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18p8il | -how do we hear differences in sound besides volume and pitch? | I understand the basic concept of sound waves, frequency determines pitch and amplitude determines volume, but why does the same note played at the same volume on a guitar sound different from a trumpet? What is it about the sound waves that changes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18p8il/eli5how_do_we_hear_differences_in_sound_besides/ | {
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"In a word, overtones. Overtones are higher frequencies that vibrate in sympathy with the fundamental frequency. These overtones are what give instruments their own sound, or timbre, and each instrument has their own overtones created by the construction of the instrument, the way it's played, and a whole bunch of other factors",
"Frequency determines pitch, and amplitude determines volume, as you say.\n\nBut wave shapes are much more complex than just pitch and amplitude.\n\n[This picture](_URL_0_) shows waves for each of four different instruments. You can see that they all have the same frequency and the same amplitude, but they are very different shapes."
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4xir9r | what 911 does when you call and say nothing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xir9r/eli5_what_911_does_when_you_call_and_say_nothing/ | {
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"They will call back and if no one answers they will come to the location of the phonecall. I accidently called 911 when calling a friends house when I was 8 or 9. They called back and I hung up the phone because I got nervous. A few minutes later I'm putting my helmet on to ride my bike to my friends house and 2 squad cars screech to a stop in front of my house blocking the driveway. ",
"Yes, they'll send the cops to verify. It could be a person in distress, like sick, or a hostage situation.\n\nA few months ago a friend heard a knock on the doors, it were the cops. It turns out, his son was playing with the phone and somehow dialed 911. He had a looong conversation with a cop while his wife was talking with another cop in another room, just to be sure everything was okay with the family. \n\nAnd because it was their first time, nothing else happened. Next time, they'll have to pay a fine for misuse of the 911."
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88td2f | if the usa was to switch to the metric system... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88td2f/eli5_if_the_usa_was_to_switch_to_the_metric_system/ | {
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"That has been done by Congress. The US officially switched in the 1970s. It did not stick. Those industries like the Sciences where it is much more useful switched, but general society where there is virtually no difference in the usages as we do not need to be that accurate in things there is not enough of a benefit to overcome the inertia of learned behavior and the cost of changing the infrastructure. \n\nTo switch we would have to replace every piece of equipment in every home and building from the screws and nails used to build things, to the pipes in your walls, to the car that you drive. You would have to replace every single road sign in the nation. Etc. It would cost trillions of dollars. Most nations that switched did so before there was a lot of infrastructure or standardization of how things were made or built. Those that switched later like the UK are in a kind of half transition because of those same inertia issues. The UK still uses miles, and still uses Stones and pounds for weight. "
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74f8k4 | when connecting to a public wi-fi hotspot, why is it often necessary to try to go to an http://, and not an https://, webpage to get the sign-in screen to show up? | Often, when I attempt to access public Wi-Fi hotspots - in places such as coffee shop chains - that feature sign-in pages or require the user to click "I Agree" or "OK" to begin using the Wi-Fi, the sign-in page will not be triggered until I have typed in and attempted to visit an unsecured (http://) webpage. If I try to go to Reddit, Google, or any other page that uses an https:// protocol, the loading icon will simply rotate forever or until the request times out. Why can the sign-ins be triggered only by an http:// page? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74f8k4/eli5_when_connecting_to_a_public_wifi_hotspot_why/ | {
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"Usually the browser does a few extra check with https request, like being sure that you go on the page where you expect to go. \n\nIf there is a login page the browser will raise an error thinking that the security is compromised (somehow it is since you don't go where you expect to)",
"The sign up page works by directing your request for _URL_0_ to a server controlled by the wi fi provider. That server then responds pretending to be _URL_1_, telling your browser to go to _URL_2_ instead. That works fine for HTTP, but with HTTPS the server has to provide a certificate proving that it's really _URL_1_. Since the server doesn't have that certificate, your browser would know that it's talking to the wrong server and trigger scary security alerts instead of loading the sign up page.",
"The whole WiFi login screen is a hack whereby the WiFi service pretends to be any website you're visiting so it can present its login screen, even though you didn't try to visit the login screen. HTTPS requires a cryptographically signed certificate to prove that the site you're visiting is the site you think it is and, of course, the WiFi service doesn't have such a certificate.\n\nThat's a major feature of HTTPS: stopping man-in-the-middle attacks. What the Wi-Fi service is doing is exactly a man-in-the-middle attack."
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5m31xy | how do speakers translate electricity into sound? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m31xy/eli5_how_do_speakers_translate_electricity_into/ | {
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"The pulses of electricity are used to control an electromagnet which pushes and pulls on a membrane in the speaker to create pressure waves in the air. Those pressure waves are sound."
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2uwuqq | what is happening when i have to pee really bad to the point where i don't think i can hold it any longer and then it passes and i can hold it for like 10 more minutes? | Happens when I'm driving for a long time, while I'm busy with work, and just times where I can't get to the bathroom immediately. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uwuqq/eli5_what_is_happening_when_i_have_to_pee_really/ | {
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"I am not a physiologist but I strongly suspect that a pocket of intestinal gas can pass through the compartments of your digestive system and exert a pressure on your bladder as it passes, which results in the bursting feeling that you need to go for a leak. Bu as the intestine is compartmentalised, if the gas pocket or bolus of digested food goes through to the next compartment because a sphincter ni your digestive tract opens up, then the pressure on your bladder from inside goes (think- squeezing a balloon and releasing) and you aren't so desperate for a piss. Apparently this also applies to pregnant women when the baby stretches or wriggles about in the womb.\n\nNot a medically trained person, but reasonably proficient at reasoning.\n"
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2umy4h | why can't i sleep at night when i'm nervous for something happening the next day? | I'm a President of a university student organization and our second meeting of the semester is today. There were some mishaps at the first meeting that I think I've fixed but I'm still nervous.
Anyway, I fell asleep fine but 5 hours in, I woke up and I believe it took an hour to fall back asleep. In the many thoughts in my head, it occurred to me that somehow my body should be able to figure out that interrupting my sleep cycle will not solve any problems. Why does my body do this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2umy4h/eli5_why_cant_i_sleep_at_night_when_im_nervous/ | {
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"You are definitely not alone. I have this thing too... It is because our brain doesn't \"shut down\" into a sleep mode because it's actively working, in your case constantly thinking. As hard as is sounds you have to stop thinking to fall asleep. I sometimes spend as much as 3 hours to fall asleep, usually happens before some big day too. Sometimes I have some song stuck in my head... and I can't fall asleep, god I hate that...",
"The fight or flight response your body has to stress is ill adapted to our current way of life. This is a well-known phenomenon. ",
"Stress makes it hard for your body to relax. I think your problem is more mental than physical. I have found meditation to be very useful for getting to sleep and, upon waking, falling back to sleep. Something as simple as emptying your mind and just thinking in time to your breathing, \"In...Out...In...Out\" as long as it takes for you to fall asleep. It is simple but requires focus. It lets my mind shift into sleep. Long term, meditation and exercise will help you compartmentalize stressful situations so that you can focus on going to sleep, getting up for work, etc.\n\nSource: IAMA long-time sufferer of PTSD-related depression and anxiety"
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3037so | why do people make weird faces when in pain or when smelling something bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3037so/eli5_why_do_people_make_weird_faces_when_in_pain/ | {
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"For pain a lot of it may be a social signal. But specifically for disgust, one of the biggest theories is that the disgusted face is a way to minimize what your senses perceive. Your eyes crinkle up (you don't have to look at the dog turd anymore), your nose moves to limit your nostril size (so you don't have to smell the turd), and if your mouth was previously open, it snaps shut (so you don't have to taste the turd). "
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51rkek | what is simple harmonic motion and it's application? | I have a presentation to give and want a better understanding of what Simple Harmonic Motion is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51rkek/eli5what_is_simple_harmonic_motion_and_its/ | {
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"Simple harmonic motion is a model that can be applied to many systems e.g. springs and pendulums. Basically, any system that has 'harmonic motion', that is, motion that oscillates with a fixed frequency (frequency = how many times a pendulum swings or how man times a spring bounces in a given time). \n\nImportantly, pendulums are found to have a time period (time taken for one oscillation) that is only dependent on the length of the pendulum (in a given gravitational field). Similarly, the time period of a spring is only dependent on the mass *on* the spring (for a given spring strength and assuming the spring itself has no mass).\n\nIt is applied (with great successes) to the study of vibrations in molecules as a classical ('non-quantum') approximation of there behaviour.\n\nReddit could make a tonne of money doing people's homework for them.",
"SHM is when something oscillates with a constant frequency like a spring with a mass attached to the end.\n\nWe use a sine wave to describe this type of motion.\n\nQuite simply, when you get smaller and smaller, matter behaves like a wave and has oscillatory motion. So, we use a sine wave to describe how it behaves.\n"
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2pxy07 | -how is the curiosity rover fueled/powered, and how does it stay fueled/powered over all this time? | Will it eventually shut down? When? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pxy07/eli5how_is_the_curiosity_rover_fueledpowered_and/ | {
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"It is powered by an RTG, a device that uses the heat from the decay of radioactive material to generate electricity for a long period of time.",
"According to wiki it is powered by 11lbs of plutonium oxide which has a radioactive half life of about 87 years. That means after 87 years it will output half of what it currently does, then after 87 more years it will output half that and so on.\n\n_URL_0_"
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1rxrbj | why is it so hard to maintain eye contact when speaking with someone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rxrbj/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_maintain_eye_contact/ | {
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"I always watch their mouth instead. I find it awkward to look someone right in the eye when talking with them, feel like I'm staring.",
"Maybe a self-confidence issue?",
"Because you don't want people to know you. Think about this: when you look at someone, does any other part of their body feel awkward to look at? Not usually, because the other person isn't observing you through any other means except vision. Same thing goes for other senses; things get really awkward when a person starts sniffing you or touching you because they are getting to know you on a different level, one that you aren't comfortable sharing. There are even people who feel uncomfortable being heard because they believe their opinions have no value.\n\nTL;DR You are afraid of what is being learned about you through senses.",
"Try this next time you're having a conversation with someone (or a few people): suddenly (or even casually) look behind them or off to the side. Human instinct will likely have several other people immediately look in that direction as well for a moment before turning back towards you. They might not even notice that they've done it themselves.\n\nHumans, like most mammals, have evolved to expect each other to constantly be on the lookout for threats. This is why our eyes are always naturally shifting around during most social activities, and why as soon as we see someone else's eyes lock on to something we'll very often look in the same direction - instinctively, we're looking for whatever threat has possibly been identified by our fellow human.\n\nThis natural instinct is also why sustained eye contact with someone else is uncomfortable. In nature, sustained eye contact between predators (which includes humans) is usually a sign of aggression, because it implies that if your eyes are locked on someone else's, you're mutually considering each other as the top threat in your environment.\n\nEDIT: Fun side fact - this last paragraph is also why \"first to look away\" is usually a sign of submission. Looking away from a threat that's looking at you implies you're dropping your ability to defend yourself (you won't see the attack coming), and therefore that you don't want to sustain the confrontation. This also carries over into sexual cues - if you make quick eye contact with someone potentially sexually compatible and they look *off to the side*, that's generally a cue of non-interest, indicative of their instinct continuing to protect the group. If, however, they look *down*, that's usually indicative of interest, implying that they feel comfortable enough to drop their guard while you approach. It's also very hard to fake because it's not usually a conscious decision.",
"What happens when someone stares at you? It makes you uncomfortable. What happens when you are speaking to someone who isn't even looking at you? It appears as thought they do not care enough to acknowledge what you are saying. Humans conversing walk a fine line between appearing aggressive/confrontational (staring too much) and/or appearing disinterested (not looking at the speaker enough). This is exemplified in people who are \"socially inept\". They often cannot balance the two, something that the average person will pick up on very quickly.",
"So is that y I look all around when walking places instead of being focused on on one object?",
"I have a very minor lazy eye so sometimes it appears that I'm looking off behind a person that I'm actually looking at. Because of this I often break eye contact every few seconds and \"re-lock on\".",
"It's good to maintain eye contact. If you aren't feeling comfortable, you might have some issues with social interactions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you might find people will see you as less trustworthy if you can't maintain eye contact. Just keep at it and push yourself to make eye contact. If you stare at their mouth, they're going to notice. If you stare beyond them, they're going to notice. There is no trick that is going to trick someone into thinking you're looking them in the eyes. The only thing that you can do is to just get into a habit of it. Next time you are watching a news report or something of the likes, when the person speaking on camera stares into the camera, stare into their eyes and practice blotting everything else out. There will be less social pressure in those situations and it may soon become a habit if you just keep practicing.",
"I hope this doesn't get down voted but i find it hard not to look into peoples eyes while talking to them, idk if it is just a respect thing or what but i can see why you would say that",
"Easiest way to overcome that, focus on just ONE eye during conversation. ",
"In the D/deaf community you don't necessarily keep eye contacting you are an observer a performer.however, the initial locking of eyes is initiation or deferral to converse, but most people who talk look away whereas listeners observe language of the body and awareness of conversation(IF you're paying attention)"
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d95xsr | why do utis hurts so much? what causes the intense pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d95xsr/eli5_why_do_utis_hurts_so_much_what_causes_the/ | {
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"You have a (usually) bacterial infection inside of the sensitive urinary tract - microbes that shouldn't be there are having a reproduction, consumption, and excretion fest which inflames tissue causing intense burning and pain."
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afk38m | what's the difference between shampoos for straight, curly, wavy, etc? is there really a difference or is it bs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afk38m/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_shampoos_for/ | {
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"People with different hair textures have different needs. The oil on your hair is made at the scalp, and it over time disperses to the length of your hairs.\nNow imagine that each hair is a slide, the straight slide is much faster than the curly slide.\n\nPeople with very straight hair get the oil all down the shaft of the hair much faster because of this. They might appear to have very oily flat hair, think of Severus Snape. They may opt for less of a deep condition, and a more thorough shampoo.\n\nWhereas people with very curly hair usually have very dry hair, cause its harder for the oil to make it down the shaft. Dry hair will usually be frizzier, Like Hermione in the first books. So someone with curly hair will opt for a more moisturizing routine, which leads to more defined curls. ie. Hermione at the Yule Ball.\n\nNow this is only the very basics, there are tons more variations in hair textures and scalp needs. As well as the fact that people with curlier hair also have thicker hair and coarser hair.\n\nApologies for the formatting, I’m on mobile. Edited to include more Harry Potter references \n\nTL;DR: Yeah, curly and straight hair do have different needs. Curly hair needs more moisturizing than straight hair",
"I’m not exactly sure, but no one has mentioned that there is a difference in disulfide linkages (hair has a lot of keratin, which is a protein made up of a lot of cysteines) between people with straight and curly hair. Iirc disulfide bridges introduce kinks into your hair and thus people with higher keratin content have curlier hair. There must be some difference in shampoos based on this principle, but I am unaware of what they would be. ",
"Only partially related, but hairs can have a variety of different structures, which are also heavily related to ethnicity.\n\nMost asians have round section hair, so their hairs are more straight and glossier.\n\nMost europeans have oval section hair, which tend to be more fizzy looking and less glossy.\n\nAfrican, black people instead have \"bean\" section hair, which tend to have the classic \"afro\" look.\n\nThe degree of wavyness depends instead on how the hair follicle (underskin part where a hair grow) is shaped and tilted: if it's perpendicular and straight follicles make for straight hairs, while tilted and curve follicles produce curly hair, with everything in between.\n\nDifferent skins also produce different amounts of oils and fats, so i assume that different shampoos have different purposes, just not at the absurd degrees ads seem to suggest.\n\n & #x200B;",
"Friend of a friend who works for Johnson & Johnson said that there’s literally no regulation of the claims they put on bottles because hair and nails are dead cells and therefore unregulated by the FDA. I think there’s probably a pinch of science to it...and 98% BS.",
"Followup question: what would actually be the effect (damage?) if you use a 'wrong' shampoo? Eg curly shampoo for straight hair, or straight shampoo for wavy hair? ",
"There are actually chemical differences in shampoos and conditioners which benefit curly and dry hair, but *a lot of the time* it's just BS marketing. As other have said, dry and curly hair has less oil and needs to be moisturized more. Just from my personal research, having dry and curly hair, it's best to avoid harsh sulfates, which are used in most shampoos, because sulfates will strip more oil from your hair and make it drier. Just the same though, you'll find that a lot of shampoos marketed towards curly and dry hair, still have sulfates in them. I've also read that it's best to avoid dimethicone in conditioners, because it will attach to your hair and build-up. It will make your hair look more moisturized at first, but as it builds up, you'll eventually have to resort to a sulfate shampoo, to strip it all again...which will set you back to having really dry hair. You can find shampoos without sulfates and conditioners without dimethicone, but you have to hunt for them and just because a brand is marketed as \"for dry or coarse hair\" doesn't mean it's free of these chemicals.",
"There CAN be a difference, but a lot of companies will rely on you not knowing your cosmetic ingredients, and will use the same formula with a few additives changed to sell to you “specialized” products. Finding products with actually tailored formulas can be difficult and you probably won’t see too much of a difference between drugstore/pharmacy brands. \n(Source: worked in a curly-specialized salon with a woman who was neurotic about ingredients. Actually did INCI labelling for our in-house products.)",
"Due to my daughter having curly hair and me having straight and therefore no idea how to handle her hair, I am frequenting /r/curlyhair. I have learned she needs to use shampoo infrequently, and all her hair products should be silicone-free! Has to do with the fact that curly hair is generally dryer than straight, I think.",
"Another reason for curly hair being less oily is that it isn't supposed to be brushed, but picked instead (unless you are going for that afro look). So oils off your scalp aren't pulled into hair vs straight which usually gets brushed often.\n\nI have curly hair....like Shirley Temple locks, not wavy. ",
"Followup question;\n\nIf I have curlyish hair, and i want it to be straighter.\n\nDo i get the shampoo that's called \"For straight hair\", or \"For curly hair\". The grammar is super ambiguous for me. \n\nIve read the bottles and tried both (and other variations) and I can't work out what would suit me better. ",
"So judging from the comments, curly hair needs a slightly different shampoo. What about hair color? Some shampoos are advertised as being for blond hair. Is that bs?",
"Ooh! Ooh! I remember this from bio 404! Your hair can never actually be \"healthy\" since it's already dead keratinized cell remains. What is actually happening with curly vs. Straight hair is that the chemical composition of those remains has an effect on nearby molecules. Phosphorous being one of the biggest actors, since phosphorus has a high electronegativity (meaning it doesn't have enough electrons in bonded form, so it pulls hard on it's neighbors electrons, drawing the two molecules closer together) it pulls hair strands in on themselves, making curves. Different shampoos have different chemical compositions including phosphorous (among other actors) that replenish, neutralize, or supplant existing chemicals with chemicals of varying electronegativity, affecting the appearance of your hair. "
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3pda3h | how would an alien specie somewhere in the galaxy detect us? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pda3h/eli5_how_would_an_alien_specie_somewhere_in_the/ | {
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"Their best bet would be to pick up some of the signals we've been (purposefully or not) sending out into space via radio and other technologies that rely on using light to transmit a signal. However, they'd have to be pretty close to Earth to be able to make anything intelligible out of them, since most of these signals spread out and degrade into noise before too long.",
"SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is constantly sending out radio waves on multiple frequencies, so one of the ways we could be \"discovered\" is by an alien species picking up on those signals and following it back to Earth."
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40uql9 | why is corruption so difficult to reduce in developing nations? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40uql9/eli5_why_is_corruption_so_difficult_to_reduce_in/ | {
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"Because being corrupt pays better than it used to, relatively speaking.\n\nThe developed world was at the top of the food chain, and the only people they could bribe was each other.\n\nNow, if you are a powerful official in a developing country, it is not just the people your poor country who can you can get bribes form. People and corporations from the rich, developed countries can bribe you, too, at a much greater scale.",
"In a lot of developing countries it stems from a lack of education and infrastructure. For a democracy to succeed, the population has to have an understanding of how the system works, the candidates and parties involved, and what's at stake. It's easy to take for granted in fully developed countries where the norm is for children to be sent to school for almost two decades and just learn, but in the developing world education is hard or impossible to come by. \n\nIf you have a country with many illiterate people with minimal access to information, how will they know who to vote for? Chances are if they do find the time to step away from their farm or labor-intensive job, they won't know one candidate from the next, so they will choose the (corrupt) current leader who's militia has done a decent job of protecting their village . They could also be subject to bribes or intimidation at the voting booth to vote for said leader. Often though, many just won't care as they don't see voting as important to their livelihood. That leaves the powers at be to continue what they're doing. \n\nAs for infrastructure, many of the corrupt and developing countries have a history of underdevelopment and exploitation of a specific industry or resource. When the colonial powers leave, someone is going to control the resource. Often that group or person will have a huge amount of money and power and use it to gain political control. It's extremely difficult to change that once it starts as they are not going to want to lose that control. \n\nThe international community could try and come in and fix the problems, and sometimes they are successful. But unless the standard of living is raised to the point where the average person can take time to actually care about the *politics* itself, chances are the country will fall back into corrupt, or totalitarian hands. \n\nTL;DR- you need an educated population who has the time and availability to care about politics to get rid of corruption. ",
"There's a lot of reasons, but I'll give just one: People in advanced nations have more to lose if they are considered corrupt. If you have a professional career and your trustworthiness with money gets called into question, you could be permanently unemployed. The risk of accepting a bribe, for a typical corporate type, is *very* high. There are also a lot more ways to get caught. One of the hallmarks of an advanced nation is a consistent legal system in which all people are equal (yes, I know this is the *ideal* and not the fact, but still, \"it could be worse\".)\n\n",
"I taught development economic for a semester and we had a corruption module. I think I can remember the main points. Here's five reasons bribery is endemic in less-developed nations.\n\n1. These people are poor. Taking bribes makes a big difference to their quality of life.\n\n2. These people are poor. Being thrown in jail will not make such a big difference to their quality of life or future employability.\n\n3. The chance of being caught is low. Poor countries have underdeveloped legal systems, and those are focused on major crimes.\n\n4. Corruption is like a tax. It prevents economic growth. To this extent it makes sense that high corruption and low development are found in the same places.\n\n5. Corruption thrives in places [where trust is low.](_URL_0_) High trust is correlated with strong economic growth because it means you can expect people to deliver on contracts, etc."
