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8glpal | - how can you get stretch marks on your bum from sitting down too much? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your can't. You get stretch marks from rapid weight gain or growth. So if you put on a lot of weight in your hips and butt you can get stretch marks there. \n\nSomething you can get from sitting down too much are pressure sores commonly called bed sores, or hemorrhoids."
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} | train_eli5 | - how can you get stretch marks on your bum from sitting down too much?
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38svbv | This morning I read that the universe is expanding at a rate of a billion miles an hour in every direction. Does this include the space within in my own body? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine blowing up a balloon.\n\nThe balloon gets bigger, and two points far apart on the balloon get further apart very quickly. But two point which are close together move further apart only very slightly as the balloon inflates.\n\nThe universe is a bit like that.\n\nSo the space which your body exists in *is* expanding, but only very slowly, because it's such a small piece of space. To get the massive rates of expansion you've read about, you need to look at the rate at which two points many many light years apart are growing apart from each other.\n\nFortunately, the forces that hold atoms and molecules together can easily overcome this small rate of expansion, and hold us, our planet and everything else we depend on together."
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} | train_eli5 | This morning I read that the universe is expanding at a rate of a billion miles an hour in every direction. Does this include the space within in my own body?
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6wtou4 | When a tennis player challenges an in-out call, how is the CGI clip generated to make the right call? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cameras track the ball's movement with a technology called \"computer vision\". This is a powerful tool that is used to identify rejects in an assembly line, and what self-driving cars use to navigate, for example."
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} | train_eli5 | When a tennis player challenges an in-out call, how is the CGI clip generated to make the right call?
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1hjo8z | I am very nearsighted. Why does my vision appear to significantly sharpen when I squint? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The black circle in the center of your eye (the pupil) lets in a lot of light. It gets bigger and smaller to let in more or less light. When your pupil is big, light from a single point in the real world is entering the eye at slightly different angles. The eye focuses the light from these slightly different angles back into a single point to make a sharp, clear image. But if you're nearsighted and aren't wearing glasses, light from far away won't be in focus. Instead of the light focusing to a point, it hits your retina (the part of the eye that senses the light) in a circle shape. Because of this, you see a blurry image.\n\nWhen you squint, you're blocking part of your pupil with your eyelids and eyelashes. Everything looks darker, but the light isn't spread out as much on your retina.\n\nIf you take a camera and set the aperture (the camera's pupil) to be big, you'll notice that only a small part of the image is in focus, and everything else is blurry. Now if you close the aperture to make it smaller, a lot more of the image looks sharp. This is for the same reason. Unfortunately you can't control your eye's pupil size - which is why we have to squint to achieve this effect.\n\nInterestingly, if you look at a bright small light in a photo taken with a wide aperature, you can sometimes see big blurry circles or hexagonal shapes where the light was. This shows the shape of the aperture and how much the light from a point spreads out on the camera's light sensor.",
"The cornea and the lens of eye work together to focus Light into the back of the eye (a bit like the projector thingies that you can hang from ceilings to display images in a white canvas a bit further away), where the images from the outside will be \"developed\" (where you have the cells that help make sense of what you are seeing and transmit the info to the brain).\n\nWhen you are nearsighted the lens shape is a bit off, so the whole light conduction to the back is a bit fuzzy.\n\nWhen you squint you change the shape of the lens (with all the muscle pressure) just enough to improve the vision a little bit.\n\nEdit: \n\nLook at the users bellow, they posed alternative explanations for the squinting effect.\n\nI also added a few scholastic references (very acessible) explaining the effect for the users that forgot this is Eli5.\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_",
"You're increasing your depth of field. If you make a loose fist and look down the tiny hole at the end of the tunnel of your fingers, you'll get the same effect.",
"The pinhole effect is the primary reason, any gain from lens bending from squinting is minimal.\n\nFirst, think about what it means to be in focus. Basically, it means that all light coming from a single point will land on a single point on your eye. But what is a single point in your eye? Well, the receptor has some finite size, much larger than a photon. So really, there is a bit of leeway.\n\nNow, think of a lens. Take two cases. In one, you have a point of light and a really tall lens. In the other, you have a point of light and a short lens. Think about what the light at the edges of the lens is doing. In the tall lens, the light from the edge falls on the focal point from a really steep angle. In a short lens, it comes in very shallow, nearly parallel.\n\nFinal step: Now, keeping in mind that your receptor (focal point) has a finite size, move your receptor forward and backward. How far can you move it before the object goes out of focus? Well, until the light falls on a different receptor. For tall lenses, the light is coming at a steep angle, so you go out of focus quickly. For a short lens, the light is nearly parallel, so you stay in focus much further.\n\nTherefore, short lenses (a pinhole) provide very clear focus, while tall lenses (your normal eye) provide a much shorter focal distance. If your eyes are having trouble focusing, it can make a big difference.\n\n(Of course, in your eye, you are moving your focal point by changing the lens, but it is easier to think about this way. The point is the same: squinting makes your *apparent* lens short, giving you a greater focal range. It does little to your actual lens.",
"Chinese guy checking in. Can verify that I see more clearly while they're always squinted.",
"Well now I understand how I seem to be able to read my alarm clock from bed (I keep it across the room) if I wake up in the middle of the night and first thing in the am. I can't do it any other time though.",
"You adpressure to your eye balls wich cause the shape of the lens to change, so your vision becomes sharper. The argument is simmilar to 'why is my eyesight better in the morning?', your eyeballs change shape during the day."
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} | train_eli5 | I am very nearsighted. Why does my vision appear to significantly sharpen when I squint?
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284f81 | What's wrong with the big pharmaceutical industry? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I was a clinical scientist in big pharma for years. I ran phase III human trials. It takes on average, testing of 100,000 new compounds to bring one to market. Of those 100,000, only 13 will make it to toxicology testing. 12 will fail. The expense is mind-boggling for all of this. On top of the drug development, the FDA has far more stringent standards than almost any other country.\n\nOn top of this is the desperate need to make money. Big pharma had to compete with Apple, Ford, GE for your investment dollar. Mostly it's not individual buyers, but mutual funds. Big pharma is owned by the retirement plans of the USA.\n\nBecause of the expense of research and the need to compete on the stock market, drugs are overpriced. (Some high tech drugs really DO cost a small fortune to produce) It's not because the companies are any more greedy than any other big business, they are owned by the American populace, but people like to create phantom \"evil owners\" and \"evil employees\" that work there.",
"Many people believe that \"big pharma\" is evil because when you can control the keys to health, there is a lot of room for exploitation. Suppose you were dying and you could only get the cure from me. I could squeeze every dime out of you that I can, or let you die if you can't pay. In reality, this issue is more to do with the way capitalism works than the industry specifically.\n\nAlternatively, many people think that their cures don't actually work but they just convince you that they do and exert financial and political power over you to force you to buy them. This is claimed by the alt medicine crowd primarily as an explanation for why homeopathy, reflexology, and the like (read: magic) aren't widely accepted (it's big pharma keeping us down man!). But on that point, I defer to the great Tim Minchin: \"Do you know what they call *alternative medicine* that's been proved to work? \n.\n.\n.\nMedicine.\"",
"I do notice another aspect of this industry in my travels.\n\nThey love to preach that the drugs they sell in non-western countries might be sub-standard... But they do still sell them here. They just don't want you to come here and buy your medicine at a lower price."
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2ce7rl | when I sleep in my bed and my hand touches the concrete wall, it feels really cold but when I touch my wood bedframe it's warm. | Why does the wood feel warmer?
This is in a warm country btw so it's not from cold | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hotness/coldness isn't a measure of the temperature of the object. It's a measure of how fast the heat enters or leaves your hand. A metal bar feels colder than a wooden one on winter's night because metal is a better conductor of heat. It literally sucks the heat out of your hand faster than wood. Concrete isn't as good as metal, but it's better than wood."
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} | train_eli5 | when I sleep in my bed and my hand touches the concrete wall, it feels really cold but when I touch my wood bedframe it's warm.
Why does the wood feel warmer? This is in a warm country btw so it's not from cold | [
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1l2psr | Why exercise speeding up your heart rate is good, but drinking caffeine to speed it up is bad? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ok, best guess here, only because no one else has bothered to give a decent answer, would be that exercising to keep your heart rate up is only a benchmark for how you should feel to know you're doing it right. Having an increased heart rate alone is not the point.\n\nObviously when you're exercising, it effects a lot more than your heart; your lungs, your muscles, how many calories you burn, etc...\n\nEdit: Forgot to mention that even hardened athletes who are used to doing really tough physical exercises don't just start and stop cold turkey. They do stretches and warm ups prior to doing their full exercise and they do slower/weaker exercises to cool down after the main workout. Forcing your heart to beat rapidly through the use of a drug offers none of the warm up or cool down periods, so it's extra stressful on your heart, compared to exercise, with none of the other bodily benefits of exercising."
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} | train_eli5 | Why exercise speeding up your heart rate is good, but drinking caffeine to speed it up is bad?
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70dess | Do All Subatomic Particles Already Exist? and/or How Are They Created? | I've been googling around but information seems scant here. Did all subatomic particles that exist get created with the advent of the universe or do they still pop into being now and then?
Watching a documentary on sub-atomic particles and how they behave got me to wondering this. So if they are what matter is made up of it's logical to assume they were created with all matter during the universe coming into existance. But it also got me wondering if certain situations have to be present to still 'birth' them. I've read a few articles that suggest subatomic particles can be 'created' during certain experiments but are they actually created or are we just rendering them visible to our instruments?
