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31nm2k | why does a vhs image wobble and show bands of "static" when you press pause instead of just standing still? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31nm2k/eli5_why_does_a_vhs_image_wobble_and_show_bands/ | {
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"I think it's because the tape stops, but the read-head is still spinning round.\nSo it's really just reading the same 'frame', but since it's analog, it cant really stand still. ... A video tape is encoded like this: /////// ... which is different from an audio tape which is encoded like this: ||||||\nThe reason being that a video needs a lot more info per second.\nalso.. there are actually 2 read heads on that disk, not just one.\n"
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20kbaw | if something becomes legal while you are being prosecuted for it being illegal will you still be found guilty. | For example: Someone in Colorado gets arrested for possession of Marijuana before it was legal, but now it is legal and that person is still on trial. Will that person still be found guilty?
Thank you, I cant find the answer to this question anywhere. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20kbaw/eli5_if_something_becomes_legal_while_you_are/ | {
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"As far as I know, yes. You still committed a crime while that act was illegal. unfortunately.",
"It also works the other way. You can't be prosecuted for something that becomes illegal but legal when you did it.",
"I know this is already explained, but I wanted to elaborate on /u/yabs, /u/incruente, and /u/ACrusaderA because in the criminal law class I took last year, we covered this very subject indepth.\n\nAll of these comments are correct, but this is more of an ELI10 version. The term is \"Ex Post Facto,\" or \"After the fact.\" It refers to how you can't be tried for breaking a law that wasn't illegal when you did it. \n\nFor example, if you turn 16 and get your drivers license, then the state changes the law to an 18 year minimum to drive, then your license can't be revoked because that'd be an Ex Post Facto decision.\n\nBy the same token, you are still guilty of breaking a law WHEN it was illegal if said law changes \"after the fact.\"\n\nIn OP's marijuana example, the time frame and circumstances are huge. But assuming all conditions for legality are met (ie. proper age, not smoking in public, etc.), one of a few things could probably happen:\n\n1) The prosecutor could drop the charges because it's a waste of his time\n\n2) The judge could throw the case out because it's a waste of his time\n\n3) He could be found innocent before a jury of his peers and released scot-free\n\n4) He could be found guilty before a jury of his peers, and serve his sentence\n\n5) He could be found guilty before a jury of his peers, but the judge could overturn the jury's verdict and acquit the defendant\n\n6) He could be found guilty before a jury of his peers, serve his sentence, but later be exonerated or pardoned (for 5 year olds, set free or relieved from punishment)\n\nAnd there's probably a ton of other possibilities on what could happen in OP's situation, but the above ones are by far the most likely.",
"I think it depends on the country and its legal system. In my country for example, you would be aquitted because of lex mitior (principle according to which the most favorable law applies). At least this is what I understand."
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c0f4k1 | how do crayons get their pigment? | Asking after seeing this post on /r/chemistry
_URL_0_
I wanted to know what actually gives crayons their colors. Is it synthesized chemicals? Pigments found in nature? Can anyone answer this? Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c0f4k1/eli5_how_do_crayons_get_their_pigment/ | {
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"Both of your answers are correct. Some colours can be produced naturally by things found in nature, but more often then not, they use chemicals. Iron for example is naturally red and so can be used to colour things red or orange. Different chemical compounds form with different colours and can therefore be used to colour. Lead iodide for example is bright yellow and iron permanganate is a gentle light pink colour. I hope this helps!"
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256wqh | red light's effects on the eyes vs. green. | Red lights are supposed to preserve night vision, why? And I got a flashlight that had a red light to preserve night vision, and a Green light for "inspection." Does green ligh preserve night vision but give more detail or what?
Edit: [Here] (_URL_0_) is the light. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/256wqh/eli5_red_lights_effects_on_the_eyes_vs_green/ | {
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"Red does not preserve night vision particularly well; it simply causes a less obvious \"after-glare\" than most other colors.\n\nThe best color for seeing in the dark is actually a sort of greenish blue-green (507 nm wavelength), because that's actually the color that the \"rod\" cells in our eyes are most sensitive to, and thus we can use it at the lowest intensity."
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"http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Professional-Swivel-Flashlight-Black/dp/B0014IU5BQ/ref=sr_1_23?s=hardware&ie=UTF8&qid=1399779016&sr=1-23&keywords=energizer+flashlight"
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1zsfaq | massive eve online battle that cost north of $300,000 usd | How and why did this battle happen? Where are they getting these dollar amounts from? Time and Material? Actual USD for buying these "ships"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zsfaq/eli5_massive_eve_online_battle_that_cost_north_of/ | {
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"Like any MMO there is a market for in-game money. In EVE this is generally \"how many in-game credits does it take to buy a one month game card. The exchange rate can then be figured because a month shbscription to the game has a set price in real currency, and a marmet price in virtual currency. \n\n$300k means if you wanted to purchase all the stuff that got blown up in the battle with in-game credits (ISK), it would theoretically take you $300k to buy that many in-game credits.",
"To expand on /u/snkns's answer. In EVE it is possible to buy a gamecard (1 month worth of playing) with in-game money. So you don't really have to spend real money (off course they are expensive). \n\nThis is something differentiates EVE from other MMOs. It also makes it possible to convert in-game values into real money values so if a ship destroyed cost 1'000'000 ISK then you could calculate how many gamecards worth of 15$ you could buy with these 1'000'000 ISK (IIRC not even one).\n\nNow what happened:\n\nI personally wasn't there. I just picked it up here on Reddit and other places after it happened.\n\nApparently it was that one corporation or alliance (a guild) forgot to pay for a station they owned. After they failed to pay the station was open to being bought by another corporation. Unfortunately another corp had a lot of resources in this station which were then lost.\n\nAfter that things escalated quite quickly when they came with ships to get it back which in the end resulted in the war.\n\nThis probably isn't all to accurate as I said I wasn't there and haven't played EVE for quite a while. "
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3u0n34 | why is the number two pencil number two when it's the most widely used pencil in the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u0n34/eli5why_is_the_number_two_pencil_number_two_when/ | {
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"cil makers manufacture No. 1, 2, 2½, 3, and 4 pencils—and sometimes other intermediate numbers. The higher the number, the harder the lead and lighter the markings. (No. 1 pencils produce darker markings, which are sometimes preferred by people working in publishing.)\n\nThe current style of production is profiled after pencils developed in 1794 by Nicolas-Jacques Conté. Before Conté, pencil hardness varied from location to location and maker to maker. Earliest pencils were made by filling a wood shaft with raw graphite, leading to the need for a trade-wide recognized method of production.\n\nConté’s method involved mixing powdered graphite with finely ground clay; that mixture was shaped into a long cylinder and then baked in an oven. The proportion of clay versus graphite added to a mixture determines the hardness of the lead. Although the method may be agreed upon, the way various companies categorize and label pencils isn't.\n\nToday, many U.S. companies use a numbering system for general-purpose, writing pencils that specifies how hard the lead is. For graphic and artist pencils and for companies outside the U.S., systems get a little complicated, using a combination of numbers and letters known as the HB Graphite Scale.\n\n\n\n\"H\" indicates hardness and \"B\" indicates blackness. Lowest on the scale is 9H, indicating a pencil with extremely hard lead that produces a light mark. On the opposite end of the scale, 9B represents a pencil with extremely soft lead that produces a dark mark. (\"F\" also indicates a pencil that sharpens to a fine point.) The middle of the scale shows the letters and numbers that correspond to everyday writing utensils: B = No. 1 pencils, HB = No. 2, F = No. 2½, H = No. 3, and 2H = No. 4.\n\nSo why are testing centers such sticklers about using only No. 2 pencils? They cooperate better with technology because the machines use the electrical conductivity of the lead to read the pencil marks. Early scanning-and-scoring machines couldn't detect marks made by harder pencils, so No. 3 and No. 4 pencils usually resulted in erroneous results. Softer pencils like No. 1s smudge, so they're just impractical to use. So No. 2 pencils became an industry standard.\n\n-- _URL_0_\n",
"The numbers on pencils are to denote how \"hard\" the graphite is. A number 1 pencil would be the softest and would make the darkest mark because more of the graphite would rub off of it when used.\n\nA number 4 pencil would be harder and make a lighter mark because less graphite would rub off of it.\n\nSo, for some things you'd want a darker mark (tests use them because they ultimately need a dark mark to read the results properly). Other things you'd want a harder pencil so it retains its shape and you don't necessarily need the mark to be black. A harder pencil will stay sharp longer, so no need to keep sharpening it to make a fine line."
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7d2lp2 | when a tree grows, where does it's matter come from? | Say I take a large glass box 100'x100'x100'. I fill it with soil and plant an acorn. The only thing that goes into the box is regular watering.
Each season for 100 years, the tree grows larger, leaves are created and fall off and are raked up and stored. At 100 years the tree is cut down, the wood is dried and cut into planks.
So, in the end, I have a pretty good stack of wood and bags and bags of composted leaves.
Where did all that matter come from?
Is there less soil in the box? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7d2lp2/eli5_when_a_tree_grows_where_does_its_matter_come/ | {
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"Photosynthesis (light) + CO2\n\nThat's the easy explanation.\nBut really it's more complicated than this if you want to deep dive into the specifics. ",
"Most of the matter that makes up a tree comes from the carbon in carbon dioxide in the air. In a process called photosynthesis, a tree (or other plant) takes in carbon dioxide and uses energy from light that hits the leaves to separate the atom of carbon from the CO2 molecule. Those carbon atoms are then used to built parts of the tree. \nThis is why deforestation contributes to global climate change. Trees store large amounts of carbon, and when they are cleared away more CO2 builds up in the atmosphere because the trees aren’t there to remove it. ",
"A little of it comes from the soil. But really not all that much.\n\nMost of the matter that a tree is made of actually came from the air. Plants use photosynthesis to grab CO2 from the air, combine it with water they suck up through their roots, and generate sugars and plant material from that.\n\nAs a side effect they also release oxygen.\n",
"Other than the carbon from the air (which forms the vast majority of the tree's matter), nitrogen from the soil in the form of nitrate forms the bulk of the rest tree's matter. To an even lesser degree, plants gather phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and many other elements in small amounts from the soil. ",
"Our cells are mostly filled with water, it's the same way with plants. Their cells are mostly filled with water, depending on a bunch of factors, a plant will typically be around 75% or more water. \n\nIn your example, it seams like you care more about dry matter.\n\nIn terms of dry matter, a plant is about 89% Carbon and Oxygen. The plant gets those from Carbon Dioxide during photosynthesis.\n\nIt is about 6% Hydrogen which it gets from water during photosynthesis.\n\nThe remaining 5% of dry matter is Nitrogen and other minerals that the plant gets from the soil.\n\n\nSo in your example, lets say you collected all this stuff from the tree and let it completely dry out, then weighed it. Let's say it weighed 1000 lbs.\n\nAbout 890 lbs came from CO2 in the atmosphere, 60 lbs came from water and 50 lbs came from minerals in the soil. "
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34je98 | why does a washed towel dry completely when hanged, but stays moist after use? | When I hang my very wet towel after a machine wash, some hours later it'll be completely dry and a pleasure to use.
But after I've used it for a while, it eventually starts feeling moist and needs to be washed again, even though it's again untouched for hours.
Why does it dry after the machine wash, but not after it's being used? Why doesn't it just dry up again? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34je98/eli5_why_does_a_washed_towel_dry_completely_when/ | {
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"Maybe your bathroom doesn't have good ventilation. Bathrooms are usually pretty small and showers produce a lot of steam. If you tend to leave the door closed or you don't have a fan vent, your bathroom might just be a lot more humid than your laundry room, meaning your towel will not dry as quickly. ",
"The only reasons I can think of would be either the environment it is in (a humid bathroom) or the oils from your skin and hair making it unable to dry effectively.",
"It is because dead skin cells gets rubbed off onto the towel. This makes the surface of the towel more ideal for bacteria and fungal growth. All this extra stuff on the towel makes it longer to dry than a freshly washed towel. "
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3fgvyj | why (in the usa) do "fancier" beers usually come in 11.2/11.5 fl.oz bottles? is this a foreign thing or a "less is more" sort of deal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fgvyj/eli5_why_in_the_usa_do_fancier_beers_usually_come/ | {
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"Well I'll have you know that if it is a foreign thing, it's not something from Britain!\n\nOur \"Real Ale\" beers and mircro-brewery stuff seems to always come in the [larger bottles, like so.](_URL_1_)\n\n[It's the crap that the big breweries pump out that comes in smaller bottles.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Here's another example of bad beer in small bottles.](_URL_2_)\n\nGood beer needs a lot to be appreciated over an extended period of time that preferably leaves you appropriately merry by the end.",
"Lots of European beers come in 1/3 liter bottles. This 333 ml comes in a smaller bottle than the standard 350 ml 12 oz bottle."
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304hsh | why do trains make that (chugga-chugga) noise while moving? | I don't get it. The rails are perfectly smooth, aren't they? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/304hsh/eli5_why_do_trains_make_that_chuggachugga_noise/ | {
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"The noise isn't from the wheels, it is from the engine. It releases steam with each cycle of expansion and that makes noise.\n\nAutomobiles don't go \"vroom\" because of the texture of the road either.",
"On modern none steam engines this is gaps between track pieces. On the more modern high speed rail links the tracks have much better welds and joins and give a totally smooth experience without the clacking sound.\n\n",
"Lot of people hear different noises.\n\nFor example, do you know what Web developer hears on the way home?\n\n < tr > < td > < td > < tr > \n\n < tr > < td > < td > < tr > \n\n < tr > < td > < td > < tr > \n\n < tr > < td > < td > < tr > \n\nBut seriously.The noise is from the engine When the train releases steam, and compresses that produces the noise. That's why non-steam trains don't have that noise."
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ka8s5 | explain the claim that computers use less power when there are less applications running/less computing load | I keep getting told that when there are fewer apps running, there's less power consumption.
Leaving aside the issue of peripheral I/O (and I guess that HDDs are the big draw here), is it true that a computer sitting there, just kickin' back, is drawing less power than one that's computing computery stuff? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ka8s5/explain_the_claim_that_computers_use_less_power/ | {
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"Let's say that your computer [processor] works by flipping a billion of little switches a second. When the computer is running a lot of apps versus a few apps you flip more of these switches, more often. Each switch flip uses power, so by flipping more of the switches, more often, you use more power.",
" > I keep getting told that when there are fewer apps running, there's less power consumption.\n\nTechnically, what draws power is when programs \"think\". You can start a hundred programs, but if they're just sitting there idling, not \"thinking\", then the extra amount of power drawn is not significant. But ten actively thinking programs? That will definitely suck down power!\n\nWhy? Because like gfxlonghorn said, an actively thinking program is very rapidly (billions of times a second) flipping bits (1s and 0s) back and forth inside the computer's CPU, RAM, etc. And not just a few bits, either. A computer that's working hard can easily be flipping a hundred million bits, a billion times per second. Each time you flip a bit, you consume a little power. The more bits you flip, and the faster you do it, the more power is consumed.\n\nThink of it like cars idling vs. cars driving up a steep hill. One car idling or ten cars idling, they still burn less gasoline than one car driving up a steep hill. Then consider ten cars all driving up steep hills - now we're really burning a lot of gasoline, and fast.\n\nNow make your cars super-duper fuel efficient. And consider a million of these super-duper fuel efficient cars. A million super-efficient cars won't burn much gas at idle. But a million cars driving up a steep hill will consume a lot of gas because there's a million of them - even if each one individually is very efficient.\n\nLastly - Some programs are tricky. They *look* like they're sitting still, but hidden away behind the scenes they're actually thinking furiously. These kind of programs are like cars with the transmission in neutral and the gas pedal held to the floor. They may look idle, but they're actually burning gas like mad. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen - it's a sign of bad programming, and these kind of programs are only created by bad programmers. But, sadly, there ARE bad programmers in the world. And they do create some bad programs.\n\nIf you want to know how much power your computer is consuming, buy a [Kill-A-Watt](_URL_0_) and see. You can run various programs for ten minutes at a time and see which combination(s) consume the most and least electricity.",
"This might be too simple of an explanation, but if you're running multiple apps, your computer is working harder and heating up more, and your computer fans needs to blow harder and longer. Therefore, more power.",
"Let's say that your computer [processor] works by flipping a billion of little switches a second. When the computer is running a lot of apps versus a few apps you flip more of these switches, more often. Each switch flip uses power, so by flipping more of the switches, more often, you use more power.",
" > I keep getting told that when there are fewer apps running, there's less power consumption.\n\nTechnically, what draws power is when programs \"think\". You can start a hundred programs, but if they're just sitting there idling, not \"thinking\", then the extra amount of power drawn is not significant. But ten actively thinking programs? That will definitely suck down power!\n\nWhy? Because like gfxlonghorn said, an actively thinking program is very rapidly (billions of times a second) flipping bits (1s and 0s) back and forth inside the computer's CPU, RAM, etc. And not just a few bits, either. A computer that's working hard can easily be flipping a hundred million bits, a billion times per second. Each time you flip a bit, you consume a little power. The more bits you flip, and the faster you do it, the more power is consumed.\n\nThink of it like cars idling vs. cars driving up a steep hill. One car idling or ten cars idling, they still burn less gasoline than one car driving up a steep hill. Then consider ten cars all driving up steep hills - now we're really burning a lot of gasoline, and fast.\n\nNow make your cars super-duper fuel efficient. And consider a million of these super-duper fuel efficient cars. A million super-efficient cars won't burn much gas at idle. But a million cars driving up a steep hill will consume a lot of gas because there's a million of them - even if each one individually is very efficient.\n\nLastly - Some programs are tricky. They *look* like they're sitting still, but hidden away behind the scenes they're actually thinking furiously. These kind of programs are like cars with the transmission in neutral and the gas pedal held to the floor. They may look idle, but they're actually burning gas like mad. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen - it's a sign of bad programming, and these kind of programs are only created by bad programmers. But, sadly, there ARE bad programmers in the world. And they do create some bad programs.\n\nIf you want to know how much power your computer is consuming, buy a [Kill-A-Watt](_URL_0_) and see. You can run various programs for ten minutes at a time and see which combination(s) consume the most and least electricity.",
"This might be too simple of an explanation, but if you're running multiple apps, your computer is working harder and heating up more, and your computer fans needs to blow harder and longer. Therefore, more power."
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a55zld | how does a water tap work? how can water flow so fast from the moment you open it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a55zld/eli5_how_does_a_water_tap_work_how_can_water_flow/ | {
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"There is always water in the pipes that is under constant pressure (either from a pump or because it is coming from a water tower, so more water is above the pipe and kind of presses down, creating pressure). So when you open the tap, the water immediately gets pushed out due to the pressure inside the pipes. \n\nThe reason there is no delay in the water flowing out is that the water you see coming out in the beginning has been sitting in the pipes right behind the tap before you opened it so it doesn't have far to go."
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7ggpjy | if water is transparent, how does it still cast a shadow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ggpjy/eli5_if_water_is_transparent_how_does_it_still/ | {
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"It's not completely transparent. It has a slight blue color, reflects some light, refracts some light. ",
"its not fully transparent and some light gets reflected at it's surface. \n\n it's dark in deep waters. "
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3u9clk | if a password is saved as a hash, can two different passwords have an equal hash? if so, can a different password unlock my reddit account ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u9clk/eli5_if_a_password_is_saved_as_a_hash_can_two/ | {
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"Theoretically, yes. This is called a hash collision. In practice however they are very hard to find and, for a given hash, it is not guaranteed that there are multiple passwords which will map to it (although often times there are). \n\nHowever if you've got lots and lots of time and computing power you can find two random passwords with the same hash. This is much easier than finding an alternate password matching a specific hash - in fact that'd be no easier than finding the password itself.",
"In theory, yes.\n\nIn practice, no. The hash functions used for storing passwords typically have an output of about 256 bits, which is about 10^80 different outputs. They also have the property that it is effectively impossible to select an input that will give a specific output, so to find two inputs with matching outputs you are stuck just guessing and checking.\n\nWhat this means is that every password you guess in an attempt to get into the account will have about a 1 in 2^256 chance of working. To get an idea of how bad your chances are, let's assume that you have a thermodynamically perfect computer that's stored at 1 K (efficiency is related to temperature here, and 1 K is really freaking cold). We'll also assume that it is powered by the entire power production of the sun (not just the energy that hits earth), and we'll pretend that it only has to do a single operation per hash (when in fact it has to do several thousand at a minimum).\n\nWhen you [run the numbers](_URL_0_) you wind up finding that you'd have to take 7,000,000,000 times the age of the universe before you've gone through all of the numbers. Now sure, you could get lucky and find it on the first try, but practically speaking this may as well be impossible. And remember: I've given this computer every benefit of the doubt. Realistically you're looking at a much, much, much less efficient computer and doing much, much, much more work all with much, much, much less energy. ",
"Not only is it possible to have two different passwords with the same hash, there are guaranteed to be an infinite number of such passwords. This is because the output of a hash function is always a fixed length, and there are therefore a finite number of possible hash values, but there are an infinite number of possible passwords.\n\nHowever, cryptographic hash functions are designed so that actually finding such a value is very, very difficult - ideally, it would be impossible to do any better than brute force, which will take an inordinate amount of time if the hash function is suitably slow. If you do brute force a password in this way (which is usually only possible if the hash function used is fairly weak), then you have no way to know whether the password you found was the original or one of the many other passwords that give the same hash."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28boltzmann+constant%29*+1+K+*+ln%282%29+*+2%5E256+%2F+%28total+solar+output%29%29+%2F+%28age+of+the+universe%29"
],
[]
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38idnv | why do streaming video players have to reload content when you navigate backward? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38idnv/eli5_why_do_streaming_video_players_have_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Because after they have displayed video, they clear it from memory to make room for more video to stream. Most streaming video players only keep a small amount of the video in their memory at any time -- maybe a couple of minutes. ",
"They don't particularly have to reload anything from the remote server other than more of the video stream if it wasn't fully cached locally. There are a myriad of ways to store data on the browsers local file system - indexeddb, the filesystem API, local storage and so on, but all of this requires a decent chunk of code to manage, weigh this up against advertising and the whims of the site owner and you end up with players that need to reload previously streamed content.\n\nYoutube does a pretty good job with purchased movies and tv shows, they continue playing from where you left off almost straight away, in some countries you even get the option to store the video locally for offline playback.\n\n"
]
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[],
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53fo9i | why does the iphone make you delete so many pictures in order to take a new one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53fo9i/eli5_why_does_the_iphone_make_you_delete_so_many/ | {
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"d7sp87x"
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"text": [
"50 sounds like an awful lot but anyway, it's like this: when you take a picture the raw data is recorded from the sensor, this raw file is a shitload bigger than your standard jpeg. The phone processes the raw data, compresses it, saves it and then discards the raw file. Therefore you need a lot more memory space than just one jpeg to process the new one. If you have saved other data on your phone since taking the last picture, the more photos you will need to delete."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
1s0qci | how much money do the people on game shows (who wants to be a millionaire, deal or no deal, etc.) actually take home? | I've always heard people say that the money they make on the show is taxed (up to something like 50 percent), but is that the case? and if so, how much and for what reason? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s0qci/eli5how_much_money_do_the_people_on_game_shows/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdss15f"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It depends on both the tax laws of the area where the show is held, and the contestants residency. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
4y0jub | how come some people can't digest red meat? | I know some people who get terrible stomach cramping and indigestion after eating red meat. Is there some enzyme responsible for breaking down specifically red meat that some individuals don't have or stop producing over a period of time after not eating red meat for a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y0jub/eli5_how_come_some_people_cant_digest_red_meat/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6jxcj4"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There are several enzymes responsible for breaking down animal protein and there is a tiny portion of the population that naturally does not have it. There is a slightly larger percentage (still tiny) that loses the ability due to being bitten by a specific type of tick. It does not yet have a treatment so far as a know. \n\nMost people get indigestion from over eating and that is likely what is causing problems rather than actually eating red meat. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
aypivg | how does number spoofing work? | How are people able to fake their number and used one attached to a different SIM card? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aypivg/eli5_how_does_number_spoofing_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"ei2cvle"
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"text": [
"Until recently, the telephone network worked by connecting your phone through a continuous wire to the phone you were dialing. Essentially, imagine that you have a series of switches, each of which has 10 wires.\n\nWhen you dial 512-2391 what would happen is that a machine at the telephone company would physically connect your phone wire to the 5th wire on the switch. This would then go to another switch, which would connect you to the 1st wire, and then another switch which would connect you to the second wire. Eventually you would get to the last switch, which would connect you to the person you were calling.\n\nBecause this system is creating a connection behind it, it only needed to know where the connection was going - it didn't need to know where the connection was coming from. In fact, the telephone system had no idea where the call was coming from.\n\nCallerid got around this by having your phone send your phone number as a separate bit of data. Because the phone network had no idea what your phone number is, it just trusted whatever your phone tells it. If your phone was lying it didn't matter, because the only thing the system was using that fake phone number for is to display callerid. Spoofing works by having your phone lie to the system and send a fake number. \n\nThe telephone system now shares most of the same infrastructure as the internet, and it knows what phone number you're calling from separate from the callerid. However, it still uses the old callerid system for the simple reason of that it was already in place and every consumer phone system was set up to use it.\n\nFurthermore, a lot of spoofing is legitimate and are used by businesses to mask the specific phone line you're getting a call from and instead direct you to a general number. For example, a lot of business people use their personal cell phones for work, but don't want you bothering them on that outside of work, so they set it to spoof their office number. Changing over to a new callerid system in which spoofing was disabled would cause more problems than it would solve."