]
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[],
[],
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"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13876988.2012.741442"
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3i67oa | why do bugs tend to collect and die in empty bathtubs? | If a house/apartment has been vacant for a while..I've noticed the bath fills up with dead bugs (flies) and not really anywhere else. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i67oa/eli5_why_do_bugs_tend_to_collect_and_die_in_empty/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the sides of the bathtub are slick and do not provide enough grip for the bugs to get out. Imagine for a minute that you are standing in the centre of an empty diving pool with no ladders, how would you get out? Once they get into the bath, there is no way out for them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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9f3000 | when you put a car in park then let off the gas, then turn the car off why does it rock after you’ve turned it off before completely settling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f3000/eli5_when_you_put_a_car_in_park_then_let_off_the/ | {
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"You are probably not using the emergency brake and parking on a slope. The transmission in Park gear locks the car in place, but it has a tiny bit of play and so the car can move a little before it locks the axles. ",
"Automatic transmissions have what's called a [parking prawl](_URL_0_). When you shift into Park, a metal pin slides into a toothed wheel on the output shaft to stop it, and the drive wheels, from rotating. The pin is ratcheted, so it does have some give into it. Which is probably why the vehicle rocks when you put it in park.\n\nIdeally, you shouldn't rely on the prawn alone. That's a lot of mass on a small piece of metal. Especially on a steep incline. That'll cause it to wear out over time. Replacing the prawl is expensive. They can also break if the parked vehicle is hit with enough force. \n\nThe parking brake applies the normal vehicle brakes to the rear wheels, locking them in place. The brakes are a lot tougher than the prawl, and easier/cheaper to replace if they get worn or damaged. It's good to get into the habit of using it every time you park, even in an automatic. ",
"When you put the car in park, that is inserting a pin into the gears to hold them in place. The car rocking is the weight of the car settling on that pin.\n\nThis is a fantastic way to actually snap that pin off. Then, not only A) you have a piece of metal bouncing around in the transmission, but B) now your car is free to roll away. I've seen this happen a total of **4 times**.\n\nNever rely on the parking position alone. Use the parking brake to hold the weight of the car. That's what it's there for.\n\nThe parking brake IS NOT an emergency brake. This pedal or lever mechanically engages your rear brakes. Your rear brakes are responsible for maybe as much as 20% of your car's total stopping power. Your front brakes perform 80% or more of your stopping power. When you brake, the car's weight shifts forward, putting more weight on the front tires, increasing grip and stopping power.\n\nSo what happens if you set the parking brake while the car is moving? One of two things - either essentially nothing, because the parking brake doesn't have the friction force to actually hold a moving car, just a stationary one, or it'll lock up the rear wheels and you'll drag them behind you in a rear tire skid. You can still roll hundreds of feet at 55 mph like that.\n\nUsing this as an emergency brake is a mistake. Oh, and people use it to drift their cars, because with the rear wheels locked up, you're very likely to induce something like oversteer, where the back of the car slides around to the front.\n\nAnyway, don't rely on a little metal pin to hold the weight of the car, use the brakes to lock the wheels in place when not in motion."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_pawl"
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227e3l | what is a cdo and how is it traded? | I recently watched Inside Job and was still confused on what exactly a CDO was and how they were exchanged between investment banks, investors, insurance companies and home buyers. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/227e3l/eli5_what_is_a_cdo_and_how_is_it_traded/ | {
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"To try and keep it simple for an ELI5, a CDO is a Collateralised Debt Obligation, and were very heavily blaimed for their part in the crisis.\n\nBanks took on sub-prime mortgages (which are mortgages with effectively quite bad credit in that there is a realistic chance of a default), and were happy to bundle multiple mortgages together and sell them to investment banks as mortgage backed securities. CDO's are taken by grouping together mortgages in the lower tranches of mortgage backed securities (those with a higher risk of default), and effectively they involved gambling on whether there was to be a default of these mortgages. If there was a default, there was a payout.",
"There are 100 kids in your kindergarten class. Each one owes the principal $1. He doesn't know how many kids will actually pay him, but he expects that about 95 of the kids (but he doesn't know which). \n\nThe principal decides he doesn't want to deal with this, so he splits up the 100 kids into 10 groups of 10. He assigns each group to a different teacher and tells the kids they now owe that teacher the $1. He then collects $9 from each teacher. The teachers are worried though because even though they expect 9.5 kids to pay them, it's possible that only 6 or 7 or 8 will. \n\nNow, some Snidely Whiplash-looking banker comes in and offers each teacher a deal. He says he'll give each teacher $0.80. In return, if a teacher collects $9 from her kids, she'll give him $1. If she only collects $8, then she gives him nothing. The teachers take the deal because now as long as they collect from at least 8 students, the most they could lose is $.20.\n\nThe banker thinks he's in a good position. He's paid $8 total to the teachers. If each teacher collects the $9 (remember, on average they expect to get $9.50), then they'll each pay him $1 and he'll have a profit of $2. If one teacher only collects $8, then he won't get any money from her, but he'll still have a profit of $1. He tells his boss that it’s a great investment.\n\nNow the 1st graders hear that the kindergartners are carrying cash around so they start beating them up and taking their money. Only 70 kindergartners have their $1. Some teachers collect $6, some $7, some $8, but none collect $9. No teachers pay the banker and now he’s lost all $8 that he had put into what his boss thinks is a really safe investment. \n\nThe banker effectively owned a CDO. The purpose was to aggregate credit risk such that it eliminated the idiosyncratic risk which each teacher faced (i.e. teachers are worried that with 5 of the 100 kids expected to default, it's possible that 3 got put in their class by chance). In this sense, if appropriately priced and marketed, a CDO actually makes some sense. However, the banker ignored the systematic risk, that a system-wide event (e.g. a recession) could lower the overall payment rate.\n\nThe analogy isn't perfect. In reality, the teachers and the banker are just different groups within the same bank, and all of the positions (the CDO, the first $8 the teacher collects and the 10th dollar) would all be sold off to investors. "
]
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[],
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8othvg | how do insects know how their camouflage work if they can’t see it for themselves; like a certain pattern in moth wings or the skin texture on stick and leaf insects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8othvg/eli5_how_do_insects_know_how_their_camouflage/ | {
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"text": [
"Random mutation, so say a green bug has better camo than a blue or other color, he is eaten less, so his better camo genes are passed down to offspring who repeat the process.",
"They have no idea if it works well or bad, or even that they are camouflaged. But the insects whose camouflage works poorly get eaten more often and have less kids. "
]
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[],
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1p3jkc | why, before automobiles, were city streets designed so wide? | Every time I drive through old sections of towns I cannot believe that the buildings were designed with enough room for a 4-6 lane road to go through in between. It seems that it is the case nearly everywhere (in the USA at least).
Why was it done this way before the traffic as we know it existed? Was it good foresight on the city planner's part, or some other reason? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p3jkc/eli5_why_before_automobiles_were_city_streets/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccydt8u"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Buildings have been torn down in order to make room for roads."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
bdk51y | why do our lips and tongue become so sensitive after eating foods with high sodium content, such as an entire bag of salted pistachios? | I can't feel them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bdk51y/eli5_why_do_our_lips_and_tongue_become_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"ekyq20a"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Short answer: Evolution.\n\nLong answer: Early mammals would occasionally eat too much salt and die from sodium toxicity. Enough of this must've happened for future generations, and eventually humans to develop a warning system; eat too much salt, and it starts to hurt your tongue. Think of this like pain in general, it's only there to tell you that something is wrong with your body. If we didn't have it, we'd do stupid stuff like kill ourselves with salt.\n\nAs for how it actually happens, like what's happening in your mouth when it happens, I have absolutely no idea."
]
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[]
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a60y4w | why do 18 wheelers pop tires so often? | I understand that there is more weight to be hauled therefore more pressure on the tires, but wouldn't it be distributed throughout all 18 wheels? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a60y4w/eli5_why_do_18_wheelers_pop_tires_so_often/ | {
"a_id": [
"ebqtuok"
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"text": [
"They don't. Those tire pieces on the road are from re-treaded tires. They do so much driving that their treads wear down, and instead of putting on new tires, they basically glue on a strip of new treads that can come off sometimes."
]
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xhj9w | the history of the country of liberia | I was told by a teacher of mine a long time ago that Liberia was founded by former African slaves from America, and that it was based on American democracy. What happened? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xhj9w/eli5_the_history_of_the_country_of_liberia/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Here's my understanding. The U.S. bought the land from Great Britian to create a state for freed African Americans. African Americans move in and become the ruling class. They build southern style homes and Baptist churches. They become racist against the natives and think their Southern ways are better. Charles Taylor was a descendant of those settlers and the reason no one speaks english in liberia is because if massive immigration from neighboring countries. Thats all I know.",
"[It's not exactly an explanation for a five year old, but if you haven't seen it, watch the Vice Guide To Travel's Liberia episodes.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-1"
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3wzcqf | why can my dogs recognize the difference between barking from dogs around them and barking from audio/tv while some dogs can not? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wzcqf/eli5_why_can_my_dogs_recognize_the_difference/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy0m9qo"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Smell. Barking isn't the main form of communication, smell is. If your dog cannot smell the dog, odds are he wont be interested in the barking. Dogs are actually quite clever."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
253fzg | where did all the common names come from and when did this era occur? | Ex: Sir issac and Napoleon then all of a sudden james and bob. When did the name change happen? And more importantly why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/253fzg/eli5_where_did_all_the_common_names_come_from_and/ | {
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"text": [
"People also make names up sometimes. So thats one part of it.",
"No \"name change\" happened. Many names that are in use today have been around for hundreds or even thousands of years. James can be traced back to Latin through French. Isaac has its roots in Judaism. Napoleon is a French name that came from Corsica. Bob is a relatively old shortened version of Robert. Your assumption seems to be that James and Bob are plain, recently invented names while Isaac and Napoleon are fancy, older names, but this is simply not correct.",
"Well. Names are very generation-based. Since we have a tendancy to pick up cues from our social surrounding, some names become popular. Eventually they will start to define (loosley) the generation. Those names will start to sound like old people, so parents will call their children something else, etc etc. It takes a few generations for names to circulate.\n\nMy youngest nephew is named something I would expect to be a name of a 104 year old man with a Cap and cane.\n\nAlso, a large influx of immigrants will introduce new names into the common cognition. These names will often undergo alterations to fit with the language and style of speech.\n\nSome names are chosen as a concept that represents the parents midset and joy of childbirth. Like the popular name Hope. Some are chosen for their beauty, like Rose, Lilly. \n\nAnd then there are just names that are wierd and chosen by the parents because they are ignorant and seek attention. North West\n\nAnd then there are even wierder ass combo constructed names: Charonella, Shaniqua\n\nAnd then there are names because the parents have burned away most of their brain with drugs: Vodka, Dime-bag, etc.\n\nNames always represent something. It might not still be apparent. But they always carry a meaning. So even though I had some harsh judgements above. In reality names are born out of the human cognition. So to explain why name-changes occurred, you would have to go to the ideografic level. Some are a break with social norms that are less than accommodating to the parents (oppression), some are chosen because they are somewhat unique, some are chosen because they afford easy acceptance. Some are named after idols, some are named after important people to the parent.\n\nThen again, we do tend to think alike. So patterns appear."
]
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bdm9rg | how does “selling put options” actually work? | I generally get how options work. It’s like insurance in a way.
But what exactly happens when you sell put options? You’re somehow providing insurance to other participants when the underlying asset falls in value?
And what’s with the “margin cash”? I heard you can actually keep that money invested in equities if you so choose.
(Scratch head) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bdm9rg/eli5_how_does_selling_put_options_actually_work/ | {
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"Selling a person a put option is selling them the right to sell you a security at a given price. Say I sell you a put option on GE with a strike price of $9. That means you can show up any time prior to the expiration of the option and give me a share of GE stock in exchange for $9. Right now the price of GE is right around $9, so the option would be pretty cheap, say $.50.\n\nSo, you give me $.50 and walk away with your option that expires on June 30. It's not worth much right now because you can sell your share of GE on the open market for $9, so there isn't any point to the option, but you bought it because you think the price of GE stock is going down.\n\nSay something bad happens and GE stock falls to $6 on June 29. You go out and buy a share of GE stock for $6 and bring it to me along with your option. I get your share of GE, but I have to give you $9. You net $2.50 on the transaction. Awesome. Note that often the stock doesn't actually change hands, I would just hand you $3 and we'd call it even.\n\nSay GE stock goes to $10 instead. Then you just toss away your option after it expires and lose your $.50 while I make a $.50 profit. Simple, right?\n\nSo, the thing is, if I sell a put option, my brokerage is going to require some security from me to make sure I have the money to actually buy that GE share for $9 if you come to sell it to me. That security is called \"margin\". When the price is $9 or more, there isn't any risk and the broker will require little or no margin. However, if the price drops to $6, the broker may require that I have $3 deposited with them so that I can meet my obligation under the option contract.\n\nWhile the contract is still outstanding, that $3 of margin can be invested in almost anything, as long as the investment is held by the brokerage. Say I use the margin to buy a share of ASPN for $3, held at my brokerage.\n\nNow I'm concerned with the prices of two stocks. Say GE stays at $6 and ASPN goes to $2. Now my brokerage tells me I have insufficient margin and I need to send them more money, so I send them another $1 and I can also invest that. Then maybe the price of GE goes to $7, and I can sell the last investment and get my $1 back because now I only need $2 of margin.\n\nAnd so the game goes. Realize though that if you sell a put option and invest the margin cash in a stock, it's possible that both stocks will go down and you will have to pump in increasing amounts of cash to maintain your required margin. If you don't have the money, your brokerage might just take all the money you have with them and use it to buy the option back from whomever you sold it to.\n\nSo it goes in the options game."
]
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qoztm | the effect this week's solar storm may have on communications/electronics | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qoztm/eli5_the_effect_this_weeks_solar_storm_may_have/ | {
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"Probably not much besides disrupting communication i.e. you may get a dropped call or bad Internet connection.\n\n Most if not all satellites are shielded pretty well against radiation and the Earth's magnetosphere takes the lion's share of the flare's energy. For a solar flare to do all the things you read about in the tabloids (blowing out transformers, sending us into the dark ages etc.) it would have to be a MASSIVE output of energy from the sun, and we're getting better at predicting flares all the time.",
"electromagnetic radiation is a fairly hard to grasp concept.\n\nWith small scale electronics, the effect should be minimal. Sensitive equipment might be damaged if not shielded. For radio waves, there will be added noise, but for the most part we can filter out a lot of the noise.\n\nThe most interesting stuff happens to transmission lines and transformers. Its fairly complex, but the short version is that the power grid can be taken out for over a month if the solar flare is bad enough."
]
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[],
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53qs14 | how did the norm for music go from things like symphonies to songs with lyrics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53qs14/eli5_how_did_the_norm_for_music_go_from_things/ | {
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"A symphony was never really the norm for music. Folk songs and tunes have been around forever. The people singing them and listening to them didn't get rich and write down their music though.\n\nChurch music was where the money was, and that is what evolved into the style we call \"Classical\" today.",
"The biggest change was the invention of electronic amplification. That enabled even an ordinary singer to be heard over a whole band."
]
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[],
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20ie7r | one-way encryption. | If we know how to encrypt something, how can we not know how to decrypt it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20ie7r/eli5_oneway_encryption/ | {
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"One-way encryption is more commonly called hashing, and we can't go backwards with it because we're actually destroying or losing data in the process of creating the hash.\n\nYou're taking a large number, doing some fancy math, and producing a smaller number. It's impossible to go backwards, because that smaller number can correlate to several (many) larger ones, and it's impossible to know which.",
"You're probably thinking of hashing rather than encryption.\n\nHashing is a technique for providing a summary of a message, and it does so in a way that information is lost so you can't get back to the original message.\n\nAn extremely simple (and insecure) hashing function would simply be one that counts the number of characters in a message. So for example you'd get\n\n* Hash(\"hello world\") = 11\n* Hash(\"explain like I'm five\") = 21\n* Hash(\"it's monday\") = 11\n\nSo obviously if someone simply told you \"the hash value of this message is 11\" you'd have no way of taking that and getting the original message from it. We therefore call it a one-way function.\n\nReal hashing functions are a good deal more complex than simply counting the number of characters, but the principle is the same -- given a hash value, it's impossible to reverse the process and determine what the original message was.\n",
"It involves a lot of very complicated math, but at the heart of it is the problem of factoring numbers.\n\nFor starters, recall that every number can be decomposed into a unique set of prime factors. For instance, 12 = 2 * 2 * 3, and 35 = 7 * 5. But doing the multiplication is much easier than decomposing a number into its prime factors.\n\nNow , instead of 7 * 5 = 35, imagine instead that you pick two *very large* prime numbers. Perhaps:\n\n2074722246773485207821695222107608587480996474721117292752992589912196684750549658310084416732550077\n\nand \n\n2367495770217142995264827948666809233066409497699870112003149352380375124855230068487109373226251983\n\nYou (or rather, a computer) can multiply those together in milliseconds to get:\n\n4911896143611633780682402453849989800775189204252065726408220729093666935169295333354972115958559557089914348405178885416469366816588450359422439438480830450865092769289758720093322068727908471327\n\nBut it would take a computer hundreds, or even thousands, of years to break that number back into its two prime factors.\n\nI recommend watching [this video](_URL_1_), followed by [this video](_URL_0_) to get a good explanation of how modern cryptography works."
]
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXB-V_Keiu8",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnD2c4Xovk"
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3li6z5 | why is age discrimination only illegal at age 40 and older? | I had a job interview a few years ago when I was 28 and I was told I was to old for the position. They said they generally hire college age people for the position and that my "seasoned personality might not mix well".
They said they knew I was older because I was in the Army for 3 years. They never specifically asked my age.
When I looked up about age discrimination it states that it only applies if you are 40 or older. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3li6z5/eli5_why_is_age_discrimination_only_illegal_at/ | {
"a_id": [
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"The general idea is that the protection isn't for discrimination based on \"age\"---that happens all the time directly and indirectly. The real protection is for discrimination against someone being *old*. \n\nForty was the bright line cutoff they chose, probably because it's a round number roughly halfway between 18 (starting work) and 65 (retirement for the fortunate few). \n\nBut it's less about the number than about the goal. It's not about blocking businesses from electing to go with someone farther along in life---or generally younger. It's about preventing businesses from being able to take advantage of people approaching the end of their careers who will generally speaking have far less leverage and far fewer options."
]
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[]
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3gcxnf | why can't men (easily) continue with intercourse after orgasm? and why women can? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gcxnf/eli5why_cant_men_easily_continue_with_intercourse/ | {
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"Men release two hormones after orgasm. One makes little jimmy go down, the other makes you uninterested in sex. This is called the Refractory Period (you can look up other info using that term). Some men don't produce as much of the hormones and can go multiple times as well, but it is not common.",
"A man who continues to have sex after orgasm runs the risk of scooping out all of his own semen, undoing his hard work. There is an evolutionary advantage to letting everything cool down for a little while.",
"Evolution has prevented men from enjoying their own semen running down their balls and settling in their asshole. ",
"I remember reading somewhere that in hunter gather times it was beneficial for the female to want more sex after intercourse because she would mate with multiple males and the \"strongest\" sperm would be the one to make it, leading to healthier offspring. ",
"Wait, women can orgasm??",
"Now I feel like a weirdo for being able to continue having sex directly after orgasm without a break. Thanks, Reddit.",
"I swear to God this started happening to me only after I hit 30, Im 34 now. Before that, when I would have an orgasm, I would stay up. For a while. Like no break needed type of stuff. Every girl I have ever been has mentioned how unusual it was. Now I am just like every other guy I hear about. I find it strange and it makes me a little sad.",
"his erection goes away. a man attempting intercourse with an inadequately hard dick is like trying to stuff an oyster into a slot machine. ",
"Think about what would happen in terms of successful procreation if women could not continue and stopped the intercourse after they orgasm. \n\nFortunately, females can continue intercourse after orgasm (and have multiple orgasms, yeah!) because it helps ensure they will remain interested and engaged until the male ejaculates, which is really important to the whole baby making thing.",
"I've never had a problem going a second round, but I'll last longer than is comfortable for the girl and usually need more stimulation to finish. \n\nSo what my ex and I regularly would do is she would get me off during oral, I'd then give her oral and finish the home stretch with sex. ",
"Uhmmm this is weird. After my girlfriend orgasms she has absolutely zero interest in sex. After I orgasm I can go a other 2-3 times. Am I the woman in this relationship?",
"I'm a women who definitely can't keep going after orgasm. Everything becomes very unsexy and I want to either go to sleep or go for a shower. ",
"Just want to add, I fall asleep instantly after sex, dont know what this multiorgasm-thing is.. im just done..",
"Because in nature, you gotta bust your nut fast and then get back on the move. The longer you keep fucking, the more vulnerable you are to any predators that wanna eat you.",
"I didnt read all the comments so I don't know if anyone mentioned this; but it's an evolutionary feature. The penis (inside the vagina) is shaped like a piston in a pump. The loss of erection is intentional; if a male keeps 'thrusting' after ejaculation he will pump all of the semen out of the vagina. Not a good way to have offspring, unless you're the guy who comes in 2nd or 3rd. \nOne male finishes, and on the off-chance the female is still in the mood, available or whatever, the male starts pumping and the semen from the previous guy gets expelled. ",
"Reproduction has already been taken to the highest probability after male orgasm. If the male continues to have sex he is only scooping out his own semen. ",
"Quite a number of the women I've been with are unable to continue immediately after their orgasm... they only need a few minutes before they could potentially go again, but those who experienced the sensitivity didn't want to go again later",
"if woman can keep going man can impregnate without worrying for her to become uninterested.\n\nthe other way around drops birthrate.\n\nbiology",
"What are you talking about? It's easy, just wait five minutes...what do you do in that time you ask?\nWell, the girl may excuse herself to use the bathroom (helps fight against a chance of UTIs). You as the gentlemen go into the kitchen, grab a quick drink of water, and pour a glass for the lady. Wait for her to join you in the kitchen...drink some more water, maybe grab a nice post-coital snack.\nBy now, enough time has past where the guy can get hard again. And now, it'll probably take like an hour to get off. So have fun, and try to beat your high score...see how many times she gets off before the guy gets off again.\nSource: a guy"
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2b867d | rc circuits | So I'm trying to learn about electronics and I purchased 'Getting Started in Electronics' by Forrest M. Mims III and it's been going along rather well but I ran into a section on RC circuits that I don't quite understand. I know what RC circuits are but the explanation he gives for integrators and differentiators makes absolutely no sense to me. I've tried looking things up on the internet but so far I haven't had anything that could help me. [Here's](_URL_0_) the page with the explanation. Thanks!
Edit -- I also don't understand the RC time constant. I know it's the time it takes for ~63% of the capacitor to charge but is there an infinite number of them? Also, how does it relate to integrators and differentiators? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b867d/eli5_rc_circuits/ | {
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"Applications for RC circuits include: Filtration (Most common use as a high pass or low pass basic filter for AC wave forms.), DC logic circuits use them for hardware debouncing (not very common as debouncing is better with a pulldown or pull up resistor), Spike generators for one time switches and latches, and wave form modulation from square (Think PWM) to saw (which is used in audio transformations in music quite a bit.)\n\nIntegrators also can be used to stop minimum levels of voltage.\n\nAlso, Tau, the time constant sets your frequency for your signals.\n\nSource: i may be a bit off, its been over a year since ive had the class on this stuff, and i dont use it too often because i dont have to build it on the component level much."
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1w5t7f | how hard would it be to create an independent but sustainable community in antarctica? | I want to live in Antarctica, but not as a scientist or researcher, I just want to live there with a bunch of people and form a society that is independent, maybe our own country. How hard would this be? How expensive would it be? What tools and technology would be needed? Would the international community have something to say about it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w5t7f/eli5_how_hard_would_it_be_to_create_an/ | {
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"Antarctica has no ability to make crops and few livestock could survive there without using extra resources (heat and shelter and fresh water) so you would be using more resources than you are getting back. For this reason you would be entirely dependant on outside assistance to function without being able to offer any resources in return. You would be at the mercy of outside countries causing you to not be independant and be like many of the research bases. [Source] (_URL_0_)"
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1jhvrd | do we really know where snowden is? how? and if he really still is in moscow, why can't he get to julian assange or somewhere else? | I feel like I've read about him leaving Moscow to only read about how he's still stuck there several times by now. I also don't understand how he has not gotten to another country yet, when a few started protests because of the information he released. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jhvrd/eli5do_we_really_know_where_snowden_is_how_and_if/ | {
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"Well, on the Assange point, Assange is in a shitty little Embassy in London (no offence, Ecuador). So he wouldn't want to go there. Also, the US/UK have a very strong alliance, so he would be arrested at the airport and deported to the US. "
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490zal | what does it mean to be audited by the irs? do they only catch you not filing or paying tax if they single you out and audit you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/490zal/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_be_audited_by_the_irs/ | {
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"An audit means that the IRS wants verification of some or all of your tax returns. Usually it means they either have documentation from someone you did business with that shows something other than what you reported or they suspect your figures are in error. \n\nYou have to bring documentation that shows why your filing was correct which usually requires a considerable amount of research and preparation work."
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2zaupt | why does the government leave potholes on public roads unfilled for weeks or even months, making driving conditions hazardous? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zaupt/eli5_why_does_the_government_leave_potholes_on/ | {
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"Many reasons.\n\nCould be a lack of resources. Potholes in my town have sometimes gone unfilled for years because the city just doesn't have the money to fix all of them.\n\nAnother reason is weather. There's very little sense in filling potholes in winter.",
"Right now in many parts, this is prime pothole season. The combination of thaw/freeze gets water into small cracks, and then when the water freezes again it expands and spreads the crack. That degradation means lots of potholes forming, so the governments are overloaded with fixing them. Plus, ones on highways and major streets get dealt with first, so the ones on small side streets may sit for a while.",
"I'd assume the main reason would be budget restrictions and the need to block roads causing major traffic. ",
"I can answer a little bit of this. I used to work for a city in the Public Works department. It depends greatly on the location of the pothole. There are many roads that are actually private roads and not the responsibility of the county, city, or state, but rather the homeowners association or other entity. Often, if it is a private road, it is much harder to get fixed. \n\nAnother reason could be funding. There are so many programs that need to run within a city, many of them vital, that roads are actually a bit far down on the list. Because there are so many things that need to be fixed with roads, and often because of limited budgets, things are put on a priority list. What you may think is a severe pothole may not actually be one. If it is an immediate hazard, it will be fixed right away. Otherwise, it has to wait. \n\nAnother reason, for shorter wait periods, could simply be that it hasn't been reported yet. If a Public Works (or other city) employee has not seen it, and no one has reported it, then it can't get fixed! "
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1kdczt | why does microwaving/cooking food which is out of date not kill the germs and make it edible? | As the title says.