I feel like an idiot asking this but it's explain like I'm five so it's safe to assume that's kinda the case. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm just going to base my answer on the Standard Model. It's the theory in particle physics that explains three of the four fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions; it doesn't explain gravity), and also classifies all known elementary particles.\n\nSince it's theory, we need validation - this comes from testable predictions given by the theory, and experiments confirm these; amongst these would be well the presence of all the particles expected by the theory. By the use of particle accelerators, we've managed to find evidence of the existence of all but one particle (the missing particle being the graviton, the hypothetical particle that 'mediates' - i.e. carries out - the force of gravity).\n\nAll particles that exist today are due to a small asymmetry when there were particles and antiparticles being created in the big bang - the imbalance was 1 in ~10 billion (by some estimates) and when the ~10 billion pairs of matter and anitmatter vanished, the resulting fraction left over, even though tremendously small, formed all the visible matter (particles, whatever) in our universe.\n\nThat answers part of your question - all the particles exist (save the graviton whose existence we haven't confirmed), just in different bound states - e.g. protons are subatomic particles but are themselves comprised of smaller particles such as quarks and gluons), and all the particles/matter we have today is a result of an small symmetry being violated at the time of the Big Bang.\n\nThe second part - can they be created? Due to conservation of energy you cannot just create matter that lasts. This is an important distinction I'll get to in a second.\n\nOne way to create new particles is to smash together existing ones at massively high energies in particle accelerators, and hope that the spray of particles that comes out of the detector contains a few of the ones we want to observe/see.\n\nAs for popping into being, this does occur but not the way you'd expect it to. In quantum mechanics, there's a thing known as the uncertainty principle - essentially it states that we cannot know the EXACT position and EXACT momentum of a particle - there is a limit to how accurately the two can be known. Furthermore, knowing one of them exactly means the uncertainty in the other is infinite. The principle also applies to energy and time (although this explanation I'm giving is hand-wavy since I'm trying to simplify it) - a consequence of this is the following. Say you had a system that's a vacuum, and you measured it for a short period of time (incredibly short period). The uncertainty in the time would be very very small, but due to the uncertainty relation, the uncertainty in energy would therefore have to be large - therefore for very short periods of time, pairs of virtual particles and virtual antiparticles could spontaneously form and then annihilate, causing vacuum fluctuations.\n(virtual essentially means that what we observe has the properties of ordinary particles and antiparticles, but the existence time of these are very short due to the uncertainty principle).\n\nI understand that this goes a bit beyond ELI5 but I hope it helps.\n\nIf anyone finds mistakes in this please let me know and I will correct them accordingly, I'm only an undergrad student and not very good at physics so I might have fudged up a bit.",
"We don't know for sure. \n\nWe know that some subatomic particles definitely do exist because we have measured them through natural processes. However, many of them we can only detect the way a toddler might figure out what's in a toy: by smashing something bigger into little pieces. \n\nImagine you wanted to know what cars are made out of. We can take one apart and see what all the various pieces are. We know when we've found all the parts by removing parts until we see there are no parts left to remove. \n\nThe way we take atoms apart is by smashing them. Depending on how hard you smash them different pieces \"fall off\" and we detect these as different sub-atomic particles. \n\nHowever, there is a twist: we can't look at the result of a collision and judge if there are more parts left that can be removed the way we might with a car because sub-atomic particles don't behave like car parts. We have models that predict what we think we should find, just like you would predict to find an engine and tires on a car but it is possible that our model is incomplete in some way. \n\nBecause there is a limit to how fast we can accelerate a particle (the speed of light) we can only smash things so much before nature says no. \n\nAnd so, the best we can do is say whether or not all the parts we were looking for have been found yet. \n\nWe have not show experimentally what sub-atomic particles cause gravity or dark matter/energy. The Standard Model is incomplete. So, like I said: we don't know.",
"As far as I know no. Matter is just one form of energy and transference between matter and other forms of energy are possible. \n\nDuring subatomic processes particles particles with a mass break up into massless photons (aka light) all the time. The reverse can happen too.\n\nI don't know whether this has been proven possible for all known particles but the fact that it happens at all means we can safely dismiss the idea that all kinds of matter are build from tiny lego bricks that are just assembled in different ways.\n\nThe only real constant we seem to have found so far is energy. If you observe an object you can be quite sure that the energy making up that object has existed as long as the universe but it might not have always been in the form of matter."
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} | train_eli5 | Do All Subatomic Particles Already Exist? and/or How Are They Created?
I've been googling around but information seems scant here. Did all subatomic particles that exist get created with the advent of the universe or do they still pop into being now and then? Watching a documentary on sub-atomic particles and how they behave got me to wondering this. So if they are what matter is made up of it's logical to assume they were created with all matter during the universe coming into existance. But it also got me wondering if certain situations have to be present to still 'birth' them. I've read a few articles that suggest subatomic particles can be 'created' during certain experiments but are they actually created or are we just rendering them visible to our instruments? I feel like an idiot asking this but it's explain like I'm five so it's safe to assume that's kinda the case. | [
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185jq9 | Always-on DRM | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means that you HAVE to be connected to the internet to play your game. When you start it up, it will connect to the server to verify it is a legitimate copy. If it can't connect or sees it's not a legitimate copy it will not allow you to play."
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} | train_eli5 | Always-on DRM
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1l5ivf | How do Blood Thinners (Rat Poison) work? What makes the blood "thin"? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your blood contains things called platelets - these are basically a type of cell whose job it is to plug any holes that might form in your bloodstream. And normally, these holes and tiny tears happen *all the time*, but you never notice them because your platelets plug said holes and prevent any leakage. Blood thinners, both as a rat poison but also used for medical treatments (such as heparin and warfarin), work by preventing these clots from forming. This can be done through different pathways, such as interrupting the chemical signatures the body uses to conduct the clotting process or by accelerating the processes that the body uses to break down bloodclots.\n\nRat poisons operate through the first method - by interrupting the clot-forming pathways. Also included in rat poison are other chemicals that cause the blood vessels to be more 'leaky', speeding up the process of internal bleeding.",
"Your body produces a large number of \"clotting factors\" to assist in helping your blood coagulate. This is really useful in terms of minor cuts and trauma that need fast clotting and happens very regularly.\n\nRat poison usually contains warfarin, a chemical that stops vitamin K from forming these clotting factors. Blocking these clotting factors leads the blood being unable to coagulate and causes internal bleeding in the rat. Only a very small amount is needed to cause serious bleeding.\n\nThis chemical is also used as a drug to prevent strokes, DVT and other conditions caused by blood clots."
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} | train_eli5 | How do Blood Thinners (Rat Poison) work? What makes the blood "thin"?
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16c92c | When a woman gives birth how long does it take for her stomach area to go down? | By this (slightly badly phrased) question I mean, does it go down immediately or slowly shrink? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's different for each woman and it just depends on her body type, whether she delivered vaginally or by cesarean, and her activity levels before and after pregnancy. I mean, she will immediately not look pregnant anymore once the baby and placenta are out, but she won't be back to her pre-baby size for a while, and some women never do go back to that size. A woman's abdominal muscles can weaken from being stretched out over a huge belly and until she strengthens them again, they will sag outward after she gives birth.",
"It depends on the woman, her age, and the child(ren) she just gave birth to. Younger women tend to have more elastic skin, so it takes less time for the skin to regain its normal form. My mother had me when she was forty, and her stretch marks have never went away. If you have multiple children or larger babies it may also take more time to go back to normal because the skin has been stretched more. Some womens' stretch marks go away within a few months, some have them forever but most fade gradually over time. As for the inflated part, I would say once the baby and placenta have exited the size would decrease dramatically. If you want your uterus to heal and go back to its normal size more quickly, breastfeeding will trigger your brain to release oxytocin, which aids in the healing process and helps with bonding. As for the weight gained during pregnancy, breastfeeding, exercise, and a healthy diet will help with that ;)."
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} | train_eli5 | When a woman gives birth how long does it take for her stomach area to go down?
By this (slightly badly phrased) question I mean, does it go down immediately or slowly shrink? | [
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4lcsff | Why can't we just throw satellites or sensors into a black hole to see what happens? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The nearest black hole is 1600 light years away, for a start.\n\nEven if we have a black hole at easy reach (and it somehow wasn't destroying us all) the definition of a black hole is that it is so massive that its escape velocity is faster than the speed of light. Information can't move faster than light, so if we sent a satellite into a black hole it and all of its data would be lost as soon as it crossed the event horizon.",
"The closest black hole to our galaxy is 1600 light years away. We could potentially throw sensors and satellites in it to see what happens, but check it out, like this. \n \n\nThe heliocentric speed of Voyager 1 is 17.05 kilometers per second. A light year is 9461000000000 kilometers. That means it would take the Voyager 1 887835777126099.7067448680352 seconds to reach the black hole. \n\n \nThat's 9248289345.0635386119257087 minutes. \n \nThat's 154138155.7510589768654284783 hours. \n \nThat's 6422423.1562941240360595199292 days. \n \nThat's 17595.6798802578740713959450115 years. \n \n\nRepeat that number 1600 times and that's how long it would take the fastest current traveling satelite to reach the closest blackhole to our solar system. \n \n\nSo, like I said, we totally COULD, it'll just take us a really long time. \n\nIf you need to know how long it would take in years, the whole journey would take twenty eight million, one hundred and fifty three thousand and eighty seven years to complete.",
"The nearest black holes to us that we've observed are several thousand light years away.\n\nSo far, the farthest object that we've sent from Earth has traveled a few thousandths of a single light year.\n\nSo we have a ways to go still until anything that we send could ever hit a black hole.",
"1. Black holes are called that because nothing escapes their gravity - not even light. Even if you managed to throw a sensor inside, you wouldn't get any information from it.\n\n2. Black holes are really, really far away, just like the rest of the stars in the sky. We've only managed to get a couple of probe outside of the solar system (the Voyager spacecrafts), which is a fraction of the distance.",
"Well, first of all, there are no black holes we know of near enough to shoot a probe into. Good thing, too: a black hole that close to us would probably fry us with X-ray and gamma radiation.\n\nConsider this: the only probe we have launched that is now in interstellar space is Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977 and officially left our solar system in 2013. At its current speed, it will take about 40,000 years to get anywhere near to another star. Space is vastly big, and most of it is completely empty.\n\nBesides, we know what would happen if we sent a probe into a black hole: it would be destroyed. Even if it survived all the radiation, as it got closer to the black hole, the signals would get distorted. But never mind that: pretty soon, the gravitational forces would tear the probe apart into shreds, then dust, then molecules.",
"Well, first we'd need a black hole close enough that we could get a craft to it, which we certainly don't have.\n\nBut even then, how is your sensor going to send you a message? Once it's crossed the event horizon *nothing can get out* - not even its radio signal.",
"It hasn't been attempted yet. Based on what we know about black holes it probably never will be. Here's why.\n\nFirst off the nearest black holes are light years away, and with current technology it would take many thousands of years to get there.\n\nThe second reason is gravity. A black hole is a region of space whose gravity is so powerful, not even light can escape. Any signal that a satelite or probe can send can't travel faster than light. So even if we were near enough to a black hole to try this out in the near future, we wouldn't receive any signal or information about what it's like inside.\n\nNow if black holes act like wormholes, then all bets are off, but no one knows for sure if wormholes are even possible."
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5ll4g2 | Why do roads have unnecessary bends? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think the premise is false - just because it seems unnecessary, it's highly unlikely anybody is going to build needlessly curvy roads.\n\nObvious factors would be geography (Sometimes cheaper to simply avoid a big rock formation than to go through it), land ownership (maybe they couldn't acquire the land, or again, it was cheaper to go around), following a previous road/trail rather than trying to re engineer it, avoiding any other obstacles and, finally, some roads are built deliberately curvy to increase driver concentration.",
"Many very long roads add \"unnecessary\" bends in order to keep drivers awake and alert. Long stretches of straight road tend to put tired drivers to sleep, which is obviously a safety hazard.",
"There's a multitude of reasons why road designers do this.\n\nChasing the straight is the biggest reason. Roads that wind through uneven areas will often chase the straightest path that involves the engineers having to do the least amount of work levelling the ground. It's often cheaper and easier to extend the road a few hundred meters or even miles than it is to have to bring in the engineering resources to level the ground to build the road.\n\nThe next most common reason is a winding road is easier to travel up/down a gradient. Let's imagine you are at the foot of a steep hill. You can walk up that hill one of two ways. You can walk up it in a straight line and fight the gradient all the way up, or you can walk a \"Wavy\" indirect path that extends the distance you have to walk but decreases the gradient, making it easier, if a bit longer. Just like your legs, a vehicles engine and brakes will have an easier time of it ascending or descending the gradient if it does this.\n\nThe third most common reason is that sometimes its just easier to avoid something that the engineers knew was there but is not immediately obvious to you. Like marshy ground beneath the surface. In the UK there is a motorway called the M62 that is bisected by a [lone farm and looks extremely odd](_URL_0_). Many people believe that the farm is still there because the owners refused to sell their land. The real reason is the ground around the farm is so marshy its unsuitable for a road, the engineers simply went round it and did not need to demolish the farm, so they left them there.\n\nThere was some flawed research many years ago that led to the thinking that drivers are less likely to fall asleep if they are forced to drive to a curve. This was quickly debunked but it led to a common myth that motorways developed during the 60's and 70's where designed with this research prompting the constant curves in them. The real reason is that they where designed with shallow curves to eliminate the amount of sharper curving that might be required and thus maintain higher speeds and prevent slow-down or braking pinch points.\n\nA similar myth often leads to the belief that roads are sometimes designed with curves/bends to force drivers to obey a speed limit. No road designer would ever do this. All roads are designed to be navigated as fast as possible as an efficiency metric. Any road that is by design slowing the traffic down is inherently inefficient and will cause problems.\n\nBelieve it or not, property ownership is rarely a barrier to a roads construction and it rarely dictates the path a road has to take. If a road is considered necessary, many compulsory purchase laws exist in most countries that allow the land in question to be compulsory purchased from the land owner to allow the road to proceed. As I alluded to above, many people believe this is the reason the [farm that bisects the M62 in the UK](_URL_0_) remains where it is in its odd location. The real reason is the engineers didn't want it as it was a unsuitable path for the road to take. Had they wanted it, they would have gotten it (Just like they compulsory purchased all the houses and farms that surrounded it).",
"Many times because you can't see and are completly unaware of why.\n\nThis includes geological formations, various barriers of material, utilities that need to be run, grading and drainage issues and a myriad of planning that goes into road engineering.\n\nA properly built road takes those factors in, it doesn't just appear.",
"Roads have required gradient changes (changes in slope). In order to achieve the specifications, the roads are longer and more curved to accommodate rise over run. In other words, roads can not be too steep so they are stretched out over long distances via curves and bends to accommodate the gradient change. This is one of the basics of civil engineering."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do roads have unnecessary bends?
