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1sxk53 | how has the pirate bay not been shut down with the owners so public? | The owners of the Pirate Bay go around talking about the site and don't hide from society Silk Road style, but how has the Pirate Bay not been shut down itself? It's definitely not an obscure site, and Megaupload already went down before because of pirating and copyright infringement on tons of their downloads.
EDIT: Holy crap, this got more upboats than my actual karma amount. Go knowledge :P
EDIT 2: Thank you, /u/Orsenfelt for your answer! This question was really bugging me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sxk53/eli5_how_has_the_pirate_bay_not_been_shut_down/ | {
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"It's like playing whack-a-mole, the entire site is like 30mb of data. It gets uploaded to a server and a domain name gets pointed to that server. \n\nIf the domain name gets taken you point a different one at the server. \n\nIf the *server* gets taken down you upload the site to a different one, and point the domain to that. \n\nThe Pirate Bay is just a collection of signposts, instruction leaflets on how you can get copyrighted material. Megaupload actually hosted the files themselves, terabytes of data that can't be easily moved from place to place.\n",
"From what I understand they claim to operate in a grey area. First they don't host the copyrighted files only host torrent files. They also say they don't make money off of it so it's just as legal as you loaning a friend one of your movies (they got busted for making money off ads on the site though). And finally they are based in another country which has it's own set of copyright laws and loopholes, so if some american company says stop they just say fuck you this isn't america and we don't have the DMCA.",
"They pretty much say, \"Its not our fault youre doing illegal stuff, we're just hosting a torrent site.\" Also, its not in America so we cant do a whole lot.",
"Technically TPB has already been \"shutdown\" in certain countries such as the UK, where orders issued by the court told ISPs to block access to the TPB. Of course there will always be workarounds as long as the server itself is still up and attached to the internet, for reasons already mentioned above. An analogy I like to use would be like a grocery store selling knives, you can use it for cutting food or cutting another human. Content served by TPB is technically neutral in terms of copyright. ",
"The Pirate Bay is so badass. Anyone else seen the documentary \"TPB: Away From Keyboard\"? It's quite interesting and goes into some good detail about how TPB functions and shows you a little more into the lives of the guys who run it.",
"So what about other torrent sites? Are their numbers dwindling? Are there any more torrent sites hosted in the US then? I'm guessing no. Are the ads on the website's the only way that these torrent sites make money? Sorry, so many questions",
"Short version: It has been, at least a dozen times since I started using it.\n\nIt just now migrated from a .sx doman to a .pe domain, and the whack-a-mole game continues.",
" > The owners of the Pirate Bay go around talking about the site\n\nThey don't. Gottfrid, Fredrik and Peter no longer have anything to do with The Pirate Bay. The new operators are unkown as far as I know. This means that the authorities have no one to drag to court to get the site shut down via legal means. As for technological means, as explained in the other comments, using techological means to shut down TPB is pretty much impossible.",
"A bit more depth than a few other uses have covered, assuming they haven't changed their setup recently:\n\nAmusing abuse of load-balancers as proxies.\n\nWhen a website is very large, it has more users than a single computer can deal with. To make the website still work, it has a very special computer whose only job is to forward users to other computers that do the actual hosting. This lets dozens of computers appear to be one single host. TPB uses this in an interesting way.\n\nThere are some number of core servers hosting TPB content. These servers are completely encrypted and only communicate via encrypted channels to the load balancer, which in turn only communicates with the outward-facing transit router. All are hosted in different countries, and only the servers have hard drives -- everything else starts up, and humans have to transfer the configuration. If anything happens it will lose all of its configuration. Most of the companies hosting their servers don't even know it. To make things that little bit extra amusing, if something happens to the load balancer, the core servers are configured to shut down eight hours after losing communication -- after which you need the encryption password to do anything with them.\n\nWhat this means is that if someone wants to raid them, they can hit the transit router. That's just a dumb proxy in some arbitrary country though, so they have to quickly examine it and figure out where it is pointing to. Once they do that, they have to raid the next place (in a different country, and you don't know which) to hit the load balancer. When that goes down, they could perhaps trace it to the various hosting providers... but if they can't raid those additional locations (in yet more countries) within eight hours, the only evidence left will be an encrypted machine image.\n\nOf course, when this happens, the sysadmin(s) (who, if I remember, nobody -- not even the owners -- know) just upload a new set of copies to new computers (remember, this is \"cloud computing\" -- it takes probably an hour total), get things reconfigured, and TBP sails again.\n\nI believe the various authorities might finally realize that it's a pointless exercise. Of course, that's not to stop them from imprisoning as many of the founders as they can -- that just won't shut down TPB.",
"It's funny because there are literally hundreds of other torrent sites that people can use, but since TPB is the biggest, they're the only site that gets any significant amount of attention.",
"They're not from or located in America. This may be news, but America's laws do not apply to the rest of the world. ",
"Not sure if you'll believe it, but NOT ALL countries follow US laws. Ridiculous, right?",
"What have they done that is illegal? ",
"They don't host any files on their servers. When people download movies or TV shows or albums, they aren't downloading them from The Pirate Bay.",
"Whatever happened to Mininova?",
"Because 1) they only link to the copyrighted material and 2) the copyrighted material is scattered in chunks around the internet on peoples private computers. To stop them you need to either 1) kill everyone who has an internet connection or 2) destroy all computer hardware. It's just not feasible.",
"[im noticing a pattern of reddit bringing up topics and then the government addressing them. its almost like reddit isnt a secret club...](_URL_0_)",
"Going after TPB is retarded anyway. The IRL equivalence would be:\n\n- Do you know where the next crack-house is?\n- Sure, it is over there\n- You are arrested for telling me",
"UPC banned it in Holland, but there are many ways around. That's internet for ya.",
"They are always one step ahead of the government.",
"The people sentenced for running tpb is no longer the owners of the site, the new owners remain anonymous. ",
"The pirate bay is not even a website, it is just a catalog, a data set, a public listing.\nEven if you shut down the site itself people can still access the information, it's backed up on a regular basis and there are literally millions of copies all over the world. It would be like saying \"why hasn't the farmers almanac been shut down yet\"",
"In case you are not aware OP, TPB founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is currently in jail and apparently the conditions are not great. As explained in the comments, the site itself is almost impossible to shut down entirely, but the owners are always walking a tightrope. ",
"because no one but them have a say on their servers",
"Because technically BitTorrent isn't doing anything illegal. All the site does is linking a searchable index of human readable text with hash sums of file contents. For any given hash value there is an infinite number of possible files that would hash to that value.\n\n---\n\nTake for example this human readable value and hash value\n\n > -description: a comment /u/datenwolf wrote in response to a question by /u/xVirtualNinjax\n > - categories: Reddit, ELI5\n > = > hash value: 2e882348b1eda2703564d2474d3a1f91f260e388\n\nBTW: It's the actual SHA1 hash for the text I wrote before the horizontal line.\n\nAnd technically that's all what TPB does. The hash values are part of so called \"Magnet Links\" which a BitTorrent client can use to establish a connection to the distributed P2P BitTorrent network and retrieve additional meta information, namely a list of file-/directory names and their hash values (this is what a BitTorrent file actually contains). This information is then used to exchange the actual data, which is only described by the torrent, which is only referred to by the magnet link.\n\nSo what TPB does is merely providing a large index of hashes associated with human readable information.\n\nAnd if you're honest about the law and strict in how you interpret it, that is hardly illegal in most jurisdictions. Technically people hash values (i.e. magnet links) into the IMDB forums as well.",
"None of this was explained like OP was 5..... ",
"Where they are hosting their servers what they are doing is not illegal. They are simply giving users information. They are not transmitting any pirated content. I'd recommend you read their legal page (whatevertheirdomainis/legal) and you'll see their explanations to large companies. ",
"The law that applies to the owner of tpb is that it is not illegal to reffer to copyrighted material but it still is illegal to own it. Soo in short words ... tpb gives you directions to where you can get stuff it doesn't actually give it to you",
"In addition, mega upload was storing the actual content where pirate bay is just allowing the people who are looking for the content to find the people who have the content. ",
"wtf i asked this question a few weeks ago and it got deleted...",
"Bitorrent is peer to peer.\n\nThe Pirate Bay is not even a tracker anymore, it's just an index.\nTaking it down when you think about it makes no sense really. The only reason why it's in wide spread use is popularity. If it's taken down and it's owners are indisposed someone else will just set it right back up with at most the loss of most recent torrents.\n\nThe attempts to seize its domains are retarded, all they do is draw attention and increase popularity.\nThe idiots who attempt to enforce the unenforceable (copyright) are just fat-cats doing useless work for paychecks, or maybe just stupid.",
"I guess this is a good place to show off my new [Pirate Bay app](_URL_0_)",
"Looking at it from a different angle, it all has to do with freedom. Freedom is popular with those in power, when they are free to do whatever they want and get away with murder, so to speak. When it comes to freedom for actual people, hey not so fast, we have corporations to protect.",
"Sometimes it's easier to catch car thieves if you don't close all the chop shops.",
"The owners keep creating horcruxes that those who shall not be named have yet to find."
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3y45ee | ; do biting bugs get affected by drugs or medicine in someone's blood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y45ee/eli5_do_biting_bugs_get_affected_by_drugs_or/ | {
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"Some do - [lufenuron](_URL_0_) for example persists in the bloodstream and kills certain parasites which ingest it with stolen blood.\n\nIt would probably work very nicely against headlice, but doesn't have a license for human use.",
"I remember watching a Ted talk a while ago where they had developed a oral drug that would kill mosquitos when they bit you, helping to stop malaria transmission ",
"I NEVER used to get mosquito bites until I went through chemo. Those assholes bite the crap out of me any chance they get now. I WISH my toxic blood could make them die a painful death.\n\n\nDid that escalate too quickly?"
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5sal2j | why do objects with a higher thermal conductivity feel colder to the touch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sal2j/eli5_why_do_objects_with_a_higher_thermal/ | {
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"They only feel cold to the touch if they're colder than our skin. If they're hotter than our skin, they'll feel hotter than something with lower thermal conductivity at the same temperature.\n\nThis is because our body can't detect temperature. All we can detect is rate of heat transfer. The faster the heat transfer (in either direction) the more extreme it feels to us.",
"Because heat gets conducted faster. A cold object will \"take the warmth\" from your hand, while a warm object makes your hand hotter.\n\nIt works the same way for any object, but since metal has a higher thermal conductivity than wood and it transfers your heat faster, your hands will get colder in a shorter period of time, and that's what you're feeling."
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1hts1y | the existence or perversion of the social contract in the us | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hts1y/eli5_the_existence_or_perversion_of_the_social/ | {
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"Can you be more specific?"
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2hgstb | how can an iphone 6 bend without the screen cracking or breaking? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hgstb/eli5_how_can_an_iphone_6_bend_without_the_screen/ | {
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"Two Things:\n\n1. The aluminum is obviously flexible. It will bend just like a paperclip would, but obviously not as easily. Now the aluminum is not attached to the glass as firmly as you think. If the aluminum is bent at 15°, that does not mean that the glass is also. The glass will actually pull away from the aluminum so it is bending slightly less which brings me to my next point…\n\n2. The glass used in smart phone manufacturing is actually somewhat flexible. It can handle a certain degree of bending without breaking. \n\nTL;DR The glass does not bend as far as the aluminum does, and it is also slightly flexible.",
"This might shed a little light on your question...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nELI5? It isn't really glass in the normal sense."
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frwtqi | how do scientists count chromosomes? | They say that most human cells have 46 chromosomes. How exactly do they count how many chromosomes they have? Did they just grab a cell and start counting it like tallying? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/frwtqi/eli5_how_do_scientists_count_chromosomes/ | {
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"Yes, using electron microscope images mainly. They can also me matched up by size into 21 pairs plus the two sex chromosomes which don't match in men."
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66awue | the new 'negative mass' discovery | So in this post the linked article talks about the discovery of 'negative mass' particles:
_URL_0_
Is anyone able to explain this in simple terms? I struggle with the concept of how something can have negative mass, it says in the article that atoms were used so how can something composed of matter have negative mass? If it has negative mass then wouldn't it also have to have negative energy? How would gravity affect a material with negative mass? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66awue/eli5_the_new_negative_mass_discovery/ | {
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"I'm very skeptical of how this is being reported. I expect the substance still has positive mass, but that the bulk behavior of it in a specific situation may be such that it *appears to act as though* it has negative mass. \n\nBasically, it's normal mass, but it acts weird when we poke it a special way."
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8ktokj | i understand that plants (specifically flowers) are killed when we cut them from their original location, but how does placing them in vases of water and plant food keep them alive for a little longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ktokj/eli5_i_understand_that_plants_specifically/ | {
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"I would disagree with the statement that you kill the plant if you cut them. Plants are not like animals so you done have organs in some location that you need to survive or blood supply to transport oxygen. they are more distributed and uniform in the construction. \n\nCutting plants and putting them in water result in new roots in many plants and that is the way de make new plants.\n\nGrafting is cutting part of one plant and attaching it to another and that is common on for example apple trees.\n\nSo a flower primary need water, used in photosynthesis among other things , that is usually get from the root but it can get it from a vase. So if you give it water so it don't dry out had perhaps a bit of sugar it get the main thing it need and can stay alive for a long time."
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3r0efu | how trick or treat works. first halloween in the usa | This is my first halloween in the USA and I was wondering if some one could explain me how this works. what to give what not, how to let people know if you are participating, etc.
Danke,
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r0efu/eli5how_trick_or_treat_works_first_halloween_in/ | {
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"If you live in a neighborhood with houses you will probably get some trick or treaters. If you don't want to participate, shut off your lights on your driveway /porch and make it look like no one is home. If not, buy a couple bags of candy and get ready. You don't have to do anything special but hand candy out to kids and stay stuff like \"Oh great costume, oh you're so scary, what's up Chewbacca\". Buy cheap and small pieces so you don't spend a fortune and you don't run out. If you do run out, go back to step one. ",
"If a house has the porch light on, or lights on in the driveway it is signalling that they are giving out candy. ",
"Once nightfall hits, everyone starts to go from house to house saying 'trick or treat' and then the person gives them candy. This usually lasts until the kiddies go to sleep for school the next day, but since it's a weekend day this time it'll probably last to just before midnight I'm guessing. \n\nThey usually sell big bags of small candies at the store, so I'd recommend getting one or two of those. Make sure not to run out too early or you have the potential to get egged.",
"Every Halloween kids go to houses and ask for candy in costumes. If you're staying in your home and have candy to give out, turn your porch lights on. Kids will go to houses with lights on and Halloween decorations out (i.e a pumpkin.) Kids will come and I generally give out 3-5 pieces of little candies to the kids. I just say \"Hello! Here you go.\" You could comment on how nice their costumes are. If you're going out with your child or something, you just have him or her exclaim \"Trick or Treat!\" at whoever opens the door. If you don't want to participate, just turn off all the lights so it looks like no one is home. ",
"Also keep change in a bowl next to the door for unicef boxes (I'm in Canada but I thibk the US does this too?) If you see a kid with an orange box around his neck drop some $ in for charity."
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1d86wx | over-clocking a computer | What does it mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d86wx/eli5_overclocking_a_computer/ | {
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"A computer program is basically a recipe for the computer's processor to follow. The clock on a computer determines how long the processor will take on each step of the recipe. Over-clocking a computer means forcing the computer to go through the steps of the recipe faster, which will make the program run faster.\n\nHowever, if you force the computer to go too fast, it might not have enough time to finish each individual step of the recipe, and might start making mistakes."
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5rhj60 | why do atoms organize into living organisms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rhj60/eli5_why_do_atoms_organize_into_living_organisms/ | {
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"The vast majority of atoms do not actually do that.\n\nAtoms organize according to the rules of chemistry, and the reason they do *that* has a lot to do with the laws of physics. The laws of physics are something that you just need to take at face value--they *could* be different, but they are what they are and that's apparently mostly due to random chance (unless the religious people are right).\n\nBillions of years ago, some of the atoms organized into specific chemicals, which led to the very slow process of chemical reproduction and eventually into biology. This was--again, unless the religious people are right--simply due to random chance, an abundance of resources, and favorable conditions on Earth at the time."
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988h75 | how do parasitic worms control the movement of their preys? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/988h75/eli5_how_do_parasitic_worms_control_the_movement/ | {
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"Just hazarding a guess here but I assume they fuck with their host's existing biological impulses by tweaking brain chemistry and perhaps trigger conditions in the body which would cause the host to exhibit the desired behavior.\n\nFor instance if I were a parasitic worm in your body and I needed you to take me to water I could conceivably do something to make you feel thirsty even when you were well hydrated, or excrete a chemical that would make you attracted to reflective surfaces (in nature that means water usually).\n\nIn science fiction parasites are sometimes depicted as having precise control over their host's actions, which is not really the case in reality. In reality these kinds of things are very vague, instilling only an impression or a need in the host which is usually enough to provide a biological advantage to the parasite."
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9ws0cw | what are artificial ingredients and why are they bad? | I know that artificial ingredients get such a bad rap but why did we create them in the first place and what are they actually? I know some of them were to help preserve foods and such, so how will we compensate if they are removed from our foods? Is there proof that they are bad for us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ws0cw/eli5_what_are_artificial_ingredients_and_why_are/ | {
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"Artificial ingredients are things added to a food item that aren't naturally from that food item. They aren't necessarily good or bad for you. Some can be bad because they might be present in unhealthy quantities, such as added sugars, which make it easy for people to overindulge. However, if you are eating a balanced diet, a food item with artificial ingredients is not likely to represent a problem. Some also attempt to color all artificial ingredients as bad, and all natural ingredients as healthy, in an attempt to sell 'natural' foods, but this distinction (artificial = unhealthy, natural = healthy) is not necessarily true in either direction and a marketing gimmick more than anything. ",
"They're not bad for us, they only have a bad rap because people are dumb and think \"natural = good, artificial = bad\". You know what's natural? Hydrogen cyanide. Ya know what's bad? Hydrogen cyanide!\n\nWe generally use artificial ingredients as preservatives. They may also be a chemical which occurs naturally (like sodium benzoate) but we make it in a lab because we need more than the tiny amount you can pull out of cranberries. It's technically artificial since it didn't come from a natural source though it does occur naturally",
"An artificial ingredient is anything that makes a food more appealing in terms of appearance, flavor, texture, freshness, and so on. For example, grape Kool Aid contains artificial dyes to make it purple (visual appeal) and taste like grape candy (taste appeal).\n\nIn general, artificial ingredients are not “bad” per se. Artificial substances added to foods are regulated by government authorities and therefore will not hurt you. However, they make the food less authentic, and many people prefer “all natural” food. Note that some things like added salt and added sugar can make the food less healthy.",
"Artificial ingredients are usually just ingredients that are not made from animal or plant products. Natural ingredients are therefore not necessarily raw materials from nature; they can be pretty much anything so long as the ingredients used to make them are not synthesized from minerals or similar.\n\nWhether an ingredient is artificial or natural is effectively irrelevant to how beneficial it is to you. For example, you can obtain benzaldehyde (an almond flavoring) either naturally by messing with peach pits or artificially by doing chemistry with crude oil products. Either way, it's the same chemical.\n\nMost food additives that we use today are not harmful. As a matter of taste, a lot of them are bad because they are cheap and inaccurate ways of replicating a taste you would otherwise get by a more expensive and complicated cooking process. ",
"\"Artificial\" can be misleading. If you grind up Apricot pits and make a Peach flavoring with it, then add it to a food item, it must be listed as an artificial flavor, because it contains no peaches, even though it's made from 100% natural apricots. So names can be misleading."