]
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[]
] | |
6q72bt | hearing someone's smile as they talk. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q72bt/eli5_hearing_someones_smile_as_they_talk/ | {
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"dkv5udf",
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"text": [
"I don't know the exact science of it, but as far as I'm aware, when you smile, you use certain muscles in your face and around your mouth. When those muscles are in use, it changes how your mouth normally moves when you're speaking. I believe that the pitch goes up slightly which is why you can 'hear' when they're smiling. ",
"Just_be_fwb is on the right tract. What speech is, is just manipulating the air you are pushing out of your lungs. What determines the different sounds in our languages is the shape of the space between your voice box and lips as the air leaves your mouth. To make the 's' in 'sam' your tongue is behind your teeth, when you make the 'f' in 'fool' your lower lip is under your bottom teeth, and so on for all the unique sounds (or phonemes) in your language. All these mouth configurations have distinct acoustic properties. When you smile you change the configuration of your mouth slightly and we are able to hear the difference.\n\nInstruments are kind of similar. Imagine taking the bell of a trumpet as it was being blow and bending it into a cresent moon shape. The trumpet would sound different.\n\nKey concepts to explore if you want more depth:\nresonance, acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetics, phonemes, and place/manner of articulation."
]
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[],
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] | ||
7yjkpq | electrical current and electron flow directions, and how we can design a circuit from positive to negative if the electrons are flowing the opposite direction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yjkpq/eli5_electrical_current_and_electron_flow/ | {
"a_id": [
"duh1v8x"
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"text": [
"It doesn't matter. Mathematically, the direction of the current is arbitrary; if you want to model it with the current carrier direction as the direction of the current, then just multiply all the currents by negative 1.\n\nEither way, the results from circuit analysis are exactly the same. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
5lsmy3 | why can't a car give more details with a dashboard warning light? | Assuming that a mechanic can hook to your car to get the code, why can't the car just output the code, or even better, the cause associated with the code? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lsmy3/eli5_why_cant_a_car_give_more_details_with_a/ | {
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"text": [
"The mechanic can get much more data, with a reader, from the car's ODB2 maintenance data port. The car manufacturer only lights the MIL to tell you to take you car to someone who has a reader. There are thousands of codes, and cluttering up the dashboard with space for all the message details would not meet the car company's styling requirements.",
"If I was being cynical it doesn't give information because it wants you to take your car to the dealer for a expensive service. I genuinely don't understand how with modern cars with big LED displays and onboard computers, a car can't give an indication of the nature of the issue.",
"They can do it if they want. However the car companies makes money to train and certify car mechanics and to provide them with the correct codes. Codes can often change between similar cars and be totally different for the same model with different option packs or with different production dates. It also ensures that the owner takes the car to a licensed workshop which helps reduce problems that comes from untrained mechanics or unoriginal parts.",
"Some cars can. Most newer Dodges will give you the code if you turn it off, then turn the key 3 times without starting it. The code is displayed where the odometer usually reads out. \n\n*Edited for more detail."
]
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[],
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109mmd | why can't people clap in unison to a song? | Usually whenever a group of people is clapping along to a song, they tend to speed up and just get off tempo. With people listening to music everywhere, how can they still have such a terrible sense of tempo?
edit: Well, this is now really ELI5 rhythm | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/109mmd/eli5_why_cant_people_clap_in_unison_to_a_song/ | {
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"text": [
"At least with large auditoriums, the speed of sound plays a role. Someone clapping at the front of the stage will hear the beat about a half second earlier than someone in the cheap seats 500 feet away.",
"I can't clap in unison because I have no rhythm. ",
"well, to be fair, sound has to travel, even if everyone clapped at the same time it wouldnt sound perfect",
"It is a combination of two things in my experience, either A: they have no rhythm or B: because of the way sound travels people hear it slower or faster than others.\n\n[/Maybe wrong but personal experiences]"
]
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[],
[],
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2h7nei | what would happen if the middle east refused to export oil? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h7nei/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_middle_east_refused/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckq4pot",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They would get really poor, really quick.",
"The situation is entirely too speculative and would never occur as long as the world consumes a lot of oil.\n\nThe middle east is a collective and not one single nation with one single governing body. It won't entirely stop what to many of its individual countries is their principal economic activity. That'd be suicide for their government and/or ruling structures.",
"Supply drops, demand remains constant and so price would rise exponentially.\n\nIn 1973 it actually happened: _URL_0_ "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis"
]
] | ||
c8sfck | what actually happens to the body during an asthma attack? why can't you just calm down and breathe? | Was watching the movie "Signs" and it occurred to me that I don't understand asthma or it's subsequent "attacks". | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8sfck/eli5_what_actually_happens_to_the_body_during_an/ | {
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"text": [
"I think it's to do with the inflammation and mucus of the airways, calming down and breathing wont stop it.",
"Asthma is when an immune system reaction in the lungs causes the bronchi of the lungs to spasm. Both the immune system reaction, and the spasms, are completely out of the control of the person experiencing them. They are autonomic actions the body just does by itself.",
"During an attack, there is an inflammation around your airway and your muscle contract, which create an obstruction. You simply end up with smaller airway that let less air go through.",
"Imagine running until you’re completely out of air and panting. If it’s not asthma, you’re back to normal in a few moments. If it’s asthma, you wonder if the panting would ever stop again and breathing gets hard and hurts now, minus you didn’t run in the first place. \n\nAn asthma attack has individual triggers. You wonder if _your_ immune system does that out of pure malice.\n\nFuck asthma."
]
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[],
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[],
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32v6oh | why are zebras a different animal and not just a breed of horse? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32v6oh/eli5_why_are_zebras_a_different_animal_and_not/ | {
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"text": [
"Simple: they aren't the same species.\n\nTwo animals are of the same species if they can successfully breed together, and the children that they make are able to breed themselves. So me and a female human are the same species, because we can breed and our baby will be able to breed. A Dalmation and a Labrador are the same species, because their mutt will be able to breed.\n\nBut a zebra and a horse that breed together will give birth to a Zorse, which is sterile. Since it can't continue to breed, these two animals aren't the same species.\n\nBoth zebras and horses descend from a common ancestor, which is why they look similar and are of the same genus *Equus.* But they've been genetically drifting apart for millions of years, and simply aren't close enough to be the same species any more."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
2eux6d | anita sarkeesian | 1) Why do people hate her so much?
2) What is happening as to death threats etc. on Twitter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eux6d/eli5_anita_sarkeesian/ | {
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"text": [
"1) They disagree with the things she says on the Internet, possibly because she says that Internet and gaming culture are pretty anti-woman.\n\n2) People are posting credible death threats, rape threats, threats of harm to her family, etc., on her Twitter feed. This shit is pretty gruesome, I would not click it if I were you: \n_URL_0_",
"1) A lot of people hate her because she is pointing out uncomfortable truths about the world of gaming and it's culture. There are plenty of valid criticisms about her \"thorough research\" but it is impossible to suggest she has no valid points. We (in this case \"we\" being \"men\") don't like being told that we are all guilty of perpetuating harmful stereotypes, because for the most part we aren't, playing video games where women are mistreated is as likely to turn all men into brutal misogynists as violent video games are as likely to turn us all into brutal murderers. So a lot of people become defensive and reject her ideas completely, and a small amount of very stupid people really over react and send her death threats online. ",
"1) Generally she's just accused of not being good at what she's famous for, the feminist critique of video games. She started a kickstarter looking for the money to get the games and whatnot to critique, got massively overfunded for that and yet has still has found a lot of infamy for using footage of other people's Let's Play videos, saying the same things others have said before and perhaps most importantly she's been accused of outright fabrications to reinforce what she's saying.\n\nIIRC there was something about how she pointed out in Hitman: Bloodmoney you have to kill some innocent strippers to advance, but they were actually weren't your targets and you'd be penalized for killing them in your final rating.\n\nStuff like that where people keep screaming: \"Are you sure you played the game!?\"\n\nI really didn't pay much attention to her or her criticisms so I'm just saying what I've heard.\n\n2) Everybody with an ounce of fame on the internet gets bile spewed on them, and everyone that's also female manages to get rape-threats and other more sexual/sexist shit on top of all the usual shit. I think it's not wrong for it be considered really shitty of the trolls, but it's not really that rare. Any internet celebrity can tell you about this shit, especially any of them even marginally controversial. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504718160902492160"
],
[],
[]
] | |
9hd6vf | what causes computer storage to become 'corrupted (ie: external harddrives, flashdrives, etc), and need to be reformatted (erasing all that is on the drive) in order to be used? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hd6vf/eli5_what_causes_computer_storage_to_become/ | {
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"Files can be corrupted for a lot of reasons. It typically happens when a file is left in a weird state where the system doesn't know how to read it anymore. A program might have broken or been interrupted partway through writing to the filesystem, a file could be damaged by a malicious program like a virus, or an old file might not be recognized after a system upgrade. However it gets in that state, the file is now basically dead code.",
"Lots of ways!\n\nStorage devices are physical things so if part of it is damaged then any data on that part of it will be corrupted. This damage could be caused by something obvious - a big scratch on the CD, say - or something more obscure like the general decay of stuff over time (we're alllll goiiing tooo dieeeeee).\n\nThe warning about \"safely ejecting hardware\" is mainly because if you pull the storage device out when it's half-way through writing to it it won't complete and thus you'll have a half-written pile of potentially unreadable garbage on the disk, or, even worse, when it's doing some clever moving-lots-of-things-around optimising and then everything is messed up",
"The problem is often with the file system rather than the file itself.\n\nA file system is kind of hard to explain eli5 style, but I’ll try.\n\nThink of a file as a book in a library.\n\nThe file system is the building. The shelves. And the friendly librarian who knows where every book is.\n\nWhen the file goes unreadable, it’s not necessarily the book itself that is the problem.\n\nIt could be an overturned shelf. A leaking roof. Or just that the librarian is at home with the flu.\n\nSomething that makes the book impossible to find, even though it’s definitely there somewhere.\n\nTo complicate matters somewhat, the books in this particular library has a fixed size. You can store information that takes up more than one book, but it’ll be spread out in several books throughout the library.\n\nAnd for that you really need the librarian. Because the damn books are not right next to each other!\n\nIf you can’t read one of the books, then you won’t have the file. And that is totally a problem. But if the file system messes up, it doesn’t matter that the book is there. Because you have no idea which one to start with..."
]
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[],
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2h9e4m | let's say i'm watching a 24fps movie on my 60hz computer monitor. how does the framerate of the movie match up with the refresh rate of the monitor? | 24 doesn't go into 60 evenly, 60 / 24 = 2.5, so wouldn't that mean that a frame is dropped every 2.5 seconds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h9e4m/eli5_lets_say_im_watching_a_24fps_movie_on_my/ | {
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"Don't quote me on this, but I think that it works like this;\n\nThe monitor refreshes a complete display 60 times in every second, the movie shows a new image 24 times in every second. Imagine that you have a friend standing outside your window with a flip-book and he was flipping the pages 24 times every second, and you were able to close and open the curtains 60 times a second. The two aren't linked and work independantly, so it doesn't matter that they run at differing speeds. Besides, at those sort of speeds, you would barely even notice (if at all) a dropped frame here or there.",
"This is why you ideally want to get a 120 or 240hz TV, since 60 does go into those evenly."
]
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[],
[]
] | |
1nj54q | what is sociological imagination, and why is it important? | I'm having trouble understanding not only the concept, but also why I should care and why society as a whole should as well. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nj54q/eli5_what_is_sociological_imagination_and_why_is/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccj286v"
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"text": [
"Here's a first year Sociology student's answer:\n\nAccording to the creator of the term, C.W. Mills, it is the ability to perceive how dynamic social forces influence individual lives.\n\nWhat the hell does that mean?\n\nIt's about stepping out of yourself and viewing yourself from a new perspective. Seeing yourself as the product of your family, income level, race, and gender. \n\nAsk yourself: Who am I and why do I think the way I do?\n\nThis enables you to become more informed about the social forces that have come together to **make you who you are**\n\nYou are looking at the world and seeing things in grey instead of black and white and looking at all of the things that have affected you to make you who you are.\n\nThose who don't look at those things and just say: This is how life is and it should be that way are \"social robots\" who lack sociological imagination.\n\n**Sources**:\n\n [The Promise](_URL_0_)\n\nRavelli, Bruce, and Michelle Webber. Exploring Sociology: A Canadian Perspective. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2009. Print."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://socialsciences.nsula.edu/assets/Site-Files/The-Promise.pdf"
]
] | |
b4r1t4 | gear shifting on a bicycle, how do you do it properly? | So when I was really 5 years old and learning how to ride a bicycle with gears, by father told me to "never use the shifter on the left!". He was probably just trying to avoid a chainlink disaster, but now at 29 I am still hearing his voice in my head. How do you *actually* use the left gear shifter on a bike? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b4r1t4/eli5_gear_shifting_on_a_bicycle_how_do_you_do_it/ | {
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"Left shifter is the front gears, right shifter is the back. Basically the closer in size the selected gears are, the slower you'll go but the less energy it will take to pedal (so for uphill movement), the larger the difference, the more force it takes but the faster you'll go. So when you're going downhill or moving fast you want the big one on the front and a small one on the rear. Uphill you want small front larger rear.",
"The left shifter usually controls 2 or 3 gears in the front, the right shifter controls 5 or more gears in the rear. \n\nFor this discussion, let's pretend you have 3 in the front and 5 in the rear. Normally you'd leave it the middle gear in the front, and whatever gear in the rear you feel comfortable peddling. If you encounter a hill with front in the middle, and rear in the largest gear, but you still find peddling too hard. Perhaps you can switch into a lower gear. In this case you'd switch to the smallest gear in the front, and a gear in the rear that feels comfortable. \n\nOr in a slight down hill, perhaps you want to go faster, the largest gear in the front, and smallest in the rear will get you the greatest gear ratio for going faster. \n\nGenerally it's advised not to be in the smallest in the front, smallest gear in the back or largest in the front and largest in the rear because that puts the chain at a diagonal. That risks putting additional strain on the chain. ",
"There's a few reasons. The first and main reason is to avoid chain crossing. The chain and gears work best if the chain feeds the gear straight on. If the chain is coming from an extreme angle, it bends the chain (putting extra stress and fiction in the links) and puts a lot of extra wear on the sides of the derailleur and gear teeth. Another reason is that the front gear isn't really designed to be shifted a lot. It uses a much simpler and lighter mechanism than the rear gears but one that is less forgiving of being shifted under load. Finally, the steps in the front gears are much larger. Again this makes it less forgiving of being shifted under load (or shifted at all for that matter). \n\nThe \"best\" way to use the left shifter is to only use it to reach the top and bottom two or three gears. \n\nIf we label the front gears L, M, H (H being the largest) and the back gears 1-6 (one being the smallest), you might go: L1, L2, (M1), M2, M3, M4, M5, (M6), L5, L6. Notice that, even though the bike is sold as an 18 speed, you're only actually using 10 of them in this case. I parenthesized M1 and M6 because they aren't ideal but are commonly used. \n\nFor actual shifting, in general I try to keep the chain moving but with little or no pressure at the moment that I change gears, especially in the front. The gear won't change if the chain isn't moving but pressure forces the chain to try to straighten and can also cause the chain to jam or jump if things are a bit out of alignment. "
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4pe5k1 | why is brazil still hosting the olympics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pe5k1/eli5_why_is_brazil_still_hosting_the_olympics/ | {
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"They are the ones that won the bid. There is not really a system in place for the Olympic committee to withdraw who won once it has been decided, and even if there were there is not time for an alternate to prepare. ",
"It's too late to have somebody else host. Hosting takes years off planning and building new infrastructures. "
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1aebug | does fire weigh anything? | I wanted to know if fire actually had a set weight or if there was a way to the measure the weight of fire?
Thanks for the answers guys, it really helped my drunk self understand :-)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1aebug/eli5_does_fire_weigh_anything/ | {
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"Not sure about fire itself, but I do remember learning that if you could take a giant plastic bag over a fire that would collect all the byproducts from a fire (ash leftover on the ground included) that it would weigh as much as the original product before burning. Conservation of energy and all.",
"Fire is in itself a really fast reaction with oxygen, releasing energy in the form of heat and light. The answer to your question depends on what you mean by fire. \n\nIf you mean the reaction, no, that doesn't have mass, just like walking doesn't have mass. \n\nIf you mean the flame though, that is actual chemical compounds giving off light - and that does have mass. ",
"The term you're looking for is \"flame\" - the red hot gases you see - and not \"fire\" - the chemical reaction. And since flame is a gas then yes, it does have mass and therefore weight as well.",
"Fire is what results when some things mix together and they form a really hot reaction. Whatever mixed together has a weight, which is still part of the fire, and as it burns it turns to gas which gets released into the atmosphere. If anything a fire is just the weight of whatever mixed together that gets smaller over time because the gases float away",
"Fire is simply burning matter. The visible flame is basically plasma, which is when a gas gets hot enough to ionize giving it the distinctive appearance. Solids are the first state of matter, then liquids, gases and finally plasma. As such it has mass, but it's a very hot plasma (ionized gas). \n\nThink of the molecules of a gas as a bunch of tiny balls, all bouncing around. Heating a gas makes the bounce with more speed, so when a ball on is filled with a gas, you are seeing the result of trillions of trillions of impacts of those balls each second with the sides of the balloon. If you heat up the gas in the balloon, the balls pick up speed causing them to hit the balloon harder making the sides push out and expand. This expansion makes the gas less dense, in that it's the same amount of matter but spread out over a larger area.\n\nSo because of the heat, a flame's density (and the density of the air around it that gets heated) is lower than that of the much cooler air around the fire. This causes the gases to rise and makes the flames go upward. Even though they have low density, they still have mass. But mass =\\= weight. Weight is gravity times mass, so two objects that have the same mass will have different weights on the Earth and the moon. Still, just because it floats doesn't mean the Earth isn't pulling on it. Just think of a life jacket that floats in water, but if you pull it out, it can still be weighed on land. \n\nAs for weighing it, you could probably best estimate it through stoichiometry (taking the formulas for the reactions and multiplying for the amount of material being reacted.)\n\nTLDR: flames are ionized matter, they have mass and have weight.",
"Fire is a plasma. \n\nIt's lighter than air though, but yes, it does have some mass.",
" > /r/askscience, a great place for detailed science answers\n\nFrom the sidebar."
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bgisnx | why are internet atheists so militant in pushing their views? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgisnx/eli5_why_are_internet_atheists_so_militant_in/ | {
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"Probably because the 99.9% of atheists who post on the internet and aren't militant don't post about atheism online."
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7kpz6t | in people that have dissociative identity disorder it has been noted that different "personalities" can have physiological differences, like eyeglass perscriptions, allergies or responses to medication. how is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kpz6t/eli5in_people_that_have_dissociative_identity/ | {
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"It is possible and fairly common for your body to develop psychosomatic symptoms even without DID where you can start showing symptoms or improvements solely because your brain believes it to be true. \n\nThere have even been cases of women exhibiting signs of real pregnancy because they believed it to be true so hard when they were in fact not pregnant at all. ",
"Because your brain interprets all the electrical signals from your senses. Your eyes dont see, your ears dont hear. Well they do but all they do is convert that somatic, light energy into chemical electrical energy which is than interpreted by your brain to give you sight or hearing. So if your brain software changes so does your ability to perceive and understand stimuli. "
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2fonqs | what happens to stolen cell phones? | I understand thieves sell the stolen phones to a middle man that wipes them, but what are they doing to the phones that allows them to be re-sold. Is it just reinstalling to OS? Id think each smartphone has probly several unique serial numbers or addresses that can't be modified. How come when it connects to the network it isn't flagged as stolen? Considering almost every phone has GPS, why arent smartphones tracked to the thieves?
Also as the owner of a password protected iPhone, what are the chances my personal info will be revealed/used? Or is it mostly a wipe and re sell?
Thanks for the help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fonqs/eli5what_happens_to_stolen_cell_phones/ | {
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"All phones have an IMEI number which can be used to cancel the phone quite literally, it can never access a network again as it gets flagged as stolen.\n\nThe problem is not everyone keeps a note of their IMEI serial number so this rarely happens.\n\nUsually what happens once stolen is the thieves (or \"middlemen\") perform a basic factory restoration. All settings and files are removed, the phone is probably unlocked, then sold usually at 2nd hand electronics shops among legit handsets.\n\niPhones, usually they won't access any of your data, they will just wipe it completely. However if you are jailbroken it would be quite easy to backup your drive beforehand, getting any personal information stored within. Although 99% of the time the thief just wants quick cash, not messing about decrypting any files needed to access info.\n\n\n\nTL;DR - Phones can be disabled if you keep you IMEI somewhere, they get wiped and sold on, untraceable without any serial numbers, no personal data will be stolen 99% of the time."
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3cuio1 | why do get so high latency when playing videogames with people on other continents? | With data traveling through fiber-optics at the speed of light (or around the entire globe in < 14ms), how come the distance between the players of a videogame is still such a big issue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cuio1/eli5_why_do_get_so_high_latency_when_playing/ | {
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"If you had a direct fiber optic to a guy across the world that is exactly how it would work. But in real life going from you to someone across the world is going through many many dozens of intermediate devices. Each slowing things down a little. It is no where near a direct straight fiber optic all the way from your house to their's. ",
"* more like [66 ms](_URL_0_)\n* thats assumes the speed of light in vacuum, not in fibre optics OR copper cable\n* you also have relays in between which add latency",
"To add onto /u/YMK1234 and /u/bailbtc you not only have that delay (66 ms at absolute bare minimum), but THEY also have that delay, too. It might take 66ms to them, but then their commands would take 66ms back. Even longer, since it also has to take in account the changes on the server being fed to you, too. And that's in a vacuum, with nothing slowing it for whatever reason."
