. In the past, virtually everyone only ate food from their local area. A natural disaster or epidemic in that area wiped out your food supply. But today, a natural disaster can wipe out crops in your area, and it'll hurt you economically, but you'll still be trading other things you produce for other regions' food, in a way that simply wasn't that viable before globalisation and modern technology (eg refrigerated trucking and shipping, preservatives, freezing).\n\nThe developing world remains more prone to famine because they experience less of all these things. They have less money to spend on technology, fertilisers, pesticides, less education on agricultural practices, and they generally export food rather than import it -- which means that a crop failure not only wipes out their food supply but hurts their ability to import goods in general, and they have fewer resources to trade for food when they're lacking it. And of course, mechanisation -- farmers in Iowa and Queensland are buying machinery that farmers in Malawi just can't afford, and that machinery has a huge impact on output. (Foreign aid from developed nations is often provided in the form of agricultural technology and training on how to use it.)\n\nPeople are often surprised at just how much scientific research and planning goes into agriculture. Good agricultural education involves a good bit of chemistry and biology and I'm not just talking about people running breeding and genetics programs, farmers can benefit from it too."
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5nwdav | how do health insurance companies know you have a preexisting condition. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nwdav/eli5_how_do_health_insurance_companies_know_you/ | {
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"When you apply/sign up for it you generally give them rights to access your medical records. They can basically get records from any doctor you have seen. And if they find out you didn't disclose something in the first place then they will just deny your claims.\n",
"Some of them may require you to get a physical before insuring you, and that may depend on your age. Once the results of the physical are back they will know whether or not you have a pre-existing condition."
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8mc9vp | how does insurance work in regards to damage from volcanos? in hawaii, people are losing homes, land, personal possessions, automobiles, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mc9vp/eli5_how_does_insurance_work_in_regards_to_damage/ | {
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"Volcano insurance is pretty common, most homeowner's policies cover it. If the volcano produces an earthquake and that damages your property, that's not covered. However, if you live in a place that's been destroyed by a volcano in the past, like the people in Leilani Estates, you might not get insurance without an exclusion for volcano damage.",
"An insurance policy will specifically tell you what is covered and what is not. It is often specific enough that a broker cannot go over all the details with a person - which is why it is common for people to find themselves surprised with noncoverage. These details can range from what how many drinks you have per year to natural disasters. Each of these details has been calculated for and forecasted before the policy was sold on the market. So, in general, \"how does insurance work\" would depend on the particular policy. However, I'll go into the details for you.\n\nGenerally, insurance policies do not cover disasters - for example, economic (investments/employment income), biological (pandemics), and geographic (earthquakes/volcanoes). This is to mitigate tail-risk if you know anything about normal distribution. In layman's terms, it's to avoid payouts for things that are outside of standard models of prediction.\n\nInsurance policies which do cover disasters, or even specifically cover disasters, are often backed by something called re-insurance. A reinsurance policy provides insurance for insurance companies. In the event that an insurance company must make a payout for whatever is defined in the reinsurance policy, the reinsurance company then insures the insurance company.",
"Your insurance premium goes up with the risk of disaster. If you live next to a volcano, an earthquake fault, or a flood-prone river, your premiums are going to be very high, so high many people can't afford them or otherwise elect not to pay them.\n\nThe people who are losing everything are the ones who didn't buy insurance.",
"I heard on the news that since the subdivision is built on a recent lava flow, there is no lava damage/destruction rider on the insurance policies. But if the lava causes a wildfire which then destroys your house but the lava never touches your property, you can make a fire damage claim."
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2nok3v | how can a circumcision prevent penile cancer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nok3v/eli5_how_can_a_circumcision_prevent_penile_cancer/ | {
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"From _URL_0_:\n\n > For example, men who are circumcised cannot develop the condition called phimosis, and cannot accumulate material known as smegma (see next section). Men with smegma or phimosis have an increased risk of penile cancer. The later a man is circumcised the more likely it is that one of these conditions will occur first. Also, circumcised men are less likely to get and stay infected with the human papilloma virus (HPV), even after accounting for differences in sexual behavior. Again, the later a man is circumcised, the more likely it is that he will be infected with HPV before the procedure.\n\nThe tl;dr: If your foreskin is too tight and/or nobody ever teaches you how to clean underneath it, you have a higher risk of developing penile cancer. Maybe. Even _URL_0_ says that it's inconclusive. Basically, circumcision prevents penile cancer like cutting your arm off prevents pit odor."
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eztt3q | what are the little white flakes falling off of rockets when they launch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eztt3q/eli5_what_are_the_little_white_flakes_falling_off/ | {
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"Ice\n\nRockets often use liquid oxygen (-183C) as their oxidizer and may also use liquid hydrogen (-253C) as their fuel.\n\nThe tanks are insulated, but that's still so goddam cold that ice builds up on the lines and insulation while the rocket is awaiting launch.",
"Rockets often use gases that is cooled down to a liquid. For example liquid oxygen, liquid nitrus oxide, liquid helium for pressurization, liquid hydrogen or liquid methane. All the time when the rocket is sitting on the pad after having been fueled the condensation in the air will freeze on the outside of the rocket. When the rocket is launched the ice will fall off due to the vibrations and heat. So the white flakes is ice falling from the outside of the rocket.",
"It's actually Ice.\n\nRocket fuel (which is usually just a specific type of Kerosene) requires oxygen to burn - lots of it. Since the rocket quickly reaches the upper atmosphere and space (where little to no oxygen is present), it has to bring that oxygen along with it.\n\nTo do this, the rocket is fueled with an \"oxidizer\" of literal oxygen. More importantly, this oxygen is in *liquid* form (it's a lot easier to fill a tank with liquid oxygen, and you can take more of it). Liquid oxygen is *very* cold, since it has a very low boiling point (-297^o F or -183^o C).\n\nThe tanks that hold this liquid oxygen are pretty much un-insulated and filled to the brim. Water from the surrounding air will condense and freeze on the outside of the rocket where the tanks are. As the rocket is launched, the vibrations break up the ice and it falls away."
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1ruq8e | if you eat a perfectly balanced nutritional diet, why do you still poop? is it possible to eat just enough to fuel your body, but not produce waste? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ruq8e/eli5_if_you_eat_a_perfectly_balanced_nutritional/ | {
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"Our foods contain things we cannot metabolize. It isn't just excess nutrients, there are things we cannot use.",
"What if you absorbed all your nutrients rectally? ",
"A large percentage of feces is actually dead bacteria. We have helpful bacteria that live in our intestines and help us digest food. Those bacteria live, reproduce, and die just like normal bacteria, and we poop out the dead bacteria. Eating only what you can metabolize won't stop the bacterial from needing to be pooped out.",
"Not everything we eat turns into fuel. Some things that we eat, like fiber, are doing their job by becoming waste. No problem, you say; the question was to eat just enough to fuel your body, and fiber doesn't fuel your body, so no fiber! Well, a significant percentage of your waste is dead cells from the inside of your body. Fiber is needed to help scrape off those dead cells and carry them away."