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2rhrj0 | why do nasa launch rockets from sea level instead of from the top of a mountain | if they launch from a higher point they will need less fuel because they have to go a shorter distance, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rhrj0/eli5why_do_nasa_launch_rockets_from_sea_level/ | {
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"True but the fuel needed to get the shuttle to the top of the mountain pretty much cancels out any fuel savings.\nThat and building a launchpad is expensive",
"Its better to launch rockets closer to the equator. Its so that the rocket launches at the same speed of the earth spinning. There is also to my knowledge no mountains that are close to the equator in America ",
"Because hauling a rocket or shuttle, where keeping the stack incredibly stable is important, up a mountain, with high winds, would be a bad idea. \n\nIf your stack toppled over, going up a mountain in bad weather, you'd have a very broken 1:1 scale model of a spaceship where your crawler used to be. ",
"Becauss mountains are inland and rocket launches are historically prone to spectacular failure.\n\n Where do you want your flaming wreckage to land?\n\n The ocean? Sounds safer than any other possible alternative.",
"There are a lot of things you want out of a launch site.\n\nThe first is that you want it in your own country. Many rocket payloads are sensitive to national security and you don't want to ship them to another country to launch them.\n\nNext you need a big area where debris can rain down in the event of either a launch failure or just stage separation. Thus far there are no launch vehicles that can get a payload to orbit with a single stage from launch, so there's going to be *something* dropping from every launch. Oceans work very well for this, as does Siberia. Oceans and mountains are often far apart.\n\nAfter that you tend to want to be close to the equator, at least for most launches. If you're going into a \"normal\" orbit then launch eastward to make use of the rotational velocity of the earth. This can be as much as 1000 mph that you don't have to achieve on your own, which is a big deal. Some launches require going pretty much directly north or south (e.g. Sun Synchronous or Polar orbits), for which Vandenburg AFB in California is useful.\n\nWhen you put all of these requirements together you're left with some pretty obvious choices for launch locations. The southern-most areas in the US that are near vast uninhabited areas (i.e. oceans) are the Southern tip of Texas, California, and Florida. Florida is more conveniently located (plenty of industry nearby) so it got the bid for most of NASA's launches. California is only good if you're not launching East, so it's used for some launches. Now SpaceX has started construction on a facility in the southern tip of Texas to have their own facility.\n\n*******\n\nWith all of that said, yes, you would like a higher launch site, all else being equal. It gets you above a lot of the atmosphere which can be a real drag; pun most definitely intended. However, all else is not equal and the other concerns are more substantial. It's worth pointing out that getting to orbit isn't about getting to a high altitude—orbit is only about 250 miles up (altitude of the ISS). It's about getting to a high speed. The space shuttle can get to the altitude of the top of Mt Everest in about 52 seconds, and that's not even traveling straight up. By that point it's already moving largely horizontally at an overall speed of about Mach 1.2.",
"I think two of their criteria are \nA) somewhere on the equator (the earth is spinning the fastest here, so you get to use it's spin to help you out). \nand \nB) Somewhere with a lot of water directly east of them, so if a takeoff goes bad, if it crashes back down it does so over water.\n\nI'm not sure if theres just no good high elevations that meet this criteria, or if it's too challenging to build a mountain base and get rockets there, or if theres some downside to high elevations.",
"The same reason you don't sleep in your driveway so that you can get to the car faster in the morning. The savings are negligible compared to the inconvenience. Launching from the equator provides advantages in speed, and hauling everything up a mountain shaves off a minuscule part of your trip. "
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7oesjy | how does paypal work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7oesjy/eli5how_does_paypal_work/ | {
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"yeah, that's all it takes. you can send, receive, and request payments with just an email or a phone number. you only need an account to receive payments. \n\nhowever, more than likely, this guy is scamming you for item. you'll probably get a fake authentic looking email from paypal saying you've received the money tricking you into giving up the item. "
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qmi3n | what exactly do a president and vice president do all day? | Are they just reading bills and such, do they have people summarizing things to them and just making rulings about it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qmi3n/what_exactly_do_a_president_and_vice_president_do/ | {
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"All sorts of stuff. \n\nPolicy meetings, meeting with various heads of departments, briefings, public appearance stuff, meeting/calling foreign leaders, ",
"Well, in America the president is 1/3 of our government. If a bill passes through Congress, then he must sign it into action. He also has the ability to propose laws or policies for Congress to approve. He probably has a shit load of meetings everyday. I know for a fact the president's schedule is kept by the minute. He has to make several speeches and public addresses every year. Also, a state of the union address. He has the power to order military strikes. And if shit hits the fan (like 9/11) he is the man we all look to for guidance. "
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2esqeu | how bills like cispa can keep being reintroduced but with different names after not being adopted into being? | Like if it didn't work the first time, how can they just call it something else, change a couple things, and then try it again? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2esqeu/eli5_how_bills_like_cispa_can_keep_being/ | {
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"Because there is no law against that. The only thing near that is double jeopardy. But that says that you can't be tried for the same crime twice. There is nothing anywhere that says that they can't try to pass a shitty law after its been defeated. As long as it passes the proper mechanisms, regardless of how many times it failed before, it can become law.",
"It's like that girl that's flirting with you and you want to take it a little further but she says \"no\" - but you know she's not really saying \"no, no\" but \"not yet\".\n\nPlenty of those who vote \"no\" aren't entirely opposed to saying \"yes\", it's just this particular bill on this particular day they're saying \"no\" to. If you stay persistent on it and keep trying, keep arguing, keep persuading, keep trying different wording, you might get a majority \"yes\" some day. \n\nAnd if you think of the analogy, sooner or later somebody's getting screwed.",
"Because anyone can propose any new law, and if you're got politicians that will back it, you're in business, and in the USA, politicians are bought and owned. \n\nIn this case it's like an assassination attempt - most of the time the guards will manage to save the king, but the assassins only need to succeed once, while the guards need to succeed every time, so eventually the day will come when luck runs out, guards are sleeping, whatever, and the deed gets done. Then it's much harder to undo. So there is a large incentive for them to keep trying - eventually those assholes will manage to sneak or buy their law past the guards and onto the books. A better defense might be being more proactive - try to pass laws that preemptively prohibit what the lobbyists want, or which guarantee our rights.",
"How is simple - any member of Congress can generally introduce any idiotic legislation they wish, subject to the rules of their chamber\n\nWhy is more complex - maybe they really believe it's the right thing to do even if it's doomed, or that this time they will be able to get enough support to pass it. However, often they do it for simple political reasons - they can then go campaign and claim \"I fought against X by introducing bill Y\" without mentioning that Bill Y was doomed to failure."
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4eh9d0 | when and how did buttoning the top button of a collared shirt when you're not wearing a tie become a thing? | Buttoning the top button of a button-down collared shirt without a tie used to be a way of signaling a character's social ineptitude (see: Rain Man or Forrest Gump). Now, however, it's all over the place. It seems to be "in" everywhere from hipster hangouts to the runway to hip-hop. How did this came to be? Am I the only one who thinks it looks ridiculous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4eh9d0/eli5_when_and_how_did_buttoning_the_top_button_of/ | {
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"Fashion never made sense. Look at the origins of the necktie.\n _URL_0_"
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4w3bhj | how do you determine something as right or wrong? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w3bhj/eli5_how_do_you_determine_something_as_right_or/ | {
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"Not an explanation but just an interesting comment about this (I think).\n\nI was once talking religion with one of my friends who happens to be Muslim, and I personally don't believe in a God that affects your day to day life. Something might have started everything in the world called God, but I'm not sure that I believe he is watching over me. We were talking about all the different beliefs in the world.\n\nRegardless my Muslim friend asked how I knew right from wrong because I didn't follow the Quran or Bible. I said that I don't think you have to be told what's right and what's wrong usually, you should know.\n\nSo that's a differing of opinion of how you learn right from wrong right there.",
"The same way you decide if you like or hate something: It's how you feel about it.\n\nYour concept of what you feel is right or wrong is largely determined by your upbringing, what others have told you and what your society has taught you; if you are religious, you will also be strongly influenced by what your holy texts explicitly tell you is right or wrong.\n\nUltimately however what you determine is right and wrong is controlled by your own personal feelings. If the idea makes you feel bad, you will find it wrong.",
"I have wrestled with this. My simple conclusion, is if it hurts someone, it is wrong. If I promised something and don't follow through, it's wrong. If keep my word, it is right. If I make sure my actions are not detrimental to others, it is right. \n\nNot every decision is back and white. Some decisions will hurt someone no matter what decision is made. Sometimes it is weighing consequences and outcomes. ",
"One question: would I like it if it was done to me?",
"As everyone pretty much says, it's how you feel about something. \n\nPersonal feelings are a product of genetics, social influences and cultural/religious background.\n\nI like to think about this a lot, because we as a society like to differentiate right from wrong so much that when we feel a certain way about something we completely seem to forget that those feelings are simply that - feelings. Think about something specific that you 100% believe is right and there will be a way to twist it to turn it bad. Which brings me to my second point. \n\nContext. It's much easier to decide when something is right or wrong when given context. Is it wrong to hurt somebody? Of course! Is it wrong to hurt the person who is about to kill your wife and children (sorry for the dramatic example)? It suddenly becomes ok to hurt someone now. There is no 'one rule fits all'. \n"
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73a4hz | how do companies manufacture the pixels for hd displays? | I know how a pixel works, a pixel has 3 cells red, green, blue yadayadayada I get that. However, for years I've wondered how so many pixels could be packed into such a small space. A 1980x1080 monitor contains 2,073,600 pixels, and each pixel has 3 cells, how do people manufacture pixels this tiny? And don't even get me started on smartphones, the fact that 2,073,600 of pixels can get packed into a 5.5 inch display is too much to comprehend. How do they do it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73a4hz/eli5_how_do_companies_manufacture_the_pixels_for/ | {
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"They are not individually made and then assembled.\n\nRather, they are *printed* directly onto the glass of the monitor. They come into existence right in their final location, as layers of deposits of various semi-conducting chemicals.",
"Or, more to the point (pardon the pun), how do they pack a 4k screen into the Sony Xperia XZ Premim?"
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4dgeq6 | why are there articles about new, amazing battery technologies that seem ready for production so often, yet lithium-ion batteries are still the king? what technology is bound to be the next best thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dgeq6/eli5_why_are_there_articles_about_new_amazing/ | {
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"The new batteries are more often than not better versions of Lithium-ion batteries. You do not have to change the element a battery is based on in order to develop the next best thing. ",
"Ready for production does not mean that it will be produced. There is still a big need for development. COmpanies need to figure out how to transfer a new tech into a consumer good, how to produce it, and what it costs in big production numbers. Along that way, many techs turn out to be impossible to manufacture or simply too expensive for success.",
"If you make amazing wonder batteries, and about 1 in every 7000 catches on fire and explodes, that is too many. Those are bombs. Or maybe your batteries work splendidly, as long as they're below 60 degrees F. Above which, they melt and/or explode. People's pockets are typically above this threshold. There are dozens of factors and conditions that have to be considered. Quality control is a big one, since better batteries usually means more energy packed more densely, and electrons get increasingly fussy the closer you try to squish them together. "
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18fxmg | how much truth is there to the idea that the united states invaded iraq for oil? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18fxmg/eli5_how_much_truth_is_there_to_the_idea_that_the/ | {
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"Iraq was on the verge of switching it's oil transaction medium from the US dollar to something else (probably the ruble).\n\nSo there really is no truth to the US wanting Iraq's Oil. What was wanted was the continued value and export of the american dollar.\n\nAmerica exports currency now, that's now the business.\n\nedit: Some people are pointing out that the Euro was in contention; This is not incorrect, it was both Rubles and Euros. I didn't mention Euro because it can be polarizing, and because of past alliances Iraq was (arguably) leaning more toward Moscow. But many see the Euro angle as being the driving force to France trying to stop the US from invasion.\n\nand yes, this is a vast oversimplification of a very complicated game, but this is an answer designed to be simple. Maybe a better answer is \"The US was looking out for the wealth of very, very rich financial institutions.. none of which actually wanted barrels of oil\"",
"You could ask this in /r/answers and get the same response. This doesn't need to be explained like you're five.\n\nEDIT: Even when I attempt to be polite and articulate, I get downvoted. Maybe I should just give up on trying to help people.",
"This question doesn't really belong here. There is no objective answer to the question, no definitive proof for either side. ",
"Pretty much none. The world no longer uses the [Mercantilist](_URL_0_) model of economics, where you conquer nations to gain their resources. Oil prices rose as a result of the invasion, meaning that if \"getting the oil\" was the purpose, it had the opposite effect. Basically, capitalism makes it so wars are very costly because they destroy production and block trade.\n\nHowever, the real reason was removing an irrational and dangerous autocrat who threatened the region and could start a war that would raise global oil prices astronomically. There were also the humanitarian goals of bringing Sadaam to justice for genocide and war crimes as well as the whole WMD situation, which it turns out is a lot more complicated than it's often portrayed (that the US lied). We know with certainty that there was extensive chemical weapon production until at least 1999 and now we still don't know what happened to the weapons since Iraq didn't have the infrastructure to dispose of them safely.\n\nYou could argue very indirectly that oil was one of the reasons, but it doesn't stand up very well.",
"Do you really need something explained to you or are you just looking for an answer? This really belongs in something like /r/answers or /r/AskHistory and not in a subreddit that is designed to give explanations to answers you have but do not understand.",
"It's not true. The U.S. and Canada both have far more oil than Iraq. If we were going to do something political unpopular, it would have been far cheaper and less damaging to simply bull rush a bill through opening up ANWR and plundering the frozen, barren tundra for its vast oil riches.",
"It's only true to the extent that ALL of America's foreign policy interests in the Middle East are about oil.",
"This isn't going to be very eli5 because it's not a very eli5 question haha sorry but here ya go.\n\nIt's not about getting their oil, per se, as many people like to simplify it, but about remaining in control of the market. The USA only gets about 12% of its oil from the Middle East, contrary to what many would think considering all the talk. What we pay for oil is determined by how much oil is released into the market at a time. But when you have somebody like Saddam in power, a friend turned enemy, the last thing they wanted was for him to screw with the oil market. This concept of controlling the market goes back to Rockefeller times, and it's worth looking into the history of oil to get a better sense of it all.\n\nThere's a pretty good PBS documentary series about it called The Prize, based off the 800pg book by Daniel Yergin. You can get it from YouTube. Worth watching, or if you have the time, reading. It's also really well written, like a story, so it's not boring to watch or read. :) also another book, I'd recommend Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell... This book goes into depth about the role that oil plays in democracies. Very very interesting and very relevant to your question. Sorry to recommend books as an answer, but in order to get a full sense of how/why current day politics are directly related to oil, it's very helpful to know the history behind it if you're truly interested.\n\nEdit: disclaimer: I'm no expert.. This is just based on the little that I know about the history of oil and its relationship to democracy. Also these things aren't fact, as there is no definitive answer. We intentionally avoided talk of oil when going into Iraq, and instead we used dialogue which subconsciously linked Iraq to the 9/11 attacks in the minds of Americans (which of course Iraq had nothing to do with). We had many reasons for going into Iraq, but one thing that the government remained quiet about was oil.",
"It's not true that oil was **the** reason.\n\nThe reasons for the Iraq invasion were complicated and driven by fear (the need to 'find someone to fight') and greed ([PNAC/neo-con fantasies](_URL_0_)), but oil wasn't a major factor.",
"Practically none. Iraq was invaded because the neocons thought they could remake the Middle East into a region of free-market democracies by toppling dictators. The easiest one to topple was Hussein, but the only clear excuse they could all agree on to do so was the WMDs. Everyone thought he had them, even if there was no proof, so they \"stovepiped\" intelligence - pushing raw, dubious intel up the chain without critical analysis in order to bolster their weak argument - and supported intelligence they probably knew was phony. They believed they would find WMDs, we would be welcomed as liberators, we would reshape the Middle East in our favor (which has too many benefits to list, control of oil being only one), and we would remind the rest of the world that our military is still number one and we can use it where and how we wish to enforce our will (the subtext there is, after the end of the Cold War, the neocons were worried the military-industrial complex would lose its relevance and, therefore, its bottomless well of money). \n\nTL;DR: the money to be made from Iraqi oil is nowhere near as important as the money to be made from the US military-industrial-security complex.\n\nEdit: forgot about Curveball.",
"As someone who was an young adult during this, saw friends get sent to Iraq, had friends die in Iraq, and had friends return broken and scarred from Iraq, I don't know.\n\nBut it was 2002 and all you kept hearing about was WMD WMD WMD. Sadddam 911. And it was pretty obvious they were trying to connect Saddam to 911, wait, I mean associate him with 911. And anyone with half a brain could see right through it. And one of the few people on news that was standing up saying it was all bullshit was this former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. And then suddenly, wait he's arrested as a pedophile. That's when I knew this was going down. That war is happening. It was total pre war PR blitz. It's still haunting.\n\nThen the war happened and you literally heard nothing about WMD's ever again. It was all about toppling that horrible tyrant. Was it for oil. Was it Israel bidding. Was it the result of a humongous rolling incompetent cluster fuck called the Bush Administration. Strategic positioning. \n\nWhatever the reason, before the war someone sure had a real hard itch about starting that war, and it sure as hell wasnt about wmd.",
"TIL nobody really knows wtf happened",
"It is a question of CONTROL of oil, not access. It is also a question of removing regimes that challenged American regional control and imposing a set of policies -- err, \"do's and don'ts\" -- on Iraq that would allow foreign investors to basically steal Iraq's stuff (of which oil was one type of stuff). \n\nBut saying it was just about oil is too vague. It was about control more than the oil itself.",
"Yeah, it was irony that Libya was going to ditch the dollar for the gold standard and we invaded days later, too.",
"I think a lot of good points have been raised in this thread.\nI would like to make one small point. The question raised\nwas \"Why did the United States invade Iraq\", and the answer\nshould only deal with what the Bush administration believed\nat that time. \n\nMaking a point that it was not for oil because it appears that the end result was different does not mean that they did not invade Iraq because of it. (Nor does it mean that they did). But we should not factor in end results when contemplating why the Bush administration was hell bent on invading Iraq.",
"Only a small group of individuals will ever know to be honest. I'd say the real factor was making sure Iraq sells oil in US dollars, this is also the speculated reason we gave a crap about Libya. Having people do transactions in USD is GREAT for the US, there's no other way to put it. ",
"Well, there's three interperetations of this. \n\n1. George W. Bush and a bunch of his political cronies, at the behest of the oil executives, declared War on Iraq in order to get access to oil. \n2. As a result of socioeconomic forces, Iraq was *chosen* from among a list of unstable regimes based in party on the fact that is has oil. \n3. As a result of socioeconomic forces, Iraq was inevitably invaded because it had oil - though the fact that it had oil was not part of the actual decision for invading Iraq. \n\nAnd regarding the 'truth' in them:\n\n1. Zero. There is no evidence, zero, that Bush or anyone else in the administration invaded Iraq for their own economic benefit, or that of others. Conspiracy Theorists will pile up coincidences left and right, but when you are talking about truth you are talking about fact, and there is no evidence. I'll also say that by and large mass conspiracies are horseshit. \n2. This is possible to likely, depending on how you intereperet memos produced by the National Security Council. But I don't think it's particularly sinister - Saddam was a bad guy, and the fact that he was gone or the fact that oil was used as part of the reason to justify taking him down and now, eg, Kim Jong Il, shouldn't really cause anyone to lose sleep. \n3. This is almost certainly true. The Hussein regime was completely and utterly dependent upon oil revenues for its power, and its international influence. If Iraq wasn't an oil-rich country there wouldn't have been a war in the first place. ",
"There was a few reasons to invade Iraq. The United States wanted to establish Iraq as an area it could (if they desired)launch military attacks on Syria and Iran and to have influence in the region. Having additional influence would be desirable because it could influence OPEC and its monopoly on oil pricing). Additionally there was the thought that Iraq could be turned into a prosperous capitalist democracy like Germany and Japan were after the end of the Second World War. The administration (Bush) also believed that they could adapt an Israeli strategy, a strategy that called for a pre-emptive strike on terrorist. Part of their reasoning was they could invade Iraq and prevent further terrorist attacks from occurring by pre-emptive attack. Lastly there was the very public reason that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ‘WMDs’.\n\nPalmer, M. (2007). The politics of the Middle East. (2nd ed., pp. 221-260). Thomson Wadsworth.\n",
"Almost none. I actually wrote a paper on this in college. The real reason we went in had nothing to do with oil, WMDs, or helping the people of Iraq become free of Saddam Hussein. The real reason is because the United States wanted another pro-American government in the Middle East to put pressure on the anti-American governments.",
"Prior to the invasion Sadam announced that Iraq would switch from US$ to Euros as the trading currency for future oil deals. No other oil exporting country has tried this since.",
"Lets see, i'm still paying close to $4 a gallon at the pump. So if we did, where is the oil? GIVE US YOUR OIL!",
"This is my understanding;\n\nThe WMD's were not the but-for cause of the invasion of Iraq; meaning that if it wasn't the WMD's, it was going to be something else. Moreover, Iraq was not supposed to be the end.\n\nThe Bush Doctrine advocated the use of American political, economic, and military power--power that we had obtained at rather steep costs--to go out and make the world a better place for democracy, capitalism, and American interests and values. Iraq was a major regional power pole, it had a virulently hostile leader, and it had the potential to seriously compromise the free flow of oil; the lifeblood of Western economies. Makes the place a logical starting point.\n\nHad the operation been conducted and concluded with competency, the Bush Doctrine might not have ended up being such a failure. But alas, we fucked it up. ",
"I think when most people say that we did it for the oil, it's to mean that we did it for reasons that were different than what the government told the public. Which is true. \nWe recognized an unstable region, (Under developed infrastructure, rich in natural resources, volatile power structures.) and figured it would be in our best interest (for capitalistic reasons like oil, as well as for our investment in Israel) to stabilize it. \nAlso years of preexisting racism made the public particularly receptive to the idea of invading a mid-east country. [Ed Said](_URL_0_) Does a great job of explaining. \n",
" There is a term coined the petro-dollar which refers to the U.S. control of oil refineries in the Middle East during the Cold War. Essentially, the U.S. agreed to provide military protection to oil wells in the Middle East if they agreed to sell their oil in the U.S. dollar. This forced all other countries (The Soviets and Europeans being most important) to stockpile U.S. dollars in order to maintain oil supplies for their ever increasing armies. This started sometime in the 1950's and reached completion by 1969 (Nearly every Middle Eastern country was selling oil in the dollar at this point). Their are interesting videos as well as a wikipedia page to read on the petro-dollar, and it is only with the petrodollar that the U.S. was able to outspend the Soviets. It may not sound that this could provide huge amounts of money for the U.S., but it has resulted in huge, huge amounts of extra income that has continued unhindered. Unhindered, that is, until the Iraqi's decided that they had enough of selling oil in the dollar and wanted to sell in the Euro (The euro would have provided a 20 percent increase in revenues off oil because it was much stronger at the time). This is the point at which the U.S. decided to start making plans to invade Iraq and topple the dictatorship (Yes, the dictatorship they established after toppling the previous democratic government that was to far aligned with the Soviets). Then, 9/11 happened, and the government had a large amount of support to commence there war. After the invasion, the very first thing to happen was the switch back to the U.S. dollar. And so, there is a rather legitimate reason to concerns over middleastern invasions for oil. If you want to know more about how much income the U.S. actually receives from this I can find a link for you. Or a link to any other information you would like to know about the petrodollar.",
"As someone who works in oil and gas, lives in the middle east and majored in US politics I can say one thing for you. \n\nIraq did have the 2nd largest reserves of oil. However it had the lowest yield of any oil production nation (due to all the equipment being horrendous old and undermaintained, which it still is to this day). \n\nTherefore it would have taken around 40 years of work and a gigantic amount of money (more than the war itself cost) to actually start yielding an amount that would pay off the invasion and turn a profit.\n\nLogically why on earth would Bush do that for something he wouldn't see the reward for in his lifetime.\n\n*Source: I won a national award on my dissertation on Bush's FP in this era. This is my expertise."