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4cbq2s | when you gain muscle, does something that weighs 10 pounds feels like it weighs 5 pounds or does it feel like it weighs 10 pounds you are just able to lift it without as much exertion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cbq2s/eli5_when_you_gain_muscle_does_something_that/ | {
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"If something feels like it is heavy, and you then train your body, it will indeed feel lighter. But at the same time, because your body has more muscle to work with, it can divide the load over a larger amount of muscle mass. So the applied exertion is lower as well. The answer to your question is: Both are true.\n\nHowever, it's not just about the strength of your muscles, but also about the technique you are using. The better you manage to convert the force that you are using into movement of the object, the less you need to exert yourself to achieve the same result.",
"In my experience, the object still feels like it's the same amount of weight, depending on where you determine the feeling of \"weight\" in your body. If you use the amount your muscles tense to lift/move the object, it will feel lighter. Whereas if you consider the force applied to your joints it will feel just as heavy though you can lift it with less exertion in your muscles.",
"We have two ways of looking at that. Your body uses both, and can be tricked in both ways. For example if your exhausted and you realize it, the 5 pound weight feels like a 5 pound but takes all your energy. If you don't realize youre that tired and you conceal the weight it's possible it will feel like a 10 pound weight.\n\n\nAlso the forces through your body don't feel the same. Some folks can barely squat 50 pounds, but if you build it up to 200 pounds, it's gonn feel in you torso differently, even if your legs feel similar.",
"Mostly the first one. If you're lifting it a lot of times, then as you're stronger, your cardiovascular system has to do more work, so you often get fatigued differently and more quickly.",
"10lb dumbells at the gym feels very light for me, like throw it around in the air like nothing, yet I complain about having to carry my 5lb macbook to school and how I need to purchase something lighter every day. \n\nI think things become relative. I've also noticed that when in the gym it's like my mindset is different and I'm expecting to move heavy weight around. If I'm anywhere else, moving a 20lb whatever is a chore. Could be either mindset or could be that the weight is evenly distributed in the gym and daily things aren't designed that way and feel awkward to lift.",
"I lift weights. Smaller things feel lighter, but heavy things still feel heavy, but you are able to lift them.\n"
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6dz2ig | why are violent, illegal, and immoral topics socially acceptable when they're in song lyrics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dz2ig/eli5_why_are_violent_illegal_and_immoral_topics/ | {
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"Music is art, one of the major functions of art is to challenge the one experiencing it; their morals, their taboos, their whole worldview.",
"People either: 1) don't actually listen to the lyrics (or don't understand them); 2) pretend to themselves that the artist doesn't actually mean whatever's in the lyrics; or 3) don't think the lyrics are immoral.",
"Violent, illegal and immoral topics are generally acceptable when it is *fiction*. Music is one form of fiction, but that same goes for books and movies. Those topics still tend to be very interesting for people, so exploring them in a way that is not related to reality at all is something most people don't have an issue with. "
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7rhy6e | why do certain pills change the way food or water tastes? | I started taking some new medication, and I noticed that suddenly water started tasting really different and really bad. I can only describe the taste as metallic.
I guess this is a normal thing, but I'm really curious of why does this happen. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rhy6e/eli5_why_do_certain_pills_change_the_way_food_or/ | {
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"Lithium? i remember when i started taking it things tasted different too, not bad different, almost more like a shift, like when you change the colours of picture, but with taste. \n\ni imagine whatever brain chemicles the medication changes, it happens to affect a sense as well, for example my eyes see differently too, another \"shift\", not bad just different. when i briefly was off medication everything shifted back, and then shifted back again when i went back on."
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a7s9ve | when water gets down a whale's blowhole do they cough violently / panic / overreact like hoomans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7s9ve/eli5_when_water_gets_down_a_whales_blowhole_do/ | {
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"From reading the wikipedia article on cetacean's blowholes, it says they have a nasal plug to prevent the water going into their lungs. \nThe muscles are relaxed to close it, and they have to contract to open it, so it seems highly unlikely that any water could go into anywhere it's not supposed to.\n\n & #x200B;"
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khxiy | why does light look pointy when you have wet and
squinty eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/khxiy/why_does_light_look_pointy_when_you_have_wet_and/ | {
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"Excellent question. Perhaps it has something to do with the lightfall being different?",
"It has to do with the way light bounces off the edges of things. Have you ever noticed how on tv or in photos, when there's a light source (like the sun, or a candle) it seems to have five or six \"rays\" coming out of it in all directions? [In this picture, you can see six main rays of light sticking out of the sun with other smaller ones. They are in a hexagon shape.](_URL_1_) \n\nThis happens with things that use lenses containing apertures of some kind - [like one of these](_URL_2_). They are rings of metal leaves specially made to close off or let in more light depending on how bright it is. You can see that any adjustable aperture will have edges though - you can't make one perfectly circular. \n\nBecause light acts like a wave on water, it diffracts - *bends around* - the edges of things (rather than cutting off cleanly), [as this diagram shows.](_URL_0_) As the light diffracts off the edges of the aperture, you see rays form in the photo or video. \n\nYour eye is like a camera lens, able to let in less or more light depending on brightness. It doesn't have an aperture made of individual leaves, but instead has one single round aperture - the iris. This prevents the kind of diffraction you see in camera lenses. If your eye is extra wet, or squinty, however, the water/eyelid adds an \"edge\" to your eye's aperture that wasn't there before. Now, light will diffract off the new edges. \n\nRemember how a six-sided aperture made six light rays in the photo? Look at a bright light and squint. You'll see two light rays appear - one up, one down - the direction of your eyelids. ",
"Excellent question. Perhaps it has something to do with the lightfall being different?",
"It has to do with the way light bounces off the edges of things. Have you ever noticed how on tv or in photos, when there's a light source (like the sun, or a candle) it seems to have five or six \"rays\" coming out of it in all directions? [In this picture, you can see six main rays of light sticking out of the sun with other smaller ones. They are in a hexagon shape.](_URL_1_) \n\nThis happens with things that use lenses containing apertures of some kind - [like one of these](_URL_2_). They are rings of metal leaves specially made to close off or let in more light depending on how bright it is. You can see that any adjustable aperture will have edges though - you can't make one perfectly circular. \n\nBecause light acts like a wave on water, it diffracts - *bends around* - the edges of things (rather than cutting off cleanly), [as this diagram shows.](_URL_0_) As the light diffracts off the edges of the aperture, you see rays form in the photo or video. \n\nYour eye is like a camera lens, able to let in less or more light depending on brightness. It doesn't have an aperture made of individual leaves, but instead has one single round aperture - the iris. This prevents the kind of diffraction you see in camera lenses. If your eye is extra wet, or squinty, however, the water/eyelid adds an \"edge\" to your eye's aperture that wasn't there before. Now, light will diffract off the new edges. \n\nRemember how a six-sided aperture made six light rays in the photo? Look at a bright light and squint. You'll see two light rays appear - one up, one down - the direction of your eyelids. "
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5ib916 | why are web extensions (.com,.net) in europe and pretty much everywhere the same as the countries name, except in the us. | In the USA, the extension .us is rarely used. But in Mexico, .mx is popular and in Germany .de . Why is .com and .net the dominant ones used, even if the website is a foreign company making a second page in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ib916/eli5_why_are_web_extensions_comnet_in_europe_and/ | {
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".com stands for commercial. It's not a US specific thing. A company in the UK for example will register both _URL_1_ and _URL_0_, even if they don't operate in the US.",
"They are called \"top-level domains\". And initially, the internet was an all-american thing, so the primary \"sorting method\" of sorts became by application area. Mil was used for the military, gov for the government, edu for educational institutions and so on. Several of those were limited to official institutions, to sort of validate their authority. Others were made available to the private sector for purchase. The initial idea was that there were a few groups to whom an internet presence might be of interest. Commercial entities, network infrastructure providers and organizations (.com, .net, .org) were the first ones. And they always became most popular. Especially .com, as pretty much any company with an internet presence used it. Note that open source projects often use .org to highlight the non-profit nature of their endeavour.\n\nThen of course, other countries started participating, and each of those wanted their own domain name authority, so each country got a top-level domain with its internationally-recognized two-letter abbreviation. Except for the UKoGBaNI, which is officially recognized as GB, but uses .uk in the domain name system. And each country handles things their own way. Some, such as Britain, use the second level of domain names to replicate the american structure (._URL_0_, ._URL_1_), others, such as Germany, just let people use the country code after their own chosen name directly.\n\nBy the time country codes started taking off around the world however, the American internet had already gotten used to .com, so that stuck and was never replaced by a .us."
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62pw01 | why aren't there other forms of intelligent life on earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62pw01/eli5_why_arent_there_other_forms_of_intelligent/ | {
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"Why aren't there other species as fast flyers as peregrine falcon? Or other species with as strong a bite as a crocodile? Or as big as a blue whale?\n\nNo matter how you rank some quality of an animal, there is going to be some animal that has the most of that quality. It'd be a ridiculous coincidence for two organisms to be exactly the same in any given respect. There is just too much variation in life.",
"TL;DR: that isn't actually true\n\nHumans underestimate animal intelligence to an extreme. We barely even have a \"theory of mind\" developed enough to realize that retail workers are human beings, let alone the ability to see life from the perspective of a different species. Sonder wouldn't be such an obscure, profound word if we were accurately able to grasp how complex other thinking organisms are.\n\nDolphins, as well as other cetaceans (whales, porpoises), elephants, corvids (crows, ravens), cephalopds (octopuses, cuttlefish), and a few other broad animal groups have intelligence that rivals our own in (at least) certain areas. We can't actually test it, though. Humans can't even create an accurate IQ test for humans, let alone a different species.\n\nIn the case of cephalopods, many simply lack the ability to nurture their young. Most of what makes humans so wacky is that we can accumulate mass knowledge. Octopuses learn a lot in their lifetime, and that's it. They die, never having taught what they learned.\n\nDolphins *do* teach, and even have dialects. They have to *learn* their local language in order to communicate, and even have names. They're demonstrated to show empathy, recognize themselves in mirrors, do drugs, sing, rape, enact revenge, and even commit suicide...but they don't have hands, so they're stuck in the water.\n\nedit: I mean, just do a [google search](_URL_0_)",
"Octopus is possibly a similar level of intelligence without the ability to effectively communicate with humans so that we can notice/understand/measure it. ",
"There is no species that comparably, consistently scores similar to human intelligence tests designed by humans. There are a number of animals that sometimes score similarly to humans in some tests (ravens, crows, octopus, dolphins). I think it's likely tests designed by humans have a natural human bias.",
"The question should really be 'why do no other species have the ability to communicate verbally?' Language has allowed the human brain to develop and learn as much as we do. Other species probably have the capacity to be as intelligent as humans if only they could communicate with us in detail.",
"In addition to the case of animal intelligences provided by galacticleofin, there were actually other sapient species on our planet, as well. Most notably, the Neanderthal. Not technically an ancestor itself - human ancestors lived alongside them, and there's even genetic evidence of cross-breeding. Archaeological studies indicate that they were intelligent and cultured, likely more than our own ancestors at the time. However, our ancestors were significantly more aggressive and competitive...\n\nSo. long story short: there are no other forms of intelligent life on earth because we already killed them. And hey, to go back to animal intelligences, look at endangered species lists - we're killing them, too.\n\nEDIT: As an additional remark, the common pig is evaluated to be about as smart as a 5-year-old human, with intelligence much greater than dogs, rivalling apes and porpoises. It's why they make such smart and loving pets, if you have the space for them. And guess what humans usually do with those?\n\nEDIT2: As a disclaimer, I'm not a professional. I'll answer what I can with what I know, but I'm working with limited knowledge gained from being an interested learner, not professionally trained.",
"Humans tend to gauge intelligence based upon how we think, which is incredibly egocentric. Yet, humans still can't measure or define intelligence (psychologically). Dolphins could easily take the cake; it just depends upon what you look for.",
"The physical part is called the neocortex, it's part of your cerebral cortex, and the reason ours is do elaborate is because of something called cortical folding, thus we are able to fit so many more interneural connections and decrease the distance between. Primates have a significantly smaller cerebral cortex. This is the part of our brain that is responsible for cognitive thinking and problem solving, so that's why we are so intelligent as to have language, civilization, etc.",
"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.",
"Hands are super helpful for applying intelligence. Kind of hard to build rockets when you're a dolphin. Doesn't mean they aren't as intelligent. It's difficult to test other animal's intelligence for now though.",
"Several answers, not one directly addressed the intent of the question. \nThe requirements for our ancestors to have developed sentience, were many. Several key components came together that most other animals lack: bipedal movement, herd/pack life, dexterous hands, and versatile diet. Being bipedal allowed human ancestors to free up their hands for certain tasks. Communities (as in other apes) is important, because it results in faster spreading of learned skills. Hand dexterity allowed the use of ever increasingly complex tools. And omnivorous diets gave us the ability to adapt to tougher conditions. \nThis is an exceptionally rudimentary explanation.\n\nNo other animal, except chimpanzees, have these features. Without so many advantages, and a clear lack of need to evolve further, no animals other than our distant primate ancestors developed the intelligence required. Fire was, perhaps, the singularly most important discovery that contributed to our society.",
"Depends on what you're looking for. \n\nSome animals are known to have extreme vocabularies. Prairie dogs have thousands of different words, for instance. Various primates have learned basic sign language, talking birds can be demonstrated to understand the meaning of individual words and phrases, apparently there's an elephant that literally learned how to say five words. Basically, we just don't know if animals have grammar, and that's it. \n\n As far as other signs of intelligence go, easy examples include crows recognizing humans they don't like and teaching their children to recognize them without ever meeting them while their parents are alive (implies verbal communication of that person, memory), crows memorizing garbage truck routes, orangutans picking locks, pets saving children from gas leaks and fires, insect colony coordination, and I'm sure literally hundreds of other impressive things. \n\nSo the question isn't \"are other animals intelligent,\" but \"do other animals develop civilization.\" We know they're intelligent, but why should we care? What does it amount too? Philosophically, maybe we should regardless of their qualities, but rationally, it just doesn't matter.",
"There's a lot of misleading answers here, including ones suggesting we're just underestimating intelligence in other species. Nothing could be further from the truth.\n\nLets get the basics right first. Humans are far far more intelligent that anything else on the planet. Its objectively not a disputable point. Just look at the neocortex and try to find equivalences in animals.\n\nThat said the question becomes suddenly more obvious when you first look at a slightly different scenario. Imagine going back many many millions years in the past, say right as the first birds were taking flight and asking why arent there other species that fly? Or going back to when the first mammals were evolving and asking why arent other animals warm blooded, or give live birth and so on.\n\nThe reality is, things take time, and something has to come first. And given how evolution works, usually that something with the advantage then proliferates massively, and often evolves into different paths. It just so happens that when that 'something' is intelligent introspective life, it tends to ask why are we so intelligent and why arent others just as intelligent yet?\n\nSo just like the 'birds' first evolved flight and then expanded out to all areas where flight offered advantage, or the mammals first evolved warm-bloodedness, live-birth etc and expanded out to all areas where that was advantageous, the homo branch of primates too happened to have first evolved high intelligence, very very recently in evolutionary history, and are in the process of essentially expanding to all areas where intelligence is advantageous!\n\nIn fact, it looks like they will soon be expanding out into space, possibly other planets, maybe even star systems, and they might even ditch biological evolution all together for artificial or digital-and-computing substrates and designed evolution of intelligence. So absolutely without doubt, in the next couple thousand years, and for sure in couple million years, there will be literally thousands and millions of kinds of intelligences populating the universe, all of which will be trace back the evolution of their intelligence capable lives to early humans!! \n\nTL;DR : We are just really really early in the evolution of intelligent life, geologically and evolutionarily speaking. So you just need some patience, in a couple just a couple million years (and much less if we go digital), there will a splendid variety of intelligent life forms that will evolve out of humanity.. almost in the same way we have thousands of kinds of birds all evolved out of the first flight capable dinosaurs!!",
"Can I get some sources in this thread? So many claims thrown around, so little evidence.",
"Define intelligence. I don't think humans can answer that question when we can't figure out how animals communicate and generally what goes on in their minds. \n\nAnimals like chimpanzees have an understanding of medicine. Just because we don't understand it doesn't make them stupid/dumb creatures. It's the same way Africans were taken to be good for nothing but slaves for a long, long time just because whites didn't understand their ways. But Africans already had forms of government, their own religious beliefs, own medicine, etc. They were human beings too! \n\nWhen I think about the Penguin that was saved by a man in Brazil, and goes to visit him every 6 months or so after being at sea or wherever it goes.. The thing that amazes me the most is it's understanding of geography without any technology! It's going into the ocean and finding it's way back to the same spot without even a compass! How many humans can do that? I'd say all animals are intelligent in their own ways. There's a saying about expecting a fish to climb a tree and how you'd think it's inadequate for not being able to do it.. But that's not what a fish is about! ",
"While humans are currently the most intelligent animals, some scientists speculate (although it is not proven) that neanderthals might have been more intelligent, and we likely killed them all.\n\nThere are also other factors to consider other than raw brain power - dolphins for example are extremely intelligent but even if they were as intelligent as us they would never be able to have modern civilisation as they lack opposable thumbs for tool use and cannot make fire (necessary for technology) underwater. Another thing is cooperation - if neanderthals were more intelligent than us, we still managed to kill them all because we may have been more cooperative.",
"I think the answer to this question lies more with your definition of intelligence rather than defining those who hold it.\n\nI look around and see intelligent things all the time. A cat is much smarter at catching mice than I am. A dog can hear your voice, know what you're saying, and respond.\n\nYou may be able to organize things a bit better, and yes abstract thought's a good one, but it can still be a reach sometimes.\n\nWith our friends from before I sometimes stop to wonder, who is the intelligent one and who is getting fed and housed for free.",
"Intelligent is a bit subjective. [Dolphins](_URL_1_) have better memories than people. Apparently, some animals can [count](_URL_0_). I would not assume we are the only animal with intelligence, and plus, we decided what intelligence is in the first place.",
"Better question (imo), why aren't there ANY forms of intelligent life on earth? ",
"A lot of the top comments here have some insightful information. On the biology side, the neocortex is the primary answer. Also, as /u/galacticleofin points out, there are lots of other highly intelligent animals.\n\nWith that acknowledged, there's definitely an element of \"asking the wrong question\" here, though. Humankind's intelligence and accomplishments are definitely linked, but it's not strictly a one-to-one. Dr. Yuval Noah Harari has a pretty good TED Talk on the subject, arguing that abstract and *fictional* story telling is the primary driver behind our accomplishments that we attribute to intelligence:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nEDIT: Oh yeah, also forgot to mention, there are even \"intelligence\"-related tests that animals outperform humans on. E.g.: Chimps crush humans at some Working Memory tests -- _URL_0_",
"various mutations enabled humans to develop relatively large energy consuming brains, while other evolutionary natural selection mutations weakened our body which prompted humans to use even more brainpower to survive. intelligent life is a mistake of nature, thus not only rare on earth but in our galaxy as well. considering how intelligent humans are irrationally over consuming and ruining the earth they depend on instead of living in harmony with it - that fact alone demonstrates what a mistake of nature we truly are - we are just too arrogant and self absorbed to realize it. our intelligent society interferes with natural selection and natural population control, thus as a species we exist way out of balance with other life on our planet, despite the fact that our very intelligence equips us with the perception to know just how much we are collectively fucking things up. it's also probable since intelligence can lead to such selfish resource mismanagement, that the accident of intelligence may have occurred in other species on earth or other planets, but that intelligent mutant was self defeated and went extinct relatively early in their development. ",
"Each animal has its own umwelt. A squirrel has no need to use a calculator, or build a train, but it can bury about 20,000 nuts over the course of the year and come winter it can find about 90% of those nuts, could you do that? I don't think so, does that mean a squirrel is more intelligent than you? I don't think so, as you have no need to bury and find those nuts. Intelligence and cognition are subject per species. Does the animal need to count to survive? Does it need to be able to develop and use tools? If not, how can you measure it's intelligence on something it doesn't need. The tests we used to use to measure an animals intelligence were things that we used in everyday life. I read a book no so long ago called Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? By Frans de Waal. Frans de Waal is an expert in the field of primatology and animal cognition. One of the flawed tests we used was to see if primates could use their hand to pick an object up from a flat surface. Gibbons repeatedly failed this test so we're labelled as an unintelligent animal. Well, a gibbons hand has developed to allow it to gracefully swing through trees on branches and vines, not pick up objects from a flat surface, so how can this be a fair test? I really suggest you read Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? You can look at the evidence presented in the book and make your own conclusion on how intelligent animals are.",
"Perhaps there is other intelligent life but we aren't 'intelligent' enough to understand it",
"Intelligent relatively speaking, right? :)",
"The answer to this question lies in the question itself.\n\nIt is selection bias. (_URL_0_)\n\nThere are several other planets out there where multiple intelligent species co-exist, you just happen to be on the one where there is only one intelligent species.\n\nSo intelligent creatures on other planets where multiple intelligent species co exist cannot ask this question. They are asking the opposite question : why are there not only one intelligent species on our planet ?\n\n**Selection bias (from wikipedia)**:\n\nSelection bias is the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed.[1] It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect. The phrase \"selection bias\" most often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, resulting from the method of collecting samples. If the selection bias is not taken into account, then some conclusions of the study may not be accurate.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"\"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.\" - Albert Einstein",
"Any quantitative measure of intelligence is highly contentious. We have difficulty enough measuring intelligence between humans because the tests we've created are biased towards cultures. Between species is very hard.\n\nStart there and realise how hard it is to compare bacteria and humans. We've evolved to solve very different problems ",
"There are many that are more intelligent than humans. It all depends on how you define intelligence. As humans, we define ourselves as the most intelligent, as ours suits us best. But that's just a tad biased.",
"The planet has existed for 5 billion years. Let's measure time in millions of years for a bit now. Each dot is a million year period\n\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\nThis here is one billion years. Starting from around here, first life started popping up the next billion years or so.\n\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\nTwo billion years. This is roughly when first bacteria started doing this whole carbon dioxide into oxygen thing, vastly increasing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen acted as poison to the existing lifeforms, but some of the life adapted into using oxygen to live\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\n3 billion years since Earth started existing. Around here eukaryotic cells start popping up. Eukaryotic cells are what differentiate us from bacteria.\n\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\n4 billion years. Now we have eukaryotes invent this thing called \"sex\". Future generations rejoice.\n\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\nFirst multicellular lifeform happened around here. It was some sort of thing that would eventually become a fish.\n\n....................................................................................................\n....................................................................................................\n\n600 million years ago, ozone layer is formed that protects life on land from harmful effects of radiation.\n\n....................................................................................................\n...\n\nAnimals with true bones becomes a thing. This here refers to jawless fishes.\n\n.................................................................................\n\nFirst plants move on to land\n\n................\n................................................\n\nSharks appear. Also, precursors to mammals start appearing and roaming the land. Some other life roams coasts of Earth.\n\n....................................................\n.....................................................................................\n\nDinosaurs appear here\n\n...............\n....................................................................................................\n.................................\n\nDinosaurs disappear here. Next 50 million years land mammals spend time developing.\n\n...............................................\n\n20 million years ago, apes as a group start developing here\n\n..............\n\n6.5 million years ago, the first *homini* appears. It's anatomically resembles modern human to some extent.\n\n.....\n\nAbout 1 million years ago, humanity figures usage of fire. Then, about 100,000 years ago, humans develop language. Then, about 5,000 years ago, humans invent written language, and start developing art, sciences and such as a society. Then 500 years ago, Newton invents modern science.\n\n.\n\nThat dot is pretty impactful, and I wanted to convey just how much has happened in such ridiculously short timespan considering the history of life on Earth.",
