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8cvzlw | how are tall buildings drained when rain falls at an angle? | When rain falls at an angle and it hits the side of a building, where does the water drain? Given the volume of the rain that falls, is the water somehow drawn into internal drainage via guttering all down the building or does it just sheet down to the ground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cvzlw/eli5_how_are_tall_buildings_drained_when_rain/ | {
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"Can you ELI5 your question to me? ",
"It just slides down the outside of the building to ground level, at which point the same drains that cope with the rain that hasn't hit a building first deal with it. Just because it hit a building on its way to the ground doesn't change anything. ",
"I think the point of the question is, with such a large surface area, you would think there would be a huge amount of water flowing by the time it got to the bottom."
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rsdtg | chiropractic, why it's controversial and how it's related to the anti-vaccine movement. | So I'm wasting time on facebook today, and one of my friends posts an article about the benefits vaccinations. In true facebook fashion, some guy makes a comment along the lines of "I'm not totally against it, but my kids certainly won't be vaccinated."
Slightly shocked and entertained, I click on the dude's profile, and low and behold, he's a chiropractor. I do a little digging and it seems that there's some connection between the anti-vaccination movement and chiropractors. Can anyone shed some light? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rsdtg/eli5_chiropractic_why_its_controversial_and_how/ | {
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"Psuedoscience likes psuedoscience? I find that people who are anti-vac, jew conspiricy, and belivers in tv ghost hunters play a gotta catch em' all game with those sorts of things. This is only my experience but I'm sure there are flat-earthers who think that anti-vac people are silly.",
"A good number of chiropractors are against invasive medical procedures of any kind, up to and including, medications.\n\nChiros believe that all of your medical problems originate and can be fixed via manipulating your skeleton (they work on more than just backs).\n\nPersonally, a lot of chiros (and their believers) take things a bit too far. Do chiros and their methods work? Quite often, but only on certain things. When my coccyx or lumbar is out of whack, they can legitimately move things around and provide instant relief. If I happen to say that I have had a nasty toothache and he attempts to manipulate my neck to make the pain go away in my mouth, well, that's stretching it.\n\n*Actual* doctors typically can't stand chiros because there is only so much data to back them up. It's very much a holistic vs scientific argument. ",
"it boils down to this, there are two schools of chiropractic thought. One is grounded in psuedoscience, with the idea that aligning the skeleton can fix all ailments [similar to aligning chi or whatever]. Members of this school of thought range in how extreme their views are [from, overall health can be improved all the way to you-will-not-need-that-liver-transplant-if-i-crack-your-back-and-move-your-ankle-just-right]. The other school is grounded in hard science, these are closer to physical trainers who fix practical needs with practical methods and refer patients to specialists and other doctors when the patient exhibits symptoms more severe than the scope of the chiropractors means. Unfortunately it can be hard to distinguish what school a specific chiropractor belongs to, and I suggest doing some heavy research into one if you ever want to go. ",
"I'm a huge fan of my chiropractor, but the anti-vaccine movement has been proven to be a terrible idea by the scientific community. Polio is literally a plane ride away. I'm not gambling my child's well being on that.\n\nI had a shooting pain in my shoulder for months. Kept me up at night unless I took 4 ibuprofen before bed. I tried exercises, stretches, improving posture, etc. Nothing helped. I went to see my GP, and he said he could give me some more powerful painkillers, or refer me to a specialist and explore surgery. I was a 28 year old guy. 6' tall, 230 lbs. A bit overweight with a beer gut, but not huge. \n\nMy wife finally made me go see the Chiropractor, which until that point I regarded as \"hippie doctor crap.\" I went once, got an X-ray, talked to the Doc about what she would do, etc and figured \"Whatever, it is worth a shot.\" I made an appointment for an adjustment 2-3 days later (I had paid $0 at this point.) \n\nI went in to get adjusted **once** and my shoulder felt so much better. Almost a year of pain and months of agony... After that point I listened to the Chiro. I went in 3x a week for 2 weeks, then 2x a week for 2 weeks, then once a week for a month, etc. Now I go once every 4-5 weeks and the pain has been completely gone for almost 2 years now. Best $35 I've ever spent to get that initial adjustment.\n\n(Obviously this is anecdotal evidence, but my friend had chronic back pain. I badgered him to \"just go try it once\" and he had similar results.)"
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2d7214 | what is the psychology/explanation/analysis of the "money shot" in porn[serous] | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d7214/eli5what_is_the_psychologyexplanationanalysis_of/ | {
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"Ejaculation within the woman isn't visible for filming. When the medium is visual and audio there is a limited way of displaying that the act is completed.",
" This post has been removed because it contains a \"serious\" tag. This is not a reddit-wide tag, and on ELI5, *every* post should be interpreted as \"serious.\" That being said you're basically asking why people like things you don't like which is inherently subjective so I\"m going to direct you to another sub like /r/askreddit."
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rza8p | the "men's right's movement" | I am aware that [there is a subreddit about this](_URL_0_), but I really just want a condensed answer on what this movement is. I really wanted to dismiss this as a bunch of guys who are bitter at women for not having sex with them, but I really wanted to know there was more to it, seeing as I have always held the belief that women experience more hardships than men because of men, for the most part.
Please and thank you.
EDIT: I didn't mean to come off as rude in this post. I was just stating my opinion on the subject before this post. I apologize if this post sounded like it was biased.
EDIT2: Wow, I really like a lot of the answers here. I never thought of the MRM those ways. I guess my original thoughts on the matter were influenced by forums where men hated women because they had bad luck with them (LoveShy being one of them, I believe). I suppose it was wrong to make that generalization, so I apologize again. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rza8p/eli5_the_mens_rights_movement/ | {
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"\"women experience more hardships than men because of men\"\n\nThis belief is false. The reason why it looks that way is because from birth almost men are taught to suffer in silence. Infant males cry more than infant females, but receive less attention, and quickly learn to cry less. This is where it starts, and it never really stops. Women complain louder, and get more attention than they do, so every issue which is a women's issue gets media attention. Every issue which is a men's issue gets treated as men whining over \"how much privilege they have.\"\n\nOnly men have to sign up for selective service. Men men comprise > 90% of the homeless, but there is no federal funding for men's shelters. There is funding for women's. Men are the majority of workplace deaths. Men die younger. Male genital mutilation is legal in countries which have the gall to call themselves \"civilized\". Men are getting systematically outperformed by women at every level of education.\n\nThese are not opinions. These are facts. You can check the numbers yourself. \n\nBut all of these issues combined receive less attention than the \"men make X% more than women\" which is actually untrue. When you correct for women taking time off and choosing easier, lower paying specialization, they actually make more. Also, there's the whole on the job death thing.\n\nThis is just scratching the surface of the shit men are expected to suffer in silence. And it's bullshit. And the MRM is about not standing for the that particular kind of bullshit.",
"There is, of course, some bitterness going on in that subreddit, but that's going to happen anytime a subreddit reaches a certain size and does not (and should not) invalidate their arguments.\n\nIn addition to what littleelf pointed out, the area that's the most frustrating to me personally is society's whole view on men and children. We don't have equal custody rights, typically, and a huge amount of male interaction with children is colored by the perception that all men are pedophiles, whereas no such perception exists for women.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is an article that is brief and a few years old but should give you more of an idea.\n\nYou should also, of course, set aside your biases for a few minutes and actually read some of the information in the sidebar at [/r/MensRights](/r/MensRights) to see what they bill themselves as being about.\n\nPlease also note that just because women also suffer hardships, this does *not* mean that men do not, and is completely irrelevant to your question.\n\nHope this helps.",
"If we can all acknowledge that we need women's and men's rights movements then why can't we just stop the separation between the to and focus on the main problem: human rights? ",
"As a Men's Rights advocate, this is my perception of what the movement is about:\n\n1. Double Standards (Physical Abuse): Men can't hit women, but women often get away with hitting men. If a man is being abused by a woman, he is expected to sit there and take it because if he retaliates he is some sort of monster while she is merely acting in the capacity of an empowered woman. Women abusing men is often portrayed in fictional media as a means of comedy. Nobody should be hurting anyone physically and it shouldn't be portrayed as comedy. In a domestic violence situation, the person most capable of causing harm to the other is usually removed, this means that if a man is being abused by a woman and he calls the police, he risks being arrested. This is a classic example of a catch-22 and men often end up trapped in these violent situations.\n\n\n2. Double standards (Sexual abuse): Men get raped women can be rapists. This seems to be ignored by the general public. If men are raped, they should be encouraged to call the police. Instead, the sexual zeitgeist seems to be that a man will always enjoy sex and that male consent is implied. It isn't.\n\n\n3. Double standards (Portrayal in fiction): I already mentioned how abuse of men can be seen as funny. A wife in a sitcom can slap a husband for a rude remark, but if the husband slapped the wife, the show would be taken off the air and the network would be flooded with angry letters. There's more though, men are oftentimes portrayed as complete idiots in fiction who need to the wisdom and guidance of a woman so that they can begin to function in society. In creating fictional independent women, society has also created a need for fictional dependent men and it's insulting. If women were portrayed this way, again, there would be outrage. Male role models are being replaced by buffoons. \n\n\n4. Father's Rights: Women are given the upper hand in divorce proceedings. Men are often made to pay child support checks they can't afford for kids they never get to see. Fathers are parents to their children just as much as mothers are.\n\n5. Education inequality: Boys are discouraged in early education. I don't have the link handy, but there was recently an article about how girls are quick to think that they are better than boys, and eventually, boys begin to think they are worse than girls. Boys are falling behind in education and nothing seems to be being done. Boys should be encouraged and treated as equals.\n\n\n6. Men's Work: This is perhaps the most offensive to phrase, but I still find it to be true. Women are not physically as strong as men. This is a fact. Women should not be given exceptions to jobs that require physical strength. Female construction workers and firefighters should be able to do their work as well as their male counterparts, and if they can't, they are not fit for their work and should be fired. \n\n\n7. Sexual Harassment: As with point No. 2, men are always seen as the aggressors in cases of sexual harassment. Women need to be held to the same standard as men, but often they aren't. What's more, the definitions of sexual harassment are so vague that interacting with women in the workplace at all becomes a dangerous activity for men. Women can exploit the fluid boundaries of these rules to manipulate and control men. Sexual harassment is similar to a witch hunt. This all needs to change.",
"I wanted to dowvote the OP because of the snarky post, but goddamn are there some good answers here. Credit to this subreddit.",
"Apart from what littleelf said, another main issue that gets brought up in the Mens Rights movement is what happens in custody issues. Many family courts seem to automatically default custody of children to the mother, as it's assumed that they are they are always the better parent. Along with this comes Child Support, which is often more than the man can make to be able to support themselves and pay child support. If the man loses his job and can't pay, he's often then breaking the law and thrown in jail. I'm not sure of the laws in these cases, but I've heard instances of this decision being left up to the mother of the child, basically leaving his future in the palm of her hands.",
" > I really wanted to dismiss this as a bunch of guys who are bitter at women for not having sex with them\n\nSaying this is the same as saying women only complain about not having rights because they are ugly..\n\nMen and women both have hardships. One group expressing it's hardships doesn't equal to that group claiming it has more hardships than another. Men have no real reproduction rights, men are often the ones that lose their children in custody cases, male rape is still seen as a joke to most people, young boys are commonly labeled as dumb and possible rapist just because they are born male, when men are abused it isn't taken seriously, and in most media men are seen as idiots that are helpless without the assistance of a woman.\n\nWomen has a lot of issues that they need to fight against but so do men. This shouldn't be seen as men against women but instead people fighting for their rights.",
"One thing that I think should be kept in mind, concerning this issue, is that our culture thrives on dichotomy, i.e. , the rule of opposites. Women have been historically dominated by men, and as a result a movement formed to advance the plight of women. However, one of the issues that was never addressed by mainstream Feminism was actual equality, instead the focus was placed on fixing woman's position. As with all studies, there eventually emerges a bastard group of 'armchair philosophers' who never really examine the issue as a whole. What most people refer to as Feminism, I would classify as such. The same, however goes for the Men's Rights Movement.\n\nOne of the core ideas posited here is the push for total equality. However, the language used to describe the grievances experienced by men still carries with it a negative connotation. Just like mainstream feminists blaming men, the men's rights movement shifts the blame onto women. An example of this is a statement such as \"women complain louder.\" This is put onto the woman by implying that if she would just quiet down a bit, some progress could be made, in contrast to the rational male. Ultimately what is happening is that for centuries the western male has been defending himself against the woman through arguments such as man is biologically designed to remain aloof, woman is weak and irrational, and the most important one, woman is defined as 'that which is not man,' insinuating that man is the basis of comparison.\n\nThe entire reason the men's rights movement exists is because of the errors of historical man and modern woman's rebellion against the status quo. The basic problem here is in which gender does the power base lie? Equality is not a real goal here for either side, in my opinion. Instead, what I see is a fringe group of women who want the female to influence and compete, and on the opposite side, a fringe group of men who are uncomfortable with being treated, as they see it, unfairly. Which is exactly how the opposite side feels.\n\nAll bullshit aside, be smart and surround yourself with smart people. If you are dabbling in marriage and child birth, use legal protection and plan ahead for the future of the child. If you are out and about late at night, regardless of gender, be aware that shit people exist in the world - take preventative action. If you are paranoid about getting raped as a man, be smart about the situations you are in. Sound familiar? \n\ntl;dr - Discussions on gender are usually lengthy and make hasty genealizations to shorten the discussion.",
"As a male knitter (and three-war retired Navy veteran) I explain it like this: If a woman wants to be a combat soldier, a firefighter, or a high-powered business lawyer, she is seen as a brave operative in the struggle for women's rights and is often actively encouraged in her endeavor. (As she should be, of course... as anyone should be.) But if a man wants to be a nurse, or a kindergarten teacher, or wants to knit... well, never mind all the things he *says* led him to those choices, we all know it's because he's really a sexcrazedpervert.",
"[your comment has violated the sensibilities of r/ShitRedditSays](_URL_0_)",
"Just so you know, op. MRA's being bitter at women for not having sex is the same as saying feminists just need a dick. Its extremely offensive. \n\nThat being said, most mens rights supportrs would be disgusted to hear that people view them as a male version of feminism. We arent against women, we are against inequality and special treatment."
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24aa9z | how does subway roast bread within 15 seconds? | Can someone explain to me how the machine of subway works, the one that roasts bread from normal to perfection (roasted) in 15 seconds, whilst in real life, to roast bread, it takes 5-10 minuets. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24aa9z/eli5_how_does_subway_roast_bread_within_15_seconds/ | {
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"The ovens they use are not just big toaster ovens like you have at home. They are kind of like a toaster oven/microwave hybrid. You get a nicely toasted outside without completely drying out the bread."
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1ltyjj | what makes a "good" lawyer a "good lawyer? the law is the law so what makes one better than another? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ltyjj/eli5_what_makes_a_good_lawyer_a_good_lawyer_the/ | {
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"The law is the law, but a \"good\" lawyer can convince a jury/judge to side with his or her interpretation of it. Precedents are set based on the outcomes of specific trials. Case in point: a lawyer is defending a client who killed someone. Was the act premeditated (planned ahead of time)? Was it done with harm in mind? Was it an accident? Can the lawyer convince people that it was an accident even though evidence suggests that it wasn't? \"Good\" defense lawyers can find ways to make solid evidence against their client be ruled inadmissable in court; in other words, if there is evidence that proves that the defendant was there and committed the act, but the lawyer gets it thrown out, the jury and/or judge doesn't get to see that it exists. If the case against that person relies heavily on that evidence, then there is a greater chance the defendant will be cleared based on the actions of the lawyer. Hope this helps!",
"I can't say for sure, but I imagine it has something to do with quality of service, and the lawyer's ability to \"manipulate\" (for lack of a better word) the law in the favour of his client.\n\nThe same thing applies to any profession. For example, one might say \"Medicine is medicine, so what makes one doctor better than the other?\" with the answer being that the \"better\" doctor is more efficient and simply better at diagnosing things quickly. A good lawyer is just better at law than his/her counterparts.",
"We are story tellers.\n\nSome do it better than others.",
"I think the issue you're having is your assumption that \"the law is the law\". For example, the basis of many law suits is that someone acted negligently, causing harm to another person. But what's the legal definition of negligence?\n\n\"A person has acted negligently if she has departed from the conduct expected of a reasonably prudent person acting under similar circumstances.\"\n\nThat's the \"law\", but look how open to interpretation most of that is, especially the \"reasonably prudent person\" part. A good lawyer is particularly experienced in demonstrating that to a judge or jury, whereas a not so good lawyer isn't as persuasive.",
"Speaking as a barrister, I can say the following. \n\nIn essence, a good lawyer is one who will do the work. They will go the extra mile and put their heart and soul into their cases. They will read all the case law, know all the facts and essentially be able to explain every factor that helps or hinders them.\n\nTruthfully, the facts will win 90% of cases. 'Bad lawyering' or as we call it, poor advocacy will lose 5% of cases. This is due to someone making a critical mistake, failing to appreciate how important a piece of evidence is or generally doing something silly.\n\nLet's take this famous textbook example of one question too far. One question too far is when you have successfully created doubt in the jury (or trier of facts) mind and you ask one extra question which destroys all the credibility you bought. For example, we want to prove that there was no way that the man could have seen the assault\n\n* Where were you standing when you saw the fight?\n100 meters away\n* Do you wear glasses?\nYes I do\n* Were you wearing them that day?\nNo I wasn't\n* How is your eyesight?\nIt isn't that good\n* What time of day was it?\nIt was night\n* So without good eyesight and at night, you made an identification of the accused?\nYes\n\nTHAT'S WHERE YOU STOP! You have totally made your point. A bad advocate gets smug and tries to rub it in. This is a cruel lesson we all learn with experience. That extra step can end up here:\n\n* So how could you POSSIBLY confirm that the person you saw all the way over there was the accused?\nBecause after he assaulted him, he screamed, \"IM RICK JAMES BITCH and came running past me within meters of my face.\n\nThis example is of course over the top, but illustrates something a 'bad' lawyer would do.\n\nGood advocacy will win 3% of cases. These are cases where the facts are not in your favor, but a smart advocate can see an avenue that nobody else thinks to look. \n\nOne of my favourite examples is when I had a case where a client stole a stop sign from an intersection. He was caught red handed, made a confession and had the sign in his possession. All the elements of the larceny had been made out, BUT, at no stage did the prosecution show who owned the stop sign. It's a logical oversight, obviously the council owned the stop sign and an affidavit from a person from the council highlighting that fact would have proved it in short order. They didn't do this.\n\nFor an object to be stolen, it has to have an owner. By proving that this object didn't, we asserted that it had been abandoned. I got a judge who agreed with me and we won.\n\nTo sum up, I wouldn't say that I am a particularly good lawyer, but if you get a lawyer who is prepared to do the work and acts like your case is the most important one in the world (because to you, it really is) and has the skills to back it up by looking at the problem through different lenses and doing the research necessary to argue the appropriate angle, then you have a 'good' lawyer. ",
"You ever see my cousin vinny?",
"The same thing that makes a good engineer a good engineer. \n\nThe laws of physics, electronics, etc are known quantities too, right? So any engineer is as good as any other? Heck no. Creativity, the ability to analyse, deduce, see parallels, instruct non-experts, collaborate with and understand experts from adjacent fields... all that makes a good engineer, and, by the same token, a good lawyer.",
"Saul Goodman\n\nEnough said",
"A good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer knows the judge.",
"As a former criminal I don't care about education, ability to \"manipulate,\" reputation, etc. When in doubt, hire the guy the prosecutor and/or judge plays handball, golf, or poker with. If a case isn't decided before you step into the courtroom you've hired the wrong lawyer.",
"The law is complicated. Case law -- the history of how the law has actually been used -- is even more so. And ultimately, a lawyer is making predictions that if certain arguments or filings are made, certain other results will be achieved. Knowledge of which levers to pull comes from experience, and that experience has value.\n\nPut even simpler, there's a difference between reading how to drive a car, and actually driving a car.",
"The guy who knows it better and often who spends the most time. That is about it. Lawyers jobs aren't a ton of fun. ",
"I'm really surprised I haven't seen any mention of this here, but fwiw my lawyer is a good lawyer because besides being razor-sharp and a brilliant elocutionist, he social-engineers the absolute shit out of his position. He has apparently limitless favors he can call in and relationships he can exploit for his clients' benefit. It's important to mention that in a high-profile murder case this probably means absolutely nothing, but for my needs and the needs of most of the people he represents in various local/civil/minor criminal matters it's like being able to employ a fucking genie sometimes. \n\nHis motivation for this type of networking also has a lot to do with the fact that he's upwardly mobile in his career aspirations, but he's a genuinely good guy on top of everything and generally uses his powers for good. (full disclosure: we're friends above and beyond the representation he has/is providing me with so I probably have a better idea of exactly what kind of strings he can pull than your average client, but two years of a painful crash-course in how the legal system can truly fuck you when you've never been in trouble before and naively put your faith in it has taught me that this type of influence can be invaluable.)",
"Lawyers are trained to identify risks and advise their clients to avoid those risks. A good lawyer can come off incredibly risk averse, telling a business owner not to do anything that rocks the boat.\n\nA great lawyer is one who can figure out why the business owner wants to do a certain thing, and help find out the best way to do it within the law, or minimizing risks of lawsuits. \n\nThe good lawyer says, \"No, this is how you would get sued for that...\" The great lawyer says \"Yes, here's how we control the risks...\"",
"In short, because the law is NOT the law.",
"Better call Saul!",
"Articling student here. While the focus here has been criminal law and litigation, a huge chunk of the work done by law firms is transactional/corporate based.\n\nThe difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer in the transactional field is customer service and client communication. Legal transactions most always have a similar format and precedent (in terms of the form), so what separates a good lawyer from a bad one is the ability to effectively manage their time and effectively communicate with their client and set realistic expectations for them.\n\nMissed phone calls and unreturned emails are common place in the legal profession and completely unappreciated by the client. If you pick up the phone or email back to your client on the regular, you are ahead of 75% of lawyers out there, it seems.",
"The law isn't just that law. The law is words and words are open to interpretation. See Bill Clinton, \"it depends on what your meaning of the word is, is\". ",
"Continental European Lawyer here. I feel like many answers were a little UK/US centric so here's another perspective. What makes a good lawyer really depends on quite a number of factors that we haven't touched upon here yet, bear with me!\n\n1) What legal system are working with? The two big systems are Common Law, Civil law (you can add Sharia, and mixed systems to that list). Each tends to favor a different type of lawyer! Common law systems, typically, have adversarial proceedings, where the lawyers for both sides must present the evidence for and against. Swing over to a civil law system, you'll often find inquisitorial judges who can do their own questioning and evidence weighing. You'll find this a lot in continental European systems. I once took part in a criminal proceeding (for the prosecution) where the judge allowed me to talk twice: reading the charges at the beginning and recommending a sentence at the end. The rest of the time it was him questioning witnesses, weighing evidence and speaking with the defendant (and his attorney). This means that the kind of lawyer that is \"good\" in a common law system can be completely sunk in a civil law system and vice versa. I could be a great public speaker, but if the legal system doesn't require me to say much at all, then I will - as a lawyer - loose out against a superior researcher or more creative thinker.\n\n2) A civil law system (in theory) codifies most of the law and seeks to accommodate any possible dispute within a perfectly designed framework, kinda like a house that you build brick for brick. The common law system make no such claim, and evolves by considering problems on a case by case basis, eventually deriving principles from the precedents, kinda like a growing tree.\nThat makes a huge difference for the way you construct arguments and the skills required to develop them. Let's take a simple example:\n\nA grabs B's wallet and runs off.\n\nCivil law Argument: Article 242 of the Criminal Code states: \"Whosoever takes chattels belonging to another away from another with the intention of unlawfully appropriating them for himself or a third person shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine.\" I believe that A's conduct is covered by that provision for the following reasons x,y and z. Therefore, A should be punished.\n\nCommon law argument: Pursuant to the case law of X vs. Y it is a crime for A to take B's property. I believe that this principle applies here because the case of X vs Y is sufficiently similar and cannot be distinguished from our case of A vs B on the facts or the law. A should be punished.\n\nThis gets significantly more complex if there is no established principle, then analogies can be drawn to almost any - even remotely relevant - cases.\n\n3) Are you working with a Jury or a Judge? Depending on the answer, you'll be looking for very different traits in your lawyer. I really don't mean this in a negative way, but a Jury requires significant elements of showmanship that will simply not fly with a Judge. Keep in mind that many civil law systems actually expressly prohibit jury trials! That means that much of the work for a lawyer in a civil law country revolves around being creative with your research and analysis of the law, as opposed to swaying opinion in the court room. You can often get away with very limited rhetorical skills, that would not fly in a common law court room.\n\n4) What area of law is in the case in? Depending on your legal system this can make a huge difference. Remember how I said above that civil law systems don't typically do adversarial trials or juries? Guess what there are exceptions to this! Trying a juvenile for instance? All of a sudden lay judges with no legal background are involved. Working in commercial litigation? Suddenly the inquisitorial judge will temper him/herself somewhat and let you question witnesses and present evidence.\n\n5) And just to make things more complicated some common law countries have - at least in some areas - established a significant body of statutes that limit the applicability of the common law. Conversely, civil law systems have areas where they've introduced very little legislation and strongly rely on judge made case law.\n\nHope that was helpful!",
"I have had a bad lawyer, then I replaced her with a good lawyer. The bad lawyer basically just acted like a liaison between the other party and I. In circumstances where I had leverage my lawyer didn't use that leverage to my advantage. She was also kind of a bitch, and wasted a lot of money without results.\n\nThe good lawyer: (This was a custody battle) He started off by telling me that he was going to act like a \"bulldog\" and I could be the good guy. He got shit done immediately, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn't accept failure - all while preparing me for the worst. He was always really honest about what could happen, and never made promises that he could not keep. Even now if I have a question or whatever, he will still exchange emails with me and he doesn't charge me any money unless he needs to spend money(filing court papers kind of shit) \n\nBasically a better lawyer is definitely worth it in the long run. My good lawyer was actually not the most expensive, he was actually pretty affordable... as far as lawyers go.\n\nI hope you don't need a lawyer.\n",
"Most importantly, a good lawyer is one who will put the interests of his clients above his own. (Which is something all lawyers are *supposed* to do, but so precious few actually do.)\n\nAlso, personality is critically important. The majority of cases never go to trial and are thus often either settled over the phone or in mediation. Bad lawyers are combative or impersonal and they will always have trouble settling cases out of court (which requires reaching agreements with opposing counsel). In some criminal cases, a good lawyer can have your case settled and set for diversion in one phone call. \n\nBeyond that, it's all about the skills several other folks have mentioned in here: diligence, intelligence, research and fact-finding, knowledge of the law and court practices and standards, etc. ",
"american lawyer here. Most people think certain facts + certain law = certain result. Not the case. Good lawyers know which strategies to use depending on which opposing counsel, prosecutor, judge, etc. they are up against. Some persuasive techniques will only work depending on who you are using them on. Sometimes the only way to get a certain result depending on a certain set of facts is to use a specific lawyer. I'm not talking about trial, 95% of cases don't go to trial. Trial skills are a whole other ball of wax. Some lawyers are awesome at resolving cases, others are terrible at the game but are unbelievable in the court room in front of a jury. Some suck at both but are brilliant writers. ",
"1. Strong communication (oral and written) skills, i.e. ability to be direct, tactful, and clear when dealing with clients, opponents and counsel.\n\n2. Ability to see the forest from the trees - strategy, tactics, risk vs benefit.\n\n3. Strong organisational skills to keep workflow steady; ability to delegate and manage others e.g. junior lawyers, assistants, paralegals (the rule is - if someone lower down the food chain is capable of doing the work you're doing...you shouldn't be doing it, unless you're doing it specifically to hone a technical aspect).\n\n4. Ability to network with and form positive working relationships with colleagues, opponents, counsel, referral sources, important clients and judges.\n\n5. Ability to balance technical rigour (you need to delve like a perfectionist into some cases, either because they are challenging and worth it, or because you need to develop that aspect of your technique) with practicality (you can't put 100% into every file, or you'll burn out, or make no profit).\n\n6. Willingness to bill hard (revenue & profit depend on it) whilst billing fairly.\n\n7. Negotiating ability. Poker ability.",