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism"
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31rfk0 | why can't i remember things when i tell myself to? | As in, why is, "I don't need to write that down, I'll remember it!" completely ineffective? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31rfk0/eli5_why_cant_i_remember_things_when_i_tell/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq48nhm"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"No effort was made to remember it. You have to develop further context/fire up a few more neurons/create a stronger network of interrelated ideas - otherwise it will stay in short term memory and away it goes. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
25xgfn | if outer space is zero pressure, how does earth's atmosphere keep in everything? | Like what forces keeps the atmosphere (O3, O2, N2, etc) at a gradient ie the atmosphere gets thinner right? Why doesn't it all just get dispersed into space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25xgfn/eli5_if_outer_space_is_zero_pressure_how_does/ | {
"a_id": [
"chlp8i3",
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"text": [
"At the very top of our atmospher the air pressure is essentially a vacuum. The air is very hot but very sparse. Its torn away regularly leaking into space due to solar heating and tidal effects. We release lots of air into space. That is replenished from water from the oceans and from gases dissolved in the magma. We also get new water from meteors and comets. \n\nDeeper the air is thin but its very cold. All that very thin cold air is lying like a blanket on still deeper air, compressing it a little bit. Next below that the air has to support not just the cold air above it but also the next layer above that. \n\nThe equations that describe the static pressure of homogeneous cylinder of gas under gravity and open at one end are fairly [straightforward](_URL_0_), but they're also easy to visualize. If you stacked marshmallows three stories high the bottom ones would get squished.",
"gravity holds the atmosphere to the planet, but very light elements like helium can be blown off into space by solar winds. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_models"
],
[]
] | |
6s2bme | why do facebook pages use videos of still images instead of just a picture? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s2bme/eli5_why_do_facebook_pages_use_videos_of_still/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I believe it is because videos get more visibility when shared versus text & pic updates. It is all dependent upon Facebook's algorithm which favors more towards videos. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
226slz | is swallowing phlegm bad for you? | What's in phlegm? Sometimes you get a nasty loogie and just can't spit it out. It's gross to swallow it, but is it bad for you too? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/226slz/eli5is_swallowing_phlegm_bad_for_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgjw62f"
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"score": [
2
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"text": [
"If it's your phlegm, it's probably not going to hurt you. If it's someone else's phlegm, then that's really gross, and a good way to spread germs. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
2tbbpg | what would be the impact if in the next presidential election, a republican wins, thus controlling both congress and white house? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tbbpg/eli5_what_would_be_the_impact_if_in_the_next/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnxfoq2"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"\"can they make a ridiculous, highly partisan law/bill come to life?\"\n\nYes. If the Democrats have enough members they can fillibuster and use other procedures to prevent votes. But in general the Republicans would have free reign.\n\nAnd of course, if the new law is ridiculous enough to be potentially unconstitutional the Supreme Court will get involved - this is the final check"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
3arudt | how can a commercial show a competitor brand in a negative light, but a television show/movie/book has to use made-up versions of a brand? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3arudt/eli5_how_can_a_commercial_show_a_competitor_brand/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Television shows and movies aren't *required* to hide brands. They do it on purpose to avoid giving free advertising. If a company wants their brand shown, they're going to have to pay for it.",
"/u/AnteChronos is mostly right, but there's a bit more to it.\n\nSomeone's brand is controlled by trademark law. And without getting into it too much, law allows a brand owner to stop uses that are likely to confuse consumers as to source, affiliation, or sponsorship. I can't call my new fangled soda-pop Coca-Cola because consumers would believe that it's the same soda produced by that big corporation in Atlanta, or, at a minimum, that I had permission to use their name on my product.\n\nIn the Pepsi ad, no one believes that Pepsi is affiliated with or sponsored by Coke, even though Pepsi used their name. Plus, if you couldn't compare your product to your competitor, your speech rights are implicated. \n\nThe television show may be using generic products because it wants to extract money for product placements. On the other hand it may be worried that if it uses real products in their shows, and the owner of the product doesn't like the use, they might get sued for trademark infringement because a consumer may be confused that the mark owner sponsored or affiliated with the TV show. \nLet's say that awful rapist guy from Game of Thrones is always seen wearing Hanes briefs just before he goes in for the kill. Hanes will say \"wait! we don't want to be associated with that message!\" and may be able to sue GOT because consumers know about product placement and may be confused that they have associated with that message. \n(And if anything on the product is copyrighted, like artwork, the owner may have a copyright claim if the art is reused without permission!)\nSo, out of an abundance of caution, and/or to extract money in product placement, many forms of art just avoid real products altogether.\n"
]
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[],
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5elz27 | how does the destruction of thousands of tons of illegal ivory help fight poachers and the black market? | Wouldn't that make them that much more valuable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5elz27/eli5_how_does_the_destruction_of_thousands_of/ | {
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"We're making a statement that ivory is never going to be sold in a legitimate way. Basically, if we find *any* ivory, it's illegal. There's no way to smuggle it or \"launder\" it like you'd do with ill-gotten money and pretend you got it from a legitimate source. It's a strong statement, but this *is* kind of a big deal. ",
"In order to make money on poaching, there's two steps. First, kill the rhino. Second, sell the horn. (or whatever animal.) If you only complete step one, you wasted a lot of time and effort.\n\nBy destroying confiscated ivory, you ensure that step two doesn't ever happen for a LOT of poachers. Yes, a few who didn't get caught will make a lot of money. But it means that *most* poachers will be frustrated out of their profits and hopefully discouraged from trying again.",
"The short answer is that it doesn't. Many economists argue that by decreasing supply, destroying confiscated ivory makes poaching more profitable and actually encourages more poaching. It hasn't been widely studied in the ivory market, but the scarcity dynamic applies in almost every other commodity market that has been studied, including other black market commodities such as illegal drugs, so there is no credible reason to suggest that it wouldn't apply in the ivory market as well.",
"Why do they use actual rhino horn in Chinese medicine? Surely you could give the idiot patient any old rubbish for the same price and with the same effect. Where did this ridiculous motion even come from? Who in China has even seen a rhino, let alone carried out extensive testing on its horn (pure keratin) to evaluate its properties? It's almost as stupid as homeopathy. Hard to have faith in humanity sometimes.\n",
"There is actually an Indian company that has learned how to perfectly clone ivory and was planning on completely flooding the market with fake ivory to destroy the trade. It was about two years ago and I have no idea what happened to that. ",
"Destroying illegal ivory reduces the supply, thus raising the price (law of supply and demand), and therefore increasing the incentives for poachers to kill the few remaining elephants.\n\nHence the controversy about whether or not this is a good idea.",
"By making sure that the only ivory on the market is illegal, there will be no way for criminals to \"launder\" dirty ivory to make it appear clean.\n\nIt also makes sure that buyers can't claim \"I thought it was legal ivory\".\n\nSo, basically, it's to make the point \"If it's ivory, then it's illegal, and you shouldn't buy/sell it.\".",
"Economically, it doesn't--destroying ivory reduces the supply, increasing its price, this making it *more* profitable to poach. From an economic standpoint, it's a dumb, counterproductive idea.\n\nFrom a PR perspective, it's not bad--not only are you raising awareness of the ivory trade, you're also signifying that the seller's market is actively looking to discourage it. This is kinda thin, since \"awareness\" campaigns are generally oversold, and ivory sellers don't really care what happens to the ivory once they get their money, but there is *some* value in the PR.\n\nWhether the PR outweighs the bad economics is part of the controversy. Personally, I think it's a bad idea, but I'm willing to hear opposing sides.\n\n"
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2c4e0n | how does banning revenge porn not contradict copyright laws? | I've been reading a lot about revenge porn lately, which usually involves an angry ex posting naked pics or sex tapes. If the ex who's posting things took the pictures/videos, then don't they own the copyright on them? Shouldn't they legally be able to post them anywhere they want?
(I understand why it's revenge porn is unethical. I'm not trying to defend people who do it, I'm just curious.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c4e0n/eli5_how_does_banning_revenge_porn_not_contradict/ | {
"a_id": [
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"For starters, pornography has special restrictions about records that have to be maintained to prove age and consent to appear. Also, depending on the scenario, the subject would have the expectation of privacy and control over commercial use of their likeness.\n\nThat's why you generally have to sign a release when you're posing for a real photographer.",
"Owning the copyright on something doesn't necessarily mean you are free to do what you like with it. Copyright is about preventing others from benefiting from the work you legally own without your permission. Putting restrictions on how you can use your own intellectual property doesn't contradict that.",
"The same reason that banning child pornography doesn't infringe on copyright. \n\nCertain classes of content can be restricted. The person who took the photos still retains the copyright, and if someone takes those photos without authorization, they can be sued for infringement.\n\nHowever, whether it is legal for you to share (or even own) a copyrighted piece of content is far from universal.\n\nAt this point in time, society has decided that revenge porn is not something it wants to tolerate. As a result, they have passed laws to restrict its commercial value. "
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[],
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atjptz | why can't our immune system fight against many diseases without external medication? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atjptz/eli5_why_cant_our_immune_system_fight_against/ | {
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"You would be surprised how much your immune system can fight off. Many people just choose to seek medical treatment so they don’t have to suffer longer. You can fight off most minor infections, but who wants a month of an ear infection when we can cut that down to 5 days? You can be more proactive and miss less work when you get medical intervention. Not to mention feeling like garbage less. \n\nEdit: you fight off viruses naturally because you can’t cure a viral infection, the flu, rotavirus (stomach flu), common cold. Those take a beating on you, but you probably survived! ",
"The same reason why the Finns lost the winter war, not enough recourses to fight that many fronts for along time. Especially cause ever disease needs something else to be fought off, so the body must split his recourses again, which makes it more ineffective. I hope you understand, iam not a native English man or a pro in this area but that's the way I think it must be.",
"For the most part, the external medications are an effort to minimize the *symptoms*. \n\nYour body *is* what defeats the actual disease."
]
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1j43rj | as a woman, why is it that i can painlessly poop but i cannot have anal sex without crying in pain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j43rj/eli5_as_a_woman_why_is_it_that_i_can_painlessly/ | {
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"text": [
"Poop is slippery and malleable. Not so your partner. Lube can help with the slippery part, but the size isn't adjustable.",
"its not just a female thing, you need to use a lot of lubcrication and go slow... try smashing a cucumber through a doughnut thats what your doing to your but when not using lube and letting your self get used to it. \n\nps. google is your friend. ",
"When you poop you relax the muscle. My gf tells me she \"pushes\" like she's pooping when I'm sliding in. Then she just relaxes and I wait for her to adjust for me being in her. ",
"The sphincter's job is to keep the poop in all day, even when you sleep. It's relaxed state is \"closed\". You've trained your anus to only open when you sit on a toilet.\n\nSo anal sex hurts because you haven't practiced teaching your anus to open the same way it does on the toilet. It hurts when you try to put something inside it when you've not opened it up first. ",
"Because you're probably not pooping out giant hot cock.\n\n"
]
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45loat | why do the majority of girls growing up tend to have a similar writing style? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45loat/eli5_why_do_the_majority_of_girls_growing_up_tend/ | {
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"czynspz",
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"text": [
"Like the same hand writing? ",
"Girls who are following traditional gender roles will want to have \"feminine\" handwriting, which they interpret as meaning attractive, smooth, gentle curves, etc., so they aim for those goals every time they practice handwriting.\n\nThe idea of flourishes like dotting I's with hearts or flowers is learned from older kids, and motivated for the same reason.\n\nA lot of guys, and girls who do not follow traditional roles, may have messy handwriting by comparison simply because they don't have the same concerns.\n\nAn interesting tidbit: I once read that people who lose use of their arms and learn to write by holding a pen in their mouths, once they get good at it, have the same handwriting style that they once had with writing with their hand."
]
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[],
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2cqf57 | why does technology double every two years? | Why not 1.5x, or 3x, or any other variation in advancement? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cqf57/eli5_why_does_technology_double_every_two_years/ | {
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"text": [
"It is more like every 3 years now, and it is just an observed trend. It advances because people are trying really hard, but there is no rule it must progress at such a rate.",
"2x in two years can also be described as 1.4x in one year or 2.8x in three. It probably just made more sense to say it doubles every X months. There is nothing fundamental about either the 2x or the two years. Originally, it was 18 months and it also changes from year to year and is also different depending on what you mean with technology. The only thing that is fundamental about this is the exponential growth, as opposed to a linear growth. That is, 'the number of transistors per dollar is doubling every X months', rather than 'is increasing with 200 transistors every X months'"
]
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[],
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cbf08b | the almost surely probability concept | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbf08b/eli5_the_almost_surely_probability_concept/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Think about throwing an infinitely-pointy dart at a square poster that you can measure infinitely well, to an infinite precision and accuracy. This poster is half red and half blue, cut across in a diagonal line. You throw the dart perfectly at random, and you always hit one spot on the poster: the red side 50% of the time, and the blue side 50% of the time.\n\nWhat are the odds of getting your dart to land exactly on the diagonal?\n\nWell, it's zero. Not just super, super unlikely, like randomly shuffling two decks of cards of having them come out identically, but actually *zero* chance. The closer you zoomed in on your dartboard, the more you'd be able to see that the dart is on one side or the other, no matter how slightly. There is no point where the dart can hit the exact diagonal, because the exact diagonal has no area. It *exists* -- the blue half is the blue half, and the red half is the red half, and because there's no gradient between the two we can say it's a perfectly sharp transition between the two -- but because it has no area. \n\nThe problem is, a dart landing on one of those points is in theory no less likely than it landing on any other specific point on the board, when looked at at the same scale. Mathematicians get around this by saying 'almost surely': there is a probability of 1 that the dart will land somewhere other than the border, but the border is still -- technically -- a valid place for the dart to land.",
"Let's say that I pick any positive integer, at random. What is the probability that the number I pick is 42?\n\nWell let's start with an easier question: are the odds that I pick 42 more or less than 1/10? Surely it is less than 1/10, because I had more than 10 numbers to choose from. If I did this over and over again, there's no reason why I would pick 42 any more often than the other numbers, so I wouldn't pick it more than 1/10 of the time. This should be pretty easy to convince yourself of.\n\nWhat about 1/100? Again, it should be pretty clear that the chance that I'll pick 42 is less than 1/100.\n\nWhat about 1/1,000,000? Again, there are way more than a million numbers to pick from, so the odds that I pick 42 are smaller than one in a million.\n\nWe can keep going, as far as you want. You name any big number N, and the odds that I picked 42 are smaller than one in N. \n\n*There is no positive probability that is smaller than the probability that I picked 42.*\n\nI could make the same argument for any number - not just 42. Whatever number you name, the chance that I will pick it is so close to zero that it's tempting to just call it zero.\n\nBut I am going to pick some number, so it also doesn't make sense to assign a probability of zero to each number. We can use \"almost surely\" to describe situations like this, where the probability of an event is smaller than any positive number, but the sum of the probabilities of all the events is one.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThere's a practical problem with the game I described above, which is just meant to give you something to chew on:\n\nWhat's the chance that the number I pick is less than a million? It turns out that by a similar argument, I will almost surely not pick such a number. The same is true for the chance that I'll pick a number smaller than a billion. \n\nEven scarier, the chance that I'll pick a number with *fewer than a trillion digits* is basically zero.\n\nEven though there are an unimaginable number of integers with fewer than a trillion digits, there are so many more integers with more than a trillion digits that I am pretty much guaranteed to pick one of the bigger ones.\n\nSo the game is a bit silly, because just writing down my number would *almost surely* take longer than any amount of time you give me to do it, even if that amount of time is billions and billions of years. Yikes!"