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dgrjit | why does going to sleep "reset" your body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgrjit/eli5_why_does_going_to_sleep_reset_your_body/ | {
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"I too want to know. Just sleep is amazing. I can’t even understand how it works. All I have to do is sleep and I heal. Head ache gone, bad mood. How does it do it?! I can’t even wrap my head on how amazing it is.",
"I don't think there's a simple answer, but a lot of things happen when you sleep, it's actually quite amazing. I'm also fairly sure that what happens when we sleep is not totally understood by scientists. \n\nFor one, our bodies become much more relaxed, barring any unique conditions. Breathing slows, heart rate and blood pressure drops, muscles become less tense. These events lower mental stress, and can relieve the effects of pain. This also is generally good for your brain and heart, as they basically get a 'break.' The heart and brain can now focus on the areas that need their functions the most.\n\nIt also makes it easier for your body to deal with sickness and injuries. Our bodies repair tissues and blood is pumped to areas of the body that needs it during sleep. In fact sleep is essential for recovery from injury as well as for growing muscle, as much of the work is done while we're sleeping. The effects of sleep is really wild tbh, so much is going on."
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2i0inw | cooties: ie, why are boys and girls prone to find each other "gross" before puberty? | Is there some evolutionary reason why girls and boys might feel this way, is it a reaction to early confused feelings of attraction, or is it just because kids are generally less accepting of things that're different?
(I searched, but all that came up were discussions about the origins of the word) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i0inw/eli5_cooties_ie_why_are_boys_and_girls_prone_to/ | {
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"Young children don't understand their own sexualities yet and are often actively encouraged *not* to explore. Interacting with the opposite sex, therefore, causes social and emotional discomfort.\n\nNot all children have this issue, though.",
"I don't think it is so much that they find each other \"gross\" in neutral terms. But rather that they've been conditioned since birth to be different (girls wear pink, have skirts, play with dolls, like makeup, and boys; have short hair, wear blue, are told to play with soldiers/trucks etc).\n\nBecause these things divide boys and girls they just have different interests. The \"gross\" part comes from the fact they understand from an early age that boys and girls have relationships with each other and eventually have this kind of affection and attraction to each other they likely don't yet understand.\n\nIf you're a male (I can't speak for females,) you'd probably remember how rapid the changes to your body during puberty affected your attraction to the opposite sex. It goes into overdrive. That being the case it's not hard to imagine why kids have feelings like that.",
"Sociologists and psychologists tend to describe inter-sex relations during childhood in three rough phases which seem to be cross-cultural, even if culture can and does influence how it plays out.\n\nIn early childhood, children barely notice that boys and girls have any difference. At this stage, 'cooties' are something which children might imitate their parents doing, but if children don't have exposure to that sort of thing, it doesn't occur to them to create it.\n\nStarting about age 8-ish, there is greater self-segregation on the basis of sex. A great many cultures seem to exaggerate this, but there are many indications that without cultural support, that boys and girls will tend to form closer bonds with those of similar sex than with those of alternate sex. It is at this time that children will tend to internalize the idea of 'cooties' as it seems to reflect the feelings they are generating on their own.\n\nIt is generally (though by no means universally) believed that the middle stage sets things up for adolescence when most will seek to form sexual relationships with others.\n\nIf this model is accurate, then it is no wonder that culture has come to reinforce these structures by creating explanations and expectations for this behavior. It is expected that Tommy and Jane might be playmates as young children, then grow apart, and then become romatically involved with each other. This cultural reaction, however, makes it extremely difficult to tell what is biology and what is socialization as adults will prompt children to begin this segregation before the biology kicks off.",
"Boys and girls, especially in the past, were socialized into the male and female roles their were expected to adopt as adults. Boys were discourage from playing with dolls, and girls from climbing trees, reinforcing the notions there was something wrong with the opposite sex."
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44y9fg | how did people who made the measurement system decide how long a mm was or a cm, inch, etc.. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44y9fg/eli5_how_did_people_who_made_the_measurement/ | {
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"The metric system revolves around the *metre*. It is one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. As it was derived over a century ago it was not exact, but is actually pretty damn close.\n\n[For imperial units... that is a very complicated question. Watch this video for deets.](_URL_0_) "
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3lq00s | how did emotions evolve in humans? specifically curious about embarrassment. do other animals feel embarrassed? what are other emotions that humans feel that no other animal feels (can include mammals as well as other species)? | The first few hits in Google are ok, but I cannot find substantial information specific to this question. I am more curious if the emotion Embarrassment is found in other species, and how it evolved in humans. Is there even adequate research on this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lq00s/eli5_how_did_emotions_evolve_in_humans/ | {
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"Humans are social animals, embarrassment and shame help us remember to follow the rules of the tribe. Not following the rules back when we were cave people and nomads could have endangered the rest of the group."
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30p599 | how does reddit prevent corporations from controlling the front page? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30p599/eli5_how_does_reddit_prevent_corporations_from/ | {
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"Walkie sound \"Agent 55 here we have a security breach someone call in the profile hunter bots, this one will need to disappear\" ",
"Mods and admins do a fair bit to help alleviate this situation. Posts can easily be brought up for review by any user by reporting it as spam. Because each and every post, up vote, and down vote can be analyzed, patterns can be located, posts deleted, and accounts banned.\n\nCertainly a highly motivated corporation could work constantly to overcome these roadblocks, but it would be expensive and time consuming, and most companies won't waste the money to get fake posts to the front page through spamming.\n\nThere are certainly companies that employ PR specialists, called community managers, to create positive publicity. Pornhub has one or two on here somewhere. These people divide their time between many social networks, websites, and real world events in order to improve the company's image.",
"something like that is easy to notice and they get banned fast, but if done correctly the system can be abused.\n\nbut the best form of it is just simply making good product and that will result in users posting/talking about it on there own and that will be huge boost.\n\nfor example ongamers websites links were banned from /r/leagueoflegends becouse of that",
"They don't.\n\nNow can we get back to talking about Rampart?\n\n",
"**When I read your question first, I didn't know if you were trolling.** But I decided that perhaps you were truly ignorant about this and genuinely curious. \n\nThe thing is, **[Reddit itself is a \"corporation\" worth $500 million](_URL_0_) today** ... (or if you prefer, a [traditional media source](_URL_1_) that estimates Reddit's worth to be as much as $700+ million) ! And just like any corporation, it exists solely to serve its own purpose - increase its wealth and power of influence. \n\nHave no doubt about this - **the front page can be editorialised when they want, and they do editorialise it**. (In fact, reddit's own founders have publicly acknowledged that they used to create fake posts / discussion themselves and through bots to make it appear as if Reddit was quite a \"lively\" place.)\n\nHave you noticed how just by hiding certain posts in reddit discussion you can completely change the tone of the discussion? Or how by \"giving\" reddit gold, a particular post can be made to stand out and appear more important? All these and many other techniques are used to subtly influence a redditor's judgement ... \n\nReddit is just one of the \"new-age\" medias that the Americans [government] is experimenting with to further its own agendas. (Propaganda mainly; it's the beauty of being a capitalist country - they use the corporates to do the dirty work, make money in the process and yet can claim to have a clean hand. Just like how it is Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and hardware companies like Intel, Cisco, Seagate etc. that enable and do the actual spying for the NSA! It works the other way too - the corporates make the law through the politicians, but it's said to be \"democracy\" at work ... anyway, I disgress ... :) ... \n\nI do admire the American ingenuity to adapt and continue to be the most influential power, but truly despair the rise of the accompanying oligarchy and what it means to us ... \n\n**tl;dr** - *Reddit IS a corporation by itself, and has been known to have manipulated its users since its inception. There is no reason to believe it still doesn't ...* "
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3vb52j | why do any americans who are not white, rich, and male vote republican? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vb52j/eli5_why_do_any_americans_who_are_not_white_rich/ | {
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"You underestimate how many voters have no knowledge of the policies of the people they vote for. You also underestimate the amount of advertisement and gerrymandering to counteract this exact thing you're talking about. Republicans are super good at getting people to vote against their own interests by convincing them that the other side is satan",
"Perhaps because the complex political fabric of a country of 300+ million people is not easily captured by stereotypes.\n\nThere are very fundamental questions about the role of Government in ones lives, the nature of morals, mankind's place in the world, how we should interact with our fellow man which do not easily fit into a binary classification..\n\nThe crux of it is basically that the political landscape is far more nuanced and a lot less easily defined then many people would like for it to be. Republicans represent a myriad of interests, moral stances and positions which are legitimately shared by many individuals (some of which are poor, minorities, women etc.)\n\nThis question is correctly answered with \"Because they see things differently then you do.\"",
"Two main reasons:\n\n1) The 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' theory. This is theory that Americans have a tendency to think of themselves as future millionaires who are just temporarily in a bad financial situation and that one day, with enough hard work, they will live the ideal American dream with a large suburban home, a nice expensive car, etc. \n\nThe basic idea here is that a significant percentage of Americans, even those who are living in poor conditions and stand to benefit the most from social programs, are unwilling to support government social programs (e.g. welfare, healthcare, etc.) because they feel that - when they become rich(er) - they shouldn't have to pay the taxes to help fund these programs and support people who are 'too lazy' to work and become a millionaire themselves.\n\n2) Some people have very fundamental beliefs which they are not wiling to compromise on. So, even if they know that the party doesn't truly serve their best interests in all cases, they may feel that they cannot vote for another party that goes against certain fundamental beliefs which they hold very strongly (e.g. related to issues such as abortion, gun control, etc.)"