"The problem is your question assumes that the law is knowable. So much of the law is grey and unclear and arguable and dependent on the facts that what makes a \"good\" lawyer \"good\" is their ability to apply the vagaries of the law to the specific facts in their client's best interests.",
"A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge. An outstanding lawyer know BOTH!!\n\nEvery judge has his own personality, and his own set of quirks. A lawyer who has been before that same judge many times and knows what he will and won't go for has a huge advantage. \n\nSurprisingly it is also somewhat like a doctor or a plumber!! The more times that individual has handled that type of case, the higher his/her success rate. \n\nKnowing his stuff backwards and forwards, up and down, helps a lot, but at least as important is the experience that lawyer has had with that type of case, and with that particular judge. \n\nAlso, how bad he wants to win the case, and whether he really thinks the case is legit. ",
"The law is, most assuredly, not the law. The common law, which is the body of recorded decisions by judges, is a collection of nuanced and often contradictory decisions. Those decisions are frequently arbitrary.\n\nSome judges explain their decisions thoroughly and logically; some just make those decisions with no explanation. In theory, each of those circumstances carries the same legal weight, and although it should be obvious that only a fool would follow an arbitrary decision, that happens all the time.\n\nThe work of the lawyer in sorting through the body of common law decisions is to, first, understand the general principles driving those decisions, and, second, illustrate how the particular conditions driving a decision are reinforced, or distinguished, by the present circumstances. \n\nThis is not a simple task, and it is open to wide interpretation. A good lawyer is one who can make a compelling argument why, in the context of hundreds of years of common law decisions, a judge should decide a particular way in a particular case. A great lawyer is one who accurately assesses her client's chances in context and who avoids going before a judge when the chance of a favourable decision does not outweigh the client's need for one.\n\nEven statutory law is largely arbitrary, or has aspects of evidence, procedure, or penalty that are arbitrary. Every case can be argued successfully from both sides; there are very, very few binary situations in the law. Invariably, even those can be mitigated to some extent by good planning, research and good decision-making. A good lawyer is the one with an informed plan.\n\nYou guys are cute. You still cling to the notion, to a greater or lesser extent, that the universe is deterministic. It is not; it's chaotic. It doesn't obey your rules. When you get cancer, it's not because you didn't shop *organic*; it is most often just a matter of bad luck.\n\nEven a field like the law, which is supposed to be a deterministic system applied to a chaotic background, doesn't behave deterministically. A good lawyer is the one that realizes that *shit happens* and tries to minimize your chances of a horrible outcome.\n",
"The law is not always \"the law\" and the facts are not always \"the facts.\"\n\nFor example, the law prohibits you from driving a motorized vehicle while intoxicated. Simple enough. But what constitutes a \"motorized vehicle\"? The law doesn't say. So if you're in a motorized wheelchair and you get drunk, have you broken the law? What about a golf cart? (Not joking, there have been cases about this.) In those cases, a good prosecutor can skillfully argue that, if you look carefully at the intent behind drunk driving laws, they are first and foremost about safety, and that impaired driving of a golf cart or wheelchair are just as likely to put someone's safety at risk as a car. A good defense attorney, on the other hand, will skillfully argue that if the legislature had meant to include golf carts and wheelchairs it would have included them specifically in the law, and that various regulations about golf carts and wheelchairs don't refer to them as \"vehicles\" at all, suggesting that they are different from the \"vehicles\" defined in the statute. Both sides will have cases backing up their arguments.\n\nA bad lawyer in that situation might say, \"well, tough bananas, Wheelchair Jimmy. The law's the law so I suggest you plead guilty.\"\n\nThe same goes for the facts. One thing you really learn as a lawyer is that there is not \"the truth.\" There is your story (\"he didn't pay me my money after I built his deck\") and the other side's story (\"he only did half the work\"). Both of your stories might have some truth to them, but a good lawyer will present yours in the best possible light -- will tell your story in the way that is most compelling to the judge or jury.",
"a good lawyer... vs a goood lawyer..\n\nwho tells the better story.\n\nor\n\nwho knows which bottle of booze the judge likes more.\n",
"A good lawyer is finishing his motions in limine for trial at the end of the month, not reading this thread. I'm am not such a lawyer. ",
"U.S. civil litigation defense attorney here.\n\nMany laws are not meant to be black and white in the first place. A couple of examples:\n\n1. Under your lease, you're probably responsible for damage to your apartment, except \"normal\" wear and tear. What's \"normal\"? It's whatever a judge or jury says it is. Reasonable people can disagree on this.\n\n2. Many, many laws depend upon what's \"reasonable.\" Sued for negligence? The other side must prove (among other things) that you failed to exercise \"reasonable\" care. Charged with a crime? The prosecution must prove their case beyond a \"reasonable\" doubt. What's \"reasonable\" care, or \"reasonable\" doubt? It's whatever a judge or jury decides it is.\n\nIt might be tempting to think that we all agree on what's \"reasonable.\" But millions of reasonable people disagree on \"big\" issues like abortion, gun control, etc. It's just as easy to disagree on \"small\" issues like \"normal wear and tear,\" \"reasonable doubt,\" etc.\n\nThat begs a second question: why not just write laws that are black and white in the first place?\n\nAnswer: because we would have to write so many laws, with so much detail, that (a) we could never write enough laws in the first place, and (b) we would never want to live in a world that worked that way.\n\n\nTry to imagine how many laws you would have to write to define \"normal\" wear and tear to your apartment. Is a small dent in the refrigerator door normal? (How big/small? One inch? Two inches? 12 inches?) Is a tear in your carpet \"normal\"? (Where is it located? How big is it?) Is a broken deadbolt \"normal\"? Scuff on the linoleum? Stain on the wall? Broken window? Hole in the screen? You get the idea. We could never write enough laws to cover every possibility, so instead we rely upon concepts like \"normal wear and tear,\" and let judges and juries sort it out case-by-case.\n\nThat's where your lawyer comes in. Your lawyer knows that here, in the U.S., we follow a system called \"stare decisis\" - that is, we follow precedent. If a case gets decided one way, we want future cases to be decided the same way. It's good to live in a system where we can reasonably predict how cases will come out. (See what I did there?) But no two cases are alike, so it's up to your lawyer to figure out which old cases you think are most similar (and up to the other guy's lawyer to figure out which old cases THEY think are most similar), and then convince a judge/jury how your case should come out.\n\nTo carry on with our \"normal wear and tear example,\" let's say you have a 3-inch dent in your refrigerator door. Your landlord wants $500 for a new refrigerator, but you think that it's normal wear and tear. It turns out that there aren't any old cases involving refrigerator dents, but there's one case involving a 2-inch tear in carpeting (judge ruled for landlord), and another involving a 6-inch tear in a window screen (judge ruled for tenant).\n\nImagine the arguments:\n\nTenant lawyer: Judge, there was a tear twice as long in the window screen case, and that was considered \"normal wear and tear.\" This refrigerator dent is only three inches.\n\nLandlord's lawyer: That's true, judge, but in the carpeting case a two-inch tear was considered \"damage,\" not \"wear and tear.\"\n\nTenant's lawyer: But judge, in the case of carpeting, it's possible for a small tear to effectively ruin the entire carpeting. Torn carpeting has to be replaced before the tear gets worse. My client might have dented his refrigerator, but that doesn't impact the function of the refrigerator at all - the refrigerator still works perfectly fine. Heck, even the six-inch tear that ruined the window screen was considered \"normal wear and tear\" - this three-inch dent didn't ruin the fridge at all.\n\nLandlord attorney: But judge, this is a luxury apartment with stainless steel appliances. No one will rent this place with scratches in the refrigerator. My client simply must replace it.\n\nYou get the idea. Now, imagine that instead of a landlord-tenant case with $500 at stake, we're talking about an employment discrimination case with $50K at stake. Or a breach of contract case with $500K at stake. Or a wrongful death case with $10 million at stake. The stakes are bigger, but some of the basic concepts - defining what's \"reasonable,\" researching and extrapolating from old cases, etc. - will factor into the result.\n\nThere are many other considerations that are just as important. A few, briefly:\n\n- Recognizing small problems that have the ability to turn into big problems later. It's better to avoid litigation in the first place.\n\n- Coming up with creative solutions to problems. I just \"lost\" a case that we might not appeal, because there's an easy way to comply with the trial judge's decision. (The attorney who \"won\" this case seems to have figured this out, and is now threatening to appeal his \"win.\")\n\n- Understanding the inter-personal dynamics between the people involved in the lawsuit, and using that to your advantage. If I know the plaintiff HATES one of my managers, I'm probably not bringing that manager to a settlement conference. If I know the plaintiff is suing to cover future medical costs, I structure a settlement into an annuity that's cheaper for my client upfront but provides ongoing cash flow to the plaintiff.\n\n- Developing a good relationship with my client. If my client doesn't trust me enough to tell me the truth, then there's no way I can do my job effectively.\n\n- Knowing the judge. This gets thrown around tongue-in-cheek, but there's a legitimate point underlying it, and it's not golfing with the judge on the weekends. If I know how this particular judge has decided refrigerator-dent cases in the past (which might be very, very different from the way that the judge in the courtroom next door has decided refrigerator-dent cases in the past), then I am way ahead of the game.\n\n- Hard work, creativity and intelligence, strong writing skills, etc.\n\n- Brevity. Obviously.\n\nEDIT: formatting, typos",
"There are many things that make a lawyer a good lawyer:\n\n1. Knowledge of laws and precedents. The amount of reading that needs to be done by a good lawyer is unbelievable, and the memory that it requires is something that only few people have. Some of the things written in legislation are not possible to deduct, they need to be known and remembered.\n\n2. Critical thinking. A good lawyer needs to ensure that each and every possible risk is covered by the contract, and this is not only a science but an art. Of course, big law firms have templates for contracts with many clauses already made up, but trouble starts when somebody just adds them without understanding the big picture and without a perfect grasp of principles of law.\n\n3. Eloquence and ability to make a point. A good lawyer is actually somewhat uncommon, as he (she) needs to be excellent at both introvert and extrovert qualities. Analytical and methodical enough to read through the texts, extremely pedantic and attentive to minute detail (as any lawyer will tell you that the most unpleasant mistakes are the dumbest ones, when you place a wrong amount or date or name, etc.) and at the same time quick-witted and aggressive when needed to ensure that the battle is won during the face to face meetings with the other side. This is a very uncommon blend of traits.\n\n4. A strong network - a great lawyer has a huge list of trusted acquaintances, as very many things are being decided, settled, etc. using unofficial channels.\n\n5. Law is a huge field and there is no single lawyer and no single set of quality required. The best lawyers are the ones with deep domain knowledge and experience across the field.",
" > The Law is the Law\n\nOne of my patent lawyer friends has had several cases where he felt his client was clearly in the right, but the judgement landed against them. At the end of the day you're still trying to convince one or more people that your client is being truthful and that the law should be in their favor. There are a lot of grey areas, interpretations, and politics in law. Charisma and a silver tongue are as good if not better than actual knowledge.",
"A good lawyer isn't someone who knows all the laws. \n\nA good lawyer is someone who understands how to analyze facts carefully -- there are hardly ever slam-dunk cases. Some facts will be good for you. Some facts will be bad for you. And some facts you won't even know what to do with until after extensive research. \n\nA good lawyer is also someone who knows how to spot the issue (or as we in law school say, \"Answer the motherfucking call of the motherfucking question\"). Good lawyers hear their client's story/complaint and understand this case involves a tort for battery and the issue is whether the battery occurred when the defendant did such and such or that this murder was done by an accident so we should research cases dealing with involuntary manslaughter with facts like the case at hand. \n\nGood lawyers are able to take the issue they spotted and research efficiently for it. They understand how to utilize secondary sources in order to reach the proper case law. \n\nAlso, most importantly, good lawyers know how to shepardize. The law is always changing. Court decisions are constantly getting overturned. A good lawyer understands that not only should he have proper case law but the case law must still be good law (not overturned, not reversed, and preferably, not on appeal). \n\nFinally, good lawyers know how to fucking write. BUT not in the same sense as most people understand. There are different legal writing styles for different things (memos, briefs, legal opinions, client letters, etc.). Sometimes, the lawyer has to write objectively -- so that he and other lawyers working on the case can make a prediction on how the case will turn out. Other times, the lawyer has to write objectively persuasive (you're cramming your opinion down the person's throat, but you're also addressing the other side and subtly saying, 'These arguments are stupid because...My arguments are better because...'). \n\nAlso -- while this isn't necessarily a benchmark of good lawyering, a respectable lawyer is someone who isn't a total dickhole to opposing council. ",
"well, this isn't a technical answer but not all lawyers are badasses. I subleased from a lawyer who was absolutely awful at what he did. He went to school for learning about land laws and whatever, got a job at an oil company and was making roughly $40-50 a year. Not much really. \n\nNow, here's where it gets fun - within his first year of passing his bar exam and working that job, he decided he was bored with the job and wanted to get into criminal law - with NO knowledge or education based on it. He did, however, update his resume to say he passed with honors in that field. The first case he took up was a murder case and I assure you he gouged them out of money and had no idea what to say or do in a court room.\n\nI then got him evicted and took over the house I was subleasing.\n\nA good lawyer would'nt of done any of that, or gotten evicted by a pizza boy.",
"The ability to properly use quotation marks.",
"the lawyer that can exploit the law better or has a better relationship with the judge."
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3xoxa7 | why is 'x' shorthand for christ? (as in xmas = christmas). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xoxa7/eli5_why_is_x_shorthand_for_christ_as_in_xmas/ | {
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"cy6hjtg",
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"X stands for the Greek letter [Chi](_URL_0_) which is the first letter in the Greek spelling of Christ (Χριστός). It's just an abbreviation.",
" Χριστός is Christ in Greek. The short hand is the Greek letter \"X\" (chi) and not an English X. ",
"Why does my Aunt yell at people for using xmas then? She starts going on about how it's against Chirst or something to use xmas. She gets legitimately angry.",
"\"hey yo bro welcome, happy crossmas.\"\n\n*proceeds to do 72 improper pull ups within 30 seconds*",
"I always assumed it was thus: Tilt X 30* clockwise: + . a cross, which is a symbol of christ, hence x-mas. \n:Edit: this made much more sense in my head somehow. \n",
"There is, as it happens, a Wikipedia page on this that does a pretty good ELI5 version - better than I could, certainly. _URL_0_",
"Huh. TIL. I thought/was told, that x is like a \"criss-cross\", so if you Hsu take the beginning of that (criss), it's \"close enough\". These answers are way better and make much more sense. Guess I'm ruling this one made up by whoever told me now! ",
"ELI5 is for requesting simplified explanations of concepts that are too complex for you to understand otherwise. ELI5 is *not* for questions that are not complex and don't need simplification, and you're just asking because you don't know the answer (in other words, ELI5 is for things that you don't *understand*, not things that you merely don't *know*). Because of that, your post has been removed.\n\nNormally, I'd direct you to /r/Answers/ or /r/NoStupidQuestions for direct answers, but it looks like I caught this late enough that you've received multiple answers already."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter\\)"
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6sqzjl | how can we assume that people recycle properly? what happens if someone accidentally throws a non-recyclable item into the recycling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sqzjl/eli5_how_can_we_assume_that_people_recycle/ | {
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"The recycling plant has machines and people to split recycling. Even if it where all recycled properly you still need to put the coke can in the aluminum recycling machine and the coke bottle into the glass recycling machine."
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2dp5lk | how to weigh my own head without decapitating myself | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dp5lk/eli5_how_to_weigh_my_own_head_without/ | {
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"You have to use Archimedes' Principle as well as simple math to find ratios.\n\nStep one: Get a large tub, big enough for your entire body to submerge. Fill it to the top with water, then carefully climb into it and go under. Get out, try not to carry too much water outside of the tub. Measure the amount of water that your body has displaced.\n\nStep two: Get a smaller bucket, submerge only your head. Measure the amount of water that has been displace.\n\nStep three: Divide your total body measure by your head measure. If you are using pints, you might come up with 140 pints total, 10 for the head. If you divide 140 by 10, you get 14. \n\nYou will also notice that you can divide the larger number by either of the smaller numbers to get the other smaller number. 140/14=10 and 140/14=10\n\nStep four: Weigh yourself. Use that weight as the total body percent in your ratio. Divide that number by the previous result. That will give you the closest you can probably get to the weight of your head without getting really scientific. In general, your head should be about 7% of your total body weight.\n\n*Example: You displaced 10 pints of water with your head, 140 with your body. 140/10=14. You weigh yourself. You are 180 pounds. Divide 180 by 14 to get 12.86 pounds. Your head weighs 12.86 pounds. This works out to 7.14% of the total body weight of 180 pounds.*"
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m1o7y | what a microchip is and how it works? | I'm also open to 10 year old explanations and maybe even basic high school explanations. Anything after that, I'm stumped. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m1o7y/eli5_what_a_microchip_is_and_how_it_works/ | {
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"A microchip is just an electrical circuit that has been put onto a small piece of Silicon (or some other semiconductor). \n\nThere are lots of different types, and they all work in different ways. Maybe you want to know about CPU's, the microchip which does most of the computations on your computer?",
"A microchip is just an electrical circuit that has been put onto a small piece of Silicon (or some other semiconductor). \n\nThere are lots of different types, and they all work in different ways. Maybe you want to know about CPU's, the microchip which does most of the computations on your computer?"
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85yjmy | flat or smooth spots in lakes/oceans on the surface | I've always assumed it's something to do with the depth of the water or water temperature. Why is that in the middle of the ocean there are flat spots on the surface of the water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85yjmy/eli5_flat_or_smooth_spots_in_lakesoceans_on_the/ | {
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"There's a lot of different answers depending on the size of the body of water and waves that you're talking about. Let's go small to big.\n\n* On anything bigger than a puddle, wind is highly regional on light windy days under certain conditions. When breeze \"puffs\", it can cause a ripple effect to shimmer out. On really gusty days, such as when small clouds hide and show the sun, this can be extremely amplified. Water goes back to being calm fairly quickly afterward, so your lake will be dotted with flat spots which have been calm for a while and windy spots where breeze has just blown.\n\n* On slightly windier days, you can get \"tidal streaks\" of calmer-looking water to appear. They're often dotted with tiny rafts of bubbles formed by the surf, that look a little calmer than the ripply water around them, but bigger waves will still pass through them. What you're seeing in this case is a combination of cancelling-out effects that lower the level of wind at the water's surface enough for the water to collect dust or oils or these rafts of bubbles, and then those things on the surface help absorb and stabilize the smaller ripples. Land forms, like a point that sticks out and causes a consistent wind to \"bow out\" around it, can make this effect very visible.\n\n* Now to oceans, where the answer is \"we don't all get the same weather\". Water has a tendency to level out over time in the same way a tea bag dunked in water has a tendency to spread its colour out evenly over time. So if it's calm enough long enough, no waves occur. On the oceans, there are thousands of square miles where there's lots of wind to create waves, and there occasionally is thousands of square miles where there's no wind at all. It depends on the weather, ocean currents, and sometimes the nature of the nearby land, but sometimes things are just really, really still. So you can get \"becalmed\" out on the water sometimes, which caused no end of grief to ancient sailors, or you can experience 30 foot (or worse) swells when you're in a storm system.\n",
"If you are looking at water that is rough all over but then there are smooth spots you may also be looking at an area where waves are cancelling each other out, like noise cancelling in a headset where sound is picked up and then played half a wavelength later to make a kind of anti sound."
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3d4pj1 | why aren't movie statistics counted as viewers instead of dollars? this would remove the effect of inflation which now makes avatar the highest grossing movie instead of gone with the wind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d4pj1/eli5why_arent_movie_statistics_counted_as_viewers/ | {
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"Avatar would probably still win because there are more people on the planet now from when Gone With the Wind was originally in theaters.",
"It would be difficult to count viewers. If a movie is really good, people will often go back and see it two or three more times. This is more easily reflected when you count revenue.",
"Why would they want to remove the effect of inflation? It's a great way to twist numbers.",
"Box office stats are reported by the studios, who can report them however they like. And you're right: *they wouldn't be as impressive if they used an objective marker like attendance*.\n\nBut studios *want* their films to look like one of the biggest movies of all time, because that's good marketing. Universal wants to be able to announce that Minions had the third-highest opening for an animated film and that Jurassic World is already the fourth-highest grossing film of all time, because these help draw even more viewers. The message they want to get across is: This movie is historic! Everyone's talking about it! If you haven't seen it yet, you need to go see this *now*! Plus, breaking a box office record is a great way to get free publicity. If Variety and NBC and the NY Times are all reporting that Jurassic World just passed The Dark Knight in all-time box office, that's keeping their movie in the public eye. When it passes Avengers, it'll get even more publicity.",
"France does this.\n\nFrance lists films by tickets sold, not amount of money made.\n\nThe number one film of all time in france with 21.9 million tickets sold is.....Titantic\nGone with the Wind is 6th\n\nTop 6 films each come from a different decade.",
"Counting revenues lets producers know how much money they made. If a movie makes 8 million but cost 30 million to make, they want to know that.\n\nSure, they could easily convert that to tickets sold, they are obviously related, but they just don't care about \"views\" the way youtube does. And, today's producers don't care about inflation effect and competing with Gone With The Wind. They aren't interested in breaking records for its own sake, and they don't produce movies thinking \"this is really important, I need everyone to see it\". They just want to know their return on investment.",
"A studio doesn't care how many people saw the movie, they care how much people paid to see the movie."
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13f3sh | why are plants considered living beings? | Studying at school library, mind wandered off, thought of this, cannot wrap my head around it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13f3sh/why_are_plants_considered_living_beings/ | {
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"Well first, we have to agree on what to call 'living'. Essentially, for something to be considered 'living' it must:\n\n* metabolise (convert food to energy)\n* homeostase (regulate themselves)\n* grow (increase in size)\n* stimuli sensitivity (be able to react)\n* reproduce (create new generations)\n* adaptation (change and evolve)\n\nIt's easy to assume that a plant isn't living with opinions such as 'it doesn't respond to pain', 'it can't move around', or 'they don't evolve' - But when you take a more education approach, you'll find that they do respond to being harmed, they do move around (i.e. react to sunlight) and evolve (slowly, as is all evolution).\n\nYou now may well find yourself asking yourself if plans have a conscience, personality, awareness or emotion"
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6nmjc9 | the fear of ai. | AI would still be bound to a base instruction set, and it seems like we'd (probably) implement kill switches in their programming.
And even if neither of those things turn out to be true, and sentient (artificial) life is created ... so what?
Is it a fear of creating something or someone smarter than ourselves? I just don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nmjc9/eli5_the_fear_of_ai/ | {
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"There has been a fear of irresponsible science creating a chain reaction that the creator loses control of since Frankenstein, which was pretty close to the point where science began to have a noticeable effect on the common person's life (via industrialization). Since AI is currently a cutting edge research topic, it gets the treatment, too. ",
"Any AI capable of self-improvement can probably identify and circumvent its own kill-switches. Any AI *not* capable of self-improvement is of limited utility.\n\nThe problem is not with an AI smarter than ourselves *per se*, but rather that there is no guarantee that it would be friendly, and if it were malevolent then in the highly-digitised world we live in it would have an enormous amount of power, meaning the potential impact of an unfriendly AI scenario is enormous.\n\nMany people do believe that with sufficiently-careful procedures, such a scenario could be avoided. I certainly agree that this is so for *intentional* AI, so as long as *emergent* AI doesn't happen we're probably OK.",
" > AI would still be bound to a base instruction set, and it seems like we'd (probably) implement kill switches in their programming.\n\nThe problem with AI is that *we can't program it*. Consciousness is far too complex a thing for us to even understand, let alone program. The only possibilities being explored to create true AI involve things like self-learning neural nets. Which means that when the AI is finally complete, we'll have no idea what its programming is, nor do we really even have any way to fully understand it.\n\n > And even if neither of those things turn out to be true, and sentient (artificial) life is created ... so what?\n > Is it a fear of creating something or someone smarter than ourselves? I just don't get it.\n\nThink of it this way. If we can create an AI that's smarter than ourselves, then that AI could create another AI smarter than *itself*, which could create another AI smarter than **itself**. Very rapidly, we'd be faced with a super-intelligence whose thought process are beyond our ability to comprehend (much like your dog could never comprehend the complexities of your thoughts).\n\nWe'd have no way to know if such a super-intelligent AI is benevolent or malevolent. Will it want to help us, or destroy us? And even if it wants to help us, will it help us in ways that we can tolerate? You're only \"helping\" your dog when you have it spayed or neutered, but your dog isn't particularly pleased with the outcome.",
"The fear isn't of AI, as such. \n\nThis situation has been discussed in speculative fiction ranging back to *Frankenstein* and given direct wording in *Jurassic Park*; that humans are \"so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.\"\n\nNote that \"AI\" doesn't mean Siri or Alexa. We're talking about True AI. \n\nThe fear is that we create a new life form (and possibly entrust ourselves to it) without considering the *consequences*. ",
"The issue is that there's a lot of complexity to programming a kill switch for AI. Let's just start with a basic off-switch. You have some robot that's programmed to load boxes onto a truck and you have a remote that can switch it off. This is all the AI wants to do. It doesn't want to take over the world or enslave mankind and it never will unless we change what it wants. For now, it just wants to load boxes. Let's say that the robot is loading boxes as normal and it's about to do something wrong and you're getting ready to hit the kill switch. The AI doesn't want you to press that button, because that button will stop it from loading boxes, which is the only thing it wants, so the concern is that it might try to stop you from pressing that button, and that's bad. So let's do some tweaking. Since we can change what the AI wants, we can program it so it doesn't care if the kill switch is hit or not. We can say something like \"if the kill switch is hit, that is equivalent to putting 10 boxes on a truck.\" So now we don't have to worry about the AI trying to stop us, because hitting the kill switch is a good outcome for it. But now we have a different problem: the robot is now incentivized to press the kill switch instead of doing work. So instead of loading boxes, it will just spend all its time trying to get at the button or doing dangerous things so you'll have to press it. ",
"That's a popular question here. I hope ye find these previous posts helpful.\n\n\n1. [ELI5: why Is It Considered Dangerous to Create...?](_URL_6_)\n1. [ELI5: Why Are We So Scared of Ai...?](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Why Are Some People Afraid of Ai If There...?](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: Why Are Some People Afraid of Ai If There...?](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Why Is Ai a Threat to Humanity...?](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: What Are Real Dangers of Sophisticated Ai...?](_URL_5_)\n1. [ELI5: why Should We Fear Selfaware Robots Why do We...?](_URL_3_)\n"
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9f66i3 | how does hyperbaric chamber therapy help in the treatment of things like blood poisoning and gangrene? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f66i3/eli5_how_does_hyperbaric_chamber_therapy_help_in/ | {
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"Oxygen is a gas dissolved in your blood, kinda like how CO2 is a gas dissolved in pop. \n\nYou can dissolve more gas if you use more pressure. Hyperbaric therapy is used to dissolve more oxygen into your blood. Some wounds get worse because there's not enough oxygen-carrying blood flowing to it. So if the blood flow is diminished, you might as well have it carry extra oxygen so your tissues get fed.\n\nThe opposite reason is why people who climb Mt. Everast (and others at high altitude) need to use oxygen tanks: at higher elevation, air pressure is less, so the oxygen content is less.",
"Normally red blood cells are already at or near full saturation. HBOT merely dissolves more O2 into the liquid phase of the blood under pressure. Gangrene involved death of tissue. It died because not enough blood got to it. It is already dead . I am referring to dry or ischemic gangrene not Clostridial infection. Visit Atlanta Hyperbaric Center, if you want to info about [hyperbaric oxygen therapy](_URL_0_).\n\n \n"
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atm23h | why don’t brits use articles (a, an, the) in front of certain words like hospital and university? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atm23h/eli5_why_dont_brits_use_articles_a_an_the_in/ | {
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"Generally, you would add the article if you're describing a specific, often physical, act, while you would omit the article if you're describing a wider act.\n\nFor example, take the sentences:\n\nI am going to jail / I am going to **the** jail.\n\nThe first one say you're going to be locked up in a jail, while the second one say you're physically going to a jail, but not why. You could be visiting a person in the jail or working there, for example.\n\nSimilarly, \"Go to bed\" means \"Go to sleep\", while \"Go to the bed\" means \"Move towards the bed\"\n\nAmericans also omit the articles when saying \"Go to school\" / \"Go on vacation\" etc.",
"It's more of an American thing to use them than a British thing to not.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn Canada we say going \"to hospital\", going \"to university\", etc. Americans go \"to the hospital\". But as mentioned below, context matters. Sometimes the article is included."