]
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9hybkc | what is the riemanm hypothesis and what does it have to do with prime numbers? | Bringing this up as I saw a news article saying that a mathematician has found a way to prove this particular hypothesis, which has been unsolved for more than a century. Reading the wikipedia article just gave me a headache :( | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hybkc/eli5_what_is_the_riemanm_hypothesis_and_what_does/ | {
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"So, firstly, it is almost guaranteed that this mathematician does not have a proof. While Atiyah is a very well respected mathematician (Fields medalist and winner of the Abel Prize), anyone can only hope to do a sliver of what he's done, it's not related to his specialization and he's almost 90 years old and has a history of making some wild claims and not following through with proofs in his late age. \n\nBut the Riemann Hypothesis is looking to understand more about the primes. We know that there are infinitely many primes, and we have a rough idea of how frequently we can expect them to pop up as you move down the number line. Very loosely, around the arbitrary number N, we can expect a prime to pop up with probability roughly equal to 1/ln(N). Figuring this out and proving it was a huge accomplishment, basically the \"Riemann Hypothesis\" of the 1800s. The issue with this results is that we can quantify the wiggle room around this approximate value of 1/ln(N), there's not a *ton* but there's enough so that it can get in the way of us concluding many different things about primes. The Riemann Hypothesis is basically the statement that we're overestimating this wiggle room and that we can make this wiggle room a lot smaller than it is now. Intuitively, this means that the primes are a lot more \"smoothly\" distributed along the number line than the original result from the late 1800s predicts.\n\nThe way that this works is that you can blend together information about the primes, and encode this information into a function. As an idea of how this works, you know that the exponential function 2^(x), 3^(x), 5^(x), 7^(x), 11^(x),... all grow at different rates depending on how big they are and, in a way, if you knew how the combined function 2^(x)+3^(x)+5^(x)+7^(x)+11^(x)+... then you might know a bit about how the primes grow all together. Of course, this vastly simplifies how it is actually done, but this is the base idea of how you can make a function that encodes information about the primes. You don't get any information about a single prime, just the primes as a whole. Kinda like how when you hear a choir, you don't hear any individual, but all of them combined as a single object. \n\nNow, because this function is sufficiently constructed, there are specific ways of poking this function to extract certain kinds of choir-level information about the primes. One important thing about this function is that the numbers that return zero when you plug them in more-or-less totally determine the function. It's kinda like how the polynomial x^(2)-1 is almost completely determined by the fact that it is zero at x=1 and x=-1 (you don't need to know much more than that to get this function). So, since this function encodes the primes, and these zeros determine this function, it follows that we should be able to relate choir-level information about the primes to choir-level information about these zeros. This is, explicitly, what the Riemann Hypothesis does. It says that the zeros of this function are as optimally distributed as we can guarantee, which means that the primes are as \"smoothly\" distributed as they can be."
]
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6lk46h | when does it go from "my cute little baby who is naked" to child porn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lk46h/eli5_when_does_it_go_from_my_cute_little_baby_who/ | {
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"text": [
"When sexual content is introduced.\n\nNudity is not pornography, and having or taking pictures of naked children, in and of itself, is not illegal. It only becomes pornography when the primary purpose is to illicit a sexual response. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
byajdy | when popping popcorn, why does the first kernel popped not burn while the others are being popped? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/byajdy/eli5_when_popping_popcorn_why_does_the_first/ | {
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"Some general background: Boiling water in a pot is always (usually) at 100 deg C or 212 F. When boiling or steaming food, the phase change from liquid to vapor controls the cooking temperature, until there is no more water. \n\nAs applied to popping corn, the microwave, stove or kettle heats the water in the kernel and when it boils, the kernel pops. When the majority of the kernels are unpopped or actively popping, the temperature is relatively controlled, so the first kernels aren't burning. When the last few kernels are popping or popping is complete there is less water becoming steam to moderate the temperature, and the corn increases temperature rapidly and it is more likely to burn.\n\nEdited for clarity, apparently some thought I was making a case for boiling corn kernels in water. Probably moved it out of an eli5 though.\n\nEdit 2: some awesome discussion downline of granular convection, actual temps for popping and so forth. All have impacts on why the first popper doesn't burn. I contend latent heat of evaporation and escaping steam and resulting loss in temp moderation is the main driver in why popcorn goes from just popping to inedible so quickly",
"Because the popped popcorn kernels ride on top of the un-popped kernels.\n\nthe un-popped kernels are dense and small, so they fall to the bottom, while the popped ones are big and light, so they allow themselves to be pushed upwards. When a kernel pops, it throws itself upward, out of the unpopped kernels, in a little explosion.",
"Popcorn pops at [approximately 180°C](_URL_0_) (355°F). When it pops, it tends to bounce up, and away from the heating surface, allowing for rapid partial cooling, and temporarily coming to rest on top of the remaining unpopped corn (slightly farther away from the heat). Corn burns at approximately 230°C (450°F), so it would need to sit in the hot pan/popper/oil long enough to get up to that temperature in order to burn, and by that point, most of the remaining corn is usually popped.",
"If you accidentally stop microwaving too soon and there's still a lot of kernels, don't try to reheat the bag again. It will catch fire.",
"The real question here is why is the first kernel to pop always smaller then the following kernels?",
"While there are still a lot of unpopped kernels and only a few already popped, the energy is absorbed by the unpopped kernels. It is only until a few unpopped kernels are left, that the already popped kernels start to absorb energy and get burnt.\n\nCopy pasted my top answer from: _URL_0_",
"The Kernals probably get up to boiling point pretty quickly, then whilst the moister inside them vaporizes, the temperature is stuck at 100 C because boiling water into water vapour takes all the additional energy. Then when enough steam has been produced, the kernal explodes.",
"Related: How does my microwave (with a \"popcorn\" button) know when to stop? It's almost scary how accurate it is.",
"Is there any other grain in the planet that pops as corn does?",
"because the other ones, by popping, keep their neighbors moving around in the volume they are contained, like molecules of a gas heating.",
"The same reason anything doesn't burn. The moisture in it regulates the temperature. As the water content drops lower and lower, things start to burn.\n\nThink of something like fried chicken. If you put a little ball of flour into hot oil it would burn very quickly. But the flour coating the chicken browns only as the chicken cooks because the moisture escaping and changing phase keeps the temp well below what it would take to burn flour",
"The kernels absorb more heat than those that are already popped. Once the large majority of kernels are popped, there is less thermal energy being absorbed by the kernels, and the already popped corn begins to burn.",
"I always thought it just rested on top of the cooler still to be popped corn outside of the oil",
"Ever cooked them in a pan/pot? Those on the bottom will burn. I believe they don’t in an air popper or not as much as you would think in a pot because the lowermost popped kernels insulate the rest of them from the heat.",
"Okay not gonna lie, I read \"when pooping popcorn\" and the other half was naturally confusing for like a solid 15 seconds."
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5nw1dd | why is evidence found illegally by police inadmissible in court? | I am **NOT** asking why it is illegal to do random search and seizures of private property, or why police officers gathering evidence should be charged. Rather I am curious why any evidence found illegally is considered inadmissible? Its still evidence isn't it? Is it simply because it was found illegally or are there other reasons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nw1dd/eli5_why_is_evidence_found_illegally_by_police/ | {
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"In the simplest way it's because they broke your rights, typically either legally or your constitution, and if we allowed cops to break these rules for evidence that defeats their purpose in the first place. ",
"If police officers just got a slap on the wrist, but allowed them to still use the evidence, then there would be almost nothing to stop them from doing it. Having the evidence thrown out forces them to do good police work to get probable cause for a search warrant",
"2 main reasons why.\n\nThe first is that any evidence illegal seized is can be viewed as planted. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty so if you commit an illegal search without possible cause then the evidence is not tied to the suspect.\n\nThe second main reason is that it acts as a deterrent. If illegally gathered evidence was able to be submitted than there would be no real reason to not do it. If all you will face is a B & E, if even that, then why not do it and completely void the amendment. ",
"It's to incentivize police to respect suspect's rights.\n\nIf illegally-obtained evidence was admissible in court, you'd have Dirty Harry breaking into your house and going through your things if he thought you were guilty.\n\n(Speaking of Dirty Harry, remember that scene where he tortures the dude by standing on his gunshot wound to get a confession, which is later ruled inadmissible?)\n\nSure, police would still be liable for illegally obtaining evidence but the criminal justice system is slow to punish their own, and many police departments favor convictions over respecting criminal's rights. ",
"It comes from the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution:\n\n > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. [SOURCE](_URL_0_)\n\nIn short, it is one of the most basic rights you possess as a US citizen. If police could ignore it and the evidence they illegally gathered was allowed to be admitted to court then that constitutional right would be meaningless.\n\nSo, the only thing that can be done is to reject all evidence illegally obtained.\n\nUnfortunately, this has been one of the most eroded constitutional rights we have. The Supreme Court has given great leeway to law enforcement on this issue. So, while it is not entirely gone it affords you little protection these days (sadly). Indeed it took another hit just last year (mid 2016): [Another Hit to the Fourth Amendment](_URL_1_) < -- That article describes the dissent which illustrates why this is important...well worth a read.",
"Quick question which follows this:\n\nWhat does actually happen if someone has been proven guilty but said proof has been acquired illegally? How does justice deal with this then, because after all it still proves another criminal act. And especially: How else would you proof it, if the proof has already been found but can't be used? \n\nI do understand the neccesity for this, yet I have always wondered what is going to happen next. ",
"No, it's not still evidence.\n\nSuch non-evidence is indistinguishable from planted fake evidence."
]
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1xatuh | how do states have time to pass silly bills when there are far more pressing issues at hand? | For example, in California, we banned the sale of fois gras that is produced in California. The ethical issue of force feeding an animal to enlarge its liver is one thing, but this is not a significant issue to the vast majority of people. I would assume that there inst enough money behind this issue to force this bill through.
SO: Why in the world is it even taken up as a bill to be voted on.
source:_URL_0_ (because wikipedia never lies) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xatuh/eli5_how_do_states_have_time_to_pass_silly_bills/ | {
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"Writing a bill can be done by anyone with the interest in doing it. Many bills are written by companies or organizations, they just find one state senator to sponsor it. Voting on a bill hardly takes any time at all.\n\nWhat takes a long time is finding compromise. With the really difficult and important issues, nobody can agree on the solution, so state legislatures spend most of their time arguing about how to compromise.\n"
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2u2f1c | why were the seals assigned to take out osama? | And could any of the other Special Forces have done it too IYO? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u2f1c/eli5_why_were_the_seals_assigned_to_take_out_osama/ | {
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"From what I understand, the team that executed the raid were specifically chosen because of their recent operational experience in Afghanistan, and they had first hand Pakistan cross border experience. On top of that, as soon as they arrived in the states from their most recent mission, they were able to be secreted to an airbase to immediately commence their mission specific training for the operation without anyone noticing.\n\nAlso, the planners put in charge for the operation were previous DEVGRU (Seal 6) members.\n\n[Source:](_URL_0_) *In late 2010, Obama ordered Panetta to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound. Panetta contacted Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the SEAL in charge of JSOC. Traditionally, the Army has dominated the special-operations community, but in recent years the SEALs have become a more prominent presence; McRaven’s boss at the time of the raid, Eric Olson—the head of Special Operations Command, or SOCOM—is a Navy admiral who used to be a commander of DEVGRU*\n\n**and**\n\n*The Abbottabad raid was not DEVGRU’s maiden venture into Pakistan, either. The team had surreptitiously entered the country on ten to twelve previous occasions, according to a special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid.*\n\n**and**\n\n[Source:](_URL_1_) *Instead, Mr. Obama turned to Adm. McRaven to further develop the idea of a helicopter raid. Adm. McRaven assembled a team drawing from Red Squadron, one of four that make up SEAL Team 6. Red Squadron was coming home from Afghanistan and could be redirected with little notice inside the military.*\n\n*The team had experience with cross-border operations from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and had language skills that would come in handy as well. The team performed two rehearsals at a location inside the U.S.*",
"I've read a couple of places online (all speculation of course) that devgru was picked because the head of special forces was a navy guy. If the head of special forces had been an army guy it probably would have been delta force. Both groups were capable of the mission. ",
"I recall reading an article where someone explained that a small team of commandos like the SEALS were the most tactically suited to the situation. SEALS apparently work best in relatively smaller groups, whereas, say, the Army Rangers are best used as a full battallion. Therefore they decided that the best and most efficient way to go into a small compound, kill one guy and any resistance, and get the hell out, was to send a small group of Navy SEALS."
]
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"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/getting-bin-laden?currentPage=all",
"http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704083904576334160172068344"
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5vgmtu | how gangs work | I am from Europe but I am very interested in American gang life style. I was hoping if someone could give me detailed explanation how do gangs actually identify members as I heard they don't use colors anymore and also I doubt all the TV documents are real that say they just rob stores and kill rival gang members on the street so if there are any ex or current gang members or just people who have actually studied this I would love to get some sort of real explanation to this. Thank you for reading and maybe answering my question! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vgmtu/eli5_how_gangs_work/ | {
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"They use more inconspicuous methods of identification like colored beads around their necks or accessories of certain colors. They also have certain phrases or questions they use to identify a person they believe may have some kind of affiliation to the gang.",
"Super long response:\n\nI had a friend in school that was assigned to my community college through a gang rehabilitation program from east LA.\n\nOnce you are charged and associated with a specific gang, you can not be in the same vicinity as any other known parolee of the same gang. The gang culture is a really a large (violent) family, brotherhood and neighborhood/community. Telling a parolee that they can't be associated with anyone in the same gang generally means that they can't go home; they have to leave their entire family (father, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends).\n\nThey just got out of prison, never had a job other than selling drugs, no money, no where to go; yet it is incredibly hard to break this cycle without completely isolating them from any affiliations.\n\nThat was a huge insight for me becoming friends with this guy. He had been in jail for most of his life and was only 20 years old. He had tattoos covering his body head to toe but was genuinely a teddy bear. He kept his room the cleanest in the entire dorm, military corners when making his bed, shaved his head daily with a razor, was the only person on campus with an ironing board.\n\nHe was from east LA and there were a few different ways to distinguish his gang other than colors. They were known as being \"classic gangsters\" with direct ties to the Mexican mafia, so the gang members had more classic subtle ways to display themselves. They drove classic old school cars (certain make, I don't remember) around the block that would display their affiants and had artwork of skeletons with fedoras, they often had skeleton tattoos. \n\nHe originally went to jail in a famous raid that happened in his neighborhood about 15 years ago now. The police came with armored vehicles and took in as many people as possible. He ran away originally and while he was fleeing he had his foot ran over by a vehicle and was subsequently apprehended. His foot never healed properly and he eventually had a skeleton outline drawn over most of his body, including the broken bones on his foot.\nHe was in for a few years for that and got out at around 15, was free for a few years and then got caught up stealing a car, one high speed chase in the interstate later and he is back in jail for the second time before 18. He spend 3-4 more years in jail and then that is where our stories met.\n\nLike I said he was a skeptical looking character, I would probably have never talked to him if I didn't live down the hall from him, but he taught me an incredible amount about life (and how crazy it is). He was taking sign language for a foreign language (because he had already learned a lot in jail) and at the end of the semester for his final he had to act out a song of his choice as a translator. I suggest he did a simple song to keep it easy and gave him \"Rocky Racoon\" by the Beatles (personal fave) and it was incredibly heart warming (and a hilarious moment) to see the look on his classmates and instructors faces when they saw this \"skeptical character\" in a different light. \n\nI haven't seen or heard from him in 4 years and I am almost certain he is living in LA again, he was involved with Homeboy Industries and wore shirts like \"nothing stops a bullet faster than a job\" so I hope he is doing okay today.\n"
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xoncn | why do non-english speaking teams in the olympics always have their names in english writing on their jerseys? example would be north korea having their names not in korean | What the deal with it? Does it have to do with what nations hosting? Or are the olympics only an english speaking thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xoncn/eli5_why_do_nonenglish_speaking_teams_in_the/ | {
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"English and French are the Official languages of the Olympics in addition to the language of the host nation (in this case, English), so this almost certainly explains why non Roman script languages (like Korean or Mandarin) are Romanised to be readable to French and English speaking people, even in Olympics hosted in countries using non Roman languages.\n",
"Their names aren't in English. Unless you think \"Ye Shiwen\" etc. are English words. The alphabet used by the English language, and also used to transliterate the names, is called the latin alphabet."
]
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9ma4el | what are the differences between "sponsors" and "advertisers," especially when it comes to donations and ad revenue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ma4el/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_sponsors/ | {
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"Advertisers give money as part of a contract that specifies exactly how much air time they get, how often they get it, what will be aired, and on which channels or stations. They are not deliberately trying to support the channel or station, they are trying to get attention for their product or service. Of course, the channel or station *is* supported by the money, but only in the sense that buying something from Walmart supports Walmart.\n\nSponsors have no contract, and may not be given any air time at all. They may only get mentioned as a sponsor. They cannot dictate how often they are mentioned, and they don't get to determine the content. The channel or station may *voluntarily* give them air time or air their commercial, or say their slogan as part of mentioning them as a sponsor. Although a sponsor may hope to get attention for their product or service, the primary *stated* goal of giving money to the channel or station is to support them. They may not get anything out of it except the continued existence of that channel or station, and they are probably perfectly happy with that."