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6fm0id | - why do vets require vaccinations every 6-12 months, but doctors don't? what's the difference? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fm0id/eli5_why_do_vets_require_vaccinations_every_612/ | {
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"I actually had a discussion about this with my vet for my dog. \n\nTurns out it's driven by the state, not science. The rabies vaccine here is given, then if the next shot is given with 365 days, but not a single day more than 365, it's good for 3 years.\n\n\nLet that sink in. Late by one day, 1 year. In time 3 years. It's the EXACT same shot no matter what. Timelines driven entirely by the government."
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1c4qe6 | fixed vs. floating point | I was looking at the specs of patriot missiles and apparently the computer has "fixed and floating point capability". Why is that an advantage? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1c4qe6/eli5_fixed_vs_floating_point/ | {
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"Fixed and floating-point both refer to ways that a computer handles [*real* numbers](_URL_0_) - fractional numbers or numbers that involve a decimal point. All computers can handle integers (whole numbers) really well but some computers, even today, cannot manipulate real numbers. This is particularly true of embedded systems.\n\n**Fixed-point** numbers have a decimal point in the same place at all times. So they have certain number of digits before the decimal point and a certain number afterwards. 43512.06789 is a fixed point number with 5 digits before and 5 digits after the point.\n\n**Floating-point** represents numbers in [scientific notation](_URL_1_) which gives them a much larger range but at the cost of some accuracy. 4.3512067 x 10^04 is is the same number as floating-point with 8 digits of *significand* and 2 digits of *exponent*. Note that we have lost some accuracy due to some digits being required for the exponent.\n\nAlthough floating-point processors have become much quicker, fixed-point is faster still and comes with guaranteed accuracy. However, floating-point is most common on general purpose computers because of the range advantage (also, most CPUs have no built-in support for fixed-point). A floating-point number can hold both Avagadro's number (very large) and the charge of an electron (very small) but you would need a ridiculous amount of digits to achieve that with fixed-point.\n\nIf you are dealing with numbers in a very small range (for example, geo-spatial co-ordinates) and accuracy and/or speed is paramount fixed-point may be a better choice which is one possible reason for putting it in a guidance system."
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a28sqr | how was the automobile invented before gasoline? and how did gasoline become the standard fuel for automobiles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a28sqr/eli5_how_was_the_automobile_invented_before/ | {
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"When \"oil guys\" first started refining oil, they knew it produced many different types of substances as you increased the boiling temperature. We've found a use for almost every substance that crude oil can make nowadays, but back then gasoline was considered a waste by-product of the manufacture of kerosene for lamps. After about 30 years they found a use for it, powering the new automobiles. ",
"Gasoline was not invented as is it a product of oil refineries when the start you get products with different molecular size and one is gasoline. It was a biprodukt of the kerosene production for lamps.\n\n Oil have been refined since 500 AD in china and spread around the world. Larger scale modern production start in the 1850 for kerosene and you get out some amount of gasoline when you do that so. \n\nFor cars you need a energy source to power it and the first was steam in 1796. The first internal combustion engine was hydrogen in 1808. So cars existed for a long time until they advanced to the stage then the started to be common in the late 19th century.\n\n\nThe common power source was steam, electricity and petrol. Early on electricity what the most common and for a while more then half or all cars in New York was electrical.\n\nIt all changed in the early 1900s and byt 1910 gasoline was dominant. The explanation is that electrical cars was slow and had short range but was quiet and nice to use. Steam take a long time to start up and require a lot of work to keep the fire with smoke going but they are powerful. Gasoline had the advantage that you had long range and quick to start. When the engine was become powerful enough and reliable they took over.\n\nSo the small, long range and practical petrol engine took over. The exhaust is relative clean and do not disturb humans directly the same way as stram did. So with relative few cars petrol engines was consider a environmental advancement fro the city as the did result in manure on the street like the horsed they replaces. The problem on a global scale for the environment and the local effect with the number of cars we have today was known at that time"
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a1u95y | what is that morning taste and how do we get it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1u95y/eli5_what_is_that_morning_taste_and_how_do_we_get/ | {
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"Bacteria! Your mouth is full of it and while it has learned to live with your saliva (or at least not die out), if you sleep with your mouth open, your mouth does dry out which bacteria love (not desert dry, but drier than it normally is). It's a more favorable environment for them. This is why dry mouth is bad for your teeth. It makes plaque grow faster (and poop more acid on your enamel).",
"It's bacteria. They have a long time to live(and die) in your mouth when you sleep unlike when you are talking and eat and drinking and cleaning your mouth throughout the day. This build up creates the stink.\n\n\nThrough cleaning before bed can reduce the effect. Over a couple weeks of proper brushing, flossing, tongue scraping, and mouthwash every night before bed had reduced the bad smell in my mouth when I would wake up."
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39u6b2 | why does german milk have such a long shelf life? | German milk can be found unrefrigerated in the grocery store and has a sell-by date several months in the future. For example, I'm drinking milk that is good until 15 September and it tastes great.
On the other hand, milk in the US needs to be refrigerated and usually is only good for a week.
How is German milk so delicious and so long lasting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39u6b2/eli5_why_does_german_milk_have_such_a_long_shelf/ | {
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"That milk may be Ultra pasteurized. That is heating milk to a much higher temperature and for a longer period during the pasteurization process. It does make it more stable and last longer but it also changes the taste and texture of the milk and many people do not like it. But if you do that is great. ",
"This is the kind of milk used in Europe. They've introduced it in the U.S. But Americans don't buy it."