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5pts2g | what does post-truth mean, and what is a post-truth society? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pts2g/eli5_what_does_posttruth_mean_and_what_is_a/ | {
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"It is a term of criticism, suggesting that the society cares more about what people *say* then about whether that thing is true.",
"\"Post-truth\" was the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year in 2016. Its meaning according to them: \"Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.\" "
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61f28r | how does code translate to circuits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61f28r/eli5_how_does_code_translate_to_circuits/ | {
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"If you take a stripped clean cpu architecture with no sophistication, it is loading an instruction from memory based on the instruction pointer value, and decoding that instruction to signals used to control the cpu circuitry. Then automatically advancing the instruction pointer to the next instruction. This is called the fetch–decode–execute cycle.\n\nOne instruction could be decoded to what signal levels to send to hundreds of other places in the circuitry of the cpu. Signals control if registers should store the value on the bus, control if registers should put their value on a bus, what operation the ALU should use on input values. Control if the latest comparison flags should control the storing of values. And so on..\n\nA loop is nothing else but the conditional write to the instruction pointer register. So a while loop in a high level language is some test instructions for the condition, and the condition outcome is stored in a condition register, then followed by the conditional write to the instruction register based on a bit in the conditions, if it should jump to the instruction after the while loop, or just continue into the while loop for another iteration until its end, where an unconditional jump goes up to the test instructions again.\n\nTypes of variables is a high-level construct. In assembly language everything is bits in registers and loadable from memory. Assembly instructions use these values for specific purposes. It is perfectly possible to multiply a memory address with another value, but the result value is not useful. It is however useful to add a value to a pointer (to calculate the address of an element in an array). Many high-high languages zero-initialize variables instead of letting them have the value of whatever existed in the memory where it is allocated.\n\nHowever, a modern cpu has lots of sophistication to make it run faster, but they all maintain compatibility with the above model. A compiler writer or developer writing a tight loop in assembly can use understanding of the sophistication to get faster running code though.",
" > If you take a fresh out of manufacturing microcontroller, how do you make it understand how do you make it understand C++ and not another language (say, Java)?\n\nYou already said you understand that all code gets turned into assembly. Each cpu has an instruction set: a series of operation codes and expected inputs and outputs. Assembly is these instructions and you give it the memory addresses of the inputs and outputs. So it doesnt matter what language you use they all get translated into low level code. What does matter is what compiler you use. C++ has different compilers for different cpu architectures. Java has 1 compiler that turns your java code into bytecode. Which can be run on any java virtual machine. A java virtual machine is code that has been compiled for a specific cpu architecture.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nA cpu fresh out of manufacturing has an instruction set. They designed it to work with specific instructions. You then write a compiler to adhere to those specific set of instructions. Physically when a program runs, the cpu is forced into a cycle where it reads assembly instructions from memory. These instructions are usually 3 binary values. But engineers set up the first value so that when it is translated into text it looks like a word. ADD could be an instruction. \n It looks like a word, but it can still be stored in binary. When the cpu reads the ADD instruction it expects 2 more binary values to be stored in memory. If you forget the second value and instead have the instruction LOAD. The binary balue of the words LOAD will be used as the second input of the ADD instruction. Then the next operation code would probably be invalid and your cpu would bail.",
"\n > How does a while loop look like in terms of switching a couple of transistors?\n\nA CPU has some *registers* which are small transistor-based locations for holding data. Usually registers are the same size as the CPU's main processing size (32-bit CPU has 32-bit registers, 64-bit CPU has 64-bit registers), but sometimes registers are larger or smaller. Some registers are *general purpose* meaning that they're just used by programs for storing whatever data. Other registers are *special purpose* which means they change the behavior of the CPU in some way.\n\nOne special purpose register is the program counter or PC. The CPU is hard wired to fetch data from memory at a memory location (address) specified by the PC. The data that's fetched is a coded *instruction* for the CPU. Based on 0's and 1's in the data that was fetched, the CPU does some specific hard wired function like addition, subtraction, memory access, etc. Which general purpose registers to use for inputs / outputs of the operation are also specified by the instruction data. (Depending on which CPU and which instruction, there may be bit patterns that specify registers, other bit patterns may allow the instruction's input / output to be directed to special purpose registers, memory locations, or a literal value stored as part of the instruction itself.)\n\nAfter processing the instruction, by default the CPU increments the PC to set up to fetch the next instruction. But there are some instructions that modify the default behavior -- there are instructions that can *write* to the PC register! Such an instruction is usually called a *branch* or *jump* instruction, and it allows the program's execution to take a different path.\n\nA CPU has a special purpose register called the *flags register* which contains various bits that are set to indicate conditions in arithmetic operations. Specifically the Carry flag or C flag is set when the result of an addition or subtraction exceeds the register width, the Zero flag or Z flag is set when the result of an arithmetic operation is zero. There are then *conditional branch* instructions which reset the PC only if some flag-based condition occurs. With the arithmetic operation of subtraction, the C flag can be used to check for less/greater and the Z flag can be used to check for equality. So your loop that says `do { ... } while( i < 5 )`, will translate to an arithmetic instruction to subtract `5` from `i` and throw away the result, followed by a conditional jump instruction which sets PC to an address at the beginning of the loop if the C flag is set.\n\n > What about giving a data type to a variable and initialising it?\n\nFrom the CPU's point of view, it's all just bytes in memory. The compiler/linker/loader cooperate to assign a specific location in memory to each variable. Local variables exist on the stack. There's some large block of memory set up by the OS, or the language runtime library's startup code, a *stack pointer* special CPU purpose register that starts out at one end (usually the high-address end), advances toward the other end each time a function is called, and retreats each time a function returns. The memory set aside by the advancing SP register is a \"scratchpad\" for each function to use, called the *stack frame*. The stack frame is where data's put that's limited to a single invocation of a single function -- arguments, local variables, temporary storage of intermediate values in complicated expressions. Modern \"production-quality\" compilers with optimizations turned on will try to avoid using space in the stack frame, in favor of keeping data in registers. A function call also saves the address of the following instruction on the stack, so the function return knows what to set the PC to in order to transfer control back to the caller. (Most CPU's have a single `CALL` instruction which takes care of saving the PC of next instruction on stack and jumping, and a `RET` instruction which does the reverse, removing a value from the stack and loading it into PC.)\n\n > If you take a fresh out of manufacturing microcontroller, how do you make it understand how do you make it understand C++ and not another language (say, Java)?\n\nThe CPU doesn't understand C++. It understands its own machine language. When you write a C++ program, you run that program through a compiler. A compiler can be considered a very simple thing -- it takes one string of bits -- a C++ source file -- and turns it into another string of bits -- machine code for your microcontroller CPU.\n\nHow? The compiler does a bunch of sophisticated string processing to figure out what the C++ source file is supposed to tell the computer to do. Then it generates machine language for the microcontroller CPU -- bit patterns which will, when loaded into the microcontroller memory, cause the microcontroller CPU to operate in the way you specified in your C++ source code.\n",
" > How does a while loop look like in terms of switching a couple of transistors? \n\nAll processors have a register called the instruction pointer (or program counter), which stores the address of the currently executing instruction. After each instruction is executed, the instruction pointer will be incremented to fetch the next instruction. Some instructions modify the state of the instruction pointer, loading it with a new value and thus transferring control to a different part of the program. To create a loop, you would transfer control back to a previous point in the program.\n\n > What about giving a data type to a variable and initialising it?\n\nData types are for the benefit of the programmer and do not exist at the machine level - everything is a binary number.\n\n > If you take a fresh out of manufacturing microcontroller, how do you make it understand how do you make it understand C++ and not another language (say, Java)?\n\nEvery microcontroller has an instruction set. Code written with those instructions is *machine code*. It is the only thing that a processor can execute directly. To execute a program written in a high level language, you either translate that program into machine code first (compilation), or you have an existing program that will interpret the code. You don't \"make the processor understand C++\". The processor does not understand C++. You have to write a program which will translate C++ into your target machine language."
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5knf13 | why are military members so opposed to socialism, when the military receives benefits similar to a socialist government? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5knf13/eli5_why_are_military_members_so_opposed_to/ | {
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"If this is a US based question, you should check out how the VA operates, or how DFAS pay operates, or what DFAC food tastes like. \n\nThe reason is that they've seen what central planning looks like, and prefer the reverse.",
"It should be pointed out that if you asked five people what \"Socialism\" meant, you'd get six different answers...\n\nAt any rate, at least in the United States, he military tends to be (American-style) conservative, for numerous reasons, but partially because American conservativism encourages a strong military and also because the military is a large and old institution and large and old institutions tend to be conservative. \n\nIn turn, American-style conservativism has declared itself strongly opposed to (what it considers) socialism. \n\nAlso, remember that there are millions of people employed by or serving in the military, and thus millions of opinions. My father and uncle both served in the military for decades and both are staunch liberals who favor many \"socialist\" policies. ",
"Other users have given great answers. I wanted to also point out that there will always be elements of socialism in our government. There will also be elements of capitalism in our government. True socialism (all wealth spread out equally) will never happen because humans aren't made to all work and share equally. We are too selfish. This is also the reason why true capitalism won't work. It requires that everyone be constantly trying their best to make a living with minimum or no handouts. \n\nMy point in saying the above comment is to point out that just because we have elements of socialism or capitalism, doesn't mean that either economic system is being promoted above the other. ",
"Uhh...literally just got off of active duty in the US Army. But, I know a decent portion of my unit was left leaning. I only say left leaning because socialism is a pretty undefined term, both on context of this topic and generally. Everyone views it differently. Point is though, I knew A LOT of Bernie supporters in my unit, who is the closest thing to a \"socialist\" we've experienced in recent history in the mainstream media.\n\nBut, on the other side of the coin. The people I've seen who oppose it, use the benefits we receive as an example of why. Military medicine is perceived as terrible, which is \"socialized health care\". From what I've understood, wait times in the ERs on post are about the same as they are in the civilian world, so its really just a preconceived notion. Soldiers experience issues with in-unit medicine because the army is a bureaucracy, not because of the socialization of the process. \n\nUhh, point being. They're probably opposed to it due to their own political leanings and confirmation bias. And those who support it is probably due to their own political leanings and confirmation bias.",
"The military receives benefits similar to a socialist government... specifically, similar to a dysfunctional socialist government in southern Europe, rather than a German or Scandinavian government. \n\nBut there is another key difference, they *earn* those benefits through hard work, through being willing to have their lives uprooted at a moment's notice, through being willing to die in doing their duty. Nothing about teh military experience teaches people that they have a right to expect good things because they are entitled to them as citizens. The military teaches that a true citizen is wiling to sacrifice everything, to sleep in a hole in the mud, and fight, kill, and die for the nation. People who aren't willing to do that are morally inferior, and they are entitled to less; they aren't entitled to shit, they deserve to experience the suffering that results from the shit lives they created for themselves. \n\nNote that this is not my personal belief, I'm in favor of single payer healthcare and other socialized programs. It will be a better world if we lift up both the worthy and the unworthy. However, I'm capable of understanding a different mindset, I suggest that everyone try. Military life is about teamwork, slackers are despised. Slackers threaten everyone's safety. Providing benefits to all people inevitably means providing them to lazy people. You and I may see that the benefits outweigh the costs, people from other life experiences hate the thought of giving anything to someone who doesn't deserve it."
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eshes2 | mirages on the road | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eshes2/eli5_mirages_on_the_road/ | {
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"When light passes through materials of different densities, its direction changes.\n\nWhen you have a road on a hot day, the air near the road is significantly hotter than the air further above it.\n\nThis causes light passing from the cool air to the hot air to be bent. So the line of sight from your eye that would hit a spot on the road is instead \"curved\" upwards and hits the sky near the horizon. So instead of seeing the road, it looks like portions of the sky have been cut and pasted on the road in some sort of bad photoshop.\n\nSince the air is constantly moving and mixing and isn't a perfectly constant temperature, the specific ways the lights bend are different and constantly changing giving which makes the image look wavy instead of a perfect reflection. This makes what is an image of the sky look like water."
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24r0cq | why is it the responsibility of the waiter/waitress to cover the bill if their customer 'dines and dashes'? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24r0cq/eli5why_is_it_the_responsibility_of_the/ | {
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"Its not. It is written off as a loss.",
"It is not, and if you're in a place that does this, report them and get another job.\n\nEdit, another thread prompted me to look into why this is being a thing to be asked all of a sudden, and I found more info. Here's a little better answer:\n\nIt's not legal, most places. But it's a thing where the establishement compares what was served out to what the server's tables brought in, and if there's a missing bit of money, that's taken out of the tips, and the server gets what's left, if there is any.\n\nIt's a means to try to get the server police the tables to ensure the customers pay. \n\nThe choice is up to the server to put up with that or to find another job. That they don't report it is interesting, if it's illegal in their area of the world.\n",
"Everyone saying \"it's not legal\" and \"it doesn't happen\" has no experience working in the service industry. This is actually a common, although not universal, occurrence. There was a situation a few months ago in [new York City](_URL_1_) that hit [Reddit's front page](_URL_2_). But it's not just her story, [it's something that is actually sanctioned by the United States Department of Labor](_URL_0_).\n\nReally, it depends on the restaurant, and most restaurant managers and owners consider the waitstaff to be among the least valuable, most interchangeable and most replaceable parts of the business. If you're looking for a job in the industry, this is a valid question you can ask during the interview; whether you choose to take the job based on their answer is up to you, but it helps to know ahead of time."
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"http://consumerist.com/2013/04/02/after-a-dine-and-dash-is-it-legal-for-a-restaurant-to-take-money-from-a-waiters-tips/",
"http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/12/suzanne_parratt_servers_being_forced_to_pay_for_walkouts_is_surprisingly.html",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/... | ||
4ykqhm | how hard resets/power-offs are bad for a computer's software or hardware. | For example, if I put the exact two computers through the same paces, except for one of them I always just shut it off with a hard power-off, will there be any difference between the two after one year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ykqhm/eli5_how_hard_resetspoweroffs_are_bad_for_a/ | {
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"The concern is when a computer is writing to the hard drive. If its in the middle of writing and there is a sudden loss of power it can cause data corruption and potentially cause complete loss of everything on the hard drive, including the operating system",
"Software stores data on your hard drive in a structured manner. If it can't properly clean up after itself, the data may become corrupted. It's like tearing a notepad away from someone while they are in the process of writing."
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3g0hus | where does the energy go to when you have a fully charged device and it is still plugged into the wall? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g0hus/eli5_where_does_the_energy_go_to_when_you_have_a/ | {
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"This is how I've been told to think about it: it's not that the power plug is PUSHING power out to the device, it's that the device battery is PULLING power from the plug. When the battery is 'full', it stops PULLING thereby eliminating any further flow of electrons.\n\nCan anyone confirm?",
"For the most part, the charger it stops drawing current once the device is charged, so there is no energy being used. Merely being plugged in doesn't mean that energy is being used."
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5mrrqv | what does the canine tooth do in humans? | Does canine tooth really have a function in current or past human digestion system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mrrqv/eli5_what_does_the_canine_tooth_do_in_humans/ | {
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"It's great for biting things, like biting a piece of meat so it doesn't move while the incisors cut it away. This gives you a chunk small enough to grind up and swallow.",
"It is a remnant from our past evolutionary tree.\n\nToday we don't rely on the canine teeth as much as a couple of thousand years ago (perhaps couple of hundred thousand).\n\nBut because evolution is very slow process especially when it comes to evolving away from a previous beneficial selection state, we still have the canines.\n\nShould we continue to eat all these highly processed soft food we may still evolve our teeth away completely :)\n\nEDIT: So the answer to your question is that we don't have them now as a necessary survival trait, but we use to depend on them in the past for defence and ripping meat off bones (like what WRSaunders said below).",
"I'm no anthropologist, but I would guess that they were used to tear through rough meats and what not. Also, in a world without scissors, those sharp teeth sure do come in handy. I once knew a guy who believed that humans weren't supposed to be omnivorous and early human's sharp teeth were used as nutcrackers. ",
"It was evolved to aid our ancestors in eating meat. As were the bicuspids. Incisors and molars are for eating plants. The fact that we have both indicates that we are omnivores. "
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3rpi4b | why does the us allow non-citizens to own property in the us? | Is this typical for countries to allow ownership of land to non residents?
No negative connotations meant here, just curious as it seems like bad country policy to allow your land to be purchased up by non citizens. And I'm seeing lots of articles about real estate markets around the country improving because of foreign money, and foreign buyers a | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rpi4b/eli5_why_does_the_us_allow_noncitizens_to_own/ | {
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" > just curious as it seems like bad country policy to allow your land to be purchased up by non citizens\n\nWhy? It's not like it becomes the sovereign land of the country they're from. It's still American soil and subject to American laws."
]
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3efja6 | how come if i put the wire in a certain position, my "broken" headphones will play sounds in both ears rather than just 1? | And why is it always the right ear that stops working?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3efja6/eli5_how_come_if_i_put_the_wire_in_a_certain/ | {
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"Your headphones obviously have a loose connection somewhere inside the cable jacket. When you put the cable into just the right position it will complete the circuit and you'll hear sound in the right ear. The two ears use different wires so that's why one is broken and the other works fine.",
"To elaborate a little bit more on /u/aragorn18's answer: The cable is broken at one point. If your cable is twisting the one way it pulls the breakage point apart, thus breaking the circuit. If it twists the other way, it pushes the two points together thus giving you contact again."
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9sekpu | what is "daemon tools" used for or what are iso files? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9sekpu/eli5_what_is_daemon_tools_used_for_or_what_are/ | {
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"Daemon Tools is a program that let's you create a virtual cd-drive on your computer. \n\nAn ISO is a file type that is basically a copy of a CD.\n\nSo to use these, you put the ISO file into your virtual drive, and the computer acts as if a CD has been put into its CD Drive, and it can start installing a program from that CD. People that crack anti-piracy features on software will often also put extra files on the CD that allow you to bypass these security features. If they are a more advanced cracking group, they will often have custom installers with music and credits to their team."
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2ioj24 | why is a pc faster when it has an emptier memory? | So my laptop runs faster, and this is true for most computers, (I believe) whenever I un-install games on the one time when I completely wiped steam and un-installed all of my games, that (noticeably) speeds up my PC. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ioj24/eli5_why_is_a_pc_faster_when_it_has_an_emptier/ | {
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"It depends what you wiped/uninstalled. Uninstalling programs like steam itself, can result in faster computer speeds since it runs processes in the background. Unless your HDD is full, or near max there shouldn't be an issue. The reason when it is near max/full that it is an issue is because computers still use virtual memory, they use hard drive space instead of RAM, when appropriate, your computer can suffer from being slow if RAM is at capacity, and virtual memory is called upon, and the HDD is near full or in other cases, free memory is terribly fragmented, meaning the disc head has to spin the disk more to get the same amount of stuff done that may otherwise not require a bunch of spinning. Since you received significant speed increases when wiping your hdd, i would also recommend defragging it.\n\nHope this help!",
"It depends on what sort of performance boost you're talking about. The reason why your computer was working faster after you removed steam could be described by few factors. First is now you no longer have steam running in the background. Steam has been updating quite frequently and the application itself has gotten quite large. I would sometimes notice it taking up to 250MB of memory space while idling. I have 8GB of ram and a decent CPU, so it doesn't make any noticeable difference, but on older machines the impact might be much greater. For example my buddy has a very old rig which he uses to play obsolete RTS on our VPN. Steam may take up as much as 25% of processing power at any given time, though his case is extremely rare because the machine itself is outdated, and he never flushed his windows since he bought it, so there's all kinds of wrong shit going on with it in the background. \n\nSecond factor will be hard drive performance. Even though it hasn't been a center of attention until lately - hard drives play a very important role in PC performance. Your fast CPU and RAM will get you only so far if it takes forever to pull data from your hard drive. There are different kinds of storage speeds. \n\nYou got HDD (hard disk drive. Data is stored on magnetic plates spinning at extreme speeds) which is the most popular option. There are different makes and models that will give you different results. Ill hive you WD series for example. They have \"green\" model which is energy efficient but slow. Disk speed is only around 5krpm, seek speed is much slower than normal as well. These are good for large server storage and archiving purposes as they tend to last longer compared to faster models. For that purpose they may contain a feature that will put them to sleep if they are not being accessed, and when you DO need to access them they need to take their time to spool up to working speed. Also OEMs love those because how cheap they are. Then you got Blue series which is \"standard\". 7k rpm disks. Read speeds are noticeably faster than green series. \"black\" series is their \"performance\" brand which will still be around 7.5krpm but will have improved heads and cache and seek times. Then you have enthusiast ones like \"raptor\" (dont know if they still even make those) those are 10krpm with super fast seek times and large cache. Much improved performance over Blue. \n\nHow fast your hard drive is will also depend on storage capacity. Like /u/SuicideByYourMom compared storage to a room. More room you have - more time it will take to look for shit, because you can only memorize where only so many things are (cache). Defragmentation is like a cleanup crew that will scan your entire drive and put things and files where they belong (close to each other). After defrag - when you open a program your hard drive won't have to search over different sectors scattered over different plates for relevant pieces of that program. They will be close together and programs will open/run noticeably faster. Imagine you're in the same bigass room and your task is to assemble a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle. When the disk is fragmented your puzzle pieces are everywhere. There's one on the TV, one on the lamp, one under the couch. You have a map and know EXACTLY where those 100 pieces are but it will still take you much longer to walk around the room and gather pieces before you put them together instead of just picking up the pieces from a neat, organized stack and building the puzzle from there (defragmented drive).\n\nThen you have SSDs (solid state drives. Data is stored on microchips just like flash drives) and RamDisks(Same as SSD but use RAM chips for storage. Insanely fast, Insanely expensive, Lose data if they don't have power. Very uncommon, won't get into them.). Entry level SSDs are much more faster than even enthusiast HDDs. Though where they win in speed - they lose in capacity and price per gigabyte. The reason behind it is the lack of mechanical parts. If HDD is like a big room filled with stuff and you have to walk around to find it (though you know where things are, it's the walking that wastes your time), SSD is like an automated warehouse. Instead of having a person walk around the warehouse looking for necessary pieces it has a conveyor belt near every item(sector), and a mechanism behind each item to push them onto conveyor when needed. So now instead of bringing data piece by piece you can throw all the necessary bits onto conveyor at once and deliver it in a much quicker and efficient matter. SSDs are not affected by fragmentation because the whole drive is mapped, and each sector has its own independent \"push\" mechanism(nobody has to waste their time by walking around looking for things, it's all ready for pickup), but the downside to them is that with use the sectors start wearing out independently. So some parts of your drive may become slower than others in the future. Defrag on SSDs is not only unnecessary but also advised against because it causes unnecessary wear on the entire drive which may cause it to wear out even faster without providing any increase in performance. \n\nNow that you have a general idea about how storage works on desktop computers you might have a better idea about why your PC is faster after you deleted your steam library. ",
"Memory and hard drive space are 2 different things. Memory is how many processes can be running at the same time (scripts...how hard it thinks) and hard drive is physical storage (how much it can remember...). My guess is you're either not exiting your game/what ever or its still running scripts in the background. Uninstalling fixes both of these issues though not necessary, press control+alt+delete, open the processes tab and manually close scripts you don't want. Be careful though, you can corrupt data by mistake this way...",
"The placebo effect is definitely a possibility. Does the system just \"feel\" faster or are you using timing utilities to compare?\n\nThere are a few things that can potentially make a difference, but whether it's measurable or noticeable depends on your particular system.\n\n1. Steam running in the background. Steam is mostly idle so this isn't a huge CPU drain unless your computer is two potatoes held together with silly string. However, it downloads updates for games in the background. Downloading a 2GB patch for TF2 will cause your web browsing to slow the fuck down.\n1. Registry keys. Some games store data in the registry. This isn't so common anymore because there's better ways to do things now (roaming profiles, app data folders), but older games used to really abuse the registry because it was the easiest way to get certain things done. If two programs both store & load data in the registry, they will both slow down because they have to scan over each other's data in order to find their own respective data. If you have a dozen games cramming stuff in there, than anything else that uses the registry (email, browser, etc) will have a slowdown whenever they try to hit it.\n1. Windows pre-fetching. Windows Vista & higher will keep track of which programs you use frequently, and will load parts of those programs in memory when your system boots up so that launching those programs is faster. If you're using those programs, great. If you're using other programs, then the pre-loaded data gets in the way, and your system slows down in order to clear it out (called \"paging\"). I have heard of one guy where his system was stuck trying to pre-load a game that was too large for physical memory (C & C generals?), meaning that his computer thrashed on boot. \n1. Other programs running in the background now have less work to do. Things like back-up utilities and virus scans have less files to dig through.",
"It's not, if you have maintained your HDD properly by keeping adequate free space (like 20% or so, iirc) and your data is not fragmented\n\na lot of people don't do that, though"
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529485 | why do some plants grow so much faster than others, which would surely cause the slower plants to lose out a lot more often. | I ask this because recently I planted an oak tree. It grew exceptionally fast in the first 2 weeks going from sprout to about 5 inches and has now practically stopped. I realise it is looking to get a foothold and leaves as fast as possible but if it's capable of that kind of growth why does it stop? what possible advantage would that have | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/529485/eli5_why_do_some_plants_grow_so_much_faster_than/ | {
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"There's a balance between rate of growth and durability. Some plants grow slow but are built to last, so to speak, like maple trees. Other species grow fast with hopes of reproducing quickly before they die, like grass. An oak tree can't grow any faster without sacrificing some of its durability/strength. Seedlings often grow much faster than mature plants due to the nutrients and growth hormones contained in the seed.",
"An oak tree grows from an acorn, which provides enough nutrition to get some leaves and a stem going, which allows photosynthesis to start. After this, the tree is going to concentrate on getting some roots sorted out. Once that happens it will start growing upwards again. May be worth comparing with the behaviour of other trees that grow from smaller seeds",
"Plants grow differently according to what the plant \"wants\". Some plants need to grow fast, some need to stunt it's grow. It depends. Your other question is about your oak tree. First the little oak tree is not growing because it's eating sun like it's mother, it is growing because it's eating acorn (the fruit where the seed was). But the acorn ran out (of fat and sugars), so now it must eat sun. That's one of numerous factors that limit growth on a plant (others are light, nutrients and genetical info). I'm not a native english speaker so I apologize for any mistake",
"There's also the forest growth patterns that you see in naturally woody areas, both tropical and temperate. \n\nThe plants that grow fast grow like crazy in tree falls, which are areas where a big tree fell down leaving lots of sunlight and a gap between the trees. All that sunlight provides fast food for those quick plants.\n\nMeanwhile, in the undergrowth, things like your oak tree begin to take hold. They don't need as much light right away, and they can survive below those other fast plants. The fast plants, when they die, put out seeds, but those seeds can't grow beneath the new little hardwoods, like your oak tree, so they have to wait in the soil for another sun-soaked opportunity. The oaks and other slow trees grow up in the shaded areas and eventually get taller and sturdier than the quick plants can get.\n\nBasically, it's like an eternal tortoise-and-the-hare situation, and creates forests that are constantly changing while maintaining old growth and a high level of diversity (slow plants, quick plants, all of the transition between those types of habitats).\n\nSource: an ecology degree and a deep < 3 of trees"
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19vk8s | what's the deal with the government subsidies of corn syrup? | Have there been tangible benefits? If anything, why does the government do it to begin with? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19vk8s/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_the_government_subsidies/ | {
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"The government subsidizes the production of corn, not corn syrup. When corn is cheap & plentiful, people will find ways of using it."