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6dr9k2 | if some supermarkets have store-brand coupons freely available with the item on the shelves, why must we present the coupon at the register in order to get the discount instead of the store simply giving the discount to everyone who purchases the item? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dr9k2/eli5_if_some_supermarkets_have_storebrand_coupons/ | {
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"Two reasons:\n\nFirstly, they work as advertising media and as a customer magnet. By making you carry coupons, you're essentially carrying the store's flyers. You'd be more likely to shop at the coupon place (since you already have the coupons), and if you leave the coupons around the house, or somewhere else, they may attract other people as well.\n\nThe second reason is a bit more insidious, but the concept applies to coupons, loyalty programs, points, mail-in rebates, etc. Essentially it acts as a customer segmentation mechanism. Under the classic supply/demand model, prices are supposed to get to an \"equilibrium\" which then everyone pays. However stores really, *really* want to be able to sell the same product to different customers based on the customer's ability to pay, since they can make a higher margin than possible on a single equilibrium. \n\nBy making the customer jump through hoops to get the better deal, they effectively segment customers who have enough money to avoid going through the hoops (selling to those customers at a higher, non-discounted price), and those who are willing to go through the hoops to get the discount.",
"Because it's not always the store putting out those coupons. \n\nSometimes, it's the company who makes that brand of soda, or spaghetti sauce, or crackers, or whatever that wants you to buy their brand over the others. \n\nSo they attach coupons to the shelf so you see their stuff first, and think \"this is a good deal\" and put their product into your cart. \n\nThe store knows about it, of course, but they still have to collect the coupons and send them to the vendor to be reimbursed for the face value of the coupon, plus a small handling fee. \n\nSometimes it is the store, because they got a particularly great buy on some particular product, and they want to move as much of that product as possible. "
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c226t3 | is there a good explanation why passports need to be checked when departing and then again when arriving? | Why do they check when I'm arriving if I've been checked already on the way there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c226t3/eli5_is_there_a_good_explanation_why_passports/ | {
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"Because the authorities of your arrival destination do not trust the check in every departing location. Maybe you are a searched criminal only where you arrive?",
"Isn't it so that they stamp the thing to say which country you have been in? Pretty sure that would be a fail safe if you are accused of illegally entering a country.",
"To verify that you are 1) Allowed to leave the country you're in and 2) Allowed to enter the country you're coming to.",
"Your question isn't super clear. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nDo you mean when you check in to the airport to take the flight out and then when you land at immigration? That's because if you get on a plane without a passport and end up having to fly straight back home that's a huge headache for the airlines. If there's a check for it at check-in then there's a chance you could go home and get it and save yourself the trouble. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSome airports now have something called pre-clearance (like if you fly from most Canadian airports to the USA) where all the immigration checks are done while you're still in Canada but by US immigration officials. That makes it easier when you land wherever in the USA because now the flight is treated like a domestic flight rather than an international one. Which can save you a ton of time especially if you need a layover in the USA.",
"Passport control at departure has typically two purposes. \n\nFirst to verify that you have the proper paperwork to enter your destination. Nobody wants the hassle of people being denied at the other end. \n\nSecondly if you are in a country with a departure tax they will verify you have paid it. \n\nAt your destination you will be checked to ensure you have the proper credentials to enter that country. \n\nAs far as U.S. travel goes some popular foreign airports have U.S. Customs staff on-site to process your entry before you leave, saving you the line here.",
"You were checked by outbound customs, and their concerns are mostly \"did you avoid paying any taxes\" plus a records update that you left the country. Inbound you are checked by immigration, and their concerns are almost exclusively \"should we let this person in\".\n\nDifferent people have different interests. A third group also uses this data to figure out \"are there people who's visas have expired that haven't left\".",
"If the airline takes you to a country and you are refused entry due to not having the correct travel documents, the airline has to pay to return you to your country of departure. That’s why the airline checks your passport before you can board.",
"As others have said, the border control officials of both countries will have different goals when they examine your passport. For example, I recently left France/the Schengen Area after having been living there for eight months on a work visa. When I flew out of Paris, French border control stamped my passport and recorded that I had left the country before my visa expired, so that if I ever try to come back to France, it will be on record that I followed the terms of my previous visa, and therefore am a person who can be trusted with a visa again in the future. If they had not checked my passport, it would have been much more difficult for me to prove that I left the country when I was supposed to. (Alternatively, if I had tried to leave the country after my visa had expired, this would have been an excellent opportunity for them to confront me about me overstaying my visa.)\n\nWhen I arrived in my hometown in the US, the border control officials were more concerned with what you typically imagine the purpose of border control to be – they wanted to know whether or not they should allow me to enter the country. The departure checks I went through in France took no consideration of whether I would be allowed to stay in the US when I landed."
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293arn | how does your body fight off illness? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/293arn/eli5_how_does_your_body_fight_off_illness/ | {
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"A foreign body enters through the mouth, open wound, etc. and begins to multiply. White blood cells, of which there are many kinds I won't get into, recognize that the cells are foreign and starts an inflammatory response (causes swelling, tenderness, warmth). This is basically your body setting up a quarantine of an infected area and other white cells are drawn to the inflamed area (fever is slightly different; it's a general purpose heating of the body that hopefully slows the growth of the infectious agent). Meanwhile, while the general purpose, non-specific white cells attack the area of inflammation, other white cells bring a marker (some piece of the cell wall) from the foreign invader to a white cell that will produce antibodies specific to that invader. This is the stage when you begin to really beat the infection. The antibody-producing cell multiplies rapidly and the antibodies target the foreign bodies for destruction. Meanwhile, the bloodstream is filtered into the lymphatic system which has pockets of white cells (example: under your jaw) that trap and basically massacre any invading cells. \n \nIn short, there are two basic mechanisms your body uses to fight infection: the non-specific, quick and dirty methods like inflammation and fever basically stall for time while your body produces antibodies, which are the magic bullet against that specific pathogen. Also, after the infection is beaten, one of the antibody cells will remain so that if you ever encounter the foreign body again, your body will circumvent the first step (inflammation, etc.) and begin cranking out antibodies. You won't even realize you were infected because the body will respond so quickly and efficiently at this point. Hope this helps!"
]
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34ncnb | why doesn't some violent athletes get banned by their organizations? | So I was gonna post this on /r/ChangeMyView but then I realized I didn't know enough about it to have a view.
[Michael Vick had a dog fighting ring. If dogs didn't perform well he drowned them](_URL_0_).
[Floyd Mayweather beat up his wife infront of his kids](_URL_1_).
This should be forbidden and any organization should ban anyone who commits heinous or violent crimes from competing on any level. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34ncnb/eli5_why_doesnt_some_violent_athletes_get_banned/ | {
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"But then how would the industry make money off of those guys?",
"Policy varies by organization.\n\nSome teams will immediately terminate any player who violates their internal code of conduct, others won't. It basically comes down to whether they feel the negative publicity is sufficiently offset by performance or not.\n\nIn Vick's case, he was terminated by the Atlanta Falcons and spent time in prison. He later returned to the NFL and has done some anti-cruelty outreach.\n\nHe did his time and the NFL considered that an acceptable punishment and reinstated him."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Newz_Kennels_dog_fighting_investigation",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather,_Jr.#Criminal_convictions"
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5qznh8 | why are presidential appointments not predetermined and provided during campaigns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qznh8/eli5_why_are_presidential_appointments_not/ | {
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"There is no constitutional or legislative requirement for this to happen. So if you're running for President, why surround yourself with potential targets for opposition attacks when you don't have to ? On a more practical note, these appointments need to be confirmed by Congress, who is also being elected."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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] | ||
9my61j | what is the difference between a constitution and a statute? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9my61j/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a/ | {
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"A statute is basically another name for a law. A constitution is a document that outlines the form of government, what it can or can't do, what laws it can or can't pass, how those laws are passed, what the political offices are, what those offices can do, how people are placed in them, and basically every other thing that determine what a government is and what its power are.\n\nSay you're playing a drinking card game with a few friends(with chocolate milk of course since this is ELI5). Before the game starts, you say \"whoever gets the high hand in a turn is king of the round and can make 1 rule that everyone else has to follow. The only limits on that is that they can't make you do something illegal or destructive like 'whoever gets the next low hand has to smash their phone on the ground', but other than that anything goes\". Those rules are the constitution of the game. It lays out an office (king of the round), says who can make rules (the king of the round once per turn), what sorts of rules the king *can't* make (you can't have the loser destroy a $600 piece of personal property for the sake of a game), and sets up how the game is played and how the office changes from one person to the next (playing cards, high hand is king, it moves to the next high hand every turn).\n\nThe rules that the king of the round makes in each turn would be statutes. Low hand has to take a shot. If two people have the same hand, they have to make out, whatever else. But those rules and who can make them and how they're made are limited by the constitution. ",
"Constitutional Law > Federal Statutory Law > State Statutory Law > County Law > City/Town Ordinance\n\nEach level have its own nuances and but cannot directly challenge the ones above it. \n\nConstitutional Law: All citizen have a right to coffee in the morning\n\nFederal Statutory Law: All citizens must be licensed to make coffee. \n\nState Law: The state of Montana requires coffee makers repairmen to go through an apprenticeship program.\n\nCounty Law: This County requires that coffee makers be UL certified so they dont cause fires.\n\nTown Ordinance: Our electrical grid is spotty, the left half of the town can make coffee at 7 am and the right half can make coffee at 8am. Otherwise the whole grid will fail when everyone makes coffee at the same time.\n\nDo you see how each level adds a more localized restriction without overtly denying anyone coffee?"
]
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[],
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esvxc1 | how does a flash lamp excite electrons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/esvxc1/eli5_how_does_a_flash_lamp_excite_electrons/ | {
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"All light excites electrons. The photons that make up the light collide with the electrons in a substance, get absorbed, and cause the electrons energy to increase. Electrons can then reemit the photons to decrease in energy."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
c1anyw | how come acid can't dissolve ceramic or glass vials but it can go through metal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1anyw/eli5_how_come_acid_cant_dissolve_ceramic_or_glass/ | {
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"It's about how chemically reactive the materials are, not how strong they are. Metals are fairly reactive, in some cases they form oxide layers on top that block further reactions, but acids can strip away the oxide layer, making the base metal weaker to further reactions. Ceramic is much less chemically reactive\n\nNote that aluminium is so easily destroyed by acid that cans of carbonated drink have a layer of plastic inside to stop the acidic pop/soda/juice from actually touching the aluminum",
"Most acids have the H+ ion as the active part (technically H3O+ but let's keep it simple). H+ is an oxidizer, which means it takes electrons. Metals are reducers, which means they have electrons to spare. Ceramics have no electrons to spare, they are oxides of elements like aluminium or silicon, they are already oxidized. Therefore, H+ reacts with metals and does not react with ceramics.\n\nSome acids are more than just H+, however.Hydrofluoric acid has the ion F-, which is a powerful complexing agent, so it reacts with ceramics."
]
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[],
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a8pki2 | what do clothing companies do with stock that didn’t sell by the end of the season? how do high end brands (gucci, chanel) do this differently from ‘industrial fashion’ brands (michael kors, zara)? | Surely there’s stock left for all these companies and this problem is obviously also present in other industries. But when it comes to clothing, clothes essentially become obsolete after the season has passed (2010 clothes would sell considerably less if put up for sale currently), differently from, say, electronics, where Apple or Sony can keep selling their products from 5 years ago (iPhone 7, PlayStation 4).
Also how does a Zara deal with stock differently than Gucci? Gucci has a strong reputation where if they sell their products 90% off, their brand gets damaged, whereas Zara doesn’t have that problem.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8pki2/eli5_what_do_clothing_companies_do_with_stock/ | {
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"Well some of the high end brands just destroy their leftover stock, though I know [that was an issue](_URL_0_) and some may have changed (mainly by selling them to a country they don't care about).\n\nThe cheaper brands just sell it to other stores, TJ-Maxx and Marshalls basically exist for this, they buy up all the unsold stuff and sell it at a discount. Some have various subsidiaries that they go through first (Nordstrom has Nordstrom Rack which just sells old Nordstrom stuff)",
"They sell the leftovers to off-price retailers such as TJMaxx, Nordstrom Rack, or the brand’s own factory outlets. Very high end labels just take the L and destroy the extra merchandise."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.aol.com/2010/04/02/what-happens-to-all-of-those-clothes-retailers-cant-sell/"
],
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3idqit | what exactly is happening when a kitchen radio or microwave makes a static noise just before a nearby cell phone receives a text or a call? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3idqit/eli5_what_exactly_is_happening_when_a_kitchen/ | {
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"The cell tower doesn't know if your phone in still in range, so it sends out a query to your phone before if sends the real message. The phone transmits back a \"here I am!\" signal at maximum power. The phone and tower then negotiate the lowest power they can use and still communicate reliably. That's what you hear. By the time the actual text or call is placed, all that is over and you can't hear the static anymore. (/u/rhomboidus did a good job explaining it, but didn't make it clear why you only hear the static before the call and not during the call itself.)"
]
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[]
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9bq3xy | why are there trade tariffs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9bq3xy/eli5_why_are_there_trade_tariffs/ | {
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"Tariffs serve two functions. \n\n1) It helps protect locally produced goods by making the import of competing goods more expensive. (How effective this is, is debated by economists) \n\n2) It is a warning shot for a country that is doing something you do not like. Step 1 would be to complain about an activity issuing a statement. Step 2 is placing tariffs on goods. Step 3 is placing full on sanctions which are bans on trade or kinds of trade. Step 4 is war. This usage is effective, and this kind of tariff is generally short lived. "
]
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[]
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234agl | does it actually do any legal difference to write "i do not own this material" in a youtube video description? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/234agl/eli5_does_it_actually_do_any_legal_difference_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Nope. Still not legal to put up copyrighted content."
]
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[]
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4iaje3 | why does it feel like it's easier to have negative thoughts rather than positive? also, why are we more attracted to negativity - violence, drugs, and vices? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iaje3/eli5_why_does_it_feel_like_its_easier_to_have/ | {
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"It is simply human nature. If I told you that there was a new treatment for a hard to cure disease with a 40% success rate, you would think \"wow that's great!\". Now if I were to tell you about the cure from the angle of the 60% of patients who do not respond to treatment you would think negatively of it. The opposite (ie telling the negative side and after the positive impact) would still leave you unimpressed with this miracle treatment.\n\nThere is a great TED talk on this that I will link later as I am on my phone. \n\n",
"Not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with cultural conditioning. In america, at least, our culture has somewhat grown up on negativity (greed, anger).\n\nKinda relevant: schizophrenics in eastern countries tend to have more positive hallucinations, whereas those in the west (USA) have the harsher ones. \n_URL_0_",
"I don't think people are attracted to the negativity of violence, drugs and vices so much as using them to cope with the vast emptiness I feel inside and the self-doubt about having enough energy to live out the rest of my life.",
"You don't have to worry about good things. You do need to focus on the negative so that you can fix the problem amd make it a possitive. Once content you move onto the next problem. Drugs and other vices are (usually) liked for two reasons. 1. people tend to want to be their own person and doing something bad makes them feel excitement that they are setting themself apart. 2. People think that doping themselves up, drinking im excess, and getting high as a kite feel good. And they sometimes do. But they are more treating the symtom than the problem. It's better to fix your life amd feel happy on your own than to use shit to get out of your head and feel like you are happy",
"Probably the biological instinct for self preservation. \n\n\"All good\" things are not usually a threat to us. That is why we have likely deemed them to be good or positive.\n\nNegative things deserve our attention to discern whether there is a threat or not to our wellbeing.\n\nJust a guess. \n",
"I'm a doctoral candidate in clinical psych and a therapist, so here's my two cents on this phenomena. *Please remember that this information is a generalization based off of existing research and observation of humans--there are always exceptions to any rule.*\n\nOne thing I often tell my patients is that we notice negative events more often because the positive stuff is happening all the time. Think of it like bad reviews on Yelp. Most of the time, if you had a decent experience somewhere, unless the experience was *exceptional* you're probably unlikely to post about said experience. Whereas if something bad happened, you definitely want to tell the world, right?\n\nSecondly, negative emotions are associated with the release of a lot of different neurotransmitters and hormones, such as cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline). Both of those stimulate our nervous systems to enter fight/flight mode--this is a heightened state of arousal. Generally speaking, positive emotions don't put us into fight or flight mode unless we perceive something as a threat. \n\nThis is the same reason that we are more inclined to remember nightmares rather than dreams. Nightmares release the same chemicals and wake us (very quickly) from sleep.\n\nAll of that said, as to why we \"seek\" risky behaviors, that's all human nature. If you tell a kid \"no\" to something, what are they going to try and do? They'll find a way to do it. It's quite possible that this is because we like adrenaline rushes (and that's why adrenaline junkies exist).\n\nLastly, violence, drugs and vices are not usually seen as negative experiences by the people who partake in them. Mostly because they are getting some positive reinforcement from their brains--usually a flooding of dopamine (the feel good neurotransmitter).\n\n**TL;DR: Good stuff happens more so we don't always see it and being bad makes us feel good sometimes (like sneaking cookies from the cookie jar).**\n\n.\n\n.\n\n.\n\n**Edit: If you are struggling with negative thinking, please consider seeing a therapist! Additionally, here are some resources for changing the way you think!**\n\n*Books:*\n \n* [Self-Compassion](_URL_4_) \n* [Happiness and Well-Being](_URL_2_)\n* [Habits](_URL_3_)\n\n*Grounding Apps:*\n\n* [Headspace](_URL_6_)\n* [Stop, Breathe, & Think](_URL_1_)\n\n*Cognitive Distortions (Twisted Thinking):*\n\n* [List of Distortions](_URL_5_)\n* [Self-Help Worksheet](_URL_0_)",
"Negatives can do you harm. If you don't pay attention to something positive, you simply lose out on that positive. Generally, the level of harm in the two cases is vastly different. I think we pay attention to the negative so much more because it increases our chances of survival.\n\nOf course, always focusing on the negative has, itself, negative consequences. It helps to become aware of the fact that we do that, and take steps to counteract it. But, don't beat yourself up: it's very likely that we come from a long line of ancestors who paid more attention to the negative, which is why you're here to do the same.",
"Consider the idea that drugs are not necessarily negative? Substance use has been labelled wrong via morality-based governance. Drug use is fun and would be far less problematic if it were not illegal. ",
"It's not, necessarily. It's more about what you're more practiced with doing. I used cognitive behavioral therapy to help me change my negative thinking into positive thinking so that, by default, I'd think of all the ways I'm lucky and things about which to be happy at times I used to only find negative things upon which to dwell. Also, evolution saw to it that we remember bad things more so we could avoid them, but in a postindustrial, late capitalist society, we have much more time to dwell upon things rather than needing to always take action ",
"We aren't attracted to drugs and vices because they're negative, they're immensely pleasurable. It's only the puritanical that have castigated them as 'negative'. ",
"The older I get the less I find this is true. Part of it may be because you're lumping drugs n vices into \"bad\". The use of drugs, alcohol, and smoking of all sorts of things has created social bonds between diverse cultures at least going back to Sumerian culture.\n\nEstablish a livable morality and inhabit your values constantly as you move through life, and let others inhabit theirs. You may find yourself marveling at the wonder of existence instead of judging how closely you're following someone else's path.",
"This question is biased to begin with, since \"negative\" and \"positive\" are arbitrarily defined by different societies. Positive in one society is negative in another, and vice versa.\n\nMost of what western society labels as negative, are actually deeply rooted species-typical behaviours in humans, and sex, psychoactive substances and violence are absolutely essential tools for our survival, even now (no matter how much our governments/religious institutes may try to deny it)\n\nIn Western society (and a few others) we are conditioned to suppress fundamental thought patterns we cannot suppress. That's one reason why it may seem \"easier\" to think about those \"negative\" things.\n\nBut if you take the definition of negative and positive from a biological or salient standpoint (beneficial to a life-form's interests, in this case ours) think of it like this:\n\n**Would you rather miss a good piece of fruit, or the predator that is lurking underneath it?**"
]
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"http://healthypsych.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Challenging_Cognitive_Distortions_HealthyPsych.com_.pdf",
"http://www.stopbreathethink.org",
"http://amzn.com/1439190763",
"http://amzn.co... | ||
2xt5l5 | where are all the rabbits? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xt5l5/eli5_where_are_all_the_rabbits/ | {
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"Because rabbits are not exactly apex predators. Lots of things eat them. They die nearly as fast as the reproduce.",
"Foxes, coyotes, hawks, eagles, etc all eat them pretty regularly. They are also mostly nocurnal, as well as small and flighty so all these combine to make it so you don't see them everywhere. They are also competing with all the other small animals for food, so some probably starve. Odds are not all those 1000 offspring make it past being babies. They also go through cycles of population increase and decline (based on their predator/prey interactions as well as food availability), so maybe your local population is in a decline phase right now. I know in my area I have only seen a few rabbits or so, but if you look closely for trials and leavings you'll see that there are way more than that out there.",
"They breed in such large numbers because they have an incredibly high mortality rate. They are fast enough to evade predators for a short time, but they have a lot of predators... mortality rates for some breeds of rabbits can be as high as 80% a year. ",
"If you're living in a city, they're supporting the cat population. For ever cat you see, that's dozens, if not hundreds, of rabbits that you don't."
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zjz5j | what is a heat haze? | What is it that we actually see during a heat haze? Why can we see it? Sorry if it's a slightly mundane question, it's bugged me for the best part of 20 years. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zjz5j/eli5_what_is_a_heat_haze/ | {
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"Have you ever looked at an object through water, and noticed how it looked fuzzy and weird? That's because water has a different refractive index than air. Well, the refractive index of air can change depending on how hot it is. When the air in one area is much hotter than the air around it, it has a different refractive index, causing light to be distorted."