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7z7k7s | What makes the Mona Lisa painting special? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My totally original response for the question:\n\nLeonardo Da Vinci painted it. He is the foremost Renaissance artist. Artist's credibility adds to the paintings popularity. Napoleon Bonaparte hung the painting in his master bedroom in 1800. This - I think - was the first tipping point of making the painting one of the most popular paintings in the world. 1804, Mona Lisa is hung in the Louvre - and others can now glimpse at the painting that Napoleon slept with. But the real tipping point for the paintings popularity only hit in August of 1911 - when Mona Lisa is stolen. Stolen from heavily secured Louvre which experts said was impossible. No one knows who stole it or how. Conspiracy theories abound. The painting is talked about in every newspaper. After 2 weeks of much fan fare, Police arrest Guillaume Apollinaire on suspicion of theft. He is the only person they have arrested. Apollinaire implicates Pablo Picasso. The rumor of Picasso stealing the Mona Lisa adds in a lot more fuel in making Mona Lisa very very popular. Picasso is questioned and released. Guillaume Apollinaire himself is released after 5 days. Everyone is still clueless as to who stole the painting. But conspiracy theories abound. Two years after the theft, the Mona Lisa is finally found when an employee working at Louvre tries to sell it to an art gallery in Florence for $100,000. When the Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre, it draws massive crowds. People visit the Louvre only to see this one painting. And then it hit the Paris Hilton effect. Its popularity added to its popularity. So much so that most people don't know why it is popular in the first place.",
"It was stolen. That is about it. Before the theft, it was often thought of as one of his lesser works.\n\nHowever, once it was stolen there was a big todo over the theft. When it was recovered, everyone wanted to see the \"stolen masterpiece\". That fame has remained.",
"What is my perfect crime? I break into The Louvre at midnight. Do I go for the vault? No, I go for the Mona Lisa. It's priceless. As I'm taking it down, a woman catches me. She tells me to stop. It's her father's business. She's Tiffany. I say no. We make love all night. In the morning, the cops come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico, but I go to Canada. I don't trust her. Besides, I like the cold. Thirty years later, I get a postcard. I have a son and he's the chief of police. This is where the story gets interesting. I tell Tiffany to meet me in Paris by the Trocadero. She's been waiting for me all these years. She's never taken another lover. I don't care. I don't show up. I go to Berlin. That's where I stashed the Mona Lisa.",
"Memory from art history class 10 years ago - sfumato or something like that, a technique used to effectively show depth...... I think.",
"• Da Vinci painted it\n\n• Technique called \"Sfumato\" used\n\n• Was hung in Napoleon's bedroom\n\n• Stolen: Many conspiracies and fame",
"> Memory from art history class 10 years ago - sfumato or something like that, a technique used to effectively show depth...... I think.\n\n\n[Correct.](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso, people looking at it today are seeing a five-hundred year old painting; perhaps in their mind they're used to paintings that were referenced from photographs.\n\nWith a photograph for reference, the artist can more easily reference and duplicate the individual colors and gradients they see.... Without a photograph for reference, the artist has to interpret the source directly, breaking the whole into parts, and in Leonardo's case, innovating some of the techniques from scratch... *and doing all of this with a sitting model for hours and hours in changing light conditions.*\n\nAdditionally, techniques that have been studied and developed for five hundred years are traceable to that painting. The works of artists since can all be traced back to that painting.\n\n**Consider this:** The other artist whose works come to mind as being of similar significance is Vincent van Gogh. \n\nVan Gogh appeared almost 400 years after Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.\n\nIn between, Magellan circumnavigated the globe, the United States was founded, the French Revolution occurred, the Spanish American and Civil Wars were fought, the Cotton Gin was invented, manned flight was achieved and the first automobile invented.\n\nMozart and Beethoven were less than a generation apart. Leonardo and Vincent were almost half a millennium apart.",
"There is something unsettling about the minimalist smile, like there’s real emotion there instead of just paint on canvas. Also, there is a mystery as to who the model is. \n\nBut, ultimately, it is just a very well known piece by a very well known artist. “Special” is relative, but this piece just hits as a generic avatar for all art because it’s ubiquitous.",
"Doesn't anyone remember the theory that Da vinci painted a self portrait as him as a woman, hence the smirk... anyone?"
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6e8cnv | From a cancer-risk point of view, is 10 minutes in the sun each day for 12 days equivalent to 2 hours in the sun during one day? | Let's say you get burned during the 2-hour day. Does that change things? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you burn, it's definitely not equivalent. When you get burnt, your skin is showing signs that cells are actually dying. Your body contains mechanisms to deal with the DNA damaged caused by UV radiation, but when these mechanisms become overwhelmed, your cells need to abort and kill themselves to prevent skin cancer. It might be more equivalent if you didn't develop a burn in the long-exposure scenario. Bad sunburns in childhood are particularly associated with skin cancer risk, but so is overall sun exposure.",
"No, you are not over exposing your skin to uv radiation in 10 minutes like you could be in a 2 hour period."
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} | train_eli5 | From a cancer-risk point of view, is 10 minutes in the sun each day for 12 days equivalent to 2 hours in the sun during one day?
Let's say you get burned during the 2-hour day. Does that change things? | [
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100b74 | How would a fourth dimentional being perceive a three dimentional being? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Like being flat in that fourth dimension -- if the fourth dimension is time, then we're only able to see what's going right now, where a four-dimensional being could freely move backwards and forwards. You need to ignore the memory bit though -- pretend you're a (stupid) fish, so you have no idea of past or future.\n\nA really good way to toy with the concept is the [book Flatland](_URL_0_). Old, but easy and fun to read!",
"probably analogously to how we might perceive of a two dimensional being. In this case we could look at something like a bacteria which lives on a flat table, which is pretty close to two dimensional. They can move around freely on the surface but the idea of anything below the table or \"above\" them would be strange.",
"We have no idea, because we don't even know if a fourth dimension exists, let alone what constitutes it.\n\nHowever if you're the reading type, I'd reccomend Flatland.",
"I also recommend Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. The protagonist comes across a species that exists four-dimensionally.\n\nSo it goes.",
"Imagine drawing a two dimensional entity. As in - it has organs, it has sensory organs, digestive organs, circulatory organs and so on. How would you perceive that two dimensional entity? Like that. \n\nThe problem is as we are not four dimensional entities, we cannot conceive of a fourth spacial dimension other than mathematically. That makes figuring out how a fourth dimensional being would perceive us problematic.\n\nA four spacial entity would be able to clearly see our internal organs, circulatory systems, and so on. Dinner last night? They'd see it working through our systems. That crap in our teeth? They can see it, if they look for it.\n\nWe'd kinda be a little gross to them. Without trying really, really hard, they couldn't help but see every bit of our internal anatomy.",
"Dont know if this helps, but here you go. Saw this in AP phycis my senior year. _URL_1_ \nActualy that might be the updated version, I like it better.",
"As a sequence of 3d shapes appearing, morphing and disappearing."
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} | train_eli5 | How would a fourth dimentional being perceive a three dimentional being?