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1kjbai | who contracts a groups like blackwater and how exactly do they work comparing to armies belonging to countries? | Wow thank you all for providing good explanations | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kjbai/eli5who_contracts_a_groups_like_blackwater_and/ | {
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"Companies like Blackwater are hired by private individuals and companies. For example, say you've got a government contract to provide hot meals for the bases in the middle east. You have to get the supplies and food from transportation hubs like airports through and into military bases.\nUnfortunately the roads are filled with people who disagree with the military being there in the first place. And since you're supporting the military, you must be as bad as them.\n\nSo these people attack your supply chains in an effort to disrupt the military. You're not military, so you can't call in an air strike or get a company of soldiers to protect your trucks. Instead civilians with certain skills will take a big chunk of your profits in exchange for protecting your assets. Those assets might be equipment, translators, diplomats, CEOs and VIPs, information or medicine. And since those skilled individuals are not military, they're not liable under things like the UCMJ, rules of engagement, SOPs or other red tape and bureaucracy. \n\nObviously this is simplified a lot, as it's not really protecting taco trucks headed from the green zone to Basra, but you get the idea hopefully.",
"Military contractors are like the tier-1 operators of security guards. They can and do regularly exercise the use of force, including lethal force, to protect the assets of their employer. \n\nIIRC these groups are supposed to be limited to defensive action only, and can't instigate or carry out offensive action, unlike the military. \n\n",
"Blackwater and other PMC's (private military companies) are operated by private individuals whereas the military of a country is operated by a political chain of command. Each PMC will have a wide range of missions, however they will not have the authority to declare war, whereas the military of a country is used for force projection and other missions as directed by the political process"
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a0dh3m | how do waterfalls, such as niagara, maintain a seemingly consistent flow even when there has been little rainfall? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a0dh3m/eli5_how_do_waterfalls_such_as_niagara_maintain_a/ | {
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"Because so many bodies of water over such a vast distance lead to it. This means that it would have to not rain over a huge area for a really long time for the supply of water leading to the waterfall to dry out.\n\nA waterfall that has less tributaries will dry out much more readily. ",
"In addition to what the other comment said, groundwater will flow into rivers from the water table. Imagine a river between two hills. The hills will absorb a large amount of rain, which will slowly leak out into the river over time. ",
"The Great Lakes Basin feeds Niagara Falls. It covers an area larger than the UK and holds 85% of North America's fresh surface water (18% of the world's). With that huge a bathtub, the flow out the drain will remain quite consistent through periods of extended dry or wet weather, especially if that weather is just affecting a portion of the region.",
"Will there ever be a time when Niagara Falls stops flowing? I don't really know how waterfalls consistently flow. ",
"They’ve cut off flow to the falls once or twice. Diverted the river away. Other than that, though, the only times it’s stopped was due to blockage I think. The Great Lakes can sustain the rate of flow until more water tops it up again.",
"Also because your eyes are bad at discerning the change of such a huge amount of water. If it had lost 15% of it's flow, would you be able to tell the difference?",
"Besides what others have said, I wanted to say that their flow is not really consistent. Find pictures of Niagara Falls, Snowqualmie Falls, or (even better, due to heavy rains in the area) Iguacu Falls before and after rainfall and you’ll see the difference in flow. They may not ever dry up, but during wetter seasons they roar to life. ",
"Tangent since this has been answered. There are totally waterfalls that have inconsistent water flows. Victoria Falls, one of the biggest in the world, has a dry and wet season and there’s a huge difference between the two. ",
"There is actually 2 different flow rates per the treaty you can see. Tourist season has 100,000 cfs. Rest of year 50,000 cfs. Its neat to go in the dead of winter. Much quieter (people) and really cool to see everything frozen over. ",
"There are a couple of control dams upstream of the falls maintained by the hydroelectric commissions in the area. \n\nThis helps regulate the rate of water flow over the falls. \n\nMost of the water is diverted to make electricity, and only a fraction actually goes over the falls. ",
"The article you showed where it ran dry was theAmerican Falls, not the Horseshoe Falls... \n\nI work in a large hotel in NF on the Canadian side - I see them both every day - the American falls are significantly smaller than the Canadian or also known as Horseshoe falls. ",
"Streams are essential year-round events, despite the cold of winter. There is enough groundwater discharging at about 50 degrees fahrenheit to keep the stream flowing all year.\n\nRivers are the same only far larger, and they drain almost unimaginably vast areas of land. They flow all year because there is such a huge amount of water, it has to go somewhere, so it flows to the lowest elevation and makes a valley, and voila a stream forms, merges into a river, and it never stops flowing.",
"I visit a campground on a river near by (Sooke River) that it is dammed just a few miles upstream from the campground. (It supplies the water for the City of Victoria and others. Anyway, we pretty much don't get any rain here from July to September yet the river flow, waterfalls and level are the same all summer long. I believe this is just seepage from the surrounding watershed that does get a ton of rain the rest of the year. So a large lake as in Niagara's case is not necessary to keep a river consistent. I'll check next time we have a serious drought. There must be a breaking point where the flow will be noticeably reduced.",
"The same would be said for any large river. The waterfall just has a falling effect due to geology. ",
"The Great Lakes all look like oceans from their shores. Even the smallest one, Lake Erie. The fact all their water flows over such a tiny thing like Niagara Falls is breathtaking. Rainfall plays no role.",
"What happens to the water that falls into the middle of the waterfall ? Does it unload out into the ocean? ",
"It's like how YouTube plays back decently well when driving. If you've have a minute of good connectivity once in five minutes or so, it buffers sufficiently. The Great Lakes are the buffers here",
"If I remember correctly from Earth Science back in high school, 5/6 of river water comes from the ground, not from runoff. In other words, as the river drains, the water under the ground fills it back up again.",
"I grew up in Chicago and now live in Milwaukee. I love living by Lake Michigan. You get the best arts of living by an ocean without all the terrible parts (hurricane, salt everywhere, etc.). The lake in the summer is just outstanding. There are boats everywhere and a nice cool breeze coming in off the lake. Summer by the lake always brings a smile to my face. ",
"Can't speak for other waterfalls but to keep Niagara Falls running Canada established National Pee Duty. When rain fails to fill up the river, Canadians line up along the shore to help their country continue to exploit American tourists.",
"Not all waterfalls do, it can just be difficult to tell without pictures from different days/years.",
"The great lakes feed into Niagara. That's a huge quantity of water that can last through the dry season.",
"Even much smaller watersheds can maintain consistent flow. Alot of it has to do with groundwater. A great sign in my local city park explains that creek water nearby could well have entered the watershed from nearby neighborhood hose water decades ago. ",
"Some of the European hockey players coming to play in Buffalo comment on how much they like the area being so close to the ocean.\n\nThey're in for a surprise when it freezes over. ",
"I can tell you Burney Falls in California constantly flows due to being fed by an underground spring. There is a time in the summer when the creek that flows to the falls drys up yet water comes up out of the ground about a mile up stream from the falls. It’s a pretty cool to see the creek bed dried upstream yet all the sudden there is water flowing to the falls as you get closer. ",
"As someone who lives in near Niagara falls I can say the rates change massively. Can't really answer your question, but I can say that they don't really keep consistent rates. ",
"I remember reading that they artificially slow the flow of water to reduce erision. Apparently the falls we're even more impressive when they flowed unabated.",
"Niagara Falls does not have a constant flow. There is a damn up river. They turn the falls down in the winter and up in the summer for tourist season. "
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1m3mox | why do we pay personal property taxes ? | December is coming up, so I know that my yearly personal property taxes letter is going to come in the mail for things that I have already paid taxes on.. What is the purpose this ? I understand State and federal taxes but not this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m3mox/eli5_why_do_we_pay_personal_property_taxes/ | {
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"Your local government needs to fund certain things like schools, emergency services (fire/ambulance/police). They can't tax your income, but because your house (for example) is located on territory they control, they have the authority to demand a small amount of money from you, and since your community likes those services and likes schools they've agreed to elect people who put these taxes into place."