Just as an example (don't just stick to this) I have a ready made chicken curry which is 10 days out of date but I can't smell if it's off cause the smell of curry is so strong. I thought microwaves and/or an oven with a high heat kills bacteria. So why is it that I can't get food which is past it's use by date and nuke it in the microwave to make it edible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kdczt/eli5_why_does_microwavingcooking_food_which_is/ | {
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"It's often not the bacteria that are the problem. Rather, it's various toxins that are produced by the bacteria's metabolic processes that are dangerous, and microwaving won't remove them even if it does kill the bacteria.",
"When bacteria has been living for a while, the waste that they generate accumulates.\n\nBoth bacteria and their waste are bad news. Killing the bacteria doesn't get rid of the waste.",
"It's not always the bacteria itself that's harmful.\n\nIt's often the byproduct of bacteria metabolization (their poop) that can harm you. In that case, even if you killed every bacteria the food would still be harmful. ",
"Microwaves don't heat. They do, but they don't pass energy like passing heat from a source to another. A microwave disturbs and excites water molecules, nothing else. That's why microwaved food cools faster and it's dull. This not necessarily kills bacteria."
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5objra | why is it recommended that i 'shake well' before drinking juice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5objra/eli5_why_is_it_recommended_that_i_shake_well/ | {
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"To prevent sediment from remaining at the bottom of the juice, making the part you drink watery and the part remaining overly concentrated. Shaking mixes the beverage up again."
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2tetmf | why are fast food companies spending millions of dollars upgrading the look and decor or their restaurants and not spending the money on upgrading the quality of their food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tetmf/eli5_why_are_fast_food_companies_spending/ | {
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"It's a subconscious thing. We go into a restaurant that's a bit classier, and more modern and the food will taste better. Mind you, this is coming from someone that enjoys fast food.",
"Its simple. Its cheaper to upgrade the dining experience then the food. You redecorate once....you have to buy more expensive meat forever. If their sales were hurting they would look at their food....but theres a line at the drive thru 24/7. Why serve Filet Mignon when alpo is raking in the bucks? \n\nGood business is about giving people something they want and getting more money for it than it cost you....and the greater the gap the more successful you are. So their answer to people like you....depends on the chain...maybe theyll put an $8 angus burger on the menu..or maybe theyll add real lettuce and bacon, a cheese other than ameripaste, and possibly a pretty bun...all on their normal QP patty, talk about a cheap upgrade...oh and theres the obligatory overpriced under meated grilled chicken option. So there you go enjoy your fancy premium option in our fancy premium dining room. ",
"The chains are *constantly* trying new things and figuring out new items to try and boost sales. I know this because I'm an engineer working on kitchen equipment for many of these companies and they're constantly asking for modifications to software and/or hardware to make their new recipes happen.\n\nMcDonald's biggest problem is that they don't have a premuim product to compete with Chipotle. They're trying to redress the Quarter Pounder with all kinds of fancy dressing but in the end it's still a flat-grilled burger. They just can't make anything else without a major redesign of their kitchen.\n\nAnd these things don't happen overnight. When McDs launches a new item it's taken *years* of R & D, testing, kitchen engineering, and other things. I've seen some products get delayed or totally shelved simply because there aren't enough raw ingredients in the target country to supply every store on a yearly basis. Even adding apples to the Happy Meal took forever because they need to be sure there were enough apple growers able to meet demand.\n\nI'm not defending the chains, trust me they do a lot of stupid shit. But to claim they are sitting on their hands is completely false.\n\n[EDIT] FYI, McDonalds does not own any % of Chipotle anymore. McD's invested in the company in the early days and helped them grow but sold out when Chipotle shares went public. Both sides were quite happy with the outcome.\n\n[EDIT2] Thanks for the gold, I really don't deserve it. If I knew this quickie answer would have triggered so much discussion I would have made it a little more serious. But thanks for reading.",
"Their customers expect a very specific thing when they order from a fast food restaurant. That is why people go there, because It tastes exactly the same whether it's in an airport, another country, next to you house.p, etc. if they changed e recipe there would be a shitstorm.",
"because McDonald's is already fucking delicious?",
"When opening a franchise of mcds, Burger King or even dennys they give you a \"cheat\" sheet to become a successful restaurant. Every single one of them promotes location, location, location. Food is centralized coming from sysco, mbm or fsa. Dennys, mcds, Burger King and others make money from royalties on the restaurant and usually leave the \"food\" aspect to 3rd party providers and a 3rd party \"chef\". Since everything is done in so many different companies it takes a considerable effort and a tremendous amount of money to change anything. If you're changing 1 menu item you also have to change the menu in restaurants, apply that change in kitchen etc etc I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. Also consider that many of these 3rd party food providers offer fast food companies an interesting discount for continuous purchasing. In cases like dennys they'll even get a grocer deal on discounted produce year round bringing food cost down to a ridiculous 10%. \nBasically food is the last thing you want to change in a fast food restaurant. Interestingly it is the cheapest cost per item but the more expensive to make changes to. Source: have managed, cooked and taken care of invoices for multiple restaurants and fast food companies. ",
"If people didnt like the food, they wouldnt be some of the biggest corporations in the world. If they change the recipes of existing items, like say a bigmac that some guys been eating for the last 20 years, and now he doesnt like it cuz its not what hes used to, they risk alienating their customer base. ",
"The food is selling so there's nothing wrong with the food",
"My guess is,\n\n- they are confident customers are satisfied with the food they already serve, so it is questionable whether there is an investment opportunity in this area.\n\n- Enhancing food quality most likely involves refactoring the kitchen, which would be a lot more expensive than a few screens here and there.\n\n- the investment opportunity of relooking the place holds little uncertainty about the cost and results, contrary to a general attempt to \"serve better food than before\"\n\noh, sorry, EL5:\n\nCustomers are happy now with the food. Nobody's sure they'll make more money by changing what they do.\n\nTo make better food, you need to buy a new kitchen everywhere. This is very very expensive, a lot more than buying decoration.\n\nThe fast food companies know what will happing if they decide to spend money on decoration. They don't know what will happen if they try to change the food.\n",
"[I think Spongebob shed some light on this back in 2001.](_URL_0_)",
"They spend money to upgrade their food as well. \n\nMcDs i coming up with new burger and chicken sandwiches, Wendy's had a pretzel buns a while ago (do they still?), salads, wraps, new sauces etc. etc. That has to be developed and researched, tested and promoted. That shit costs money.\n\nYou just don't see them doing the work.",
"24 year fast food vet here. Many folks hit in the cost side of the equation or the customer want/perception side, but I'm going to throw in two other concepts : The competition between ego and status quo. \n\nWhat happens more often than not is that you have an owner or operators that think they know best and have a massive cult like belief in their brand or their leadership. One sees then when a new CEO, VP or heck even manager start with a company. They want to put their mark on a brand much like a dog marking trees. Part of the problem though is that there are things that are held as sacred to a brand. Take McDonalds for instance.... Quarter pounders, Big Macs, fries and kids meals are some foundational products that they offer. Of course you could try and change them, and people have over the years by introducing new things. Most often the new things don't work and they stick with the tried and true. \n\nSomeone new comes along and wants to try something new because it's human nature but the machine won't allow it because things like that haven't worked in the past. That is status quo. \n\nPeople want to try things but the pressure from people around them keep the machine going and instead of looking for bold changes, incremental ones are easier to get implemented and accepted. \n\nAlso franchisees have built their business models off of established practices and products and if something new bombs and materially affects them, look out for more lawyers that fat people lined up for a free all you can eat pizza buffet. ",
"It's way cheaper to do a 1 time spend on all your restaurants to boost sales, rather than up your COGS by 25% and have that directly hit your bottom line, every quarter. ",
"I think fast food gives great quality for the price, but that's just me. I can routinely get a big burger, fries and a drink for under $8 in around 2-5 minutes. I can barely eat for less at home, and whatever I make at home for less will either require a lot of work to make and cleanup, or it will be less satisfying. Health wise, fast food has easily kept up with most restaurants, because most restaurants don't give two shits about health. They want you coming back, and only delicious food is going to get most people to routinely spend their money.\n\nNow that being said, fast food chains try new stuff all the time. 10 years ago, Wendy's didn't have the natural cut fries, the portabella sandwich thing, the vanilla frosty, countless other things and a good portion of my life was before they did breakfast. McDonalds does limited supply stuff like the McRib (when pork gets cheap enough, McDonalds buys it up and does McRibs), the $5 burger, new sauces, salads, pies, McFlurries, McGriddles, etc. Dominos re-did their recipe entirely a few years back because they saw that people were going elsewhere, and their quality improved quite a bit. There was a time when there were 3 options at a pizza place: thin, regular or thick crust. Now we have stuffed crust, dessert pizzas, pasta, calzones, poppers, etc. It's usually not going to taste as good as a fancy restaurant perhaps, but then they take 10-30 minutes to prepare your meal, whereas 10 minutes in fast food is almost unheard of outside of a 3AM rush at McDonalds from the bars closing. Also they aren't cheap. \n\nAs to the updated appearance, you have to stay with the times. If you have the same 1980's wallpaper up and old looking decor in general, people aren't going to feel comfortable. Just as their have changed, so does the decor.",
"Because research has shown there's money to be made in giving people an experience as well as a meal. \n\nPeople are stressed and eating out has become about more than a meal. People want a *break* in their day. Mothers often take their kids out at lunch for fast food because they are at the end of their patience. Or, they stop in for coffee and let their kids play as a reward for running errands. \n\nAdditionally, ideas of personal space have shifted since many of these restaurants were built. If you look at modern spaces, you either find people embracing urbanization (Chipotle) or attempting to create little pockets of privacy (Panera). McDonald's is between the two and it's not working for them. They are trying to take back those individuals who are willing to pay $5 for coffee, not because the coffee is good, but because the *experience* is good. \n\nIronically, food is one of the less important triggers when it comes to picking a place to eat. The true influences of choice are often more subtle. ",
"Because fast food companies are the slum lords of the restaurant world? Same shitty apartment but with new exterior paint! ",
"Look at it from a cost perspective:\n\nFixing the interior = one-time, fixed change at a restaurant\n\nFixing the food = innumerable changes to literally every single meal served every single day, all day\n\n",
"Flat screen televisions are cheaper menus over time. Especially if you buy in bulk. They can update the menu in 5 seconds at every restaurant in the region as opposed to lost productivity of an employee changing a menu board. Every change is like that. It appears sleek and modern, but it probably saves money.",
"Updating the look = more expensive once.\n\nUpdating the food = more expensive all the time.",
"It's the Starbucks v. Dunkin' Donuts dichotomy. Controlling for geographical constraints, young people [read current and future spenders] like establishments where they can go and relax and work for a couple hours -- like Starbucks. Most current fast food restaurants are modeled like Dunkin' Donuts -- get your food and coffee but loiter for too long and we will call the police. \n\nIf you're purchasing fast food, you're inherently not concerning yourself with quality [In 'n Out being an exception]; rather, you're now paying for a comfortable place to hang out. Historically, you were paying for just speed and convenience. The benefit of investing in aesthetics is the drive-thru crowd doesn't have their speed and convenience sacrificed.\n\n",
"As someone who owns and operates multiple fast food franchises, I can tell you that corporate handles (funds) the quality of food and what food is to be served on the menu. We as franchisees have to use our own money to renovate the building. \n\nTLDR - Corporate does not pay to renovate the buildings and I, as a franchisee, do not decide on the quality of food to be served. ",
"There are people in finance/accounting in every fast food chain that have measured to five decimal places the costs and benefits of changing menus and of IE/REMO/RELO (image enhancements, remodels, relocations). If they can't back up their numbers, they lose their jobs.\n\nThe bottom line is that IE/REMO/RELO keep people coming in. So does a changing menu, but at a much higher cost in money and time. There's essentially no gain in improving the taste of an old product. (Remember \"New Coke\"?)\n",
"I think fast food companies are now more concerned with making their restaurants look less trashy, and with trying to convince customers the food isn't extremely unhealthy. They focus on giveaways/contests (like Roll Up The Rim at Tim Horton's) or philanthropy (like Ronald McDonald House). They even emphasize how cheap the food is to rope in low-income customers. But they don't worry about making the food better.\n\nAnd why? There's something people don't entirely realize or admit about fast food: We like it. We don't have a problem with the taste. It's a familiar, predictable flavor that's all salt and fat and sugar. It's extremely bad for you (close to toxic in some ways) and in many cases it's made unethically, but the taste isn't the problem. Billions of people don't buy and eat things they don't like the taste of. \n\nI think more discriminating palettes will obviously know there are better burgers, better fries, etc. in the world... but the masses feel their mouth water when they imagine a Big Mac or a Whopper. So that's not a marketing hole that needs plugging.",
"Fortune just did this story and explain why McDonalds is doing just that while Chipotle is focusing on the food. \n\nChipotle sales have gone up exponentially while McDonald's sales have dropped. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n > Just as McDonald’s is out tweaking its marketing message, using Pac-Man and the Smurfs to pump up the appeal of its brand, Chipotle is concerning itself with the integrity of its product.",
"Right because the whole Angus push never happened.",
"First, you're seriously shortchanging the effort that goes into modern fast food. You have food products that can be safely prepared by unskilled workers to be exactly the same at any of millions of locations across the world, and it can be done in 60 seconds. You have massive supply chains to gather the crazy volume of ingredients, processing plants that can output consistent, safe product fast enough to meet demand, and a shipping network to get the right quantity of ingredients to stores to keep stock at specified levels. As others have said, McDonald's has to check to global output of an ingredient before adding it to a main menu product. It watches pork commodity prices to determine when to bring back the McRib. The R & D and engineering that goes into modern fast food is nothing short of remarkable and is arguably one of the more impressive human creations. Your local burger place has nothing on that. ",
"They are trying to improve the food. The problem is that their idea of an improvement doesn't match yours.\n\nTaco Bell has introduced flavored taco shells, flattened burrito things, and other \"improved\" food products. McDonald's is constantly starting yet another push to improve their foods e.g. injecting water into the burger patties to reduce the calories and fat per ounce. Carl's Jr has introduced a string of \"premium\" burgers including bigger patties, \"all natural\" ingredients, etc. Arby's and Wendy's both decided that customers really want to pay $6 for a sliced sandwich bread sandwiches of the sort you can make at home for $2 and introduced those. Long John Silver's has added non-deep-fried food to their menu. About the only fast food chains that haven't tried desperately to fix their food are the short-menu burger joints (like in-n-out, 5 guys, mooyah, etc.).",
"IDK man, I ate at a revamped Popeye's a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I'd had it in years, bc I remember hating how greasy and salty it was. BUT DANG. They did something to their food. It's frickin amazing. Maybe not everyone is forgetting the \"food\" part of \"fast food.\"",
"Also its a one time cost per store... Better quality food is I creased cost for each sale..",
"The cost of implementing new ingredients involves more than just buying new ingredients. They'd have a menu re-design, a sourcing of food re-design, and a (likely) continuous raise in cost that they can't justify passing onto the consumer.\n\nThe cost of improving facilities is one that a company will typically build into their P & L as its expected over a certain amount of time. By making upgrades to the facilities, you get the impression its new, clean, and different than before. They can buy a mental goodwill by painting the walls, while leaving the Nuggets alone. ",
"americans don't give a f*** if the food is good, we are fat, and want to be fat in a nice enviroment",
"Frankly, I kind of wonder if there's just...not a demand for it. Granted, if they upgraded their food, they'd be bringing in a broader population--health-conscious people for instance--but like...McDonald's isn't doing bad, you know? And every person I know who goes to McDonald's regularly fucking LOVES McDonald's. Maybe an \"If it ain't broke, don't fix it\" thing?? I just don't think the vast people of McDonald's-going people are concerned about this or else they wouldn't be eating it. People go crazy over those nuggets, man. And they're shit.",
"Manager for In-N-Out burger here, I find it crazy as well that most fast food places (other than us) do this. We have kept the same menu, same restaurant, and the only thing we change is by improving our standards on quality, cleanliness, and customer service every day. Makes me proud that I've worked for a company for over 12 years that I love! ",
"I would also like to mention that I used to work in fast food. Corporate has a clause with every franchise that they must renovate their store every 15 years",
"Texan here. We have the response to your question, its called Whataburger.",
"I worked at McDonald's in the late nineties and early aughts, so my experience may be a bit out of date. Having said that, in my experience, the problem isn't the quality of the food, it's that it's prepared poorly. If you'd every had a fresh, correctly prepared item, you'd be amazed by how good it is.\n\nBut fast food workers make very low wages, which means that you can't attract good workers, and the workers you do attract are not exactly motivated. So you can have good ingredients and good methods, but when the people making the food don't care what they're doing, you're product is going to be pretty bad. For example, a quarter pounder patty is supposed to be thrown away twenty minutes after it's cooked. The kitchens have little heated bins with timers to store the meat. When the timers go off, the meat should be wasted, but a typical employee will just reset the timer. Which is why your meat is so tough and dry.\n\nSo either upper management is simply incompetent, and they think that relatively complicated recipes can be carried out by the absolute least capable workers, or they are aware of the trade offs, and have simply decided that paying for better workers would not be offset by enough of an increase in profits.",
" > if my burger tastes like crap\n\nThis is entirely subjective. McDonald's billions served is a testament to the fact that a *huge* fraction of people actually *don't* think it tastes like crap. It's very chic to hate on fast food, but if the product were truly unappetizing then the company would have been out of business decades ago. ",
"There are a ton of responses, but I haven't seen one about the actual real estate yet. The first thing you need to learn about McDonalds is that it is NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, it's about the shareholders having property on every major intersection they can get their hands on. If they let the value of the property decline due to not keep it up, they don't see the return on the investment. \nSource: Rich Dad, Poor Dad (it's a book, I don't remember the authors name) ",
"Well, there's only one answer: money. It must be the case that the look sells more food than the food itself. These people have done their homework.",
"I think you just hinted at the answer: that's why people go. not for the healthy food. more and more ppl go to Mcdonalds because it looks fresh and less embarrassing to be seen in, especially if there\\s a 'mcafe' sign on the window that your sitting behind... now you're jut in a cafe, not a fast food joint. \n\nWe all want cheap eats, and if they reduce the barrier of going there (sketchy looking) they get more customers.",
"Another accountant chiming in.\n\nImproving a restaurant is a capitalized expense (you use cash for an asset which is depreciated over time) which does not impact EBITDA and the effect on net income would be over time. \n\nThe cost of a improved menu item would negatively impact margins and earnings (assuming you did not raise prices).",
"We always talk about \"the 4 Walls\" where I work.\n1.Food\n2.Atmosphere\n3.Cleanliness\n4.Customer Service\n\nMcdonalds' product sells. They change up small things and try out new items here and there but overall I think they like where their product is.\nWhile the food is the most important part of a restaurant the other areas need the occasional revamping to be current or breath a little fresh air into the business.",
"This depends on your definition of \"quality\". In business terms the quality of McDonald's is extremely high, as the term is used as a measure of providing a consistent product that achieves the performance objectives of the firm. For McDonald's these objectives are mostly speed and cost, which their burgers fill extremely well. In order to increase quality, in terms of taste, it would require them to increase its cost, therefore making the burger fill their company's performance objectives worse. \n\nAlso note that McDonald's mostly competes with other low cost, fast food restaurands, so it would start losing its ground in the fast food market if it was to increase its prices at all. In fact, you can see the company go to great lengths in order to keep prices low.\n\nOn the other hand, they are changing the look of the restaurants, to give the brand a more upscale image, and most importantly make people stay in the restaurant for a longer time. For McDonald's this is mostly due to their increased efforts in selling breakfasts and coffee. The coloring of a space effects how people behave in it, for example the old red and yellow theme was meant to get people in with flashy colors and then push them out as fast as possible to make more room for new customers. The current theme is less aggressive and studies have shown that people stay in the restaurants longer.\n\nSo McDonald's is trying to get the best of both worlds by reducing costs in order to stay in control of the extremely price sensitive fast food industry, while making the restaurants more enjoyable for customers so that they would eat some of the more expensive dishes as well as the new breakfast and coffee menus. ",
"At Chili's, I ordered this sirloin special since it was around 500 calories. The picture showed a chimichurri sauce, sautéed cherry tomatoes, and with a salad. My plate came out looking nothing like that, the steak was smaller than my palm and horribly well done (I'd specified a medium rare), and the salad was wilted and charred. They'd put the entire plate under the broiler. WTF? Who in the hell puts a salad under the broiler? ",
"What the fuck do people expect for $6 and 40 seconds? The food is generally fine for the price range.\n",
"I'd say a big part of it is how quick it gets made. Yes, you could go to a small diner and sit in, but what if you want to grab it to go to eat at home? You'd probably not want to sit and wait for 10-15 minutes to just take it to go, but you might be more willing to sit for 3-7 minutes.\n\nIt is fast food, and so the companies have to create the food and their cook times around being fast. You can only cook a burger so quick, especially thicker, higher quality beef burgers.",
"A & W Canada has been increasing the quality of their meat and I have always loved the construction of their burgers. Some people don't like the \"natural\" cut fries but I absolutely love them. Their stores are going more and more retro as well. Their prices have also gone up, but their monthly coupon books keep me going there.",
"Same reason fucking a hot dumb chick is better than a mediocre smart chick, its appealing and does the same.",
" > on a flat screen tv rather than printed paper. \n\nBesides the already well explained fact that the upgrade is a one time cost, flat screens are not that much more expensive compared to the instalation required to hold that piece of paper, and if you add a new item or the week special or whatever you no longer need to print that piece of paper and send it to all your locations, you just update the screen, so it can actually be cheaper in the long run.\n",
"McDonald's really doesn't have to change too much except the quality of the damn meat.\n\nHow come I can go to Wendy's and get a burger that actually tastes like a burger, while McDonald's tastes worse than a Hot Pocket? Wendy's isn't that much more expensive (maybe 30-40 cents more) than McDonald's, so it isn't a pricing issue. I can understand having sub-par meat for their value burgers, but that is about it. The last time I ordered a Big Mac, not only was it much smaller than I remember, the whole thing tasted like plastic.\n\nBut I guess it's cheaper for companies to mask the poor quality by spending tons of money on fancy remodels and products that steer people away from your burgers.",
"Heres the thing, I dont know where a lot of these people are from but where I'm from (Portugal) theres legislation for food quality, and its actually very tight so the truth is mcdonalds and pizzahut tend to actually be pretty nice and quite tasty. Its not the helthiest food you can find but its pretty nice from time to time, besides they do have helthier options like salads and stuff.",
"The top responses here aren't exactly correct. The answer is because of business strategy, industry positioning and value proposition. Every company offers a unique value proposition to customers. McDonalds' value proposition simply isnt \"good quality food\". That simply isn't what they do as a company-- and that's okay.\n\nWhat McDonalds offers is a reliably consistent product, reliably quick service, and frankly, good tasting food (it may not be good quality or healthy but i don't think you can argue that it doesnt taste good) for a reasonable/cheap price. This is their place in the market. Offering \"high quality food\" like you say simply isnt what McDonalds does, and if they did do that, they would be an entirely different company. A transition to that isn't necessary and would be financially stupid.\n\nThe redesign/rebrand of the restaurants isn't so much about \"upgrading the look\" in some desperate attempt to appear higher end as you seem to suggest, but it's just about not becoming stagnant. Every company has to change over time with changing consumer expectations. The new \"upper scale\" style many fast food places are adopting is simply what's expected from customers (personally, I'd say its from the advent of cafe's like starbucks; this is what consumers expect now)",
"also, some people (many people i'd guess) like the food at mcdonald's and other fast food chains. i generally would always go to a shake shack or a pub or a five guys over mcdonald's for a burger, but sometimes i don't want a burger, i want a big mac. the same as people will go to an authentic mexican place for mexican food, but taco bell for chalupas. don't give me faux-fancy burgers at mcdonald's. i want big macs.",
"They have millions of dollars to spend on decor because people like the food the way it is.",
"They actually spent millions researching on their food to appeal to the widest audience. If you don't like their food, then you are not part of their audience.",
"most places ain't even got a dollar menu anymore, fuckin dumbass \"dollar and more\" shit",
"Better food doesn't sell.\n\nThe truth is, if the restaurant looks good, menu is futuristic, servers are happy, plating is done well, atmosphere is great, cost is reasonable, you won't give two shits if the food is good or average. Your brain will tell you how good it is.\n\nThis is even easier in expensive restaurants, where your brain rationalizes even better to make the cost justified. Five Guys tastes better to most people than a fancy steakhouse, but they both can make a fuckton of money.",