]
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[]
] | |
4g08bw | why do we get so caught up in mob mentality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g08bw/eli5_why_do_we_get_so_caught_up_in_mob_mentality/ | {
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"It's similar to the reason we shitpost on the Internet. Being part of a mob gives people a partial sense of anonymity, allowing them to drop their inhibitions and behave with less fear of being held accountable.",
"It's a sociology condition known as [Groupthink.](_URL_0_) Conformity replaces individuality in very short order and in very subtle ways."
]
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1rbqww | how famous does one have to be to be considered assassinated and not just murdered? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rbqww/eli5_how_famous_does_one_have_to_be_to_be/ | {
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"Generally the motivation should be political, and being famous is just incidental. (Few non-famous people can really find a reason to get killed for political reasons.)",
"I always thought assasination was a killing for political reasons.",
"According to whichever dictionary _URL_0_ is...\n\n\nverb (used with object), as·sas·si·nat·ed, as·sas·si·nat·ing.\n1.\nto kill suddenly or secretively, especially a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.\n2.\nto destroy or harm treacherously and viciously: to assassinate a person's character.\n",
"Famous? Phil Hartman was famous. He was murdered. Assassination has to do with political motivation. ",
"It's not about how famous they are, it's more about the reasons for and method with which it's done.",
"Assassination is murder but murder is not necessarily assassination. Assassination is usually connected with killing someone for cause not personal or even necessarily related to the killer in any way. It tends to be a job usually done for others. Murder can include killing for personal reasons, assassination, killing with or without intent etc.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_) "
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zme7v | when americans say to increase taxes on the rich, what taxes are they specifically talking about and what changes would make it "fair"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zme7v/eli5_when_americans_say_to_increase_taxes_on_the/ | {
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"Usually, they're referring to income taxes. (There are also arguments that the *capital gains* tax should be rolled into the income tax; that is, rather than being considered separately and taxed lower, profit from investments should be taxed as income.)\n\nPeople obviously disagree on what the most fair tax rates would be.",
"When Americans say it, they mean taxes on wealth. i.e. money/assets rich people have.\n\nWhen politicians say it, they mean taxes on income, capital gains and in some cases foreign holdings -- money rich people earn/create/make each tax year. \n\nFor income -- the basic proposal is higher and more graduated tax brackets. So whereas federal income tax currently caps out at 33%, American politicians who want to raise taxes on the rich would like to see it increased to 35% or more. Others still would like to see the introduction of entirely new tax brackets -- income over say 1m gets taxes at 50% .etc. The consequence of additional tax brackets or raising taxes is usually not discussed.\n\nFor capital gains, some Americans have realized that the majority of truly rich people have little income but instead have a lot of assets (homes/bonds/stock) which generate cash. The tax rate on these asset yields is much lower than income tax (the low taxes exist due to the warping effect taxes has on effecient capital investment) and some Americans want to see them raised on the basis that the rich should pay more. The consequence of raising the capital gains tax rate is not discussed at all.\n\nFor foreign holdings, some Americans believe that a company/asset owned outside the borders of the US still owes taxes to the US providing that a US citizen derives benefit from it. How this would work in actuality is rarely defined but the basic premise goes back to the idea of taxing wealth vs. income/dividends.\n\ntl;dr: Its not about specific taxes but instead about asset redistribution. Inequality is perceived by some Americans as unfair. \n",
"Well, here's a simple comparison.\n\n* I'm well off; I make more than twice the average USA per-capita income. So I paid 17.63% of my 2011 income as federal income taxes.\n* Romney is insanely wealthy, and he made about 5,950 times the average per-capita income in 2011. How much of his income did he pay in federal income taxes? 13.9%.\n\nSo Romney, who makes thousands of times as much money as I do, nonetheless gets to keep a higher percentage of it. What the heck?",
"Five people go to dinner and the richest person pays for almost 70% of the bill when it arrives. The poorest person at the table paid only 0.3%. Then, a politician hearing about this dinner complains that the rich person didn't pay their \"fair share\". That's politics right now in the USA.\n\n--\n\"CBO looked at 2007 through 2009 and found the bottom 20 percent of American earners paid just three-tenths of a percent of the total tax burden, while the richest 20 percent paid 67.9 percent of taxes.\"\n\nsource: Washington Times _URL_0_ ",
"Fair would be a flat tax percentage applied to any profit made in a year. ",
"People don't seem to actually understand how tax brackets work. Everyone pays the same tax rates.\n\nFor a married couple the tax rate is 10% for the first $17,400\n\nthe tax rate is 15% for $17,401 through $70,700\n\nthen 25% for $70,701 through $142,700\n\n28% for $142,701 through $217,450\n\n33% for $217,451 through $388,350\n\nand 35% for everything above $388,350.\n\nSO if your taxable income is $1,000,000 in a year, you do NOT pay 38% of it in taxes ($380,000), you pay:\n\n10% on $17,400 ($1740) plus\n\n15% on $53,300 ($7994.85) plus\n\n25% on $71,999 ($17,999.75) plus\n\n28% on $74,749 ($20,929.72) plus\n\n33% on $170,899 ($56,396.67) plus\n\n35% on $611,650 ($214,077.50)\n\nFor a total tax of $319,138.49 or 32% of total income.\n\n\n**The primary debate right now is if the top bracket should be changed from 35% to 38%.** (A secondary debate is if the cutoffs points should be changed, or if a new bracket should be added, e.g 35% from 388,350-500,000 and then 38% for income above $500,001)\n\nIn our example, that would mean the total tax on $1,000,000 in taxable income would go up an additional $18,349.50 for a new total of $337,487.99 (33.7% overall rate)\n\n"
]
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4x1lk9 | how do those credit card readers/calculators, the ones used to approve online payments or log in to internet banking, work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x1lk9/eli5how_do_those_credit_card_readerscalculators/ | {
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"I assume that by those calculators used to log into internet banking, you mean the code generators.\n\nBasically the calculator has a clock and a secret key inside. \nWhen you log in online, the banking site also has your secret key. The bank site's clock along with your calculator's clock is synchronized. \n\nNow using the current time along with your key, it generates a code which the bank site can match on its side and allow you to sign in."
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8c2bnk | leveraged buyouts, siphoning off debts, and who is holding the bag? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8c2bnk/eli5_leveraged_buyouts_siphoning_off_debts_and/ | {
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"The basic answer is, when a private equity firm does a leveraged buy-out, often the company being bought out is the collateral for the loan. So the bank is taking the risk that the equity firm rebuild the company successfully, or at least that the bank may become the first creditor and recover enough to cover the loan.\n\nBecause TRS is a corporation, it's a separate legal entity, the owners of the company, be it a private equity firm, or share holders aren't legally responsible for the debts. If for example coca cola went bankrupt, the bank can't come and repossess your home just because you were a share holder. \n",
"A capital firm or any other wealthy entity that fails to repay loans or debts enough times does get black listed eventually. There are just short of zero international finance banks willing to lend Donald Trump and his organization large amounts of financing capital because of his repeated use of bankruptcy protections. (Only one bank still finances his activities: Deutsche bank - which was fined 600million for helping to launder 10 billion in illicit Russian funds.)"
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3cf6ws | how do space probes continually photograph the same distant object? | How is it possible for a probe to be taking progressively closer photos of the same object, eg. New Horizons photos of Pluto. Its orbital path is shown [here]( _URL_0_). Wouldn't the perpendicular travel of the probe relative to the planet's orbital path suggest the planet would move close enough for imaging for a brief period, before again moving further away? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cf6ws/eli5_how_do_space_probes_continually_photograph/ | {
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" > Wouldn't the perpendicular travel of the probe relative to the planet's orbital path suggest the planet would move close enough for imaging for a brief period, before again moving further away?\n\nYes. At the moment it is still moving closer. On July 14th Pluto will reach its closest position to the probe, after which point Pluto will begin to recede from the probe. You seem to have the general idea, you're just over-estimating the 'brief' aspect. "
]
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"http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-082514f-lg.jpg"
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[]
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bi1k16 | what causes different types of glue behave differently? (ex. super glue vs hot glue) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bi1k16/eli5_what_causes_different_types_of_glue_behave/ | {
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"The compounds that make up the glue cause them to behave differently. \n\nSuper glue for example is made up of compounds that undergo a chemical reaction that cause it to harden (triggered by water). \n\nSomething like hot glue is simply a solid at room temperature (and quite a bit warmer) that melts into a liquid at high enough temperatures. \n\nOther glues like Elmer's glue simply dries out which turns it from a liquid to a solid. \n\nThen two-part epoxies which have two components, one is a resin the other is a hardener, upon mixing the parts causes the curing process to kick off (much like superglue). \n\nAt its simplest, all the glues which behave differently do so because they are different compounds that were discovered to behave in different ways and create a substance that can be used to bind objects together. Depending on what you need bound together, how strongly they need bound, and the application method determines the best type of glue to use.",
"Superglue is generally an epoxy. It's a type of plastic called a thermoset: it chemically becomes a hard plastic when it cures and usually bonds chemically to the surfaces you're gluing.\n\nHot glue is a different thing; it's a thermoplastic: it just melts and then cools solid, nothing chemically is changing there. Because they don't chemically bond, they tend to be kinda crap on smooth surfaces.\n\nOther types of glue can also be thermosets kind of like superglue (often they are chemically pretty close to synthetic rubbers)."
]
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[],
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3jr6ug | why dislike healthy foods? | Why do (some) people dislike the taste of spinach/broccoli/etc if it's healthy for you? I've heard we enjoy the taste of sugars because it's quick energy which would be useful back when we would have to find food and had no guarantee of a next meal. How would it at all be beneficial for our body to reject foods that are saturated with nutrients? And how come some people like them and others dislike? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jr6ug/eli5_why_dislike_healthy_foods/ | {
"a_id": [
"curlc6k"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"What was desirable to people in nomadic times was food that was dense in protein and calories. These are nutrients in themselves because you need them to sustain a high-energy lifestyle that comes with hunting, gathering, and enduring the elements. \n\nIn modern times, we don't move around nearly as much, but our bodies still desire that food because we have not evolved to fit the new environment we created, so the food is detrimental simply because we can't burn off the fat. \n\nVegetables on the other hand were meant to be a second tier meal for when meat was not available. It's healthy, but it would not give much energy for strenuous activity, so it was not as desirable."
]
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3aqxru | if the half-life of uranium-235 is 4.5 billion years, why does nuclear fuel become ineffective in like a decade or less? | Even though only a fraction of a nuclear fuel rod is U235, shouldn't it still remain viable for thousands of years? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3aqxru/eli5_if_the_halflife_of_uranium235_is_45_billion/ | {
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"It's half life is the natural rate of decay. We configure the uranium to have an artificially increased rate of decay. We need to make the reaction occur faster to extract energy at a reasonable rate.",
"The half life generally refers to the amount of time it takes for 1/2 of a substance to disappear radioactive decay, but you could use it for any sort of exponential decay. That's what would happen if you took a lump of uranium-235 and just left it there, untouched. After 4.5 billion years, half of it is gone, turned into other substances due to the release of various particles.\n\nWhen we use it for nuclear fission, we're essentially forcing it to split into other substances and release the store energy *on purpose*. This cuts down its lifespan as uranium by a lot, but also speeds up the rate we're getting those energetic particles by a lot. ",
"Nuclear engineer here. \n\nRadiation is something decaying away on its own. \n\nIn a nuclear reactor we are splitting the atoms through fission, a different process. \n\nThe reason the fuel rods only last 6-8 years in a reactor core is because you deplete the fuel by splitting all the fuel atoms. \n\n\nRadiation and fission are two completely different processes. Radiation is when an atom releases a small amount of energy to decay. Fission is splitting the atom. "
]
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16k568 | people w/ physics backgrounds, why does water fix bed head? | Physically, what is the interaction between the water and my hair that makes it stay down? Why does wetting it work so much better than pushing on it/brushing it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16k568/eli5_people_w_physics_backgrounds_why_does_water/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7ws92l"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Why do you want someone with a physics background?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
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eibkhx | what caused the sudden and dramatic shift from predominantly hands-off parenting in the 50s and 60s to the overprotective, helicopter-style of parenting we see today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eibkhx/eli5_what_caused_the_sudden_and_dramatic_shift/ | {
"a_id": [
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"The 24 hour news cycle and the Baby Boom\n\nIn the 50s and 60s, there were only three or four channels on TV, a handful of radio stations, and the newspaper for news. So even when bad news came out, it was slow to travel across the country and didn't impact people very much.\n\nCouple that with the fact that there were more children and less adults, and sprawling suburbs, made it far safer to allow children to go off on their own.\n\nBy the time the 80s and 90s came out, there were more adults out there, and news became easier to consume thanks to cable.\n\nThis new news cycle made it easier to see when serial killers were active, and hear about when kids were abducted.\n\nAs for the suburbs, they slowly became more dangerous as more adults were out there driving cars, leading to more chances for kids to get hit on the street \n\n30-50 years ago, it wouldn't have been odd to see kids playing hockey or soccer in the middle of the street. Even bringing out goal nets. Today, it's all but unheard of.",
"I would say more access to media and awareness of crimes against children. We also have shifted to the “mind your own business” mentality. Back then all neighbors knew each other and kept an eye out for each other’s kids. Nowadays neighbors, at least in my experience, keep to themselves mostly. We’ve lost that village mentality."
]
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[],
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agss8w | how do movie producers make old photos of the characters? | Do they use personal photos of the actors or is it just photoshop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/agss8w/eli5_how_do_movie_producers_make_old_photos_of/ | {
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"text": [
"Depends but a lot are likely just old photos of the actor as that’s way cheaper and easier ",
"Depends on what we have to work with and what the desired end result is. The usual starting point is to ask the cast member if they can supply any old photos themselves. They are then passed to the Art Dept which will usually these days include a Graphic Designer, and framed/treated/photoshopped as needed. For some photos (e.g. actor wearing a specific outfit, or actor’s “parents” in a specific situation) we will organise a photoshoot with actors specifically hired for the photo and put into costume and make-up. This happens during pre-production.\n\nSource: I work in the industry "
]
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[],
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98fxp9 | why does it seem so difficult for app developers to include a dark mode with their apps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98fxp9/eli5_why_does_it_seem_so_difficult_for_app/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Just because they don’t add it doesn’t mean it’s difficult. Most people don’t care if there is one so adding one is is a waste of time and resources. "
]
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39qnui | in 1998: what exactly am i doing when i use the tracker on a vhs? | Edit: This was totally prompted by my 4th viewing of Kung Fury | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39qnui/eli5_in_1998_what_exactly_am_i_doing_when_i_use/ | {
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"text": [
"You are adjusting the position of the playback head to pick up\nthe exact position that previous record head recorded it.",
"The playback and/or recording head is positioned on(to) the tape in a specific angle. When a tape was recorded in another recorder with a different alignment playback quality on your recorder could suffer. When using the tracker the head would become more (or less if you're going in the wrong direction) aligned and thus playback quality would improve (or decrease). It's kind of like tuning into a radio station (the old way, by adjusting a knob, not the new way of using spotify or whatever :P ).\n\nIf you want more in-depth information or pictures/illustrations then go over to _URL_1_\nIt also contains an answer to your specific question:\n\n > Tracking control - The tape contains a linear control track that helps the VCR synchronize the rotating heads with the actual bands recorded on the tape. When you adjust the tracking control, you are skewing the relationship between the control track and the heads to try to get a closer match to the bands on the tape. [Source](_URL_0_)\n\n\n"
]
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[],
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"http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/vcr4.htm",
"http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/vcr2.htm"
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89abvq | what exactly is washington dc, geographically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89abvq/eli5_what_exactly_is_washington_dc_geographically/ | {
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"text": [
"It is legally a Federal District, an area of land that is not included in any state but is governed directly by the national government.\n\nYes it is filled by the city of Washington."
]
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nz7hc | how a major motion picture with significant cg (inception, avatar, star wars) is made from front to back | Things like auditions, storylines, locations, actors/actresses, directors, production crew, cg, dates, etc... How long does it all take and what's the order it goes in? Sorry, but my tiny little mind won't let me wrap my head around how it goes from Idea to theatres.
How does it go from idea to theatres and in what order?
AND
my biggest question is: How do they film shootouts and fun scenes so it looks like the bullets are hitting so close and all that other exciting shit! :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nz7hc/eli5_how_a_major_motion_picture_with_significant/ | {
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"This is a pretty broad question so the answer would be quite hefty but i'll try to help a bit.\n\nIdea for movie is made. Some large company purchases the exclusive rights to make it if it sounds profitable. They find a writter to draft a screenplay. Project is greenlit, reworked, or rejected based on quality of screenplay, budget needed, and percieved box office success. If greenlighted, a director is found to start building a team around. Roles are casted by the studio or sometimes the director will have thier own crew or choices as go to picks. Concept artists work with the director to create character and environment art to be agreed upon. Many small specialist teams begin creating wardobes and costumes, sets, coordinating stunts and movement. There are scouts that explore cities or lamdscapes that have an eye for what any given setting has to offer visually. Say Peter Jackson wants sharp craggy rocks dusted in snow with no vegatation. They location scouts may say, ok, we know of areas like that in russia, the uk, and new zealand. We're cleared to film in NZ and don't have the budget to move production to russia, lets look in NZ. A small crew flies to the mountain range they have info on. Explore by foot, jeep, helicopter. Take pictures. Find a suitable location to match the need requirements. With all things built and prepared according to the decided art concepts, locations picked, days scheduled, and all actors cast, shooting begins. Green screen generally takes less time to shoot because the whole crew stays in a big hollywood warehouse whereas a cascading shot of mountains and waterfalls with our heroes physically present requires transporting tons of film crew and huge vehicles and gear across the globe to the location. Think of the big bridge to hogwarts in harry potter. They would have to find the perfect looking canyon, build a massive footbridge for millions of dollars and then squeeze a small film crew on to film the actors or fly helicopters around them. Extremely difficult. Extremely expensive. Instead they build the general shape of the walkway in a warehouse and cover everything in chroma green, a color that makes it easier for the computer software to delete later. Then they film the actors as if they were on that hogwarts bridge. Most movies have a mix of real world locations, sets built out of lumber and foam inside of a watehouse that are painted to look real, and green screen shots whete the environment is added later. \n\nSo filming is wrapped. All physical camera work is done. The film is edited to a general cut that aims to flow well and meet a runtime expectation. The cg is crude and unfinished since it's costly and time consuming to render and composite complete cg scenes. They don't want to pay and wait 3 weeks for a shot that gets edited out. The film reaches a sort of finished point where it is cut to final specifications, sans the cg and finishing touches. What do they do to the shots of Harry and Hermoine talking in front of a huge bright green wall? The cg modelers and animators have been building virtual replications of the locations in software such as 3dsmax, maya, lightwave, xsi, zbrush, etc. In editing, they likely already did this with quick mock ups or place holders. Cg characters and backgrounds probablly looked like something from playstation 2. Now is time for final renders and compositing. The bridge and mountains are made to match the perspective and movement of the shot of Harry and Hermoine so that when they subtract that bright green in their shot, it lays over the top of the fake cg world as if it was the same camera shot. The scene is then fine tuned so the lighting and color of the 2 separate shots looks as convincing as possible. Now, this is all pretty generalized but hopefully you get the picture. And hopefully you've seen some HP movies. Not sure why that came to mind as an example.\n\nHere is a great quick look at some vfx breakdown feom the HBO show boardwalk Empire. _URL_1_ Really good compositing work. You can see how some basic make up and costumes in front of some small hand built sets turn into a completely believable world once the greenscreen is keyed out and replaced with cg.\n\nLastly, once the film is truely done, there are some small screenings to assure all is well. Marketing begins with trailers, posters, and websites. Actually, I said that wrong..marketing *begins* much earlier. Damn near at the beginning, in the filming stage or just after it goes to _URL_0_'s sent to the mpaa for a theateical rating, possibly needing some scenes cut or changed last minute to get a lower desired rating like a pg 13 instead of R. Then it's in theater.\n\nPlease excuse the typos! I'm on my mobile. Hope that helps."