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2cjoli | all of my dads brothers are over 6'2", but he's 5'10". is this simply the result of genetic variation? in which case i will be shorter like him, or do i still have the "tall genes" present? | Essentially I'm wondering if out of the 6 of them, my dad received the shorter variation, and if so, whether I would too be around his height, or if I will be around the height of the other men in my family.
Also: he had the appendix removal surgery during his teenage years so I'm wondering if that could have affected his final height?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cjoli/eli5_all_of_my_dads_brothers_are_over_62_but_hes/ | {
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"There are quite a few genes that impact height. They are expressed in many combinations in different people. Tall people can have short children, and short people can have tall children. As a result, it's hard to tell how tall you'll be.\n\nIn addition, just because your genes say you'll be tall, if you don't get the right nutrition, you won't be as tall as you would otherwise. It's unlikely that your dad's surgery impacted his height because appendectomies are usually pretty minor surgeries.",
"5'10 is pretty tall. "
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bsxuzq | how is it that a couple can have hiv negative children despite one or both of them being hiv positive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsxuzq/eli5_how_is_it_that_a_couple_can_have_hiv/ | {
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"I'm a family medicine resident so somewhat qualified I guess to answer. The transmission rate from mom to infant is only something like 10% without hiv treatment, this is because most of the time the virus does not cross the placenta. Sometimes it does and there is a riks of transmission to baby during delivery. If a mom is treated with antiretroviral therapy and has very low viral levels the transmission rate can be close to 0.",
"HIV can generally only be passed to the baby from the mother, not the father. Mothers with HIV can pass the virus to the baby during pregnancy, but if they are on HIV medication it's unlikely because it can lower the viral load in the bloodstream to near-undetectable levels. There's a risk of passing it during childbirth or breastfeeding, so women with HIV shouldn't breastfeed and can give birth via C-section to prevent transmission.",
"There’s a public relations campaign to let people know that [Undetectable = Untransmittable](_URL_0_)",
"Baby and mother have different circulatory systems. The baby’s blood exchanges nutrients with the Mother’s at the placenta.\n\nTheir blood does not mix directly, or else children with different blood types from their mother would just die from blood clots."
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3q6841 | now that merchants are moving to chip & sign terminals with keypads, why don't they and the card companies offer chip & pin operation from the same card and the same terminal at no additional cost? | One of the concerns about introducing chip & pin in the U.S. has been the fear that the American consumer will be totally bewildered by learning to use a PIN (the same process that they have already mastered for their ATM withdrawals without riots in the streets). Why can't it at least be an option for those who feel up to it?
Edit for clarity (hopefully): I have a newly issued credit card with a chip. The merchant has a terminal that reads the chip. So both the card and the terminal understand the chip encryption. Then he prints out a paper receipt and has me sign it. I've asked the card company if, since the card now has a pin, I can use it where chip & PIN are accepted, like Europe. They say no. I can ONLY use it for chip & sign. Their agents are understandably not trained on answering the "why." So (1) why would the chip not be usable with a PIN at merchants who have been using chip & PIN for a decade or so, and (2) why can't U.S. merchants accept PIN transactions if customers prefer it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q6841/eli5_now_that_merchants_are_moving_to_chipsign/ | {
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"The USA is way behind the rest of the world in this area. I'm not entirely sure what the OP is asking either, so let me just describe what I've had here in Ireland for at least 6 years now. (Maybe longer - I forget!) \n\nMy main card is a VISA Debit card with Chip & PIN that also acts as an ATM card. It has a magnetic stripe too. I use it for groceries at least twice a week, and occasionally to withdraw cash. For transactions under €15 (soon to be €30), some retailers (inc. McDonalds) support PIN-less operation: just touch your card to the terminal for a few seconds. Biggest problem with this card? It's starting to wear out. \n\nI also have a credit card, which I use mostly for online transactions, or the (rare) large retail purchase. I pay it off the same month, but the debit card is usually enough. I used it more in 2 weeks in the USA, last month, than in the previous year. "
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2ji0z5 | water filtration vs. purification. what’s the difference? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ji0z5/eli5_water_filtration_vs_purification_whats_the/ | {
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"like names are stating, filtration is filtrating water (mechanical \"purification\") and purification is broader term covering [variety](_URL_0_) of methods, from mechanical/physical (filtration/osmosis and boiling) and ultraviolet (killing bacterias) to chemical purification (using chlorine, ozone, etc) "
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j6h92 | the distinction between a musical key, mode and scale | I get that they're all related, but I don't quite understand when/why you'd use one term instead of another. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j6h92/eli5_the_distinction_between_a_musical_key_mode/ | {
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"Every song is in a certain key. The key of a song can be worked out by knowing the notes of the song, but good musicians can tell what key a song is in just by listening. Basically, the key of a song is a label, like \"A\", \"B\" or \"C\" that musicians give to a song so they know how to play things over the top of it that sound good.\n\nOnce a musican knows the key of a song, he or she might want to play something, like a guitar solo, or a violin melody, over the top of it. A scale is just a list of notes that sound good over a piece of music. So if you know the key of a song, you pick a scale, and play only notes in that scale. Scales are how musicians \"improvise\" over music - they are basically safe notes that will always sound quite good. But to play really well of course requires more than just knowing scales - you need a lot of practise and a good musical ear.\n\nDifferent scales have different feels - some have a happy sound, like the major scale, and some have a sad sound, like the minor scale. Which scale you pick depends on how you want the tune to sound.\n\nModes are really just special types of scales, and are used by more advanced musicans. There are seven modes, each of which has a different \"feel\" to it. The most simple mode is called the Ionian, which is the major scale (the happy scale we talked about). Then for example the Phrygian mode sounds very spanish (think of the Miserlou opening to Pulp Fiction, if you ever managed to watch it when your parents were out). Some of the modes sound very strange and are only used by crazy musicians with weird hair and silly shoes.\n\nSo the key is the label, the scale are the good notes that you can play if you know the key, and modes are really just special types of scales.",
"[Great music dictionary online.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe terms you're asking about are often used interchangeably. There are however, specifics to consider: \n\nA scale is essentially a collection of notes in some kind of logical order. There are many possible scales, each with their own unique musical flavour.\n\n\"Key\" (from Dolmetsch): specific scales or series of notes defining a particular *tonality*, for example, certain keys may, on the basis of the sequence of successive intervals, be defined as major or minor and are then named after their tonic or key note\n\nModes are ALMOST like scales (in that they are more or less scales) but are treated in their own special context. If we are in the **key** of A Major, we might play notes from the A Major **scale**. However, depending on the harmonic context, we may choose not to think \"tonally\". For instance, if we're playing a ii-V progression (ad infinitum) in A Major, we're in \"modal\" harmonic territory. When improvising or writing in this context, it's likely you would use B Dorian and E Mixolydian **scales**. These two scales have the exact same notes as an A Major scale; they just start and end on notes other than the tonic (B and E respectively). Because of this, they are referred to as **modes** of the A Major scale. They share the same notes, but are applied in their own unique manner. \n\nIt's also possible to hear a minor/major key referred to as a minor/major mode if the harmony is modal. Modal music has chord progressions that are characteristic of a certain mode and does not have any \"tonal\" references (i.e. perfect cadences, tonicizations, etc.). \n\n",