"Mcdonalds R & D takes fucking years to come out with a new product, they do so much research, so many attempts to make it 'perfect', they waited like, 2 years before releasing Mcnuggets because there weren't enough Chickens in the world.",
"Why change the food when people are going to buy it? MOST people are going to want to go into a clean/nice looking facility to eat.",
"The key to fast food chains isn't making food _good_, it's making food _the way you expect it_. They do change the menu from country to country, but within a given market a Big Mac in one restaurant has to taste _exactly_ the same as it does in any other restaurant.\n\n\"Good\" is certainly a key goal, but any alterations have to be:\n\na) Scaleable from one test kitchen to the entire regional or national chain, and \n\nb) Acceptable to the core customer.\n\nYou might be able to make improvements on a given menu item, but if you make Johnny MiddleAmerica's Whopper taste different that what they've grown up with, God help you.",
"I was questioning this today as I drove past a newly re renovated Wendy's. \n\nIn the world of fast food, I presume that the customers are loyal to one chain or another due to the taste of food. I know that I stopped getting the hotdog combo at Costco when they made the switch from Coke to Pepsi. ",
"Quick tip:\n\nAny question in the form of: \"Why is [successful company] doing [thing] instead of [thing]?\" can be answered by \"Because it makes them more money\".",
"If it's broke and people still buy it, don't fix it. ",
"Because we *know* the quality of the food. Even though it's bad, it's something we can rely on to be edible, tasty, and cheap. Although the cheap part is starting to get blurred, because for the price of a burger and fries I can get a premium sandwich from Chipotle.",
"They don't need to change the quality of their food. Just because one person doesn't eat it, doesn't mean 100,000 other people won't eat it either. \n\n",
"The purpose of a business to get people to willingly pay money for the service you provide and enjoy that service enough to return. Your service doesn't need to be the best, it has to be the most adequate option to generate consistent revenue. \n\n\nFast food restaurants sell food products that appeal to the sweet and salty seeking desires of the public. They are also in competition with each other. Increasing the quality of the food would elevate the food product above their competitors at too expensive a rate, while simultaneously putting them into competition with semi-fast food restaurants: (applebees, panera, wood grilled pizza joints etc) with whom they cannot actually compete in terms of what the social public gets out of patronizing those slightly fancier places. \n\n\nWhat they can do is improve the visual appeal of their franchises, all of which have roughly comparable foodstuffs that scratch the same itches (except arby's, I have no fucking clue how that place is still in business). By looking the most modern, while producing food of such quality that people fall into a neat binary (never eat it/always eat it...and of course, the \"only-when-drunk-but-i-get-drunk-a-lot\" which I folded into the always eat it) the next real market share is to attract first time patrons.\n\n\n\nIt's like adult onset disease, why does it still exist? Because people get to fucking before it impacts their chances of reproduction. Fast food still exists because it converts early and people have to learn their way out of continuing to go there. Eye appeal is absolutely necessary: Huntington's disease is still around because those genetic traits are attached to people that are sexy as 19 year olds. ",
"Probably because you only have to spend the money once, whereas if you improved your food you'd have higher costs every time you had to order anything.\n\nIt would take a long time to pass the price of the renovations, but it would happen.",
"They aren't in the food business; they're in the real estate business",
"anyone else remember the arch deluxe?",
"this isn't even worth an explanation [this](_URL_0_) nails the shit out of this stupid question, and is directly making fun of this post",
"Because doing the decor is a one off cost, producing higher quality food is a constant cost that is much higher over time.",
"A couple of years ago Maccas had their first ever year of negative growth in a quarter- blame subway and the health revolution. The CEO (?) at the time decided fuck this, I'm not losing this. And so every single Maccas everywhere was renovated and turned into a 'restaurant' or 'cafe'. At the cost of hundreds of millions. Bold move cotton. \nAnd it worked.\nInstead of being grimy fast food in a shitty diner, suddenly you could get yourself a well known burger (old faithful) in a nice classy looking sheek modern cafe.\n*disclaimer: not sure if this was worldwide or just Australia. But it is definitely true- it's why we have McCafe's now.",
"My kneejerk answer comes from a different perspective than those with inside knowledge of the food preparation.\n\nJust look at how much McDonald's spends on marketing as opposed to the actual product. $1 out of every $6 restaurant ads in America is spent per year by McDonald's. The actual value hovers around $1B. This is far more than their competitors. It's about 3-4% of their yearly revenue.\n\nSo you're looking at a company which spends an enormous amount on maintaining a certain image. It's been wildly successful at doing so, far beyond competitors such as Burger King that don't spend as much.\n\nWhat do you think a company that has met success through advertising is going to do to encourage future success? Change the product that got it there? Or improve its image?\n\nMy overall point is, image revamps are really a form of advertising, pretty much the same thing as TV ads, and it's not surprising that it continually happens on a franchise-wide basis. Wal-Mart's recent image revamp is another advertising success story. I'd speculate that in general, food R & D comes from one bucket of money, image revamps and advertising efforts come from another bucket.",
"Simple. They don't have to. People buy the food. \n",
"Upgrading a look is a one time thing.\n\nUpgrading food quality is something you have to maintain. With every single food shipment.\n\nIn other words: it's cheaper therefore more profit.\n\nIt's all about money.",
"It's too expensive to upgrade the quality of each ingredient required to make each unit of food sold versus making superficial changes. But if current trends continue they'll have to or suffer further lost profits.",
"Generation Y will pay for the \"experience\" as much as they pay for the food. ",
"Because they think you are stupid enough to fall for the ambiance and overlook the fact that the food tastes like cardboard.",
"Because people still eat it as it is. Millions and millions of people.",
"This is true of most modern businesses, not just restaurants. Have you noticed how many banks have been spending on POSH decor inside and out ? ... I mean the landscaping alone at any BOA or Arvest branch bank must have cost tens of thousands for the planning and maintenance. It seems to be more about EGO these days than anything else. They have money to burn on their aesthetics but none to give towards a decent savings account rate or CD.",
"Capital improvements vs recurring expense.\n\nEvery third rate business school hammers their MBA students to cut recurring expenses. \n",
"I've worked at an agency that did interior design / packaging design for McDs. Basically most people don't want new products. If you want a great burger you can get that at a lot of places. When people go to McDonald's they want a McDonald's burger. No point changing that. What they don't want is to feel like a scumbag whilst eating it. Hence the move to nicer (less bright red / yellow plastic) interiors, and the push to make it more coffeeshop-ish with mc-cafes etc.. They are now doing 'secret store' mc cafes which are barely branded, here is where they try out new foods as it doesn't fuck with their main brand if it fails ",
"Cause selling their crap food got them the money to upgrade their looks ",
"Applebees just did this in my town. Their food has gotten so bad in trying to cover up crappy quality meats with waaaay to much flavorings, yet they redo the outside, and I think the inside, I'm not sure because I don't go there anymore.",
"Why polish the shit when you can just put it in a fancy box? ",
"A restaurant's food costs are many times the cost of a renovation over the course of a single year, let alone 3-5 or so years per typical national quick service restaurant remodel. \n\n",
"Renovating the store 1 time cost\n\nBetter ingredients ongoing costs. It's really simple. ",
"Because you will eat whatever they give you, you sad fuck.",
"because infrastructure is a one time investment that brings in the customers. Upgrading their food is going to increase cost and lower profits for every unit sold. ",
"Because health is temporary, while linoleum is forever.\n",
"I wish they would unnecessarily changing ingredients, I remember back in the early 90's Taco Bell actually tasted good. \n\nI don't what they did but they changed something up and now it's just bland, even the sauce and sour cream they use is different.",
"I don't know... The poor quality of the food is the very reason I stopped going to many of these places. It never looks or tastes as good as the picture and 4 out of 5 times I end up getting heartburn, stomach cramps and explosive diarrhea. I'll just eat regular food, because my body is rejecting whatever these fast food companies are producing.",
"Fast food restaurants sell public perception instead of food.\n\nI am eating fast food. Fast food is eating me.",
"Because it's a lot easier to act like you're doing something than it is to **actually** do something. It's business 101. ",
"One is a fixed cost, the other isn't. They would have to constantly pay more for better food, while upgrading a restaurant only needs to be done once and I am sure costs less than increasing the quality (and therefore cost) of the food by even a small percentage. ",
"So....I worked in the corporate HQ of a certain hamburger chain for 7 years, up until very recently. They have a very aggressive remodeling strategy and are literally sinking all of their capital on a refresh of the stores as well as digital marketing strategies. So much so, that they have sold 1/3rd of their corporate owned stores in the U.S. and Canada in the past two years to fund it. They are furiously transferring stores to franchisee ownership and reaping the cash for the remodel effort.\n\nNow...on to the \"why\". When this remodel program was piloted, average sales increased at the pilot store by nearly 100% and unlike other promotional projects, the eventual sales drop off surprisingly never hit. That store showed that it was a sustained uptick in volume with little fall off over time. Since the QSR (quick service restaurant) business is based on volume and not average guest check, this is where the money is. I can tell you for certain that they barely break even on the actual food in the store. Sometimes only making 1-3 cents on a sandwich. The money is in the drinks. The higher the volume of sales (which is why \"same store restaurant sales\" is a key performance indicator) the greater the profit. Making food with better ingredients costs more money and the industry is under constant commodity pricing pressure which drives their already slim margins down every year.\n\n I will say this...the chain I worked for really was on the hunt to provide the best quality food in the industry and offered some really good options. But alas, as a simple consumer now, I find that the preparation and actual product delivery to be underwhelming in most franchise locations. \n\n",
"Who eats fast food anymore? The prices alone have gotten outrageous. I can't get out of Arby's for 2 for less than $20 easy.",
"Atmosphere can truly make or break a restaurant. Often times the food can be sub par and the atmosphere and conversation/staff can make up for that.",
"Because their shitty food already sells just fine. Now they want you to be able to come inside and not be ashamed to be seen eating it.",
"Good point OP. I am always pretty impressed by how expensive it is to eat at McDonalds.",
"Fast food is about marketing, not the quality of the food. Companies will pay to make their product look more attractive, whether it's good or bad or better or worse. This is what fast food chains do.\n\nAdditionally, from an economic perspective - they're playing the long game. Upgrading their decor every five to ten years may be expensive - very expensive across a country - but it's less expensive than upgrading the quality of the food indefinitely. The former is essentially a fixed cost, while the latter is not. Finally, it's possible that the companies put some of the costs on the franchisees.\n\nBasically; it's a matter of money. And, I mean, really....what isn't? :\\",
"Because profitability?\n\nIt constantly amazes me how much business/finance-oriented things that seem like common sense to some can be so hard to grasp for others.\n\nRenovations = one time cost, keeps customers happy\n\nBetter quality food = higher costs = higher prices or lower profit margin",
"McDonald's is a chain of franchises. Each McDonald's restaurant is owned by a different person, some people own many McDonald's. McDonald's the corporation does not own or operate most McDonalds stores. Individual people do. McDonalds collects money from the people in exchange for letting them sell McDonald's-brand products. Individual store owners can easily upgrade their decorations, but they can't change the menu. \n\nMcDonalds the corporation requires store owners to buy kitchen equipment and raw food from McDonalds the corporation, so store owners cannot choose to buy raw food somewhere else, or start serving different food.\n\nHowever, McDonald's the corporation does not have direct control over what these store owners do. This is because McDonalds stores are owned and operated by individual people. It's not like other companies, where the CEO could make a big change and everyone in the company would follow him. This is because McDonalds the corporation does not actually own most McDonalds stores. The CEO must convince the store owners to accept changes. McDonalds has so many stores that any CEO-ordered change would hurt some stores, and they would object and refuse. \n\nThis is why you always see McDonalds commercials offering specials \"at participating stores.\" The stores don't have to accept McDonalds' new plans, some choose to agree, some disagree. \n\nOverall, McDonalds has no one person or thing in charge making decisions. Single store owners cannot change their menus, and McDonalds the corporation cannot force changes on individual stores. \n\nSources: The Economist, a business partner with a career in Competitive Intelligence in Fast Food, and good ol Wikipedia",
"This really takes me back when A & W restaurants were advertising 1/3lb burger competing against McDonald's 1/4 Pounder.\n\nThe advertising failed because people thought 1/4 was more than 1/3, so A & W didn't succeed in that dept.\n\nAlso, In and Out has hardly remodeled anything and they still are profitable compared to other fast food places.\n\n",
"Go outside the United States. McD's had the best fucking spicy chicken sandwich ever.",
"Because marketing, brand identity, etc. is what gets people in the door.",
"The point is to draw in more customers by making the place nicer, not to alienate customers by increasing their food prices.",
"I'm seeing so many comments about the scale of upgrading ingredients, arguments that they are in fact upgrading food all the time, and that fixed costs of upgrading decor is ultimately less than a variable cost of upgraded food quality.\n\nWhile yes, those can all be factors, a huge reason being overlooked is that \"upgraded food quality\" won't sell. Focus groups, surveys and tests are constantly being done to determine what the customer will buy. The reality is that McDonald's has a huge market share in a very specific (albeit massive) customer base, who have an expectation for what they are getting with their purchase. If McDonalds drastically upgrades the food quality, they risk alienating a huge group of customers. Let's say McDs wants to make a shift to higher quality food; upgraded food quality may cater to a different group of people, yet those \"upgraded food connoisseurs\" have a preconceived expectation that McDs food isn't up to their standards, so they may never try it. A little off topic, but this is why companies will create a new brand for a different customer, so as to start without preconceived expectations. \n\nMcDs IS making small changes and additions to their menu to adapt to their massive customer base. Through those focus groups and surveys, they're learning that their customer is seeking healthier alternatives, and that a comfortable place is taking precedence over having high quality food. But ultimately, the McD customer is expecting McD quality food to fulfill their wants/needs. \n\nTl;dr it's extremely important for a company to maintain customer loyalty by meeting their customers expectations. A drastic change in product quality would risk losing a huge subset of customers.\n\nAnd an ELI5 version: You love your old tattered stuffed Mr. Bear. He's brought you happiness and good feelings since you were born. Suddenly, your parents ditch it and get you a brand new Mr. Bunny! (Wat) \n\nIn reality, what you really want is to ditch the small bed and upgrade to a twin sized bed to better cuddle with good ole Mr. Bear. You keep coming back to Mr. Bear because you know he'll always bring you comfort. Fuck Mr. Bunny.",
"Just watched [a documentary](_URL_0_) on this today actually. ",
"Do you wanna go eat shitty food in a place that looks great? Or go to a shitty area for good food?\n\nA person eats their meal in the first 30 seconds, with their eyes!\n\nThat may be contradicting but I'm drunk so it's 'K",
"I think by now, everyone realizes these restaurants sell cheap and unhealthy food. I no longer think it's a secret. Choosing to eat at these places is like making any other bad health decision in their lives. ",
"Actually, McDonald's, if we're talking about them, has upgraded the quality of their food. If you think it's shitty now, well, it's been worse.",
"Okay, I'll give you the real answer:\n\n1. Upgrading the look of a restaurant is cheaper than upgrading the quality of their food. Since a fast food joint is in the volume business, a couple pennies makes a different in their profits.\n\n2. To a degree taste is subjective. If the person's surroundings are better, people think their food tastes better.\n\n3. A pleasing atmosphere will make you return. Most people would prefer eating slightly lower quality food, in a nice looking place, over high quality place in something that looks like a shtibox.\n\n\n4. McDonald's food has actually improved in quality. Believe it or not. I'm guessing you're too young to know what it was like before.",
"FF is largely disgusting. I'm glad I don't have to eat it. In the Midwest there are many more similarly priced higher quality food restaurants available at similar prices. You actually might have to wait for the food to cook though.\n\nI can put a turd in the toilet. Throwing a fancy seat on the toilet won't change the taste.",
"Perceived Affordance.\n\nIt's similar to how an unused product in an open box costs less even though it's functionally identical. Customers aren't paying for the food, they're buying an experience that includes food. You only have to renovate once to improve your Perceived Affordance but if you improve your food that cost is added to every unit sold, forever. "
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7d2x6a | since our bodies aren't 100% efficient at absorbing nutrients from food, wouldn't the nutritional information found on most food packaging be inaccurate, as not all of the calories, protein etc. are absorbed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7d2x6a/eli5_since_our_bodies_arent_100_efficient_at/ | {
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"The amounts on the packaging are still accurate. This is why packages say \"the average adult daily energy intake is 8700kJ. Yours may vary\" or something to that effect. They can't account for individuals metabolism. But they can give exact measured amounts of what's in the food. If you know your metabolism well enough you can calculate how much/what to eat in a day by trial and error. Don't eat sugar 😉\n\nEdit: changed to kJ. Forgot about you Yankee bastards 😂",
"The nutritional information on packaging is *roughly* accurate to the amount that the average person absorbs.\n\nThe process is silly, and involves explosions and poop. Food is basically just fuel, and burning fuel can tell you how much energy was in that fuel. Scientists freeze-dry food, crush it into powder, and ~~explode~~ burn† it inside a machine called a bomb calorimeter. Reading the energy released by burning the freeze-dried food gives a general idea of how much energy was in that food. \n\nAt the same time, other scientists feed that same food to people, collect their poop, and perform the same process. Freeze-dry. Crush. Burn. That gives an idea of how much energy a person does not \"absorb\" in the digestion process.\n\nSubtract one from the other. Total energy minus unused energy equals energy absorbed.\n\nOf course, this is a rough estimate, conducted for only certain foods. More complex items are just sums of the already-taken measurements for their component parts.\n\n[[Edit: Of course these are \"standard\" values and the amount absorbed by any individual may vary slightly based on their own unique digestive tract & the microbes living there.]]\n\n†: [[Edit for clarity: You are *setting up* an explosion by burning the material inside a constant-volume steel container—the bomb. Rather than allowing it to actually explode, the expansive force is contained and measured. My ELI5 language was a bit too simplified—it's my first time commenting here—so at the request of one of the replies I have edited.]]\n\n.\n.\n\nSource : _URL_0_",
"They do tests on what is actually in the food, not on what you absorb, the labels are still 'accurate'. \n\nThe labels are **misleading**. For items which are normally cooked after purchase (starches, proteins) you can absorb significantly (~50%) less of what it says on the tin, if you eat it raw.\n\nEdit:Science says 50% undigested raw proteins and starches, not ~90%",
"It's safe to assume that raw ingredients have accurate nutritional specs.\n\nThe processing (baking, frying, cooking, freezing, etc) of raw materials does have an impact on final specs.\n\nThe larger the company the more likely they have the money/budget to extract more accurate results out of the final product whereas a smaller company with limited scientific resources or skills may have a product calculated based on raw ingredient specs without taking into account the processing.\n\nTL;DR: Take nutritional specs with a grain of salt. They exist to prevent scurvy and other nutrient deficiencies.\n\nSource: I do nutritional labeling in a small sized wholesale bakery. ",
"There are so many factors involved that any such information is a very rough estimate based on averages.\n\nEspecially in the case of raw produce, there will be fairly significant variation between one piece of fruit (for example) and another. So from the start nutritional information is an estimation based on measured averages and your particular purchase may vary to some extent regardless of how much effort was put into the measurements.\n\nHow the food was stored, for how long, how you cook your food, what you've had to eat previously, the condition of your intestinal flora, how hydrated you are, the condition of your stomach lining and who knows how many other factors can all influence how many nutrients there are *left* to absorb and how many your body *can* absorb.",
"No it wouldn't be inaccurate, they have to list what's IN the food itself, they can't really tell you how much you'll absorb. That would be subjective",
"Others have spoken about macro-nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates). Let me elaborate on micro-nutrients though (trace elements, vitamins). \n\nThere is less interest in them so the analytical methods aren't quite so developed. And the interactions between different compounds play even more of a role. We have quite good methods to determine amounts of vitamins (usually by LC-MS if you want to look it up) or of minerals in \"ash\" (whatever is left when you completely burn the food), its easy. But there is this parameter called \"bioavailability\", it is the % of the compound that actually gets absorbed and people are sorely unaware of this. \n\nBioavailability is why, for example, you shouldn't drink caffeinated drinks while taking iron supplements - caffeine bonds with iron lowering its bioavailability by roughly 70%. Or why you should eat your steamed veggies with a bit of butter or olive oil so your body can absorb the fat-soluble vitamins. \n\nLet me use a case study - spinach. I cant even count the times I got into arguments over spinach - every so often I stumble upon an article (usually some magazine for women or vegans) that says that spinach is a great source of calcium. Well, yes, spinach definitely is rich in calcium (about 100 mg/kg in raw spinach, compare to some 50 mg/kg in broccoli or 120 mg/kg in whole milk). BUT the bioavailability of calcium from spinach is about 5%!! (Compare to 50% from broccoli and 35% from milk). So from a kilo of spinach, you only get 5 mg of Ca (you get that from half a glass of milk or 200g of broccoli). Actually spinach is so bad that it is common to add milk to it when cooking larger quantities (like spinach soup) to catch extra oxalates so they form salt with calcium before they enter your body (they are a common cause of kidney stones).\n\nRich in =! good source of..."
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3bqzn4 | what's the issue with open carry in states that already have concealed carry? | Why are they treated differently, and why is open carry harder to pass? Wouldn't everyone want to know who's carrying a firearm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bqzn4/eli5_whats_the_issue_with_open_carry_in_states/ | {
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"I think it's considered \"impolite\" to open carry because it's a reminder of violence in a society mostly free from it. This sort of thing seems to be common in my discussions about it.\n\nOpen carry forces people who pretend guns aren't around them to think about guns being around them. It makes people afraid, and that's confrontational. There's quite a bit of argument concerning whether or not people *should* be afraid simply because someone is armed in their vicinity, but the current state of being is that they *are* afraid. \n\nWith concealed carry people don't see the guns and can pretend that it's just a few rednecks circle jerking about their phallic representations at home who never get around to carrying and darned sure not in *my* neighborhood etc...with open carry you actually see the weapon and must confront any cognitive dissonance that results.\n\nThere are a number of political reasons behind the difficulty, but that's a different thing. It's seen as a return to \"the wild west\" and a step down the slippery slope to not regulating firearms at all. Much like firearm owners and/or the NRA will argue against almost any regulation for the same reason (they do quote the slope as a reason, that's not made up) the actors in the firearm regulation movement don't want to lose any ground in their political fight.\n\nOpen carry is already legal in a whole lot of places, especially rural ones, but even I was a bit surprised at the fellow with the Glock in a hip holster standing in line at Wal-Mart.\n\nFrom a self defense standpoint it's often considered less useful to open carry as anyone looking to get the drop on you will plan it into their approach and may draw your weapon as their initial move before you realize the situation has become dangerous (or neutralize it in some other way).\n\nI'm not well versed in the current movement but the above is a fair bit of the reasons given historically.",
"When you say \"pass\" I'm not sure what you mean.\n\nIf you mean pass socially, then from a gun owners perspective, open-carry sometimes has a negative connotation because:\n\n1. It seems like you just want attention or want to show off your piece.\n\n2. It makes some people uncomfortable. I know that's not necessarily your problem, but still; if it's just as easy to conceal carry then why not avoid the tension?\n\n3. You lose a huge advantage when you open carry. Attackers know you're armed and know where your gun is. If you look into self-defense shootings, it really comes down to who can take the first shot. Even if you're going against someone with a knife, you're at a big disadvantage if they're 'ready' for the fight before you are. Concealed carry gives you more of the element of surprise which you definitely would want if you're really worried about defense.\n\nIf you mean \"pass\" as in legally, states have vastly different laws regarding open carry. Some states don't even have it. For example in PA you can open-carry in public but not in a vehicle. The reason for that is that almost anybody is allowed to open-carry - no license needed - while concealed carry requires a background check and permit. Open-carry is meant to keep the gun out in the open so law enforcement can easily spot it. Only after you've had your checks and proven that you're likely not a threat are you allowed to 'hide' the guns on your person.\n"
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1r4lm9 | if central banks lend money with an interest rate, how can we be debt free? | There's something I don't quite understand.
If a central bank creates 1 unit of money and then lend it to a bank at 1%.
It means the bank will pay back more.
But since the central bank is the only one creating money, then the world has only got 1 more unit of money. So the bank has no way to pay back.
What I am trying to say is:
If the central bank has emitted so far 100 bazillions of units of money, how can they expect people to pay back 101 when there is only 100 to begin with?
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r4lm9/eli5_if_central_banks_lend_money_with_an_interest/ | {
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"They don't expect the debt to be paid. The power of the banking system is to keep everyone in perpetual debt. In that respect, the only way to be debt free is to remove the banking system; wiping clean any current or triggered debts.",
"Having debt(s) isnt bad, as long as we can gain more money from that debt to pay the interest. Maybe u think having debt is bad, because u have consumptive one (ex:buy iphone). If that debt is productive, not a matter.."