]
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"post.It",
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3fzk5u | how does running/cardio result in building abs, shouldn't it just burn fat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fzk5u/eli5how_does_runningcardio_result_in_building_abs/ | {
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"Having visible abs is mostly a matter of having low enough fat to see them. Training your abs will result in a more impressive look, of course.\n\nYou can do a lot of abs exercises, get those muscles strong, but if you have a beer belly nobody is going to notice anything. You can also lose weight and have all your muscular mass (however much or little of it there is) on display. It's possible to be strong but pugdy looking.\n",
"When running the abdominals are critical for maintaining balanced and so are getting worked as well.\n\nIn addition, running does burn fat, and this is what makes abs appear. Even a 40stone whale has abs... They're just hidden.",
"Interesting that all the comments about how running does actually engage the core muscles are getting down voted."
]
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6s1coo | where did the bacteria in our mouths come from? | We brush our teeth every day, or should at least. We eat cooked food that should contain no bacteria. Yet we still end up with enough bacteria in our mouths that if left unchecked can dissolve our enamel with the acid they produce. Where do they all come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s1coo/eli5_where_did_the_bacteria_in_our_mouths_come/ | {
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"Your fingers, straws, cups, forks, spoons, the air, the food you put in your mouth has bacteria on it (think eating a piece of bread,) your toothbrush has bacteria all over it.\n\nBacteria are extremely numerous and extremely common. Brushing your teeth doesn't eliminate all of them, cooking your food doesn't eliminate all of them. They're a fact of nature, good or bad, and you do need them to survive. Your body is covered in them, inside and out.",
"They start off being passed down from both parents, but primarily the mother. Exactly which body parts & fluids of the mother seed which parts of the child is still being researched. But much of it starts off from the vagina & breast feeding, and possibly even in the womb. \n\nIf this topic interests you check out /r/HumanMicrobiome!",
"From your mouth. Brushing your teeth doesn't sterilize it. And that's a good thing. Your body needs that bacteria to aid digestion. Your salivary glands actually fill your mouth with bacteria that grow inside it. Bacteria are part of the crew of the ship of your body that keep it running. You just can't let them get too numerous and mutiny. \n\nSide fact: bacteria in salvary glands is the evolutionary precursors to be in sacks in snakes. Komodo dragons have a sort of in between phase. Their salivary glands contain enough dangerous bacteria that their bites are sort of venomous sort of just highly infectious. "
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1nlt55 | why do you hear a big bang when you break the sound barrier? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nlt55/why_do_you_hear_a_big_bang_when_you_break_the/ | {
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"text": [
"When a jet zooms past going near the speed of sound, all the noise generated by the jet engine shows up at once. The jet doesn't hear the bang because it is just speeding ahead of the built up sound.",
"Normally the sound waves of a plane are radiated in all directions, but as it approaches supersonic speeds the waves are compressed. When a jet accelerates passed the speed of sound the sound waves are compressed into a cone behind it because the plane is moving faster than the noise it is making. So the sonic boom that you hear is all the sound waves hitting you at once because they are compressed into a cone that is following behind the plane.\n\n[Here is a picture that demonstrates what I'm saying.](_URL_0_)",
"What's interesting about the way your phrased your question is that you actually *don't* hear a sonic boom when you break the sound barrier - stationary observers beside and behind you would hear it, but from your frame of reference, it's inaudible because you're actually outrunning the sound from it. ",
"Sitting in the cockpit then, does the sound of the engines go away at some point? "
]
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205drh | why are planets, or even whole galaxies, arranged across a plane instead of dispersed randomly across all axes? | My question was spawned by this article. _URL_0_
We know that planets are arranged in concentric rings, but what surprised me here was that whole galaxy clusters could be too. We have the 'Local Sheet' here that's over 30 million light years across but only 1.5 million light years thick. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/205drh/eli5_why_are_planets_or_even_whole_galaxies/ | {
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"Primarily because they were once a combined blob - this blob might have had chaotic motion, but ultimately that settled down into a uniform motion; a certain speed and a certain amount of rotation... and most of the time the rotation is a simple single-axis rotation.\n\nThe rotation of that blob is very important as planets are forming. Eventually things along the axis of rotation will be sucked in, but planets that form from areas of orbit will condense along that plane.\n\nConsequently, the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies and the suns at the center of solar systems all are rotating along the same plane as the planets / systems that orbit them.",
"Im sure it has been posted, but I can't find it so here is a nice explination.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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25ehkt | why do politicians agree to be interviewed for colbert report clips when he is always going to make fun of them right to their faces? | He always interviews people and pokes fun at them and their stances when generally they seem like they are trying to promote and issue or themselves. If they watch any interview of his they can plainly see what they are in for, yet so many continue to agree to it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25ehkt/eli5_why_do_politicians_agree_to_be_interviewed/ | {
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"text": [
"There is an old saying: any publicity is good publicity. At least people will remember their name! And they might also think \"hey, this person is cool and a good sport.\""
]
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1ix54q | why do i blackout and almost faint after working out? | I've been athletic all my life. Sometimes after working out my vision gets all black and fuzzy then I feel as if I might faint. The pressure in my head feels terrible and I can't yawn to make it go away, like one might do on an airplane. What's going on?
EDIT: After seeing a cardiologist I have finally been diagnosed. Apparently when I work out my blood pressure drops instead of remaining the same or increasing. The doctor does not know what is causing this. He did find a heart murmur, but it is not hurting me in any way. Doctor recommended drinking Propel every day before exercising (Gatorade and Powerade have too much sugar) because water does not support blood pressure.. Hopefully this will help! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ix54q/eli5why_do_i_blackout_and_almost_faint_after/ | {
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"Maybe try a cooldown? After a workout, blood pools in your feet and takes blood away from your brain. Try gradually lowering the intensity of your exercise instead of suddenly stopping. ",
"Have you had any head trauma at all? If so, you should get it checked out by a doctor.\n\nIf you don't, it could be a few things:\n\n- Heat exhaustion, which can be caused by dehydration or your body not having enough salt. If you're exercising in the heat and you feel nausea, confusion, dizziness, headaches etc., STOP. Solution: Rest in a cold area and strip down to your underwear. If you can, take a cool shower. If your symptoms don't go away or get worse (vomiting, weakness, you're disoriented, throbbing headache), see a doctor immediately because it means you might have heatstroke. \n\n- Dehydration. If your pee isn't clear or a very light yellow, you need to drink more water. Solution: Obviously, increase your water intake. Having eight glasses of water is perfect, but remember that you don't actually have to *drink* eight glasses since a lot of your water intake comes from food.\n\n- Lack of electrolytes. Electrolytes are basically these salts in your body that have an electrical charge, and they're used by your cells to help your body function properly. When you sweat, you lose both water and electrolytes (this is why sweat tastes salty; when you sweat, you lose sodium). You can tell if you don't have enough of them if you get muscle cramping, a pulled muscle, Solution: Have a sports drink like Gatorade because, not only does it replenish these salts, it works faster than drinking just water because water follows these electrolytes throughout the body.\n\n- Hypoglycemia, AKA low blood sugar. According to [this article](_URL_0_), 30% of athletes experience exercise-induced hypoglycemia. If you have it: eat within 4 hours before exercising, don't overexert yourself, eat whole grains and proteins (instead of sweets) before exercising and use sports drinks to keep your blood sugar at a normal level.\n\n- Overexertion. If you push too hard, you can end up nauseous, light-headed and even black out. \n\n- For the ear pressure ... what exercises are you doing? If you're straining a lot, especially during weight-lifting, you can get that pressure feeling in your ears. Try chewing on gum, holding your nose while blowing through your nose. \n\nHope this helps.",
"First off, go see a doctor if it persists. Don't rely on Internet answers for medical issues. \n\nNow, as for what might be causing it, it sounds like you're exercising pretty thoroughly which is good, but you may not be hydrating enough as you do, and if you're not warming down after your exercise that might be causing it too. Try some light cardio to finish off - a light jog slowing down in to a slow pace followed by stretches (gotta look after those muscles!). Also make sure you're sleeping well before you work out. If you stress your body on very little sleep you'll be doing more damage than you realise"
]
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[],
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"http://voices.yahoo.com/exercise-induced-reactive-hypoglycemia-to-11307494.html"
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5y19kc | why do profitable companies carry debt? | Why do many large, profitable companies with positive cash flow carry millions, or even billions, of dollars of debt?
Doesn't it cost money (interest, fees, accounting costs, etc.) to carry debt? So if a company has cash and/or other monetary assets, would it make more sense to pay down the debt?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y19kc/eli5_why_do_profitable_companies_carry_debt/ | {
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" > Doesn't it cost money (interest, fees, accounting costs, etc.) to carry debt?\n\nYes, but wealth makes wealth. If you invest $100,000 into a machine for example you expect it to make you much more money than that or you wouldn't have bought it. So if you can service the debt for less than the borrowed wealth will earn you the exchange makes you money overall. In that case you want as much debt as you can comfortably manage.",
"Debt allows for leverage, debt can be deducted from taxes, company needs short term cash, seasonality of outflows and income (ie. buying inventory for holiday season in summer/fall, selling in late fall/early winter)",
"Debt is not a bad thing. Yeah Debt cost money, however the things you are using for that debt are in theory going to make you more money then what the debt is costing. If you can make money using someone else's money then you do it. Also, you might not have the cash on hand to do certain things, expand your build? Do you really want to use all your cash to do that? Create or bring on a new inventory line? There are lots of reason to use debt. ",
"The same reason people who make good salaries still get mortgages or other loans. Money now is more useful than money later.\n\nA loan will have interest, yes, but you might be able to use that loan to invest in something that will immediately start to return more than what you pay in interest. Even if they have the cash to pay off their debt immediately, it might not make sense to if they can do other things with that cash.",
"Contrary to popular belief debt isn't bad, quite the opposite. Why blow all your money now when you can just repay it over time? It makes it safer if the potential venture falls through.\n\nDebt is only bad when you don't understand how it works and don't plan/invest safely.",
"Let me quickly explain leverage, which is one of the more important and cited reasons to raise debt (notwithstanding interest rate tax shields).\n\nSuppose you want to start a lemonade stand. It will cost you $100 dollars.\n\nYou can either spend all your own money which you've saved up, OR I can give you a $50 loan at 10% interest, due in a year. \n\nIf you spend all your own money, a couple things happen:\n\n1. You are out $100 completely, until you recoup the investment. If all of the sudden you want something else, you might not be able to afford it.\n\n2. It can take a lot of time to recoup that cash, or even just save up. Time is valuable. If you want to start a lemonade stand this summer, you must have that fully $100 saved up, or you'll miss out on this summer. \n\n3. If the lemonade stand is successful, you think you'll earn $200 total, meaning you'll make 100% profit. You'll keep all of it.\n\nIF, however, you take my loan...\n\n1. You only need to save $50, which means if you have the other $50, you can use it for other things.\n\n2. Only needing to save $50 should be easier and faster than saving the full $100.\n\n3. If the lemonade stand is successful, you'll earn $200. $55 dollars gets paid back to me for my loan, leaving you with $145. *That means, after your $50 investment, you made $95, which is a nearly 200% return.*",
"I remember reading an article about Sir Richard Branson along time ago. I wish I could track it, (must have been in the 80's or early 90's). He said everything he owned is hocked, even his island. He generate capital for businesses which give a return 0f 30% while servicing the loans at 10%. Made sense.",
"\nIt only makes sense to pay down debt faster than your contractually obliged minimum repayment rate if the interest on the debt is more than you'd be able to earn by making other investments.\n",
"Most of the comments got it wrong. Firms can always issue equity instead of issuing debt to finance investment opportunities.\n\nIn a perfect capital market (without taxes, information asymmetries, ...) , increasing equity or issuing debt will lead to the same cost of capital (modigliani miller theorem). This is taught in corporate finance 101.\n\nThere actually is a lot controversy surrounding optimal leverage levels for firms. Historically, three main schools have emerged from academics.\n\n*1) Trade-off theory \nIncreasing leverage leads to higher interest payments. Interest payments are tax deductible. Therefore, increasing debt leads to higher post tax profits. -- > good\n\nHigher leverage increases the likelihood of default. Default is costly, since it leads to transfer of ownership, lawyer costs, less trust of customers in guarantees of the firm (which decreases demand). -- > bad\n\nFrom this line of reasoning follows that firms have an optimal leverage ratio depending on the consistency of their profits (tax shields only work for positive EBIT), costliness of bankruptcy (firms with lots of fixed assets have less bankruptcy costs than firms with a valuable brand).\n\nInterestingly enough, theoretical predictions implied much higher leverage ratios than were observed in reality which led to a new theory:\n\n*2) Pecking order theory \nThis is more complicated to explain, but basically managers know more about their firms than investors. This means that investors demand a premium for this informational disadvantage. This premimum is higher for equity owners, therefore firms prefer to issue debt over equity if they don't have the option of internal financing.\n\n*3) Agency costs \nManagers don't necessarly act in the interest of shareholders. They will try to invest in prestigous projects with negative net present value if they have too much cash lying around. Issuing debt is a way for share holders to control the behavior of the manager."
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2mz1or | how will finding new particles at cern effect my everyday life in the future? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mz1or/eli5_how_will_finding_new_particles_at_cern/ | {
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"That's the thing with fundamental research. Nobody knows. If you were born 100 years ago, you'd be asking why are we wasting time on this quantum mechanic nonsense. That turned out to enable the existence of a computer.\n\nOnce we understand how the world works, we might be able to create ways to influence it, and design applications for it. Take for example the famous Higgs boson. For a long time, it has been puzzling why some particles have mass, while others do not. A solution for this was proposed in a form of Higgs field and a Higgs particle. It's important to note that they don't just guess that some particle exists, but it is calculated that it also has certain properties. They then did the tests, and what do you know, a particle was found with the properties they calculated, so it was announced that the Higgs particle indeed exists. And this is where we can start going all scifi. What if at some point in the future, somebody discovers a method to manipulate this particle? It could essentially mean an anti-gravity device.",
"As u/Bondator said, nobody knows, that's the nature of research. 100 years ago cutting-edge particle physics research was the discovery of the electron. That completely revolutionised our everyday lives in ways nobody could have predicted.",
"You'll probably read some interesting stories about how the world works at a fundamental level at some point if you're into that kind of thing.\n\nHonestly, I don't think it will be more than that. For the record, I'm a physics PhD, and I won't make false promises here. Yes, many discoveries didn't have any immediate application but turned out to be huge (electricity, quantum mechanics, ...). The difference is though that these effects were discovered with equipment that you could easily fit on a table. The research teams were small or even a single person. That means that these new found effects were noticeable with small, relatively inexpensive machines. \n\nToday, you need a decade to build a giant underground accelerator or satellite worth a billion dollars with thousands of scientists involved. That's what it takes to make the effects we're looking for visible. These effects cannot have any effect on our everyday live, because we don't have these kind of monstrous machines in our everyday life. I'd argue that at this point the only benefits are largely ideological.\n\nIt is in the nature of mankind to want to know as much as possible about our world, even if we don't benefit directly from it. I don't know about you, but I simply *want to know* if there are smaller particles than quarks, what dark matter is made of, what the conditions of the early Universe were. Not because I'm hoping for a cool gadget I can show off to my friends, but because I'm simply curious. If you're worried about the money, look at how much money is spend on museums, opera, and similar things. These don't *benefit* anybody, at least not in a measurable way, but we still want these things. Don't even get me started on the military...\n\nOf course, there are some nice side effects. The WWW was developed at CERN, they invented some new network and storage technology, space exploration led to efficient solar panels, etc. You also attract brilliant minds and produce highly educated people who may focus on industry after a while, increasing the GDP. But I don't expect to get a hoverboard any time soon due to the findings of the LHC.",
"You might end up being their test subject for time traveling through mini black holes, turning you into a Jellyman in the process. ",
"It's not possible to realise that the discovery of relativity means we can have GPS. You can't really reason from one to the other, as there are too many steps and discoveries in between.\n\nIt's not possible to put acid in a jar, use two metal rods and be able to shock people, and reason from this process that one day we'll have instant light, mobile vehicles and clocks powered by this new discovery.\n\nLooking at the first computer, you can't reason from there to World of Warcraft and Twitter.\n\nWe can't get to there from here - there's no way to know. Maybe it will lead to a new way of treating disease. Maybe space travel. Perhaps a new cheap dyeing process for fabrics. Possibly some form of enterainment. Food replication. Cheaper cabbages. Who knows?",
"Many people here focused on \"what physics discoveries means to everyday life\".\n\nBut there is other aspect of such things like Hubble or CERN LHC. It's engineering side. Engineers make machines like never before. Faster computers, more reliable tech, superconductors, etc. Many of such things had no applications in everyday life, but once they were done and researched while building unique things it can further go into everyday life things.\n\nEDIT: for example, [NASA report on everyday applications of Apollo program](_URL_0_)"
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800pez | why does shortsightedness still occur when looking in a mirror? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/800pez/eli5_why_does_shortsightedness_still_occur_when/ | {
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"What a great question! The answer involves some big concepts in physics, so I'm going to try to break them down one by one. \n\n1. When you look at any object, what's actually happening is that light waves are bouncing off of that object in all directions, and some of those light waves travel toward your eyeball. Ideally, the lens in your eye (see [diagram of eye anatomy](_URL_1_)) focuses these light waves exactly onto your retina by making the light waves converge or come together, like [this](_URL_5_). The rods and cones in the retina of your eye collect that information and relay it to your brain, which is able to form an image. \n\n2. Short-sightedness (aka near-sightedness or myopia in medicine) is what happens when your eyeball is too elongated, when your [cornea](_URL_3_) is too curved, or when your lens is too thick. Rather than focusing incoming light waves onto your retina, the lens focuses light in front of your retina, like [this](_URL_6_). \n\n3. The reason that this problem occurs with distant objects and not near objects is that light bouncing off of nearby objects diverges more -- or is coming toward your eye at a wider angle --, whereas light waves bouncing off of far objects is traveling toward your eye at closer to a parallel angle. Because of this, light from nearby objects needs to be converged (or brought together/focused onto a point) more by your lens to focus on your retina. Because your eyeball is bulging, or your lens is fat, or your cornea is thick, converging light is easy for your eye to do. In fact, it does it so well that it does it a bit too much for light coming from distant objects -- which needs to be converged less as the lightwaves are forming nearly parallel lines (or vectors, rather), so the light all converges at a point in front of your retina rather than on it. [Here is an illustration of this concept.](_URL_0_) In the top illustration, light bouncing off of a closer object hits the lens at wider (more diverging) angles, and so the lens must converge it more substantially to focus the light onto the retina. This is easy for a nearsighted (or myopic) eye to do. In the middle image, light bouncing off of a distance object is forming nearly parallel lines as it hits the lens, so the lens needs to converge it less to focus it on the retina, but it is unable to do that. \n\n4. Now let's bring in mirrors! A flat, regular mirror, called a plane mirror in physics, forms what is called a virtual image. When you put a cup 1 foot in front of a mirror, it will appear that the cup is sitting 1 foot behind the plane of the mirror. This is because light waves bounce off of the cup in all directions, and some of those light waves travel toward the mirror and bounce off of it. When the light waves bounce off of a flat plane mirror, [the angle with which they approach the mirror and the angle with which they bounce off of the mirror are the same](_URL_4_). When these same light waves travel toward your eye, your brain interprets these reflected light waves as if they came from the same distance behind the mirror. The 2 angles are the same, and the 2 distances (between object and mirror and virtual object and mirror) are the same. \n\n5. The light traveling from these \"virtual images\" (really light that has bounced off of a mirror) greets your lens and retina just the same as it would if there were actually a [cup sitting in the spot 1 foot behind the mirror](_URL_2_). Because that is a fairly close distance, the light that bounced off of that cup and onto the mirror, where it then bounced at the same angle onto your eye, is made up of diverging light waves. Objects farther away (such as objects far behind you in the room) also have light bouncing off of them. In their case, the light that makes it to the mirror is traveling in lines (vectors) that are closer to parallel. Those same angles are preserved once they hit the mirror, and they approach your eye needing to be converged *less*, which is difficult for your eye to accomplish because of its structural defect. As a result, that light is focused in front of your retina instead of directly on it, and the image in the mirror appears blurry. "
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1gyrop | why was concorde pulled out of service? | Also why is it common to refer to it as a single concorde when they were a few of them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gyrop/eli5_why_was_concorde_pulled_out_of_service/ | {
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"Long story short, after one of them went wrong _URL_0_ France Flight 4590 the usefulness of the concorde was re-evaluated. The fact is that it had never really been a particularly profitable endeavour as it cost too much to run and didn't carry enough passengers. It was only ever really a flagship for the airlines that used it and for the countries that made it.\n\nAs for why it was just called concorde instead of concordes, it was called concordes if you had multiples lined up next to each other but most vehicles are referred to without quantity. \"Have you seen the new bmw?\", \"The veyron is so sweet\", \"The F16 is the best plane evar\".",
"The official reason was that it was too expensive to operate. And this is true - it lost loads of money, and was only used by the two airlines who used it because of the prestige it gave them.\n\nHowever, the accident in Paris was no doubt the trigger that caused it to go out of service, because it had been losing money for a long time before then.\n\nAs to why it's talked about in the singular, I might also say that \"the Boeing 737 is a twin-engine jet\" even though there are thousands of them. So I don't think that's particularly unusual.",
"From [the wikipedia article](_URL_2_):\n > On 10 April 2003, Air France and British Airways simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. **They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following 11 September 2001, and rising maintenance costs**. Although Concorde was technologically advanced when introduced in the 1970s, 30 years later its analogue cockpit was dated. There had been little commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde due to a lack of competing aircraft, unlike other airliners of the same era such as the Boeing 747. By its retirement, it was the last aircraft in British Airways' fleet that had a flight engineer; other aircraft, such as the modernised 747-400, had eliminated the role.\n\nSupersonic Airliners needed continued development. When Concorde was introduced it was seen as only the beginning of what would become the norm. Much was learned, but it is a huge investment to develop the next iteration (lower cost to operate, lower noise, etc). No one was willing to make that investment for what became apparent as a very small market (not being allowed to fly supersonic in most places that aren't the open ocean limits the routes significantly).\n\nIt's very possible it would have been retired much sooner were it not for the consideration of its \"Halo effect\" (Auto manufacturers put disproportionate effort into the development of a [Halo Car](_URL_0_) because even though very few of that model are sold it changes public perception of the brand and is thought to sell more of the lower-range models). The [very dramatic crash](_URL_1_) undermined that effect, and the post-9/11 Airline hardship had management looking for ways to cut costs. The airline equivalent of Chevrolet discontinuing the Corvette had become palatable."