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3hoghz | how does a card reader read a credit card | How does a card reader read the strip off of a credit card? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hoghz/eli5how_does_a_card_reader_read_a_credit_card/ | {
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"The strip on the card is magnetic. It contains a series of magnetised parts coded in like the long credit card number. As you move the strip past the card reader ( which is much like the head of an old cassette player). \n\nThe reader detects the tiny changes which is then sent to a computer, this sends the information via built in modem to a finance institution computer which then charges your card. \n\n Any web search on \"how a credit card reader works\" will give you more technical information if you are curious.",
"OK, so you know how magnets can push or pull each other, right? The magnetic strip on a credit card has been magnetized at some points along its length and not at others so that, when it's swiped, other magnetic components in the card reader can \"feel\" those pushes and pulls. Now, think of binary, or even Morse code. The card reader analyzes the *sequence* of those magnetic pushes and pulls, and together in the sequence, they're interpreted as numbers, such as a credit card number."
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9rt9o0 | how did gta v run on the xbox 360 with 512 mb of ram while the pc version requires at least 4 gb? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rt9o0/eli5_how_did_gta_v_run_on_the_xbox_360_with_512/ | {
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"The primary reason is a gaming console is a fixed system, and a PC is not. \n\nA game developer knows every component and every capability of a gaming console, because it's a fixed set of hardware defined by the vendor. Developers love this because it means they can optimize the hell out of their code to work extremely well on that one specific, narrow set of hardware components. \n\nOn a PC, though, a developer has a harder time optimizing their code, because they cannot predict what hardware any given individual will have. Your PC doesn't have the same capabilities as my PC. So instead of ardently optimizing they're forced to take a \"least common denominator\" approach. \n\nIt would certainly be possible for a developer to make GTA V run on a PC with only 512 MB of RAM ... but to do so they would need to require that PC to have a certain *type* and *brand* of RAM ... and it would need a specific type and brand of CPU with a specific speed ... and you would only be able to use one brand of graphic card ... and so forth and so on. But if they did that, they'd be limiting their PC market to the handful of people who meet those narrow, specific hardware requirements, and that doesn't make business sense. \n\nSo system requirements for games on PC are *always* going to be higher than those for consoles, because console games can be optimized for a specific, narrow set of hardware, where PC games cannot. ",
"Because GTA on the PC uses higher resolution textures, has a farther draw distances, has crisper shadow and blur effects and supports 4k display settings.",
"The version that was released on PC isn't the same version that came out on PS3 and Xbox360.\n\nThe original 2013 release of GTAV was considerably less detailed, with lower detail meshes, and lower quality textures than the version that came out on PS4, XBone and PC well over a year later. \n\n\n\n",
"PC games are (usually) not just recompiled from the console version. They need to add support for keyboard + mouse control, variable screen resolutions, and the like. Usually, they'll also upgrade the video textures (the \"skin\" of objects) and add other stuff that consoles don't have the power for.\n\nGames that don't do this (e.g. Fable anniversary) get poor reviews and don't sell well. One of the most annoying things to a PC gamer is having to deal with a poor quality gaming experience because that's the best a cheap gaming console can manage.\n"
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ahq4ue | why are ships always referred in the context of a woman? an example, “she can sail the seven seas in 70 days”, not a good example but along those lines. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahq4ue/eli5_why_are_ships_always_referred_in_the_context/ | {
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"A lot of European languages genderise objects. Like, all objects. \n\nEnglish has almost entirely discarded that, but some remnants remain. Vehicles being feminine is part of that ",
"The explanation that I've heard and instantly clicked with me was that they carry life, and therefor are referred to as being feminine.",
"Because ships, until recently, have been full of men, and what guy wants to be sailing around inside of a dude?",
"In English and many other European languages ships are female. In languages like Russian ships are male and some languages don't really have the distinction at all in their grammar.\n\nIn other languages it is quite common to give a gender to everything. Often a whole class of named objects has the same gender like all ships being a she (or is some few languages a he), but sometimes you are met with a situation where gender is a case by case thing (good look figuring out which rivers are male and which are female in German for example).\n\nIt is pretty rare in modern English for named things to have a gender as English has mostly gotten rid of gender in its grammar long ago, but nautical tradition is nothing if not traditional and keeps using conventions from long ago.\n\n",
"Besides gendered nouns, sailors, probably since the beginning of time, referred to their ship as female because it sheltered, transported, protected them etc. \n\nAlso kind of related: Until relatively recently, women on ships were considered bad luck. Ships were dangerous places, if you weren’t a sailor climbing ropes and chugging grog then you were a soldier, and mixing a however many women with a couple hundred men in a restricted area like a ship was not a good plan.",
"\" *A ship* is always referred to as '*she*' because it *costs* so much to keep one in *paint and powder*. \" Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, USN"
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d4prrv | would it be possible for a boat to never reach land by just being steered by currents? is there something like a current cycle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4prrv/eli5_would_it_be_possible_for_a_boat_to_never/ | {
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"Ocean currents do flow around the planet and you could travel for a substantial distance and time just carried on the currents, but eventually you would be brought into land. A lot of the ocean currents basically circle around the edge of an ocean as seen here _URL_0_",
"Ocean currents can occur at different ocean depths. Subsurface currents occur due to changes in water salinity as well as gravitational pull and geography. Whereas surface currents are also impacted by weather and temperature above the water.\n\nIt is possible for surface water to be moving in one direction while deeper water moves in another. The ocean currents as a whole generally move in a cycle as warm water moves from the equator to the poles and cool water moves from the poles to the equator. But all the possible impacts on surface water could mean while the major subsurface currents move water in a cycle, the surface currents could send you straight to land.\n\nThey're also always changing, on the small scale, with different branches going in different directions. So even if you completed a lap there's no saying whether a second lap would take you along the same route.",
"Yes, though it would be because it was trapped in a gyre. When you hear about the great pacific garbage patch, that's all the shit trapped in the gyre, circling around and around, and more and more stuff gets caught in it. Some of the stuff in the North Pacific garbage patch is 50 years old.\n\nThere's a South Pacific gyre, a North Atlantic, a South Atlantic, and one in the Indian Ocean, but the North Pacific seems the most grabby.\n\nWeather, of course, would affect things, and climate change will likely screw with oceanic currents. But these gyres are primarily caused by the rotation of the earth, the Coriolis effect. That's why the gyres in the northern hemisphere spin clockwise, while those in the southern hemisphere spin counterclockwise.",
"On earth a boat that is floating forever will _eventually_ reach land, but it could get hung up in a gyre for quite some time. The issue is that at some point some sort of storm or something will blow across and push the boat out of the current, or else it will get caught in an eddy current and carried out of the main gyre."
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36vcw5 | what fighting is currently going on between countries that is not based on religion? | Feel very uninformed on any war where the Islamic religion is not involved in some way. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36vcw5/eli5_what_fighting_is_currently_going_on_between/ | {
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"Not really answering the question directly, but any border disputes in general. Also while not between 'countries' as such, separatist movements can fit under the umbrella of border dispute, and aren't religiously motivated. The Basque and Kurds and Tamils see themselves as distinct and want to separate from their host territories, so fisticuffs happen.",
"The war (not a full scale but an uprising) between Balouch separatist and the state of Pakistan. Religion has nothing to do with it. ",
"To be honest, none of the wars are based on Islamic teachings. Saying that the wars you have in mind based on Islamic views is like saying that Crusades were sent to fight because Christian religion required them to. Religions are involved because they are the easiest way to manipulate uneducated, uninformed, easily impressionable people.",
"Ukraine and Russia is an obvious example. Err... I mean.. Ukraine and \"Pro-Russian rebels that are *totally* not being funded and supplied by Russia\".\n\n^Cough."
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3g1moj | what exactly happens to your brain when you feel mentally exhausted? | Is there any effective way to replenish your mental energies other than sleeping? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g1moj/eli5_what_exactly_happens_to_your_brain_when_you/ | {
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"I'm basing this answer on some intro level anatomy courses and some extrapolation and educated guessing. I hope a better answer comes along. \n\nSo to start, the brain runs exclusively off glucose. Other tissues can convert fats or proteins to fuel, but the brain can only utilize glucose. Some some mental fatigue is low blood sugar. The less fuel there is the less activity, and hence a tired feeling. \n\nAnother thing that could be going on is the Reticular Activating System (RAS) is winding down. When active/stimulated the RAS is what wakes you up and keeps you alert. I think its pretty closely tied to your sleeping pattern. This cycle of being alert and stimulated and then winding down is most likely due to a negative feedback loop. I have no idea as to the actual pathway. \n\nI would be happy to be corrected on anything I have stated above. \n\nEDIT: It has been correctly pointed out that under starvation conditions, the brain can fun on ketone bodies. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\n\nEDIT@: that fun up there should be run, but I'm just going to leave it :D",
"Your brain cells (neurons), just like any other cells in your body, excrete metabolic wastes. During the day (or night) when you are active and awake, the brain is slightly swollen relative to when you are sleeping and this shrinks the amount of space between the gyri and sulci (mountains and valleys) of the brain. The less space, the less efficiently the cerebrospinal fluid is circulated and cleaned. With this stagnating CSF, the metabolites being released by brain cells just hang around the cells in the brain and this affects the metabolic functions of said cells. All of this occurs until we go to sleep, where the brain shrinks and more room is made for the CSF to be circulated and the metabolites to be cleared. ",
"It's most likely just metabolic fatigue. Same reason you can't do cardio forever or lift weights forever. The brain is not a muscle but it is still dependent on aerobic respiration. \n",
"Please take this with a Grain of salt or two \n\nI trained as a clinical neurophysiologist. Any real neurophysiologist will tell you this means fuck all. \n\nBut while I was doing rounds and attending lectures and reading books and all that. Something was reinforced in many ways. It seems novelty and variety are critical components to attention and interest \n\nSome degree or stimulation and challenge is needed or our brains relegate the function to a non imperative area \n\n\nOverall our aware brains are intersted in change.\n\nLacking novelty out subconscious pretty much takes over\n\nUsually this is fine. What happens in the past is likely to recure\n\n\nYour mental exhaustion is a physiological awareness of lack of novel stimulation \n\n\nNow you ask. Why do people in a chronic state of stimilatiion become exhausted?\n\nAccording to one of my preceptors. We can't maintain a high level of awareness and attention for long periods. No creature is evolved for such activity \n\n\nThe creatures that survive conserve effort and energy \n\nThe ones that are always hyperaware are a problem \n\nMore a delusion and a paranoid person who sees threat and pattern In randomness. \n\n\nThis is not good for people or tribes. \n\n\nWe are better off. Individually and in together with a fatigue response when we get overly focused on usuly random Incidents\n\n\nThis is typed on a smartphone please exude typos \n\n",
"Try meditating. There are 10 minute guided sections and you feel like you just woke up from a good nap after doing one. I thought it was a load of crap until I started doing it every so often. ",
"I took Human Behavioral Biology with Professor Robert Sapolsky. If I remember from that class correctly, as your neurons expend energy by breaking down ATP(Adenosine Triphosphate), free adenosine is accumulated in the synapses. Neurons have receptors that detect this adenosine and make you feel tired because the accumulation indicates that you have been using up your ATP(basic unit of energy in cells). \n\nDrugs like caffeine work by blocking the adenosine receptors so your brain doesn't realize that it SHOULD be tired.\n\nHTH",
"I've heard it called decision fatigue, where you're brain runs out of neurotransmitters to carry information or signals.\n\nI've heard (and believe based on personal experiences) that healthy fats do a lot to help with mental fatigue. I am in a field where my clients CONSTANTLY ask me questions on a daily basis. On days where I'm sluggish after lunch I will have a cup of bulletproof tea or coffee and it helps a TON! Blend a tablespoon of coconut oil and butter from grass fed cows (I use Purity Farms brand Ghee) into your hot coffee or tea and drink up! It tastes yummy and I think helps with energy and cognitive function. There are claims it helps with fat loss too because the healthy fats signal to your brain that food is plentiful and in turn allows fat stores to burn off.... If the rest of you diet is decent anyway. If your diet isn't good the extra fats may not be spectacular for you. ",
"There are many good answers here, but none satisfactory. Including the one I will give. The reality is we don't know with certainty. The explanation I like the best is articulated by Giulio Tononi: \"wakefulness leads to a net increase in synaptic strength, and sleep is necessary to reestablish synaptic homeostasis.\" _URL_0_\nIn other words (ELI5): during the day, we build up memories and thoughts, and during sleep we forget the unimportant stuff, like what you ate for breakfast last Wednesday. Meaningful stuff with high emotional value, or stuff we practice all the time will resist the nightly 'forgetting' from sleep. This process is important because although your brain is an incredibly powerful feature, it is energetically expensive to maintain (leading to mental exhaustion), so it's useful to prune extraneous stuff.",
"So when that guy called me \" shit for brains \" maybe he was being nice and said I may need to go to sleep ? \n\nI thought he was just being an asshole .... ha",
"Our brains get gummy. Like combing peanut bitter with a wide tooth comb. At first it's good. But then it gets gummed up and isn't do good. But them sleeping is like running your comb under warm soapy water.",
"I am amused by the range of answers here- all speculative and metaphorical. Because in fact, nobody knows!\n\nYour brain runs out of neurotransmitters. The synapses are depleted. Waste products build up. A thing is out of balance with other things.\n\nSleep washes it out/lubricates... restores balance. Replenishes neurotransmitters.\n\nOne thing of note? It doesn't seem to be an evolutionary choice. Being awake 24 hrs should be of an evolutionary advantage. Now dolphins were a big question because they can drown if they \"sleep\", but they don't- because they let one hemisphere sleep while the other one maintains consciousness. That is extra-complicated, and would NOT have come about if the brain could evolve to survive without sleep (which sounds simple, doesn't it?). ",
"I'm actually curious about a different kind of brain fatigue. If I'm learning a lot of information really fast in a short amount of time, versus playing a game or reading, etc. My brain becomes fogged, badly. Fatigue of the eyes and just an exhausted brain feel, different than sleep deprivation. What causes this?\n\nI can specifically remember it when I was learning Arabic 8 hours a day with no English at DLI. Very brain exhausting.",
"This is my jam! Wait … not my jam, my PhD. \n\nThere are probably about three different types of mental exhaustion. One, that has already been explained (to the best of anyone’s ability) is sleepiness. Basically, that is when you start feeling tired and want to sleep at the end of the day (or other times in the day if you didn’t get enough sleep). That is your brain telling you that you need to sleep for a while so that your brain can clean itself out and deal with memory consolidation. Although the purposes of sleep aren’t entirely understood, it is definitely totally necessary for brains to function and it plays a role in solidifying important memories (and forgetting irrelevant things).\n\nAnother type of mental exhaustion happens when you’ve just been engaging in difficult and unenjoyable mental work. So maybe you just finished a couple hours of awful homework, or had to be on your best behaviour during an uncomfortable lunch with racist grandparents. Or something like that. But you’ve been slugging along, doing something mentally difficult, and now you feel tired. Although sometimes people want to sleep after this, a lot of the time people really just want to take a break. You want to check Facebook, eat something, laze around at your house. That’s not the same thing as being sleepy, since you aren’t craving sleep, but people still refer to it as feeling \"mentally tired\". Researchers in this field are converging around this being caused by shifting motivations. Basically, it’s good to spend some of your time doing things that you have to do, and some time doing things that you want to do. Someone in the thread mentioned something about the brain running low on glucose … that was an earlier theory, that has been pretty thoroughly dismissed. The quantities of glucose that your brain uses doing difficult math problem sets is less than you use walking around, but 10 minutes of intense math can make you crave Facebook much more than 10 minutes of walking. Glucose is also sent to your brain pretty darn quickly, so running out of brain “fuel” is not an issue. You can get rid of this type of fatigue by taking a sufficient break, preferably doing something that you enjoy doing! Meditation (as someone posted) has been shown to rejuvenate people, as has prayer, youtube videos, smoking cigarettes, reminding yourself about your values... the list goes on!\n\nA third type of mental exhaustion, that was also mentioned in passing, is an attentional habituation. If you do a single task for an extended period of time, your brain start to attend less to the relevant information in the task. (Interestingly, doing a mentally taxing task not only makes you attend less to task-relevant information like the math question, but increases your attention to rewarding stimuli like food and comfortable chairs, which seems to support the above idea of a \"trading off\" of motivations). At least one paper has differentiated between this habituation type of fatigue and the previous fatigue (last paragraph), but they still might be overlapping in many contexts. ",
"Mental fatigue and sleepiness are distinct things. As for general mental fatigue, the truth is that nobody knows. I've got a paper in pre-publication status now with a new hypothesis (that fatigue is a signal of astrocytic glycogen depletion). But I did a pretty thorough literature review for the paper and can say with confidence that there is no scientific consensus on what exactly mental fatigue is.",
"It's called the glyphatic system, Google it for more info. The short answer is no its not possible because like the previous comments say, your brain needs to be cleaned by cerebral spinal fluid. ",
"I suggest smoking a fat joint and you'll be alright until you need to sleep, or smoke and sleep either way you put it",
"Pretty sure I remember reading about a study about willpower last year where they showed that low glycogen/blood sugar levels/brain food correlated with low will-power and after a sugary drink the test subjects showed enhanced willpower. Related?",
"Basically, inside a neuron, signals are carried by ions. The ions pile up on one side, and take time to get back to the start.\n\nBetween neurons, there are larger molecules. They exit the axons (long part) and connect with the dendrites (shorter part). The connection is called a synapse. \n\nAs a synapse is triggered, it becomes less responsive to being triggered. This is because of recovery time for the synapse proteins, and the time to recover neurotransmitters, and because the ions inside are more depleted. \n\nThe higher activation potential is good, because the neurotransmitters accumulate in the synapse, and you do not want the synapse locked \"on\". For an example of why that is bad, look up seratonin syndrome.\n\nSo, mental fatigue is basically running low on transmitters, and the activations reduce. Using other parts of your brain still works, because they are not depleted.\n\nYou can recover fastest by not using those tired pathways temporatily, so they can recover. Sleep, clearing your mind, or doing something else all help well. Long term, more practice in mental endurance will cause you to build up more neurotransmitters, giving you longer time to use those pathways. Also, you may duplicate pathways for load sharing. Last, having a healthy diet can make sure you recover quickly. Lots of different trace elements, proteins, fats, etc are used in the brain in small quantities. Variety is the spice of life.\n\nReward seeking is because dopamine is a pretty pervasive override, and can reduce the amount of signal needed to activate many target neurons. This can gelp short term, but it leaves you more depleted, requiring more recovery time. Long term, it can be part of how you build mental endurance, but the pathways are different than through self motivation. Memories slightly compartmentalize, and habits form."
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4m2bkq | why are designer brands so expensive for seemingly the same product as cheap brands? | I understand that they are a higher quality, I just don't understand how [this](_URL_0_) one is 200 dollars, but [this](_URL_1_) one is 16. They are both 100% cotton tee shirts. Is the quality difference truly deserving of such a huge price gap? If so, how is it so different when it's the exact same 100% cotton material? Do you pay for the artistry of a brand? Or simply the name and status of the brand?
EDIT: Thanks for the great responses, everyone! I think it makes a lot more sense to me now. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4m2bkq/eli5_why_are_designer_brands_so_expensive_for/ | {
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"A lot of influences where the main one is Marketing...which costs a ton! And these costs have to be covered...For instance an minute ad in TV alone costs in primetime 90.000€ (germany). Models have to be paid etc. \n",
"Designer brands built a reputation for being expensive. People aren't buying it for the quality, but for the social status e.g He's weaking a CK cotton shirt (same one can be bought for 16 dolalrs), how ever it's CK and therefore I know he paid a lot for it.\n\nIf CK were to start selling things for 16 dollars based on materials etc, then they will slowly lose out on that recognition and lose market share as people would be less incline to pay top dollars for no recognition.",
"It's a bit naive to think that the consumer pricing will be based directly on the manufacturing costs.\n\nA business is motivated by profit and consumer pricing is rarely based directly on the cost of manufacturing/production, but rather is based on whatever people are willing to pay for the product.\n\nA product could cost just $0.25 to make and a company might sell it for $25.00 if people are willing to pay for it.\n\nPeople are generally willing to pay considerably more for a product than it is worth in materials/components when (any of the following are true):\n\n* There is no or very little competition (it's basically the only option for that type of product)\n* The product is associated with a certain brand name or mark that is well-known or reputable\n* There is a very high demand for the product (it's very popular) but the supply is limited (think of collectibles)\n* The brand name or mark is associated with power/status/wealth\n* The design of the product is significantly more aesthetically pleasing (relative to competing products)\n* The brand name or mark is associated with 'green' environmental friendlyness\n* The brand name or mark is associated with corporate social responsibility (moral/ethical/principled organizations) or charities/non-profits",
"It's definitely not the exact same material. I have a $75 T shirt from Norse Projects, it is 100% cotton but it doesn't feel like ANY of my other shirts (and I have plenty from the Gap, etc). It is much thicker, doesn't stretch out nearly as easily. The thickness hides my man-boobs way better. Worth $75. \n\nIn most cases designer brands are not the same project. I'm not saying that they are worth $200. There is definitely money being paid \"for the brand\" in there. But most designer clothes use better materials and have more unique and interesting design choices than your average big box product.",
"The margiela is almost guaranteed to be made out of higher quality cotton made in nicer soil and treated with better chemicals, but you're looking at $50 at most for that. most of the cost is the status of the brand, but that status is derived from the artistry. MMM has a reputation for being deconstructionists that make incredibly interesting pieces with good quality. When you buy MMM, you're buying all those things, while with a no-name brand you're just paying for quality. That no-name brand didn't have a world class designer pinning the models and making the fit perfect though, but that's tertiary ",
"The reasons are various, but a big one is how many steps between the manufacturer (in this case the Brand) and the end consumer (you). Every time the garment changes hands it is essentially resold, and each time it is resold it is marked up at a set percentage. \n\nThis is why it is difficult to to get money from the end of the supply chain (what you paid) back to the beginning of the chain (the person who actually sewed the shirt.) You would probably gladly pay $1 extra to ensure that the person sewing the shirt was working in safe conditions and paid properly. The problem is that the chain generally only goes one way and $1 added to the cost of a garment at the beginning becomes $10 by the time the garment is on the shop floor.\n\nSo, say a shirt has $2 material and $3 in labor (this labor is not just the sewing but the cutting, finishing, packing etc.) The factory owner charges $10 for this to cover his overhead and profit. The manufacturing contractor buys it at $10 and sells it to the Brand for $20 to cover his overhead and profit (he has an office and a management team, goes to trade shows, etc.) The brand buys it at $20, but sells it wholesale for $70, because they have to pay shipping, duty, hang tags and branding, the wholesaler (11% - 15%), the design of the garment, sales materials (photographs of the clothes on a model / runway show for the buyers from the stores) overhead and profit. Also, the Barneys is buying it and they will only take it if you give them a 15% discount. Barneys marks it up 64% (that is 64% of the price you pay is for their overhead and profit. So you pay $165.50 for something that is just $5 in material and labor!\n\nSo why can the Gap or Walmart be so cheap? Because they have a shorter supply chain and / or they are making *a lot* of something. Fashion is an odd case because it depends on making goods that have no perishability \"expire\" and have a sell-by date. Sa a store like the Gap can make 1000s of blue T-shirts and sell them over a long period of time at full price. If you are Renzo over at Maison Martin Margiela you know you only have maybe 10 weeks to sell your T-shirt at full price and after that it will go on sale and then be cleared out completely to make way for the next season. And you are only making 500 of them, because you can't sell more than that. And you have to pay a for huge amount of PR and advertising to make people *want* to buy a $200 T-shirt in the first place.\n\nTL;DR: fabric and sewing is only a small percentage of the cost in fashion.\n\n"
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9rcvel | how do "air sanitizers" such as ozium actually clean the air and remove smoke? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rcvel/eli5_how_do_air_sanitizers_such_as_ozium_actually/ | {
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"It works like any other odor locking spray it has negative charged particles that attach themselves to the positive charged odor particles. ",
"Fun fact, smudging with sage actually has the same effect. Sage smoke purifies the air by binding to positively charged particles like smells and bacteria.",
"Is this similar to how burning candles can remove the smell of smoke?",
"The most common way air sanitizersbcurrwntly work is by using s chemical called cyclodextrin.\n\nThis chemical has a cup shape [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nIt binds smell molecules on the inside, and prevents the smell molecules from making direct contact with sensors in your nose.\n\n \n\n\nAnother way of removing smell is by overloading your smell system. Very strong (and less unpleasant) odors will numb your nose for other smells. The \"pest doctor\" vinegar sponge works like that.\n\n \n\n\nAnd a way to actually destroy the smell and not just hide it is using a chemical called Ozone. Ozone will break down most molecules that cause smell. Since Ozone is toxic to humans, this can only be done when there's no people around. For example thoroughly cleaning a car works by putting a small machine in the car that turns Oxygen from the air into Ozone, and then wait for several hours while the Ozone does its job. Afterwards you air out the car, and obnoxious smells will be gone."