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2meni4 | where bitcoins come from and why everyone doesn't just mine bitcoins for profit | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2meni4/eli5_where_bitcoins_come_from_and_why_everyone/ | {
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"Basics first. \n\n* For each block (set of transactions) there is a set bitcoin reward. \n* Each block is a race to see who can solve it first. \n* Only one person/group can claim the reward. \n\nNow, knowing that, we can also add the following:\n\n* Mining is difficult\n* It takes electricity (sometimes a lot) \n* Electricity costs money (in most places) \n* How difficult each block is adapts to the size of the network. \n\nSo, what you end up seeing is a sliding scale where the average cost of electricity needed to do the calculations matches the size of the reward. Or:\n\n Average(cost of electricity) * portion of network rewarded = Average(size of reward) \n\nSo if you have a higher electricity cost in your area, you might not make a profit, since the calculation is based on an *average*. This pushes the average cost for the network down, and further drives out high-cost areas, making a sort of cycle. \n\nNow, this ignores the price of hardware, so it's not totally accurate, but it gives a good picture. "
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2wshmn | why does satellite tv require precise aiming, but siriusxm doesn't? | Satellite TV (Dish, DirecTV) require very precise aiming of the dish in order to receive TV signals. But my car moves around and gets XM radio without an issue. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wshmn/eli5_why_does_satellite_tv_require_precise_aiming/ | {
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"Sirius' signal is stronger, more redundant and carries less information than DirecTV.\n\nThe Sirius satellite uses 18kW to transmit 12.5MHz of spectrum out of a 9m dish, while DirecTV has to power 94 transponders with 20kW."
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5fxnjw | why do so many people crave something 'sweet' for breakfast? | Or is this just an American culture thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fxnjw/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_crave_something_sweet/ | {
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"When you sleep, your body continues to work, thus needing energy. We dont usually feed ourselves during sleep so the body starts to catabolize, which is destroying your muscles and your fat to gather resources to feed the cells that are constantly working, like the neurons in your nervous system. Your body \"knows\" that sweet aliments contain sugar and that sugar is a fast source of energy (that is why there are people who get all \"electrical\" after eating something sweet, specially kids). That is why.\n\nNow, the mechanism of knowing that sweet aliments contain a lot of fast energy (unlike fatty aliments, that contain what is called slow energy because it takes more time to break the fat into usable energy resource) comes from hypothalamic nuclei in your brain, which is an area that we dont exactly know how works. \n\nIt is possible that it became CULTURAL because of being INSTINCTIVE or the other way around. ",
"It's purely cultural. Other cultures, like China, don't eat sweet breakfast and think it's weird that we do.\n\nAlso, why did you put sweet in quotes? That's the right word.",
"When people don't get adequate sleep they tend to crave carbohydrates when they wake up. Could be a result of not enough rest sometimes.",
"Some people still feel groggy/sleepy for a while after waking. Sugar and caffeine are two ways of getting a quick burst of energy."
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27flm1 | how urinating works considering our kidneys and bladder aren't connected to our intestines. | I remember someone saying that our urine is just blood plasma or something like that? Always interested me once I found out about the disconnect between bladder and GI. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27flm1/eli5_how_urinating_works_considering_our_kidneys/ | {
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"The kidneys filter your blood and remove excess and waste, so liquids are absorbed by the large intestine into the blood and then filtered by the kidneys",
"That's the magic of the Kidneys!\n\nThe kidneys are a tissue that have many very small blood vessels that allow your body to get rid of metabolic waste. Every cell in your body does stuff. That stuff produces waste. That waste goes into the blood and is carried to the kidneys. In the kidneys, those small blood vessels are wound tightly together and have access to lots of water. As the blood travels through these tight clumps of blood vessels, water is exchanged with waste and voila, you have urine that travels from the kidney to the bladder.",
"The bladder doesn't need to be connected directly to the GI tract.\n\n\nLiquid (and nutrients) are absorbed from the GI tract and go into circulation. The blood will circulate throughout the body, and at some point it will be filtered by the kidneys. Some of the liquid is sent from the kidneys to the bladder (along with waste molecules like urea) and some liquid is sent back into the bloodstream.\n\n\nSo saying urine is just blood plasma is insightful but not quite correct. It's basically blood minus everything the nephrons decide to keep in the body (nephrons are basically tiny filters). Red blood cells and white blood cells are kept in the body, so in that sense urine is plasma (blood without the cells). But there are other changes that happen. The nephrons are responsible for deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. So urine is more concentrated in stuff your body doesn't want anymore (e.g. urea) and less concentrated in stuff it wants to keep (e.g. glucose, unless you are diabetic).\n\n\nThink about it this way: if urine was blood plasma, donating plasma would be as simple as peeing in a cup."
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798prf | why are screen resolutions like 1920x1080 rather than 2000x1000? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/798prf/eli5_why_are_screen_resolutions_like_1920x1080/ | {
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"Originally, the standard was 4:3 since several experiments found that the human eye’s field of view (FoV) was of the same ratio (155° H x 120° V). Hence it was continued as the standard for film, camera and later for TV as well.\n\nNow, Hollywood industry had to be something different compared to the home television. As a result, Hollywood came up with widescreen movies with more picture content which created the wow factor and was successful in drawing back crowds to theaters. Since there was no standards body back then, several aspect ratios started cropping up across different film houses, some of the popular ones being Panavision ratio of 2.20:1 and a much wider format called CinemaScope of ratio 2.39:1. This way, Hollywood managed to get back its audience for movies, while casual viewing at home like soap operas & news continued with the 4:3 ratio.\n\nGoing forward, to accommodate this wide array of aspect ratios under a singular standard, the geometric mean of the extreme ratios (1.33 & 2.39) was taken at approx 1.78, rounded to whole numbers as 16:9. This was done to efficiently cater to all the aspect ratios under the same screen by minimizing the presence black bars across the entire ratio spectrum.\n\nFollowing this 16:9 ratio, screens were manufactured. The resolution or detail (1280x720, 1920x1080) was just a measure of the horizontal and vertical pixel array size and correspondingly, picture clarity.",
"In the 90s and the 2000s it was kinda a wild west of formats. There was 4:3 on tv, 5:3 1.85:1, 11:5/2.2 and 2.35:1 on cinema every piece of content had their own ratios and if you had the wrong type of monitor it would look terrible. \n\nAfter doing they math someone figured out that a monitor with a screen of ratio 16:9 would be the best option for someone viewing content in different aspect ratios. Nothing would fit perfectly but nothing would look awful either. \n\nOnce it had some momentum it just took off and everyone started making content in 16:9 and screens had 16:9 ratio. Now it's just a standard everybody follows. Really it could have been almost anything but 16:9 is just what everybody went with and it works. \n\nWhy it's exactly 1920x1080 is mostly due the pace of technology, we want as many pixels as possible and that's how many we can fit in a screen while still being cheap to manufacture. We might see a transistion into 4096x2304 (4k) but mainstream computer hardware is still a bit lacking to display 4k content and 1920x1020 got enough pixel density for most users.",
"It all starts with film.\n\nFor a lot of the 20th century, the most common photographic film was the 135 film. It was 25mm wide (between the sprocket holes), and the sprocket holes were themselves 4 2/3mm apart. Why these dimensions exactly, I don't know. \n\nBecause this film was the most common, and thus the most widely available (and probably therefore the cheapest), movie studios used this film for their movies.\n\nThis film imposes some restrictions on the frame size. Firstly, the frame needs to be around 25mm wide (leaving a tolerance of 0.1mm either side is common giving a frame width of 24.8mm). Additionally, the frame height must be a whole number of sprocket holes high. Possibilities are 2 sprocket holes or 8.3mm high (again leaving a tolerance). This is approx 3:1 ratio and was thought too wide. Next is 3 holes high or 14mm or 16:9. This was also rejected by early movie makers as too wide. 4 holes high is 18.6mm or 4:3. This was considered just right.\n\nEverything was then made is 4:3. Cameras, projectors, cinemas and when television came along it was in 4:3 too.\n\nThen came widescreen cinema. Now you could switch the height of your frame to two or three holes, but all your cameras use four hole frames and you'd rather not throw them all out. Instead, you can simply put an extra lens in front of the camera that makes everything in the frame twice as skinny, and put a matching lens on the projector to widen everything back out. By this time, films had stereo sound which took up 2.8mm of the width, so a frame was 22mm X 18.6mm, but after this stretching process, it seemed twice as wide, ie 44mm X 18.6mm, or approximately 2.4:1 or 21.5:9. This became the aspect ratio for widescreen movies. \n\nEventually we started to think about putting movies and tv onto tapes or disks. And the problem is, tapes and disks have a fixed number of pixels per frame that can't vary depending on the content. For content with a different frame size, you shrink it down to fit and leave part of the frame blank. \n\nImagine you have a 600x400 pixel frame. Older 4:3 content would take up at most 533 X 400 pixels, meaning you were only using 83% of the available pixels. 2.4:1 would be at most 600 X 250 pixels, only 63% of pixels. Clearly this is a bad compromise because much more of the frame is wasted with widescreen.\n\nImagine now a 960x540 pixel frame. 4:3 is 720 X 540 pixels. This uses 75% of the available pixels. A 2.4:1 would be 960 X 400 which uses 74% of the available pixels. This is a good compromise. If we make DVD or VCR with this frame size, then both older 4:3 and newer 2.4:1 movies will all look about the same quality. The aspect ratio of this good compromise? 16:9\n\nNow, why the odd numbers like 1920x1080? Why not 1600x900? Well, the answer is binary. 1080 is 9 times a nice round binary number (0111 1000 as it happens). Since all this encoding and decoding is being done in binary, and round numbers are **always** easier, the various frame sizes are always going to be 16 times a round binary number by 9 times a round binary. And this generally isn't going to give round decimal numbers. But that's ok, the computer isn't using decimal so it doesn't care.\n\nAnyway, that's it. That's why 16:9 and why the specific 16:9 we choose is not round numbers. Hope it helps\n\n",
"There's a lot of history here. \n\nLet's go back to movie screens. Now, they didn't have \"pixels\" as such, but instead had analog signals/film. The aspect ration was determined by the width of the flim and the number of perforations each frame would take up (the film was fed by gears and to keep everything in line, you wanted the gear positions to be the same for each segment.) This standard was largely arbitrary, but stuck as having a standard is a good thing.\n\nThis gave 35mm (film width) by ~27mm (4 perforations) which yeilded a 4:3 format. This was a movie standard format (with minor alterations) for a couple generations and spawned the standard 4:3 TV set.\n\nWhen movies started going widescreen, and capturing a wider peripheral view, you had several competing aspect ratios. The format wars raged for decades, eventually settling on 16:9 for widescreen TV, as a compromise that would reasonably show both movie formats with letterboxes, and 4:3 broadcast with pillar boxes. There still is no universal standard for theaters. The digitization of those aspect ratios are where we get standard resolutions of 480, 720, 1080, 4k, etc\n\nNow, that brings us up to computers. There was no standard until people started watching TV and movies on computers. Now, many screens follow 16:9 formats in common resolutions. "
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mqjip | how facebook is exploiting our personal information? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mqjip/eli5_how_facebook_is_exploiting_our_personal/ | {
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"What you need to understand that you aren't the consumer in your relationship with Facebook. You're the product. \n\nSo you hit the little like buttons on various websites, you post about stuff on facebook, and facebook tracks what sites you go to. They collect all that information to determine your interests. \n\nFacebook then goes to advertisers and says that they can pinpoint ads at any demographic the advertiser might like to target. \n\nFacebook says they don't provide personal information to 3rd parties, but it's arguable. ",
"Don't take me as authoritative, but from my understanding, it gives information we submit to advertisers so they can target advertisements at us. Ever notice that advertisements on FaceBook seem oddly specific to your interests? I know I have, and their giving information to them is why.",
"When you see that your favourite band has a page on Facebook, you can \"like\" the page and then receive updates, pictures that whoever runs the page posts, and your friends can see what music you like when they look at your profile info. This works for actors, films, websites, whatever. But say your age is listed as 25, you've liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers page, you've put your current location as near New York. All of that information will be public unless you have very specific privacy settings. So what Facebook does is goes to advertisers and uses that information. They might find a site that is selling tickets for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert tour. Facebook can then say, you want to sell tickets for the New York set? People in their 20's are your target group? Here, advertise to these guys. Then you see on the little advert bar on the side, \"Buy tickets for RHCP New York show\". Advertisers can target exactly who they want to buy their product, Facebook makes billions, the Facebook users sees ads that are relevant to them. I personally don't see a problem with this but many people do, especially as Facebook don't tell you what you're doing. \n\nAnd that's how I understand it works. Anyone else correct me if I'm wrong.",
"What you need to understand that you aren't the consumer in your relationship with Facebook. You're the product. \n\nSo you hit the little like buttons on various websites, you post about stuff on facebook, and facebook tracks what sites you go to. They collect all that information to determine your interests. \n\nFacebook then goes to advertisers and says that they can pinpoint ads at any demographic the advertiser might like to target. \n\nFacebook says they don't provide personal information to 3rd parties, but it's arguable. ",
"Don't take me as authoritative, but from my understanding, it gives information we submit to advertisers so they can target advertisements at us. Ever notice that advertisements on FaceBook seem oddly specific to your interests? I know I have, and their giving information to them is why.",
"When you see that your favourite band has a page on Facebook, you can \"like\" the page and then receive updates, pictures that whoever runs the page posts, and your friends can see what music you like when they look at your profile info. This works for actors, films, websites, whatever. But say your age is listed as 25, you've liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers page, you've put your current location as near New York. All of that information will be public unless you have very specific privacy settings. So what Facebook does is goes to advertisers and uses that information. They might find a site that is selling tickets for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert tour. Facebook can then say, you want to sell tickets for the New York set? People in their 20's are your target group? Here, advertise to these guys. Then you see on the little advert bar on the side, \"Buy tickets for RHCP New York show\". Advertisers can target exactly who they want to buy their product, Facebook makes billions, the Facebook users sees ads that are relevant to them. I personally don't see a problem with this but many people do, especially as Facebook don't tell you what you're doing. \n\nAnd that's how I understand it works. Anyone else correct me if I'm wrong."
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15cwaa | why is printing technology stangant and expensive while every other computing-related tech is better and cheaper? | Was just thinking this the other day when buying $50 worth of ink that will last me 6 months or less.
EDIT: Why doesn't some enterprising company start a Kickstarter project for a printer with cheap ink? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15cwaa/eli5_why_is_printing_technology_stangant_and/ | {
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"Your looking at the industry in the wrong way. Xerox is not in the business of making copiers, they are in the business of selling toner. Same goes for Gillette, they are not in the razor business, they are in the razor blade business. \n\nThe other way around, some people are in a business they didn't think they were in. When the highway system was proposed, train freight companies did not oppose their creation. They thought they were in the train business, when they were really in the getting shit from point A to point B business. \n\nThe modern example is Facebook, where they are not in the business of selling stuff to customers, but selling customers to companies. \n\nAlso, third party companies make cheap ink, but the quality isn't always as good, and I have heard that they may be able to add something like RF to the actual ink so you can only use HP ink in an HP printer.\n\nTL;DR: Making cheap ink is easy, but they are in the business of selling ink so why would the lower the price when the market sustains a higher price",
"In addition to some very good responses here, you do have a choice in what type of printer you buy. To borrow the car analogy, you can choose to buy a gas-powered vehicle or, for a bit more, a diesel-powered vehicle. Diesel is far more efficient and you'll usually offset the initial extra cost within a year. You can buy an ink-jet printer for about 50$-100$ and then pay another 50$ each time you run out of ink. The ink also expires quickly, so if you don't use it all within about 6 months or so, the cartridge is as good as ruined. Or, you could pay a bit more and get a laser-jet printer. Toner is still expensive, but I've yet to have it expire and it lasts me through at least a dozen reams of paper. I made the switch once I realised that it would cost me more to replace both the colour and the black cartridges than it would the printer.",
"I'll leave discussion to sick with only inkjet and not laser. Ink is cheap. Technology to print is not. The printer itself is usually sold cheap and the dudes selling it don't make crazy money. Sometimes they are even giving them away. \n\nInk jet printing requires the print head has hundreds of tiny holes. Each hole has a little electrical thing that powers the hole to shoot an ink jet like a paintball gun. This is hard to do so it cost some money. Also it can dry out and jam. So the printers have a Lil cup area it hides in where it takes a Lil ink poop to clean it self occasionally. The engineers that made the printers realized that you often unplug your printer so it never gets to clean itself. Because of that the printer will have some holes clogged and it won't print well. So they sell the print head as part of the ink cartridge. It's that weird part where they make you peel off the tape. \n\nThey sell printers that truly just take ink and you can buy the print heads. The catch is they are generally more expensive and they require more maintenance than most ppl care to give a printer. \n\nTl;dr buy a laser and give up color. Its the only cheap printing soln. The toner is pricey but you get more prints per cent."
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1h407f | if all americans are required to have a social security card/number, why doesn't the ssa issue free voter ids to everyone? | It just seems to be a logical solution to voter ID laws. They already have the list.
Edit: Maybe I should have posted this in /r/CrazyIdeas | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h407f/eli5_if_all_americans_are_required_to_have_a/ | {
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"(There may be *some* bias involved below.)\n\nA Social Security number is *not* an ID number for anything other than Social Security. That it has become used for general identification is a testament to the dysfunction of our government. A proper identification system should include other features and a different set of rigor in determining who someone is; the Social Security administration should not be shouldering the responsibility of national identification.\n\nThat being said, I simply don't understand why there is not an established national identification method already. When you start a club before you talk about dues, by-laws, regular meetings, clubhouses, etc... the first thing you figure out is who is in the club! A republic based upon the votes of representatives should darn well know who they are representing, and a country should have a good idea who its citizens are! It baffles me why this hasn't already happened.\n\nThe reason it hasn't happened is that a bunch of people get up in arms in protest when the barest hint of the idea surfaces. As far as I can tell this has two basic roots: First, it is commonly expected that if the government knows something about you it will, eventually, find some way to use that knowledge to fuck with you. Much like pleading the 5th many people prefer to keep anything they possibly can out of the hands of the government for fear that it will be used against them. I can't say that these people are entirely in the wrong.\n\nThe second reason is religion. Many Christians will point to the drug-addled fever dream of the book of Revelations 13:17 where it talks about a \"dragon\" putting a mark on everyone: \"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.\"\n\nConceptually presenting ID would be required to make credit purchases to combat fraud, and we aren't really *that* far away from many stores going to a credit-only sales model. One of the things preventing this is the adherence of large swaths of our population to some of the least coherent myths of an early Iron Age civilization.\n\nWith that in mind it is easier for me to understand why national ID cards haven't taken off as an idea, but slightly harder to understand why our civilization hasn't choked to death on its own saliva.",
"Everybody doesn't register to vote, so you can have a SS# but not be registered to vote. The government doesn't want to automatically issue voting cards b/c it is viewed as a privilege and the people that want to vote should make an effort to do so. Now whether that is right or wrong is a whole different discussion.",
"Social Security numbers are required not just for Americans citizens, but also for permanent residents and other aliens who pay into SS, but cannot vote. And the SSA does not want to, and perhaps is even unable to, figure out who's a citizen and who's not."
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74lhuc | how do private industries sustain gas during shortages? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74lhuc/eli5how_do_private_industries_sustain_gas_during/ | {
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"If it is mission critical they stockpile it in times of abundance. More often they have guaranteed delivery contracts with firms that specialize in this that will do whatever it takes to deliver it (including flying it in on a chopper). ",
"In the wealthy countries, shortages are actually quite rare, and when they do happen, many businesses run out soon and have to stop operations.\n\nSome have a private emergency supply on-site, enough to run for 8 to 72 hours."
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bjeg44 | why dies your throat hurt so badly after no food/ just tea for meal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bjeg44/eli5_why_dies_your_throat_hurt_so_badly_after_no/ | {
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"Your body starts to react when you haven’t had the necessary amount of nutrients or other important necessities. How long has your throat been hurting for? How long has it been since you’ve eaten that makes your throat sore. \n\nBasically your body is telling you that you need to maintain a healthy eating routine. Also try to drink more water this will help if your throat feels dry too."
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1bmje1 | why does jenny mccarthy have any sort of relevance to vaccination? | EDIT: dumb it down for me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bmje1/eli5_why_does_jenny_mccarthy_have_any_sort_of/ | {
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"Because she's a celebrity, and she speaks to people's fears. Not because she's right (she isn't) or because she's an expert (far from it) but because parents are afraid, and frustrated, and they want someone to blame, and she offers someone up.",
"Her son has autism and she's dumb and angry enough to believe something that ridiculous without putting forth any research first.",
"People blindly follow celebrities on various advice. Just look at Oprah, she puts a book in her book club and suddenly it's the hottest thing on the market!",
"She's a celebrity (sort of) and her kid has autism. A lot of people believe that vaccines cause autism (not true) and she's essentially a spokesperson for this movement. ",
"she has no relevance. the better question is why her opinion on the subject was ever publicized. the answer to that is because some tabloids thought it would help sell magazines. "
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2unk9r | why is asia full of 'asian' looking people, and then randomly, russians (white people). | I've always been confused that theres so many ethnicities in Asia from Indian, Nepal, Ugher, Mongol, Thai, Japanese, Siberian, Han, so many thousands, all are ether kind of brown/olive, almond/asian eyes, black hair....asian looking.
.
then suddenly, Russians, tall, blonde, pale, round eyes.
.
what part of human migration caused that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2unk9r/eli5_why_is_asia_full_of_asian_looking_people_and/ | {
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"Almost everybody in Russia lives in the far West in Eastern Europe, and they look slavic like all the other slavs in the area.\n\nPlenty of people within the border of Russia do look pretty Asian is you're out on the Asian-bordering parts of Russia.",
"Simple. Russians (who are for the most part ethnic europeans) conquered and colonised a large part of Asia. \n\nMany of the natives of Siberia are more \"Asian looking\" than an ethnic Russian.\n\nSo it's essentially the same reason the Americas are full of European looking people.",
"It's called \"colonization\". Czarist Russia expanded into Asia and took it over, much like the U.S. did when it expanded westward."
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536087 | why do gasoline engines use spark plugs? | This is not a thread about the differences between diesel and gasoline, this is specifically about why gas engines even need spark plugs. Pre-mixed gasoline and air mixtures auto combust if the compression ratio is too high or spark plug timing is off in a gas engine, resulting in a "knocking" noise. If gasoline/air mixture CAN auto combust when subject to high compression in an engine, why do we even use spark plugs to ignite the mixture? Wouldn't it be simpler to just build gasoline engines more sturdy to withstand the knock from the uneven combustion and direct inject the gasoline just like a diesel does? The higher compression would result in higher MPG and power, so why do we even use low compression and spark plugs in gas engines?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/536087/eli5_why_do_gasoline_engines_use_spark_plugs/ | {
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"The constant temperature needed to self combust from pressure is to high. It would cause to much heat within the engine and also increases the pollution from the combustion. ",
"Using a spark plug allows the ignition to occur at the precise moment desired by the auto manufacturer. You want the ignition to occur at the ideal moment so that the full force of the combustion turns the shaft in the correct direction. A gasoline engine that knocks has the potential to put extra stress on the shaft, losing efficiency and possibly damaging the components.\n\nThe reason to not make engines \"more sturdy\" so as to be able to handle knock is twofold: sturdy engines are heavier and more expensive. The heavier weight is less of a concern with a diesel engine, since the engine's weight will still be small relative to the weight of the load that a large truck would be expected to pull. Added weight translates to less efficiency and a need to make all the other components in the car sturdy enough to support the engine, again affecting price."
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5gkap0 | how are "e-signatures " verified if under suspicion of being done by an unauthorized person? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gkap0/eli5_how_are_esignatures_verified_if_under/ | {
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"\"I didn't actually sign this\" seldom comes up in court when dealing with contract disputes. Unlike you see in the movies, a contract isn't some magical form that can take everything you own by the act of signing a piece of paper. In real life, the signature is just a formality, the important part of accepting a contract is when you start following through with it - namely, when you give or receive something of value according to the terms of the contract."