"Intelligence is a subjective metaphysical term. Meassure a humans intelligence on its ability to navigate and move under water and suddenly it is dumb as fuck. Meassure a humans intelligence on its ability to solve human created word puzzle and suddenly it is a genius.",
"Actually, we're not 100% sure there aren't. Communication barriers make it really hard to get a great read on the intelligence of say, dolphins, (who it seems have language and give each other names). We've got some guesses that we think are really good, but time may prove us wrong. Also, the oceans are relatively unexplored; it is possible there are many forms of undiscovered life down there (especially if they were intelligent and wished to stay hidden from us). ",
"In short; there were but they died/we killed them. \n\nPeople think we're special because we're so different from every other animal, but if the other sapiens were still alive then the differences would be far less obvious.\n\nIt would be incredible if just one species survived.\n\nAlso lots of other animals are very intelligent, but we can't really quantify how intelligent they are as they're so alien to us, and we can't communicate in the same way. Is an octopus conscious is the same way as us? Do dolphins think?\n\nCommunication is a big factor. Having words makes concepts and thoughts more concrete. Look at feral children, without language they are pretty indistinguishable from animals. Maybe a society of humans without language wouldn't look to different from chimpanzees?",
"Probably already mentioned, but to sum it up evolution is driven by competition amongst and within species for niches (a fancy term for the roles that a species plays in their environment - for example, large cats occupy a niche that could be described as stealthy apex predator). \"Intelligent, tool making critter\" is the human \"niche\". At one point, this niche was up for grabs, with many different species of intelligent homonid competing to occupy and dominate within that niche (when modern humans appeared, the world was occupied by at least five other species of \"bipedal, tool and culture making apes\", and likely more that we haven't discovered, including Neanderthalis, Denosovan Man, Red Deer People, Homo erectus, and Homo floriensis, though there is some debate over whether or not denosovans and red deer cave people are simply subspecies of neanderthal or homo erectus). Homo sapiens, our own species, had slight advantages that enabled us to outcompete the other homonids and \"win\" this niche for ourselves. Once a species loses its niche, unless it adapts to a new role then it won't be able to secure resources for itself that it needs to survive, and will eventually go extinct. A followup question, then, is why did humans win instead of the competition? Erectus was physically stronger and - at least the male specimens - grew a bit taller than modern humans (I have a pet theory that \"giants\" are cultural memories of prehistoric encounters with clans of Erectus), but they had smaller brains and were likely limited in their capacity to develop language and culture. We really don't know much about the denosovans and the red deer cave people because we have such few fossils of them, but Neanderthal was widespread in Europe and quite succesful. Built like the stocky dwarves of Tolkien's fantasy (they were short, strong, barrel chested and incredibly tough, with thick bones), they also had many adaptations to the cold, including larger nasal passages for heating their breath and great physical strength (muscles keep you warm). The theory is that Neanderthal was less omnivorous than homo sapiens, and was essentially an ambush predator - their favored hunting tactic was to sneak up on prey and grapple it to the ground (we know this because they had a lot of bone injuries that forensics associate with close-quarters fighting). This worked well during the periods of glaciation, when herbivores like the Irish Elk were forced to migrate through Europe's many valleys in a constant search for thawed patches of grass, making it easy to catch prey in an ambush, but as the ice retreated this tactic was less and less practical. Homo sapiens, being adapted to running and likely practitioners of persistence hunting, which involves following prey over vast distances until it drops from exhaustion, could hunt in open plains and generally had access to a larger variety of potential prey animals. One could say that humans won the evolutionary race because we had the longer legs.",
"Because [we cannot recognise anything more intelligent than ourselves](_URL_0_).\n",
"First of all, there are different types of intelligence. Dolphins, for example, have language, individual first names, different culture in different areas, etc, and you could argue that they and other animals are indeed sentient already. I think the question you're asking is why there aren't intelligent life forms that behave like us - building machines and so on. \n\nThe only other animals I know of that would have behaved similarly are other subspecies of the *H* genus like the neanderthals and denisovans. Denisovans didn't look like us, nor did Neanderthals, but they can both be broadly categorised as human - it's very likely that early *Homo Sapiens* (us) killed them all off, though there are other theories. It's pretty well documented in fossil records that the arrival of humans to an area is often quickly followed by mass extinction events, like in Australia and small pacific and polynesian islands. \n\nWe ourselves are only here by the grace of previous mass extinction events, and it's probably fair enough to say that other life might have developed sentience in the same way that we have had it not been killed off by predators or natural disasters.\n\nFurthermore, as /u/KapteeniJ pointed out, it's still early days on planet earth and we haven't been here too long ourselves. If allowed to flourish, other species might undergo a [cognitive revolution](_URL_0_) like we did about 70, 000 years ago, introducing the concepts of abstract thought, deities, myths, and so on.",
"If human-like intelligence was naturally selected like say eyesight, you would expect it to be a bit more common. However, there is a theory that human-like intelligence occurred rather quickly from a random mutation that radically shrunk the size of our jaw muscles and thereby allowed for a much bigger brain. After this mutation, a form of sexual selection took over and spread intelligence around. Unlike natural selection, sexual selection can make any stupid trait more common and is unlikely to be repeated in a lot of different species: think of the peacock's tail. So in short, intelligent life may really be an accident and something we should expect to be pretty rare, because from an evolutionary perspective burning that many calories to write music and make poetry is pretty wasteful unless it's getting you laid.",
"A better question in my opinion is why did we as a species deem this \"intelligence\" necessary? Most animals are so, so very much more skilled at survival than a naked man. Before fire, clothing, weapons, tools and so forth, we weren't shit in the animal kingdom. Evolution drives us to procreate, to preserve the species. We evolve by spawning offspring that develop slightly different based on genes (forgive me if it's the wrong technical term, I'm dumb too). Example, two humans born and raised in tropical climates, one moves towards a desert, another goes north into the cold. Human A will develop in a slimmer way to cope with heat, and his skin will become more resilient to UV rays. Human B will develop with more fat to keep warm, and might not get that UV resilience. Those traits are passed down to the next generation. Based on that, I'd think we should have just evolved into more efficient hunter-gatherers. Somewhere, sometime, someone learned. They saw a thing they could use and used it. They then remembered they can use things. Others caught on, and the learning curve began. Some animals are capable of using tools too, but rarely will they use anything they don't need. The key difference is evolution has driven these animals to survive as efficiently as they can. For some odd reason, we decided that wasn't enough. It took tens of thousands of years, probably longer I dunno, but evolution has driven us to learn and create. Not just secure food, shelter and a mate. And my final point. Food, shelter, mate. Dinner, house, spouse. Society has made some pretty cool stuff, but I'm still busting my ass so I can eat, sleep, and one day get laid again. With all our contemplation and inventing, primal directive is very much alive and well. I think we got smarter because we had to, because we sucked at hashing it out as primitives. Once we figured out we could use shit to help us live easier, we kinda went a little crazy on the prospect. \n \nP. S. Opposable thumbs, dual vocal cords, and a mouth/tongue setup capable of manipulating air to shape the sounds we make. Those things actually really made it all possible. Couldn't really share what we've learned without em, and the Socratic method proves we're way smarter together than we are alone. ",
"Humans? Intelligent? Humans defined what intelligence is and how it should be measured. So basically it doesn't mean anything",
"Its cuz we ate a \"apple\" of knowledge. Maybe a parasite that formed our neuro pathways, or just caused our brain to develop faster. Whatever it may be we are \"lucky\" sadly",
"Your perception of what is intelligent is subjectively based on your human biases. It take profound understanding to really grasp the subtlety of this point.",
"We just don't know.\n\n1. we traditionally attributed life to entities according to self-initiated movement. So animals are believed to have some basic intelligence, while rocks and trees are not.\n\n2. The main reason humans evolved this much is thanks to the archival/transmission of knowledge over time, and preservation of tools across time. Lifeforms like animals and minerals have no known knowledge transmission means that transcend their immediate geographic boundaries and existence (once theyre dead, everything they learn in their life is gone for their species). Think of it as how caveman evolved slowly until the middle ages, but the rate of progress considerably increased when archival methods became mainstream.",
"Because everything in nature works in a hierarchy and you are the luckiest sentient being on the planet. Everything else is eaten by something else, down to the smallest level - and you can eat it all. If there was something else that got close; now, in the future, or at any time in the past, we'd all get together and try to kill it, until it killed us. The few things that kill us only do it when we let our guard down and tempt fate, and if it were a serious problem we'd fuck them up pretty bad.",
"My dog's pretty smart. She eats treats all day, sleeps on the couch, lays in the sun, enjoys life. All while I go to work and put in my 8 hours. It sounds like we are the foolish ones. "
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3rsr9d | why do we sometimes need to blink for our eyes to focus? what is occurring during the blink that "resets" our eyes, allowing them to focus correctly? | Every once in a while, whether it be after just waking up - or when switching focus between a close object and a far one - we blink to aid ourselves with the change in focus. Why do we do this/How does blinking facilitate the act of focusing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rsr9d/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_need_to_blink_for_our/ | {
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"actually, you don't need to blink your eyes. Hold your thumb close to your face and look at something distant. You can switch between the focus on your thumb and the focus on the other object without blinking.\nBlinking helps though, that's because for a moment your eye isn't able to focus anything so when you open it up again, you can sort of look at what you want to be focused and since it's the first thing you'll see opening your eyes, they focus it.\nEyesight gets worse with age, that's why we have those little tricks. There is no rocket science behind it though. Just simple re-focusing"
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3uzon0 | what happens if you split a proton? | (See title)
So just before I was reading another ELI5 about Nuclear Energy and the topic of fission. So if fission is splitting the bonds between atoms, what happens if you actually split or slice the particles the atom is actually made of?
Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uzon0/eli5_what_happens_if_you_split_a_proton/ | {
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"Splitting a proton would get you a down quark and a pair of up quarks, but it's impossible to split it any further because quarks are fundamental particles, meaning nothing comprises them, they just exist.",
"It turns out that quarks - the pieces that make up protons and neutrons - can't be out on their own. A lone quark has so much potential energy in its efforts to go stick to another quark that it can actually spontaneously create other quarks to bond with out of nowhere. It's called *quark confinement*.\n\nSo if you input enough energy to blast a proton apart - which is possible and has been done in particle accelerators - you'll create a slew of new quark-based particles out of the energy you put in (but not, for any significant period of time, solitary quarks).\n\n[seriously, the forces sticking quarks together are *insane* - a single pair of quarks are pulled with enough force to suspect a one-ton object against Earth's gravity]"
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7ibajc | why is it that some roads have a disproportionate number of gas stations and fast food places on one side of the street instead of the other? | I notice this often on many streets in my city. It's kind of annoying when you're hungry or need gas. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ibajc/eli5_why_is_it_that_some_roads_have_a/ | {
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"Could be zoning laws, the availability or lack of infrastructure such as water and sewage or electrical. Property owners refusing to build or allow businesses to be built on their property, legal restrictions...it could be any huge amount of reasons.",
"Why not just cross the road?",
"In a marketing class I took in college there was a lesson that showed if a business did the right research they would capitalize on much more customers with simple decisions in where they locate. Gas stations for example get the bulk of their business when people are driving home from work so placing your gas station on the side of the road most likely to be the easiest access point gives you more customers",
"If the difference is extreme, typically it's because of zoning laws -- one side of the street may only allow offices or residences -- interfering with the free market otherwise would do.\n\nIn rare cases it's because one side of the street is owned by a single owner, such as a military base, that has no interest in selling to retailers."
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62wb1y | how can the lone star tick make us allergic to meat when there is such a vast variety of animal foods? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62wb1y/eli5how_can_the_lone_star_tick_make_us_allergic/ | {
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"It's called an alpha-gal allergy (Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose allergy). It's a carbohydrate that's found in almost 100% of all mammals. The carbohydrate is used in the creation of cell membranes. All mammal meat contains cells, all of these cells have cell membranes, so you can't avoid it. It's so fundamental it's a level below where differences in mammals are."
]
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j47fp | please explain the 14th amendment and how it relates to the debt crisis. | I've been reading and hearing on the news that the President can invoke the 14th Amendment in someway to settle the debt crisis if congress continues to lallygag around. As far as I understand, the 14th Amendment is the civil rights amendment. So, how can it be used to settle the current situation? How is it relevant?
(I apologize if this has already been posted. I did do a search for it first and there weren't any recent topics, it seemed.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j47fp/please_explain_the_14th_amendment_and_how_it/ | {
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"Section 4 of the 14th amendment basically says that the US will honor its public debts incurred by congress and that the debt is legitimate. In theory, congress refusing to raise the debt ceiling would fly counter to that.\n\nSome say that Pres. Obama can use that to raise the debt ceiling by himself.\n\nOthers are saying that this is not in the spirit of the law. \n\nI think this is one of those things where both sides may be correct, and that's pretty maddening."
]
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[]
] | |
2visr5 | why is bacon only made as pork bacon or the unholy turkey bacon? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2visr5/eli5_why_is_bacon_only_made_as_pork_bacon_or_the/ | {
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"Beef bacon is very popular in Muslim countries. The bigger limiting factor is that to make a good bacon it does need to be a fairly 'fatty' cut of meat. Hence, turkey thigh and pork belly. \nChicken thighs work. Also Beef Shoulder (Made a kilo of this recently as an experiment. Tasted awesome. 500gms (about 1lb) of this vanished faster than the 500gms of normal bacon I had prepared at the bbq). \nKangaroo wouldn't work because it's way too lean.\nCamel would work. \nCould probably do mutton. It might be a little tough. But it'd work. \nSource: I love making bacon. I do numerous recipes and like to experiment. Chicken bacon isn't that crash hot. It's not a robust enough flavour. Turkey has a stronger flavour so it works. "
]
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[]
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1nzwjl | why do people have different hair colours but apes don't? | People can come in blonde, brunette or ginger and variants of those three but all monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees etc. are all black (not including orang-utans who are all ginger)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nzwjl/eli5_why_do_people_have_different_hair_colours/ | {
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"Most of humanity has black hair except for Northern Europeans.\n\nThere is a theory that states that because Humans have only lived in Europe for such a short period of time, less than 35000 years, that random genetic evolution did not cause for such a wide array of hair and eye colors in Europe. \n\nInstead, in those early European societies, there must have been sexual selection. Women/Men of unique and rare hair/eye colors must have appeared more attractive than common colors, so those humans reproduced and spread their blond and ginger hair genes in Europe.\n\nSo the gist of that theory would explain it as this: early Europeans favored those with unique hair and eye color traits. So those who had those unique traits would reproduce more often than those who didn't. Monkeys and other humans around the world didn't have this sexual strategy so their hair color stayed roughly the same.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Frost_06.html"
]
] | |
zuiil | why does reddit use "vote-fuzzing" and not show the true number of upvotes/downvotes on posts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zuiil/why_does_reddit_use_votefuzzing_and_not_show_the/ | {
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"Sometimes bots are banned silently, so they think they're still having an impact. Votes are \"fuzzed\" so that the bot can't be sure whether it had an impact or not, if they think everything is still working they won't try to find some new way to scam reddit."
]
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49u87u | what is a convolutional neural network? | What is it? How does it work? Saw some cool news on The Verge about [Google and robots](_URL_0_) and I'd love some more info. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49u87u/eli5_what_is_a_convolutional_neural_network/ | {
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"I work in this field. It's a bit complicated so I'll try to stay as simple as possible. If I go too technical feel free to ask for more detail.\n\nIn a picture you have rows and columns of numbers. These numbers are just measuring \"how green is this point\" or \"how blue is this point.\" Typically you start with a picture that has some width, some height, and some \"depth\" where the depth is usually 3 and corresponds to red, green, and blue (or perhaps hue, saturation, and brightness, of other representations).\n\nYou could then look at a small patch of this image and ask \"how 'vertical line' is this patch?\" If that small patch (e.g. 7x7 pixels) is composed of a sharp verticle line then you would assign a high value to that pixel in your next layer, just like a very red area will have a high value for the red number in its pixels. Then you step over by one pixel and you ask again \"how 'verticle line' is this patch?\" (Noting that you are asking about some of the same pixels that were in the previous patch, too.) You repeat this for patches that cover the whole image. Then you repeat with a new question, perhaps \"how 'horizontal line' is this patch\" or \"how 'smooth texture' is this patch.\" \n\nThis process of coming up with a bit of math to convert one small patch of an input image into a pixel of an output image, then repeating that for every region of the input image, is convolution. Note that while the initial image would likely have 3 channels (red, green, blue) the next layer may have many more layers (smoothness, detecting edges in various orientations, etc). Also, note that the width and height of the output image may be smaller than the input, perhaps because you only check your 7x7 squares every two pixels, or perhaps because you ignore the edges of the image since your 7x7 region would hang off the edge.\n\nThat's just one layer. Next you would start asking more complicated questions like \"how 'circle' is this point?\" which is an easier question to answer when you know how 'verticle line' or 'horizontal line' regions are. You continue building layers like this on top of one another until ultimately you're asking questions like \"How 'elephant' is this picture?\" where a picture of an elephant will score very highly but a picture of a rhinoceros or a highway would score lower. \n\nThe challenge in all of this is figuring out what questions should be asked at each layer and how to ask them. It isn't *that* hard to figure out how to check for a verticle line, but how do you codify what constitutes an elephant? This is where neural networks come into play. With a neural network you start with a network that is asking \"how 'flarp' is this region\" where flarp' is just some random, useless description. You have many layers of this randomness. Then you show the network a picture where you already know what it contains and you ask the network to figure out what it is. At first it does no better than chance, but by random dumb luck it will get some answers right. When that happens you modify the math that goes into your individual questions to be a bit more confident, while you reduce the confidence when it gets things wrong. You repeat this a few million times and eventually the 'flarp' classifier gets molded into, perhaps, a verticle line detector, or if it's in one of the later layers perhaps it becomes a 'leathery skin' detector. \n\nWhatever features happen to be useful for the task at hand wind up being learned, which means that you no longer need a human figuring out what things you need to look for in an image, not how to look for them. This means that instead of hand-writing a few layers to detect something simple you could have a 150+ layer network (e.g. Microsoft's winning entry to the ILSVRC last December) that could never be written by hand.",
"In a regular neural network, you have inputs, outputs, and neurons in between. Some of these are connected to each other. But which ones?\n\nThat's up to the person designing the network. The two most obvious ways are:\n\n\n1. Connect everything to everything else\n\n2. Connect things randomly\n\n\nThese work fine for some things. But they don't work very well for images, because the network has no idea how the pixels are arranged. It's like giving someone a jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle, and asking them to describe the picture without moving the pieces. They have to spend a lot of time figuring out how the pieces are arranged before they can even begin to understand the picture.\n\nA convolutional network connects some of the neurons to pixels that are close together. That way, the network starts out instinctively knowing that those pixels are related. That makes it much easier to understand the picture."
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"http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11186940/google-robotic-arms-neural-network-hand-eye-coordination"
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[],
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1eo5y8 | how / why does wearing prescription eyeglasses make your vision blurry if you do not require glasses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eo5y8/eli5_how_why_does_wearing_prescription_eyeglasses/ | {
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"It changes the effective focal length of your eyes. Normally the lens of your eye can focus light onto your retina. When glasses are worn by a person with good eyesight the light is refocused at a point that isn't the retina, making the image blurry. ",
"Because eyeglasses are Corrective lenses. Meaning they are there to \"correct\" the image that someone sees because their eyes aren't necessarily working properly.\n\nLooking through the glasses with \"normal\" vision you are looking through the correction first. It's like opening your eyes underwater or looking at something through a water bottle. The light coming is is refracted before it comes into your eyes. For someone with a sight problem this is a good thing because it compensates for whatever is wrong with their eyes. For someone who doesn't need them it becomes distorted."
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21hy4g | once obama decided to pull out of the war, why does it take so many years to finally get out? | Why can't all the soldiers come home immediately? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21hy4g/eli5_once_obama_decided_to_pull_out_of_the_war/ | {
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"We have millions of pieces of equipment and vehicles that have to be brought back..and we have to withdraw tactically so we don't leave a bunch of soldiers with no equipment to defend themselves..it takes a while to move that much equipment and we are destroying a lot of it because its cheaper than shipping it home. It would be like telling you to move across the country tomorrow..you would need more time to plan and coordinate"
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aiof58 | when you go to write a word, what is really happening in your brain? are you remembering the most recent time you read it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aiof58/eli5_when_you_go_to_write_a_word_what_is_really/ | {
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"There is actually two little one inch sections on the left side of your brain where all your language lives. Damage to these areas will leave you a condition called aphasia, which can range from difficulty putting sentences together to being completely unable to understand or use language - written or spoken. Scary stuff.\n\nThe basic process of speech is conceptualization, formulation, and then articulation.\n\nAt the core, you actually relate to the world on a conceptual basis, not linguistic. Language is more of a set of labels and associated concepts that is used to create references to things in the world than the core of your experience. We just use language so much that that's our go to. When we speak, we start with a concept of what we would like to express.\n\nFor example, [wild strawberries are delicious]. In doing so, I, prompted by a memory, sight, or conversation set the preverbal intent to say something. In not a neurologist, so exactly how that happens is mostly a mystery to me. \n\nAfter conceptualization, the wernicke's part of the brain takes over. This is basically where concepts get coded to words. If this area is damaged, people can end up with a condition called anomia, which means that they cannot connect their concepts to the words they wish to say or the wrong words get coded. In the wernicke's area, the concepts are encoded into words so you get your sentence that you want to say. \n\nOne thing to note is that words translated between different languages come with different sets of concepts, even when referring to the same physical object. In the case of [strawberry], ichigo, fraise de bois, and wild strawberry all have slightly different meanings to someone who is multilingual even if the same object is the reference. There are cultural contexts that become associated with objects that go beyond the word and can communicate differences by choice of words. /Aside\n\nOnce the sentence is formulated, the next step is production. The Broca's area handles that. Basically, it is part of the brain that coordinates your breath, voice production, and manipulation of the mouth to say your intended sentence. If the Broca's area is damaged, then things come out jumbled or mispronounced. For those who suffer this type of aphasia, it can be frustrating because they *know* what they are saying is wrong, but cannot say what they want to say. Imagine trying to say, \"wild strawberries are delicious\" and it came out \"straw ar ............ delicious\". That can happen. \n\nSo, that is what I understand. I may have details wrong, but this should be an ok overview from someone who is not a linguist. A take away from this is that speak production happens in a small part or the brain and has nothing to do with intelligence. Someone who has difficulty speaking can be impossibly sharp in all of their brain, but have damage to these two little areas that make language impossible for them, physically. We often take language as a sign of intelligence - but it's a different process that can function independently of the rest."
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1uo90p | why might i masturbate to the thought of something, whilst knowing i would never do it (even if given the opportunity) in real life ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uo90p/why_might_i_masturbate_to_the_thought_of/ | {
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"The old forbidden fruit, it has a lot to answer for. ",
"Fantasizing about something doesn't mean you really want/have to do it. It just causes you to Elicit emotion (in this case sexual desire) which feels good. "
]
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3t9upi | why are credit cards so poular in the us compared to europe? | Almost always when I read something on reddit where somebody pays it is 90% with a credit card and I really dont understand the culture behind it that appears to be pretty popular in the us compared to europe or at least germany .