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3s654i | what's going on at the university of missouri, and why is the school president resigning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s654i/eli5_whats_going_on_at_the_university_of_missouri/ | {
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" > A series of racist incidents in the last few months spurred calls for change, and protesters said the president at first did not take their complaints seriously, and that his later responses were not strong enough or swift enough.\n\n > In September, the president of the Missouri Students Association, Payton Head, who is black, posted on Facebook that a group of men had yelled racial slurs at him, and said it was not the first time he had suffered that kind of abuse at the university.\n\n > In early October, the Legion of Black Collegians, a student group, was rehearsing a homecoming event, when a white man walked onto their stage and used racial epithets about the black students. When activists tried to confront Mr. Wolfe days later at the Homecoming Parade, he avoided them, leading to accusations that he was dismissive of their concerns.\n\n > Later that month, someone used feces to scrawl a swastika in a university building.\n\n_URL_0_",
"SJWs demand \"action,\" but have no idea what they want. They think the president can stop people from running around drunk shouting racist slurs or smearing poop on bathroom walls. It's retards being retards"
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jd4mr | basic things to know about cars and mechanics. | I consider my knowledge about cars to be below average and as a new driver I think I really need to improve that.
I just want to know what are the basic parts in a car and how do they work. Also, what do I need to know before going on a trip, I mean, how to change a tire or how to act if something goes wrong?
Thanks for answering. :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jd4mr/eli5_basic_things_to_know_about_cars_and_mechanics/ | {
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"To be all honest, I think a quick google of your topics would provide you with ALOT more info that people can write here. :)",
"Before going on a trip, you can get away with knowing next to nothing, ala my sister. xD\n\nBut yeah, you said it. Learning to change tires I think should be first in \"car repair\" because its relatively simple, the tools are provided, and it can be done personally.",
"To be all honest, I think a quick google of your topics would provide you with ALOT more info that people can write here. :)",
"Before going on a trip, you can get away with knowing next to nothing, ala my sister. xD\n\nBut yeah, you said it. Learning to change tires I think should be first in \"car repair\" because its relatively simple, the tools are provided, and it can be done personally."
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8nl1zc | why isnt tylenol in the same category as advil, aleve, ibuprofen, etc..... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8nl1zc/eli5_why_isnt_tylenol_in_the_same_category_as/ | {
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"Acetaminophen (Tylenol) relieves pain and also reduces fever. Experts aren't sure exactly how Tylenol works but believe it affects COX enzymes in the brain, reducing the formation of prostaglandins (prostaglandins are substances released during injury that cause pain and inflammation). This effect isn't exactly blocking them, but it has some other mechanism.\n\nIbuprofen (Advil) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. The mechanism is much better understood, but it is a nonselective NSAID because it blocks both COX-2 enzymes (involved in pain signaling and inflammation) and COX-1 enzymes (associated with a protective effect on stomach lining). \n",
"Ibuprofen is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory). It blocks the production of prostaglandins, which are small lipid signalling molecules. These prostaglandins control inflammation, pain, body temperature, blood pressure, etc. By blocking their production, ibuprofen can reduce all of the aforementioned things.\n\nTylenol is not an NSAID, because it's not anti-inflammatory. It does reduce pain and body temperature, but the exact mechanisms are unknown. It is believed to work by neutralizing reactive oxygen species, or increasing endongeous cannabinoids.",
"Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen) are both categories of drugs called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs otherwise known as NSAIDs. Tylenol (acetaminophen) is not an NSAID and is just a simple analgesic (pain reliever). The importance here is some people are allergic to NSAIDs. This is why some people *must* take Tylenol because it is not an NSAID."
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6ojsff | the scientific legitimatcy behind the phrase "sex with one person means you've had sex with everyone they've had sex with"? | I get that in general, it implies that it's significantly more risky to have unprotected sex with someone. But in my searching, I haven't found a reason (other than that) as to why people (still) say this.
Are people simply referring to a chemical/emotional bond or change that can happen during sex? Or something like lingering bacteria in/on genitalia afterward?
(at the risk of sounding ignorant or silly) Is this even possible scientifically, when 1) males can directly apply soap+water and clean themselves and 2)females have a regular cycle (under normal, healthy conditions) that "cleans" some (all?) of the surfaces/linings a penis would interact with?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ojsff/eli5_the_scientific_legitimatcy_behind_the_phrase/ | {
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"Because if they had sex in the past with someone who has an STI, they themselves might now be carrying that STI.\n\nIf they hadn't, you wouldn't be able to catch that STI. But if they did, then you could potentially catch that STI.\n\nIt isn't *exactly* the same as just having sex with every individual the person had sex with (for example, even if they had sex with a hundred people who all had an STI, which means they would almost certainly catch that STI, if you only have sex once your chance of catching it may be a lot smaller than if you did all one hundred). But that isn't the point of the quote. It is simply something to keep in mind so that you don't forget about why you might want to use protection.",
"This phrase refers *specifically* to the risk of exposure to STIs that remain active in a person's system. \n\nLet's use some examples:\n\nPerson A is infected with HVP, and has sex with person B. Person B has sex with person C, and person C has sex with person D. \n\nPerson B is at risk of exposure to HPV, and may have contracted it. *If* they did contract HPV from that exposure, then person C is *also* at risk for contracting HPV. If *they* contracted HPV, then person D is at risk from exposure, which can be traced back to person A. \n\nNow, in this scenario, if person C has a full STI screen done, and they show no STI's, person D has no risk of infection. However, it's not exactly common for partners to share recent STI screens prior to sexual contact, and *in the absence of that screening*, the risk is based on all prior untested contacts.\n\nMake sense? ",
" > Or something like lingering bacteria in/on genitalia afterward?\n\nYes.\n\nAs to your follow up, good hygiene is no guarantee against becoming infected with an STI. You can wash away surface contaminates, but once viruses and bacteria gets inside your cells its game over without active intervention by either your own immune system or medication to treat the infection. Some viruses like HIV will actually integrate their own DNA into the genome of your host cells, in which case you can not clear the infection unless you seek out and destroy the infected host cells. So far, in the case of HIV at least, this has been hard to achieve.",
"It's a deceptive slogan designed by the advocates of abstinence-only sex education. The goal is to express a legitimate point (STDs spread by sex, no shit Sherlock) in a way that tries to discourage people from having sex altogether by making it sound gross, instead of teaching ways to have safe sex.\n\nIt's really quite ingenious if you think about it: for girls, it implies that even sex with one partner already makes you a slut, and since slut shaming isn't done on boys, for them it taps into homophobia by implying they'd be having sex with other guys."
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3v2pzn | how can spammers/scammers get my email and take the time to put together a scheme to try to get my money/info, but can't take the time to put together a coherent english sentence? | I just don't understand how spammers/scammers can put in the effort to do whatever it is they're doing, but still have email titles that don't remotely look real because the English is messed up. It seems like that's something they would double check. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v2pzn/eli5_how_can_spammersscammers_get_my_email_and/ | {
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"[The bad English in on purpose. People dumb enough to look past it are more likely to fall for the scam.](_URL_0_)",
"Also, the weird wording helps to give the email a chance to go trough the antispam filters without being deleted.\n\nThat's why some of these emails are also padded with random lines of text."
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67zdsc | how do restaurants not suffer losses from giving away free ketchup, salt, pepper, etc..? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67zdsc/eli5_how_do_restaurants_not_suffer_losses_from/ | {
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"Explanation like I'm 12: I think it's simply the fact that it's so cheap to buy in bulk that overall it doesn't matter. Same with paper cups and free refills on soda",
"Because the cost of providing those is so minimal compared to operating costs. Consider that a case of 1000 ketchup packets costs 26 dollars. That means that per ketchup packet it costs them 3 cents. But that tiny cost might be worth it. Consider eating your french fries without ketchup, is it worth losing the sale of the frys if you don't offer the condiment?",
"Those things aren't really free. Your meal costs a little more because of them. For example, your Happy Meal costs $4. If the restaurant didn't give everyone ketchup and salt and pepper, it might only cost $3.50. \nThis also works because most people are nice and only take as much ketchup as they need. If people always took all of the ketchup for themselves, restaurants would have to stop giving it away. So remember to be nice and only take as much salt, pepper, and ketchup as you need, okay? Okay. Now sit in your seat and eat all your apple slices so you grow up big and strong.",
"They include the expected cost of those condiments in the cost of the meals they sell.\n\nSo if you're buying a $4 cheeseburger, a couple of cents of that cost is covering the average amount of ketchup and stuff that people put on it. Like any average, that includes the people who use none and the people who grab 30 packets to hoard at home.\n\nBut the condiments are so cheap to buy in bulk that it doesn't impact the bottom line very much. And they only leave a few hundred at a time (a few $ worth, maximum) so that even if someone were to steal all of it, it wouldn't be much of a loss.",
"food is one of the hugest markups in retail. imagine you buy ground meat for $10 that can make about 20 hamburgers. then you buy a pack of 20 buns for $3. that's $13 spent. you charge $8 for each burger. that's $147 profit. you can throw a bottle of ketchup on the table hat will service 50 customers. drinks are especially profitable. syrup and water are cheap and the fountain makes a nice bubbly soda and they sell something that cost them maybe 10 cents to make for $2. next time you're in 7-11, ask a manager how much profit they make on a $2 big gulp. ",
"A couple things just to clarify. Those items aren't \"cheap write offs\" in the slightest. They can be very expensive and add up quickly. If you are not acutely aware of what all those little items are costing you then you're not running an efficient establishment. It's just like any other thing a restaurant sells. It's put into a recipe and costs are put together. If I pay $10 for a 10lb bag of ketchup and one of my dishes calls for 2oz of ketchup then I take what exactly 2oz of ketchup costs me and add it to the total cost of the item. Then you sit back, light a cigar and make hundreds of dollars a year salary working 85 hours a week. Lol "
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3w18lw | the philosophy of the ubermensch | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w18lw/eli5_the_philosophy_of_the_ubermensch/ | {
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"The Ubermensch concept was the \"over man\" or more sophisticated/evolved man in Nietzsche's thinking about how humans could possibly progress. Nietzsche was aware of Darwinian evolution and did not like the thought of humans being mere animals. He thought we were more interesting than that. He saw mankind as a rope over an abyss between that animal past and the Ubermensch...a possible future stage of human cultural development. In that future, mankind would be the creators of their own moralities/values...values that honored mankind rather than dishonoring him (Nietzsche viewed religions such as Christianity as dishonoring and hindering mankind). The ubermensch would be free to chart enabling destinies and develop societies that brought out the best of humanity. Without god around, mankind was free to shape his own world.",
"Nietzsche's big gripe was laid out in his book 'The Genealogy of Morals'. He argued that conventional morality as it was understood in Europe at the time was not the product of free thinking, but tradition given a dressing up. He argued that there were two types of morality that humans have had - Master morality and Slave morality.\n\nSlave morality asks us to restrict ourselves. It tells us not to do things, even if they don't hurt anyone, not to stand out, not to achieve, but to be humble and happy with our lot.\n\nMaster morality, on the other hand, calls on us to improve ourselves. It creates moral laws not to contain us, but to help us to become something more.\n\nWhat if a person didn't have the frailties of a human? What if they weren't subject to shame, or jealousy, or all of the other faults that make us human. What would they do with their lives? How would they approach ethical problems?\n\nThis person is the 'Ubermensch', someone who is more than human. Nietzsche felt that the key to Master morality was to attempt to be the Ubermensch, or at least to emulate him. If it's truly unethical to do something, it must be something that weakens us - something the Ubermensch would never do. But if freed from the weaknesses of our species, we would still choose not to do something, because it disagreed with how we think the world should be or made us weaker, then it's a proper ethical decision. No living person is or ever could *be* the ubermensch, rather it is a useful philosophical construct.\n\nThus, ambition for power, joy in life and sexuality, music, studying, working out, and all of these other activities that make us stronger and happier are an ethical imperative. On the other side, humility, chastity*, obedience, these are signs of slave morality - something we do out of a sense of weakness.\n\nOn chastity, he was more detailed. He said if you hated sex on principle, then it was wrong, but if you undertook a period of chastity to prove to yourself that you could, that was a challenge you were overcoming and thus an ethical trial to increase your strength of will."
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8zxnhy | if you gave a monkey a typewriter and infinite amount of time will he eventually type shakespeare? | Please make an EXTREMELY simple explanation. An explanation for someone who has mathematical understandings of an 8th grader. I just spent 2 hours debating this with a friend and I need a super simple explanation.
The monkey will be constantly typing and this monkey is immortal. He is just mindlessly typing on the typewriter.
EDIT: I read through all of these and knew I was right all along. Thanks so much for your responses! Unfortunately, my friend does not agree but oh well. You can take the horse to the water but you can not force it to drink. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zxnhy/eli5_if_you_gave_a_monkey_a_typewriter_and/ | {
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"In an infinite amount of time, it will eventually happen. That's the nature of infinity: it renders the low odds of *Hamlet* a moot point.\n\n[In real testing, the monkeys preferred to pee on the typewriter.](_URL_0_)",
"The idea is that the monkey’s typing is truly random, meaning that there’s no long-term pattern whatsoever. \n\nThe non-intuitive thing about randomness is that there will occasionally be short-term patterns arising, despite there being no overall pattern. Since infinity is such a long time, the pattern of letters making up Shakespeare’s work counts as a short-term pattern.\n\nIn other words, any finite (non-infinite) string of letters will be guaranteed to be included in an infinite random string of letters.",
"This sounds like a short story called The Library of Babel which is about an infinite library that contains every possible letter combination which means some of the books contain nonsense and some of them contain legitimate works. \n\nTechnically yes if he knew how to use a typewriter without knowing what the letters meant then there's a real chance he could type out stories you're familiar with like Shakespeare. But you'd have to consider what if the monkey wasn't typing completely at random. If he favored certain letters then that would ruin this. But as long as it's truly random sequences then he could eventually type Shakespeare",
"Anything with a chance greater than 0 will eventually happen if infinite time is given. Just imagine the monkey typing randomly and the chance for shakespeare to be written is like 0,000 (... 24234x0)... 00001%. But on the other hand you got infinite time so having infinite tries, it will eventually happen. ",
"The short answer: there is a non-zero percent chance he could (as in maybe). \n\nThe longer one: if you replaced every proton in the universe with a monkey at a typewriter, odds are it would take longer than the time from the Big Bang until the point where protons destabilize (trillions of years) to even have a reasonable chance. \n\nTo have a 1 in trillion chance of it happening, you would need 10^360th power universes all comprised of monkeys at typewriters, typing until the end of time (proton destabilization).\n\nSo, the odds are so small. So so so small. ",
"Lets simplify it: Lets say I have a program that generates a bunch of different three letter combinations in this order: AAA, AAB, AAC, AAD, ...\n\nWhen it gets to AAZ, it bumps up the next letter and starts over: AAZ, ABA, ABB, ABC, ...\n\nInstead of shakespeare's work, lets deal with a shorter word, say names. It might take some time but this program will eventually spell out TED, JEN, MAT, so on and so on. It doesn't *know* that it's doing this, it's just plucking away until it's out of options.\n\nLets expand this idea: instead of stopping at three letters, the program just picks a random letter and spits it out. A, J, S, D, F, I, ... forever.\n\nSomewhere in that infinite string of letters there will be every three-letter combination the first program made, including the names.\n\nThe \"monkey on a type writer\" situation is the same as this, but you search for something longer than three letters long. Due to the nature of infinity, you can always keep looking for your string if you haven't found it yet.",
"Let's say Shakespeare wrote an early play called A. That's all the play consists of, the letter A. Typing randomly, there are only 26 combinations, so the monkey will eventually hit the A key, and reproduce Shakespeare's play.\n\nThe play A received poor critical reviews, so Shakespeare tried again with the play BC, which, as you might guess, was only the letters BC. There are only 676 two letter combinations, so given enough time, the monkey will also reproduce that play.\n\nThis also true for all of the 17,576 three letter plays, the 456,976 four letter plays, and the 11,881,376 five letter plays. There are approximately a million words in the complete works of Shakespeare, at about 5 letters a word you have 5 million letters. That's 26^5,000,000 possible combinations, roughly a 5 followed by 7 million zeros. That is a ridiculously huge number, bigger than the number of atoms in the universe, but we are talking infinity here.\n\nNote there is nothing special about the works of Shakespeare in this case, that monkey will eventually construct all possible combinations. That means Shakespeare, Shakespeare where Hamlet says \"To see or not to see\" instead, Romeo and Gertrude, and all the other minor variations on Shakespeare you could imagine. The monkey types Shakespeare because it eventually types everything that can be typed.",
"I always heard it as 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters. Lessen the odds ?",
"Mathematically, this is talking about probability and combinations: You have 26 letters in the alphabet, if you are picking letters at random, what is the probability that a group of letters you pick turn out to be a specific word?\n\nLet's use \"the\" as an example. When you're picking each letter, there are 26 possible letters to choose but only 1 letter is correct, meaning your probability of getting the right letter is 1/26. Pick your first letter, you have a 1/26 chance to get \"t,\" then a 1/26 chance to get \"h\" and finally, a 1/26 chance to get \"e\" as your third pick. Since each pick is independent of the previous picks, you multiply the probabilities together to find the probability for getting all three in order: 1/26 x 1/25 x 1/26 = 1/17,576 In other words, there are 17,576 three letter combinations, but only one of them spells \"the.\" The shorter way to calculate this, since we know every choice is going to be one of 26 letters, is to raise 26 (the number of possible choices) to the power of the number of letters in the word, a 3 letter word means 26\\^3 possible combinations or a 1/26\\^3 probability of getting the right combination.\n\nSo, if we think of the entire work of Shakespeare as one giant word, you can calculate the probability of getting it randomly. Apparently, his works are comprised of about [880,000 words](_URL_0_), and Google says the average English word is 5.1 letters long, so that puts us at roughly 4,488,000 letters. That means, the probability of randomly typing out Shakespeare's works is roughly 1/26\\^4488000 By comparison, there's something on the order of 10\\^82 atoms in the universe, so there are way, way, *wayyyyy* more possible letter combinations in something the length of Shakespeare's works than there are atoms in the universe.\n\nBut, in an infinite sequence there are so many groups of 4.5 million letters that the probability of one of those groups being the exact right combination is 100%. Because, while the odds of getting that combination are inconceivably small, infinity is so immeasurably large that you get so many tries you'll certainly come out with the right combination at some point.\n\nAnd that's the concept that the \"infinite monkey\" statement is trying to get across. Infinity is so big that nothing we can conceive of compares to it. Not the size of the observable universe, not even something with odds so stacked against it that the number of atoms in the observable universe is *smaller than the rounding error*. We have nothing even theoretical to compare to the size of infinity in order to conceptualize it.",
"Mathematically, sure. In reality, you run into the problem that the monkeys don't actually hit keys in a truly random fashion and they would tend to break the typewriters",
"Reminded me of [this joke](_URL_1_) from The Simpsons.\n\nEdit: I was reminded of that joke because of [this awesome song](_URL_0_) by u/Dankmus. Everyone should check it out!"
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3ff062 | how do crabs work? | I'm baffled. I'm laying here hungover thinking about eating crab legs when I realize: I don't understand crabs.
They're made of three parts: shell, meat, and that spindly tendon you pull out. How does that make for movement? Am I missing something here?
Please educate me on crab movement and physiology and just give me interesting crab facts in general. I need to know. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ff062/eli5_how_do_crabs_work/ | {
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"The meat inside their shells is essentially their muscle. It's used to contract and extend their appendages similar to the way you do for your arms and legs.\n\nTheir organs are contained within the shell (along with some more meat).",
"As the crab grows its exoskeleton (\"shell\") does not. They hit a certain point where they can't grow more without molting. They shed their entire exoskeleton and begin to form a new one. This is when most crabs die as it is very stressful. Additionally, until a new soft exoskeleton forms their tendons have nothing to leverage against and they are barely able to move. They eat their shed to recover as many nutrients as possible. So when buying crab get the ugliest and most beat up looking legs because they have the most meat inside!",
"I really like the question and hope someone digs out an mechanical analogous model of a crab with actuators and strings that shows where exactly the forces act and how the joints work. ",
"Animals with exoskeletons (crustaetion/arthropods) use their exoskeleton in a way very similiarly to how vertebrate animals do. By attaching tendons to a skeletal wall, leverage can be made by mechanical energy through muscle. Ligaments and sinew further help to add stability. Multiple sets of muscles in an area also help to stabalize and avoid use injuries. Also I think I remember something from marine bio/oceanography about exoskeletons allowing animals to have more power per lb of muscle than vertebrates because of better leverage, but also being smaller also allows animals to achieve better mechanical force (think how strong ants are for their size) which helps explain why crab claws can exhibit so much crushing force"
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2pojys | what are americans biggest issues with fixing relations with cuba? | I am an American and I consider myself normally more conservative than liberal (although I suddenly feel more like a Libertarian), but I don't really have a huge issue with Obama trying to mend relations with Cuba or at least start the process. It really is a beautiful country with great people (their president leaves a bit to be desired), but I agree with Obama that the method in which we deal with them is outdated. And since the Cuban missile crisis has Cuba really done anything that bad? I feel really ignorant in regards to Cuba and that's probably because our country tries to ignore it. Can someone tell me WHY the GOP is going crazy over Obama trying to mend with Cuba? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pojys/eli5_what_are_americans_biggest_issues_with/ | {
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"There are really no measurable consequences to doing so. America doesn't like change and there are a bunch of old fucks who think that this is supporting the commies. The GOP is just using this as Obama bashing ammo. You have the liberal president doing something that can be semi considered \"supporting the commies.\" Other old people will eat that shit up. I'm pretty conservative myself but this is one of the things I can't get behind. ",
"Part of it is certainly just \"the President is doing it, so we must oppose it\" nonsense.\n\nHowever, Cuba is led by a dictatorial communist party. The Castros, whether it be Raul or Fidel, rule with seemingly unchecked power. These are typically the types of governments that the GOP hates, and therefore anything that they can deem a concession to such a government will not make them happy.\n\nAdditionally, part of this, according to Senator Rubio, is that we are sort of putting a price on the head of a captured American. Alan Gross was freed, and in exchange we freed three Cuban detainees and also began normalizing relations with Cuba. So you could say that we have made it clear the US will make a deal with you if you capture an American. Not necessarily a great precedent, particularly if you are already hawkish on foreign policy."
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37uesn | why is my computer slow and when i check performance in task manager my cpu usage is only ever about 5%-10%? | I don't think I've worded it correctly but what I'm trying to say is why is my computer only using a small amount CPU rather than alot? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37uesn/eli5_why_is_my_computer_slow_and_when_i_check/ | {
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"There are three main resources that your computer uses: CPU, Memory, and Disk.\n\nIt isn't just CPU that can slow you down. If you are using all your memory, or if you have so much disk access that the computer is constantly waiting on the disk, it can drag your system to a crawl."
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3dzhji | what exactly is datamining? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dzhji/eli5_what_exactly_is_datamining/ | {
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"Data mining in this context is using a software tool to extract information about the new update. It is usually performed on major patches in games to learn about what new items are being released.\n\nData mining in the larger context refers to using algorithms, machine learning, and filtering techniques to learn something new from a vary large amount of information. So stores might learn about purchasing patterns by some of their users. It is how Target projects that someone might be pregnant, and thus starts sending targeted mailers to try and get you to buy all your baby gear from them."
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2y4h9s | why do households not earn the double amount of money with both partners working nowadays as compared to the traditional times when only men went working? | If double the amount of people are contributing to economy, why is there not a clear difference compared to before? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y4h9s/eli5_why_do_households_not_earn_the_double_amount/ | {
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"Stagnant wages due to globalization, mechanization, flattening of the economy--and, in many cases, public policy decisions by conservative governments that enriched the very rich at the expense of the middle class.\n\nI wrote a [piece at Salon](_URL_0_) about the phenomenon. Here's an excerpt:\n\nSimply put, starting in the 1980s policymaking elites in the Western world were scared to death of oil shortages, inflationary spirals and the impact of jobs being shipped to lower-wage nations or made obsolete by increasingly powerful machines and computers. Something had to be done. Even as foreign policy became explicitly focused on securing access to oil, domestic policy became focused on quashing inflation while disguising wage stagnation. Either countries needed to move sharply to the left through increased worker protections and redistribution of incomes, or to the right by substituting an asset-based economy for the old wage-based economy. Most chose to go right — an understandable move at the time given that state Communism was still a threat to capitalist economies, but also a spent and discredited ideology. Ronald Reagan best made the case for the new economic model in a speech from 1975: \n\nRoughly 94 percent of the people in capitalist America make their living from wage or salary. Only 6 percent are true capitalists in the sense of deriving income from ownership of the means of production …We can win the argument once and for all by simply making more of our people Capitalists.\n\nOne of the chief ways that American and British policymakers put this vision into reality was by crippling organized labor. But while that certainly placed downward pressure on wages in the U.S. and Britain, labor was not so similarly affected in most of the rest of the developed world. Organized labor remains a powerful force throughout most of Europe, yet growing wealth inequality and a declining middle class are present trends there as well. The health of organized labor abroad has helped stem the tide, but has not managed to stop it. The less noticed but potentially more consequential way that policymakers across the industrialized world set about accomplishing this goal was to push their middle classes to invest their wealth into assets, especially stocks and real estate, then use the levers of public policy to inflate the values of those assets in order to disguise the inevitable declines in wages. There was also a concerted effort to hide wage losses by lowering the prices of non-perishable goods — even if doing so meant domestic job losses. These goals were accomplished in several ways:\n\n1) Push people away from defined-benefit pensions and into stocks and 401(k)s. Believe it or not, there used to be a time when the Dow Jones and S & P 500 indices were little-noticed figures in the business section of the newspaper. That’s because most people’s retirements weren’t tied to the stock market. The switch from pensions to market-based 401(k)s helped change all that. Moving employees into 401(k)s did more than just reduce the obligated burden on corporate bottom lines. It also helped goose the growth of the financial sector upon which the ultra-wealthy depend for their passive incomes. This was not an accident. Combined with the Reagan-era excesses and the explosion of the tech bubble, suddenly Wall Street was hot popular culture, and the nation watched breathlessly as the health of the Dow Jones was commonly equated with the health of the overall economy. The share of GDP taken by the financial sector grew from 2.8 percent in 1950 to 8.4 percent and rising as of 2006, and financial sector profits account for nearly a third of all corporate profits in America. As a broader sector of Americans watched their meager stock portfolios rise, they weren’t as concerned with the slow growth of their regular wages. Only lately has the damage done to retirement security by moving from defined benefits to uncertain stock markets started to become more widely known.\n\n2) Push more people into buying real estate, and increase home prices by all means possible. Rates of homeownership increased most dramatically in the 1940s to 1960s, creating the first major bump in housing prices. However, the period between 1960 and 1975 saw home prices decline slightly when adjusted for inflation. The government used the levers of public policy to encourage greater homeownership and reduce interest rates. Big business and wealthy interests pushed through Wall Street deregulation during the Reagan and Clinton eras, which not only boosted the stock market but also allowed large banks to make unprecedented money off of home loans. The end result was that wealthy landlords and asset owners got much richer while rents increased and wages declined, but most Americans didn’t feel the pinch because rising home values made them feel rich on paper until the Great Recession. After the financial crisis, policymakers have done everything in their power to boost both stock and home prices through quantitative easing, 0 percent interest rates, and increased homeowner incentive programs. \n\n3) Democratize consumer debt, especially through credit cards. Americans born after 1975 don’t remember a world before the widespread use of credit cards. But it used to be that if a regular member of the public couldn’t pay his or her bills, debt wasn’t usually an option. But that wasn’t usually a huge problem, either: Because jobs were plentiful and wages had more buying power against the cost of living, most Americans didn’t need credit cards. Revolving credit used to be the province of capitalists, not of wage earners. \n\nThough Diner’s Club cards originated in the 1950s, the charge cards as we know them today were truly born and popularized in the mid-1970s and early 1980s – not coincidentally the same time as Wall Street deregulation, 401(k) transitions and the birth pangs of the real estate boom. The boom in popular credit had two major effects: to enrich the same financial services companies whose success disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and to disguise and soften the effects of stagnant wages. \n\n4) Reduce the cost of goods through free trade policies. The same decades that produced the previous trends also saw the implementation of free trade agreements like NAFTA. It is commonly understood today that these treaties benefit wealthy stockholders while reducing jobs in developed nations. But their less-discussed effect was also to reduce the price of many consumer goods made overseas, which in turn helped to disguise wage stagnation. \n\nAll of these moves toward increasing the value of assets do directly benefit the wealthy. But more important, they have served to create a more purely capitalist society, hide the decline of the middle class and mitigate public discontent over stagnant wages. There are many problems with this, of course. The first is that the vast preponderance of wealth will accrue to the very top incomes in an economy where assets inflate while wages deflate. The second is that a purely asset-based economy is bubble-prone, deeply unstable and given to sharp and painful boom-bust cycles. The story of the last half-decade is in part the removal of the blindfold that has been hiding wage losses over the last half-century. Housing prices have skyrocketed beyond the ability of most people under 40 to afford, even as household debt nears record highs. Nearly half of Americans have no retirement savings at all, while much of the rest of the developed world faces a pension obligation crisis. \n\nThe tools policymakers have used to distract the public from the raw deal of low wages are no longer working. ",
"The cost of living has increased faster than wages have. \n\nAdditionally, we have more expenses today than we did in the past (cable t.v, phone, internet, etc), and many expenses are simply higher relative to income (retirement, health care, education, housing, etc)."