"Theory teacher here, I'll try a very basic version. \n\n**Key:** Almost all music has a \"home note,\" or a note that sounds like the end. If you can stop the song at some point, and it sounds like it could end there, chances are you found the home note. That's what key the song is in. Normally in a song, you take a journey. So you start at home, then you take a trip to another home note, which is like checking into a hotel: you stay for a while, but you wouldn't want to live there. Eventually you return to the home key. This is called \"modulating,\" and some composers/songwriters are so good that you can barely tell where it changed. Other times, they change right away, which is more noticeable.\n\n**Scale:** In Italian, Scala means \"stairs\" which is where we get the word for scale. It's a sequence of steps (usually a pattern of whole steps or half steps; look up \"intervals,\" the distance between notes, for more info). On the page, a scale looks like a big line going up or down. The most common scales have 7 notes before you reach the octave note, but there are others too, notably the pentatonic scale (5 notes), which is awesome because any note sounds good with any other note. Lots of web games have been programmed with this in mind, or the simple one to improvise with is just play rhythms with any/all the black keys on the piano. Try and find the home notes! there are two possibilities, one dark and one bright. The pentatonic scale is one of human kind's most ancient. It was discovered all over the world in vastly different places, even though the people couldn't talk to each other because of the distances. Bone flutes made by neanderthals have been found in Germany and Slovenia up to 100,000 years ago that played pentatonic scales.\n\n**Modes:** Modes are just fancy scales. Start playing a scale from any white key to any other white key to discover the new patterns of steps. They all have complicated sounding names, but the names aren't that important, just that each one has a particular \"flavor\" (such as a lowered 2nd in the phyrigian which makes it sound dark and spanish). If the 3rd step is lowered, it's a minor mode and sounds dark, if it's raised it's a major mode and sounds bright. Further alterations make them sound even brighter or darker and so you can organize them by \"bright\" to \"dark\" by changing only one note at a time: the +/- numbers are the difference from a major scale\n\nbrightest: (f-f) lydian +4, (c-c) major[ionian], (g-g) mixolydian -7, (d-d) dorian -3 -7, (a-a) aeolian -3 -6 -7, (e-e) phrygian -2 -3 -6 -7, (b-b) locrian -2 -3 -5 -6 -7: darkest\n\n\nLocrian mode is like the black sheep of the family. It's really hard to convince someone that the first note of Locrian is your home, because there's a tri-tone interval (that's the -5) instead of a nice stable 5th for the home chord. \n\nhappy to answer questions!\n\n\nEDIT: my archaeology needed checking",
"Every song is in a certain key. The key of a song can be worked out by knowing the notes of the song, but good musicians can tell what key a song is in just by listening. Basically, the key of a song is a label, like \"A\", \"B\" or \"C\" that musicians give to a song so they know how to play things over the top of it that sound good.\n\nOnce a musican knows the key of a song, he or she might want to play something, like a guitar solo, or a violin melody, over the top of it. A scale is just a list of notes that sound good over a piece of music. So if you know the key of a song, you pick a scale, and play only notes in that scale. Scales are how musicians \"improvise\" over music - they are basically safe notes that will always sound quite good. But to play really well of course requires more than just knowing scales - you need a lot of practise and a good musical ear.\n\nDifferent scales have different feels - some have a happy sound, like the major scale, and some have a sad sound, like the minor scale. Which scale you pick depends on how you want the tune to sound.\n\nModes are really just special types of scales, and are used by more advanced musicans. There are seven modes, each of which has a different \"feel\" to it. The most simple mode is called the Ionian, which is the major scale (the happy scale we talked about). Then for example the Phrygian mode sounds very spanish (think of the Miserlou opening to Pulp Fiction, if you ever managed to watch it when your parents were out). Some of the modes sound very strange and are only used by crazy musicians with weird hair and silly shoes.\n\nSo the key is the label, the scale are the good notes that you can play if you know the key, and modes are really just special types of scales.",
"[Great music dictionary online.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe terms you're asking about are often used interchangeably. There are however, specifics to consider: \n\nA scale is essentially a collection of notes in some kind of logical order. There are many possible scales, each with their own unique musical flavour.\n\n\"Key\" (from Dolmetsch): specific scales or series of notes defining a particular *tonality*, for example, certain keys may, on the basis of the sequence of successive intervals, be defined as major or minor and are then named after their tonic or key note\n\nModes are ALMOST like scales (in that they are more or less scales) but are treated in their own special context. If we are in the **key** of A Major, we might play notes from the A Major **scale**. However, depending on the harmonic context, we may choose not to think \"tonally\". For instance, if we're playing a ii-V progression (ad infinitum) in A Major, we're in \"modal\" harmonic territory. When improvising or writing in this context, it's likely you would use B Dorian and E Mixolydian **scales**. These two scales have the exact same notes as an A Major scale; they just start and end on notes other than the tonic (B and E respectively). Because of this, they are referred to as **modes** of the A Major scale. They share the same notes, but are applied in their own unique manner. \n\nIt's also possible to hear a minor/major key referred to as a minor/major mode if the harmony is modal. Modal music has chord progressions that are characteristic of a certain mode and does not have any \"tonal\" references (i.e. perfect cadences, tonicizations, etc.). \n\n",
"Theory teacher here, I'll try a very basic version. \n\n**Key:** Almost all music has a \"home note,\" or a note that sounds like the end. If you can stop the song at some point, and it sounds like it could end there, chances are you found the home note. That's what key the song is in. Normally in a song, you take a journey. So you start at home, then you take a trip to another home note, which is like checking into a hotel: you stay for a while, but you wouldn't want to live there. Eventually you return to the home key. This is called \"modulating,\" and some composers/songwriters are so good that you can barely tell where it changed. Other times, they change right away, which is more noticeable.\n\n**Scale:** In Italian, Scala means \"stairs\" which is where we get the word for scale. It's a sequence of steps (usually a pattern of whole steps or half steps; look up \"intervals,\" the distance between notes, for more info). On the page, a scale looks like a big line going up or down. The most common scales have 7 notes before you reach the octave note, but there are others too, notably the pentatonic scale (5 notes), which is awesome because any note sounds good with any other note. Lots of web games have been programmed with this in mind, or the simple one to improvise with is just play rhythms with any/all the black keys on the piano. Try and find the home notes! there are two possibilities, one dark and one bright. The pentatonic scale is one of human kind's most ancient. It was discovered all over the world in vastly different places, even though the people couldn't talk to each other because of the distances. Bone flutes made by neanderthals have been found in Germany and Slovenia up to 100,000 years ago that played pentatonic scales.\n\n**Modes:** Modes are just fancy scales. Start playing a scale from any white key to any other white key to discover the new patterns of steps. They all have complicated sounding names, but the names aren't that important, just that each one has a particular \"flavor\" (such as a lowered 2nd in the phyrigian which makes it sound dark and spanish). If the 3rd step is lowered, it's a minor mode and sounds dark, if it's raised it's a major mode and sounds bright. Further alterations make them sound even brighter or darker and so you can organize them by \"bright\" to \"dark\" by changing only one note at a time: the +/- numbers are the difference from a major scale\n\nbrightest: (f-f) lydian +4, (c-c) major[ionian], (g-g) mixolydian -7, (d-d) dorian -3 -7, (a-a) aeolian -3 -6 -7, (e-e) phrygian -2 -3 -6 -7, (b-b) locrian -2 -3 -5 -6 -7: darkest\n\n\nLocrian mode is like the black sheep of the family. It's really hard to convince someone that the first note of Locrian is your home, because there's a tri-tone interval (that's the -5) instead of a nice stable 5th for the home chord. \n\nhappy to answer questions!\n\n\nEDIT: my archaeology needed checking"
]
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4b5mp6 | why does sugar get viscous (form a syrup) at high concentration but salt doesn't? | I just had a flash back to trying to thicken something as a kid with salt but it never got syrupy. The sugar isn't forming polymers is it? What is it about about sugar that can make a syrup but salt cannot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b5mp6/eli5_why_does_sugar_get_viscous_form_a_syrup_at/ | {
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"Firstly, they are very different chemicals. When salt dissolves in water it breaks apart (dissociates) into sodium and chlorine ions which are individually herded (conjugated) by water molecules. Sugars are much larger, complex molecules which do not generally break apart when interacting with water.\n\nBecause sugars are carbohydrates, they can participate in hydrogen bonding which increases viscosity and surface tension. Each molecule's \"heads\" try to stay close to their neighbors' \"butts\". Because they are larger and are mostly planar they can more strongly interact through van der Waals forces (this effect is small compared to the hydrogen bonding in solution)",