Edit: I just came back home. Thanks for all your answers they gave me a lot of insight. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9upi/eli5_why_are_credit_cards_so_poular_in_the_us/ | {
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"I'm assuming you are from Germany yourself? \n\nIt's mainly a difference in cultural development. Americans, if you allow me the really broad generalization, really enjoy their comfort and convenience. Credit cards by nature just make the whole shopping experience so much easier. \n\nIt also doesn't hurt that your credit score plays a key role in other important transactions -- buying a car is one example. ",
"I use credit cards because I get rewards back from the credit card company for using it over my debit card. I pay most of my bills and my rent on a credit card and pay it off in full each month. This way I gain the points and I don't get charged any interest. ",
"I wonder what the rates of use are like for other western countries. I find Australia has more advanced credit card facilities compared to USA and Canada, so would that result in higher use?\n",
"I think it also depends where you are in the US. I live in the midwest and haven't had cash in my wallet for over 20 years. However, when I have traveled to places like NYC and LA I have needed cash. Either they didn't accept cards or they charged extra for using a credit card (typically a small mom & pop type of place, but still unheard of in the midwest). I try to use my credit card over my debit card, because of the rewards system. I earn about $1000 in rewards a year for using my credit card. I have never NOT paid off my credit card each month. So that is free money to me. Credit card companies make a ton off of people that don't pay off their credit cards though. I know several people that only care about the minimal payment, since they live month to month and don't care that they are paying more in the long run. To them they have a budget for a minimal payment every month and they think it is like money for life. Not smart, but that is many peoples logic.",
"As somebody from the UK - There is generally very few advantages to having a credit card here(This may be true for Germany as well, I'm not sure). In the US, as I understand it, you get rewards, insurance, and a bunch of other stuff for using a credit card. In most cases in the UK, you merely get an extended spending limit (Which you get from debit cards anyway) and have to pay extra on every purchase, which isn't worth it.\n\nSo I assume the Americans do it for the rewards. Particularly, I've been told you can get things like insurance as a reward for regularly using a credit card.",
"I use credit cards because if the card or card number is stolen my liability ends at $50. If my debit card is stolen my liability is however much is in my bank account, plus however much is in the backup/overdraft bank account connected to it.\n\nI would *never* use a debit card to buy something. The only one I have is the one that is also my ATM/bank machine card and I only have that because they did not offer any way to opt-out of the debit feature. ",
"I don't know what the situation is in europe, but we have these incentives:\n\n- smaller wallet \n- more convenient than carrying cash \n- Safer than carrying cash \n- advertised as safer than Debit cards \n- heavily marketed and given for free at ~18 years old, as parents often bail out their children who get into to much debt \n- it is a heavy influence on credit history, which is important for reducing interest rates \n- interest rates are VERY important. they make or break an ability to have a house or car (both of which are very necessary to life). \n- they often come with rewards, and the promise of \"if you pay it off every month, you get free money\", tied with an annual interest rate of 20-30% if you don't pay it off.\n\n\nEdit: and TIL it costs more money to use a credit card in Europe. Here, in order to accept credit cards businesses weren't allowed to charge more for their use. They just eat the costs, and raise prices by like 3%. I don't know what hte law is now, but I know almost everywhere has the same price whether or not you use a credit card.",
"I grew up in The Netherlands but have lived in Florida since November of 2000. Among the different culture shocks and differences was the popularity of credit cards. This is all my POV and I am not saying one way is better then another. Capitalism drives this country and it is a way of life Americans, the consumer have gotten quite used to. Many more adult Americans live pay check to pay check then European adults. Not because they are poor but broke. The cost of living in the US is in general lower than most Western European places, US wages are higher besides maybe Luxembourg and/or Switzerland, and Eurpean taxes are higher. But Americans love shopping and buying stuff they want, stuff thats much cheaper here then in Europe. Credit cards have made this possible by allowing you to spend money you don't have, on credit. This genius billion dollar industry thrives in capitalism. People want to sell, and people want to buy. Now credit cards in general are necessary in today's society and you owning one is smart for sure but when human nature is to want stuff and it is now encouraged and promoted, it's hard to not go down the slippery slope. Credit card companies want to lend you money with interest and have some fantastic cash back or flyer miles deals to get you to say yes because they no you want to. On the other hand there are many smart, fiscally responsible Americas who make most(referencing your 90%) of their purchases via a credit card and pay it off IMMEDIATELY when due. This prevents interest from building up, builds great credit and now allows you to reap the benefit your bank provides. When used properly a credit card is a great and beneficial tools but it is when it is abused that banks make the profit and they want nothing more then $$$",
"Theft/unauthorized use protection is better than for debit Cards. Always use a CC for web purchases",
"In the U.S the vendor pays the fees for credit card transactions, in Europe the consumer pays the fees.",
"Another advantage for credit cards over debit cards is when traveling. Specifically car rentals and hotels. If you rent a car in the US using a debit card, many rental agencies will actually take out extra money as extra insurance if something happens to your car. So they might take out $250 for a rental that costs $30/day. They'll give the money back when you return the car, but until you return it, you're out $220. \n\nThe same transaction via credit card only results in a $30 charge when the transaction is finished.\n\nThe same is true of hotels, where they will put a hold on your debit card for incidentals. So your $100/night hotel room might result in a $250 hold on your bank account until you check out."
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cm4sxt | what’s the big deal with micro plastic and oceans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cm4sxt/eli5_whats_the_big_deal_with_micro_plastic_and/ | {
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"Microplastics end up getting consumed by small animals, often filter feeders. Those in turn are eaten by larger animals. Due to a system called trophic levels, the animals towards the top of the food web end up with large concentrations of plastic in their system. Not only does this hurt them, but we also suffer because we have a habit of eating large predatory fish, like tuna.",
"What I think the other comment missed is that microplastics can potentially be dangerous to the microorganisms, since they can possibly eat these microplastics by accident. This in turn can have adverse effects on them. If the microorganisms start dying then the creatures that eat them start dying, and on and on til the creatures were familiar with start dying off. This is all worst case scenario.... but I guess to really ELI5: microplastics are bad because micro creatures could consume them and that might lead to bad things."
]
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2ioffi | who actually comes up with the university/college costs in the usa? who is in charge of this decision? | They are starting to feel like made-up numbers that people pull out of their ass. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ioffi/eli5_who_actually_comes_up_with_the/ | {
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"The market does. No individual is in charge of this. If the government wanted to, they could regulate the market setting caps on tuition costs etc, but ultimately the high cost of education is a result of high demand coupled with easily accessible credit (student loans). \n\nThere is also little to no accountability between University Officials and the students for which they serve. To give an example, the department of veteran affairs serves all veterans until they expire. That could be 10, 20, 50 years of dealing with the same individual, and that individual is heavily invested in voting to ensure the department runs smoothly.\n\nIn comparison, college student's tenure is normally 4 years. If a segment of the college population is unhappy, the Administration only needs to wait a couple of years and the problem disappears. Or it reemerges with a new class, in which the Administration can give promises of change with no accountability, since the new class will be leaving. This creates short term minded institutions.\n\nThe composition of the typical college student is 18-26, which has the lowest voting demographic in the US. This creates a situation where politicians get little political capital for moving resources to colleges as opposed to the VA, Medicare, Social Security, etc. At the same time, the largest voting demographics went to college at a time when college was cheap and affordable, so they do not see the problem in the same reference as new students."
]
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2b05fj | why/how is the stock market affected by negative news headlines. | Example: MH17 shot down, Israel conflict, stocks drop. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b05fj/eli5_whyhow_is_the_stock_market_affected_by/ | {
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"A lot of people misunderstand why stock prices move at all. Technically, it has nothing to do with the companies performance (as is commonly assumed), but it has everything to do with buy and sell pressure. So, to take the example of good news being released about a company, more people will want to buy a stock and less will want to sell, so the buyers will offer a higher price in order to attract more sellers, driving the price up\n\nNow to your question, lots of news isn't directly relevant to the stock price but does effect stock prices, like the examples you gave. There's two reasons for this: (1) Some stocks are going to be negatively effected to a huge degree, so this will show up as a smaller drop in the overall market and, more importantly, (2) People panic at these sorts of events, and an unstable political climate makes all investment riskier. If I was invested in a company that owned a Kazakh oil field, for instance, the news of the annexation of Crimea might have made me panic that Russia was going to do a similar thing in Kazakhstan and damage or cut me off from my investment "
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3mkwka | does the vegetable crisper in the fridge do anything different? | It just seems like a compartment to put vegetables in. But is there something to it that allows vegetables to stay crispy, or is it just a name? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mkwka/eli5_does_the_vegetable_crisper_in_the_fridge_do/ | {
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"Part science part bollocks. Crispers with a decent seal should maintain a more constant temperature, like a fridge-within-a-fridge, thus keeping food 'fresh' for slightly longer. Ones with hardly any seal and a two-inch wide gap - like the pieces of shit Harvey Norman sells - work more on the power of suggestion and don't actually do a great deal."
]
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2m26an | if your voluntary muscles relax in stage 4 of the sleep cycle, how does sleep walking occur? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m26an/eli5_if_your_voluntary_muscles_relax_in_stage_4/ | {
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"First, a bit of terminology. Sleep is divided into two categories, REM and non-REM (NREM) Stages 1,2, and 3 are NREM. There is no longer a Stage 4, which was merely a more intense level of Stage 3. REM was known as Stage 5. Stage 3 is also called slow-wave or delta sleep because of the shape and frequency of the waves. Sleep-walking happens mostly in Stage 3 which tends to be concentrated in the first third of the night. In some people the voluntary muscles don't shut off during REM and they act out their dreams. This is called REM behavior disorder. I'm in sleep medicine and have personally worked with people who attacked their SO during dreams. One woman tried to smother her husband twice with a pillow. A bounty hunter had recurring dreams that a perp was in his bedroom, and beat his wife severely. Search \"parasomnias.\" And if you really want to see weird, search \"parasomnia pseudo-suicide.\" "
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34yh22 | why do boxing matches charge $100 for pay-per-view but the super bowl is free? | Is the money made from paying viewers higher than that made from paying advertisers? Would the Super Bowl make more money if they charged to view? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34yh22/eli5_why_do_boxing_matches_charge_100_for/ | {
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"One main drawback of boxing is advertising is hard. The fight only has 1 minute breaks between rounds, only time for a couple of adverts. The NFL frequently has 3-5 minutes breaks plus halftime, so there are upwards of 10x the TV advertisements on an NFL game than a boxing match.",
"Because the Super Bowl lasts much longer than a boxing match, has a lot more time for commercial slots, and there are a lot more people that watch it, it is more profitable to broadcast it on television, whereas the Mayweather v Pacquiao fight made more money via pay-per-view than they would have through commercials.",
"Superbowl makes their money off of commercials. I'm sure you've heard about the astronomical prices of Superbowl commercials. They literally earn billions selling commercial time for a single game.\n\nPPV fights don't even have commercial breaks. The only advertising is logos/banners in the arena, and maybe some mentions from announcers/fighters, or \"sponsorships\" like \"The knockout of the night, brought to you by Bud Light\". They do make money from this, but it's an order of magnitude less, so that is supplemented by the PPV price. They cover their expenses, we get commercial-free live entertainment. \n\nSuperbowl, in theory, would make less if they did something similar. In their situation, anything they earn from fees to watch is more than lost in advertising value from fewer viewers.",
"The Superbowl makes their money off of advertising. A football game has a fairly predictable length, so you can sell ads to support it.\n\nA boxing match can literally end at any second. You don't know if the match will go the distance, or if it's going to end 15 seconds after it starts. So, it's impossible to know if you can break even on advertising."
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6rzogz | what causes water to interfere with electricity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rzogz/eli5_what_causes_water_to_interfere_with/ | {
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"The contaminates in water decrease its resistance which allows it to conduct electricity outside of the preferred path.\n\n\n\nPure water does not conduct electricity at all.",
"Water does not interfere with electricity. Water (impure water with even a small amount of dirt or salt in it) conducts electricity. Submerging electronics in water would be like soldering a bunch of extra wires onto the electronics at random. \n\nFurther, water can rust metals that contain iron which will change their conductivity (rust is a bad conductor) and can corrode batteries. "
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2q1k55 | why in certain places is it illegal to keep a hedgehog as a pet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q1k55/eli5_why_in_certain_places_is_it_illegal_to_keep/ | {
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"Because someone convinced a local politician that that hedgehogs were a local pest issue and the politician agreed and thus it became an ordinance",
"Laws against keeping hedgehogs, as well as other animals like gerbils and kangaroo rats exist because if (when) they got loose, they would be destructive to native wildlife. I know *you* wouldn't let your pet hedgehog loose, but someone would."
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10t335 | what would happen to me if i ate this? | [I'm sure you've seen these before.](_URL_0_)
The fact that it says "Do Not Eat" sounds like a challenge. What would happen to me if I did eat it? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10t335/eli5_what_would_happen_to_me_if_i_ate_this/ | {
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"My friend asked me the same question once. I explained to him that the reason it says \"Do Not Eat\" is to maintain economic stability for the product. The reason being that it tastes so damn good that if everyone started eating it, it would cause the world's supply to diminish and prices of it to skyrocket because manufacturing couldn't keep up. Even after all my explanation he still wouldn't eat it though.",
"Silica Gel. It's used to suck up all the moisture. It's non-toxic. You might get a tummy ache. ",
"Probably become a sea monster ",
"Funny story, a friend of mine at work was given some candy brought back by another colleague from Asia. She opened it up and said \"Oh look! It came with a little flavor sachet!\" as she was about to rip apart one of those things and sprinkle the contents over the candy. & #3232;\\_ & #3232;",
"I remember that when I was about 7, I found that in the beef jerky bag and I thought it was a condiment. I dumped it into the bag o' jerky. My brother was pissed and he threw out the bag.",
"Ok, so it's not very dangerous to eat it. What about microwaving it? They feel the need to point that out too! ",
"eHow always explains it like you're five.\n\nHere is them explaining what would happen if you ate Oxygen Absorber (in this case, a mixture of Iron and bits of rust).\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI'd be careful about inhaling it though. If the iron dust is as fine & sharp as I think it is, it could get into your lungs and cause damage (I think - can anyone back me up on this?).\n\nEDIT: Since it says \"Do not microwave\" I'm pretty sure it IS iron and not another oxygen remover.",
"It'll make you into a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus! ",
"You'll get super-absorbed :)",
"Open one up and toss it in the toilet, then imagine that being inside of you.",
"I've eaten one. Tastes just like charcoal and I didn't die.",
"The iron oxide packets like that one, assuming you tore it open, would be pretty harmless. You'd probably poop some interesting colors for a day or two.\n\nThe silica gel packets would also be relatively harmless, though I would worry they might cause some serious constipation. Silica is relatively inert. I don't know that your stomach could do much of anything to them, but they might swell quite a bit from moisture absorption.",
"It would suck all the moisture out of your body, killing you slowly as it turns you into a mummy. ",
"This is not a silica gel packet. From their [product website Q & A page:](_URL_0_)\n\n\n > * Q2. What happens if AGELESS is accidentally consumed?\n\n > A: The main constituents of AGELESS include iron powder and vitamin C, while the main constituents of AGELESS EYE include inorganic salts and colorants. These constituents have been confirmed to be safe in acute toxicity tests by official institutions. The packing materials used in AGELESS and AGELESS EYE pass standard regulations for food containers, plates and packing set by the Ministry of Health and Welfare notice 370 issued in 1959 and notice 20 issued in 1982 as a material that is able to come in direct contact with foodstuff.\n\n > * What if the powder in AGELESS comes in contact with my eye?\n\n > This may cause scarring on the eye. Wash with copious quantities of water and seek medical advice from a doctor.\n\n > * What if AGELESS (AGELESS EYE) packing is swallowed whole?\n\n > This may damage the esophagus and digestive organs. Seek medical advice from a doctor.\n\n > * What if the powder in AGELESS comes in contact with my skin?\n\n > Wash with soap.\n\n > * What if the powder in AGELESS accidentally enters my mouth?\n\n > Wash your mouth out with water.\n\n > * What if AGELESS is boiled (with noodles etc)?\n\n > While there are no health concerns, the iron powder and other components may adversely affect the taste of the food. If the AGELESS packing is ripped open, the iron powder may become mixed with food. Eating the food is not recommended in this case.\n",
"It mainly says \"DO Not Eat\" as it's a choking hazard to small kids, who probably can't read what it says anyway.",
"Pretty sure this question was posted here just yesterday or the day before. I saved an article on it. Essentially it's \"manmade sand\" that has a high absorption ability. If you were to eat a TON, it'd dehydrate you and you'd die. If you were to put a single bead on your tongue, it'd bleed after a short while. It sucks moisture out really well. While it wouldn't (apparently) hurt you to eat them, they can contain certain chemicals which can hurt you.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\r\rEdit: My bad guys, I guess this isn't Silica. I know *nothing* about this stuff! \r",
"to a five year old: \"BAD JHOVUDU1! DO NOT EAT THAT! YOULL DIE\"",
"**Do not eat it**!\n\nThis might not be silica gel but iron mixed with potentially harmful salts and clay mixtures. Not all salts are good for you and too much iron could lead to pulmonary edema and gastrointestinal effects.",
"[That's what happens.](_URL_0_)",
" > The fact that it says \"Do Not Eat\" sounds like a challenge.\n\nOnly to a fucking idiot.",
"By now you know that will do no real damage to your own body if you eat it. This is largely due to the fact that you're a very large creature.\n\nIf you have small pets - hamsters, rats, sugar gliders, squirrels, etc... Or even cats or dogs, it can do much more damage to them. So if you have pets PLEASE be careful not to allow these things to fall into places they can eat them.\n\nSource: pet died after eating silica gel.",
"You will die. It might be tomorrow, or it might be 80 years from now - but it is inevitable.",
"I've actually snorted a ground up line of this, thinking it was crushed up ecstasy. Long story. Nothing happened, thank fuck."
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1ykxkc | who is pol pot and what did he do? | Every article I read about him just tosses around terms that don't make sense. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ykxkc/eli5_who_is_pol_pot_and_what_did_he_do/ | {
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"To be fair Wikipedia's treatment is somewhat technical. He was a Cambodian dictator who was batshit crazy. IIRC he was the guy who said that anybody with glasses was a bourgeouisie and ordered them all killed. I guess a cross between Stalin and Kim Jong Un, except that where Stalin was responsible for rapid industrialization and modernization, Pol Pot did the opposite.",
"Cambodian leader.\nKilled a few people.",
"Pol Pot (his *nom de guerre*) was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 after fighting the Cambodian government for about 15 years. \n\nThe Khmer Rouge were in power from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge implemented a very radical version of socialism. They emptied the cities and forced everyone to work in the countryside in large agricultural communes. Money was abolished and contact to the outside world was cut off. \n\nThe system did not function, as there was very little food available and the secret police arrested and executed many for the slightest of offences. \n\nMillions died in Cambodia of starvation, accidents or were executed. \n\nThe Khmer Rouge wanted to create a \"new\" society and any \"old\" people (people from the cities) were said to be suspect and could not be trusted. \n\nThe Khmer Rouge were overthrown in 1979 by the Vietnamese after the Khmer Rouge had provoked them in a border war. "
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2d21ql | for real, when/why/whom thought to add a 'liftable' toilet seat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d21ql/eli5_for_real_whenwhywhom_thought_to_add_a/ | {
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"The liftable lid has been around forever, but according to most sources, the liftable seat appears to have shown up in 1883 with an early flush toilets (i.e. wash-out basin) manufactured by Doulton called [*The Combination*](_URL_2_). Prior to that you could find chamber pots that sat in a box, so the seat and the pot were separate, but I can't find a liftable seat attached to the basin.\n\nAs for why, [one source](_URL_1_) tells me:\n\n > The hinged toilet seat started life in the 1880’s, being advertised as a cleaner device which made the W.C. more user-friendly for men. It also made the opening larger, which enabled general slops to be emptied into it. The liftable seat was first exhibited by Doulton, and was first fixed to a wash-out closet aptly named; ‘The Combination’. Very soon afterwards, Twyford were advertising the ‘Unitas’ with such seats. In \nTwyford’s advertisement he pointed out the advantages: the hinged seat enabled men to use the W.C. as a urinal without wetting the seat. Of course, today women who find the seat left up do not always appreciate this device. \n\nHaving said all that, [this photo](_URL_0_) from the Toilet History Museum in Kiev shows another hinged seat toilet that might be even earlier."
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j2kbr | li5, most of the answers i am reading are coming across as explanations for an average intelligence adult. i thought we were supposed to "explain it like i'm 5" | Many answers are still using large words and somewhat complex explanations.
I'm just wondering how literal we are supposed to take the subreddits title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2kbr/li5_most_of_the_answers_i_am_reading_are_coming/ | {
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"High school level would be a good starting post. The community has only been around for 6-7 hours with over 13,000 subscribers. It'll take time for the community to decide exactly what they want out of this subreddit. ",
"The point is provide a good, understandable summary of events as opposed to a book.\n\nNot to use the most common words used by 5 year olds.",
"It seems to me many of you don't have kids or younger siblings\n\nYou can't explain how the stock market works to a 5 year old without using complex thoughts.\n\nThe title is not some joke..its just a way to say \"dumb down shit\" before explaining it...not literally dumb it down to a 5 year old level.\n\nsomething cannot be dumbed down that low.\n\n",
"Yes, this, absolutely this. The point of the subreddit isn't to literally explain it like you're talking to a five year old, it's to explain things simply and with effective analogies so that it can be understood by educated adults who have little to no prior knowledge of that topic, which is a topic that is difficult to find explained simply on google or wikipedia. The name of the subreddit is hyperbole, not meant to be taken literally.",
"I think the spirit of the Sub-Reddit is \"Explain this concisely in simple terms\". As in, short, to the point, and simple enough that everyone can understand. Not *literally* explain it to a 5-year-old."
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164j41 | why do musical notes look like they do? | Where did the design come from in origin and what was the thought process behind it, if there way any? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/164j41/eli5_why_do_musical_notes_look_like_they_do/ | {
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"Well, our modern system got its start about 1,000 years ago by this guy names Guido d'Arezzo. He was an Italian monk during the 11th century and he developed his system as a way to help him teach chants. He pioneered the idea of placing the notes vertically on a staff to represent pitch. Over the years, we've added more and more to the system to help us describe music is more and more detail.\n\nSystems of musical notation however go back WAY further. We've found clay tablets from Mesopotamia which are around 3,000 years old which are believed to depict a form a musical notation. \n\nThe fact is, music is a very primitive and fundamental part of what it is to be human. It follows that we would come up with ways of recording and communicating our music even when we couldn't just simply perform it for one another."
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7jco0x | do municipal water towers freeze during the winter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jco0x/eli5_do_municipal_water_towers_freeze_during_the/ | {
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"Maybe they just keep an equal amount of water flowing in as flowing out. Don't they say that flowing water won't freeze?",
"No, they're filled at night and drained during the day. The turnover alone should be enough to keep them liquid since the water is always moving.\n\nIn areas with extremely low temperatures they may be equipped with insulation or even heaters/agitators to ward off extensive freezing.\n\nFrozen water expands with incredible force, and this will destroy all the equipment if the tower is allowed to freeze significantly.",
"There’s enough “turnover” in the system to keep non-freezing water in the tank. The water that comes up out of the ground is around 50-60F. If you pumped it in there and let it sit, it would freeze. But there’s always enough demand on the system that it’s always being replenished by ground-temperature water. ",
"No, the volume of water and movement from constant flow in/out prevent them from freezing in the winter."
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e05hdg | how is time measured electronically? like if a circuit board times five seconds how does that physically work | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e05hdg/eli5_how_is_time_measured_electronically_like_if/ | {
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"If it is still the same as when I learned it (years ago), there is a crystal in the circuit board that has electricity pass through it. The energy causes the crystal to vibrate. Because it is known how fast it vibrates per second, any application in the OS (and the OS itself) is able to tell the time.\n\nAdditionally, most internet-connected devices check in periodically with an official time keeper. This allows the OS to adjust for minor errors in the time caused by brownouts, power surges, or other issues that could affect the vibration rate of the timekeeping crystal.",
"Step 1: Get a crystal that, when you jolt it with electricity, starts bending and vibrating, causing measurable changes e. g. in resistance/capacitance. This is called the piezoelectric effect btw.\n\nStep 2: Make a circuit that counts those oscillations. Also make that circuit periodically re-jolt the crystal to keep it vibrating.\n\nStep 3: Callibrate the crystal so that it vibrates exactly X times per second.\n\nNow, when you count X oscillations on your circuit, a second has passed.",
"Clocks are built out of oscillating circuits. You could build an analog circuit that oscillates, but they're very fickle and inaccurate. They're prone to generating irregular signals and speeds, and they're hard to keep in tune. 555 IC timers are like this. You can tune the circuit with a resistor, but the speed is subject to the temperature of the room.\n\nEnter the quartz resonator. Quartz is an interesting material. You squeeze it, and it generates electricity, you zap it with electricity, and it changes shape. So if you make a pair of thin films out of quartz, you can make an oscillator, and it's timing is a matter of geometry, I believe. They're far more stable than an analog circuit, and they're what we use in modern computers, radios, clocks, etc. They do drift due to temperature, and for scientific purposes or high end commercial purposes, you can get a quartz clock that is wrapped in an insulator and heating element, so that it can be kept within some tolerance. They even wrap the \"oven\" in yet another oven, for even better thermal control. These are called XOXO and XOCO quartz references. These things resonate at extremely high frequencies, and electrical engineers and physicists figure out how to generate the frequency they want turn that into a counting circuit that translates that signal into units of time.\n\nEnter the atomic clock. Certain isotopes resonate at very specific frequencies. Again, temperature is important. Rubidium and Cesium are common. The oscillations of these elements are picked up by an amplifier, and that signal is counted. You'll use a reference to generate a signal that synchronize a number of circuits. You'll see this in radio, where multiple transmitters or multiple receivers work in tandem - they have to be synchronized. The signal will go down coax or fiber optics, but the faster your oscillations, the more sensitive you are to distance. If you were to try to sync two atomic clocks across the country, the length of the cable changes with the day/night cycle, as that side of the planet heats and expands or cools and contracts, making the signal take longer or shorter to get there.\n\nAnd then when you're talking about clocks like this, relativity gets involved, which is way above my pay grade. A clock on the top of a mountain is going to measure time different than a clock on the bottom of the mountain. You have to account for relativity in satellites, or GPS won't work."