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4y79wn | why is speaking in third person often associated with low intelligence? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y79wn/eli5_why_is_speaking_in_third_person_often/ | {
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"Is it? Ceasar's Commentaries were written in the third person...\n\nMUJ561 is most likely think of speaking in the third person as a) Odd and b) Pretentious."
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3h4gd0 | what's the difference between the various cuts of steak? | I'm going to a Chicago steakhouse in a bit to help my boyfriend celebrate his birthday. After looking at the menu online, I noticed there were a lot of different choices of steak cuts. It's a high end restaurant so I don't think any of them are bad or low quality, I just don't understand the difference between them. Is it primarily a difference of texture and fat content or is there a flavor difference too? Some of the various cuts from the menu are: filet mignon, bone in filet, New York sirloin, bone in sirloin, t bone, and porterhouse.
Edit- I do understand that the different cuts come from different areas of the cow, but how do people know which one they prefer? Why would someone order a porterhouse instead of a filet, for example? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4gd0/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_the_various/ | {
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"Here's a [diagram](_URL_0_) that should answer your question. The different cuts refer to different parts of the cow that meat is being cut from. ",
"[Here is a good rundown on common steakhouse cuts.](_URL_0_)\n\nFeel free to ask your waiter as well. If he is good at his job he'll be able to give you all the ins-and-outs of the different menu options.",
"They come from different [parts of the cow](_URL_0_), and yes, texture and fat content have a great impact on the experience of the steak.\n\nOf course, preparation makes a huge difference. Sirloin is typically a less desirable cut of steak, but I'd rather have a well-prepared sirloin than a badly cooked ribeye.",
"Fine answers already, but I'll add two things:\n\n\"Steak\" is a way of cutting meat. Pretty much any cut of meat can be cut into steaks. Some are just much better suited. One could cut a Clod Steak (and indeed, I have...), but it's almost never done, because if you quick cook Clod it's super tough. Kinda pedantic, but just to clarify. Any cut can be a steak, some are just much better than others.\n\nGenerally speaking there's a tradeoff between depth of flavor and tenderness. The more tender pieces (like the filet) are the less flavorful. More flavorful steaks (like chuck-eye) are less tender. There isn't a direct relationship, but generally speaking it works like that. Consequentially, much of the choice of \"what steak should I eat?\" is about how tender vs. how flavorful, though as pointed out, fat quality is a factor as well.\n\nPersonally, were I to buy a fancy steak at a fancy steakhouse, it would be a Ribeye or bust. IMO they're the best balance of flavor and tenderness, with some real nice intramuscular fat. I also love to get a steak on the bone (a.k.a. a chop, though beef is very rarely called that). ",
"I will take a different approach. If you are at the beginning of your carnivorous life, don't aim for the stars. It would be like losing your virginity to Gisele Bundchen. All others will fail to live up to it. \n\nGo with the filet mignon. It is not the best thing on the menu. The porterhouse is. Uess they have a good prime rib, like at the Chop House. The filet is really good. Try the porterhouse or NY strip later. Get the gigantic lobster tail appetizer once. Then the pork chop. From a Chicago steak house the pork chop is completely different from your mom's. Spread your spiritual journey across several years. Unless you're 80. Then get the porterhouse before you die. ",
"I work at a high end steak house and explain this to people all the time. Sirloin cuts are very juicy and flavorful ... but not tender. Think big juicy chewy steak cut. \n\nFilet Mignon is the most tender cut. You can cut a filet with a butter knife. However that tenderness comes at a cost - they contain very little fat ... they do not have good flavor. My resto wraps ours in smoked bacon, and serves with bernaise sauce to help with this. \n\nThe New York is sort of the middle ground. Not only are they well marbled (contain a good amount of fat, and thus flavor) but they are also quite tender. If you want a blend of flavor and tenderness, they are the best option. \n\nRib eye steaks are also a middle option. Not very tender, but because they often contain bone they are very flavorful, and very large. \n\nThe most important thing is to order your steak at medium, to medium rare. Anything past that ruins the flavor. \"Chicago\" exterior, medium rare interior, is my preferred cooking method. ",
"Butcher here. Steak is just a thickness and size of any cut of meat. \n\nChuck eyes and ribeyes are probably your most flavorful steak with a good amount of tenderness with it. If you see a \"del monico\" this would be your closest best(a bone in ribeye)\n\nYour most tender cuts will be a tenderloin. You can see this as it's own steak (filet mignon) or bacon wrapped, or other varieties(beef Wellington, steak tar-tar) unless you have a well marbled tenderloin (usually only prime) the meat itself doesn't have a lot of flavor to it, (unlike the ribeye)\n\nWhere tenderloin will usually be your most expensive cut (Iv seen it upwards of 60$ for a plate here in Florida) a typically less expensive and less fatty dish than the Riley is going to be a:\n\nsirloin, probably the least tender middle meat but not tough unless cooked past medium(Fred Flintstone steak)\n\nnew York strip(shell steak), (usually the most popular for the average steak eater) having little fat in the meat means less chiseling to eat around \n\ntbone (tenderloin and ny strip),\n\nporterhouse(tenderloin/ny strip/sirloin).\n\n\nNow that's just middle meats (most tender and often most seen steak cuts)\n\nOther popular and common steakhouse cuts include \n\nFlank (good flavor but tough)\n\nSkirt(outside skirt tastes better but usually double price)\n\nTop blade/mock tender (shoulder cuts usually best for strogenaf/soup\n\nTri tip ,this is my FAVORITE cut but recent popularity(tnx Martha Stewart) has increased price\n\n",
" > Why would someone order a porterhouse instead of a filet, for example?\n\nI got this.\n\nFirst off, let me give the easy answer. The best cut is ribeye. Bone-in, boneless, roast, prime. It makes no nevermind. That's the best.\n\nNow why do people prefer different cuts? There are three factors that make a beef cut what it is: tenderness (texture), marbling (fat content), and beefiness (flavor).\n\nEvery cut generally balances between the first two and the last factor. That's just how cow works.\n\nFilet is very overrated in my opinion. It is great in dishes where the beef is not expected to carry the flavor (steak au poivre). Outside of that, it's an overpriced cut for people trying to impress other people.\n\nT-bone and Porterhouse are interesting in that they contain two primals: tenderloin (filet) and the other loin (strip). Personally I don't care for them because when I want steak, I want steak. Not this 2-for-1 hogwash.\n\nSo, back to my thesis, go for ribeye. It is the perfect balance of tenderness, marbling, and flavor."
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3sqa94 | on a cold day when someone walks into a room from outdoors and you can "smell the cold" what is it that you're smelling and what causes this? | I ask this because some people just walked into the room I'm in from outside and I feel like I can smell the cold on them. Also, there is a certain smell that cold has that seems different than when it's hot out, so what is that and how/why does it happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sqa94/eli5_on_a_cold_day_when_someone_walks_into_a_room/ | {
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"The predominant factor is the change in the _amount of smell_. When it is very cold there is almost no moisture in the air. Moisture in the air allows more particulate matter to be airborne. When it's really, really cold it simply doesn't smell as much as when it's warm, and when its humid. "
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2lzjzi | what is the functional difference between an ip address and a mac address? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lzjzi/eli5_what_is_the_functional_difference_between_an/ | {
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"The IP address is dependent on the network that the device is on. For example, your tablet will have different IP addresses at home as it does at Starbucks, because they are on different networks.\n\nThe MAC address is assigned to the hardware of your device. It never changes. It identifies your device to a network.",
"IP addresses will change when you move between networks, while your MAC address never changes. The IP address is the main address that websites use to send you data. IP addresses are basically organized by geographic region and this is how packets can find their way from a server across the world to your server. When you connect to a new network, the network assigns you an IP address that's in the range of that networks valid IP addresses. So if you and me work in the same office, my IP address might be 45.32.165.1 while yours might be 45.32.165.2. You MAC address, on the other hand, never changes and that's how the router in your office communicates with your individual computer. So once that packet reaches the office router, it checks a list it has of IP addresses and sees which MAC address it assigned to that IP address. It then sends the packet using that MAC address to your computer. ",
"You could think of a MAC address as being like a social security number, and an IP address being like a postal address.\n\nYour social security number stays with you for life, so if someone ever needs to make sure that they're talking to the right person they can check your social security number. Each network card has a MAC address which is unique, so it knows that any packets addressed to its MAC address must be meant for it to read.\n\nThat's no use for sending a message to you across the country though. Imagine if you addressed letters with just a social security number and the post office had to keep track of where everyone lived to get their mail to them. With a postal address they just need to route it to the right state, then when it gets to the right state someone there will know how to get it to the right city, then to the right street and the right house. IP addresses are like that, they say where you are on the network, not who you are. Every IP address that starts with 18 belongs to MIT, so if you want to get a packet to an 18.\\*.\\*.\\* address you just send it to MIT. Another router at MIT will worry about getting it to the right computer when it gets there.",
"Your name is your MAC address. It identifies you personally and always stays with you. \n\nYour name tag at work is your IP address. It helps identify you to others, and you can have different ones at different times.",
"Your MAC address is like the VIN number of your car - its completely unique and never changes for the life of your car. Your IP address is like your license plate- its issued to you by the state, and it can change as you move from place to place. Its unique to you FOR NOW, but other people could even have your plate number after you go somewhere else.",
"I'll use a simple analogy.\n\nYour IP address is the equivalent of a cell phone number. it gives the network instructions on how to find your phone, but you can change your number if you want to.\n\nYour MAC address is the equivalent of the serial number on your phone. So if i lose my phone and get a new one, my phone number (IP Address) would stay the same, but my serial number (MAC address) would change",
"You can think of the internet like a vast web of interconnected local networks. When a device connects to the internet, it is really connecting to a local network, which in turn is connected to the vast network of other local networks that form the entirety of the internet. The local networks communicate with other local networks over IP (internet protocol). Devices within a local network (like the network in an office building) usually communicate via Ethernet protocol.\n\nNow when your device connects to that local network, it is assigned an IP Address on the local network. This is akin to your home mailing address. Say you want to send a letter to Bob, you address the envelope with \"123 Bobby Street\" and send it out in the mail. Similarly, when you want to send Bob a packet over the internet, you need to address that packet to Bob's computer. To further the analogy, let's say bob lives in a multi-tenant apartment complex. If you address the envelope to the apartment complex, they would have to look up which apartment Bob lives at in order to deliver the mail to the correct destination. A similar process happens when an internet packet arrives at the router of a local network. Most of the computers within that network will all have the same \"global IP address\", but will have different local addresses.\n\nOnce the packet arrives at the router of the local network, the computers within that local network are communicating over Ethernet protocol. Ethernet protocol *does not understand IP addresses*, it only understands MAC addresses. Literally the source and destination in the header of the packet are the MAC addresses of the two machines communicating over Ethernet. The router has a table of assigned physical MAC addresses stored on it's internal memory and can then route the packet to the correct destination machine. \n\nSo to summarize, the IP address is used direct a packet to the correct local network within the entirety of the internet, but once inside the local network, the computers within are probably communicating over Ethernet (which only understands MAC addresses) so the MAC address is used to find the destination machine and finish the final leg of it's journey over the internet.",
"MAC - Only people within shouting distance (on the same broadcast domain)\nIP - Everyone anywhere "
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8yuu7k | there are hundreds, if not thousands, of stamp designs issued by the u.s. postal service. they never expire. how does anyone know if what i stuck on my envelope is a real stamp? i could just put a wavy-edged sticker on there and no one would know, right? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yuu7k/eli5_there_are_hundreds_if_not_thousands_of_stamp/ | {
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"The simple answer is that the stamps are coated with a phosphorescent compound that glows under a specific wavelength of light as it goes thru sorting machines. If the machine does not detect the fluoresce then it is routed into an inspection pile. You could duplicate the formula of course but the cost to do so starts to very rapidly exceed the cost of using a real stamp. Also you can in some areas get a daily email from the USPS that contains images of the mail coming to your house on that day, meaning that optical scanning of your mail is getting better and better. Search “Informed Delivery Daily Digest” for information on the scanning program.",
"The effort to fake a stamp, to get it so that it's not obviously a fake, is pretty high. Stamps are pretty cheap. And, the penalty for getting caught doing it is very steep.\n\nSo, that's why it doesn't happen much. High effort, high risk, low reward."
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3hmq1u | why are glaciers, and glacial water such a vivd bright blue color? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hmq1u/eli5_why_are_glaciers_and_glacial_water_such_a/ | {
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"EDIT: Lies and slander all up in here. There's plenty of people who know things about water so read those comments for the answer to this question. Some other stuff talking about how eyes work is down there too.\n\nAlmost any time you ask \"why is something blue\" the answer is Rayleigh scattering, or something conceptually similar so you could say Rayleigh scattering with conviction. Small particles scatter light proportionally to their wavelength. Blue light gets scattered more than other colors. Larger particles scatter them all equally and appear white.\n\nIn the case of glaciers, there's smaller parts, such as the water or the edges of the glaciers that scatter blue light, then all the other reflective white parts around just shine that back at you. Ice is incredibly reflective to a wide range of wavelengths. That's why you can get sunburned easier in Antarctica and why frozen things tend to thaw unevenly in the microwave.\n\nEDIT: I feel the need to clarify in case someone with physics background wants to get pedantic. A lot of natural things like the sky and water and eyes are blue because of a light scattering process. Particles smaller than light wavelengths will scatter shorter wavelengths more. There's a few names for this, such as eyes are called Tyndall scattering because the particles are about the same size as light wavelengths and they only scatter the ones smaller than them. The sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering which is when the particles are smaller than all visible wavelengths and all wavelengths get scattered, the shorter wavelengths just get scattered more. \n\nIt's a diffraction thing and can be noticed with sound, how it's easier to hear low frequencies around corners. The long wavelength light can more easily skirt around the small particles and keep going straight, while short wavelengths are more likely to sort of hit them and bounce off.\n\nPaints and dyes are blue because of absorption, which is a different thing and is because of the structure of the substance. A little water is clear, because it lets light through, but a lot of water is blue because the scattering effect adds up. Any amount of blue paint is equally blue because it's just absorbing light and letting the blue reflect.",
"In the case of some mountain lakes, like [Moraine Lake](_URL_0_) or [Peyto Lake](_URL_0_#hl=en & tbm=isch & q=peyto+lake) in Alberta, which have a opaque and almost unrealistic teal colour -the answer is rock flour (limestone). The movement of the glaciers grinds the limestone to a fine powder and this is carried to the lake by the runoff. Light is reflected differently in this limestone/water mixture than it is in normal water.",
"In the case of glacial ice, it's a combination of two things. First, the large amount of pressure squeezes out air, which makes smaller amounts of ice appear white-ish. Second, large quantities of water in general appear bluer because water absorbs every color of light except blue. That's also why glacial water appears so blue. Other large bodies of water don't look as blue because glacial water is much more pure and has less non-water material in it. \n\nSource: personal memory and\n_URL_0_ ",
"Reminds me of a joke a guide told us when we toured a glacier a long time ago. \"You'd be blue, too, if you were that cold.\" We didn't laugh, and it was awkward.",
"Water is blue! Don't get me wrong; scattering does occur in water, especially in lakes produced by glacial runoff. But water itself does indeed absorb other colors more strongly than blue, and that means by definition that it is blue. This is why Lake Tahoe is blue, why oceans are blue, why photographs of things underwater appear tinted blue, etc. In most cases, if we have enough water, there isn't enough scattering in liquid water for the blue to be due primarily to scattering.\n\nFor ice, it matters that there are fewer bubbles in it, which act to scatter/reflect all colors so much that our experience with ice is more commonly \"white\". But glaciers under pressure lose the bubbles, making them more uniform inconsistency, and therefore more blue."
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6saw2s | why have wages been stagnant for multiple decades? | I hear and read all the time that wages have not kept up with the pace of inflation for multiple decades now. Is this true? If so, why is that? What are contributing factors to nationwide wage rates. And if wages so begin to rise, won't that also raise the price of goods? This defeating the benefits of higher wages? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6saw2s/eli5_why_have_wages_been_stagnant_for_multiple/ | {
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"During the 60s and 70s, a new idea in business started to manifest itself. That a business should keep it's workers just happy enough to keep working and that investors are the real power behind a company. So the chain of importance went from owner, workers, investors (if there was any). But the shift started to happen where investors were moved to the top of the list and workers were pushed down, anyone can be replaced and no single worker really influences the bottom line. So investment in workers (pay) only slightly went up and profits went up and the dividends went to the investors. Is this a lot more complicated yes it is but in the end investors are in my opinion the major problem with modern corporate model. Satisfy them and the world is great, but in the end they don't provide anything to help companies improve. ",
"News sources I see talk about lack of growth in \"real\" wages. In other words, wages kept up with (or were just slightly higher than) inflation \n\nSee chart here: [wage growth just above inflation](_URL_0_) ",
"Also to add to the existing answers here, in some places where there is minimum wage, when that minimum is raised, businesses simply raise their prices to \"match\" the increase in the wage requirement, since they want their profit to not drop as a result in the minimum wage increase. So even if you got a 10% increase in your wage, the apple you need to buy will increase price as well ( dont know a average number when this happens).",
"Globally, wages have increased *a lot*. A new fairly prosperous middle class has appeared in Asia and even Africa, a continent that used to be most famous for its frequent famines and kleptocracies. All this was possible because tariffs have been abolished or at the very least cut down significantly by many developed countries.\n \nHowever, this has lead to a situation where workers in developed nations compete with worker in emerging markets where the hourly wage rate is significantly lower. A company is now free to decide to produce a car, a shirt or a TV in Detroit or Vientiane. Consequently, there's a lot of pressure on low-skilled workers. If they don't accept low wages, the company will close down the factory and build a new one somewhere else.\n"
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3nm99z | how do healthcare work in america.i'm from england where we have free healthcare, so how does it work if someone is taken to hospital unconscious from say a car accident, how do they pay for it? | Seriously how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nm99z/eli5_how_do_healthcare_work_in_americaim_from/ | {
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"In many cases, they are terrible debt for the rest of their lives! Lucky people will have health insurance and just have a large bill to pay off which is manageable.",
"If that question could be easily answered, there'd be a lot fewer people in the US stressed beyond belief, and declaring bankruptcy.",
"In that situation (where there's a critical injury), the general rule is that the hospital must treat you regardless of your ability to pay.\n\nThey'll get your insurance/medicaid info (or lack thereof) before you're discharged, and bill your provider from there. If you have no coverage, you're on the hook personally for the full amount. Of course, it's very rare that an uninsured patient can actually pay the full amount, so the hospital has to make up that cost elsewhere (by charging more to paying customers).",
"Well as a fellow Brit I don't pretend to be an expert on the matter but I heard somewhere that it's possible, with the right qualifications and experience, to produce and sell high-quality Methamphetamine's in order to pay your hospital bills. ",
"Long story short, you get a $25,000 bill (or whatever giant number your medical procedure cost) the mail after they discharge you. 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the US are due to medical expenses.",
"As for *why* the bill after-the-fact is legal, it's an issue of fairness (and ultimately derives from the legal system we inherited from England). Basically, a healthcare provider gets to assume that a patient who is incapable of providing consent but who has a life-threatening medical emergency *would* agree to treatment if they were capable of it, so they can provide the treatment (otherwise it'd be assault). But now once that person's life is saved, the doctors have done a bunch of work and made them much better off. It's unfair for doctors to be expected to do all emergency care for free; in England the solution is to have taxpayers pay the doctors, but the US doesn't do that, so the patient is expected to pay (since they're the ones who benefited from the treatment)."
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3g7ony | how are black colleges, black tv channels acceptable. but if white university or white people tv were created it would be considered racist | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g7ony/eli5_how_are_black_colleges_black_tv_channels/ | {
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"Probably because of the image of past history with certain white organizations and racism, it just wouldn't look good and many people would be offended."
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1k0jv8 | my three day old daughter is asleep and judging by eye movement she is dreaming. my question is do babies dream and what do they dream about? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k0jv8/eli5_my_three_day_old_daughter_is_asleep_and/ | {
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"...\n\nAsking what a baby dreams about is like asking what a dog dreams about. How would you ever find out?",
"What do you dream about? You can't possibly judge what a person is dreaming about.\r\rDreams are often based on the kind of activity you do through the day..\r\rFrom wiki:\r\rDreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep—when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable",
"OP asked a two part question. I'll do my best to give a thorough answer. \n\n1. Yes\n2. Nipples ",
"This isn't really suitable for this subreddit. You seem to be looking for a straight-forward answer to a question, rather than a simplification of complex topic. You might be better off trying /r/answers or /r/askscience."
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eebsaj | how do you “hear” a song stuck in your head, or “see” a thing that you imagine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eebsaj/eli5_how_do_you_hear_a_song_stuck_in_your_head_or/ | {
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"ELI5: I can \"hear\" a song in my head but I cannot \"see\" anything I imagine. What is wrong with me?"
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2u72fo | how has the chinese language evolved? | And how do we know?
Chinese writing is not tied to pronunciation, so modern Chinese people can read very old texts. For English, we see the changing language over time by looking at old writing, but can we see the same thing for Chinese somehow? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u72fo/eli5_how_has_the_chinese_language_evolved/ | {
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"We can tell it evolved because we compare it to older writings. The language is usually adapted per regions where slang is used and accents morph words. It ends up being renamed but is essentially the same thing.",
" > so modern Chinese people can read very old texts\n\nThis is false. Chinese people today can read up until the start of usage of the vernacular language (白话). Before this, it already gets harder.\n\nAlso, you should keep in mind that for linguistics speech is the main level of language, writing is only secondary.\n\nThen there's the fact that chinese writing has evolved over the years, even though it has stabilised pretty quick on our european timescale, and that's due to the fact that it's really, really old."
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7vinvt | how devices generate magnetic waves and how to they receive information from them? | Edit: electromagnetic* | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vinvt/eli5_how_devices_generate_magnetic_waves_and_how/ | {
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"Electricity and magnetism are related. Each can cause the other. If you put electricity through a wire it makes an electromagnetic field. If you turn the electricity to the wire on and off repeatedly, it creates an electromagnetic wave that comes off the wire in all directions. If you put a second similarly sized wire near the first one making the waves, the second one will pick up the waves and an electromagnetic field will be created in the second wire.\n\nFrom there you can adjust the properties of the waves (amplitude and frequency) made on the first wire. A device connected to the second antenna can be made to understand how to translate the changes in wave properties. ",
"Electromagnetic waves are generated whenever there is a changing electrical current. An antenna consists of a length of wire with an alternating current running through it. The frequency with which the current changes direction determines the frequency of the waves that will be produced. Typically the length of the wire is selected so that it resonates The antenna can be shaped to improve efficiency or help direct the radiation, but at it's simplest it's just a wire."
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95ffa4 | how did my fruit punch turn into a carbonated wine tasting drink when it was in the fridge for 2 weeks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95ffa4/eli5_how_did_my_fruit_punch_turn_into_a/ | {
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"Fermentation! Yeast or bacteria are eating the sugar and turning it into alcohol and CO2. The CO2 carbonates the drink, the alcohol makes it wine-tasting. "
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1ff0nh | the evolution and necessity for genitalia. | This may be a stupid question, i dont know, i'm 5 ok. Basically i'm interested in how human genitals evolved into what they are now, why they gave us an advantage over our ancestors and other creatures reproductive organs. anyones wacky speculation as to what our genitalia would look like in 100,000, million years etc is very welcome also. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ff0nh/eli5_the_evolution_and_necessity_for_genitalia/ | {
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"It would really help if you could be more specific. I understand that you're interested in everything, but if someone tried to explain how every detail evolved, they could accidently write a book."
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1a0zk5 | why do we get cold chills when we're sick? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a0zk5/why_do_we_get_cold_chills_when_were_sick/ | {
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"Your body is pushing its limits (from cold to hot, repeat) because it's even more annoying for the virus in your body than it is for you as a person. You merely feel cold or hot, while the virus can't stand the changes in temperature and dies.",
"When we get sick, our body begins to produce various chemicals (e.g. cytokines) that travel in the blood to the part of the brain that controls our temperature regulation (in a part of the brain called the preoptic area of the anterior hypothalamus). These chemicals change the set temperature that we normally run on and make it increase, causing a fever. (The fever, as TheDrunkPillow alludes, is to make it harder for the bacteria, virus, or parasites to move around and survive in your body.)\n\nSo - this is where it seems backwards - we now have a bunch of chemicals rushing around your blood stream, messing with the part of your brain that usually keeps you at a toasty 98.6F; you are now running a fever of 101F. Strangely you begin to feel cold and shake, when clearly you are not cold at all. This is due to a couple things: one being the altered sense of temperature that comes with messing with your internal temperature. Your body is attempting to get you to run a higher temp, and you will feel cold and begin to shiver until you get your temperature to that new, higher number. (The shivering helps your muscles make heat, aiding in increasing your overall body temperature.) \n\nThe second, and more important of the two, involves the fact that once the brain is told to raise your temperature, certain brain cells begin to work on changing your blood flow to your arms, legs, and skin. The blood gets sent to your internal organs helping raise your temperature even more. This is, likely, the main contributor to you feeling cold when you're sick and running a fever.\n\nI hope that helps! Can cite sources if you need it. "
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j4brf | i'm concerned that eli5 is essentially becoming askreddit | **EDIT**: The title should also include r/answers. As pointed out by demondawid, what ELI5 is in danger of becoming is more like r/answers than AskReddit. I think AskReddit still applies to my point, but far less so than r/answers. The concern is still the same though. This subreddit serves a niche, and it's a very specific one. I hope it can steer towards it, and stay there.
Here's my concern. Many people are taking the "like I'm five" idea to be metaphorical. A cute way of saying, "explain it to me in a simple way." As I understand it, the idea is to not only explain the idea simply, but to explain it in a way a child *could* grasp. It gives someone completely clueless the fundamentals of understanding, which he can then build off of. If you look at AskReddit (r/answers fits here as well), it is essentially a place where people who don't know about a thing, or want to know more about a thing, get it explained to them in a simple way, a way they can understand. I've seen answers in this subreddit that could easily have been in AskReddit OR r/answers.