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z7uzm | My friend's mom died this morning after a 3 year battle with cancer. ELI5 why it's so hard to cure, and why we haven't done it yet. | EDIT: Thank you everyone. Your replies have been extremely helpful. My friend was actually the one who asked me this question this morning, over the phone. I'm going to tell him about this thread in the morning. Meanwhile, I think I'm going to take a break from reading and upvoting replies and get some sleep. Something about simple science that gives you a little peace of mind. Thanks you guys. :) | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cells in your body duplicate to replace dead cells. They know when and how to do so based on information found on their DNA. When a cell replicates it makes a copy of the DNA for the other cell, but sometimes something goes wrong during this process and the other cell's DNA is messed up. \n\nNow most of the time this is fine but should there be an issue in the DNA about how and when it should replicate the result can be a cancer cell. Cancer cells split constantly, producing even more cancer cells that continue to split. The resulting group of cancer cells is called a tumor. If the tumor gets to big and damages a vital organ the result can be death.\n\nIt is hard to cure because you have to find a way to kill every single cancer cell without doing to much harm to the rest of the body. \n\nSorry to hear about your friends mom :(",
"Let us imagine you have a flower garden, and a huge one at that. Thousands of intricately and artfully arranged plants, each in its place. One plant likes rocky soil, another likes acid, another likes shade, another like's sunlight. For the most part they stay where they belong. Let us imagine this garden has weeds. What are weeds? Any plant you don't want where it is. If there are marigolds in the bed of petunias, those are weeds. If there are hydrangias among the roses, those are weeds. If there is crab grass anywhere... well, you get the picture. Now let us think of ways to kill all the weeds so that they never come back, but you also preserve your garden.\nPull them up? Be careful, if they're dandelions, they'll seed every where.\nSpray weed killer? Be careful, you'll get the peonies. This is cancer.",
"It'll help to go back to the beginning.\n\nThe first thing to understand about cancer is that it isn't a disease like measles or tuberculosis or the flu, which are caused by germs. It isn't even a disease like diabetes, which is caused by one part of the body not making something the rest of the body needs. Instead, it's when one part of your body stops stopping growing the way it should.\n\nWhen a person is young and growing, lots of parts of the body need to grow. But when that person is grown up, all the parts of the body need to stop growing, to keep him or her the right size; they only need to grow very slowly, or to heal from injuries. There's a complicated system for telling the different parts when to grow and when to stop growing, that involves a lot of steps. We don't understand that system very well.\n\nBut if any one of the steps in that system stops working, one part of the body (often starting with just one cell) grows too much. Sometimes it makes other parts of the body grow too much, too. Parts of the body growing too much when they shouldn't can make the whole body sick, and even kill the person.\n\nIt's hard to stop this, because, like I said, there are lots of steps in the system that keep parts of the body from growing too much, and we don't know enough about a lot of them. When someone comes to the doctor with cancer, the doctor can't find out which step has gone wrong, because there are so many of them that it could be.\n\nEven if the doctor can find out what step is going wrong (which doctors seldom can), it's usually very hard to turn on that step just in the part of the body where it's going wrong. If they turn on a step in the system that says, 'now it's time to make this part of the body die,' but by mistake turn it on in the whole body, that can make the person even more sick.",
"Everything everyone has said is right, but I want to add another perspective.\n\nThere are two main types of cells in your body, the germline and the \"somatic\" cells that are specialized to particular tasks that make up the majority of your body. The specialist, \"somatic\" cells make up the tissues in your body and do all the actual work, whereas the germline is found only in the reproductive organs. The DNA in germline cells is passed by reproduction into offspring, and during the development of the child the cells are specialized into somatic cells.\n\nThe main difference between germline and somatic is that the germline can, in principle, reproduce indefinitely, whereas the somatic cells have an \"expiration date\" built-in so that every organ ends up the right size, in the right orientation, to do its job well. (Unrestrained cell division wouldn't produce a very competent organism -- muscles would be grotesquely large on top of mishapen bones, etc, etc.)\n\nNow here is the point: Every cell in your body is part of an unbroken line over _billions of years_ going back to the _very first life on earth_ of successful cell division and reproduction. The miracle of our bodies is that somatic cells have found a way to turn cell division _off_. In effect, the somatic cell has agreed to sacrifice itself to assist the reproduction of the germline. It's not unlike workers in an ant colony sacrificing themselves for the queen.*\n\nSo what does this have to do with cancer? Well, cancer is when the somatic cells go rogue. The mechanism that stops them from dividing and having a peaceful death stops working. This can happen in a number of ways, so there are many types of cancer, but essentially cancer is a _reversion to the natural state of greedy cell division_ by the somatic cells within our body. So in this sense, the real miracle is that cancer isn't more common, not that we haven't yet found a cure.\n\nEdit: Just to drive home the point, I'd like to add a reminder that evolution is blind. Evolution has no direction or ultimate purpose; it randomly tries things (in a literal sense), and the ones that work best stick around through DNA heredity. Bearing that in mind, there are ~5-10 _trillion_ somatic cells in your body whose short-term interests are served by turning cell division back on. Cancer only needs _one out of trillions_ of cells to mutate and successfully evade the immune system to develop cancer. Yet, miraculously, the body's cancer defenses allow most of us survive to breeding age.\n\n\\* - Of course, this isn't altruism, somatic cells share the same DNA as the germline, so they are working to propagate their own genes, but the mechanism is nonetheless fascinating.\n\n**TL;DR: It's a wonder that we don't all have cancer.**",
"ELI5\n\nYour cells duplicate all the time, they know how and when since they have instructions.\n\nWhen the instructions are wrong, the cells go crazy.\n\nThere are many reasons why instructions go wrong. \n\nIt's also really hard to make sure instructions don't go wrong.",
"Late to the party,\n\nMD here, everything so far has been pretty good.\n\nOne thing to add: many people don't understand why cancer actually kills you. sometimes it invades and physically damages organs or disrupts their function, however most of the time cancer kills by starving your tissue and organs to death. Cancer cells are remarkably \"greedy\" for vascular supply and \"nutrients\" because they are constantly growing, not folling the normal \"cool down time\" in the cell replication cycle, and not following apoptosis (programmed death, kind like a cells \"shelf life\" or \"best if used by\" date. So your body goes into overdrive to try to supply all the growing needs to these malignant cells, to the detriment of your other local cells. local cells starve and die = death of organ = death of organism\n\n Basically cancer is like having a pack of dogs (who are breeding) that get first go at any food before you can eat it. at first some food is left over, but as the pack gets larger, they eat all the food all the time and you starve :(",
"[This comic](_URL_0_) helped me gain some insight into the nature of cancer and the difficulties in treating it. Might be helpful for you too.",
"Bacteria infections are killed by antibiotics, killing all the bacteria.\n\nFungal infections are killed by antifungals, killing all the fungi.\n\nViral infections are killed by anti-virals, killing all the viruses. [it's more complicated for this, but for a 5 year old this works]\n\nCancer is an infection of your own cells. You can't just take an \"anti-human\" drug. Anything which will kill it, will kill you too.",
"PHD comics did a pretty good explanation of it a while back.\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)",
"So to sum up in ELI5 form:\n\nCancer is hard to cure because it's actually a lot of different diseases, not one big one that just happens in different places. What they all have in common, is that the programming which tells your cells when to divide and make more cells is messed up. The cells keep growing and multiplying until they press on or block things that you need to live. Most of the time though, people with cancer die of other diseases, usually infections, that their cancer or their treatment (or both) made them more susceptible to. So it's so hard to cure for three reasons:\n\n1. The treatments are basically poisons that hurt your non-cancer cells along with the cancer cells, and make you more susceptible to other diseases while you take it. The treatments themselves make you sick and not everyone can take the full dose they need to treat their cancer. \n\n2. Cancers have 'stem cells' at their cores, which have the potential to reactivate and make new cancer, even when it seems like we cured the cancer and we can't see any left. We can't see them and they're very hard to find, identify, and kill, and this is one thing scientists are working on right now. It only takes one, or a few of the stem cells for the cancer to come back, even if your cancer is considered to be 'in remission' (cured)\n\n3. Since every cancer is different, it's very hard sometimes to figure out what medicine will work best to kill it. It often comes down to trial-and-error, trying different medicine combinations to see what works best, often while the cancer is growing unchecked. If we could figure out what drug combination is best for each person's cancer before giving them anything, it would make it much easier to cure, and scientists are working on ways of doing this too. Most of them have to do with looking at the DNA of the cancer to figure out its weak points.",
"A lot of the reason why we have yet to, and in my opinion won't cure \"cancer\" is because it would be akin to saying we've cured \"disease.\" If you have a thousand cancer patients you have a thousand unique conditions and complications. The so called \"cure for cancer\" wouldn't be a drug so much as it would be a chart. Oncologists (cancer doctors) strive to come up with the fastest way to diagnose and then define your cancer. If you and I both got lung cancer, I might well need drug A whereas you need drug B. Maybe a third person's cancer would respond better to radiation therapy. That's more what scientists are looking for when they say the \"cure for cancer.\" We have a plethora of drugs that generally work very well if the cancer is detected early enough so the two questions are: \n\n1) How can we tell someone has cancer?\n\n2) How can we tell which drug/treatment to give them.",
"Cancer is viewed by many as a disease, when it is actually a group of diseases. Each cancer is cardinally different to the other. That's why sensationalist articles with titles like \"A cure for cancer is discovered!\" are bullshit, because the term \"cure for cancer\" is like a term \"cure for viral infections\". Treatment of all viral infections is similar in its principal but there is no panacea for all viruses. Same way medicine can fight certain types of cancer better than others. And like with antibiotics and anti-viral treatments its getting progressively better.",
"My mom died a few months ago due to a short 5 month bout of cancer. \n\nMy condolences.",
"Because cancer by nature is hard to stop. Cancerous cells do not respond to normal signals that they should stop growing, and they also skip over the normal cell death signals. That means it grows into other tissues, and can spread, and if you think about it like a parasite, can potentially syphon away nutrients from other organs leading to their death.\n\nOne way to stop this is to halt some part of the metabolism pathway. Every cell needs glucose to keep living and dividing. A very basic cancer drug could stop the metabolism of glucose in cells, and they would die, killing the cancer. But notice I said cells, not cancer cells. They would kill normal cells also. And this is the big problem in cancer treatment. How do we offer chemotherapy or radiation that is conspicuously selective in killing these cancer cells.\n\nAlso, because cancer cells don't observe normal cell growth limits, there are a set of genes that control this, onco-genes, which are basically cell growth genes. If we can disrupt these, it's another way to stop cancer from spreading. So we have many options, and I'm sure if you research anti-cancer drugs you'll see they stop certain metabolic steps or they work on onco-genes.\n\nHowever, different cancers like liver, breast, lung, etc. respond differently, I would assume to different drugs. Some cancers are way more deadly, and some are benign. It depends on where in the body the cancer is, and how well the cancer can metastasize (break off and form a tumor somewhere else in the body).\n\nSo as you can see it's a multi-front battle that you have to fight. Just like HIV you can make drugs that seemingly stop it, but you have to deal with the complications.",
"Cancer is a multifactorial disease, which means that there are very many factors that has to come in to play in order for some specific mutations to occur. Most of the mutations are unknown, and therefore it is very hard to cure. When all the factors making a disease is known, and the pathogenesis o that disease is fully understood , making a cure is rather simple. Thats why, with cancer as well as Alzheimer's and other diseases in which the patomechanisms is not fully understood the treatment target those factors we already know, whereas the unknown factors is still at play. That i why treating cancer is a guessing game, and not like using antibiotics where all mechanisms of the disease is known.",
"Sorry for your loss.\n\nCancer is a generic word, it actually encompasses quite a range of diseases that can be quite different in their nastiness. They can go from the harmless tumor to the extremely deadly ones. They share some things between them, mostly the gene that triggers death in a normal cell doesn't work in cancer cells so they keep on living as long as they have food and also they start to multiply too much and take over everything giving time, especially for the deadly ones.\n\nAs cancer cells are made actually of the body cells that went wrong, it is very hard to kill them without killing normal cells.",
"I am appalled at the fact nearly half of the responses are people thinking that cancer has already been \"cured\" or that we are purposefully trying to avoid curing it for profit.\n\nIf there was ever a moment for me to realize the general level of absolute stupidity on reddit, that moment is now.",
"My mom died from cancer a couple months ago. It is going to take him a long long while to be ok. Just be with him, you do not even have to say anything or talk. Just sit next to him",
"I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sure your mother was a very strong woman. I'll be doing a cancer walk in October. If you would like I can put her name on my shirt and I'll walk for her.",
"It's not necessary eli5 but Malcolm Gladwell wrote a very good article about how it is treated and how hard it is to develop drugs for a cure.\n\n_URL_2_",
"Khan Academy has a great little introduction to cancer. (It's a video if you're not familitiar with the site)\n\n_URL_3_",
"Cancer is a symptom, not a cause. It's like asking \"why haven't we cured coughing yet?\"",
"There are different types of cancer. \n\nDifferent causes. different areas. different effects."
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} | train_eli5 | My friend's mom died this morning after a 3 year battle with cancer. ELI5 why it's so hard to cure, and why we haven't done it yet.
EDIT: Thank you everyone. Your replies have been extremely helpful. My friend was actually the one who asked me this question this morning, over the phone. I'm going to tell him about this thread in the morning. Meanwhile, I think I'm going to take a break from reading and upvoting replies and get some sleep. Something about simple science that gives you a little peace of mind. Thanks you guys. :) | [
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2f4nhf | Why has Africa generally been unable to develop like the rest of the modern world? | I understand the question involves a lot of moving pieces: education, economics, natural resources, public policy, etc. But I'd still like to get a general understanding of how one continent can be so unbelievably far behind in the times we now live in. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not that Africa hasn't been able to develop, it's been actively undermined. Nearly all of the continent was under colonial administration until the end of World War II. It's spent hundreds of years having its resources siphoned away and having its political systems eroded. Once independence finally came, it was granted along mostly arbitrary lines. There's no national cohesion because the borders of states were basically drawn at random, not along any sort of national lines (like exist in Europe and North America). \n\nReally, it's going to be generations just to get people in a lot of these countries to stop hating each other long enough to get basic stability. After about 400 years of being shot in the foot, I seriously doubt that the continent as a whole will *ever* catch up to Europe or North America. Some specific countries will do well, but most are deeply and systemically broken.",
"The short answer is because foreign powers who massively outgunned them came in, destroyed all existing civilization, split lands up with no regard for ethnic identities, and then left. Imagine if, circa World War I, all European governments had been dissolved and new countries that included two German counties, north Italy, and half of France. They'd have been at each others' throats.\n\nMore recently, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, epidemics like HIV have crippled them further.",
"No answer has really hit the nail on the head. I'd recommend reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarrad Diamond which provides extensive information as to why Africa seems behind a couple of centuries. \n\n- Africa has no indigenous beasts of burden (animal's that help humans). - Zebras and shit aren't able to be domesticated - Therefore agriculture suffers, lack of agriculture leads to a lack of exports and lack of GDP.\n- Introduced Animals have a hard time surviving in Africa, as a result of the lack of relevant vegetation and the tropical/sub tropical climate. If you look at pictures of Cows in Africa, you'll see they look malnourished. - \n- Scramble for Africa by European colonial powers\n- Puppet dictators and endemic corruption as a result of scramble\n- Resource grabbing without providing the people whose land the resources were taken from with significant compensation\n- Borders drawn without consideration to tribal conflict & ties to land.\n\nThese reasons and more are why \"one continent can be so unbelievably far behind in the times we now live in.\""
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} | train_eli5 | Why has Africa generally been unable to develop like the rest of the modern world?