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99xqfo | why was the graphical jump from ps2 era to the next generation so large compared to what we see today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99xqfo/eli5_why_was_the_graphical_jump_from_ps2_era_to/ | {
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"I guess you were not around for the SNES to N64/PS1 graphic upgrade?",
"Same as the reason for the jump before that was bigger still. Going from black and white to colour is huge. Going from static images to moving images is huge. Going from 2D to 3D is huge.\n\nEventually, the huge things are taken care of. Going from harsh to more natural lighting is pretty good. Going from blocky textures and models to higher details ones is pretty good. Going from foggy draw in to clear view distance is pretty good.\n\nEventually the pretty good things are taken care of as well. The additions, while still very meaningful, become less astonishing because the cars in the driving games started to look like cars in real life a little while ago and now it's mostly just polish and finesse. Faces look a lot like people, there's still a ways to go, but they look fine.\n\nThe term is the law of diminishing returns, where both in terms of power required and in terms of our own expectations, you need to put a *lot* more in to make the same kind of leaps you make going from basic to good when you're trying to go from good to great.",
"It has to do with how much we can actually notice a difference. We have gotten so high in poly count recently that increasing it doesn’t really have much of an effect anymore. The difference between having 1000 polys vs having 10000 polys is a LOT more noticeable to the naked eye than having 10000 polys vs 100000 polys."
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9f761n | how sales tax works. | So for instance, your income is taxed and the worker pays taxes. Now when you own a business and sell a product, what tax is the consumer paying? I know it’s sales tax but let’s say a store decided to not charge that, so they end of year have to pay taxes on that? (On top of their taxation of earning). How does that’s all work. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f761n/eli5_how_sales_tax_works/ | {
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"Sales tax is a tax on sales. When a customer buys something, a certain percentage of the sale is due to the government as a tax. The store collects the tax at the point of sale and then sends it along. A store could choose to pay the tax themselves if they wanted (and sometimes stores choose to do that during special events), but the tax needs to be paid by someone, and it's conventional for the customer to pay it.",
"I know many people are telling you that it's due no matter what, and that's definitely correct. It is also true that a State will audit you and you will be assessed on the sales tax at that time. \n\nI just wanted to say there is another nifty tactic some states use, and that would be to file a sales tax return based on an estimate of tax owed. For instance, if you filed your sales and use tax Monthly at the beginning of the year, and then quit, they sometimes will file an amount for you every month based on your average sales between the periods you were filing. If you've never filed sales tax, but did file your Federal Income tax noting the sales of the business, they sometimes will divide that number by the periods you didn't file (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and charge you that amount. \n\nThey will always send you a \"Demand to File\" letter or something to that effect to let you know this has happened. In fact, you'll receive those before they do this in most cases. But if you read the fine print in those letters it states they may estimate the tax owed and charge you that if no action is taken. Not all States do it, but some definitely do. Just another way they might \"know\" your sales and charge you without actually auditing you.\n\nIt is then up to you to file those periods where they have estimated the tax and provide backup to show what is actually owed. Always a fun conversation to have with the State : )"
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1rl2zb | how do engineers calculate how much steel and in what fashion they should be constructed to keep a structure from collapsing? | Is it just a lot of complicated calculations? Overcompensating guesswork? Do they just pile on weights until it collapses an then rebuild it like the Calvin and Hobbes explanation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rl2zb/eli5_how_do_engineers_calculate_how_much_steel/ | {
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9usftd | why do some people never grow out of their speech impediments? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9usftd/eli5_why_do_some_people_never_grow_out_of_their/ | {
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"Because it is the environment and people theyre constantly surrounded by 24/7 and they expect you to be consistent, and theyre resistent to other's personal individual growth, as they feel it may be an attack or potential threat to their ego. ",
"Are you going to pay the debt you owe?"
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411ktf | why do employers (usually) not explicitly state what the hourly wage of a position will be preceding the interview process? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/411ktf/eli5_why_do_employers_usually_not_explicitly/ | {
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"because they advertise it too low then some people wouldn't bother applying. and if they advertise it too high then some people wouldn't bother applying. \n\nso they don't advertise it at all and so you come in and interview and they ask you what your pay history is and try to make the lowest offer they think you'll accept. ",
"Companies often don't like their employees knowing too much about how much other employees earn, it makes it easier for them to negotiate salaries this way.\n\n[This video is a good explanation of why you *should* talk about your salary with coworkers](_URL_0_)",
"Salary negotiation plays a big part, you're more in the dark about what everyone else is making, the best you can get is market estimates or similar. \n\nThat was one part I liked about working for a public-funded institution, I could look up all of my coworker's salaries on the internet for comparison. And all of us underlings could look up the higher ups' salaries to have something to complain about after work.",
"That is explicitly illegal to do so. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects employees who are working towards improving working conditions. \nDiscussing pay and benefits falls under \"working towards improving working conditions\" So discuss away, that is unless your a \"supervisor\"....Independent contractors and supervisors are exempt.\n\nNow if your company has any kind of contract with the federal government over 10K, check out Executive Order 13665, effective January 11, 2016\n\nIn answer to the statement that \" companies actually have policies forbidding it & will take action against employees that discuss salary\"",
"Employers also vary what they pay based upon the applicant. If I have a candidate that might be well or over qualified for the position or brings some attractive qualities to the table, I will consider paying that person more to get them on board. I may be thinking about moving them to another position soon, or I may just like the idea of keeping them away from a competitor."
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bcumh9 | islamic banking system. how is it different from interest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bcumh9/eli5_islamic_banking_system_how_is_it_different/ | {
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"With interest, the bank gets paid back (including its profit) even if the purchase went down in value.\n\nWith Islamic banking, the bank becomes your *partner* in buying something, and can make more or less money as your investment succeeds or fails. They share the risks with you.",
"There are two methods that can be used:\n\n1) The bank acts as a traditional investor and just directly invests money into a project in exchange for an ownership stake. This is usually what people hold up as being the definitive model used by Islamic banking.\n\nThe problem with this is that it only works for investments in which taking a long-term ownership position is a viable option. IE, this works great when you're financing a startup or an established company that's ok with trading stock for cash. It doesn't work *at all* for consumer debt, such as home/car mortgages or credit cards. It also doesn't work for most established companies, as they're usually unwilling to trade stock for cash, the exception being that they may use that stock as the basis for a Murabaha contract.\n\n2) Murabaha. Murabaha is when you and the bank make a contract for you to sell something trivial to the bank and then buy it back in the future for more money. IE, the bank pays you $100 for a loaf of bread. You agree that in 1 week you will buy the bread back for $120, and to pay the bank you make 12 monthly payments of $10 each. The value of the bread isn't anywhere near $100 or $120, even though you have agreed that it is.\n\nThis is how the overwhelming majority of Islamic banking transactions are structured, and is functionally identical to making a traditional loan. The only difference is that the terms of the loan have been phrased to eliminate any mention of the word interest and an Islamic cleric has issued a fatwa legitimizing the loan.",
"So the bank bought about 80% of my parents home, and parents payed their 20% as a deposit and then agreed to buy the other 80% of the house back from the bank.\n\nThe bank raises the price of their 80% to make a profit. \n\nSo it’s technically trading and very legitimate. The loophole breaks down when you introduce technicalities or when the bank calculates the payback rate based off how much you’d pay back if there was interest"
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2yrsas | why is the isil flag purposefully designed that the white ring in the center isn't perfectly circular? perfect replications of the flag exist that all contain the same deformities. | The ISIL flag:
_URL_0_
If you look at news articles of ISIL with militants carrying the flag, you can see the same deformities. In addition, wall murals and other depictions of the flag all seem to have the same warped circle. Is there a reason behind this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yrsas/eli5_why_is_the_isil_flag_purposefully_designed/ | {
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"Did you not notice that the text also looks like it was drawn with crayon? The original design was obviously hand-drawn and then some terrorist went down to Kinkos and had it xeroxed.",
"From what I understand that part of the flag is always misshapen because it is supposed to be the[ \"seal of muhammad\"](_URL_0_) seals are like stamps used as a way of sighing a document, often pressed into wax. ",
"Contrary to top comment, it's intentional to look more historic. Have you noticed that the \"crayon-drawn\" letters all have the exact same shape. Handwritten Arabic isn't like that. It seems more like an intentionally ancient-looking font.",
"From what I remember in my high school history class...\n\nIn Islam, perfection is a quality of God. Saying that anything other than God can be perfect is blasphemy. Islamic craftsman will intentionally place errors into their works in order to demonstrate humility before God, and acknowledge that their creations are less awesome than God's creations.\n\nThis is why Persian rugs always carry an intentional imperfection. _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#/media/File:AQMI_Flag.svg"
] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_Muhammad"
],
[],
[
"http://gracialouise.typepad.com/high_up_in_the_trees/2009/12/the-imperfection-in-the-persian-rug.html"
]
] | |
6lizsn | among criminals, why does it seem to be more acceptable to murder each other than to snitch? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lizsn/eli5_among_criminals_why_does_it_seem_to_be_more/ | {
"a_id": [
"dju6yrm",
"dju75oq",
"dju7okc",
"dju8ieb"
],
"score": [
4,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Trust. A killer can be watched and you can trust them to be such, where as a snitch cannot be trusted with anything.",
"It's not like the movies where people are always afraid to snitch. For most criminals, if you put a 50 to life sentence in front of them, they will most likely give useful information in exchange for a plea deal",
"You're generally only going to kill someone who you feel has harmed you in some way. But you snitch to get yourself out of a jam, and the police do not care if it is a friend or an enemy that you inform on.",
"I think what you're referring to is more the case in prison itself. Guys doing long stretches have nothing to lose so you don't want to get on their bad side (as it were)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] | |
ejthtb | what is carpal tunnel syndrome and what are some causes and treatment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejthtb/eli5_what_is_carpal_tunnel_syndrome_and_what_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"fd2koy9"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"There are plenty of other resources that describe Carpal Tunnel and it's symptoms/cures, so I won't go into that. As pertains to correction by surgery, if you decide to go that route I highly recommend a local anesthetic vs getting put under. Out of ignorance on my first surgery, they knocked me out. On the other hand (pun intended) I had a local. I sat there flirting with the nurses and never felt a thing. Much quicker, much less expensive and actually **much less discomfort** unless you enjoy the after affects of waking up from anathesia."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
6l35j5 | what's the difference between a laser pointer and a flashlight? | I mean I know that they are both different things but why can't a flashlight's emission be as strong as a laser pointer's? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l35j5/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_laser_pointer/ | {
"a_id": [
"djqr3ng",
"djr3nta"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"A flashlight IS often stronger overall than a laser. The difference is that a laser can be collimated into a narrow beam. That makes the light stronger only in a small area. It is not as useful for illumination of close objects. The reason a laser can be collimated into a narrow, parallel beam is that it is of a single color (wavelength) with all waves in phase (coherent). ",
"lets bring this to another light-generating device: the common light bulb. i'm of an age where the most common lightbulb that I grew up with was the 100 watt incanescent bulb. You turned it on and it lit up a room. This is because the light was non-coherent, which means that the light waves and particles bounced about all willy-nilly. Laser light, however, is coherent, which means that the light waves and particles are ordered to travel in an absolutely straight line, rather like a platoon of soldiers marching in step. this means that all the light is pointed in one single direction and it all hits that spot on the wall that the pointer is pointed at. \n\nCoherent light is also stronger and more dangerous than non-coherent light. If you turned on a 100w bulb, you could look straight at it with little-to no damage, just some spots that would soon fade. Laser pointers OTOH are about .5 of a watt and every single one of them has warning signs saying DO NOT SHINE THIS IN SOMEONE'S EYES. that's how dangerous laser light can be and how delicate the eyeball can be. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
4a0ok9 | why do professional divers wade in the small pool after each dive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a0ok9/eli5why_do_professional_divers_wade_in_the_small/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0wfktj"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The pool area is kept at a moderate temperature but it's very cold if you jump in the water and then hang around wet. The wading pool is heated with warmer water that way they don't freeze in between dives. That's also why you can see them using shammies. It is too cold to hang out wet but you would soak a bunch of towels if you used them so they dry off with shammies and ring them out."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
ecqcyd | the affordable healthcare act's individual mandate | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ecqcyd/eli5_the_affordable_healthcare_acts_individual/ | {
"a_id": [
"fbd2kvv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Basically the idea was that people without health insurance often don't pay emergency medical bills, and those costs often get passed down in some way to taxpayers. \n\nTo counter this, the ACA made it punishable by a fine if one chose not to be enrolled in a health insurance plan, despite being able to (per the ACAs own determination).\n\nAlso it is to my understanding that the mandate was never ruled unconstitutional, but instead the previously mentioned fine/penalty was changed to $0, thus effectively eliminating that provision."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
5e756i | why do we tilt our paper to the side when writing or drawing on a table? | Everyone I know turns the paper to the side when writing during school. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e756i/eli5_why_do_we_tilt_our_paper_to_the_side_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"daa6llf"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because by angling the paper in relation to where we are seated, we are better able to see the pen/pencil contact point with the paper. Thus giving the artist/writer a clearer view of exactly what marks they are making since the hand can obscure in part or in full the contact point between instrument and paper.\n\nAdditionally, angling helps prevent smudging for some this ensuring a cleaner page when writing, and a better image when drawing/sketching."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
7pv3us | how does our body know when to stop reproducing blood after it has been drawn? | How does our body know it is low on blood in the first place? How does it know that the “tank” is full? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pv3us/eli5_how_does_our_body_know_when_to_stop/ | {
"a_id": [
"dsk9q2a"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"There are many receptors and signalling molecules involved in the process. When you lose blood, the amount of oxygen that travels around the body is reduced (as there is a lower amount of red blood cells). Receptors in your kidneys detect this reduction of oxygen levels and release a hormone known as erythropoieten which stimulates the production of red blood cells. As the red blood cells mature, blood oxygen levels increase, resulting in a reduction of erythropoieten produced, in turn reducing the rate at which red blood cells are produced.\n\nThe pathway is more complicated than that and involved other things such as blood plasma levels and concentrations of salts. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
yocy7 | what is or what are dividends? more so relating to the financial world. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yocy7/what_is_or_what_are_dividends_more_so_relating_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5xdqf8"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"It's a stock thing. \n\nSo: Stock. Right. So let's say I own a hot dog stands. It's a pretty killer hotdog stand and I'd like to expand but I don't have enough money to buy more carts. There's a couple different ways I could get this money, but I'm gonna go with issuing stock: I call a bunch of friends, offer them a chance to become part-owners of my hot dog business and create \"shares\" to divvy up the ownership -- say I create 20 shares valued at 10 buck each, I keep 10 for myself and each of my friends buys a share off me. So now the hotdog business has 11 shareholders with twenty ownership shares between them, and I have $100 bucks to buy a new hotdog cart. \n\nStill with me? Great. So, i use the money from the stock sale to expand my hot dog business, expansion's doing great, original joint's doing great, and a few months down the road I find myself with say, $2,000 in profit from my hotdog business. \n\nNow, I could put that money in the bank for a rainy day , or I could use it to buy even more hot dog carts. But let's say I don't want to do those things --- the locations i have at the moment are doing just fine but I don't think I'd be making any more by adding another one. If I don't want to hang onto the money or reinvest it in the business, then i can take it and divvy it up among the shareholders: $2,000 in profits split among 20 shares is $100 per share. I own ten shares and get $1,000; the rest of my friends own one share each and so they get $100 bucks. And that my friend is a dividend: When the profits made by a stock company are divided up among the shareholders. \n\nCertain kinds of companies are more likely to offer dividends than others. Coca-cola or AT & T are huge companies; with few worlds left to conquer --- they set some of their money aside for developing new products and so forth but at this point basically everyone in the world who wants Coke can buy Coke, so any profits Coke make it splits among its owners. A tech company on the other hand is less likely to offer a divdend because they're taking their profits and plowing them back into the business, hoping to expand quickly; people buy those stock in the hope that the company itself will be worth considerable more down the line and not to get a chunk of profits today. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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