People say that explaining some concepts that simply is impossible. I was inclined to agree, but then I saw [**this**](_URL_1_). Amazing. It was an easy read, and gave me the basic understanding of something that I thought would be too complex to explain to a child. Unfortunately, [**this**](_URL_0_) is more highly upvoted. I looked at that and saw a bunch of numbers and acronyms and thought, "ugh, never mind. I'm not really that interested in programming." I'm sure it's well thought out, and very informative, but it doesn't follow the spirit of this subreddit. I downvoted the latter comment, and upvoted the first one I linked to (chipbuddy's). I realise this is against reddiquette, but it makes sense in this subreddit. I don't mind that those comments exist, I just wish that people realise why this subreddit was created and relegate comments like that a little bit lower. Perhaps after I read chipbuddy's very well child-tailored explanation, I would be more inclined to read the more complicated one. We need to self-moderate a little bit better.
TL;DR - AskReddit and r/answers are for straightforward and/or simple explanations. ELI5 is for explanations a child *could* understand.
Edited to include r/answers due to demonawid's critique. He's right, but I believe my point is still valid.
**Edit 2**: I love that we have a lot of discussion going on this. I've been busy today, so I haven't had time to join in as much as I'd like. I hear those who are disagreeing with me, you all have valid points. However, I do want to make one thing clear. I am not suggesting that a child couldn't comprehend what a kind of metal is or what a certain element is called. If you explain it to Eli in the right way, he'd definitely comprehend it. The "right way" is what I'm getting at. I believe my fist linked comment explaining programming languages is not the right way to explain it to Eli. It does not need to be an analogy, but that certainly helps with very complicated answers.
**To those who believe that I, and the others who agree, are being overly nit picky**: If this subreddit involves people asking questions and getting answers [like these](_URL_0_), how is it any different from r/answers? To remain distinct, this subreddit has to stay in the "a child *could* comprehend it" niche.
**Edit 3**: It looks as if chipbuddy's response has surged up since I linked to those two responses above. Good on you all! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4brf/im_concerned_that_eli5_is_essentially_becoming/ | {
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"Not really. If anything it's becoming r/answers. \n\nr/askreddit is for asking questions like \"what do you think of x?\" or \"if you could do x or y, which one would you do?\". \n\nr/answers is for questions like \"how does x work?\".",
"I feel the quality of answers that I've been seeing are ... not answers a 5 year old would understand. Here's an example:\n[How a lightbulb works](_URL_0_)\nThe top comment starts out:\"An incadescent lightbulb works by running electricity through a piece of tungsten;\"\n\nWhile that may be accurate, I think answers like that should be in a more detail/correctness oriented location, ELI5 should be something like: power goes though a wire and it gets reaaaaaaallly hot. So hot, that it glows! And it glows really bright, and that's where the light comes from.",
"I'd like to add that if you think a question truly cannot be explained to a child, like maybe \"explain the aristocrats joke\" - you'd have to get into anti-jokes, etc., then maybe it would be more at home in r/answers. Perhaps some questions are better asked there. That said, I think people should be free to ask ELI5 anything they want, and let the community decide whether it's appropriate, and can be done.\n\nI didn't think the progression of programming languages could be done, and it was done exceptionally well.",
"Sorry but I genuinely think you have the original intent wrong because here's the original thread with the pitch for the subreddit and nowhere does it say it has to be literally something a child could understand: _URL_0_. It actually says exactly what you said this wasn't about. (the name itself comes from a clip from the office where Michael asks Oscar to explain their budget surplus like he's 8. Michael doesn't understand so he asks for it to be explained like he's 5.)",
"As a rule, if you want an answer for something get specific, go to r/answers, but if you want an explanation of something complicated, go here.",
"I totally agree with this sentiment. Here are a few tips I thought of to keep your posts 5:\n\n1) No jargon. I just explained about how Twitter makes money, and another reply in the thread said \"VC investment capital\" as the entirety of their post. Yeah, that is pretty much correct although oversimplified, and the jargon is pretty basic, but if you said that to a five year old, his eyes would roll back in his head. Dumb it down and if you have to explain a word, don't use it. \n\n2) No quick replies. If you are going to explain something to a doe-eyed preschooler, you definitely aren't going to do it with sentence fragments. If you are going to use a one-liner with a 5 year old, you are going to have to explain what a one-liner is before you do it.\n\n3) Take nothing for granted. Sure, if you are explaining how the Greenhouse effect works, saying \"the atmosphere is a big group of air that surrounds the whole planet\" is going to sound pretty goddamned condescending anywhere else, but here, that kind of shit is welcome. Pretend like we are idiots; it is actually pretty fun to read, and we might not admit it but people will learn some things that way.\n\nThe fun of writing on this SR is that you can envision your audience as a collection of completely uneducated cretins. The irony is that is exactly what we are looking for.\n\nHow can we enforce this stuff? Downvotes of course!\n\nAnd I also like to end each post with: \"Is that 5 enough for you?\"\n\nSo...\n\nWas that 5 enough for you?\n\n*Edit:* Here's my Twitter making money post. I thought that I did pretty well with it. It was prompted when someone asked how \"losing a lot of money\" was a viable business plan.\n\n > Losing a lot of money means that they are spending their savings more quickly then they are bringing in new money. Twitter has money which they got from people who think that Twitter is a good idea that will make money in the future. Those people gave the people who run Twitter money now in exchange for the right to have some of the money that they believe Twitter is capable of making (hopefully, a lot more then they are giving Twitter now) in the future.\n\n > Twitter is using the money they have now to build the social structure (users, and businesses) which they believe will make them very influential in internet marketing and advertising in the future. Twitter's bet is that when they have that influence on the internet, they will be able to make a lot more money then they are spending right now.\n\n > It is not as if they have $0 in savings, make $500,000 in a month, and spend $600,000; but that they have $40,000,000 in savings (from the people who think Twitter is a good idea) they make $500,000 and spend $600,000 and the $100,000 difference comes from the $40,000,000 in savings, and goes toward the social infrastructure they think will make them super rich in the future. So the people who run Twitter believe it is worth it to them to spend at an unsustainable rate (means: \"can't do it forever\") now because they see it as an investment toward making much, much more money later on.\n\n > Is that 5 enough for you?\n",
"I found that when I gave answers that were *truly* dumbed down to a 5-year-old level (using analogies and everything), I got downvoted (not just ignored), and more complex answers got upvoted.\n\nFor example, [my explanation of gravity has 0 points](_URL_1_), whereas the \"best\" voted comment is simply a link to [this thread on /r/askscience](_URL_0_).",
"I really like the idea for this reddit and I like some of the responses, but lets be real here: nobody reading this is actually five years old and needs things explained in terms of school bullies and mommy and daddy. \n \nI assumed \"Explain like I'm Five\" would not be taken literally, but there is this huge crusade for it and I don't understand why. Do you guys really need everything explained in analogy form? In some situations it definitely helps (the Israel/Palestine post was an excellent example), but most of the time a \"layman's explanation\" would do just fine and serve the same purpose. \n\nIf anything, posts that are dumbed down too much are just annoying to read and don't really convey anything useful.",
"I totally agree. I understand that it doesn't need to be literally like a 5 year old would be able to understand, but I think answers need to presuppose a zero-level understanding of technical terms, or explanatory points of reference.\n\nCheck out [this top answer](_URL_4_).\n\nReally people should be asking themselves \"If I say SEC, would a 5 year old ask me what the SEC is?\" I think answers should answer more questions than they beg.\n\nPerhaps if we just picture ourselves talking to an articulate adult who has been living on a different planet their entire lives.\n\nMaybe the best way for me explain the tone *I* think we should be taking is to show some of my answers, since obviously I'm trying to write them as I think they *should* be written, to varying degrees of success: [JFK conspiracy theories](_URL_2_), [Healthcare Reform](_URL_0_), [Buffer Overflows](_URL_3_), [How ISPs work](_URL_1_).",
"Most of the AskReddit posts are just \"Tell me your stories about X. Here is my story\".",
"I think that the complex explanations are caused by people trying to explain this to a hypothetical five-year-old. When I think about writing an explanation here, I am thinking of an actual five-year-old that I know. Alternatively, you can kind of also think about explaining things to [David after dentist](_URL_0_), if he wasn't quite so doped up.\n\nIf this subreddit weren't text-only, I would post videos of Richard Feynman explaining things, stuff from Sesame Street or maybe (maybe) Bill Nye as examples. Having good examples of clear, concise and well thought out explanations of things will improve the content of this subreddit.",
"Just picking on the metaphorical aspect and comparing the two examples you provided. I feel that AskReddit is for advice and discussion whereas ELI5 seems to be heading exactly in the right direction: simple answers and explanations. \n\nWhat's wrong with the metaphorical aspect of ELI5? I don't think it should mean that ELI5 should be exclusively reserved for child-like analogies. Of course they are welcome, but should not exclusive, as I feel that is what your post is implying.",
"Don't read this if you're 5 (probably wait until you're 14. Mommy wouldn't like you using these words):\n\nI love the idea of this subreddit, and the creator is a visionary, but it needs more moderation. It's already started degrading, though. I can't stop it, you can't stop it. The downvote brigade who fiend for karma are already here. If you tell them their answer is too advanced, or the question would be better suited for /r/askscience or /r/answers, you get pushed to the bottom, so more psuedo-intelligent bullshit can be flung back and forth making anyone who *is* actually trying to learn something completely fucking dumbfounded.",
"I love how this subreddit has only been around for a few days and already we are concerned at changes we see.",
"Explaining things like the person in question is an elementary schooler is going to get rather fatiguing pretty quickly. The \"excellent answers\" posted are good, but not every one is willing to write out something that extensive. Not to mention its pretty much unnecessary as everyone here has at least some high school education. You can have an easy to understand answer with zero jargon without having to dumb it down to five year old levels. This is a pretty cool idea with a huge userbase, why not just roll with it instead of constricting things too much? ",
"A friendly place to ask questions and get SIMPLE answers, without fear of judgement. Appropriate for questions about current events, history, politics, culture and more. Head over to r/answers for higher-level explanations.\n\nKeep your answers simple! However, don't take the title of this subreddit TOO seriously (Please, no arguments about what an actual five-year-old would know or ask.) We're shooting for elementary-school age answers. Use your best judgment and stay within the spirit of the subreddit.\n\nIf they can't read and pay attention to guidelines, they actually might need this subreddit... =)",
"I've made this comment multiple times. This really should be /r/simpleexplanations or /r/laymansterms...",
"I don't think the \"like I'm five\" conceit should be a straitjacket. Maybe the name of the subreddit should be changed to r/teachmeabout, with the understanding that whoever is asking the question has little or no foundation knowledge.\n\nWhen you're *taught* (rather than just being *told*), you're systematically introduced to a concept, brought through some intermediate steps, and pointed to a conclusion. A teacher has a wide latitude to get his or her point across, and whatever works may be different in each case. If an analogy works, then use an analogy. If you have to speak more straightforwardly, then at least use layman's terms, and so on.\n\nAll the bits about no bias or speculation and to cite sources are good, so leave those in.",
"We do a much better job of keeping it simple over at /r/explainlikeimfour ",
"I've started answering questions on subjects I feel I have some knowledge on. I'm not viewing it like i'm talking to an actual 5 year old, but someone with little to no experience in the subject.\n\nI'm not trying to write material for Kindergarten lessons. I work in finance, and that doesn't get much play in elementary school. I'm looking at it the way I'd explain something to a friend at the bar. ",
"I find the answers that are most true to the subreddit's spirit generally start with (or include the words) \"Imagine if...\", and then a metaphor which explains it in terms I can imagine, and then after an example of how the metaphor applies. They also tend to be the ones I learn the most from.",
"I'm disappointed at how many people are arguing with each-other over the minutae of explanations that would go right over a five-year-old's head. \"What's the difference between Linux and Windows?\" does not need to go into the history of NetBSD vs. FreeBSD, or why it should be called 'GNU/Linux', nor distinguishing between an operating system and a window manager. When my friend's child daughter asks me the question, I'm not going to mention any of these things.",
"I was kind of expecting a Bill nye the science guy or more general answers with analogies. I've been mainly lurking but there's been a few questions that have gone technical in their terminology. > . > As other said, I see more of a /r/answers vibe rather than explaining it to a 5 year old.",
"Which is okay, because /r/askreddit is turning into /r/self.",
"When I heard of it, I thought it didn't literally take the LI5 part that seriously. I thought it was a place where you wouldn't be ridiculed for how little you don't know about certain topics. It doesn't feel like its to explain it as if you were literally a 5 year old with that sort of vocabulary, but rather explain it from the bottom up without condescension."
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j155f/is_it_true_that_scientis... | |
25oft5 | why are snowden's nsa leaks not all published at the same time (or close together)? | For example Greenwald is saying that there are 'better leaks to come'. But why have they not came yet? Why not strike while the iron is hot and the heat is on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25oft5/eli5_why_are_snowdens_nsa_leaks_not_all_published/ | {
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"People forget. We'Re getting bombarded so much information everyday that we can't keep track of everything. If all the info were released it would be Big for a few weeks than die because some new scandal happened, like Russia invading Crimea. Everyone would forget what happened last week.",
"I believe it's because they are trying to keep people interested and engaged so that it doesn't just flash-bang and go away. \n\nIf they had released it all at once, the press would only be able to cover so much of it, so a lot would have never seen the light of day. Whatever did get published would be consumed in the moment, the public would have its day or two of outrage, and then quickly move on to something else.\n\nThis slow burn ensures people don't become complacent. "
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2zz8jc | why don't we vote for the vice president or other powerful positions in the government? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zz8jc/eli5_why_dont_we_vote_for_the_vice_president_or/ | {
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"The Vice President has almost no actual power. Their only real responsibility is casting tie-breaking votes in the Senate, which hardly ever happens.",
"You do? And the basis of representative government is that it takes too long and is impractical to vote for every post and everyone, so you elect people you should trust to fill those slots with the power you vest in them, dont like the job they did? Then vote against them when they are up for election again. ",
"Assuming in the below you are talking about the United States.\n\n**Vice President** - We do vote for Vice President. Originally, the VP was just whoever got the second most votes for President, but that caused too many problems since they were usually competitors with the winner (and, many feared, created an incentive to \"remove\" the president to get the other guy into office). \n\nNow, the VP runs on the same ticket with the president. They don't usually have much of an independent effect, but you are voting for them, and there certainly are times the VP choice has changed how people vote. (take Sarah Palin, for example, who energized many conservative voters and turned off many liberal voters in 2008)\n\n**Agency Heads/Officers of the United States** - These are people like the attorney general, the head of the IRS, ambassadors, or other senior government officials. We don't vote for these people directly because the idea is that they are mainly just there to help the President implement the law. So, they decided it was more important that they be people the President can trust and get along with. Thus, usually, President' pick them. \n\nThere is still some democratic say on these people though, since the Senate has to approve them before they can take office, and we vote for the Senate. However, for some positions very, very close to the president, like the National Security Adviser, that check doesn't exist. The trade off, though, is that these positions usually have virtually no power/legal authority aside from speaking for the president. The more independent authority these offices have, the more likely they are to require Senate approval and be bound by Congressional action.\n\n\n"
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9ohruc | what do wasp stings do to the body? how does the recovery process work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ohruc/eli5_what_do_wasp_stings_do_to_the_body_how_does/ | {
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"The wasp venom actually contains a combination of factors which result in the effect you observed. The first is enzymes that rupture cell membranes, destroying the cells. These enzymes are specialized to mostly affect nerve cells so the effect is more painful. Another factor in the venom restricts blood flow so the venom isn't dispersed and neutralized, instead sticking around to remain painful.\n\nThe damage to the cells is permanent in the sense that they don't recover from being ruptured, but more cells can grow to recover from the injury."
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3d2z3j | why fresh, homegrown fruits and veggies taste so much better than big corporate grocery store produce? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d2z3j/eli5_why_fresh_homegrown_fruits_and_veggies_taste/ | {
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"because homegrown, you pick the fruit when they're ripe. commercial farming, the fruit is picked before they're ripe, otherwise it's not able to transport to market before going bad.",
"Two possibilities:\n\n1. Confirmation bias. You already think homegrown produce is better than corporate produce, so your mind colors your perceptions when you compare them.\n\n2. Corporate produce is all about money. Sometimes they use genetic modifications or selective breeding to make produce more resistant to disease and pests, but this subsequently makes them taste less flavorful. You can afford to grow fruits and veggies that are vulnerable to disease and pests, because you don't make a living selling them. If you have a small harvest, it's no big deal, the taste is worth it. ",
"Because the produce sold at grocery stores is produced and sold to be as standardized, cost efficient product possible whereas homegrown or locally grown fruit is focused more on taste. \n\nThe produce sold at the grocery stores is grown on huge farms usually hundreds or thousands of miles away from the consumer so it needs to be able to be shipped long distances over several days without losing its quality right away. It also needs to be as close to a uniform shape as possible to make picking (especially by machines), sorting, transportation and packaging as cheap and easy as possible on a massive scale. It's usually picked before its ripened and then pumped with a gas that speeds up ripening right before it gets sold. They also need to pick breeds that are hearty, look nice and taste good. They need to grow fast and be cheap to produce and handle\n\nWhen you grow produce at home or when its grown at a small local farm or garden, you don't care what it looks like as much, how long it takes to grow, if it can fit in a certain package or shipping container efficiently, go bad during transportation and storage... you mainly just want it to taste really good and and pick it at the optimum ripeness and consume it within a short time."
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ayw3zm | how do animals become frozen solid while they’re in movement? like the many videos that come up in winter with a frozen fox in misstep. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ayw3zm/eli5_how_do_animals_become_frozen_solid_while/ | {
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"The animals are not actually frozen in mid-step. Similarly the pictures of frozen soldiers weren't actually frozen while standing and pointing their guns, they were posed like that after the fact.\n\nAn animal might be walking through deep snow for instance when it dies. Given the snow around it there is no way for it to fall, it just stops moving and is supported in place. Then it freezes and snow falls to cover it.\n\nLater the snow blows away and reveals the animal apparently \"frozen mid-step\" but that didn't actually occur."
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5lrvwi | what has made our internet faster over the last 20 years? | Is it better wiring like fiber optic or more efficient encoding of the data? Lots of things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lrvwi/eli5_what_has_made_our_internet_faster_over_the/ | {
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"Better wiring, but also better equipment between the wires. Faster routing, faster decision making. Comes down to both efficiency through iteration (engineers have been thinking about better ways to solve the same problem for twenty years), and technological improvements like smaller and faster chips, etc.\n\nData compression has certainly gotten more efficient as well, both in the encoding algorithms for media and for the transport layer. (Think of implementing torrent-like technology not at the consumer software level, but at the hardware level, etc.)\n\nAnother big thing is Content Delivery Networks. When YouTube started, they were streaming video to you from their huge central datacenter in California, even if you lived in Melbourne. Now, they just copy an upload to their CDN nodes around the world, and you're watching a stream that comes from Sydney, much closer to you physically.",
"Telcotech here, \n\nThe biggest boost to internet speeds has been adding fiberoptic connections between a telcos WAN and data centers. This along with a process called Orbit angular momentum multiplexing which had allowed us to send more data per signal burst. Also the addition of remote field connections like the Alcatel 7330, which allows us to get fiber and highspeed copper connections closet to a customer. Sorry for no links, doing a repair right now."
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8inhi1 | why are almost all lcd displays (calculators, kitchen appliances, digital watches) at a slight angle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8inhi1/eli5_why_are_almost_all_lcd_displays_calculators/ | {
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"The LC (liquid crystals) re-orient themselves to block the passage of light or allow it. Like a piece of paper that will block your view if it's facing you, and not block your view if it's egdewise.\n\nSo if the LCD display is back-lit, like a computer screen that has LED lamps right behind the screen, then the screen doesn't have to be angled.\n\nBut if the display is not back-lit, if the surface behind the LCD is just a grey-ish reflective piece of metal, then the light from the sun or overhead lightbulbs must be allowed to get in past the crystals, strike the surface, then reflect back at you THROUGH the crystals, so you need a slight angle for that.\n\nIt's like trying to catch the sun in a small mirror, you have to angle it a little (or a lot).",
"It sounds like you are talking about a 7-segment display, which can be an LED, or even mechanical, not just an LCD.\n\nHere's the only explanation I could find:\n\n > Most of the 7 segment displays are slanted to make the numbers look like they were written in italics. This allows for one digit to be placed upside down along with another digit, such that the two decimal points appear like a colon between the digits. This arrangement of these electronic components is widely used in digital clock displays.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nI had to read that terse explanation quite a few times to understand it. Here's what I got.\n\nIf you look at a [single-digit 7-segment display unit](_URL_0_), you see that it includes a decimal point. For calculators, every digit needs a decimal point so that a combined multi-digit display can show numbers with the point between any two digits. So, since all units are designed with the decimal point, and a unit could be rotated 180 degrees and reconfigured to display digits upside-down, you can have a digit with the point on the bottom-right (right-side up) or top-left (upside-down) corner using the same physical unit. If you place two such units side-by-side, and turn on the point on both, you get something like 8.'8 (imagine the apostrophe is a dot). The two dots form a colon. But they're not quite aligned, so the colon is tilted. The dots can't be aligned because the physical display units are rectangular and the edges can't overlap.\n\nBut if you then design the digits themselves with a tilt, the tilt of the colon matches the tilt of the digits, and it looks less awkward. *8.'8* And this is how they were used in inexpensive clock-radios since forever. And that became the style for all seven-segment displays, even those that weren't assembled from individual digit units."
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2zh286 | why are airlines so concerned about watching each other when making pricing decisions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zh286/eli5why_are_airlines_so_concerned_about_watching/ | {
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"Because customers are not loyal. If another airline is providing similar service for even a few dollars less, their plane will fill first. Given the choice, each airline would rather its plane was full and the other guy had to fly empty seats."
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4zu1k0 | do earth-like planets have trees and stuff on them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zu1k0/eli5_do_earthlike_planets_have_trees_and_stuff_on/ | {
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" > am sure these photos are CGI or something\n\nExactly. We've never seen any Earth-like planet up close. We just know that they're roughly the same size and distance from their star as Earth.\n\n > but still, earthlike implies water, atmosphere and trees, right?\n\nNot necessarily. We have no idea what's on them. Maybe some sort of life, or maybe it's barren like Mars. We just have no way of knowing right now.",
"No earth like planets have ever been detected. What you've read was a journalist taking what scientists have said out of context and then having their art department make up a picture to show what a generic earth like planet might look like.\n\nWhen you read articles saying an earth like planet had been detected, what they've *actually* detected was the light and radiation from a distant star being blocked out at regular intervals. That's it.\n\nFrom that scientists deduce that it's probably a planet of some kind orbiting that star, which is why the light and other emissions are being blocked out every time the supposed planet passes between the star and us. They then perform some math and make an educated guess that the supposed planet is probably solid and is probably just far/close enough to the star to put it in the right temperature range for life as we know it to not die.\n\nThey don't know if there's an atmosphere, don't know if there's water, don't know if there's life. Hell they don't actually *know* it's even a planet. The only thing they know is \"something\" is probably orbiting the star and the rest is guesswork. Educated and mathematical guesswork that is probably mostly correct, but still guesswork.\n\nA journalist reads all that, skips over the science stuff, focuses on the words \"earth like\" and publishes a bullshit sensationalized article about aliens with a cute looking cgi picture to go with it.",
"*Earthlike* means that it's a rocky planet (not e.g. a gas giant), it's got similar gravity to Earth, and it's in the *habitable zone* of its star, meaning that the temperature is such that liquid water can exist on at least part of the planet. These are the kinds of planets we think life *could* exist on--after all, life exists on Earth. But we have no evidence that suggests life actually does exist there; we just don't know. Right now we can only speculate about it.",
"Not really, \"earth-like\" just means they're *roughly* the same size as earth, not gas planets like our outer planets, and within the star's habitable zone (close enough to melt any ice, not so close all the water will boil off). That's it!\n\nMars would be considered earth-like. Venus, too.\n\nThose pictures are indeed artists' renditions. We have no pictures, no way to take pictures. We can't even \"see\" the planets, really. We only know they exist when they pass between their parent star and earth, causing a measurable and cyclical drop in that star's brightness. Based on how dim the star gets, we can estimate the planet's size. Based on how long it takes to cross the star, we can estimate how fast it's going and therefore its orbit.\n\n*Sometimes* we can get a picture directly of the tiny black dot on the star, showing the planet more directly, which gives us a much better idea of how big the planet is. And *sometimes* we can analyze the light of the star just barely on the edges of the planet's shadow, which will have passed through the planet's atmosphere (if it has one), and by looking at the spectra of light we can get a decent idea of what the atmosphere is made of (if there's water in there).\n\nBut that's it. It's all guessing. Really good guessing, scientists are really good at getting a lot of data from very little information, but we don't know for sure that there's liquid water at all, much less anything capable of living there. It doesn't help that, for example, the star Proxima Centauri is blasting out high-energy radiation like X-rays, so while there's an earth-like planet orbiting it, life may not be possible because of the extreme radiation."
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crcpi3 | how come sometimes when you go to sleep it feels like you just blinked and suddenly it’s morning, and you’re not tired anymore? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crcpi3/eli5_how_come_sometimes_when_you_go_to_sleep_it/ | {
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"Because you.. Slept?",
"I don't know what causes it, but I've had this experience myself, one time, and it was INSANE.\n\nI was in bed, watching TV. There was a window next to it, and it was dark. I blinked, and a different show was on, sunlight was illuminating the room through the window, and birds were chirping. 8 hours had passed in literally the blink of an eye.",
"I don’t know the answer to this, but I do know that it’s one of the most frustrating things ever.",
"A lot of it has to do with your basic senses, so it is an effect of a combination of things.\n\nYour brain places less priority on your senses when you sleep, especially sight. Without our senses we lose perception of time. Sight and hearing are the primary ones we use to measure time. Touch would be next, and then taste and smell last (unless you're counting other senses).\n\nBelieve it or not, your brain is calculating time without you knowing it using information gathered from your senses until you actively think \"What time is it?\". To illustrate, your body already knows what time of day it is. Over time, your body becomes smarter based on the information it gathers. Naturally, it is warmer during the day than at night, and sunlight usually shines in the daytime. That is why we have the hormone melatonin. It causes you to feel more energy in some parts of the day and let your organs know what should be happening. Less melatonin=more energy. When light hits your eyes or even eyelids, your eyes send signals to the pineal gland to tell it to slow down production. It is crucial in indirect ways; when we sleep our body has a chance to recover from damage, and when we are awake we can do things like eat and exercise.\n\nBlind people often end up with sleep disorders, but when they are awake they can tell the time based on what they hear and the temperature outside. Things like crossing a street or catching a ball become huge obstacles. Of course, they can resort to counting, but even for abled people counting time exactly is not easy (small test: try counting one minute while simultaneously using a stopwatch). We have to rely on a clock, which is something we don't see or hear when we are sleeping. Comatose people also experience the same phenomenon, but it's even worse because their muscles are weakened."