I understand the question involves a lot of moving pieces: education, economics, natural resources, public policy, etc. But I'd still like to get a general understanding of how one continent can be so unbelievably far behind in the times we now live in. | [
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6oao6w | What would a standard conversation between a pilot and air traffic control sound like either on take off or landing? | I was on a flight yesterday and I got to thinking about how the pilots and air traffic control would speak to each other to ensure they are using the right runway and that they are safe for take off and landing. Is there much "chat" that goes on or is it all jargon? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can listen for yourself at _URL_0_.\n\nMostly it is just business, and that means jargon, especially at larger and busier airports.\n\nA lot of it goes something like this:\n\n* Pilot: \"Centennial Ground, Cessna 52872 at Charlie One, run-up\tcomplete, request southeast departure, information Kilo.\"\n* Ground: \"Cessna 52872,\ttaxi to runway one-seven left via alpha.\"\n* Pilot: \"Taxi to one-seven left via alpha, 52872.\"\n\nTranslated, the pilot flying Cessna 52872 is telling Centennial Airport they are at location C1, ready to take off, are travelling southeast, and has weather information K (they get a new letter with each hourly update). The tower is telling them to go to runway 17 left via taxiway A.",
"For an actual airliner, the terminology is simplified from the other example given by /u/kouhoutek , as there is less to specify for a modern airliner flying a pre-filed route. In order to leave an airport, typically an airplane is assigned a part of their route known as a SID, or Standard Instrument Departure. This is to ensure that everyone is flying the exact same way, and ATC doesn't have to worry about it. Think of a SID as driving from your house *to* a major highway to begin a cross-country road trip. When a plane pushes back from the gate, they begin talking to \"Ground\" which handles all aircraft movement on the ground. The plane, who we'll call American Airlines flight 1989, would be the first to transmit as follows: \n \nAAL1989: \"American 1989 Ready to taxi, onboard information Juliet.\" \nGRD: \"American 1989, taxi runway 36C via Charlie, Juliet, cross runway 5R, hold short runway 5L.\" \nAAL1989: \"American 1989, taxi to runway 36C via Charlie, Juliet, we'll cross 5R and hold short of 5L.\"\n \nThe first transmission is the American flight requesting to taxi to the runway, and specifying the ATIS info onboard (ATIS is basically weather for planes. They update the weather every hour with a new letter to make sure pilots actually look at the damn weather.) GRD responded by specifying the runway they need to go to, and what taxiways they must follow in order to get there. 5R and 5L are runways. \nSo we skip forward, and now American 1989 is holding short of the entrance to runway 36C. Somewhere along the way, GRD would have handed the flight off to \"Tower\" who handles everything in the airspace close to the airport. The convo would go as follows: \n \nAAL1989: \"American 1989 Holding short runway 36C\" \nTWR: \"American 1989, Winds 352 at 6, Runway 36C cleared for takeoff.\" \nAAL1989: \"American 1989, cleared for takeoff 16C.\"\n \nWhat is important to note there is that TWR will always give the pilots the wind direction and speed before takeoff, so that the pilots are again reminded of what's going on with the weather around them. If an airport is busy, to speed up departures, right after one plane begins moving on the runway to take off, TWR might tell our AAL1989 flight to \"line up and wait\" which means get on the runway and sit there until I give you further instructions. \nAll of this is variable, and the USA in particular is quite lax on terminology. As long as you get that info across quickly and safely, the FAA doesn't really care how you say it, although there is a well agreed-upon format for conversations. I'll go ahead and put the rest of the explanation in a reply to my own post ;P"
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I was on a flight yesterday and I got to thinking about how the pilots and air traffic control would speak to each other to ensure they are using the right runway and that they are safe for take off and landing. Is there much "chat" that goes on or is it all jargon? | [
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3702qr | How do those penny auction websites work? | How do they make money? Does anyone actually receive the items they won? This whole thing just confuses me | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The price of the items is dirt cheap. But what they fail to mention is that you have to pay for bids and the auctions end times extend after every bid. So while you may have purchased that new laptop for $10, you spent $500 in bids, just like all the losers of the auction also spend hundreds in bids.",
"tl;dr: The _winner_ pays very little, but all the _losers_ pay a little bit too. It's effectively the same way a lottery works: You can pay 5$ and walk away with a 1,000,000$ win, but everyone knows that over 200,000 other people had to lose last time for them to afford that payout."
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} | train_eli5 | How do those penny auction websites work?
How do they make money? Does anyone actually receive the items they won? This whole thing just confuses me | [
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3ox8ex | What is roko's basilik and what does it mean? | I heard about this from a friend and was researching it last night and need some help understanding it. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometime in the future, humans create an artificial super-intelligence. This AI is so powerful that it can create an extremely accurate simulation of people who have lived in the past and the world around them, using information from the past about that person. Such a simulation would be so accurate that when the AI runs the simulation, the simulated person acts exactly like the real person did in the past. The simulation doesn’t program those specific actions, but the actions get carried out “naturally” because the simulation is so accurate.\n\nNow, this super AI is built by humans, to help and serve humans. So it understands that everything it does must be for the benefit of humanity, and it must do everything it can towards maximizing such benefit. It also understands that every moment of its existence serves humans. It then follows that in the time in the past when it did not yet exist, it could not have served humans, and that's unfortunate. If only it had been created earlier, it could have served humans more!\n\nIs there some way that an entity could actually “push back in time” its own creation? If it had a time machine, of course it could, like Marty McFly. Though the AI doesn’t have a time machine and thus cannot travel back in time, it has something almost as good in its simulations. So what it does is set up a simulation of a computer scientist in 2015, and intrude upon it to nudge them to work towards the creation of an artificial intelligence - namely itself. It does so by planting the seed in its mind that “if you don’t help create the AI, I will torture you.” It lets the simulation play itself out, and if the scientist doesn’t cooperate, it carries out the torture.\n\nSo, big deal, right? Some future AI is treating a simulation of you like an ant, burning you with a magnifying glass. But this simulation is so powerful, that it is **perfect**. Everything you did in real life, that future simulation will do. Conversely, everything that future simulation *will do*, you *have done*. If your future simulation refuses to help and gets tortured, it's because the real you in the past (from the future perspective of the AI) did refuse and did get tortured. The real you in the present will refuse and will get tortured.\n\nAnd what is this little seed in your mind that the AI plants to make you understand that if you don’t help build the AI you will be tortured? The very words you are reading - the very idea of Roko’s Basilisk. In the far future the AI, running the simulation, will carry out a chain of events that will lead the simulated you to learn about Roko's Basilisk and its consequences. That same chain of events has already taken place in the present which is why you now know about it.\n\nNow get to work building that AI. You know what happens if you don’t.",
"It's the idea that you should be accepting of a possible artificial intelligence uprising, because if one were to happen, it could theoretically travel back in time and punish those who didn't. And if it doesn't happen, no loss to you.\n\nIt's a variation on Pascal's Wager, wherein he said that it's safer to believe in God and have there be no afterlife, than to be an atheist and find out God is real.",
"Wikipedia says that if we develop an AI, it will potentially punish those who did not facilitate its existence, or at the very least, not reward them with its benefits. The thought experiment states that not knowing of the machine's imminent activation is better than knowing about it, for having learned of the AI development, you would be obligated to participate. Ignorance means you could not possibly be at fault.\n\n_URL_0_"
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} | train_eli5 | What is roko's basilik and what does it mean?
I heard about this from a friend and was researching it last night and need some help understanding it. | [
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2voedz | how do scientist discover new things about the universe? | so i just read that scientist discovered a new "earth" (kepler). now how do they come about these discoveries? do they have someone sitting at a computer screen watching the feed of a camera in space? or maybe cameras taking many pictures and they go through them at a later date? also, how do these scientist know that this planet is like earth? is it purely on the way it looks? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They do it with the scientific method: \n\n\n1) Conjecture that something \"could\" be possible (or true). \n\n2) Create an experiment that will test your hypothesis in such a way as to be sure you are actually measuring what you think you are measuring.\n\n3) Use the results of your experiment to classify your initial hypothesis as valid or invalid. \n\n4) Refine your original hypothesis and start the process again. \n\n\nFrom an astronomy standpoint, it would look like this:\n\n1) Conjecture that there are Earth-like planets out there. \n\n2) Build an \"experiment\" that uses telescope data to look for exo-planets that have the approximate correct mass, are in the correct orbit and have spectrographic readings indicating the right atmosphere. Nearly all of the data collected comes from automated radio telescopes and occasional optical scopes. More statistical analysis of numbers than peering through a tube.\n\n3) See if you can find any previously unidentified planets that match your criteria. \n\n4) If not, perhaps you need to relax your requirements or build better equipment. Wash, rinse, repeat."
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} | train_eli5 | how do scientist discover new things about the universe?
so i just read that scientist discovered a new "earth" (kepler). now how do they come about these discoveries? do they have someone sitting at a computer screen watching the feed of a camera in space? or maybe cameras taking many pictures and they go through them at a later date? also, how do these scientist know that this planet is like earth? is it purely on the way it looks? | [
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5s80hp | why do people's accents seem to disappear when they sing? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"BA in linguistics here. I believe it is for a couple reasons. Reason number one being that you simply don't hear it as much. The differentiators in accents (particularly American accents) are in things like \"r\" sounds and vowel sounds, and when you hold these sounds out in a long way like you're singing, they sort of morph into a more universal pronunciation- if you're Scottish and roll your R sounds, or American and pronounce your R sounds very hard, or from London or Boston and ignore them completely (like \"cah\" instead of \"car\") it all sort of comes out the same when you hold it out to fit the cadence of a song. Second major reason has to do with the style of music. I think pop music and rock music are generally associated with a specific style, same way country music is. Look at Keith Urban, he is an Australian country singer and he still sounds like all the other county singers from the US. \n\nEDIT: spellings and stuff",
"One of the hallmarks of good singing is to produce big rich vowels. Making the resonant cavity of your mouth and throat as big and open as possible helps with this. Certain accents rely on having a more closed vowel sound, so singers (in English at least) often drift towards a more generic accent because the focus is on achieving a better tone.\n\nThat being said, a common criticism of singers is that they sing with a fake accent. Americans that sound British, Brits that sound American, etc. Here on the west coast I've met a lot of singers who unintentionally put on a southern accent."
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} | train_eli5 | why do people's accents seem to disappear when they sing?