"Table salt is sodium chloride. The sodium bits have a positive charge, and the chlorine bits have a negative charge. That's why it makes a compound, the sodium and the chloride ions are attracted to each other's charges. When you put it in water, the salt separates into its constituent ions. Because the water also has a positive half and a negative half, the negative half of water surrounds the positive sodium ions and the positive half of water surrounds the negative chloride ions. If you add lots of salt, eventually there are no more unoccupied water molecules so you just get salt in the bottom of the container.\n\nSugar is a totally different chemical: it is an organic compound (which means it contains carbon) and its atoms are covalently bonded, meaning they share electrons. It still dissolves in water because, like water, it has a slightly positive bit and a slightly negative bit, so the molecules are still attracted to each other's charges, but the sugar isn't broken up in the process: it joins in the bonding that already occurs in water (as others have said, hydrogen bonding). As a result, when you add more sugar, you just get more hydrogen bonding. More hydrogen bonding means the liquid is more viscous, as all the molecules are attracted to each other and harder to break apart."
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7cp7p0 | why are so many historical east asian figures like sun tzu or ghengis khan portrayed in paintings as fat or slightly chubby | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cp7p0/eli5_why_are_so_many_historical_east_asian/ | {
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"Because many wars were literally about food, securing food, transporting food, and a person with any amount of chub had to be particularly wealthy/prosperous. ",
"To add to the previous comment, beauty standards were different back then. Being rounded was considered beautiful/handsome for a while."
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29z29s | why can't countries print currency notes when they need to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29z29s/eli5why_cant_countries_print_currency_notes_when/ | {
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"You're right, it does have to do with inflation. Every currency note that you print causes the rest of the currency in circulation to become worth slightly less. That means that goods and services will rise in price slightly over time. That's inflation.",
"Yes inflation is the reason. A country can print as much money as it needs, but once the country produces more money than its worth, and the value of the currency is lowered. Making the bill almost useless. ",
"As the others have said, it's inflation.\n\nYou can think of currency a country has in terms of stock and shares\n\nHypothetically, America has a total of 1,000,000 shares. Each share is worth $50. They begin to double the number of shares they have, so each person that has bought one share, now has two, but the worth of each share is now $25. But there exist 2,000,000 of them in total.\n\nIf a country were to print more money, the worth of their money on a global scale would go down, and goods would increase in price in order to accommodate for that.",
"Countries can and do print money. [Here's](_URL_0_) an extreme example of things going wrong.",
"Lets say you decide you want to start printing your own money. Nobody would take \"ifixgazes dollars\" seriously and they would essentially be worthless. If you want to do something about this, you might allow them to exchange \"ifixgazes dollars\" for US dollars and establish a reputation for always having enough US dollars on hand to exchange the money when people need it. This would give your money value because people have faith that you will back it up with US dollars, but the amount that you can print is limited by the amount of US dollars you have. That means that, if you tie your money to a US dollar, you can't just go and print more money every time you need it. Many countries do this because it helps give their currency stability, and is worth losing some of the flexibility from having a limit on how much currency they can print.\n\nLets say that \"ifixgazes dollars\" develop a good reputation on the international marketplace, and you decide that you are sick of the limitation of always having to have US dollars on hand to back them up. You may then free float your currency, meaning that you don't back up your currency with anything and just let the market determine its value. This gives you the ability to print as many \"ifixgazes dollars\" as you want, though you have to do a careful balancing act because they will lose their value as more get in circulation. Countries like the United States do this because they like the flexibility of being able to print more money whenever they want.\n\nIf you are interested, you can read more about this at _URL_0_",
"Mmm well counties do print money when they need to, but perhaps not in the way that OP thinks. The US Federal Reserve for example is printing $65 billion a month, but inflation is still below trend. But the fed doesnt print money and send it to the treasury for the government to spend directly; rather it uses the money to buy bonds, which makes bonds cheaper and reduces the cost at which private businesses (and the treasury) can borrow money.",
"Ignore the other answers, inflation is indeed the answer, well sort of anyway, but it's not really as simple as supply and demand because that's simply not how currency works.\n\nThere are two different sorts of value, there's the value inside your country which determines what you can buy domestically for a dollar and the value that the currency has internationally on the exchange rate.\n\nIdeally you want the former to vary fairly little over time. A little bit of inflation is good both as a spur for investment and also to provide a buffer against deflation such is fairly catastrophic economically.\n\nThe second however can be much more variable. There are a lot of reasons to actually devalue your currency on the market. It makes your exports lower in relative price and makes imports relatively more expensive. Both of these things make goods you produce more competitive which leads to jobs and growth and all that good stuff.\n\nSince the GFC the exchange rate for the US dollar has seen a reasonably significant devaluation while at the same time the domestic value of the dollar has remained fairly stable, even though huge numbers of US dollars have been printed. This is what you want.\n\nLots of countries can't or won't play this game though. You need to have your own fiat currency which leaves out Europe and you need to have a desirable currency, which leaves out most of the rest. If your currency has limited external value it's hard to control inflation if you print.\n\nThe big problem for most countries doing this is that it isn't really very effective if bigger economies are doing it too. A small country can't increase their money supply by the kind of raw numbers the US or China can because the percentage increase would be too dramatic. As such most countries don't bother.\n\n"
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40shxr | in the united states, at least, why is the recommended dosage in non-prescription drugs typically split into two groups: one for those under twelve and one for those over twelve years of age? isn't there a better metric, such as body weight, by which to provide multiple recommended dosages? | I mean, the physiological differences between a typical twelve year old child, an over-weight adult male, and an underweight adult female, for example, do not seem to be accounted for at all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40shxr/eli5_in_the_united_states_at_least_why_is_the/ | {
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"It IS accounted for, the recommended doses are not \"for best results\" they are \"so we don't accidentally kill anyone and get sued.\" A large full grown adult man can easily take 3 times the recommended dose of most over the counter medication with no ill effects whatsoever. The limit exists so that very small people don't take the wrong dose and get harmed. Think of the \"recommended dose\" as the \"were virtually sure this dose is safe for anyone who isn't a toddler\" ",
"Non-prescription drugs have a lot of latitude in dosage levels before they become dangerous. You're supposed to give your kid a 5mL teaspoon of cough syrup and you give them a 15mL tablespoon instead, three times as much. It ain't gonna hurt them.\n\nRecommended dosage levels inherit that flexibility. They're guidelines, not rigid definitions of EXACT amounts. So the guideline for the target receiver based on age can be similarly general, even if the child's weight differs a fair amount. \n\nPlus, age is *easy*. You don't have to weigh someone, you don't have to specify whether they have clothes on or not while being weighed, you don't have to calculate anything. So the guidelines based on that are precise enough for non-prescription drugs. You'll get a \"close enough\" dosage in most cases to achieve the desired effect while not being dangerous to you.\n\nIf the drug was dangerous in non-precise amounts, or its exact dosage levels were critically important to achieve an effect, they wouldn't sell it as a non-prescription drug and would control it through prescriptions issued by a medical authority who can better decide the precise dosage based on your weight, age, BMI, conflicting conditions, and other factors."