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9l3mdh | if supernatural phenomena were real, how would science demonstrate their existence? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9l3mdh/eli5_if_supernatural_phenomena_were_real_how/ | {
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"It would be very easy, and we would no longer call them \"supernatural\" because it would mean they were in fact a newly proven part of \"nature.\"\n\nWe would set up experiments in which people are asked to do things that \"should be impossible.\" For example, reliably tell what someone in another room is looking at; or move things without exerting any force on them; or reliably predict the outcome of random events.",
"If you're thinking of how science might establish the existence of a specific supernatural phenomenon, well, it depends which one's on your mind. \n\nFor something like bigfoot, it'd be the same as any other animal: photographs, analysis of living or dead specimens, DNA, etc.\n\nFor something like ESP, you'd need to design an experiment. THere have been many! They come back negative or unrepeatable.",
"So the first step is to find compelling evidence - in other words, this is an exercise in statistical significance. You site ESP, so we'll roll with that.\n\nLet's say the telepath claims they could read conscious thought. So the first thing to do is let them perform their miracle and see if there's something compelling there to test, or if they're just a loon.\n\nWith that out of they way, they seem legit. The next thing we do is get a bunch of participants, tell them to think of specific things, and see if a random person can read their thoughts vs the telepath. This would also be double blind and controlled, so the participants can't see who is trying to read their minds, and the scientists don't know what the participants are thinking of.\n\nThere's more details there to be had, but the goal is to remove all forms of bias that can skew the results, rendering them invalid. Now, you repeat this experiment several times, and show that the normal person is no better than guessing. You can actually do some math on the results and show that the telepath is remarkably higher than random chance - that their results are higher than just being blind lucky. Because there's a chance they can guess correctly, but if there's consistency, that's a tell.\n\nOk, so we think something is going on. Fine, the next things to do would be to take a look at his body while he performs the miracle. We have an established baseline of what just about all the human body does and how it functions. We compare his whole body to that baseline and see if anything is acting funny. It's reasonable to hypothesize this would be the case, because why would he be a telepath and I'm not if our bodies both function exactly the same? And we have to look at the whole body, because the ancient Egyptians thought the mind resided in the heart, and his ability could be coming from his left testicle for all we know. Naturally, you start somewhere, probably the brain, because that's where conscious thought happens, so it's a likely place to start, but even if we find weird deviations there, we'd want to at least look for other participating parts of the body.\n\nRegardless of whether or not we find something, we're talking about something physical. There has to be a tangible, physical exchange of information through the fabric of reality. This can get into field theory, this can get into multiple physical spacial dimensions...\n\nBut we have a very good understanding of physics right now - we know the energy levels it takes to interact with distant fields, the kind you only find in the core of stars or in particle accelerators. If this were our telepath, he'd be explosively energetic, literally. Same thing with alternate physical dimensions. This is why these cases aren't strong.\n\nSo we need to find the mechanism for which information is transferred. We'll look for light, heat, electrons, quantum entanglement, magnetic fields, and use whatever we can put between the telepath and the target and try to measure. We'll try to shield the person to see if materials matter, or if distance is significant. If it's real, there has to be something there.\n\nAnd the thing is, we may see side effects, but not the mechanism itself. By way of analogy, if something really weird is going on, it might make a wake of light or static or something. After all, that's how we know so much about how our reality works - it's not that anyone has \"seen\" the Higgs field, but by nature of the scatter and decay products from high energy collisions, those particular telling things could have only happened if that field is really, physically there. Scientists don't just pull this stuff out of their asses, this is work built on the foundation of *centuries* of research and observation.\n\nSo that's basically it - find the direct or side effects of this information exchange. Oh, and look at the target, too, and see how their brains are being affected while being scanned by the telepath. And from these observations, we can begin to build a hypothesis. Then you build on that, try to devise models that if I do this, then the outcome should be that. Testing, testing, testing. Measure. Eliminate everything you can.\n\nScience is conservative - we're not going to turn over the aforementioned centuries of work on a dime just because something new and weird is happening. It may very well be that we need to rethink how parts of reality work, but you have to eliminate the current understanding as a possibility first. Rewriting the science books is literally and logically the last resort. And rewriting the books isn't itself an easy task, either. You may know that something is aloof, but you can't just invent some mathematical model and conclude it's correct just because it works. String Theory, for example, is a fantastic, elegant model that solves a lot of problems in physics - but that doesn't mean it's real. If it came to this, it's not an easy, but not an insurmountable task."
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2yifd4 | why are some types of discrimination, like the ou sae video, considered unacceptable, but other examples, like the texas fiji border patrol themed party are considered okay? | _URL_2_
As a bonus: Baylor's honor code against homosexuality - _URL_0_
UPDATE: _URL_1_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yifd4/eli5_why_are_some_types_of_discrimination_like/ | {
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"The Fiji are not considered OK, just not bad enough to sanction.",
"Also its about publicity...the OU SAE video quickly spread across the internet and news networks. 9.9/10 people would have no idea that Baylor's honor code says stuff like that. (I definitely didn't)"
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"http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/03/10/panel-of-ut-latino-community-discuss-uts-decision-to-not-take-punitive-action-against",
"http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/03/02/fiji-border-patrol-party-did-not-violate-university-rules-administrators-sa... | [
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28o4tz | whatever happened to malaysian airlines flight mh370? | I haven't heard any news about the missing plane in months. Did the search teams find anything linking to it yet? I'm surprised at how the topic has suddenly disappeared from the news. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28o4tz/eli5whatever_happened_to_malaysian_airlines/ | {
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"It disappeared because they could only stretch nothing for so long. ",
"There hasn't been any new information to report. If there were, we'd have known about it, but they can't just stay on the news 24 hours a day saying \"Well... nothing new yet.\"\n\nCNN tried for a while, granted.",
"It will take some time to find it. It may not be found for 100 years, it may be found tomorrow. If I were betting, I'd say 18 months.\n\nThere's also /r/mh370. It's full of every nutty idea that could possibly pop up, sort of like the /r/bostonbomber subreddit but less harmful.",
"It crashed into the ocean and sank. It's a needle in a haystack."
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27kzl7 | why does almost the entire brazil world cup team go by just one name? seems pretty precocious, like they all attended the ohio state university. | Seriously, you can see the roster here: _URL_0_ . Is this just because Pele was the deal, and they are all in the "be like Mike" category? Or is this some deeper tradition I'm not aware of?
edit: the word I failed to grasp when submitting was "pretentious" not "precocious" :P | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27kzl7/eli5_why_does_almost_the_entire_brazil_world_cup/ | {
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"I'm no expert but in general it is either because their real names are extremely long and inconvenient for everyone, or they're nicknames. \n\nTake Neymar for example, Neymar da Silva Santos Junior is a bit of a strain on the tongue, and fitting it on a jersey would be difficult as well. \n\nThe history of this practice is also deep. It's been happening since before pele was around and I imagine it is some kind of combination of both tradition and practicality. ",
"Many Brazilians go by single name nicknames. It's cultural, possibly made more common by the relatively low literacy rate.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Pelé's legal name: Edson Arantes do Nascimento\n\nKaká's legal name: Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite\n\nNeymar's legal name: Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior \n\nZico's legal name: Arthur Antunes Coimbra\n\nSócrates legal name: Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira\n\nEusébio's legal name: Eusébio da Silva Ferreira\n\nRonaldo's legal name: Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro\n\nAs you can see, Brazilian and Portuguese names can be rather long. Having a short nickname makes things easier for everyone. "
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15jvwl | why do basketball players keep their arms extended after shooting a shot? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15jvwl/eli5_why_do_basketball_players_keep_their_arms/ | {
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"As with a lot of similar things, follow-through is important; you don't want to start pulling back until you've completed the throw. But it would be hard for them to start pulling back the instant they've completed the throw, so they deliberately wait until a bit after."
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2t28zo | how does karma, reincarnation and all that work in hinduism? | Also do you go to heaven how does the caste system work? I know nothing about Hinduism, but am ready to learn. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t28zo/eli5_how_does_karma_reincarnation_and_all_that/ | {
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"An incarnation is like a character that the soul plays in a play or a game. Each character has a \"right way of doing things\" (*Dharma*).\n\nIn the case of humans, each caste has its own right way of doing things. Behaving according to this way improves your *karma*, and behaving against it degrades it (*Karma* roughly means \"deed\", and in Hinduism you become what you do).\n\nWhen a character dies, the actor (*Atman*; soul/self) goes on to play another character (reincarnation). Poor karma leads to a less favourable character (a lower caste, an animal, plant, demon, etc.) and good karma leads to a more favourable character (a person, a being in heaven, or a god). In this new role, you get another chance to improve your karma, and the game (*Samsara*) goes on. Note that even if you end up in heaven, or as a god, you are still playing the game and will eventually die and be reborn according to your karma.\n\nIf you wish to escape the game (attain *Moksha*), you need to devote your life to practicing one of many meditative techniques (there is no agreement as to which ones are correct or optimal). This practice leads you to the realization that the actor is not a separate entity, but part of a fundamental, unchanging reality (*Brahman*). According to certain traditions, it's becoming unified with God."
]
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[]
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5f6190 | why do countries that generate a lot of energy through nuclear power plants, such as switzerland, want to remove nuclear power if they have seen no negative consequences from it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f6190/eli5_why_do_countries_that_generate_a_lot_of/ | {
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"Ignorance and politics. I work in the nuke industry and I'm more afraid of chemical plants.",
"Nuclear energy gets a bad rap due to incidents like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima. To many people, what they know about nuclear energy is mostly dominated by the (rare) disasters. It make nuclear power come across as dangerous to your average voter so they are likely to vote for parties that make it a point to close nuclear power plants.\n\nMind, there are genuine dangers and problems to be resolved like nuclear waste, but the actual statistical danger of this and the way people perceive this danger is very different.",
"TL;DR: Fear, plus solar seems to get more and more efficient.\n\nIf you are interested in various pro/contra i'd suggest you take a look at this playlist. Sintetic, animated and easy to follow ELI5 level.\n[Kurzgesagt](_URL_0_)",
"Largely because the hazardous waste *is* a large negative consequence. If you can generate enough energy without also generating a load of toxic waste that needs hiding for 50,000 years, that's clearly a better option. ",
"Since people are defending nuclear power indirectly by saying the fears are overblown ([and they're right](_URL_0_)), I will point out a few things.\n\nFor one, all these incidents were accidents. While few in number, and fail safes are getting bigger, one can't discount that accidents happen. When it comes to nuclear energy, it really only has to happen once. Once it does, it's done. You can't take back Chernobyl - not within our lifetime, nor the next. Life is returning but on a molecular level it's different.\n\nIt's also just as feasible to use renewable energy. Nuclear energy is amazing but other technologies have caught up and are more consumer-friendly. Not everyone's going to have a nuclear reactor in their backyard but we can all install some form of wind and solar technology that is itself renewable.\n\nSwitzerland has enough wind and sun (even Germany has enough sun, put it that way) that they can afford to switch over, and since nuclear has a bad rap, it's probably political suicide for anyone to push through nuclear energy.",
"Nuclear plants are VERY expensive to produce:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhat it boils down to is that nuclear plants are usually simply not *worth* the time and effort to build them. Nuclear waste is a small concern, sure, but nothing compared to the aforementioned. ",
"Waste disposal is a huge problem. Not only do we need to worry about the plants themselves, but also incidents at storage facilities. WIPP in New Mexico just had an incident that is still in environmental review and nuke waste has been piling up at the local plants.",
"Because people are unaware of developing fields in nuclear engineering that allow for alternatives that are actually safer than renewables, Like the l.f.t.r or other 4th gen reactors. (One hydro electric dam let go in china and killed 10,000 ppl chernobyl killed like 58 according to world health organization)",
"If there is such a big concern over nuclear fission with uranium. Why not switch to thorium?",
"All the plants in Switzerland are very old, and have design flaws. Newer reactors would be safer but are very expensive (more than 10 billion USD each). So Switzerland wants to close down all the extremely old reactors before a problem starts.\n\nThis is fine. Being pro nuclear is not the same as being pro worn out nuclear.",
"Switzerland **did** see negative consequences from the Chernobyl disaster [- approximately 3% of the country's landmass was contaminated with radioactive matter](_URL_0_). The effects of this may not have been that severe, but many Swiss people will remember it happening and not knowing how much fallout would hit Switzerland or how bad the effects would be, which was a pretty scary prospect. \n \nThen consider that nuclear power plants are big, expensive and long-term investments, while renewable energy gets cheaper and better every year. Nuclear power might be cheaper for the next ten years, but you're stuck with the plant for the next thirty.",
"People seem to forget that even without any meltdowns, nuclear energy is not clean. It produces highly toxic waste that remains so for literally thousands of years. \n\nThink about how long that is. A few thousand years ago, our species were still only nomadic tribes that hadn't yet invented agriculture. And we're supposed to manage nuclear waste for that long without contaminating our waterways?\n\nNuclear energy producers go on and on about their zero air emissions. Which is true. But under the surface lies a serious environmental hazard.",
"\"...if they have seen no negative consequences from it?\"\n\nThere are always negative consequences, in the form of waste handling. Also, nuclear power facility doesn't last forever; as they are decommissioned, a choice has to be made to build a new nuclear plant in its place or something else. Right now, proposing to build a nuclear power plant is political suicide.",
"Humans are intrinsically, extraordinarily bad at judging risk.\n\nThings we do every day that are incredibly dangerous (ex: driving) do not provoke a fear response in us, due to habituation. Meanwhile, extraordinarily rare but spectacular and scary events (ex: terrorist attack, plane crash, etc.) preoccupy our brain with fear because of how random, novel, and powerless we feel about them.\n\nThis causes our brain circuitry to mess up, and get legitimately scared about say, being in a crash while on a plane, even though we felt safe and comfortable on the car ride there, which was *literally* a million times more likely to kill us.\n\nNuclear suffers from this. A lot. When you look at nuclear's track record in terms of environmental damage, damage to human health, deaths, etc. it is orders of magnitude safer than coal, gas, or oil. Thousands of times. (Fun fact: there is an environmentally significant oil pipeline rupture approximately every 14 days in the US. But like driving, we're habituated to it and do not factor in that risk anymore.)\n\nBut nuclear, because it is rare, explosive, involves radiation, and tends to be pretty disruptive when something *does* go wrong (ex: Chernobyl, Fukushima), our brains place these incidents far higher in our minds in terms of perceived danger and risk. We obsess on them more and want to take dramatic action to reduce the chances, even at extraordinary cost. And even when it doesn't make any actual logical sense. (Ex: you get significantly more daily radiation exposure living near a coal plant than a nuclear one.)",
"Same reason people who benefit from the best health humanity has ever had in its entire history want to replace vaccines with reiki.",
"The nuclear argument has always been a ridiculous example of allowing emotional opinion to persevere in ignorance of the pragmatic facts. For unit of power produced, nuclear is one of the safest forms of industrial energy production mankind has made. Sure, you can point to an exclusion zone, or a nuclear waste storage plant, and say '*Gosh, how dangerous is that*' - it's a lot more difficult to point up into the sky and show people greenhouse gasses or particulates accumulating from fossil fuel use. \n\nEvery 10 billion kilowatt hours of electricity produced from fossil fuels causes around 3 deaths. Hydroelectric power causes an impressive 1 death per 10 billion kWh. How about nuclear energy? - **0.2** deaths per 10 billion kilowatt hours. Not 20 - 0.2. \n\nAgain, it's easy to point at the lack of civilisation in Chernobyl - just as its easy to forget about the air pollution-related diseases that people are currently in hospital for in every corner of the globe: chest infections, COPD, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer. WHO calculates **7 million people** die prematurely every year because of air pollution. \n\nAnd you may be saying to yourself '*Hang on, I don't want fossil fuel use OR nuclear plants when we can just use renewables for all power generation*' But this is where we have to venture away from the fairytale land of idealism and back to the world of pragmatic facts - alternative energy today is responsible for the smallest imaginable fraction of human energy production. **Just because you may *want* the world to be powered by windmills and sunshine tomorrow, doesn't make it technologically, industrially, or financially possible.** Even when you see articles in the news like *'Today Germany provided 80% of its power by renewable energy for half an hour*', what you don't hear about is the following day when the the wind dies down and it clouds over, and fossil fuels and nuclear are ramped up to compensate. \n\nIf you think I'm exaggerating [have a look at trends of human energy production in the last hundred years up to 2010](_URL_0_). If you think humanity has either the technological capabilities or political will to make that tiny slither of renewables overtake oil, coal and gas in the next two or three decades - then you deserve an Optimist of the Year award. \n\nFinally, here's where the real danger of the anti-nuclear rally cry comes in: until human civilisation does get to a point where our energy needs can be met from renewable resources, we will need fossil fuels or nuclear power to help meet the shortfall from renewable resources. If we close all the nuclear power stations just to make ourselves feel like proud little ecowarriors, then even more fossil fuels will have to be burnt to meet that renewable shortfall, further increasing air pollution. And as we saw earlier - this will lead to more deaths than nuclear. \n\n**TL;DR** If you campaign to end nuclear power just for the sake of it, you're helping to kill infinitely more people than nuclear plants ever have; albeit far less dramatically.",
"Now what about nuclear waste? Isn't that a big issue? The only thing I know about it is from an episode of Bill Nye where he says storing the waste is expensive and we're running out of room, not to mention that it takes millions of years for it to decompose.",
"It's not only about risks. It's about contaminated waste and where to store it. Germany, for example, has yet to find a place to store the tons of nuclear waste that need to be stored safely for millions of years. The search and temporary storage have costed the tax payer billions and will continue to cost billions as there's no end in sight. That's why the cheap nuclear waste is a illusion,maybe not in every country, but surely in Germany and many other European countries who have not found a way to store waste safely. It's cheap and clean on paper until you have to deal with the waste. Than it becomes insanely dirty (some temporary places have leaked in Germany) and unjustifiably expensive.",
"we voted against closing them so we get that going for us, sure new ones would be nice but its just to damn expansive and buying coal would also just be expansive and harm nature. Im glad Switzerland is the way it is and does not vote for retarded stuff, looking at you GB and US"
]
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4plnrk | how much faster will the earth need to travel in outer space so we will actually "feel" it? what will we feel if the earth starts to travel 10x times faster in outer space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4plnrk/eli5_how_much_faster_will_the_earth_need_to/ | {
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"We wouldn't feel it. We feel changes in motion, like speeding up and slowing down. But if you're cruising along at a steady speed, like in a car or a plane, you feel like you aren't moving at all. (The only reason why you \"feel it\" in those vehicles is because of vibrations on the road or the vibrations of air buffeting the plane.)\n\nIn fact, the idea of relativity goes so far to prove that whether or not something is even moving at all depends on where you stand. In a train, the seats don't appear to be moving. But from the outside, the seats are moving very fast. There is no objective, better way to judge speed. Everything is relative. \n\nOf course, if the earth were moving faster it couldn't stay in its current orbit and we'd certainly notice the difference in sunlight! "
]
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6g01e9 | what limits the transfer speed of data cables such as usb, hdmi, ethernet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g01e9/eli5_what_limits_the_transfer_speed_of_data/ | {
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"Cables have electrical properties - some of which are well-known (resistance), some of which are not (capacitance, inductance). Capacitance is a particular problem because it limits the frequencies that can be transferred over a cable, thus limiting the data transfer speeds. \n\nAn ELI5 explanation of capacitance goes something like this: it's the ability of a material to store charge. Electrons go in to and out of the material in response to the voltage on the line. When the voltage is alternating (which it has to be to transfer data), it means part of the voltage is delayed for a short time and comes back on to the line at the \"wrong\" time. The effect is to limit the frequency response. \n\nIf you know how a \"tone\" or \"filter\" control on a HiFi or a guitar works, it's the same thing: when you turn it down, you're sending more voltage to a capacitor, and the high frequencies are reduced. With a tone control you want that effect, but in high speed data transmission, you don't.",
"USB 3.1 Gen 2 runs at up to 10 Gbps.\n\nAssuming you mean ethernet over the common twisted pair cables that most people mean when they say \"ethernet\" (even though that has nothing to do with what ethernet actually is), the fastest current standard is 40 Gbps (although 100 Gbps are already available in non \"BASE-T\" links)\n\nHDMI 2.1 is able to pass up to 48 Gbps.\n\nIt should be noted that all of these speeds are theoretical maximum speeds in ideal conditions. At best, you'll get maybe 80% of that speed in the real world.",
"They have speed limits imposed by their respective standard. The cables themselves are capable of higher data rates at short distances, but the transceivers are not commercially available. The properties of cables which limit performance are their capacitance, inductance, resistance, impedance and their connectors. "
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2i7ktl | chemically, what is different between the orgasms we give ourselves and those with one or more partners? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i7ktl/eli5_chemically_what_is_different_between_the/ | {
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"The lack of comments on this post makes me want to know the answer to the question. O-o",
"A lot of the brain is far from understood, so please don't be surprised if this won't get answered. ",
"I believe there is more oxytocin release with a partner. No sources",
"I read something a long time ago that I am sure hasn't been confirmed so take this with a grain of salt. But it said that the brain realizes the actual act of mating and tries to release more sperm once at orgasm in order to increase the odds of impregnation. Thus giving you a bigger and longer orgasm. \n \nBut playing devils advocate, I just can't believe it. Because I have never once used my brain while operating my penis.",
"I would guess it falls along the same lines of the reasoning that you are unable to tickle yourself... even though you can take care of business alone, it's much more intense with help. Just a guess. ",
"I certainly think it's possible. In my own personal experience as a female, a clitoral orgasm I get from masturbating is much shorter and less intense than the orgasm I experience with a partner from sex. I think they have proven that a chemical is released in the female brain during orgasm that attaches her to her mate.",
"This is not solid science, but one of the prevailing thoughts: There is oxytocin release with orgasm. With a partner, this has an emotional outlet, and that's where oxytocin is said to be the \"bonding hormone\" and where you get a pronounced post-sex afterglow. The same release when solo does not have a similar bonding outlet, and any afterglow quickly dissipates. Pheremones amplify this effect. All this is to say that the cuddle time after sex with partners is just as important as the sex and the orgasm.",
"What!? Who taught you that word? Go to your room! When you're older we can talk about it.",
"Your brain releases neurotransmitters that are important in pair bonding, oxytocin and vasopressin, when you orgasm (men and women). These NTs are also released during other intimate acts such as breast feeding and even hugging! You don't get those NTs during self stimulation, which is why people rarely feel an emotional connection with a vibrator.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)"
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5h0ki8 | the drug war in the philippines. | What is happening and why is the body count so high? Is this because of the police or citizens? What role does the new president play? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h0ki8/eli5the_drug_war_in_the_philippines/ | {
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"A new dictator is in charge, funded by the [Marcos](_URL_0_) family, who is using the military and the police to take over all the criminal enterprises in the country, under the pretense of 'cleaning it up'. Due process and the rule of law no longer exist, and only his cronies are safe. While many drug pushers are being killed, so are thousands of innocents. There are no trials. There is no burden of proof. \n\nEven though he is less than 1 year in, his record of brutality exceeds that of [Pinochet](_URL_1_). \n\nIn the next five years he will abolish elections and declare himself dictator for life. \n\nEdits to add hyperlinks for reference"
]
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet"
]
] | |
27lzn5 | why do some tv show intros get truncated more and more as the show goes on? | I'm sorry I can't think of a more relevant subreddit to ask this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27lzn5/eli5_why_do_some_tv_show_intros_get_truncated/ | {
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"Commercials take a large amount of time and some drama series may also need to take some time to do a \"previously on {series name}...\", so they shorten the intro so they can tell more of the story. \n\nA thirty minute show really is only like 22 minutes or less once you factor in commercials. If they can gain even 40 seconds, it's like you get 2-3% more show.",
"They need the \"Previously on...\" as Americans cant remember as far back as a week... *pew pew*"
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303wmw | {nsfw} what is post masturbatory guilt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/303wmw/eli5nsfw_what_is_post_masturbatory_guilt/ | {
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"Imagine if you will you find yourself not getting off to \"normal\" stuff so you think of your mom having her way with your little brother in and old people's home for their viewing pleasure. Then after you pump that dirty Satan wad out of your sex organ you look back on what you came too and think I'm Fucked in the head.\nThat is post masturbatory guilt.",
"Actually, it's Oxytocin hormones being depleted within your body. Your body has a constant reserve that is stored in the posterior pituitary gland (by your hypothalamus) in your brain. Post masturbation (assuming you have achieved orgasm) you feel a sense of disinterest and a lack of motivation; the oxytocin neurohormones your body develops, as well as partly the prolactin neurohormone, are exhausted. You hence associate this to the boredom, disinterest and/or guilt. \n\nOxytocin and Prolactin take an **average** of 15 minutes to be produced again. \n\nSource:\n > _URL_0_\n > _URL_1_\n\nHope this answers your question! \nEDIT:Inserted \"(assuming you have achieved orgasm)\"."