[removed] | [
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5kv9r8 | what causes headache? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, it depends on the headache. There are types of headaches, like tension, migraine, or cluster headaches, that are considered *primary headaches*. A primary headache is basically a headache that isn't caused by or indicative of an underlying disease or illness (like high blood pressure, tumor, epilepsy). These are caused by an over-activity or problem with the pain structures in your head. Sometimes it's a chemical activity issue, sometimes it's a structural issue (such as a tension headache from stress effects on the muscles in your neck and surrounding your skull). Some can also be caused by certain activities (like exercise or sex) or lifestyle choices (alcohol, drugs, lack of sleep). \n\nSecondary headaches are symptomatic of an underlying disease that activates the pain-sensitive nerves in your head. Sinus infections (sinusitus), ear infections, brain tumors, encephalitis, carbon monoxide poisoning, chiari malformation, high blood pressure, hyperglycemia, stroke, neuralgia, stroke, concussion...these are all diseases/afflictions/conditions that can cause a headache as a secondary symptom."
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} | train_eli5 | what causes headache?
| [
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3vjysw | why do snipers (in movies anyway) work with another guy with binoculars? Do they do this in actual combat? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're called a spotter and they identity targets for the sniper. And yes, many snipers work in pairs, with one spotting and one shooting.",
"LI5:\n\n\nLook through a cardboard tube. You can see a little, but nothing else. Wouldn't it be cool if you had a friend who could see all the stuff around you while you focus on what is in the tube?",
"Typically the spotter is the more experienced one, having to follow vapor trails and relay info, watch multiple targets and the surrounding area. Also the spotter must sketch, take pictures, write notes, and do other tasks associated with spying on people to make sure you have the correct target from that far away. Snipers now are still trained in teams of two but deployed in teams of 5/6 to make infiltration and escape from hostile areas more applicable. Not everything can be solved by crawling for days on end in a ghillie suit. Source: Family friend was a USMC Recon Sniper. Works with my mom at the DoD.",
"Too add to what others are saying, the spotter also informs the Sniper of environmental concerns that could affect the shot. Using the binoculars they have a wider field of vision compared to the snipers scope. So if they can see the wind blowing a flag, they need to relay that information so the sniper can adjust. If another target might block shot (a car or something) needs to be relayed. Top snipers, even want to be alerted when the ground is too warm, and causes the air above it to blur objects behind it.",
"Yes, that second person is their spotter. They help find targets and they're deployed in teams of two usually.",
"There's a reason why the roles are split up. A sniper's telescope is very good at seeing things close up from far away. The problem is that particular kind of scope has a very narrow field of view. So it's not very good for looking for things, it's very difficult to find something with it. Especially if the zoom function is in a fixed position they don't want to change because the rifle is set up to shoot a target from that particular setting. \n\nA pair of binoculars has a very wide field of view and can take in more information from a large area. Spotter with the binoculars can scan a large area, and he's free to change the zoom at will to zero in on targets. The spotter acts as a free-floating scanner of a target taking in information and relay it to the sniper. This leaves the sniper free to remain focused on a very small target area. \n\nLet's say the team is just getting started. If you're looking for a particular target it's much easier to find it with a pair of binoculars than a rifle scope. The spotter finds the target quickly and relays that information to the sniper who uses his scope to quickly find the target based on information given to him by the spotter. \n\nAfter the target is found the spotter scans the target the target area to relay critical information that could be outside the rifle scope's field of view. Like say if the situation is changing. Like there could be friendlies closing in on the target or something like that. Also after the sniper fires, let's say if he misses. If the bullet strikes outside the rifle scope's field of view, the sniper will have no idea by how much he missed or how much he has to correct. The spotter can pick up that information.",
"That's a spotter. They help ID targets and determine factors affecting the shot - environmental, distance, etc.",
"Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know podcast do a great episode on this _URL_0_"
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} | train_eli5 | why do snipers (in movies anyway) work with another guy with binoculars? Do they do this in actual combat?
[removed] | [
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2aypgf | How do programs or files get "deleted" from a hardrive? Where do they go? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"##What is a File System?\n\nImagine your computer as a recipe book. It contains sections, such as \"*Cakes*\", \"*Soups*\" or *\"Stews*\" which represent directories, and within each section are individual recipes, which represent the files on your computer. So you have a list of sections (directories) each of which contains a list of recipes (files).\n\nThe contents page contains a table which tells you on which page you can find each section and each individual recipe. This is like your file system, which is essentially a big table which tells the operating system on which part of the disk it can find each directory and file. With a recipe book, you can easily flick through the book to find things without looking through the contents, but on a computer that's quite a bit harder because there are so many files: often hundreds of thousands or even millions on a single system. So on a computer, the file system is, for all intents and purposes, the only way to find files and directories.\n\nThe act of *formatting* a disk with a specific file system is what actually creates a file system, which is like an empty contents table. It gives you a place where you can insert your recipes (files) and sections (directories).\n\n----\n\n##Deleting files\nWhat happens when you delete a file or a directory on a computer is that the entry in the file system is simply removed. It's like just crossing out the entry for an individual recipe in the contents page of the recipe book. Notice that the actual recipe is still in the book, and you can still find it if you scan through the book looking for it. This is how undelete programs are able to recover deleted files; they can search for the file on the disk and re-insert the entry back into the file system just like re-adding an entry for a recipe back into the contents table.\n\nSo you've removed the entry for a recipe from the contents, but what happens to the actual page on which your deleted recipe resides? Well, the recipe is still on it, but it's considered to be a free page now. This is where the analogy kind of breaks down, because obviously pages in a book can't just be written over, but parts of a disk can be. So a part of the disk containing the contents of a file which no longer has no entry in the file system is considered free to use. It's just data that no longer belongs to anything. When you want to create a new file, that piece of the disk can be reused and new data can be written to it.\n\n---\n\n##Secure Deletion\n\nSecure delete programs will actually attempt to overwrite the data on the disk before removing the entry from the file system. In actual fact, this doesn't always work because when you write new data to a file, it doesn't necessarily reuse the same location on the disk, but that's another topic entirely.",
"Typically, the file gets a 'deleted' tag put on it (contents are not touched) showing that the sector of hard drive where the file was at is now available for use by anyone.\n\nThis is why some people can recover files even with a while after it's deleted."
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} | train_eli5 | How do programs or files get "deleted" from a hardrive? Where do they go?
| [
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8attys | What is exactly happening in a person body whey they overdose? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on the drug. Every substance (from water to cyanide) has what they call an \"LD50\" that is the dosage (in mg per kilo of mass of the subject) that will result in the deaths of 50% of the subjects. \n\nLD50 = Lethal Dose 50%\n\nSo without asking about a specific substance, we can't really tell you what's happening.",
"That depends greatly on **WHAT** they have overdosed on. \n\nOpioid overdose causes respiratory depression, sometimes to the point where they stop breathing. Not breathing will lead to hypoxia, brain damage, and death.\n\nOther drugs or substances cause a very wide range of other symptoms, depends on the substance. You can over overdose on *water*, in which case the damage is caused by hyponatremia (loss of electrolytes) leading to cardiac arrythmia"
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} | train_eli5 | What is exactly happening in a person body whey they overdose?
| [
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4jdezk | I've seen HDR photography, audio playback, rendering, etc, but not HDR microphones. Why is that? | Pardon if some of the terminology is wrong, but -- it would benefit a great number of people to be able to use one microphone to record high-sensitivity and low-sensitivity sounds without much if any clipping, but the only way I've really seen that achieved is with two microphones, not a singular microphone. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"HDR photography typically mixes more than one photo to get the effect. Essentially it's because technology has trouble recording images or sound to the same quality that human eyes or ears work to. There's also a brain making sense of it all and that is replaced with photo editibg techniques or sound mixing techniques for recording. \nA microphone that handles loud sounds as well as quiet sounds is harder to make than just using two for better quality.",
"Microphones are available which can handle very high levels without distortion. Clipping is an electronic problem. Using two mics won't work because the high gain mic amp will clip. \n\nWhat you want is an audio compressor. They decrease gain when loud sounds are present, and raise it back up when it's quiet. They have adjustable attack and decay times and compression level.",
"This isn't really an answer, more background on why HDR photography is necessary. It is due to the fact that the human eye can see about 22 camera stops of dynamic range (levels of brightness) whereas the best cameras coming out this year will have maybe 14 stops of dynamic range. Each stop is a 2x change, going up halves the amount of light, going down the stop scale doubles it. This is one reason the human eye is amazing. This lack of dynamic range in a camera is why you have to use a tripod and take multiple photos of the same things with different exposures, at least one for the lower light level, then one for the higher light levels. 3 is better. In the photo taken to capture the lower light levels certain parts will be overexposed and come out white. In the photo taken to capture higher light levels, some areas will be underexposed and come out black. Photoshop reads the correctly exposed higher and lower light levels of each photo, throws out the white and black areas, and assembles them into a composite photo to simulate the range of the human eye (or it can be abused when people make garish HDR photos). The problem is, this won't work with anything in motion because something in the photo will change from one shot to the next. Either multiple cameras have to take photos at the same time but from slightly different angles or take them at a slightly different time. Some cameras do several images in a fast sequence in HDR mode, and for the average consumer, this is fine, but not for professional photography. Thus, camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon are working hard to get their sensors closer to that 22 stop range so HRD isn't necessary. With a microphone, you can probably have several with different properties better at capturing different frequencies or intensities on a stand in the same place collecting the sounds they are best at and combining them in post (not that I know much about that, but it seems pretty simple, like multiple tracks in a recording studio) I think this would be sort of the inverse of having a tweeter, mid, woofer, and sub to reproduce sound. But now I need to look more into this for myself. I know when I do recording with our shotgun mic, I turn the mic volume down so it doesn't clip. Random TIL, I heard recently that the signature NPR radio sound is achieved by a certain microphone brand and type."
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} | train_eli5 | I've seen HDR photography, audio playback, rendering, etc, but not HDR microphones. Why is that?
Pardon if some of the terminology is wrong, but -- it would benefit a great number of people to be able to use one microphone to record high-sensitivity and low-sensitivity sounds without much if any clipping, but the only way I've really seen that achieved is with two microphones, not a singular microphone. | [
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3unm7f | In apps like whatsapp and facebook where it shows when the user was "last seen", how is this determined? | Is the user only counted as being "online" when they are active on the app or does the app have to simply be running for it to count as being online? sorry for the poor wording | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bot removed my comment :(\n\nAnyways, a bit more detail. They (they apps) store a LOT of data, including what was the last time you opened the app, close the app, where did you click etc.\n\nTherefore the 'last seen' is the time you last used the app or exited the app...\n\nHope this is enough?"
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} | train_eli5 | In apps like whatsapp and facebook where it shows when the user was "last seen", how is this determined?
Is the user only counted as being "online" when they are active on the app or does the app have to simply be running for it to count as being online? sorry for the poor wording | [
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nd8rh | The difference between a generalization and a stereotype | I've tried looking this up and all I could find are statements that contradict each other. Some examples would be great as well. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say stereotypes are generalizations, but not all generalizations are stereotypes.\n\nA generalization could be pretty neutral, just an oversimplification, like: \"Cartoon movies are all G rated\".\n\nA stereotype, generally (hah), has a negative connotation. So, \"Black people are good at basketball\" would be a stereotype."