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28npg6 | why and when did we start calling policemen cops? | thanks for helping out y'all
ok, it appears this hasn't been resolved.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28npg6/eli5_why_and_when_did_we_start_calling_policemen/ | {
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"Apparently early NYC police uniforms had copper buttons, and so police gained the slang term \"copper\" which was shortened to \"cop\".",
"Cop comes latin *capere* which moved through the French *caper* which means to sieze. It became *cap* in English. Somewhere along the line it mashed with old English *copper*, which identifies them as those who *cop* wrong-doers.",
"There are a few theories I have heard.\n1. In the 1840's police officers wore copper buttons on their jackets - and they were originally referred to as \"Coppers\".\n2. The term cop, as a noun, is derived from the verb, to cop, which means to take or seize.\n\nThe story of cop being an acronym for \"Constable On Patrol\" has been debunked several times as the origin of the term."
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1y7jjp | why are high speed cameras so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y7jjp/eli5_why_are_high_speed_cameras_so_expensive/ | {
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"1) Specialized pieces of equipment tend to cost more no matter what you're buying - smaller volumes = higher costs. Plus, they can sell them for more because companies are willing to pay more if the return on investment is good (see below).\n\n2) You need some decent processing firepower to move that much image data through your processors. \n\nI've got an Olympus iSpeed TR at work. I think we paid $25K for it - 2000 fps at full sensor resolution, 10,000 fps with reduced image size. For my use (troubleshooting high-speed packaging equipment, I rarely need more than 500 fps, to be fair, but the Oly was recommended by a colleague. If I can eliminate an issue that stops one of my 24/7 packaging lines for 5 minutes a day with that camera, I pay for the camera in under a year."
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6fc8nf | what makes amd graphics cards so popular for cryptocurrency mining, and why does it matter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fc8nf/eli5_what_makes_amd_graphics_cards_so_popular_for/ | {
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"They are generally a good deal cheaper than Nvidia cards and for a good while now the architecture That AMD has been using (GCN aka graphics core next) turns out is really good for mining operations and better than Nvidia. So it makes sense for miners to use AMD since the cards are cheaper and they get better mining performance with AMD cards. So they make more money and cover their investment faster.",
"To expand on /u/HeavyDT's answer:\n\nBitcoin (and generally, any coin using SHA-256 as its proof of work) benefits more from a larger number of lower-power cores able to work in parallel. AMD's cards have this; NVIDIA's don't.",
"The basic economics of Crytocurrency mining comes down to some simple (ish) math - real money earned per unit time versus the cost of the power, and the average lifetime of the hardware used. \n\nSo say a 100 dollar GPU will on average survive long enough to produce 200 dollars in Crypto currency, but in that time it will take 50 dollars in electrical power. Net gain, 50 dollars.\n\nSo the more complex discussion is around Bitcoin specifically and China (and to a lesser extent Russia and Iran and a few other places). In that case, and as is generally the case with bitcoin, the largest use of the currency is to evade government currency controls (where countries simply don't let you buy other currencies in large amounts), evade sanctions (where US and EU companies aren't allowed to sell stuff). Since both of these are hugely important activities to the right people - in the case of China particularly rich people with ties to the government, who are using it to enrich themselves and get money out of the country and import stuff they can't get otherwise. For those guys and with bitcoin in particular there is and was a significant financial motive, and to do it, they were and are willing to spend a lot of money, in many cases on custom hardware that is supposed to be really fast at the crypto math for their particular problem.\n\nSo enter etheum and other cryptocurrencies, and enter the world of ASIC's and semiconductor foundries and yields etc. Hardware built specifically for bitcoin may not be easily repurposed (or repurposed at all) to other cryptocurrencies, and lots of people are very wary of problems with bitcoin in terms of scaling and in terms of who is in control of the currency supply and decisions about what happens with scaling. And as much as custom ASIC's aren't too bad, they need to be designed and manufactured, and if that's a custom job that adds costs. AMD, or more accurately Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung and Globalfoundries (and Intel) are constantly improving their manufacturing processes, doubling performance roughly every 2 years - moore's law - If you bought a custom ASIC 4 years ago that was twice as fast as the general purpose graphics cards, well, guess what, today's GPU's might be twice as efficient/fast especially if your ASIC supplier can't or won't make what you want when you need it. TSMC, Samsung, etc don't want to talk to you if you don't want to buy a few billion dollars in components per year. The total value of bitcoins in the world is something like 42 billion dollars, TSMC does 30 billion dollars in business a year, bitcoin is too small for them to care unless you have a big order. So semiconductor manufacturing is getting better constantly, as is ASIC work, but ASIC's are expensive and if you need to replace them often they lose a lot of their economic value. \n\nSo that's where AMD comes in, their graphics cards happen to be better at the raw floating point math cryptocurrencies require than say nvidia GPU's are. While cryptocurrency mining and gaming have similar requirements, particularly graphics crunching where you're working on 4 vector blocks of 32 bits each (so 128 bits at a time) to do all of your processing, gaming has much more memory dependent behaviour (since the same things stay on screen at a given time), and gaming you can take chunks of the world or chunks of the screen and work on those somewhat independently on each pass, crypto mining doesn't have a lot of need to retain data. Gaming also allows a level of imprecision in math (notably when doing decimal division) where a 0.001% error in values isn't a problem, oh no, that red is 0.001% not red enough! Cryptomining doesn't really tolerate that sort of thing. (Nvidia actually have their own fast math modes in GPU Programming you can use, or not, and for video game rendering it's perfectly reasonable, for scientific simulation or crytomining it wouldn't be). \n\nAlong with that, of course are the fluctuation in the price of cyrptocurrencies, in march mining ethereum wouldn't have been even remotely profitable on AMD hardware, but now it is.\n\nThis is of course the sort of thing where people in certain countries might be willing to take a loss in their own currency to be able to buy foreign currency (remember, a lot of the big players in this are trying to get money out of the country or to avoid taxes and evade sanctions, even 0 apparent gain is worth quite a lot to them). That's much less common in this day and age, but you used to see people on the street offering you much more for US dollars than the official bank exchange rate in India or China for example, because US dollars were restricted by the government. "
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4bhinv | as a non-us citizen, what is right/left wing? what makes a republican/democrat? what is considered conservative/liberal? can a person be both supporting conservative and liberal policies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bhinv/eli5_as_a_nonus_citizen_what_is_rightleft_wing/ | {
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"Has little to do with the names honestly. Don't get hung up on republican or democrat as actual words. Neither are standing for that specific type of government. ",
"'Left' and 'right' wing politics as a concept came from the [French Revolution](_URL_0_) when those supporting/opposing the existing monarchy separated themselves by sitting to the right (supporting the monarchy) and left (opposing) of the king during meeting of the National Assembly. Effectively, those on the Right side took a more pragmatic view **(ie- Conservative)**, and typically opposed radical change in their governmental structure. In contrast those on the Left **(ie. Liberal)** looked to abolish the monarchy. We still use this organization today in American (and other Western) politics:\n\n- **The Right** in the US typically supports policies that resemble those we have used in the past, or that used to be the norm. Examples: they typically support gun rights, oppose abortion, seek to reduce taxes, etc. The party we associate with the right is the **Republican Party (aka GOP)**\n\n- **The Left (liberal)** in the US typically seeks to change existing policy, or pursue those that are based on newer ideas in government. Increasing taxation (as a means of redistributing income and providing more government services- basically taking more $$ from the richest in order to better provide for the poorest), supporting abortion rights, reducing access to firearms are all examples of their leftward policies. The US part we associate with the Left is the **Democratic Party**\n\nJust because a voter/candidate may choose to associate with one party or the other does *not* mean that they agree with every single policy of that party; but rather may support policies from both (ie a Democrat who favors Gun rights or a Republican in favor of abortion rights).\n\nAlso keep in mind that 'Democrat' and 'Republican' are *just names*- they merely serve to id one party or the other; just because one is named \"Democratic\" doesn't mean that the other one is anti-democracy (though in the mud-slinging currently happening in the US it is becoming normal for people to suggest this)."
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894r4z | what's the difference between all the oppressive types of government (fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, nazism, communism, dictatorship, tyranny and any others i forgot) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/894r4z/whats_the_difference_between_all_the_oppressive/ | {
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"Authoritarian is the broad umbrella term, all the others you mentioned are types of authorianism.\n\nA dictator is the leader of a specific type of authoritarian state where supreme power rests with a single person. They are often but not always from a military background. This person is basically the equivalent of a king in an absolute monarchy.\n\nDictatorships are political systems run by dictators. \n\nTotalitarianism is a type of Authoritarian system where the government attempts to control all aspects of society in order to enforce an ideology of some kind. \n\nTyrany is basically a system that the speaker finds unfair or unjust, it doesn't have a precise definition.\n\nSocialism is any system in which the wealth of a society is used to benefit the society as a while, not just individuals. \n\nThere are lots of types of socialism. One type is libertarian socialism, which has only a minimal government or no government at all and relies on direct democracy in both the political and economic spheres. \n\nThere's also democratic socialism, a very common system in western europe, which combines a modern capitalist market economy and conventional representative democracy with strong social programs.\n\nAt the other end of the spectrum there are marxist versions of socialism which advocate a \"dictatorship of the proletariat\", which in practice means a dictatorship run by a socialist or communist party.\n\nCommunism is a sub-set of socialism in which there is no market of any kind and everyone works for the good of society voluntarily and takes only what they need. It has never actually existed except in a few small tribal societies, but the attempt to create it was and is the goal of marxism (authoritarian socialism) and some types of anarchism (libertarian socialism).\n\nFinally, there is what's called National socialism, which most socialists would argue is not socialist at all. In national socialism (aka fascism), you have a totalitarian political system run by a dictator with a strong capitalist market economy and the government ensures that workers have no rights and are at the mercy of business interests. Often, but not always, this is accompanied by intense racism against ethnic and religious minorities. Mussolini, the first fascist dictator and the man who named the ideology, defined it as \"the merger of the corporation and the state.\"\n\n\n*Edited because i accidentally posted before I had finished writing.",
"While all those words are used negatively, they aren't inherently oppressive. Also, these categories aren't mutually exclusive, so it's possible to have a communist dictatorship or a communist, fascist dictatorship.\n\nFascism is authoritarianism with a heavy dose of nationalism typically characterized by the (usually violent) suppression of opposing thought and opinion.\n\nAuthoritarianism is the concentration of power in a single entity, be it a single person, a council, or whatever else.\n\nTotalitarianism is authoritarianism except that there is a sort of cult of personality around the leader. The two are *almost* interchangeable.\n\nNazis are a particular political party that practiced fascist authoritarianism. They arose in Germany in the aftermath of WWI.\n\nCommunism is an economic system and has nothing to do with oppression per se (although all attempts at communism thus far have been either very short-lived or oppressive). Under communism, the means of production (from a farmer's cows to the biggest factories) are the property of the *community*. There are many, *many* sub-categories of communism.\n\nDictatorship is where there is one person who decides how everything goes. It's a nasty word for a king, and it typically implies wrongful leadership acquired by force.\n\nTyranny is any system that is cruel or oppressive."
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1l5s06 | why is "let's go home" a good sentence but "let's go school" is not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l5s06/eli5_why_is_lets_go_home_a_good_sentence_but_lets/ | {
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"the laws of what are words and grammar are solely based on popularity.. so the answer is, for no logical reason.",
"Seconding /u/7hammers.\n\nThere are *some* general guidelines for prepositions, such as:\n\n1. Use **in** for large places (e.g.: in a city).\n\n2. Use **at** with smaller locations (e.g.: at the library).\n\n3. Use **on** to talk about position (e.g.: on this street).\n\n4. Use **to** to show direction (e.g.: to my house).\n\nIt's this last rule that *should*, in theory, apply to \"Let's go to home\", but - as /u/7hammers correctly points out - English is not a perfect language. It's a mish-mash of numerous languages that have morphed over centuries.\n\nLanguage changes to suit the speaker, and sometimes the rules are torn asunder in the process.",
"\"go home\" is actually a single verb phrase, so the two words together act as a verb.",
"interesting...I've never noticed this before.\n\nAccording to Wikipedia, this is a *locative adverb*. _URL_0_\n\n**non-LI5 tangent:** A similar thing actually happens in Latin, interestingly enough. Normally you'd say \"Edamus in schola\" (let us eat at school), but with \"domus\", the word for \"home\", you say \"Edamus domi\" without the preposition \"in\". \"Domus\" is one of the few words that still had a locative form. ~~I believe the famous Romans Go Home scene in Life of Brian is actually *supposed* to use this form.~~ EDIT: wrong about Romani ite domum; greater latinists than I have corrected me. My apologies to the great Monty Python. The point still stands that the word for \"home\" in both English and Latin have a unique quality where they don't require prepositions the same way other nouns would in the same context.\n\nIt's likely not related, but notable. ",
"Technically \"home\" is an adverb in the first sentence. Most nouns, like school, are never adverbs. [Here's](_URL_0_) some other words that can act like adverbs in the same way.\n\nNote that in \"Let's go home\" it's the home of all concerned - \"Let's go my home\" is wrong because it's a specific home.",
"I've heard \"go base go base!\" and \"go bridge!\" in counterstrike, also.",
"Home is a relative place, much like 'here' or 'there'.",
"No, it's not a locative adverb. In Latin, \"Let's go home\" would be accusative \"Eamus domum.\" (B.A. in Latin and Greek, summa cum laude here.)\n\nThe brief answer is that there is no good answer. Not everything in grammar is logical; it's a function of everyday usage. The \"locative adverb\" explanation could technically be correct if you simply made up a new adverb where the noun \"home\" used to be. In which case \"home\" would be a shortened substitution for the locative adverb \"homeward.\" But then you could do that with \"school\", too.\n\nNo, the simple answer is that home is the most common place to go, so we've shortened it and done away with the pronoun \"to\" (or, alternately, the adverbial \"ward\".) In other languages like French and German there is absolutely no difference between the construction \"Let's go to school\" and \"let's go home.\" (\"nach schule : nach hause :: a l'ecole : a la maison\").",
"I'm honestly going to chalk it up to a shortening of the phrase \"Let us go homeward.\"\n\nBasically, 'home' acts as an adverb meaning 'homeward', as in \"going home\", one goes toward his/her home.",
"**Home can be an adverb or a noun** (or maybe a preposition), as others have pointed out. \"Here\" and \"there\" work in similar ways, as do \"inside\" and \"outside\" and a few other words.` Prepositions are words that show direction or location (in, at, on, to, out, from, etc.) Look at these sentences and see how a common now like school, \"home\", and \"here/there\" work with different prepositions (*asterisk means a grammatically incorrect sentence*):\n\n > I came from school\n\n > I came from home\n\n > I came from there/here\n\n---\n\n > I am at school\n\n > I am at home\n\n > *I am at there/here\n\n---\n\n > I went to school\n\n > *I went to home\n\n > *I went to there/here.\n\nThis is why it's funny when Liz Lemon says, \"[I want to go to there!](_URL_0_)\". She's so excited, she literally can't form correct English sentences. But that can be hard to translate into some languages. To make it more complicated, there are some idiomatic exceptions to the exceptions, like \"from here to there\". It's just one of the oddities of English, but English isn't the only one with weirdness around here/there and home. In \"I'm at home\", home is a noun, in \"I'm going home\", home is an adverb. Just to keep things fresh, it can also be an adjective as in \"a person's home country\". And you wonder why your taxi driver \"can't speak English right,\" this shit makes no sense. In fact, I've heard \"Where to?\" was adopted by American servicemen in China in imitation of the local grammatically incorrect way of saying English, but it's since been naturalized. **We call home/here/there/where \"[locative adverbs](_URL_2_)\", but that's just a nice way of saying \"Prepositions are used irregularly with home/here/there/where\"**. The other Indo-European languages I know have similar oddities with these words.\n\nIn **German**, with things that are smaller than a city, you say \"zu X\", as in \"I'm going to school\", which in German is \"Ich gehe zur [=zu+der] Schule.\" With things that are bigger than a city, you say \"nach X\". I'm going to Boston is \"Ich fahre nach Boston\" and I'm going to Deutschland \"Ich fahre nach Deutschland\". So far, so good. \"Home\" is \"zu Hause\", so how you'd say \"I'm at home\" is \"Ich bin zu Hause\" (as in the state of being at home), which literally parsed would be nonesense, \"I am to house\". However, if you want to say \"I'm going home\" (as in the movement toward home) you say \"Ich gehe nach Hause\", which is an exception because a house is obviously not city-sized. Like English, \"here\" doesn't take a preposition \"to\" or \"at\" \"Ich bin hier\" (I'm here) \"Ich bin hier gefahren\" (I drove here), but you use a preposition (\"von\") to indicate from, \"Wie komme ich hin von hier?\" is \"How do I get there from here?\" In German, \"there\" is a little more complicated, \"dort\" means \"(to) there\" \"da\" means \"(over) there\" and \"von dort\" means \"from there\". \"Hin\" and \"dahin\" are weird and can also mean \"there\", and let's just leave it at that.\n\nIn **French**, likewise, has exceptions for \"home\"/\"here\"/\"there\". \"Home\" is \"chez moi\". How you say \"X's house\" is \"chez X\". But again, you don't indicate direction. \"Je rentre chez moi\" (or \"Je vais *à* la maison\"), but French is a little different from German and English in that you can use \"chez\" with anyone's home \"Je vais chez elle\" (or \"Je vais *à* sa maison\"), I'm going to her house. \"Here\" doesn't take a preposition with just being here in French, \"Je suis *ici*\". Compare that with being at school \"Je suis *à* l'école.\" Notice in French \"à\" can mean \"at\" or \"to\", depending on the verb it's with (in German, some prepositions can indicate location or movement depending on case but let's skip over that). But \"here\" uses prepositions with \"from\", but \"to\". \"Il est venu ici hier soir\", \"He came here last night\". \"Est-il difficile d'y arriver *d'*ici?\" \"Is it hard to get there from here?\" Notice that weird \"y\", which means \"there\" in the sense of \"to that place\" (it's a strange pronoun). But you can also say \"there\" using \"là\", as in \"I'm going over there\", \"Je vais *là-bas*,\" or \"I'm driving there\", \"Je conduis là\". There are prepositions \"from there\", \"de là\".\n\nSo, **ultimately, \"it's just an exception\"**, but I suspect it's an exception that is common **in Indo-European languages** (the big language family that includes French, English, German, Persian, Hindi, Albanian, Gaelic, etc.). It's not universal, in Turkish (which is part of the Turkic language family), everything is much more regular. \"House\" is ev. \"here\" is \"bura-\" (it needs an ending), \"there\" is \"ora-\", and \"where\" is \"nere-\". \"to\" is \"-e/a\" (see [vowel harmony](_URL_1_)), \"from\" is \"den/dan/ten/tan\", \"at/in/on\" is -de/da/te/ta, the -i hali (roughly the accusative case) is -(s)i/ı/ü/u\"\n\nSo when we look at examples **in Turkish**, we see they're really regular across the board. I'm going home is \"Eve gidiyorum\". I'm going there is \"Oraya gidiyorum\". She's coming here is \"Buraya geliyor\". Where is he going is \"Nereye gidiyor?\" He's at home is \"Evde(dir)\". I'm here is \"Buradayım\". There are a lot of ruins there \"Orada çok harabe var.\" This place is beautiful is \"Burası güzel\". What the hell is this place? \"Burası neresi lan?\" All very regular (except burası/şurası/orası/neresi are a bit irregular if you think about them too long because they don't really tkae the -i hali, it just looks like they do, but let's not get into that). So our brains don't *need* these to be irregular, they just are irregular in English and similar languages. In general with all languages, as a very, very broad rule of thumb, more commonly used words are more likely to stay irregular and less commonly used are more likely to be regularized, which is why we only have kept weirdness with basic words like \"here\", \"there\", and \"home\".\n\nPretty much, though, it's like asking, \"Why is 'to be' so weird? Why is it 'I *am* a student' and 'He is a student' and not 'I be a student' and 'He bees a student'? Why is it 'She was a student' and not 'She beed/been a student'?\" English has a lot of irregular formations; just be thankful our irregular plural nouns are relatively rare (mouse/mice, etc.) and we use grammatical cases in relatively few places (I/me, as in *I* love you, you love *me*, but it's not like *My dog* loves me, I love *my dogge* or anything).\n\n*Addendum: before you comment, remember \"LI5 means friendly, simplified and layman-accessible, not roleplaying comments aimed at literal five year olds (which can be patronizing)\". If this isn't simple or accessible, please tell me, but yes, this isn't how I would literally explain it to a grade schooler.*\n\n**tl;dr**: home is irregular in its use of prepositions in English, as are some other words, notably \"here\" and \"there\". It's just an exception. But those exceptions are pretty common in the languages closely related to English.",
"Examples of locative adverbs: Let's go north; let's go left; let's go up; let's go away; e.c.t. ",
"Is it the same reason you say \"I want in\" or \"I want out\"? ",
"The *home* in *Let's go home* is, in fact, a preposition. See, for example, [this discussion by Geoff Pullum](_URL_2_), co-author of the [*Cambridge Grammar of the English Language*](_URL_1_).\n\nSome of you will object that *home* is not a preposition because it does not precede a noun. All that shows is that the traditional term \"preposition\" is, in hindsight, a badly chosen name for this type of word. The point of the argument is that the correct way to classify words into parts of speech is by what types of phrases they head, and the correct way to classify phrases is by where they can appear in sentences. So in the following sentences...\n\n1. Let's go **to school**.\n2. Let's go **home**.\n3. Let's go **inside the shack**.\n\n...the highlighted phrases are all the same kind of phrase, which are headed by the same part of speech, which, for historical reasons is called a \"preposition.\" (There is no replacement term that has gained enough support among linguists.)\n\nThe people who are calling it an \"adverb\" in this thread don't have a linguistics education, and thus their understanding of grammar is stuck in the 19th century. For example, paraphrasing some of Pullum's arguments from my link before, adverbs can be placed between the subject and the verb:\n\n* We went home quickly.\n* We quickly went home.\n\nYou can't do this with the word *home*, however:\n\n* ~~We home went quickly.~~ (ungrammatical)\n\nThis is enough to prove that *home* isn't an adverb.\n\nPrepositional phrases can be intensified with *right*, but adverbs cannot:\n\n* We went right to school.\n* We went right home.\n* ~~We went right quickly.~~\n\nSo *home* behaves just like prepositions do. Traditional \"prepositions\" and *home* are the same part of speech, just like *party* and *destroy* are both verbs even though *destroy* takes an object and *party* doesn't.\n\n**EDIT:** [Transcript of a friendlier radio talk by Pullum, explaining how when he went to Australia he found that *bush* has become a preposition over there, in sentences like *On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own*.](_URL_0_) (Click on the \"show transcript\" button.)",
"I'm not being sarcastic when I say this is actually interesting as fuck.",
"let's go home/out/away/near/far/under/over are all subjective locations. Home in this context is whatever place you happen to live whereas \"your\" home is an objective location (ergo we don't say let's go your home)\nThat's why as everyone has said these are not nouns like \"house\" they are locative adverbs.",