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"http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/275795.php"
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1ukepp | what is an ontology? | what is an ontology and why would somebody use one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ukepp/eli5_what_is_an_ontology/ | {
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"If you're talking [about this](_URL_0_ :\n\nOntology is a database, that represents some knowledge domain. It contains object types, objects, relations, etc.\n\nFor example, ontology of figures might be like this:\n\n* Triangle is figure with 3 sides.\n\n* Polygon is figure with at least 2 sides.\n\nUsing software to process ontology, we can derive that Triangle is actually a polygon.\n\nWhy to use one? It's a neat tool that suitable for some tasks, like trying to get disease from set of symptoms. \n\nOntologies were planned to became the next Web (semantic web), when each site will publish info about itself in ontology-like style, so search engines will not search by text (because searching by text is simply not working now), but use this data to make more intelligent decisions. All Web is moving slowly towards this, but maybe it will be in some different form, not as planned early.\n\n"
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2vvck6 | what exactly is white chocolate, why is white chocolate white? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vvck6/eli5_what_exactly_is_white_chocolate_why_is_white/ | {
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"NPR had a short radio piece about white chocolate this morning on Weekend Edition. Chocolate uses both cocoa butter and cocoa solids to make traditional brown chocolate. White chocolate uses the cocoa butter, but replaces the cocoa solids with milk solids.",
"The process of making chocolate involves separating the cocoa beans into liquids and solids are the cocoa powder (which is brown) and the liquids are cocoa butter (which is a yellowish white). \n\nChocolate is then made by mixing the cocoa powder and butter together with milk, while white chocolate is made using only the butter and milk. ",
"To make chocolate, the fermented cocoa beans are shelled. Once shelled they are called nibs. The nibs are roasted into what they call chocolate liquor (non-alcoholic, of course). This liquor will give chocolate its typical brown color. \n\nIf you press the liquor you get cocoa powder and cocoa butter. \n\nCocoa butter is then used with liquor to make chocolate. Dark and milk chocolates have very specific liquor amounts needed. \n\nCocoa butter, milk, and sugar makes white chocolate. You leave out the liquor and cocoa powders which give other chocolates the brown color. \n\nAnd incidentally, if you see something that is sold as \"chocolate-flavored\" or \"chocolatey\", that is any fat (such as soybean oil, palm oil) with cocoa powder. It can't be sold as chocolate unless the main fat is cocoa butter.",
"In a nutshell, it's not chocolate anymore. It's just called that.",
"White chocolate is made from the cocoa butter but does not use the cocoa solids or cocoa liquor. It is therefore not actually chocolate legally and cannot technically be sold as chocolate in the US. "
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94333l | why are student loan refinance rates often lower than mortgage rates even the principals can be the same? | Especially considering mortgages have the home as collateral? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94333l/eli5_why_are_student_loan_refinance_rates_often/ | {
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"The main reason is that they have short payback schedules, so shorter risk/inflation horizon. Also, they aren't dischargeable by bankruptcy.",
"You cannot default on a student loan, student loans are for perpetuity until the principal is recovered.\n\nThey are not often lower, however."
]
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352i5v | why does my dog wag so much whenever i touch him or enter a room or talk to him, is he really that happy every time to warrant a tail wag | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/352i5v/eli5_why_does_my_dog_wag_so_much_whenever_i_touch/ | {
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"They are happy to be in your presence, and yes they get that happy when they see their owner, or even have your attention.\n\n",
"Behavioral ecologist here!\n\nDogs have been bred for thousands of years to love us and react positively when we walk into the room. We are their alpha dog, their protector and their friend. Your dog really is just that happy to see you!"
]
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7s0l7o | why does fruit that’s delicious raw need tons of sugar to be palatable once it’s cooked? | As in jams and jellies. What happens to all the sugar you’re tasting when you eat it raw? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7s0l7o/eli5_why_does_fruit_thats_delicious_raw_need_tons/ | {
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"text": [
"The sugar isn't required to make it palatable. It's required to give it a nice texture as a jam/jelly.\n\nMost baked or stewed fruits still taste nice without sugar. The only exceptions I can think of are ones that already taste bitter uncooked, such as Spanish bitter marmalade oranges.",
"Sugar is not added just to make your jam sweet. \n\nFruits contain a lot of water. Sugar is added for a preservation and protection against microbes. It draws the water out of the fruit and binds the water molecules which prevents the growth of microorganisms. \n\n"
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a2ykff | is a defective gene that is fixed through gene therapy no longer inheritable? | Is there any difference between a defective gene that was corrected to be normal and a gene that was normal from the beginning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2ykff/eli5_is_a_defective_gene_that_is_fixed_through/ | {
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"If the gene therapy targeted the germline, the defective gene is no longer heritable.\n\n\"Somatic\n\nIn somatic cell gene therapy (SCGT), the therapeutic genes are transferred into any cell other than a gamete, germ cell, gametocyte, or undifferentiated stem cell. Any such modifications affect the individual patient only, and are not inherited by offspring.\"\n\n\"Germline\n\nIn germline gene therapy (GGT), germ cells (sperm or egg cells) are modified by the introduction of functional genes into their genomes. Modifying a germ cell causes all the organism's cells to contain the modified gene. The change is therefore heritable and passed on to later generations.\"\n\n\n-Wikipedia, Gene therapy"
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3cxqqz | why is it when looking at certain lights, (a projector bulb for example) and quickly shifting your eyes the spectrum of colors making up the projected color becomes visible for a quick second? | For example, if looking at a projector projecting white and while shifting your eyes quickly, you can see red, green and blue while your eyes are in the shift. I know these colors together make white, and am well aware of the fact a combination of these colors can be used to create any color but I am curious as to why this only happens when moving your eyes quickly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cxqqz/eli5_why_is_it_when_looking_at_certain_lights_a/ | {
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"These specific types of bulbs, DLP projectors and some LEDS, actually project the picture you are seeing in the three different primary colors, and it does it so fast that the picture looks normal to you. But when you are shifting your eyes away from the light in a quick manner., it causes the seperate color images to become more noticeable. "
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1owcet | why must vaccines be given as a shot and not simpler forms like pill, patch, etc. | Seriously, screw shots. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1owcet/why_must_vaccines_be_given_as_a_shot_and_not/ | {
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"Some dont. I remember getting a vaccine at school that was a drop on a sugar cube, and more recently there are nasal flu shots for children available. So short answer is, they don't have to be, but it depends on the vaccine.",
"I'm not an expert, but I believe it is because the human body, especially the stomach, is quite good at tearing down any foreign and harmful things that enter it. Vaccine shots usually contain antibodies or disabled viruses of a certain disease, that have to be inserted into the bloodstream or at least under the skin, in order for the vaccine to work. Otherwise, the antibodies/viruses in a pill would just be destroyed by the acids and micro-organisms in your stomach, saliva, intestants, etc.\nPatches are probably not going to work as well, as the working substances need to migrate through the skin, which is difficult at the very least.",
"Has to be directly injected. The body could 'digest' (stomach acids) the vaccine before it could be absorbed and reach the bloodstream. If I remember correctly, they can make anti acid coatings and such, but the procedure can kill the antigen/virus. And clinical trials. ",
"One of the vaccinations I got before going to China was in pill form (I forget which one, but I think it was one or two pills a day for three days). The pill form was even more effective and longer-lasting than the shot form. Cheaper, too.",
"Pills and patches are great for delivering chemicals to the bloodstream, but vaccines are usually a lot more complex than that.\n\nThe ELI5 answer is that vaccines have to deliver stuff that looks like germs - either parts of them, or whole dead ones, or living ones that are genetically stunted and can't cause illness - to the immune system, so that the immune system sees it and responds appropriately (by generating memory cells, which can react quickly and strongly the next time the person is exposed to real germs, so that the germs are eliminated before they cause illness). The way to get that stuff to the right immune cells is to inject it into the muscle tissue - the particles are far too large to diffuse throughout the skin, and most would be digested or reach the wrong kinds of immune cells if given in a pill.\n\nThe oral polio vaccine is one notable exception. It works because polio is actually a gastrointestinal virus, so of course the vaccine's stunted viruses can survive stomach acid, and delivering viruses directly to the immune cells in the intestines is effective because those are the ones that need to respond to real infections. (The injected vaccine gets to those cells too, but indirectly.)\n\nLikewise, the intranasal spray for flu: Since flu is transmitted through the mucus membranes in the respiratory system, delivering flu vaccine straight to the immune cells that live there is as effective as the shot (which, again, will get to the same cells, but indirectly).\n\nP.S. a lot of the replies in here are straight-up incorrect, and even I'm being kind of lazy and cutting corners. You'll get a much better answer in /r/askscience :)",
"Because your digestive system generally destroys the active ingredients of the vaccine. ",
"The answer is: it's easier with a shot.\n\nAs has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread: you can administer a vaccine through something that's NOT a shot and there are loads of examples of us doing that. \n\nBut to really understand what's going on with a vaccine we need to take a step backwards and talk about your immune system for a moment and to really understand that we need to talk about blood.\n\nYour blood stream is a superhighway full of all kinds of cells which have all kinds of jobs. You've got your freight-hauling red blood cells -- think of them as container trucks. You've got your would healing platelets -- think of them as highway construction workers. And you've got your white blood cells.\n\nWhite blood cells are psychotic vigilante hurt machines. Think of your white blood cells as Batman.\n\nThere's actually a bunch of different kinds of white blood cells and for now we're going to lump them all on to Batman's utility belt and just deal with it that way. \n\nSo let's say The Joker wants to go and screw up Gotham City. He gets his crew together and they set out for the city steam works (or whatever you kids are calling your lungs these days) to do some serious damage. \n\nHow's Batman gonna stop him? Oh, the Joker is easy enough to recognize in all his crazy makeup and green hair but what if he's not wearing it? What if he's just regular joe nutbag ready to do some damage?\n\nBatman has to be able to recognize the Joker to stop him. That's where a vaccine comes in. \n\nVaccines are [Oracle](_URL_0_). \n\nOracle tells Batman what's up. She clues him in to what Joker looks like; tells him where he needs to be and what he needs to do. \n\nVaccines do that for your immune system. They tip your white blood cells off as to what diseases look like and that lets you get them before they do damage -- like Batman showing up before the Joker pumps the city steam works full of nerve gas. \n\nThe trouble is that we need Oracle to be able to TALK to Batman. That ear bud that Bats carries around that Oracle yammers out of? That's a pretty direct connection. She's not tossing a message into a bottle and leaving it in a port city half way around the world in the hopes that it'll wind up on one of those container trucks cruising through your blood-stream at the right time. \n\nGotham city is depending on her. No, better to go in directly. Don't worry - this'll only hurt for a second."
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1ru3qm | why are our backs so poorly designed? | Seems like everyone injures their back now and then | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ru3qm/why_are_our_backs_so_poorly_designed/ | {
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"Because it's not designed. It's a process of evolution. There was no committee that sat down to design the perfect back.\n\nOur line hasn't been walking upright for very long and so we still have a back that hasn't changed much from when it evolved for walking on all fours and since some back pain probably isn't going to stop you from surviving and breeding, and most of the problems happen after you're 30 anyway, there isn't much selective pressure to change it.",
"Your back is designed just fine, it's the current sedentary habits that are the problem.\n\nWeak abs are one of the the largest causes of back problems- when your core is weak too much of the work is done by your back and trouble follows.\n\nIf you want a strong healthy back work on your core muscles."
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2yxmxz | how do they make documentaries of illicit activities and not have to give up their subject matters? | For instance someone just posted this in a thread:
_URL_0_
I understand if its a smaller company making these documentaries but that is national geographic. How are the police not banging down their doors asking for everything they know? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yxmxz/eli5_how_do_they_make_documentaries_of_illicit/ | {
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"I would imagine that there is a contract signed that prohibits releasing that info...or it's all fake. ",
"So, there's a lot of legal loopholes and protections surrounding journalism and to an extent documentary creators. If you want to provide accurate information you need reliable sources. Sometimes you are providing information on illegal activities or illicit materials. Chances are good that a reliable source on illegal activities, like say, human trafficking, is connected to the activity in a way that could implicate them. \n\nThe journalist wants the information, but the source wants to be protected from persecution. So journalists will protect their sources, because it also protects their reputation and their career. If a journalist gets known for revealing their sources, they'll never get information from anyone ever again. A journalist well-known for not giving up their sources is more likely to get information from someone who would otherwise be too afraid to talk.\n\nA journalist *can* be pressured by law enforcement and government agencies to reveal their source if its believed that the source is a serious threat or potential danger to national security. They can even be jailed for not revealing the source. To be honest, this is a big legal grey area, and a subject of strong debate. One the one hand, creating a legal precedent for forcing journalists to reveal their sources could get a lot of people to start naming names. On the other hand, it would drive criminal elements, even the less loyal outliers that tend to be informants, to shut their lips for good, shutting down a potentially valuable avenue of information that can still be useful to law enforcement.\n\n"
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1rrhy1 | how do water heaters work? | How can I turn a dial in a second-floor shower and the water coming from the water heater in the basement gets hot within a second or two? What is the dial connected to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rrhy1/eli5_how_do_water_heaters_work/ | {
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"Cold water enters the water heater, which heats it up, and holds many gallons of hot water in an insulated tank.\n\nYour shower has two water pipes entering it. One pipe is cold water from the water mains (the same water supply that enters your water heater and is heated). The other pipe comes directly from the hot water tank. So when you turn the dial for warm water, you're getting a mix of cold water and pre-heated water directly from the tank in the water heater. Adjusting the dial changes the ratio of cold and hot water, allowing you to select a temperature."
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8pj9px | why do scary stories seem creepier/scarier late at night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pj9px/eli5_why_do_scary_stories_seem_creepierscarier/ | {
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"The night is dark and full of dangers. We are primates. We have color vision and operate in the daylight. We are not adapted to the night. \n\nbut there are exceptions.\n\nWith night vision goggles, the military owns the night.\n\nTribes which still forage, hunt and harvest wild fruits and grains, will organize night hunts for chimpanzees and baboons who den up at night on hillsides.\n\nIf the hunting party know where the den is, they will creep up and attack to get fresh meat.\n\nBack to your question. When you are in a similar situation, its dark, then you understand and emphasize with the narrator of the story.",
"You're more vigilant at night because your eyes can take in less information about your surroundings and predators often come out at night. Which is why you perceive scary stories to be a threat more often."
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3fr0aj | why food companies claim they have secret ingredients but by law must state ingredients are used in their food. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fr0aj/eli5_why_food_companies_claim_they_have_secret/ | {
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"Generally the claim is that they have a secret recipe. The ingredients may be listed, but the quantity may not be. Also, a lot can come under the umbrella of natural flavoring.",
"Not every ingredient has to be listed individually. For instance \"natural flavors\" and \"artificial flavors\" can include hundreds of different substances, and as long as that substance meets federal guidelines for being a \"natural flavor\" or \"artificial flavor\", you don't have to be told explicitly what it is on the list of ingredients.\n\nSimilar to that is the use of \"spices\", which can include all kinds of different spices, which don't need to be individually listed.",
"They don't have to explicitly list every ingredient. A lot of ground can be covered under the phrase \"other natural or artificial flavoring.\"",
"Searching for [Secret ingredient](_URL_0_) might have given you some answers."
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74j5jc | using soap too many times a day is bad for our skin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74j5jc/eli5_using_soap_too_many_times_a_day_is_bad_for/ | {
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"Yes, it is.\n\nSoap is effective for removing dirt and excess oil, but that oil is also important for keeping your skin moist and hydrated, *plus* it's a protective barrier from bacteria. We use soap so we're not dirty, smelly, and greasy, but your skin still needs some oil to function properly.\n\nMost noticeably you're gonna see your skin getting red/dry/flaky with excess soap usage, but it'll also start to exacerbate acne if it's something you already deal with.",
"You already got most of the answer in this thread, but I would like to add on that most people actually don't wash there hands thoroughly enough or effectively enough to be 'cleansing'.\n\nI started my study for laboratory science a few years ago and one of the first things we did in Biology was smear our unwashed finger, washed with soap finger and washed with alcohol finger on some bacteria breeding nutrient medium (we call it agar, not sure if that directly translates to English). And basically what we saw with most of the class is that except for obviously the alcohol (which was completely clean), surprisingly the washed with soap part was filled with bacteria. Basically what happens is when you don't wash 'thoroughly' enough, you only 'open the gates' so to speak for the bacteria on your hand. You essentially wash away the barrier but you don't wash away the bacteria. So you will just release a lot of bacteria at once.\n\nI thought you might find this interesting and it is kind of on topic, washing your hands isn't necessarily helping you rid of bacteria unless you really wash them well."
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cadtzh | how can a multi-level marketing company not be considered a pyramid scheme? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cadtzh/eli5_how_can_a_multilevel_marketing_company_not/ | {
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"Pyramid Schemes don't have an actual product behind them - ultimately it's all smoke and mirrors. MLMs have an actual product, though the methodology behind the two are nearly identical.\n\nEdit: Since there's some confusion here - when I'm referring to \"Pyramid Schemes\" - I'm talking about the classical Ponzi scheme.",
"In its worst form, a scheme is one where nothing is done except moving money around often while lying about what the business is. \n\nHerbalife might be a stupid business. But it is still a business. It sells things. You could make money selling their products without recruiting more sales people.",
"Listen to the podcast The Dream. It’s an MLM exposé and very well done. The reason MLMs aren’t considered pyramid schemes is that they’re very dedicated to lobbying politicians and running Chambers of Commerce to keep them from being categorized as such. That’s it. The co-founders of Amway (the Devoses, as in Betsy DeVos, and the Van Andels) run the US Chamber of Commerce. They use this power to keep the laws favorable to them.",
"To be a legit business, the money has to come from selling a product. To be a pyramid, the money comes from recruiting others. \n\nA true MLM company would have distributors making money only when a product is sold, and there's no immediate benefit to recruiting another person. They also have to sell products to people not contracting main company. The befit from recruits only happens when they buy/sell an actual product.",
"What about a reverse funnel system?",
"They are a pyramid scheme. They are not, however, an illegal Ponzi scheme, which involves bringing in new sellers constantly buying product, which funds the whole organization. There are no real product sales to consumers. (And sometimes no real product). \n\nMLM and pyramid schemes do rely MOSTLY on getting new sellers to buy product as their source of income. But they do have actual products, and some actual customers. You have to ask why if it's a good product, they don't just sell it in stores. The answer is that the sellers themselves are the product. The product wouldn't move if it was in a store (which would be massively cheaper and easier for most people with a product to sell.)",
"As others have noted, pure Ponzi schemes don’t really sell a product, making money solely from downstream participants. \n\nMLMs have essentially exploited a loophole, purporting to sell products through the downstream. But the downstream almost always purchases more products than resells them. So it’s the act of joining that creates money for the MLM and the upstream. \n\nSo, everyone involved has more of a financial interest in recruiting new downstream members, than they do in having anyone actually purchasing products. \n\nThis is why the overwhelming majority of MLM participants, overall, actually LOSE money. \n\nIt’s still a pyramid scheme-just not an illegal one, but it’s still predatory, fraudulent and unethical. And yes, I’m certain they’ve used their lobbying power to keep this loophole as a “legal” option, at least in the US.",
"The two things are very different, frankly. The classic pyramid scheme is a direct commission of fraud. MLMs aren't.\n\nA pyramid scheme works like this: the scheme mastermind offers an astronimcal return on an investment. He commits fraud by overstating the balances of the investors so it looks like they made the money he said they would. The scheme grows as investors share how great the investment is with their friends. Some investors cash out and the mastermind uses money from new investors to pay off old investors, which reinforces trust in the investment, as it makes it appear solvent. But at the end of the day, the money in the investors' balances is fraudulently fabricated and one day it's found out and the money isn't there.\n\nAn MLM is an actual money-making business. The are not fradulently overstating anyone's balances and they actually do make real money for some people. It's modeled after the normal stream of commerce but with the manufacturer having more control over downstream suppliers than you would typically see and several high-pressure techniques in use at once to leverage the customer into making purchases. \n\nIn the normal stream of commerce, a manufacturer typically sells product to a distributor who sells to a reseller/retailer who sells to an end customer. Depending on the products, distributors and resellers typically have agreements with the manufacturer that allow them to sell, set out pricing guidelines and discounting, define marketing and support resposibilities and many other things. Savvy resellers use these agreements to minimize their inventory carrying costs (with, for example, consignment and drop shipping terms) and minimize other risks (by requiring the OEM to market for them or extend significant credit, for example). Typical resellers also limit risk by organizing as registered companies with limited liability, selling competing and complementary products, and marketing their own unique value-add. \n\nMLMs target neophyte resellers typically operating small, single-product, non-registered home businesses and offer them boilerplate contracts to avoid these type of reseller-favorable terms. They also blur the line between end customer and reseller by typically authorizing every buyer to resell (hence \"multi-level\"). So while typical resellers would use tactics to limit inventory risk like consignment, drop shipping, extended credit terms, etc., MLM resellers typically pay cash up front and keep owned stock on hand to fill orders. Also MLM resellers are encouraged to be end customers which adds to inventory problems with loss. Additionally, MLM manufacturers don't market like traditional OEMs leaving that to their network of resellers. And of course, they entice resellers with the prospect of getting commission on sales from sub-resellers -- which, of course, is just another expression of the OEM's power because they dictate prices downstream and take direct control over the \"multi-level\" transaction. A typical reseller could dictate their own prices and make the level of comission they wish whether selling to an end customer or another reseller. (The \"you make more money if you have more people below you\" is just common sense--all they've done is take the multiple businesses and employees you could have had working for you directly and made them work for the MLM with you getting a commission). And then typical resellers can go bankrupt if their costs drag them down but MLM resellers are usually individuals with no limited liability protection (so not completely fucked, but no one lost their house or car when Delta went bankrupt--MLM resellers are not so lucky). \n\nSo the point of all this is to say MLM companies are not committing fraud. In fact, they are using many standard business tactics. The issue is that they target unsophisticated individuals with complicated contracts that put all the power in their hands where typical companies would simply tell them off and not accept the terms of the deal. Pyramid schemes on the other hand are just plain fraud--the mastermind lies to everyone about everything he's doing to con them."
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2da75p | if you drink milk your bones get stronger, will they continue to get stronger indefinitely or will they stop at some point? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2da75p/eli5if_you_drink_milk_your_bones_get_stronger/ | {
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"No, you cannot drink a thousand glasses of milk and develop steel-like bones",
"Don't believe advertising.",
"drinking milk doesn't make your bones stronger. but not having enough calcium in your diet WILL make your bones weaker. "
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3j9zdf | what was wrong with windows vista? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j9zdf/eli5_what_was_wrong_with_windows_vista/ | {
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"the biggest problem with vista was that pc components for alot of people couldnt handle it well and it ran poorly compared to xp. Secondly on release many many applications werent available because the operating system was very different.",
"Two major reasons:\n\n1: It was a BIG step up from XP in terms of system requirements - more than any other Windows OS to date. At the time it came out, a lot of PCs simply weren't capable of running it.\n\n2: A lot of hardware components didn't support it on release, and still poorly some time afterwards. Which meant that for some computers, blue screens were common. It was really more of a fault with Nvidia and others than with Microsoft, but it still made people hate Vista anyway.\n\nThere's other reasons that make some people dislike it more, but they're much more minor.\n\nIn any case, the problems went away as computers got more powerful, Vista got more updates, and hardware manufacturers made better drivers. But people still hate it because they only remember it how it was rather than how it currently is. Sort of like Windows 8.",
"Honestly not as much as the internet would have you believe. It is certainly true that the OS was no where near as well optimized as it could have been and Microsoft seemed hellbent on cramming all possible features in there regardless of practicality or you know..usefulness. It also had problems with hardware drivers not being compatible and games not running so good.\n\nOn the whole though a lot of criticism of Vista was down to people just not being able to understand the \"good points\" such as its introduction of user access control which although kind of annoying at times (basically its the reason Vista asked \"are you sure?\" a lot) was a huge step up over XPs policy of every program requiring admin control to run (from a security standpoint). \n\nThere was also a huge breakdown in communication on how Vista handled memory, people complained it was using all their systems memory and constantly accessing the hard drive. Basically Microsoft decided to adapt a policy of \"free memory is useless memory\" with Vista but didn't really publicize that very well, as a result it seemed like Vista was a bloated memory hog when in reality it was just using a new memory model that attempted to make use of available memory whenever it can.\n\nIn my opinion XP was better from a what worked better at the time perspective (although that's arguably unfair as XP had years of updates and fine tuning before it became the OS people loved) but Vista brought in a lot of features and laid the groundwork for the feature packed windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, a lot of those features however were simply not apparent to the everyday user so to them Vista just seemed like a completely bloated failure of an OS."