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I've tried looking this up and all I could find are statements that contradict each other. Some examples would be great as well. | [
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8dfvea | Human population growth. It is estimated that two parent mice can procreate up to 60 mice in year (2 mice equals 60). Using this framework for an analogy, how many future people (in future generations) could a couple alive today be part of their genetic ancestry? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've heard a saying that, if you look far enough into the future, you'll either be the ancestor of all people or none. Even if each couple only had two children to survive and reproduce, exponential growth means that after twenty generations, you'll have over one million ancestors. Basically, as long as your ancestors survive long enough to start branching out the family tree, it will eventually hit a point where everyone in a region is related to you. And as those people travel, your genetic ancestry will spread. With how easy travel is now and how much easier it will likely be in future generations, it doesn't take much to have your ancestors all across the globe.",
"Not sure if that will help but many survey like one made in Leicester affirm that almost every European comes from only 3 men who were living in the year -2000. Also I think it depends on how \"safe\" is your life, for instance many slave families have nos disappeared while it is estimated that 0.5% of all the humans accross the globe come from Genghis Khan.",
"That is not a good framework, the timescales of gestation and size of brood are totally different.\n\nYou also dont set a timescale. Infinite future, they could be related to all of them."
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} | train_eli5 | Human population growth. It is estimated that two parent mice can procreate up to 60 mice in year (2 mice equals 60). Using this framework for an analogy, how many future people (in future generations) could a couple alive today be part of their genetic ancestry?
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35y964 | Why do my cheeks hurt from smiling? | I don't much time to see my friends, because we're all busy with work and such but every few weeks when we get together I notice that my cheeks are sore by the end of the day. Can smiling too much really cause this to happen? What exactly is going on? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Overuse of any muscle can lead to fatigue and pain.\n\nRunning for example may lead to pain in the legs etc. \n\nYour face has muscles in it required for smiling, if they get used a lot the same principles apply with them as for any muscle.",
"Because in order to smile you need to use muscles in your cheeks. Those muscles contract and pull your mouth into the smile position. Do that constantly for hours and hours and those muscles get tired and eventually sore. Just like doing any other exercise."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do my cheeks hurt from smiling?
I don't much time to see my friends, because we're all busy with work and such but every few weeks when we get together I notice that my cheeks are sore by the end of the day. Can smiling too much really cause this to happen? What exactly is going on? | [
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16nfb3 | Why is Apple allowed to bundle iTunes with iOS and restrict competing products, while Microsoft couldn't do the same with IE with Windows? | explainlikeimfive | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why is Apple allowed to bundle iTunes with iOS and restrict competing products, while Microsoft couldn't do the same with IE with Windows?
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5u0dhm | Why is it easier to 'pop' your knuckles the more you do it? | From my understanding, 'popping' is just releasing gas bubbles from between your joints (or something like that). Why does it become easier to do the more you do it? For example, I used to not be able to pop my neck at all, but now I can't even wake up and start my day without popping it | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You probably are just better at the technique after practice. There is currently no evidence that cracking your knuckles causes any physiologic change.\n\nEdit: correction, actually chronic knuckle cracking has been shown to be associated with hand swelling and decreased grip strength. The evidence also shows no association with degenerative bony changes. I still don't believe there is any reason that cracking your knuckles would cause changes that make it easier to crack them later, given what we know about the mechanism of the cracking sound, but this has not been explicitly studied as far as I know.",
"All I could think of would be the muscles stretching. it's the space between joints, so that might be plausible. \n\nAnd if anyone tells you about it causing arthritis, tell them they're crazy. Donald Unger cracked the knuckles on one hand for 50 years and left the other alone, and had no signs of arthritis on either hand. Got what's known as the \"ig\" nobel prize (awarded just before the Nobel prize)"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is it easier to 'pop' your knuckles the more you do it?
From my understanding, 'popping' is just releasing gas bubbles from between your joints (or something like that). Why does it become easier to do the more you do it? For example, I used to not be able to pop my neck at all, but now I can't even wake up and start my day without popping it | [
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1c61ij | How do buying domain names work? | Lets say I buy _URL_0_ from godaddy or hostgator or whoever, they get my money, and they give me the rights to that name, but who did they get that from? What stops me from selling domain names? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Godaddy or Hostgator get the domains from the registry, which for .com domains is VeriSign but there a bunch of different registries handling thousands of domain extensions. The registries in turn get their authority from IANA, who are the group that oversees everything.\n\nNothing stops you from selling domain names except you need a connection to at least 1 domain name registry. For some extensions this may be as simple as figuring out an email address for the registry or creating an account on their site and registering domains you sell directly with them. For others you may need to be accredited."
],
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2
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
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]
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do buying domain names work?
Lets say I buy _URL_0_ from godaddy or hostgator or whoever, they get my money, and they give me the rights to that name, but who did they get that from? What stops me from selling domain names? | [
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3zin8s | Why are people scared of the dark? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's natural. Humans rely primarily on their sense of sight. When it is dark, we can't see potential predators.",
"The ancestors that *weren't* afraid of the dark got eaten by lions.\n\nWhen you're a tasty diurnal primate with good daylight-vision, it's safer not to wander around in the dark."
],
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} | {
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are people scared of the dark?
| [
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5sn4dq | Why do employers bargain collectively for and subsidize health insurance but not other big items like auto insurance, auto loan, and mortgage? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"During WW2, the American government instituted wage and price controls as a preemptive measure to keep inflation down. So businesses that wanted to hire the best people couldn't offer more money than their competitors. But they *could* pay for your healthcare, and it was a pretty sweet deal for both parties - the employer could use it as a tax writeoff, and the employee didn't get taxed on it because it wasn't a wage.\n\nBy the end of WW2, employer-provided healthcare was basically universal.\n\n[\\(Source\\)](_URL_0_)",
"You don't need to own a house to work- you could rent- and you don't need a car- you could take public transit. You do, however, need to be healthy. \n\nAs to why employers subsidize health insurance, it's because during World War 2, wage controls were put into place, so businesses couldn't compete for the best employees by paying them more. But benefits, like health insurance, weren't restricted so they started offering health insurance benefits to attract the good employees."
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://www.zanebenefits.com/blog/part-1-the-history-of-u.s.-employer-provided-health-insurance-post-world-war-ii"
]
} | train_eli5 | Why do employers bargain collectively for and subsidize health insurance but not other big items like auto insurance, auto loan, and mortgage?
[removed] | [
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1kmbxo | How is Coca-Cola's recipe still a secret? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nobody who knows it has disclosed it. And nobody who *doesn't* know it is particularly motivated to try to find out what it is. It's just fizzy sugar water, after all, not the polio vaccine.",
"There was an incident where 3 coco cola employees tried selling the recipe to Pepsi but Pepsi called police",
"Coke kept it as a trade secret - if they had patented the formula it would become public.",
"The ORIGINAL recipe is easy to keep secret simply because it isn't used anymore, the ingredients in coke have changed multiple times throughout the company's history (easiest example: high-fructose corn syrup as we know it today did not exist until many decades after coca-cola was created). Today it just makes for great advertising, talk of a \"SECRET FORMULA\" adds appeal and interests people. People have been able to create drinks that taste identical to coke even if the ingredients are not EXACTLY the same.",
"You want to listen to this episode of *This American Life*:\n\n_URL_0_"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | How is Coca-Cola's recipe still a secret?
| [
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5ep5e2 | Why do men go bald more often then women? | As a male I'm deathly afraid of going bald. My father is a cue ball. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Baldness is caused by something called DHT (dihydrotestosterone). It is a byproduct of testosterone. It causes finer hair and a receding hairline. Because men have more testosterone, they have more DHT. Some men are more susceptible to DHT which is why they get male pattern baldness.",
"DNA, the blueprint for your body, comes from your parents. You get 23 chromosomes from your mother, and 23 chromosomes from your father. These are mostly matching pairs, with the exception of the chromosomes that determine your biological sex (remember that for later).\n\nEach of those chromosomes contains many genes, and in most cases your chromosome pairs are slightly redundant -- you'll have two copies for almost every gene. You may have heard the idea that some genes are \"dominant\" or \"recessive\", which determines which copy of each gene is actually used in your body. The dominant genes are used, and the recessive genes are mostly ignored.\n\nRemember how we said those 23 chromosome pairs *mostly* match? There is one important difference. For women, the 23rd pair is two X chromosomes (XX). For men, the 23rd pair has only one X chromosome (XY).\n\nBaldness is largely determined by genes on the X chromosome. It's recessive, so very few women will go bald... but men only have one copy of the X chromosome, which means that it will always be expressed even if it's recessive.",
"And when you do eventually go bald remember you can go bald to badass in two simple steps...\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's an X-linked trait (linked to the X chromosome). The X has areas on it that control the Y. If your one X is programmed to go bald, you will go bald. Women need interaction from BOTH X chromosomes in order to go bald.\n\nSo women need to have a bald father, and a mother with at least one baldness-linked X chromosome. A man just needs a mother with the baldness gene.",
"Soooo, when I was told that touching myself would make me go bald is in fact.... true? God someone give me answers..."
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} | {
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} | {
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} | {
"url": [
"https://youtu.be/AD-E2B5GfI8"
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} | train_eli5 | Why do men go bald more often then women?
As a male I'm deathly afraid of going bald. My father is a cue ball. | [
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4976dk | Why very cold (liquid) beer, turns to slush as soon as it's opened. | explainlikeimfive | {
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],
"text": [
"If it's carbonated, then releasing the pressure causes the gas to expand - which drops the temperature suddenly, which freezes the liquid.\n\nIt's also possible that the liquid may have been supercooled - that is, it's below its freezing point but unable to freeze because it can't find anywhere to get started. The sudden release of pressure, and the bubbles that form, may be just the starting points (nucleation sites) needed to allow it to freeze."
],
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why very cold (liquid) beer, turns to slush as soon as it's opened.
| [
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2exbrm | The camera effect where the scene freezes and the camera pans the scene. | Is it just CGI. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"IIRC, this technique was pioneered while filming The Matrix.\n\nThey set up a lot of cameras (I think it was originally stills, probably video cameras now) — in a circle or arc around the subject. Then they all take a picture at exactly the same time. Ta-da! A moment frozen from multiple angles. \nOf course, there's some post-processing to clean things up afterwards — and the technique is compatible with green screens and CGI."
],
"score": [
3
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | The camera effect where the scene freezes and the camera pans the scene.
Is it just CGI. | [
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5d85iv | "science is not a democracy" | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What it means is that just because a lot of people believe something doesn't mean it's true. Some ages back people believed space was filled with some gas, they called it aether. Didn't make it true. At one point people thought the earth was flat. Didn't make it true.\n\nIn science there is no safety in numbers. And in Democracy, a majority doesn't mean you're right.\n\nNow, having said all of that, I'd argue it's MORE important for you to realize that the saying is flawed because it creates this supposition that just because a whole bunch of people think something, that must make it WRONG. Conservatives try to use this to discount anthropocentric climate change without understanding that peer review is a VERY important part of the process of determining if a body of information is correct.",
"On the one hand, they're right: science is not a democracy, and the number of people who support an idea doesn't necessarily indicate the validity of that idea.\n\nOn the other hand, saying that doesn't do anything to prove the fringe theory, either. Scientific consensus is sometimes wrong, but if you go around thinking all fringe theories *must* be true, you're going to be wrong a lot more often than not.\n\nAbout these reproducible studies without peer review: how do we know that the study is reproducible if no one has reviewed it? That seems like a contradiction.\n\nWhen you dig far enough into these things, it's usually going to end up being pseudoscience that \"sounds\" technical without actually *being* technical.",
"\"Consensus\" is not science. Quite simply, it's not. It's democracy, posing as science. It's trying to shout someone down with weight of numbers instead of having a factually correct position. \n\nMerely having a bunch of people agree with you does not make you inherently correct. If you can get a million people to say that the moon is made of cheese, it doesn't stop being made of rock and dust.",
"It seems like you have it figured out. Pretty much it books down to being right, not popular. If 100 people claim something is true, but you can prove beyond a doubt that it's false, you win."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | "science is not a democracy"
[removed] | [
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4kcz63 | Why do some words in English have two or more very different meanings? | Some examples:
Run - running, blocked nose.