"Is it because its directional? Like let's go north? ",
"\"Home\" is to \"House\" like \"Schoolward\" is to \"School\"",
"In hawaii this is a perfectly acceptable sentence. \n\nOther examples:\nLets go beach\nWe go work\n...go..\nstore\ncountry\ntown\netc.\n",
"And yet others are a 3rd option: Let's go to THE library.",
"Posting from Hawaii, both sentences are acceptable.",
"Think of it like 'Let's go home*wards*', where 'home' is used as a direction rather than an object.\ngoing to school, however, is taking school as an actual place where you will arrive at.",
"I'm studying German, and there's a big difference between home and house that English doesn't really use. Home is a general area. It has personal meaning and is different for everyone. A house is an actual location. \n\nYou wouldn't say \"Let's go house\", either. So my best guess is that it's because home is not a physical location. It's more of an idea.",
"There doesn't seem to be any grammatical basis for this. I think it comes down to common usage, and what sounds right.\n\nBut it only applies if all parties included in the subject share the same home. If we live together, you could say, \"let's go home.\" Or, no matter where you lived, you could simply tell me to, \"go home.\"\n\nIf we both had a different home you would have to add the preposition and say, \"let's go to my home.\"\n\nThe question then becomes, what is the origin of dropping the preposition when all parties of the subject share the same home. From the responses I've read, it's not exclusive to English, and the reason may be lost to history and linguistics. That is unless some scholarly Redditor out there knows the origin.\n\nEdit: I just read an entry here that said that home is used as an adverb. I looked it up, and according to the American Heritage Dictionary, home is short for homeward. Adding -ward makes it an adverb. It is possible that, over time, the suffix was dropped, and through common usage we all just learned it this way, so it just sounds right.\n\nTLDR: Home is short for homeward, but it's still interesting that the use of the preposition relies on all parties included in the subject having the same home.",
"Let's go school is equivalent to saying \"Let's go house\". Home means something different, it isn't an actual physical structure, it's more of a mental/emotional landmark..idk",
"In Ireland, it is perfectly normal to hear someone say \"go home\", \"go school\", \"go bed\", and even \"go asleep\". American English has some odd properties you do not see practiced in UK and Irish English.",
"I may be wrong, but I think this form started from the Old English phrase along the lines of \"Let's go to ward home,\" (ward = guard, to look out for), which is really sort of a joke. That phrase is a mouthful, so it was simplified down to \"Let's go homeward\", and then the 'ward' part was dropped and we're left with the ME equivalent of just \"Let's go home\".\n\nHome is a place to guard, but school isn't, so it didn't make sense for anyone to say \"Let's go toward school\" until much later. The phrase hasn't really evolved in English to the point where we can say \"Let's go school\", but it is headed in that direction.",
"Interesting, in Tamil, it is the reverse..\n\nFor \"Let's go home\", it is \"Veeti**kku** pogalam\" which translates to \"Let's to to home\". For school, it is \"Pazhikkoodam pogalam\" which translates to \"Let's go school\". ",
"Because home is an adverb here; similarly to outside, inside etc. ",
"You'll get a lot of answers to this, but there's one that's more fundamentally true: usage determines rules.",
"Because lettuce doesn't like school.",
"little things like this drive me crazy. It's odd how contractions don't always work. \n\"who's happy?\" \"I am!\"\n\"who's happy?\" \"I'm!\"",
"I really hope this doesn't get buried but here goes. Why is it that you would say, \"I'm on the bus,\" but never, \"I'm on the car,\" (or other form of transport for that matter excluding the train/plane etc)? ",
"Also, why is \"go to the hospital\" correct in the US but \"go to hospital\" in the UK?",
".... Asked someone who has never been to a pep rally.",
"I have a theory that I just thought of about 30 seconds ago, but hear me out.\n\nI think the distinction is based on travel. You go to the store because that requires travel. It's the same for school, work, or any other location other than home. The reason we don't use the word \"to\" with \"home\" is because home is our center point. No matter where we are in the world, home is our origin. It's our starting point. When we think of travel or how far we have gone, we think in terms of how far we are from home. We would say \"I am in New York City so I am 500 miles away from home\".\n\nWe don't think of work, school, and the store as our origin. Those are all places away from home, so they require travel to get to. We use the word \"to\" to indicate travel because it's a preposition meaning motion and travel. We don't use the word \"to\" when talking about home because home is always our center point. It's at coordinate (0,0). Work is at coordinate (X,Y). School is at coordinate (X & prime;,Y & prime;).",
"\"Home\" is unique to an individual or family. It can mean anything from a street corner to a planet depending upon who is discussing \"home\". School is just a generic term.",
"Home is a concept, school is a place. Nobody says, \"Let's go house.\" The word \"home\" is meant to evoke feelings of comfort and is expressed as such. Other places, not so much.",
"I bet it's got something to do with 'homeward' being a word and 'schoolward' not.\nThat same principle would account for saying \"Let's go north/south/east/west.\"",
"When I was teaching English (as a volunteer, no degrees or anything) the way I explained it was that locations are divided by the frequency, or regularity, with which you visit them. It worked pretty well to help people understand what words to use. It is NOT something I saw from anywhere official, so I could be wrong.\n\n1^st level of frequency:\n\nHome / here / there. The locations you are with the highest frequency or regularity require no preposition to introduce them or article (a, an, the) to identify them, presumably for efficiency in that you use them so much. \"I'm home. I'm here. I'm there\"\n\n2^nd level of frequency:\n\nSchool / work / church / bed. Places you go very regularly. Only a preposition is required to refer to them, an article isn't. \"I'm going to school / to work / to church / to bed.\"\n\n3^rd level frequency:\n\nthe gym / the store / the supermarket / the gas station / the library.\n\n4^th level frequency:\n\na gym / a store / a supermarket / a gas station / a library.\n\nA common location which you may visit regularly, often or rarely. The difference between the 3^rd and 4^th tier is that in the 3^rd, the listener is expected to be familiar with the location, and in the 4^th, the listener is not.",
"These are my awards from Army, mother.",
"Home is a state of being as well as a place",
"Officially \"home\" is an adverb of place like \"abroad\" and \"downstairs\" and you don't use prepositions with adverbs. Adverbs of place, time or manner describe where, when or how something takes place. ",
"Home is somewhat of an abstract concept. It's a place *and* a state of being. \"I'm home\", for example, can refer to any number of places, depending on the context; it's something you feel as well. \n\nSchool refers to a specific place, though as an umbrella statement it encapsulates a multitude of places (schools everywhere). Regardless, at no point is \"school\" a state of being. ",
"Let's go Taco Bell.",
"Take a linguistics class, have your life changed"
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1on2g2 | what defines a country as being 'western' or 'eastern' | I don't understand how a country can be defined as western or eastern. The earth is round aren't all countries both eastern and western? Like I live in Australia and we are a western country even though we line up with Asia, and America is closest to our east so why aren't they eastern? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1on2g2/eli5_what_defines_a_country_as_being_western_or/ | {
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"Western refers to those countries that got their culture from Europe. Eastern refers to those that got their culture from Asia.\n\nEurope is to the West of Asia. This means Asia is to the East of Europe. You can of course go around the world in the other direction and arrive at the other location just the same but that's not how people travelled from one to the other.",
"As always there is a suitable XKCD for this:\n_URL_0_",
"You can't define these terms based on where you personally are. That's ridiculous. You have to look at the historical context. When these terms came into existence the bulk of the 'known world' was the Eurasian continent and hence the west of that continent (Britain, etc) and east (china, etc) became the western and eastern countries. The reason Australia and the USA are also western is because they are/were British colonies.",
"It's a fabricated cultural distinction. If you get the chance, read \"Orientalism\" by Edward Said - very interesting."
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aca7ma | if our cars are in park with parking brake on, how are tow truck drivers still able to take cars? | Like is there a way for them to dis-engage the transmission from the outside so the wheels rotate freely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aca7ma/eli5_if_our_cars_are_in_park_with_parking_brake/ | {
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"Most cars use their rear wheels in the parking break. So the tow trucks will lift up the wheels with the breaks engaged. Very rare for a car to have 4 wheel parking breaks",
"The Parking brake doesn’t engage in the transmission. It is tied to the rear brakes, usually drums, the tow truck would pick those tires off the ground to bypass them being locked. ",
"I believe the brakes only work on one set of wheels. Lift that side off the ground and the other set of wheels rotate freely.",
"There's a couple different options depending on the situation. They have wedges and rods they can pry your door open enough to reach a rod in and hit the unlock button, and then there's a little slot by your gear shifter they jam a ground down screwdriver into and that disengages the lock so they can shift into neutral. I have never driven a tow truck, but I had some friends who did, you'd be amazed at how fast and easily they can get into a car. ",
"Putting a car in park doesn't make it impossible to move the car - it just locks a set of wheels. As others have pointed out, there are ways of unlocking the wheels, but if necessary a flat bed tow truck can drag a car with locked wheels onto the bed.",
"The question you're asking depends on a few things. \n\nFor example, tow truck drivers who work for repossession, impound or tow-away zone violations don't always care about the damage to the vehicle. Speed of tow-away is more important. Sometimes that means shortcuts like just dragging the car away, which may damage the transmission, brakes or tires. \n\nIn an ideal world, they could unlock the door and put the car in neutral, disengage the parking brake, put the drive wheels on jacks or dollies and tow away. ",
"Used to dispatch tow trucks. \n\nThe tow operator would either dolly the wheels, gain access to the interior in order to release the parking brake and/or shift into neutral via the internal release catch, or just go underneath and disconnect the driveshaft. "
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bwq76b | 2hy is it hard to swallow with an open mouth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwq76b/eli5_2hy_is_it_hard_to_swallow_with_an_open_mouth/ | {
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7kx8kg | what did farm animals do before they were maintained by farmers? | For example how did sheep keep their wool short or how did Horses keep their hooves short before Farmers thought to keep them and maintain them?
For example even today there was a famous example of a sheep getting lost in the mountains when it was discovered it could barely walk due to the amount of excessive wool it grew.
So how would sheep and other farm animals counter this and similar issues before they were domesticated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kx8kg/eli5_what_did_farm_animals_do_before_they_were/ | {
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"They did not exist.\n\nOur current farm animals were bred from much hardier wild animals, by humans using selective breeding.",
" > For example how did sheep keep their wool short \n\nSheep didn't have long coats until humans bred them to have long coats. Farming is what *created* the long coats.\n\n > how did Horses keep their hooves short before Farmers thought to keep them and maintain them? \n\nHorses' hooves naturally get worn down by walking. They don't really need to be maintained unless they never have access to rough terrain, or we want to affix horseshoes to protect their hooves on rocks/pavement",
"Howdy. I have sheep. Sheep originally did not have wool.. well not like todays sheep. Some sheep today still don't have wool and are called \"Hair sheep\" they shed just like dogs.. imagine a German Shepherd dog.. that's about the same as a hair sheep (google Barbadoes Sheep, or Katahdin.. or hair sheep).\n\nBut SOME of those sheep did get thicker coats in the winter with a few wool like hairs that didn't shed as easily. Farmers started breeding some sheep selecting for that, until they produced sheep with wool that don't shed on their own. Just like how wolves shed, but poodles don't!\n\nHorses are another matter... the ground they would be on was harder than in a pasture so they chip their hooves and pieces fall off. HOWEVER most certainly this didn't always happen and horses that lived in areas where their feed didn't wear down as easily would die of starvation if they had a hard time walking to different places for food - but i note horses tend to walk and eat and walk and eat at the same time..",
"The sheep and pigs and horses and cows and chickens and everything else that we’ve domesticated did not exist in the wild. Your base assumption is flawed.\n\nWe took the wild sheep and bred them to produce sheep that would grow large coats. Then we bred those sheep to produce sheep with large coats that would constantly keep growing. This is just the basic gist of it. It may not have happened in exactly those steps or in exactly that order, but you get the point, I hope."
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1528qy | why does fox news have a million commercials with people trying to sell gold and silver? | My dad watches Fox News and I've noticed that on every single commercial break they have those commercials encouraging people to buy good and silver. I never see these on other stations, so why is Fox so invested in them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1528qy/why_does_fox_news_have_a_million_commercials_with/ | {
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"A lot of Fox viewers are older and close to retirement or already there. Precious metals are often seen as a good investment with good returns. They basically have a set supply and rising demand so prices will largely increase. Also, old people who watch Fox are easier to scam.",
"Target marketing, old people participate in both Gold/Silver and Fox News. The same reason you see 10,000 Hover round and reverse mortgage commercials during the price is right. ",
"The conservative narrative that Fox supports posits that we are doomed to a future of hyperinflation caused by trillion-dollar deficits and the Fed's loose monetary policy. To people who believe that narrative (i.e., Fox's viewers), gold and silver are attractive investments, since they would retain their value in such an inflationary environment.",
"Many commodities have seen [bubble like](_URL_0_) rises in prices. I'd guess that smart folks are selling and need some rubes to buy. I cannot say for certain that it is a bubble, but this [longer term chart](_URL_1_) shows an even scarier rise and that there have been periods of declines."
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2s5eqd | what was saruman's motivation for siding with sauron? | What was his endgame? What did he want to see take place? In what direction was he hoping to steer events? Did he want the ring? If so, why? If why, why not? No, really. I've never seen this explained. Not even the search function could help me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s5eqd/eli5_what_was_sarumans_motivation_for_siding_with/ | {
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"He decided eventually that the might of Sauron was way too strong to be countered. Book Saruman essentially fell to despair and wanted to surrender to and aid Sauron's will; only film Saruman had those ideas about wanting to have Gandalf feign allegiance alongside himself, to overtake Sauron later.\n\nSaruman basically acted out of a mind for self-preservation. He didn't really want the Ring or any more power; he only wanted to maximize his chances for long-term survival as a \"free\" agent - if the Ring could have been part of the plan, then it would have been part of his game, though it actually never was. Saruman was smart enough to know that the Ring would never grant any favour to himself; it would only turn him into a mindless servant of Sauron, destroying his free will in the process. Of course, I don't mean that free will as in the right to choose between good and evil, I mean more of not becoming a \"zombie\". Saruman might eventually work for the will of evil, but at least while he did that he would be an allied Wizard still, rather than a mindless zombie.\n\nBook Saruman didn't die at Isengard. He ventured to the Shire eventually after the defeat, and had tried to lord over those lands. That could be seen as further evidence for Saruman's desire to move West, further away from the reach of Sauron, aiming at prolonging his own time before Shadow takes over all of Middle-Earth.",
"Funny, I was just talking to my kids about all this earlier today.\n\nBoth Sauron and Saruman were actually *Maiar*, one of the *Ainur*. The Ainur were the name for the beings that became the *Valar* and the Maiar after the creation of *Arda* (Middle-Earth). \n\nThe Valar would be about the closest thing you could have to a \"god\" in Middle-Earth mythology.\n\nThe Maiar were the servants of the Valar, or perhaps a better way of putting it would be they were assistants. Powerful in their own right, but not as powerful as the Valar.\n\nAll Maiar were associated with a single Valar, but some defected from one to another. Sauron was originally a Maiar of Aule the Smith, one of the Valar, but \"fell\" and became the chief lieutenant of Melkor, another Valar, who was the original Big Bad in Middle Earth. He later was called Morgoth and eventually was banished after his ultimate defeat.\n\nAfter Morgoth fell, Sauron eventually stepped in, creating the Rings of Power and doing lots of other nasty things. His power was strong enough that he could influence other beings, including other Maiar.\n\nAlso, the Valar sent a number of Maiar in mortal guise into Middle-Earth. These beings were called the *Istari*, but men called them \"wizards\". Of them all, only Radagast the Brown, Saruman the White and Gandalf the Grey are ever mentioned by name, but there were others- not much is known about their actual fate. The Istari were charged with watching over Middle-Earth and helping guide without controlling, and to assist in the defense against the dark forces of Morgoth and Sauron.\n\nSaruman was called \"The Wise\" for a reason, and was very knowledgeable about the Rings and the lore behind them. He was also tempted into using the *palantir*, which was an artifact of the ancient human kingdom of Numenor- they were sort of like magic videophones, and there were a bunch of them. Saruman had one, but at least one other was possessed by Sauron.\n\nMy personal theory about the fall of Saruman was that it was a combination of several factors:\n\n* His long service as a mortal or semi-mortal being, and his loss of connection to his essential nature as a Maia. Basically, the temptations and weaknesses of flesh.\n* His despair in the face of his knowledge about the Rings of Power and what they really did give Sauron, and his certainty that there was no good end.\n* The influence of Sauron's mind directly through the *palantir* to tip Saruman into his betrayal of the Istari, Middle-Earth and his mission.\n\nEditing to add: It's also likely that Saruman intended to ally himself with Sauron, then betray him and use the One Ring himself. But I've always felt that to get to the point where he could think that plan could work, he must have been corrupted and irredeemable already."
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5p9iit | why is our vision somewhat 'washed out' when we first open our eyes after a nap? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5p9iit/eli5why_is_our_vision_somewhat_washed_out_when_we/ | {
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"It's because the colour receptor cones in your eyes wear out relatively quickly when they're looking at the same colour for prolonged periods, causing you to see less of that colour when you look to see something else. In the case of a nap, the light will shine through your eyelids and expose your cones to a prolonged red colour, so when you open your eyes, what you'll see is the world with the reds largely drained out of it, leading to the washed-out look you're referring to. "
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7yzgze | why are there so many "chinatown" neighborhoods in different north american cities? was there a large exodus from china some time last century or so? | I was recently thinking about how common this is, and not nearly as common (in my limited experience) with other countries, in terms of setting up an actual neighborhood. Just wondering how that all happened | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yzgze/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_chinatown/ | {
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"From what I remember from APUSH, there was a huge influx of immigrants in the late 1800's. Immigrants, of course, weren't Chinese specific, but in comparison, the Chinese were hugely segregated from the \"American Dream\" and the government created the only law against a race. As such, I think it was likely that the Chinese grouped into communities and as time progressed, they stayed roughly where they were and as such, have created huge Chinese communities.",
"The railroad. \nAt the time those big cities like San Francisco were really \"booming\" was during the time of the railroad. Chinese immigrants were largely responsible for building the railroad but were also considered one of the lowest class of citizens. Being society's outcasts forced them to create 'cities' for themselves. ",
"Yes. \n\nThere were several waves of immigration from China over the last century (and a bit). One was in the mid to late 1800s and large numbers of immigrants came to the US with most concentrating on the West Coast. They were looking for work opportunity with the California Gold mines, and with the US building railroads. \n\nThe next major wave came in the 1920s and 1930s as they fled civil war, famine, and the communist revolution. ",
"There was heavy Chinese immigration in the 1800’s, mainly to the west coast. Due to racist beliefs, they were shunned by white society and mainly stayed within their own communities. These were the 1st Chinatowns.\n\nHowever, in 1882, a law was passed specifically prohibiting Chinese immigration. It was not fully repealed until the major reform of the American immigration system in the 60’s. There was very little Chinese immigration during this time.\n\nAfter the reform, immigration from China increased again. A high number of Chinese-Americans are recent arrivals. Recent immigrants tend to stick together in “ethnic towns).",
"Chinese were often discriminated against and banned from living in many places or forced to only live in specific areas, which became Chinatown’s.similar to why blacks and whites are still often so segregated,and even more so 100 years ago. But because there were fewer Chinese, more cultural and language differences, the neighborhoods remained more insular and kept more of their tight knit character. But most today — other than Chicago and a couple others — are more akin to country visits at EPCOT than actual ethnic communities due to rising real estate prices in those neighborhoods and surrounding areas, assimilation of Asians."
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44jign | why can't the united nations overthrow north korean's dictatorship and rehabilitate the ~25 million people with government funds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44jign/eli5_why_cant_the_united_nations_overthrow_north/ | {
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"1. You have to be high to believe the UN has any real power.\n\n2. Why?\n\n3. Nukes will probably go flying if we show a sign of agression towards NK.",
"To start, the UN has no authority to do that. the only binding resolutions that come from the UN are from the Security Council, of which China is a permanent member with veto authority. Since China doesn't want a failed state on its border, they will veto any action to intervene.\n\nSecond, who's going to lead it? The UN has no military, and Peacekeepers come from the active militaries of other nations. Very few people would be interested in getting involved in a massive ground war in Asia.\n\nThird, who's going to pay for it? We generally discourage pillaging these days, so you can't raid North Korea for the funding and I doubt the U.S., NATO, Russia, or South Korea want to do that. \n\nFourth, what happens when North Korea goes all out and nukes the invaders? Or decides to shell Seoul with conventional artillery, turning it to rubble? The world would have to rebuild two countries.\n\nIntervening in North Korea is simply not feasible. It'll be a big enough disaster if the regime collapses on its own, let alone through forced occupation. ",
"It's not the UN's job to \"overthrow\" governments. Besides, which government's funds do you propose they use and how much? What makes you think they could actually rehabilitate 25 people any way, much less 25 million? ",
"The UN has no real power. They have the power of suggestion. They mean well, and do some really good work. Every now and again they will have a real impact on something everyone can get behind, like wiping out a disease like small pox. China has a seat on the UN Security Council, and while we don't like North Korea China doesn't hate them. They see North Korea as a buffer between themselves and US bases in South Korea. So nothing will be done about North Korea. ",
"1. They don't have the authority. \n2. No nation wants to back the troops let alone fund that mission.",
"Please remember this is ELI5 and it's a question that deserves good answers, not snide ass remarks.",
"I salute the people with enough patience to answer such a ridiculous question. \n\nGeopolitical issues like these aren't things that can just be fixed. \"The road to hell is paved with good intentions\" Is not just some cliche phrase. It perfectly describes the danger that line of thinking presents."