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bfq9o2 | how does tobacco suppress the immune system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfq9o2/eli5_how_does_tobacco_suppress_the_immune_system/ | {
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"Short answer: many ways from cell distribution, to antibody production, to decreased cells which activate the immune system.\n\nLong answer: Tobacco specifically the nicotine in tobacco and smoke produced from it affect nearly all aspects of the immune system. Due to this wide range of effects I will give a few examples.\n\nIn the immune system there are cells which mediate the immune response (E.g. CD4+ or T helper cells) by telling other cells there's an infection including other mediation cells and cells which actually kill the pathogen like CD8+ or cytotoxic t cells (T killer cells), antibody producing plasma b cells and virally infected cell killing cells like NK (Natural killer) cells. Tobaccos smoke decreases the amount of CD4+ cells in the body which means the body is slower and more rubbish at responding to infection as less cells can aid in communicating that there's an infection. Further more the way the immune system communicate to itself via cytokines (cell signalling molecules) is imapried as quantities of this signalling molecules (E.g. INF-gamma and IL-4) are decreased in smokers. So not only there are less cells to tell your immune system it's infected the signalling molecules to actually send the message are less.\nAlso, NK cells are less active and in lesser quantities, and antibodies (compounds prodcuded by b cells to destroy pathogens) are in less amounts (except for IgE) so the immune system is worse at killing things. \n\nNicotine specifically in one way affects the immune system is suppressing lymphocyte profileration. So this means your body's major immune cells have issues producing new cells and forming specialised cells upon exposure to a pathogen thus impairing immune response. \n\nAgian these are one of many reasons why this occurs but the matter of the fact is that fact it does suppress the immune system is well documented.\n\nSource: _URL_0_ (an old paper so you need to download it)"
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62lmna | what is a virus's purpose? how is our purpose any different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62lmna/eli5_what_is_a_viruss_purpose_how_is_our_purpose/ | {
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"A virus does not have a purpose. Purposes are assigned by minds and a virus has no mind. A virus's *function* is to create more viruses.\n\nSimilarly humans in a biological sense have no purpose. Our *function* is like that of any other biological creature in that we make more humans. However we also display the emergent property of having a mind and that mind can create goals and exert actions in order to obtain those goals, giving those actions the conceptual quality of \"purpose\". Those purposes are dependent upon our minds and are a subjectively assigned conceptual quality.",
"I don't think there is a concept of \"Purpose\" that actually exists in any meaningful sense other than to continue to pass along DNA as part of the biological evolutionary process. \n\nViruses are not \"alive\" like we are. they are basically little bits of DNA and RNA that need other cells to provide the resources they need to continue to replicate."
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5znaig | how do maglev trains keep from crashing into the ground when they stop? | When maglev trains come to a stop shouldn't the magnetic field be equal to 0 causing them to crash into the track?
On a similar note, how do maglevs keep themselves at a constant height above the track when passengers cause the weight to vary so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5znaig/eli5_how_do_maglev_trains_keep_from_crashing_into/ | {
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"There are different technologies used in maglevs trains. Early systems had completely independent solutions for levitation and drive. Some modern systems (as you mention) (e.g. EDS) require motion to create the levitation. In this case, the train needs wheels on the bottom to support it. As for height, the trains measure the distance and then feedback to the power in the coils can be dynamically adjusted."
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axkc75 | what is the mind-body problem and what are ancient and contemporary philosophers view on it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axkc75/eli5_what_is_the_mindbody_problem_and_what_are/ | {
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"This sounds like homework lol\n\nMind (emotions, thoughts, pain)\n\nIn relation to Body (neurons, cells, matter)\n\nWhere do they meet? How do they relate and at which point are they separate?\n\nModern ppl think it is all one because our synapses produce our thoughts and pain etc.\n\nOld school ppl thought it was spirit vs. Animal body"
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55pz0w | how is vote counting in developed countries kept accurate and accountable when so many powerful people and organizations have huge incentives to to tamper and the power to do so? | I'm especially thinking about powerful corporations and organizations. The financial benefit they receive from having a politician "in the pocket" is probably in the hundreds of millions, even billions, and there are many powerful companies and organizations out there. Say if even three of these companies worked together, they could have 1 billion dollars at their disposal. Think about the power in that much money. Everyone has their price, they could pay off many people at every step of the voting process in order to create their desired outcome, they could pay some of the best programmers in the world to change records. How is this prevented? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55pz0w/eli5_how_is_vote_counting_in_developed_countries/ | {
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"Because it's actually pretty hard to bribe everyone involved. And you have to bribe everyone, because if just one person blows the whistle the gig is up.\n\nAnd the number of people is massive. If you were going to rig the vote in my precinct, you'd need to bribe all three poll workers. And that's to affect a precinct that will get about 700 votes on election day.\n\nFor the whole county? You'd need to do the same thing, but in 45 other precincts. Plus then about another five in the county election board.\n\nThat's about 150 people to bribe for a county of about 70,000 people. And if even one of those people goes to the authorities, then there's some serious prison time for the people trying to rig an election.\n\nSo, bottom line: rigging elections on anything but the smallest scale is very expensive and extremely dangerous, with a very, very high risk of getting caught. The rewards can't even come close to the risk.",
" > How is this prevented?\n\nBy having a lot of people who can see what other people are doing. Paying off one person in each step of the voting process is not enough to make any meaningful impact. At most it appears as a statistical anomaly, which may or may not be enough to warrant an 'investigation'.\n\nVoting policies also vary from state to state in terms of the requirements and information needed. You don't just 'corrupt the voting system'. To really corrupt our first world voting system, you need to disrupt on a local level in many, many states.\n\nPlus there will always be a money trail you can follow if there is corruption and somebody is being paid off, but these sort of things have to be caught by people who manage the financing and budgets of these people/companies.\n\nRich, powerful people are not inherently bad. Just as much as some rich people may try to undermine our democratic system, there are just as many rich people with genuine incentives to see a fair process. Also as long as we can keep as much people working on each level of the voting process, the likelihood of corruption 'sneaking' through the system is largely unfounded.",
"The Medici family had it figured out way back in Renaissance Italy. \n\nIf you can't own the vote, then own the candidates. \n\nSo it didn't really matter who you voted for, as every individual candidate was already bought and paid for...",
"All of these answers assume physical ballots. \nIn the digital age it is as simple as manipulating the code.\nIt seems it's like editing a spreadsheet. Or what happened with the Sarbanes-Oxley software sold by Legato (as exposed by Richard Grove)\nYes, there are digital paper trails, but if the people providing the machines and curating the vote results are the ones manipulating said results, what prevents them?\n\nThat last part is a serious question because I don't have first hand experience with this.",
"\"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.\" - Benjamin Franklin\n\nThe problem with any wide-ranging, multi-state, multi-jurisdictional conspiracy to commit fraud is a problem of scale. You can't get that many people to game the system without a lot of money or an extremely complicated method for committing fraud in such a way that none of the participants know they're being fraudulent. And even if you go the money route, it only takes one person with a conscience, or to miss a payout, to bring down the entire system.",
"Because the more people you involve in any secret, the faster it unravels.\n\nThis was modeled just recently actually.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBut ELIF: There is no way to get the amount of people needed to do this to keep it secret for long.",
"In Canada this is pretty simple. Each party has the right to design someone to watch over the counting process and the ballot boxes can't be opened and counted until everyone designed by political parties for this voting office are present.\n\n\nSo for every voting office, there are people from each major parties to watch someone open the box and count the votes. So unless all major parties aggree to make one of them win, any small irregularity is immediatly noticed.\n\n\nForgot to say that those people are also there when the voting happens to watch for box stuffing and that kind of stuff.",
"Its not. Look at the last few elections, our parties have been bought out, same with the electoral college.",
"Worked in voting centres in Australia. Every polling centre counts the votes received at their centre before they get recounted at the main counting centre, so you would need to bribe/control the person in charge of each voting centre. \n\nWe also have a process of having scrutineers, generally from the larger parties that watch the votes being counted, take notes on the numbers of votes taken at each centre and listen into the call where we lodge the figures. The scrutineers tend to keep the system honest, cause if they see anything they don't like, they will speak up. \n\nAlso you need to have a bit of faith that the people employed in polling centres have a decent level of ethics and honesty and are only there to get paid. At the end of the day, in Australia at least, polling officials need to provide declarations of associations/previous associations. We have an OK political system, so polling official are fairly blasé to your voting intentions, we don't care who you vote for, just answer the questions, complete your ballot paper and head on out. Also, once the papers are handed to the voters, we don't generally get to touch the ballot papers until we open the ballot box for counting. ",
"This question is an excellent example of the logical fallacy known as \"begging the question\". That is, assuming an unproven point as the basis for your question.\n\nGiven all the problems you just outlined, why would you assume that elections in developed countries are fair and accountable?",
"In places where voting generates a paper trail, and the voting is supervised by volunteers from opposite sides, it's quite difficult to push much of the vote without getting caught, partially due to the wonder of randomly assigned helpful senior citizens.\n\nWould you want to try bribing volunteers, many of whom were drawing handsome pension payments, who you couldn't supervise, just before they went out to socialize with hundred of people? That secret would get out.\n\nWith electronic voting, it is significantly more of a risk, and the people responsible for the checks and balances are significantly less capable of noticing or correcting a problem. Paper trail requirements exist in some states but not others.",
"A lot of replies are giving reassurances that there is no rigging. Using electronic voting booths however, there is no way to prevent a booth from displaying the voter having voted for their candidate, while tallying another. You only need to bribe the software developers. Ironically enough, several of the major developers of the electronic voting booths have voiced their support for one of the candidates.\n\nSad truth of it that I hate to tell a 5 year old, is that it is too easy, and there is too much incentive to rig this election.",
"The reality is that it's a \"security by obscurity\" and really isnt that safe from tampering. There are lots of checks in place to make sure that each small batch is fairly safe and that is basically the only real security. A few documentaries of electronic voting and how easy it is to screw with are around, as well as multiple cases in the just the last few years of people abusing the system AND being caught. ",
"The tampering happens prior to elections through donations, advertisements etc. Not exactly bribing anyone but this is how we are lead everyday anyway",
"Typically, vote rigging in developed countries aims at casting fraudulent votes not tampering with the counts. In my local city, Birmingham (UK), there was abuse of the postal vote system and personation. \n\nPostal vote fraud is where they register people to vote, typically those who haven't registered before, to cast a vote ahead of the ballot and then post it in time for the count. They collect all these ballots and then vote accordingly and then mail them out. \n\nPersonation is where they find people who are registered to vote, but typically don't. To do this they typically abuse political party databases that contain voter intentions (which help parties know where best to concentrate campaign efforts during an election). They then go in to the polling station and impersonate the elector. To do this all they need is a name and address (this is because the UK has no national ID scheme). \n\nElection fraud happens in developing countries. It's just that the fraudsters are better at hiding it. \n\n_URL_0_\n",
"Each country has their own system. This is how Sweden does it:\n\nWe use paper ballots. Not the \"check a box\" kind, but different paper slips for each party. These are put into an envelope, the voter is checked against a list, and the envelope is stuffed into an ballot box (usually just a wooden box with a slot on the top). At all times, these boxes are watched to prevent tampering.\n\nAfter the election, the votes are counted. There are three persons doing the counting, and they represent different parties. One takes the ballot out of the envelop, shows it to the others, read aloud what the vote was, and it's counted. This process is repeated three times, and if there is any mismatc at all, the process is repeated another three times, until there is no mismatch. This entire process is open to the public, so anyone can come and watch (but few do).\n\nThis result is then reported as the preliminary result of the election.\n\nThen, the ballots are put into sealed and locked containers, and sent to the central authority of elections. They count again, using the same method (but, this time, with different people each count). Once they get three counts in agreement, it becomes the official election result.\n\nAs you can see, manipulating the vote would not just be risky, it would have to involve a lot of people. Such a big conspiracy wouldn't be possible to hide.\n\nOn top of that, there are observers checking that nothing wrong is going on at the voting stations.\n\nDespite that, I've noticed some cases of election fraud, where the ballots of one party (The Pirate Party) was removed by the people manning the voting station. I called the local coordinator, explained the situation, handed over the phone and she came down on them like a ton of bricks. Still, I think that such cases of fraud are minor, and do not influence the election in a noticable way.\n\nSweden takes elections very seriously, and the \"every vote must count\" is strong. I usually dress up when voting, to match the importance of the event, as do many others.",
"Far more easy to control the candidates than to rigg the election?",
"Well, basically, it isn't. At least when electronic voting systems are used. Not only are the existing solutions quite hackable, the very idea of electronic voting is a stupid one because you will never be able to get all requirements of a fair democratic vote (accountable, verifyable, secret, etc) under one hat because they are mutually exclusive.\n\nSource: Ages ago, I was tasked with developing an electronic voting system and after a lot of research I recommended not to do this to avoid besmirching our companies good name. I still closely follow all those disasters that pop up at every major election so far, and I am not disappointed about our decision. Electronic voting results quite often differ significantly from previous paper ballot results, with US voting leading in this trend.",
"First, you take all the electronic voting machines, put them in a big storage hall, and forget about them, going back to paper ballots. Would have been cheaper to never introduce them but well, that's what happened (Germany).\n\nThen, you have the paper ballots counted by hand. Multiple people do the counting and the process is open to the public. These people then report the counts, and the counts are published.\n\nWhile you can't verify that *everyone* counted correctly, you can check your polling place, and you can check that the numbers they reported show up correctly in the final report. And the people doing the counting, many of them volunteers, might also think highly of democracy and check to ensure their numbers are reported correctly.\n\nThis entire system needs nothing but pen, paper and telephones. Excel is useful but not a must, and the summing is trivially verifiable.\n\nTo manipulate centrally, you'd have to falsify the written (and signed by multiple people) reports from the polling place and hope no one has made a photo of the original report.\n\nTo manipulate at the polling places, you'd have to have multiple people collude, would need to have this happen in many polling places to have an effect, and would need to be careful not to have the manipulated result be too different from the result in places where you couldn't get a conspiracy going.\n\nThe ballot boxes are also verified to be empty by multiple people + anyone from the public who wants to be up that early, sealed afterwards, and watched by multiple people, just like the voter records where every person voting is checked off. And the number of check marks better match the number of ballots in the evening.\n\nNumbers are typically in within hours, so it's not even that much slower than voting machines.",
"It isn't. Elections the world over are rigged with regularity. Russia just had a massively fraudulent election for example.\n\nOne of the reasons I have almost no faith in international institutions is that organizations like the UN have not stepped up to try and create some kind of international online voting system.\n\nSomeone like the UN would actually have the resources, credibility, and expertise so that if they wanted to they could establish a website that any country could use (or dissidents within a country could use to set up alternative elections), where any voter who wanted to could register, and vote. A system like that could do all sorts of really interesting things (imagine you had to vote from a smart phone and the phone took a picture of the person casting the ballot as they pushed the button and automatically checked their photo against the picture of everyone else who voted to look for fraud). Imagine activists in Russia saying the state voting system was rigged and organizing large scale voter registration drives for this app. Imagine Iran having an election where anyone could run without having to get the government's ideological approval as a pre-condition.",
"For the most part, the counting of votes seems to be pretty accurate. You will have the occasional anomaly of individual reporting locations \"tampering\" with the count but in the grand scheme this is not enough to skew the vote. With that being said, voting IS NOT FAIR! Instead of breaking the rules, politicians have just devised ways of adjusting the game to work in their favor.\n\nFor example, gerrymandering. This is defined as to \"manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.\" It's kind of like stacking the deck. Once a particular party has a majority, they can start to draw the lines however they see fit. Lump all of their opponent's constituents into one district and then distribute their constituents in a majority position through all the other districts. Then they lose one but win in all the others. I mean, look [at this map](_URL_0_) and tell me how this makes any sense!\n\nTake this and add to it Lobbying, Early Voting, Electoral College and a slew of other strategies and you can see how voting is not fair in any way. Just looking at the Electoral College, your entire voting base can go in one direction but then your representative can just up and decide to do the opposite. Then it is up to each individual to remember how this rep. screwed you 2/4 years ago and not vote them back into office. Right......\n\nAnyway, [HERE](_URL_1_) is a great video on gerrymandering by Adam Conover from Adam Ruins Everything. I hope that this information has not discouraged you from voting. While the process is skewed, it can really only be changed through voting. It is just important for voters to be INFORMED! Unfortunately, getting this INFORMATION is another beast of a topic related to ethics in journalism. :)\n\nEDIT: spelling",
"The short answer is it's not and they do. However the bigger the population the more each side has people keeping tabs on the other and there are usually laws around keeping ballots to allow for checking results but various forms of fraud and tampering still occur as well as disenfranchisement (which is where you try to keep people from being able to vote who would vote against the person you support).\n\nOn a non-ELI5 level, Here is an article by RFK Jr that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine about the 2004 Election which, regardless of if you accept these examples as true or not, it delves into the types of activities you will likely see people of power take to tamper with the election to push it in their favor. _URL_0_",
"It happens a lot. For example, 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections, or the 2016 Democratic primary",
"America had their elections rigged once so there's no theory that it wouldn't have happened again.I am talking about florida election recount.",
"Short answer in the USA: It isn't.\n\nWe also aren't a democracy so we only actually vote on a few things where votes need to be counted."
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2tdoo7 | how come when your muscles are sore, flexing the muscles makes them momentarily feel better? wouldn't that just make them more strained and more sore? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tdoo7/eli5_how_come_when_your_muscles_are_sore_flexing/ | {
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"There is a buildup of fluids when your muscle is repairing itself. This fluid build up is more viscous at your resting temperature. When you stretch them it feels easier and easier because the warmer your muscle gets the easier the fluid can move inside the dynamic muscle movement. "
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8bj718 | magnetic declination | While reading about one of Columbus's voyages to the West, Wikipedia mentions: "As he crossed the Atlantic, Columbus discovered that the angle between North as indicated by a magnetic compass and North as measured by the position of the pole star changed with his position (a phenomenon now known as "compass variation")".
Could someone kindly elaborate on this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bj718/eli5_magnetic_declination/ | {
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"Basically, the exact direction of magnetic field on earth won't be directly towards the geographic North pole, but with a slight deviation. By using the pole star, Columbus determined the direction of geographic North, and the deviation between geographic North and magnetic north is known as angle of magnetic declination. ",
"Currently, the magnetic north pole is somwhere around 86^o N, 180^o W (or E, take your pick), north of the Bering Strait. For us in W Europe, that lines up behind the true pole determined from the rotation. So a compass pointing at the magnetic north pole (\\*) does actually point close to the true north direction. \n\nIf we travel west from London, that variation angle opens up reaching a maximum at ~90^o W, in Ontario before reducing again in the Aleutians as the magnetic pole lines up in front of the true north pole.\n\nThe magnetic pole moves over time so it was a different position in Columbus' time but you get the idea.\n\n(\\*) I've simplified it a bit as the Earth's field isn't exactly like a bar magnet lined up with the magnetic pole\n\nMore details :- _URL_0_"
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2j8fix | what happens to the body when a person drowns or nearly drowns? | I've heard it being called a silent killer because the person drowning doesn't move. Why is this? What stops them from moving and swimming to the surface? Is it true that when people begin to inhale water from being submerged for so long, it's because their lungs force them to try and breathe under the water? If so why is this? Would the brain not realise it's in water still and to breathe would be a bad thing?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j8fix/eli5what_happens_to_the_body_when_a_person_drowns/ | {
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"The panicking response of the body that forces people to breathe when drowning is due to the increasing CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration in the blood. The body uses this, rather than oxygen level, to determine if it needs to force itself to breathe. This is why there are carbon monoxide alarms in houses - you won't panic quickly if your oxygen is being replaced by carbon monoxide because it is not increasing your CO2 concentration. \n\nWhat stops the person from reaching the surface is really in the definition of drowning. If the person *could* reach the surface they would, and then they wouldn't drown. A lot of times people do try to reach the surface. The problem is that when they can't, and are too exhausted, they have no more energy to do so and move. So someone who is still thrashing around isn't as close to drowning as someone exhausted and sinking to the bottom.",
"I'll try to answer this as best as I can, I've actually almost drowned before I was swept out in a riptide and I remember the force of water pushing me around and I was sinking and couldn't float so I panicked and kicked my legs and was waving my arms violently trying to get someone's attention (was at the beach) then I went under and I remember I was holding my breath but my lungs were trying to take in oxygen by themselves that was the scary part I eventually hit the sea floor it was only about 7 feet down and I kicked the floor and propelled up and my head broke the surface for only a second and I tried to breath but I took in water and was coughing then I remember a sharp pain in my chest as water entered my lungs then I felt numb and had no feeling at all I was starting to lose consciousness and I was in somewhat of a trance then I started blacking out and I remember a tug on my arm and woke up on the beach with a lifeguard, my cousin , and random bystanders in a circle around me , if I hadn't gotten pulled out I probably wouldn't he here today \n\n\n\nTl;dr I can't swim worth shit \n \n\nEdit: words"
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ftmctt | apart from inflation, why do stocks generally trend upwards over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ftmctt/eli5_apart_from_inflation_why_do_stocks_generally/ | {
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"Companies who’s stocks are doing poorly is an indication the company is doing poorly. Companies who do poorly for long enough go out of business and are therefore no longer on the stock market. Only those who do well get to continue doing well.",
"Particularly for the Dow and the S & P500, which contain some of the largest firms, big firms have been growing continuously grow bigger. A share of ownership in a firm that has more and more valuable assets is worth more than one that is smaller and has fewer, less valuable assets. \n\nThis effect is largest for the biggest firms, we expect indices to go up because we keep creating more wealth. Firms keep turning less valuable stuff into more valuable stuff. As the amount of wealth owned by publicly traded companies increases, people are willing to pay more to own part of it.\n\nAnother reason why large firms, in particular, do well is that scale often means the firm can impose high barriers to entry in their industry and retain high profitability for a long time. Scale often means pricing power, which means sustainable profits.",
"Ultimately because of\n\n1. Productivity increases due to technology\n2. Increasing global population means more stuff can be made"
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29es6t | if strep throat is caused by streppococcus bacteria, why wouldn't drinking hard alcohol help to rid the infection? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29es6t/eli5_if_strep_throat_is_caused_by_streppococcus/ | {
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"This [link](_URL_0_) has some good info about alcohol and killing bacteria, including strep.\n\nEDIT: from the above link: \n > a 50 percent ethanol solution needs 15 minutes to kill E. coli bacteria and 45 minutes to kill strep in a \"cooked-meat broth,\"\n\nTo your question directly, the main reason this would not work is time. At the concentration of alcohol in most ingestible drinks, it would take many minutes to kill any significant portion of the bacteria in your throat. Even if you were to drink straight grain alcohol (please don't) you would not be able to safely ingest enough to keep the bacteria in contact with the alcohol long enough to kill much of it. This is all compounded by the fact that your throat is a great, safe environment for strep, which makes it much harder to kill with alcohol. "
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2g7ytz | why does clenching our fists, toes, teeth, etc. help us deal with pain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g7ytz/eli5_why_does_clenching_our_fists_toes_teeth_etc/ | {
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"Because you are consciously clenching/flexing those muscles it is giving you a distraction from the pain. It's like when you scratch an itch- the pain helps to relieve the itching because it provides a distraction."
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2yrml2 | why are minorities likely to see the majority(read: white people) attractive but no so much the other way around? | As a black male, I've noticed that I can easily see people of more or less every color attractive, but in the case of my majority friends, it's more limited. Why so? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yrml2/eli5why_are_minorities_likely_to_see_the/ | {
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"I am a white guy, I don't feel the same, in many cases I find people of color more attractive. Out of the my top five local crushes, 3 of them are black, one is latino, and the other is a white girl.",
"I believe it's to do with cultural programming.\n\nTo explain: If you see the majority in movies and magazines reinforcing that a certain thing is attractive or implies wealth/status it will often become so in your brain.\n\nFor example: In some western African countries it is attractive for a woman to be overweight/obese as it implies wealth. In many Western cultures it is the opposite.\n\nAlso interestingly an example of a child that grew up in a basement comes to mind, (child abuse case in the 80s) where the liberated 17 year old saw everyone new as equally intimidating, but had no definitions of beauty.",
"In the magazines and on TV, the goddesses (celebrities) we're presented with as these fountains of beauty are virtually all white. Racism and exclusion pervades mass culture. This tendency to find whites more attractive is taught. "
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eimweu | what's negative boost pressure? | The turbo gauge in my car starts at -6 psi. I'm just trying to understand what that means. Whenever boost starts to come on, it always starts at the negative number which doesn't make sense. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eimweu/eli5_whats_negative_boost_pressure/ | {
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],
"text": [
"On non-turbo cars, the intake manifold is almost always at negative pressure compared to outside air(this is called manifold vacuum)\n\nThere is a throttle plate that reduces the airflow going into the cylinders and this is how you control how much power the engine makes(the throttle changes the position of the throttle plate). Well because this plate is reducing the airflow but the pistons are trying hard to pull in air you get vacuum pressure in the intake manifold.\n\nThe turbo takes additional air and rams it in so you get more air and more power when needed, but because the throttle plate is still there you still have negative pressure in the intake manifold at low boost pressures(just not as negative as without the turbo) and as the turbo spins up it'll build up the pressure in front of the throttle plate and eventually the intake manifold is at a higher pressure than the outside air which gives you positive boost pressure\n\nNegative intake manifold pressure is what normal cars run at, only boosted cars get that pressure above 0."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
19y7d3 | - how can an executable file(.exe) that is 100mb contain a 600mb file inside? | Hello
So today I downloaded an .exe file, NetBeans to be exact. the .exe file was around 190MB in size. but when when I go through the installation process it says it will install 600MB.
so please explain that to me like I am five.
thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19y7d3/eli5_how_can_an_executable_fileexe_that_is_100mb/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8sduw4",
"c8sgphy"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"/r/F7U14 instead of /r/FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU\n",
"uhhhh I think everyone in this thread is wrong. I think it's much simpler than all that.\n\nThe installer probably just downloads the rest of the data from the internet during the install process."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
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