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25v3rx | what is it about tropical climates that makes everything so deadly? | I have searched ELI5 before, and the only explanation about biodiversity doesn't really explain what it is about a colder climate that prevents nature from getting too deadly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25v3rx/eli5_what_is_it_about_tropical_climates_that/ | {
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"Good conditions make everything grow fast and plentiful. In order to get your place under the sun and survive species should defend themselves really hard.",
"Well it's the perfect temperature for most bacteria and secondly animals don't have to expend any energy surviving the cold",
"There are simply more organisms in the tropics since those regions get more energy from the sun, and more energy means more life. That means there's more competition for everthing including energy from the sun, but also other forms of energy (food), and space. With more competition, organisms have to try harder to survive, and so species' survival advantage will evolve to more extreme levels, such as being poisonous or causing greater disease to host organisms.\n\nIt's kind of like why big cities have more crime and people are nastier - there are more opportunities, and more people competing for them, so people go to greater lengths to survive.",
"For the same reason a pickpocket is going to have better luck in Times Square than Death Valley.\n\nWarmth + water means there are going to be lots of living things crammed together in one place competing with each other.\n\nWhen it is cold and dry, organisms are fighting the climate more than each other."
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186il5 | how does a computer use prime numbers for encryption? | What is the benefit of using prime numbers, and how does it work? I know one of the reasons is that there's no effective way for computers to calculate prime numbers, but how does that relate to them being used in encryption? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/186il5/eli5_how_does_a_computer_use_prime_numbers_for/ | {
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"Two part answer to your question.\n\n1) The key, used to encrypt a message, is produced by mathematic algorithms that use prime numbers. If you don't use a prime number, then any factor of the number can be used to \"break\" the key. For example, if I use the number 12 to generate the key then the numbers 2, 3, 4 or 6 can be used to \"break\" the key. A \"good\" key is one that is longer than the protected message. Once a key repeats, it is easier to \"break\" an encrypted message. A large prime number allows for a longer key.\n\n2) To \"break\" a key, you have to determine the prime numbers used to generate the key. It is relatively easy to generate prime numbers, but it is much harder to factor large numbers into primes.",
"In the counting numbers, primes are irreducible - they can't be made in to smaller parts. So a number which is made out of multiplying only two primes only has two things you can divide it by (besides 1 and itself).\n\nSo if we wanted to make a number which would be hard to find something that divided it, but needed at least two pieces, the easiest way to do that would be to pick the product of two prime numbers - you can only divide it by those two pieces!\n\nWell, it turns out there are lots of times in cryptography where you want to make a number out of two pieces and have the result be hard to find something to divide it. So you use lots of big prime numbers."
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13zife | can someone explain timbre to me? | I know that it has to do with an instrument's sound but I'm still confused on this one. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13zife/eli5_can_someone_explain_timbre_to_me/ | {
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"Every instrument can play the same basic notes. Middle C is approximately 260 hz. But, you would never confuse a piano for trumpet, even if they're playing the exact same tone. The difference between the two is the timbre.",
"Say all of your vowel sounds in a row, a-e-i-o-u. As you changed the shape of your mouth, even though roughly the same amount of air was going through, the timbre of the note changes because the shape of the airway is different (commonly called \"formant\" when talking about vocals as opposed to instruments).\n\nWhen you go a step further and start having totally different construction of instruments, with different materials, airways, no airways, resonators, etc., all of these contribute to the timbre of the instrument in more complex ways.",
"Lots of things contribute to an instrument's tone and sound. Such as: is it plucked, strummed, blown, bowed, or hit? And is the instrument metal, wooden, plastic, or a combination of these?\n\nComparing two sounds, you can describe the differences between them. That perception of the sound is the timbre. You can describe timbre however it appears to you. Visualise the sound. Is it warm or cold, thin or thick, gentle or hard, soft or sharp? Take your pick of adjectives.\n\nFor example, compare an oboe to a piano both playing the same tune. You may describe the oboe as thin, hard, and sharp and the piano as soft, warm, and gentle. Voila!",
"From *This Is Your Brain on Music* by Daniel Levitin:\n\n\"We employ the term *timbre*, for example, to refer to the overall sound or tonal color of an instrument--that indescribable character that distinguishes a trumpet from a clarinet when they're playing the same written note, or what distinguishes your voice from Brad Pitt's if you're saying the same words. But an inability to agree on a definition has caused the scientific community to take the unusual step of throwing up its hands and defining timbre by what it is not. (The official definition of the Acoustical Society of America is that **timbre is everything about a sound that is not loudness or pitch.** So much for scientific precision!)\"\n\nBasically, timbre is undefinable with our current understanding of the physics of sound. It is one of a few physical qualities that we can perceive but not explicitly define.\n\nAlso, just to be sure everyone knows, it's pronounced \"TAM-ber\". Not \"timber\"."
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8zg2or | what are all the extra ingredients in a cigarette for if nicotine is the main goal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zg2or/eli5_what_are_all_the_extra_ingredients_in_a/ | {
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"There are lots of reasons, also keep in mind that most lists are of a company's additives across all their brands, not just one product. The main reasons for additives get added are flavor/scent, burning retardant (so the cigarette doesn't smolder too quickly when not being actively smoked), or modifying nicotine delivery.\n\nWhen you see thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke, that's the result of tobacco leaf compounds and additives not combusting completely and creating lots of different partially burnt compounds. ",
"It's a little like saying \"what are all the extra ingredients in tequila for if alcohol is the main goal?\" The chemical that humans are looking for in those products, in its purest form, is nasty and even more harmful, so the producers do what they can to make it more palatable.\n\nThe majority of the additives in a cigarette are there to \"improve\" the smoking experience for the consumer - things to make it burn more smoothly, to reduce harshness, impart a flavor like menthol or a sweetness to the smoke, preserve it while it sits on a store shelf, etc.\n\nIn a cynical sense, the main goal of a cigarette is not to get nicotine into the system - from a marketing standpoint, it's to sell the best way to disguise a very unhealthy product better than the other cigarette companies. Most of the additives are there to facilitate that goal and make the product a more attractive way to get nicotine in than the competitors."
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