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84jfjs | what is the significance that all galaxies complete one revolution every billion years? how does this help us better understand the mechanics of what makes them tick? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84jfjs/eli5_what_is_the_significance_that_all_galaxies/ | {
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"All galaxies *don't* complete one revolution every billion years. In fact, different stars in galaxies have entirely different orbital periods. \n\nFor example, stars in the Milky Way for example, that are not in the center, orbit at around the same speed (210 to 240 km/s ), which means their orbital periods depend mostly on the distance (orbit length) they travel. Our own Sun takes aroun 220 to 250 million years to complete an orbit, which is a time period less than 1 billion years.",
"If this measurement of 1 billion years turns out to be true and is the same for all galaxies, then it is significant because if we know the speed of the rotation, then we can measure a lot of other things about the galaxies- their masses especially. The equations for how this works would be out of the ELI5 boards, but they are connected.\n\nAlso- if one billion years -per-rotation is the speed, it leads us to more questions. !!And this is how science works- solving problems and finding new questions!! \n-Why is it 1B years?\n-Are they the same direction?\n-Are bigger galaxies necessarily older because of what this new data states?\n-Does this change when two disc galaxies merge? And does this shine any light on non- disc galaxies?\n-And the black holes at the centers of many galaxies spin- does this mean the spin gets faster, slower or doesn’t change when the stars are swallowed up into the black hole since the mass of the stars just become added to the mass of the black hole?\n\nAlso by knowing the speed and mass we can begin to measure the amount of energy making the galaxy spin- which could lead to identifying more information about the black hole. \n\nAnd once know about the mass and energy we can study the effects of the galaxy on it’s neighboring galaxies or giant dust clouds. And so on. \nIt’s science! And it’s always so exciting!",
"From a general point of view, anytime we see something occurring in all examples of something, it's significant.\n\nPlanets and stars are round(ish) because of how gravity shapes non solid masses into that shape. There's no pyramid shaped planets running around barring post cooling impacts.\n\nSo if we observe all galaxies rotating at a consistent rate, we can extrapolate that *something* is making that happen. And since galaxies have formed at varying times and in varying circumstances, we can rule out some inherited property from a singular event.\n\nPerhaps galaxies are only stable under certain conditions, with tendencies to collapse in or fall apart if the circumstances which generate them are outside of a relatively narrow range that also happens to result in galaxies that revolve at a specific speed. Perhaps not. Probably not.\n \nWe don't know yet. We just know it's a significant detail.",
"Normally, Newtonian physics say with the same energy the smaller the object the faster it rotates, the bigger the slower it rotates. But if all galaxies, big and small rotate at the same speed it means that they must either follow different rules, or there is something to them that we don't know yet.",
"follow up: ive learned on a few different places that our solar system revolves arround the center of the galaxy once every 300 million years.\nHow does that fit into this new discovery? Was the 300mio estimate just completly off the mark?",
"Ive never heard this theory, can someone please cite a source for it?",
"I remember from my uni days that the rotation curves of galaxies have been used to study dark matter, as visible matter alone can't explain the rotational speeds. I imagine this discovery may shed some additional light on the subject. More info [here](_URL_0_).",
"Is it EXACTLY one billion? Like, 1,000,000,000.00?",
"It basically tells us that since galaxies are made of the same original star dust from the original quasars and blasars (really huge, extinct stars) then that gives us proof that light=time. If all galaxies make one round every billion years, then we know that all time across space is in sync with gravity, energy and antienergy and the rest of reality as know it. We know that because of time dilation. If you look at a galaxy 100 lightyears away, you have the image of that galaxy 100 years ago. If you can still calculate that the rotation of it is 1 per billion years, you know that the relationship between the speed of light and the speed of time is constant. It doesn't speed up or slow down as it progresses. Because if it ever fluxes, you would get a different time frame for one rotation of x galaxy x light years away.\n\n The tricky part is getting a clock accurate enough to measure time changes. It may change, but we cant detect it yet due to our method of time keeping being imperfect vibrations from crystals. If we had a perfect clock, then we would have a good controled experiment but until then, we just dont known if the speed of time changes relative to the speed of light.\n\n We only know it doesn't change much if at all. Calculating the speed of light is another flawed area of physics, but your whole question assumes we have a good understanding physics and we do not, so I won't start that tangent. I have some ideas but I lack the mathematical knowledge to prove it.\n\nTldr. Relative to our understanding of lightspeed, time doesn't deviate much if at all but we can't truely detect changes due to our imperfect method of measuring time. So we look to galaxies to prove our theory by shear size and numbers of examples. However, we can only confirm light=time based on an outdated understanding of light so we must solve light first. ",
"The rotation of galaxies is not well understood and this is another failure of theory to predict a fairly easily confirmed phenomena. So if this result holds, it could provide a hint pointing at new physics or at new models of how galaxies form and how the gas and stars in galaxies interact.\n\n\nArticle discussing this recent discovery:\n\n _URL_0_",
"Stupid question, but I keep seeing speed and rate used interchangeably. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but if the rate of rotation is the same, isn't the speed of rotation is going to be different depending on the diameter or the galaxy, and where you measure said speed in the radius?",
"this tell me that space may have a constant speed, just like a bullet travelling in air could cover a faster, long distance but a bullet in water would only cover a smaller distance.\n\nso space is a medium? not sure, we need more evidence for it. \n\ni may also point that there maybe a clockwork or something that time it.\n\nthis also indicate that we might be really emulated(i hope not, i do not like being in AOE game). "
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75u4jq | how do computer board designers change and update parts like gpus and motherboards to be compatible with all types of new and old standards, and make them faster, so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75u4jq/eli5how_do_computer_board_designers_change_and/ | {
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"In a word: Standards. \n\nIf your part doesn't comply with the standards for that part, it won't work with anything else. Which means nobody will buy it. \n\nNew standards are sometimes backwards-compatible. Sometimes they are not - so part manufacturers don't *always* make stuff compatible with everything else.\n\nAdd to that that there *are* companies that just make everything themselves, or have it made for themselves, and don't *care* if it's compatible. ",
"I'm not exactly a computer engineer, but there are a couple of things you mention in your question that I can try to shed light on.\n\nThere are a few ways we can talk about compatibility between computer components, software, and accessories. They are:\n\nBackward Compatible: This new shit works with old shit\n\nForward compatible: This new shit is so great, it's gonna work with shit that hasn't even been invented yet (for a little while, anyway. notable exception: most programming languages, I still use Fortran, which is older than me by 3+? decades)\n\nPhysical compatibility: Does the plug fit in the socket\n\nFunctional Compatibility: The plug fits, but do the parts work as intended together? (this is different from simply having a bug, but in some cases it has the same effect)\n\nAs an example, you won't be able to use your Macbook to connect to your old CRT in the basement unless you introduce a bunch of dongles and adapters into the equation. It's definitely still possible to do, as long as you are providing the TV with the Video and Audio input it is expecting, but you need to take extra steps to make it work. The TV is not forwards compatible, it doesn't have bluetooth or a mini display port, but they work together because the macbook was DESIGNED to be backwards compatible. There is no way that the manufacturer of the TV could have predicted that HDMI ports and other types of connections would exist, because, well, they didn't exist. Another example is my old copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. The CD is physically compatible with the drive on my laptop, but I won't be able to play the game unless I install a virtual machine or something to pretend it's still '05 and i'm on windows XP instead of 10, meaning that it lacks functional compatibility until something else makes my machine backward compatible.\n\nNew stuff is compatible with old stuff because it wouldn't sell if it couldn't run existing operating systems or couldn't view a PDF. Then again, Apple keeps removing ports from the IPhone and it still sells, but the reason they make the big bucks is that they discovered people would still buy their stuff, even if their headphones were obsolete.\n\nCompatibility isn't something that just happens, it's a very important design criteria when new products are made. That's the reason why the people who design GPUs and motherboards go to school for god's ever to learn about old dusty mainframes, so that they can build upon that knowledge, because the computers still run on 1s and 0s.\n\nThis is honestly a super rich topic that I could harp on for hours, but I have projects that aren't going to finish themselves. I might come back to add some stuff to this later."
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3j6j5b | why do people say to breathe while doing anaerobic exercise such as squatting or benching? | I'm talking about doing sets of about ten, which as far as I know is anaerobic exercise. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j6j5b/eli5_why_do_people_say_to_breathe_while_doing/ | {
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"It's still using oxygen. You would pass out if you didn't breathe properly. Anaerobic is just a way off saying that you can't continue to do reps due to the burning of oxygen. Your body will use the stores it has and you can't bring in enough to keep up the work. Aerobic exercise is when you can continue to exercise while breathing in the amount of oxygen needed to fulfill the bodies needs. ",
"Because many people forget to breathe when they are doing this kind of exercise. That's really all there is to it.",
"Breathing through your diaphragm allows you to create a stable core. Try this: Pretend someone is about to punch you in the stomach, and brace your core."
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k7h9y | the difference between jpeg and png. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k7h9y/eli5_the_difference_between_jpeg_and_png/ | {
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"Both are methods that describe how to store images into files. \nJPEG discards image information that its algorithm deems a human eye wouldn't notice anyway. \n\n* Pro: Smaller file size. \n* Con: Detail is lost. \n\nPNG keeps all information and it is optimized for simple non-photographic data such as screenshots. \n \n* Pro: Maintains quality. \n* Con: Huge file size for photographic images. \n",
"Ok, pretend that you have a book, and you want to make it smaller. The JPEG way to do it is to read the book and summarise it, so for example, you say, \"On the first page you're introduced to the main character, Joe Bupkins, who is a retired mechanic. There are two paragraphs about his childhood, when he broke his leg falling out of a tree...\" and so on, and you do this for the whole book. Then on the other end, someone reads the summary and tries to re-write the book from the description of it. It's not perfect, but the general story will be correct (ignoring writing style and so on).\n\nThe PNG way is to look at each word, and then write the word and the number of times it occurs. For a novel, that will almost always be 1 -- so for example, \"It occurred to Joe Bupkins\" translates to \"It 1 occurred 1 to 1 Joe 1 Bupkins\", and what you get will actually be longer than the novel you started with! But if you had a text that looked like \"Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Badger Badger\", that becomes \"Buffalo 5 Badger 2\", and you can make it much shorter. Also, PNG allows you to get back the exact original text.\n\nAn image like a nature photo is like a novel -- just as every word is different, every pixel in a nature photo is different. So if you encode it with PNG, it will actually make it bigger. But PNG works great if your image is, say, a solid black circle on a solid white background -- because there is a lot of uniform color, PNG compresses it exactly.",
"ELI5: Well JPG is called a lossy format, where PNG is not, let me explain without getting into the technical details.\n\nPictures on the computer are made up of thousands of little pixels. Each pixel can have a colour. You can imagine a pixel as a 1x1 piece of lego.\n\n\nNow, imagine I used 1x1 pieces of lego to make a picture on a lego board and asked you to make a copy- you would have a couple of ways you could do this:\n\n\n1) You could take the exact same amount of the exact same lego pieces and reproduce my lego picture. Each pixel would be the same as the one you copied. We call this non-lossy because no detail of the picture was lost in the copying process. Furthermore you could write down the colour and position of each piece and give that piece of paper toa friend and they could use that plan to make another exact copy of our two lego pictures using their own lego. If it was a really good friend you could even put it in a code the two of you could understand to make the plan even shorter (while it's not necessary it's this ability which makes PNGs better than other non-lossy formats). The reason this is non-lossy because the same data (or building blocks if you will) is used every time to reproduce the picture.\n\nSo if you wanted to share your picture with a friend quickly, rather than draw a precise plan:\n\n2) Instead of using legos, you could bust out the crayons and draw a pretty good copy of your lego picture to share with others. If you were a really good artist you might even be able to make a picture by hand which is almost as exact as my lego block picture, but it will never be exactly the same as the original. You might be able to do it faster than if you had tried to make an exact copy using legos so sometimes this is a good idea. You could give this picture to a friend and he might be able to use it to reproduce your drawings using his legos, but it will not be exact like your originals. This is what we call a \"lossy format\" because information about pixels is dropped or assumed when we make a copy. JPG is a \"lossy format\".",
"ok, could someone now explain it so that graphic designers can understand it. then they can stop sending me logo's and other non-photographic images as jpegs",
"Both are methods that describe how to store images into files. \nJPEG discards image information that its algorithm deems a human eye wouldn't notice anyway. \n\n* Pro: Smaller file size. \n* Con: Detail is lost. \n\nPNG keeps all information and it is optimized for simple non-photographic data such as screenshots. \n \n* Pro: Maintains quality. \n* Con: Huge file size for photographic images. \n",
"Ok, pretend that you have a book, and you want to make it smaller. The JPEG way to do it is to read the book and summarise it, so for example, you say, \"On the first page you're introduced to the main character, Joe Bupkins, who is a retired mechanic. There are two paragraphs about his childhood, when he broke his leg falling out of a tree...\" and so on, and you do this for the whole book. Then on the other end, someone reads the summary and tries to re-write the book from the description of it. It's not perfect, but the general story will be correct (ignoring writing style and so on).\n\nThe PNG way is to look at each word, and then write the word and the number of times it occurs. For a novel, that will almost always be 1 -- so for example, \"It occurred to Joe Bupkins\" translates to \"It 1 occurred 1 to 1 Joe 1 Bupkins\", and what you get will actually be longer than the novel you started with! But if you had a text that looked like \"Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Badger Badger\", that becomes \"Buffalo 5 Badger 2\", and you can make it much shorter. Also, PNG allows you to get back the exact original text.\n\nAn image like a nature photo is like a novel -- just as every word is different, every pixel in a nature photo is different. So if you encode it with PNG, it will actually make it bigger. But PNG works great if your image is, say, a solid black circle on a solid white background -- because there is a lot of uniform color, PNG compresses it exactly.",
"ELI5: Well JPG is called a lossy format, where PNG is not, let me explain without getting into the technical details.\n\nPictures on the computer are made up of thousands of little pixels. Each pixel can have a colour. You can imagine a pixel as a 1x1 piece of lego.\n\n\nNow, imagine I used 1x1 pieces of lego to make a picture on a lego board and asked you to make a copy- you would have a couple of ways you could do this:\n\n\n1) You could take the exact same amount of the exact same lego pieces and reproduce my lego picture. Each pixel would be the same as the one you copied. We call this non-lossy because no detail of the picture was lost in the copying process. Furthermore you could write down the colour and position of each piece and give that piece of paper toa friend and they could use that plan to make another exact copy of our two lego pictures using their own lego. If it was a really good friend you could even put it in a code the two of you could understand to make the plan even shorter (while it's not necessary it's this ability which makes PNGs better than other non-lossy formats). The reason this is non-lossy because the same data (or building blocks if you will) is used every time to reproduce the picture.\n\nSo if you wanted to share your picture with a friend quickly, rather than draw a precise plan:\n\n2) Instead of using legos, you could bust out the crayons and draw a pretty good copy of your lego picture to share with others. If you were a really good artist you might even be able to make a picture by hand which is almost as exact as my lego block picture, but it will never be exactly the same as the original. You might be able to do it faster than if you had tried to make an exact copy using legos so sometimes this is a good idea. You could give this picture to a friend and he might be able to use it to reproduce your drawings using his legos, but it will not be exact like your originals. This is what we call a \"lossy format\" because information about pixels is dropped or assumed when we make a copy. JPG is a \"lossy format\".",
"ok, could someone now explain it so that graphic designers can understand it. then they can stop sending me logo's and other non-photographic images as jpegs"
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1cndta | why do sports games sometimes get blacked out, even close to the team's city? | I was in Buffalo and the Red Sox/Indians (in Cleveland) game was blacked out for some reason. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cndta/eli5why_do_sports_games_sometimes_get_blacked_out/ | {
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"They black out games in local markets to make sure they get enough attendance at the games. It's the leagues way of selling tickets. The thought process is, people aren't going to the games because they can watch it at home, if we don't get enough people at the games we will take the home option away.",
"It depends on the sport and their local terms. \n\nThe NFL's policy supports game attendance, and is simply a base distance from the city, but the MLB's rules protect local broadcasters and are based on the team's ['territory'](_URL_0_) (so El Paso is considered part of the territory for the Houston Astros). The NBA's blackout policy only applies to NBA TV.\n\nFor the NFL, the idea is to keep ticket sales high. The profit off a ticket sale (and the related parking, concessions, and memorabilia sales) is far higher than the profit from a single viewer. However, teams and broadcasters don't want to lose the money from the broadcast, so they have the option to tape off sections of the stadium for the season (something the Jacksonville Jaguars have been forced to do) or buy the remaining tickets and give them to charity. It does, however, mean that struggling teams run into further problems, because they lose even more money if their local broadcast never shows.",
"One, to keep ticket sales up. Two, it protects the smaller sports channels that have rights to the team's games and air all or most of their games. For example, I am an Atlanta Braves fan, and most of their games are on FoxSports South. So if they are blacked out on ESPN, it's because FoxSports South is airing the game. "
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13sd5u | why is muscle size and actual strength not always proportionate? | i saw a guy with chicken legs squat 800 lbs. how is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13sd5u/why_is_muscle_size_and_actual_strength_not_always/ | {
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"A lot of strength comes from how well trained your central nervous system is. Remember that no matter how big or small a muscle is the entire operation is controlled by your brain and nervous system. Weight training not only causes muscle growth, but also causes the CNS to get better at its job, in the same way that repeatedly practicing a skill will make you better at it. The squat is a prime example of a movement that is heavily affected by CNS training since the majority of your muscles contract to make it happen. "
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673mkh | what does f(x) mean? | When writing graphs as an equation, like f(x) = 2x+x^2 +24, what does f(x) mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/673mkh/eli5what_does_fx_mean/ | {
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"It's a function corresponding to an input named x\n\nFor example, f(x) = 2x, f(g) = 2g and f(k) = 2k all mean the exact same thing. It's a function with a corresponding input x, g or k.\n\nYou also see g(x) etc, which is when you have multiple functions with the same input",
"A symbol **f** denotes a **function**. Functions take input, and for each input, they output something. So a function could be, you input fruits, and function outputs how many fruits there were. For example.\n\nf(x) means the variable you input is called \"x\". That's the parameter to this function. So f(2) means whatever the function **f** outputs, when you input 2. Really it could be any letter or name or whatever, but 'x' is almost always used because Descartes thought it would be nice and no one has disagreed with him since.\n\nf(x) = 2x + x^2 + 24 defines a function. Someone wanted to tell you how **f** works, and how it does it is that once you replace x with input in that formula, you get the output.\n\nFunctions can be graphed by drawing each point (x, f(x)). So if f(1) = 2, then you draw a dot at coordinates (1, f(1) ) = (1, 2). Do so for each x, and you have a graph drawn. Simply put, at each x-coordinate, if you want to see value of f(x), you check height of graph at that point, or vice versa, to draw a graph you draw a point at each x at height indicated by f(x).\n\nSince you ask in terms of graphs specifically, using functions may be overdoing it. Usually you'd be happy with y = 2x + x^2 + 24. However, in many other cases it is useful to move between graph and function that was used to generate that graph. Could be you're being prepared for that sorta movement?",
"f(x) is a machine. Put something inside the brackets aka. substitute 'x', and the machine gives you another value. So in your example of graphs, put in one coordinate and you get a other coordinate. In R2 that would be your x and y values."
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1mq3cb | why, even though new york and spain are approximately 40° latitudinal, do they have vastly different climates? | Just curious how these two similar places on the globe have such different yearly climates, moisture, plant life, etc. I am sure it has something to do with the Mediterranean Sea but was hoping somebody could explain it better for me. Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mq3cb/eli5_why_even_though_new_york_and_spain_are/ | {
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"Wind primarily moves from west to east so New York gets drier air since it's land west of the city. Spain would get wetter air since the wind is coming from the ocean. Also, the [North Atlantic Current](_URL_0_) also pushes warmer water towards Spain and some colder water toward New York which cause huge climate differences.",
"Ocean Currents. Both are along the Atlantic Ocean which plays a huge factor as far as climate goes. The waters that comes up from the caribbean are really warm compared to those coming from the north atlantic that hit Spain's Atlantic coast. This warm water coupled with the jet stream that comes from the western US to New York causes dramatic weather changes. The colder currents regulate the temperature better in the Atlantic regions of spain than its mediterranean one does. Also, Spain has much more land mass than it does coastline, which is not true about New York. \nTL;DR The ocean and its currents regulate the temperature in the different regions. ",
"Spain is actually a very complicated country.\n\nIn the Northern Atlantic facing Cantabrian strip of Spain, it's influenced by the North Atlantic current funneling warm moisture from the Florida waters up to the British Isles. This area of Spain has climate just like Ireland, Wales, England, and the French Atlantic coast. This small strip ends at the Cordillera Cantábrica, a mountain range that span northern Spain. The mountains basically present a wall to the Atlantic moisture and divides the rest of the country in terms of climate.\n\nSouth of the mountain range is either a continental Mediterranean climate for the Castille-Leon plains or a coastal Mediterranean climate at the coast. Both of these regions have a summer high pressure cells that prevent rains from pushing into the region in the summer. In the winter, the jet stream overwhelms the high pressure cells and brings moisture for precipitation. However, it is much more likely to snow in the high plains than in the southern coastal cities.\n\nNew York is subject to flow of the jet stream and there are large fluctuations. Sometimes, it reaches rather far south in the Gulf of Mexico area. Sometimes, it gives New York a blast of Arctic air. The weather patterns are unpredictable and it gets even more unpredictable as you move east towards Boston. In the winter, the region has a curious weather pattern called a Nor'easter in which warm storm systems originating from the gulf hit cold water and forms a cold-core cyclone just offshore.\n\nhmmm.... that wasn't a very good ELI5"
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3x19f4 | what's the purpose of relationships in the romantic sense? (aside from reproduction of course...) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x19f4/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_relationships_in_the/ | {
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"Fulfillment. Companionship. Self-actualisation. Escape from loneliness. Sex.\n\nThere are thousands of reason. And if they end, it's not always in tragedy. ",
"You get all the benefits of a friendship like love, emotional support, someone to laugh with, and someone to share your ups and downs with, but your relationship is deeper than a friendship. You learn to love them unconditionally in spite of their flaws and you make a committment of working through your issues because you value that connection. Sex is also different with a partner because it's not just about the end result of an orgasm as it is with a hookup but it's also about nurturing that deep emotional connection during sex.",
"There are actually positive health outcomes to being in a relationship -- many people are healthier, happier, and live longer when they're in a long-term relationship. You're right that many relationships won't be life-long, but that doesn't mean they're \"bound to end in tragedy\" any more than anything else in the world. "
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8ehrss | what happens to life insurance money if there is no beneficiary? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ehrss/eli5_what_happens_to_life_insurance_money_if/ | {
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"There is always a beneficiary.\n\nPerhaps it's the insured's estate, and then it gets divided up like everything else. Even without a will, there are rules.\n\nUnder no circumstances does \"the system\" aka the insurance company, get to keep it. Some government might step in if nobody else can take it, but there is no joy for the insurance company."
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4s8sdj | why aren't political campaign signs at an intersection considering littering? | I pass about 200 of them on the way to and from work, and they're an eyesore. I'm curious if there's any law or reason why that's okay | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s8sdj/eli5_why_arent_political_campaign_signs_at_an/ | {
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"1) Because anyone can put up a sign if they go and get the proper paperwork and pay the proper fees. Actual campaigns do this and so it is a licensed activity and not littering. \n\n2) The campaigns are required to go and recover the signs after the elections. \n\n3) Many of these signs are actually not on public land, they are often on private property. When this happens it is up to the owner to take down the signs. "
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7c1sdc | why are the heating vents placed over windows in homes and heaters over the entry doors in big stores? it seems like it would be inefficient as all that warmth gets lost to cold outside temperatures. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7c1sdc/eli5_why_are_the_heating_vents_placed_over/ | {
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"It creates a kind of wall of hot air. If the window in open it obviously doesn't work as well but any air that hits the window and is cooled, when it comes back it gets warmed by the air in front of the window. \n\nIt also prevents the imbalance if temperature u can get sometimes. Ever been able to feel the temperature difference when walking across a room, radiators by the window prevent that to an extent. ",
"Those blowers over the doors of stores and places like that, aren't heaters but just air blowers designed to create a kind of \"air barrier\" to prevent the hot/cold air from inside to scape outside",
"The reason is sort of basically to counteract the worst areas of weather differentiation.\n\nWindow glass is the coldest part of a wall. When warm room air hits it, the air cools, and cool air sinks. The movement of cool air creates floor drafts that most people find uncomfortable. The placement of forced-air heat registers or baseboard heating units under the windows counteracts this process by sending up warm air to mix with the cool. The end result is that the room feels more comfortable.\n\nThe reason is because the heat loss occurs mostly in the windows and the fenestration. The idea is that you would like the incoming air to be heated up. Also, it creates an air curtain that prevents more heat from being lost through these exposed areas. Finally, it makes the temperature of the room more or less uniform. If the heaters were placed at the center of the room, you would create a large temperature gradient, resulting in drafts and discomfort for the occupant.\n\nsource: _URL_0_\n_URL_1_\nand that I have a minor in architecture",
"Your biggest battle in climate control is infiltration/exfiltration through the home's thermal barrier (This barrier consists of everything between the air space inside and outside the home, including the drywall, wood sheathing, insulation and siding) and windows are your largest holes in that thermal barrier as glass panes are not good insulation. The best thing you can do to increase your energy efficiency in this regard is to install double-paned windows and seal the frames from any draft to prevent as little heat transfer through the window as possible.",
"In homes, heating vents and radiators are placed next to windows so that the rising hot air immediately moderates the cold air by the window. By convection, the now coolish-warm goes up, across the ceiling and then comes down on the other side of the room, from where it comes back to the window to repeat the cycle, driven by the convection currents. By this second and subsequent go-arounds, the room temperature is raised to a comfortable level all around. \n\nIf the radiator had been placed away from the window, yes there will be a hot corner there but the convection currents then bring this warm air across the ceiling and then, already cooler, down the inside of the cold window. You now have a stream of cold air creeping back across the room, with the effect that in that far corner, you’d have an uncomfortable temperature gradient between the upper half and lower half of the room. ",
"The reason why they put heaters over the entry doors in big stores is because in summer when its hot outside the air is changed to a cooler one and any sort of flying instect cant get it, the power of air doesn't let the insect get it as they're not strong enough to get through it, same in winter but also it creates a wall of hot air that ''welcomes'' the person coming in and heats them up immediately."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ask-toh/placement-heat-registers",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/87731/why-are-radiators-always-placed-under-windows"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
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