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3746o4 | if there were a solar storm that knocked out the power grid, how might an off-the-grid single residence solar power system hold up by comparison? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3746o4/eli5_if_there_were_a_solar_storm_that_knocked_out/ | {
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"Fairly well. Geomagnetic storms cause damage by inducing strong currents in power lines and other long conducting objects. But the objects have to be pretty big for this to amount to a significant amount of current - the lengths of wire in a typical house wouldn't be affected."
]
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32nnrf | if quadriplegic people have lost the ability to control/move their muscles below their neck, and the diaphragm is below the neck, how do quadriplegics breathe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32nnrf/eli5_if_quadriplegic_people_have_lost_the_ability/ | {
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"The spinal cord consists of four different nerve regions: the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacorum/coccyx (from head to coccyx). Among the 8 cervical spinal nerves, C3 and C4 control muscles in the diaphragm. Quadriplegia, which is the loss of movement in all four limbs, not the loss of all voluntary and involuntary movement below the neck, can be caused by injuries to spinal nerve sections lower than C3 and C4, usually in the thoracic or lumbar region. ",
"Your spinal cord is the link between your brain and your muscles. If the spinal cord is damaged *where* it is damaged determines the injury. If the very bottom of your spinal cord is damaged you might just lose sensation in your feet, and as you move further up the spinal cord more and more of your body loses sensation/control.\n\nFor you to disconnect your brain to your diaphragm and heart you would need to injure the spinal cord *very* high up. While you can survive a high up injury to the spinal cord, it's less likely to happen.",
"Some are on respirators that breathe for them. With physical therapy, some can gain enough control to breathe a bit on their own so they can have enough breath control to speak. If their respirator shuts down, they'll die. But if they can gain some control, they can continue breathing for a little while, until someone finds them and fixes the respirator.",
"The nerves that control the diaphragm (phrenic nerve, mostly) exit the spine very high up, and then run down the neck **outside of the spine** before reaching the diaphragm. So \"below the neck\" is just a verbal shortcut, it does not correspond exactly to what actually happens. \"Paralyzed below the nipples, and also in the arms, except for a few places where it is above the nipples and some other places where it is below the nipples\" is a bit of a mouth-full.\n\nPeople who have their phrenic nerve severed are more likely to be found in a graveyard than a wheelchair.\n\nOf the people with transactions above the phrenic nerve, the ones who survive will be on ventilators/respirators."
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bsaoex | why do guitar amplifiers give off bad feedback? guitars in giant rock concerts don't normally do this, how they can be so loud without feedback? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsaoex/eli5_why_do_guitar_amplifiers_give_off_bad/ | {
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"The guitar amps/setup at rock concerts are different to your typical bedroom 30watt fender amp.\n\n\nFirstly, at most large concerts, amps are ethier mic'd up on stage, or off stage in an Isolation Cabinet. The musicians will probably have 'in ear monitors' (head phones essentially) for listening to all the audio they need to hear. This essentially means that its much harder for a feedback loop to occur as any amp noise isn't being directed to the guitar.\n\n\nSecondly, a lot of feedback is caused by noise, a few things can remedy this. \n\n\n1) A noise suppressor - This acts as a gate where low-level noise such as power-hum isn't let through to the amp, as soon as anything louder is detected (for example playing the guitar) the gate is opened and sound is let through to the amp. This makes feedback harder to occur (in simple circumstances)\n\n\n2) Power conditioners - These help prevent 'noise'. Which i think is commonly referred to as 'ground hum' ?\n\n\nAny large concert will have (high end) noise gates and power conditioners to help prevent unwanted noise/feedback.\n\n\n\nNote : A lot of musicians will have their 'rig' off stage, however they'll have an amp or speaker on-stage so they can intentionally trigger feedback by walking up to said amp/speaker and dry-humping it with the guitar. This is a very intentional setup which prevents feedback in 99% of the regular performance.",
"Feedback is caused by an amplified signal finding a sympathetic resonance with the guitar producing that signal, getting louder and louder until it no longer resembles the original tone. It happens most commonly when the amp is absurdly loud for 2 reasons: 1) a cranked amp applies a LOT of gain to the signal. 2) A loud amp is more likely to vibrate the strings or internal components of the guitar's pickups.\n\nThat said, in most concerts it's not actually that loud on the stage. Even playing small clubs as a rock band you'll more often see amplifiers mic'd up and put through the house PA and not cranked to fill the room. The PA speakers being in front of the stage and pointed away from the band so the majority of their sound goes towards the audience can can't cause feedback. Stage volume is actually downright reasonable in most cases unless the sound system isn't operated correctly or undersized. And even then, if you turn your back to the amplifier a lot less sound gets to your guitar because your body is in the way, which is why when you do see guitarists try to create feedback on purpose, they'll turn around and face their guitar towards the amp. \n\nAnd if you think it's disappointing to go on stage with a half stack and not really turn it too far past like...3. In your stereotypical \"giant rock concert\", most of those amps [are fake](_URL_0_).\n\nYou might have one cabinet mic'd up or in more modern cases...they'll use a direct output from the their amplifier \"head\" and run it directly through the house PA with no actual guitar amp on stage. Think...plugging your phone into the car's AUX input or using bluetooth connection to the onboard stereo system."
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44srzm | why do website make you click "show more" to see the rest of the text? | Its not like in this day and age downloading an extra 10,000 characters is going to kill your bandwidth. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44srzm/eli5why_do_website_make_you_click_show_more_to/ | {
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"They're measuring engagement. They want to know how many people are actually reading the whole article, so they can use this data to get advertisers to pay them more, as well as knowing what type of content is actually being consumed.",
"For some websites, they want to gather statistics to see who actually is interested in reading more, compared to the total number of users on the website that click to read more and simply scroll past. They do this primarily to show advertisers how many active viewers the site gets and potentially increase ad revenue. \n\nSome websites give you articles with clickbait titles in order to simply show you more ads. The slideshow tells a story like \"This man just had surgery, what happened next changed his life forever\", and if you click on \"show more\" you're greeted with several ads, one sentence of story, and a picture. Then you have to click Next to get the next sentence of the story and a whole new slew of intrusive ads. \n\nBasically, for data primarily, and sometimes just to show you more ads. "
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6bgxx7 | what information did clelsea/bradley manning leak/release? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bgxx7/eli5_what_information_did_clelseabradley_manning/ | {
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"The item that got the most attention was the gunsight video of an [Apache helicopter airstrike](_URL_0_) in Baghdad, that resulted in the deaths of Iraqi men and children, as well as two Reuters reporters."
]
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike"
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6r1zfv | what is happening to my vision when i'm sleepy? | Typically when I get sleepy my eyes just feel weird and also just start having an inability to focus. Is there a reason why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r1zfv/eli5_what_is_happening_to_my_vision_when_im_sleepy/ | {
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"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: When we feel drowsy, why do our eyes lose focus first before any other senses? ](_URL_1_) (702 comments!)\n1. [ELI5: Why/how do our eyes \"lose focus\" and get blurry? What's happening? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: What happens when your mind drifts, and your eyes can't focus? ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: When you're really tired, why do your eyes unfocus and make you see double? ](_URL_3_)\n"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rky3p/eli5_whyhow_do_our_eyes_lose_focus_and_get_blurry/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mz9ig/eli5_when_we_feel_drowsy_why_do_our_eyes_lose/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h71ja/eli5_what_happens_wh... | |
7ymnca | why is a recent (less than a year) prescription required to order replacement contact lenses or glasses when it's ok to wear existing lenses or glasses for over a year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ymnca/eli5_why_is_a_recent_less_than_a_year/ | {
"a_id": [
"duhnob4",
"duho7qm"
],
"score": [
5,
2
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"text": [
"I get my eyes checked every year and because of my health insurance, I only pay a small copay for new glasses/contacts. You should be wearing the best corrective lenses for your eyes so if you have not gone to see your ophthalmologist in over a year, you should. Its not really OK to wear existing ones if your eyes have changed in that time as they can lead to headaches and damaging your eyesight even more. Which is why you should make it a point to get your eyes checked at least once a year.",
"This is presumably your eyewear shop’s policy and not a universal thing. I regularly buy glasses online with a 5-year-old prescription that I should really get around to updating.\n\nA cynic might suggest that the eyewear shop’s policy is trying to drum up business for their on-site ophthalmologist... but you really should see an eye doctor regularly anyway. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
3s0xzj | if atoms are 99% empty space, and everything is made of atoms, what are we actually seeing when we look at something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s0xzj/eli5_if_atoms_are_99_empty_space_and_everything/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwt0rjv",
"cwt3egg",
"cwtbi8h",
"cwtmx1d"
],
"score": [
105,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Electrons interacting with light. It's not even the nucleus, the nucleus gives the atom its physical shape, but the light we see from something comes from light's interaction with electrons.",
"They aren't really empty space. Neighbouring atoms touch. I'm using the word touch here to describe the interaction of their electron shells, rather than the tiny nuclei in the middle.\n\nThe electron shells are what give an atom it's shape for interacting with light and other atoms, and they do touch their neighbours. There isn't actually much empty space, it's filled with electron wave functions.",
"You're actually seeing the photons reflected off of the atoms. So you see the light that gets caught by the atom and thrown back at you.\n\nIt doesn't really matter if there's loads of empty space there, as long as there's enough atoms in the way (its thick enough) then you'll get some light bouncing off which is all you see.",
"The particles are very very small. i.e. it's like looking at a super hi-res display. Think of an old low res phone display compared to an IPS display. You can't see the spaces in between because there are so many pixels packed tightly together.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] | ||
cu36qg | why do some battery powered items need to be off when being charged, and other can be turned on while being charged? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cu36qg/eli5_why_do_some_battery_powered_items_need_to_be/ | {
"a_id": [
"exqrmtn"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Its been a while since I've encountered a device that couldn't charge while in use (mobile electronics anyway) - can you provide an example?\n\nIt would come down to the complexity of the device and its corresponding power monitoring chip. More expensive PM chips are capable of doing both. Since using your cell phone while charging is a critical feature, the additional cost and complexity is worth it. \n\nIn simpler devices it may not. On one hand, maybe because charge-while-use isn't a typical use case. Back in the day of cordless vaccums and cordless phones, the use-while-charge use case wasn't really possible, so they never designed for it; and now that it is the additional cost/complexity doesn't jive with the low cost nature of the appliance.\n\nFrom an engineering perspective charge-while-using requires some serious circuitry; keep in mind the operating current of the device will likely be an order of magnitude less than the charging current - battery usage draw is slow and continuous, but you want charging to be fast, ergo: high current. So the PM chip has to be able to either handle both current levels simultaneously ($$$) or isolate between them (and thus only handle one case at a time.) ( $)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
191mdf | "dry" beverages (ie: wine) | What does it mean when a drink (usually I see it in reference to wine, but also sometimes for other liquors) is "dry"? What would be the opposite term?
The 5 year old/Caboose in my head just keeps saying, "Liquids by their nature are not dry!" but I know it's somehow related to taste. x_x | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/191mdf/eli5_dry_beverages_ie_wine/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8jyjas",
"c8jyk04"
],
"score": [
13,
2
],
"text": [
"You are right, it refers to the taste. In wine, dry is the opposite of sweet. The less sugar the wine has (the less sweet flavor) the drier it is. ",
"\"[Sweetness](_URL_0_)\" is the opposite of dryness in a wine.\n\nThat's as far as I can go, because I know absolutely nothing about wine. =/"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine"
]
] | |
4wwzoc | what happens if an entire country decides to ignore copyrights | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wwzoc/eli5what_happens_if_an_entire_country_decides_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6ajetw",
"d6ajzr7"
],
"score": [
22,
2
],
"text": [
"China is what happens. China is still there, it hasn't been sued into oblivion, you can buy knock offs of just about anything you ever heard of and probably some you haven't, but this doesn't stop multinational corporations locating huge manufacturing facilities there to take advantage of the cheap labour and lax environmental regulations. ",
"You'll piss off the other countries. Now, what can they do about it?\n\nOne thing is to impose trade sanctions, either not allowing goods to be imported from that country, or imposing a high import tariff. They may also stop exporting goods to them as well. Basically, they're saying that if you don't want to play by the rules and go be your own little rogue state, fine, but don't expect to get to participate in the international market. \n\nThe other option is to sue copyright infringers that have assets in other countries. If you're in the country with no copyright, knocking off films, but you own a house in the US and have a bank account there, you can get sued in the US, and those assets can be seized to satisfy the claim."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
2lc6em | how does reddit organize comments when you chose "best". | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lc6em/eli5how_does_reddit_organize_comments_when_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"cltj23k",
"cltrgyq"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Randall Munroe from xkcd did a pretty good ELI5 on it: \n\n_URL_0_",
"Top: The comment with the highest total amount of karma. \n\nBest: The comment with the highest ratio of upvotes to downvotes. So if the \"Top\" comment has 2000 karma, but it also had 2000 downvotes, that means it had a 2:1 ratio of upvotes to downvotes. A comment with 1000 karma but only 100 downvotes has a 11:1 ratio of upvotes to downvotes. That comment would be the \"best\" out of the two. \n\n\"Hot\" means comments that have the highest upvotes, but the most recent posted time. A 1000 karma comment that was posted 1 minute ago will be very \"Hot\" but a 10,000 karma comment posted a week ago will not be as \"Hot.\"\n\nControversial: Comments with approximately the same amount of upvotes as downvotes, meaning people are split 50/50 on the topic. These will hover around 0, and the more people voted, the more \"controversial\" the comment is. \n\nNew is self-explanatory."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html?m=1"
],
[]
] | ||
69cir3 | how is the senate able to write their own healthcare bill? what happens to the ahca that was passed in the house today? | How is the Senate able to write their own healthcare bill? What happens to the AHCA? Is it a rewrite of the AHCA or does the House have to vote on this bill too? Thank you for explaining. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69cir3/eli5_how_is_the_senate_able_to_write_their_own/ | {
"a_id": [
"dh5j1a5"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The senate and the house have to agree. The house can pass a bill and submit to the senate to sign off on identically or vice versa. Or, and more likely, one chamber can pass a bill and submit to the other, and the other will make modifications, and approve it. Then the modified bill goes back to the originating chamber for agreement on them amendments. So here, if the senate approves with modifications the proposed modified law must then be approved by the house, despite the original bill orgimatimg in the house. Got it?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
10iaso | the british were able to extend much control over the chinese during the 1700s and 1800s by selling them opium. why would the legalization of drugs in the u.s. not result in the same dire consequences for the u.s.? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10iaso/eli5_the_british_were_able_to_extend_much_control/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6dp6l1",
"c6dpcf7",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Just because it's decriminalized doesn't mean it can't be legislated. We could still control the trade, importation, tax, sale, etc. like we already do with alcohol and tobacco. Decriminalization doesn't mean a free-for-all. ",
"Because Opium was officially illegal in china for most of that period and didn't become legal until after the Second Opium War in 1858. When China started to grow their own, the British lost much of their influence.\n\nIn otherwords, the British had influence BECAUSE it was illegal.",
"This question is not about drugs so much as it is about trade imbalances: IIRC, the British opium trade grew initially because they had a severe trade imbalance over tea, which they purchased extensively from China and in payment for which China would only accept silver. To work around this, they began selling opium to the Chinese, correcting and ultimately reversing the silver trade imbalance. \n\nEven prior to the opium trade, the Chinese extremely strictly limited and controlled foreign trade, forcing all of it to go through specifically designated districts in Canton. However, despite their absolute control, the Chinese were unable to stop the importation of opium. \n\nPredictably (and as we see today), this lead to harsher and harsher crackdowns, beginning in harsh treatment of Chinese participating in the trade, and culminating in mass confiscations of opium and the like. Officially, these actions were justified morally (i.e. the normal Drug War stuff), but presumably it was also important to stop that transfer of silver out to the British. \n\nThis is effectively the state we have today – we attack the supply, and confiscate drugs from smugglers. Unfortunately for China, the drug traders had the militarily superior British Navy backing their trade, and the British viewed the drug confiscations as confiscations of their nationals' property. They retaliated, and things generally went downhill for the Chinese from there. Imagine if the South American drug exporting countries had armies powerful enough to invade the U.S. because we sank a drug lord's cigarette boat. \n\nNow, when you talk about how the British \"exerted much control over the Chinese,\" you're talking about this silver trade imbalance, the great irony being that China's citizens, through their imports, sent the nation's silver, and thus its military purchasing power, directly to the British, who used that wealth to subdue them. \n\nSo, would this (or does this) apply to the modern Drug Wars? Well, sort of. Trade imbalances like this impoverish the buyer and enrich the seller. Is that happening? Yes, but relative to the size of our overall economy, the drug economy is so small that we're not at risk economically the way the Chinese were. \n\nOn the other hand, we are hugely enriching our trading partners – not always a bad thing, but given that in this case our partners are some of the worlds' most dangerous and ruthless criminals, yeah, giving them the money to buy a small army's worth of weapons sucks. \n\nHowever, we're trading with ruthless criminals *solely* due to the fact that drugs are illegal. Were drugs legal, we'd be enriching Recreational Pharma inc. (a Delaware company), not the Pablo Escobars of the world. At worst, we'd be funding legitimate companies in other countries, something we do via legitimate foreign trade every day. \n\nStill, despite giving these bad guys the money to arm themselves, they're still not going to be strong enough to invade us – again, the relative size of the drug trade is just too small. \n\nHowever – many people *do* worry that trade imbalances weaken us and strengthen our potential enemies. It's not drugs, though – it's the much, much bigger legitimate foreign trade that could pose a threat. Consider that every single product we buy that contains either (a) electronics or (b) molded plastics is shipped directly from China (ironically, that same Canton/Guangzhou region we talked about before). \n\nIf you're worried that some foreign country with a strong military and arguably superior technical and human capabilities is going to drain huge amounts of our currency, don't worry about drugs – look at every iPhone you see on the street. \n\n*edit: Sorry, totally not LY5. Oops. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] | ||
1wxqwd | with all the nuclear bomb tests carried out, how comes it didnt have serious effects on the earth? | Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wxqwd/with_all_the_nuclear_bomb_tests_carried_out_how/ | {
"a_id": [
"cf6bhnz",
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],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Most were underground tests. This means there wasn't a lot of crap thrown into the atmosphere. ",
"Nuclear bombs release radioactive particles, known as nuclear fallout, into the air when they detonate. However, most nuclear tests are carried out in locations where there is no immediate danger to people. The fallout cloud often dissopates and decays quickly enough that it doesn't pose a threat to people who aren't in the immediate vacinity."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
2vy3px | why can my eye dilate but i don't notice? | Long story short taking small amounts (like the prescribed amount) of DXM gets me high and makes just my right pupil dilate quite a bit larger than normal (don't ask why it is just the right idky). My question is why can my eye dilate but there is no noticeable difference? Shouldn't everything get much brighter since more light is getting in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vy3px/eli5why_can_my_eye_dilate_but_i_dont_notice/ | {
"a_id": [
"colxesx"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I work in the medical field. You should tell your doctor that one eye dilates and the other does not, because this can sometimes indicate a central nervous system or brain problem. \n\nAnd, yes, both your eye's ability to focus and perception of brightness should be affected by dilation."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
bn0jtf | when you look to a fast turning wheel you sometimes see it turning back because of the processing time of our eyes. what causes this processing time, and is it the same for every person? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bn0jtf/eli5_when_you_look_to_a_fast_turning_wheel_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"en1aurn"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The premise is false, the back spinning occurs because of the frequency of the lighting. Under sunlight the wheel only looks like a smooth disk and the direction of rotation is just about suggestion, it can go either way."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
dagdxj | what do the rally drivers' partners say while they drive? | I just watched a GoPro video of a driver doing a [tarmac rally](_URL_0_). Can't seem to figure out exactly what the partner is saying.
I've even heard somewhere that what he says doesn't really matter haha. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dagdxj/eli5_what_do_the_rally_drivers_partners_say_while/ | {
"a_id": [
"f1pgccv",
"f1pholn",
"f1qfny6"
],
"score": [
2,
52,
7
],
"text": [
"The copilot reads off directions, like \"left long 4\" which indicates a long left turn is coming up. The number rates how sharp the turn is. Haha, definitely matters unless the driver somehow knows that really by heart.",
"It *really* matters.\n\nA rally isn't like a circuit race where you cover the same lap of a track over and over, so you very quickly get to know the exact speeds you can go round each corner - in a rally, the chances are you will only be driving that particular stretch of road once or maybe twice (and often if you do it again, it's in the opposite direction). This means that in order to be fast, you need to know as much as possible about the road ahead of you. This is where pace notes come in - that's what the co-driver/navigator is calling out.\n\nThere's no fixed system but most teams tend to use fairly similar systems. The co-driver will call out something like:\n\n*\"sixty, four left into three right\"*\n\n That means, in sixty yards there is a left-hand bend that you need to be in fourth gear for, which goes immediately into a third-gear right-hander. As soon as they're into that sequence of bends, the co-driver will start calling out the next bit.\n\nOf course, what they end up calling out involves a whole lot more information than that - you'll hear things like:\n\n*\"Sixty, four right tightens over crest into jump maybe and square right don't cut over bridge into square right, fifty.\"*\n\nWhich translates as \"in sixty yards, there is a fourth gear right-hander that tightens up, immediately after which is a bump or crest that might make the car leave the ground. Then there's a 90 degree right turn which has got something substantial on the inside of the corner (so don't hit it). This takes us over a bridge, then another 90 degree right turn, then it's fifty yards until whatever I start saying next happens\".\n\nOne of the most important skills for a rally driver is to be able to process information like this on the fly while driving a car as fast as possible in usually less than ideal conditions (it's a similar skill requirement to modern fighter pilots) while knowing that driving too slowly will lose them huge amounts of time, but driving even a fraction too quickly will almost certainly end their race; there are no run-off areas on rally stages, usually just trees or cliffs...",
"It matters. Unless the driver has the circuit perfectly memorized, down to the tiniest detail of every bump in the road, what kind of rocks or sediments are in what part of the road, a co-driver is absolutely necessary.\n\nTypical rally circuits is a long one-way route that can range anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of KM, which could lead to some races being 15-30 minutes. \n\nFor larger event they are planned out for just this event, so you might never race the same circuit a gain, or even have gotten a chance to practice on it. A circuit you raced last year might have also had an avalanche or something, so they had to create a new route. It's almost impossible to know all of that road which is why a co-driver is needed.\n\nYour co-driver will be reading out upcoming road coming up. They explain things like how sharp a turn is, if the terrain will change, cautions to watch out for on edges, hazardous road conditions, etc.\n\nBelow, I'll leave some examples of calls you might hear.\n\n---\n\n**Turns**\n---\n\nThey will indicate whether the turn is left or right.\n\nFor how intensity, they're typically in a format like this:\n\n* **\"1-6\"** is typically what gear is suggested going into a turn. If they say 6, that means the turn isn't likely to be sharp, so you can stay in 6th. If they say 1, that means a sharp turn is coming up, so it's suggested to go to 1st gear.\n* **\"Square\"** means the turn is a 90^o turn\n\nYou might also hear things like *hairpin*, which means the turn is probably between 120^o and 180^o or something.\n\n---\n\n**Distance**\n---\n\n* Calls like **40, 100** or **200** means how many yards/meters until the next note.\n* **And** means the distance they said isn't accurate. (It might be 38, but they say 40 anyways).\n\n---\n**Terrain and Road Conditions**\n---\n\n- **Crest** is like a bump.\n- **Jump** means the car will jump. (ie: You're about to hit a small peak on a hill and are going fast enough to get off the road for a bit.)\n- **Slippery** a sudden change to having lower grip in an area.\n- **Grip** a sudden change to having more g rip in an area.\n- **Care** means be careful.\n- **Caution** means chance of crashing is high. If they say things like double caution, that means really high chance of crashing.\n\n---\n\nFinally, I should mention that pacenotes terms are defined, but may be used outside of their definition. The relationship between the driver and co-driver is communication, so they might use these terms differently, have their own terms, or their own way of conveying the info.\n\nIt's up to the driver and the co-driver to know what works for each person. What may be a \"2\" one person and car might be a \"4\" for another."
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_6tfDMld90"
] | [
[],
[],
[]
] | |
1mdkk9 | how are reports able to stream video live from around the world? | How is it that reporters are able to stream video feeds from across the world, or various secluded areas?
With todays technology it's rather easy to stream video feeds over 4G or similiar, but how did they do it, say 15-20 years ago?
Satellite?
Edit: accidentally a word in the title | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mdkk9/eli5_how_are_reports_able_to_stream_video_live/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc86ceo"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Satellite is still very common as it is very reliable"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
2n0tm0 | why aren't most ovens set on a timer, but smaller convection ovens/microwaves are? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n0tm0/eli5_why_arent_most_ovens_set_on_a_timer_but/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm9b0o8"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Chef here- Most home ovens have a cook timer that turns the oven off until you hit the button to stop the dinger. My convection oven at work has a timer but doesn't stop the heat. I'm not sure why. I can tell you that in the middle of a rush i would be livid to learn that my lasagna didn't cool properly because the oven timer malfunctioned or was accidentally set to an incorrect time. That and it's just one more thing to break on a simple metal box that gets hot."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
13dnwg | ghostery and its parent company, evidon. how are they making money? | Ghostery is an add-on that I always install whenever I set up my computer. So after trying to figure out what their main incentive is, and how they're able to sustain themselves--I read somewhere that the original developer of Ghostery has sold off the program and is now currently owned by Evidon. However, after reading through their "[Our Solutions](_URL_0_)" page, it's all beyond me.
Anyone more familiar or able to translate that page for me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13dnwg/ghostery_and_its_parent_company_evidon_how_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"c732m2r"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Since you install Ghostery, I assume you know that web advertising networks embed trackers (web bugs) in web sites that show their ads, allowing them to track users and build user profiles to allow for better ad targeting. Ghostery blocks these; that's the reason users install it.\n\nHaving installed it, some users enable Ghost Rank. This is where the upside is for Evidon. If you enable Ghost Rank, Ghostery sends information about the web bugs you encounter to Evidon. Evidon then sells this information to groups that might be interested in what web advertisers are up to. These might include consumer protection organizations concerned about privacy, or web advertising networks themselves, who are interested in what their competitors are doing.\n\nAt least that's what I've been able to piece together."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.evidon.com/solutions/encompass"
] | [
[]
] | |
a1c4an | what happens when the body ''rejects" donated parts? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1c4an/eli5_what_happens_when_the_body_rejects_donated/ | {
"a_id": [
"eaolgog"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"All of the cells in your body have little protein \"ID tags\" on the surfaces of the cells. The form most people are familiar with is blood types, which tell you what kind of ID tags people have - an A tag, a B tag, both, neither; and an Rh tag (+) or not (-).\n\nDifferent kinds of cells have many different kinds of tags, not necessarily the same ones that your blood cells have. Your immune system recognizes which unique combination of tags your cells have - it's incredibly unlikely that anyone will have the *exact* combination of tags. The best you can hope for is *close enough*, which is what it means to be a donor \"match\".\n\nIf something, *anything* inside your body does not have the ID tags your immune system is looking for, your immune system attacks that thing. That means secreting enzymes to break it apart, kill it, destroy it, then consume it to destroy it even more, and then carry any parts that can't be broken down further to be dumped out of your body in your waste.\n\nWhen you have a donor organ, you're hoping that the tags are close enough that with the help of immuno-suppressants - drugs that weaken your immune system - it will take your immune system long enough to notice the wrong tags or lack of correct tags that you will die of old age instead of dying from organ failure.\n\nRejection is what happens when your immune system *does* notice the bad tags and attacks your donor organ, which is obviously very bad because odds are good you still very much need that organ to live."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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