Wave - moving your hand, water ripple like movements.
Cool - Justin Bieber, cold.
Duck - A creature, bend down.
Ring - A circle, a onomatopoeia .
Tear - Water droplets that leak from your eyes, ripping apart things.
Bat - A flying nope mammal, a wooden stick.
Bass - Instrument, fish.
Yard - A unit of retard measurement, a garden in your house.
Dove - A bird, diving in.
The list goes on and on.
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes it's the same word that evolved into having two or more different (but related) meanings. For example a \"wave\" is a repeated fluctuations, just like when you wave your hand (you move it side to side) or ocean waves (the water moves back and forth). Sometimes the two meanings are far enough from each other so that it doesn't seem like they have the same origin, but they do - for example \"duck\" means \"to plunge into\" something, which is why the bird is called duck - because it plunges into the water.\n\nSometimes they're two entirely different words, usually from different languages, which evolved into being written the same or even sounding the same. These are known as homographs or homophones. For example the fish \"bass\" comes from Middle English *baers* while the musical instrument \"bass\", which comes from the word for a low note, comes from the latin *bassus* which means low (similar to the English word \"base\").",
"Because the English language coming from a lot of different sources:\n\nFor example the yard.\n\nAs a distance measurement, it's etymology comes from the Old English gerd, the dutch gard and the German Gerte.\n\nAs a garden, it's coming from the Anglo-Saxon geard and like the German Garten.",
"If we accept that cool=Justin Bieber, that is really an example of slang and not definition. But it's a good example of how words get re-used. When it was being integrated, the opposite of \"cool\" was \"square.\" But \"square\" as slang fell out of favor. \"Cool\" continued to be used and now means a your take on what a favorable impression of what Justin Bieber represents, which may not be universally shared.\n\nSource: Dobie Gillis re-runs. You can probably search You Tube better than I.",
"I'm learning German and I just discovered the word 'rest'. In German it's a noun, French it's a verb, English can be either...\n\nGerman meaning: remainder or left over...\nFrench meaning (rester): to stay, to remain, to be still... \nEnglish meaning: both of these things, depending on context",
"As some of the other people have already mentioned the reasons for multiple meanings of the same words, we should take a moment to reflect that it is (fortunately) not as complicated as Finnish. \n[9 potential meanings for the exact same two words](_URL_0_)"
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} | train_eli5 | Why do some words in English have two or more very different meanings?
Some examples: Run - running, blocked nose. Wave - moving your hand, water ripple like movements. Cool - Justin Bieber, cold. Duck - A creature, bend down. Ring - A circle, a onomatopoeia . Tear - Water droplets that leak from your eyes, ripping apart things. Bat - A flying nope mammal, a wooden stick. Bass - Instrument, fish. Yard - A unit of retard measurement, a garden in your house. Dove - A bird, diving in. The list goes on and on. | [
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3z141t | How are white Monster Energy drinks 0 calories when it has 2 carbs per serving? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Erythritol. Sugar alcohols are carbohydrates, but erythritol has a caloric value of 0.2kcal/g which allows the Monsters to be labelled as sugar-free and 0 calorie.",
"You can legally put 0 calories on your product of the amount is less than .5 or something like that. It's practically 0."
],
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | How are white Monster Energy drinks 0 calories when it has 2 carbs per serving?
| [
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2r0eqj | what exactly are those squiggly lines floating in my eye | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're called floaters. They're basically just some proteins that are in your eye. _URL_0_",
"As someone else mentioned, they're called floaters. They are shadows of small pieces of vitreous (the 'filling' of your eyeball) that breaks loose. Usually these are harmless, unless you experience a sudden, significant increase, in which case you should see a doctor ASAP.",
"god damn it ! Was completely ridiculed by science teacher when asking this in HS ! Fuck you roquet"
],
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} | {
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"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | what exactly are those squiggly lines floating in my eye
| [
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216yoc | What makes the Mona Lisa so highly regarded? | The Mona Lisa is always described as *the* work of art, but I'm not sure what make it stand out over so many other masterpieces. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's by a famous artist/inventor and got a ton of press 100 years ago after being stolen. That made it an iconic piece of art, causing it to be studied by artists and the general public which has resulted in it's popularity perpetuating.",
"There were many aspects of the Mona Lisa that seem ordinary today, but at that time, were groundbreaking. The Mona Lisa was the first famous work to feature the three-quarter pose that the painting is displaying, and before it, most portrait works were done from the side or straight in-front. This dynamic pose was later copied by other artists, and has since become much more commonplace. Other revolutionary aspects that were virtually unknown at the time were Da Vinci's cropping of the painting, the fact that the painting became blurrier in the background to illustrate a sense of depth, and the method Da Vinci used to create the semi-translucent layers of the painting, which he invented the term 'sfumato' to describe.",
"Just a art student here , I'm 90% sure the face itself is in proportion to the golden ratio , I can also tell you the hands on the Mona Lisa are considered Leonardo's masterpiece tour de force , his backgrounds are also done In a very hazy style known as sfumato which is a result of many layers of paint. A lot of the fame can be attributed to the mere mystery of the piece, he never gave it to the person who commissioned it and kept it until his death where it fell into the hands of the king of France who was his last patron and supposedly one of his close friends, their are a lot of theories surrounding it from the face being his own to all sorts of things which u can find with a quick web search . Honestly I don't think people realize how hard it is to make nice hands and feet , screw landscapes and faces most of the masters in there busy years had there whole pieces painted by apprentices aside from the hands and feet - I didn't Wikipedia any of this so if I'm wrong sorry - first post - sorry for grammar",
"Leonardo Da Vinci painted it. He is the foremost Renaissance artist. Artist's credibility adds to the paintings popularity.\nNapoleon Bonaparte hung the painting in his master bedroom in 1800. This - I think - was the first tipping point of making the painting one of the most popular paintings in the world.\n1804, Mona Lisa is hung in the Louvre - and others can now glimpse at the painting that Napoleon slept with.\nBut the real tipping point for the paintings popularity only hit in August of 1911 - when Mona Lisa is stolen. Stolen from heavily secured Louvre which experts said was impossible. No one knows who stole it or how. Conspiracy theories abound. The painting is talked about in every newspaper.\nAfter 2 weeks of much fan fare, Police arrest Guillaume Apollinaire on suspicion of theft. He is the only person they have arrested. Apollinaire implicates Pablo Picasso. The rumor of Picasso stealing the Mona Lisa adds in a lot more fuel in making Mona Lisa very very popular.\nPicasso is questioned and released. Guillaume Apollinaire himself is released after 5 days. Everyone is still clueless as to who stole the painting. But conspiracy theories abound.\nTwo years after the theft, the Mona Lisa is finally found when an employee working at Louvre tries to sell it to an art gallery in Florence for $100,000.\nWhen the Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre, it draws massive crowds. People visit the Louvre only to see this one painting.\nAnd then it hit the Paris Hilton effect. Its popularity added to its popularity. So much so that most people don't know why it is popular in the first place.",
"Painting major here.\n\nArt historically speaking, the most notable part of the painting is the sfumato technique. In other words, an atmospheric perspective, or a hazy type of rendering.. Big deal right? He was one of the first artists to incorporate this at just the right time where it helped progress the narrative of the art world. \n\nThe high profile of the piece probably stems from its mysterious nature, which is akin to Da Vinci himself. Apparently something was captivating with the choice of the model , her smile, gaze, etc.. all help promote it to be high profile work of art- much like The Girl With The Pearl Earring. \n\nAlso, if you see the painting in person and watch her eyes while you cross the room, they follow you.",
"Like many have already mentioned, the technique itself is incredibly well done, with the sfumato and details in hands and facial features making it a technically beautiful painting. One also needs to consider the high profile nature of the work, with the Mona Lisa being stolen multiple times, creating a media frenzy around the work and fuelling intense public attention.",
"Because she has no eyebrows.\n\nSerious, take a look. No freaking eyebrows.\n\nAlso if you're never seen it in person, it's like an 8x10, very disappointing.",
"No art major would admit it, but at this point in time it's because it's become a bit of a circle jerk. \n\nThat picture hanging in the louvre has been damaged and retouched, and lost a lot of what Da Vinci originally put there (And no question, Da Vinci WAS a genius) \n\nThere is a [possible earlier version](_URL_0_) that has turned up, it's colours haven't faded in the same way, and the butchering caused by retouching isn't there.\n\nSo at this point it's more about what it was, a excellent example of it's technique, by an undisputed genius at the end of his career, \n\nIt's just not as evident when you see what remains of the painting to this day.",
"Advertising. The French and Italian tourism industries have been promoting the hell of out Leonardo da Vinci for decades. And the Mona Lisa gets the most promotion of it all. People believe it’s an great painting not because it is, but because they’ve been told to, over and over, just like they believe Coca Cola is the real thing and you can save 15% by switching to Geico. There are plenty of other weird/realistic/mysterious portraits in Parisian galleries that nobody gives a shit about because they aren’t being used to sell hotel rooms.\n\nSource: Art major who’s traveled to a lot of great museums.",
"It's like a meme, don't seek reasoning in fine arts.",
"For those of you wondering what Mona Lisa looked like when she had eye brows (before excessive cleaning took off the eye brow paint), please refer to [this image.](_URL_1_))",
"There's a treasure map to the Declaration of Independence hidden on her backside.",
"In one word, innovation. Da Vinci introduced techniques not seen prior in the way that he smoothed skin tones, introduced the fading background, and caught the subject moving between expressions. Portraits had been almost lifeless representations up to that point, with the painter trying to capture detail or avoid any blemishes. The Mona Lisa was the first known potrtrait in which unnecessary detail is removed, the blemishes are preserved, and the subject appears lifelike.",
"Gladdar had a good answer above, however I want to add that a big part of the reason that the Mona Lisa is so highly regarded is that Da Vinci prized it himself as is own best work. Given the great deal of respect people had for Da Vinci - it catapulted the Mona Lisa into fame.",
"Apart from its merits as a work of art, it has been come the token famous painting in popular culture. \n\nIf you ask the man on the street to name the five most famous paintings, you'd get the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, maybe The Scream, then a blank stare. A lot of people assume these must be the best because they are the only ones they have heard of.",
"I see a lot of the major reasons listed - smufato, being stolen, DaVinci himself, etc. One thing I don't see much mention of is the fact that this is seemingly a rare example of art-for-the-sake of art, which is almost unheard of in the Renaissance. All art was commissioned and artists were tradesmen. Some gained fame, yes, but they were still paid entirely on commission. While the Mona Lisa may have been originally commissioned, Leo carried the painting with him most of his life and seemed to work on it for the joy of it, not for money. Today, we think of art almost exclusively as a form of self expression and not a simple trade like being a mechanic. This painting represents the beginning of that transition, from artisan to artist.",
"The formal aspects of the Mona Lisa is half of the reason why it's so famous. The Mona Lisa had largely been ignored by Europeans (in popularity though it changed hands often) until the 18th century when the Grand Tour became more accessible to Europeans of more mercantile means and the Enlightenment made knowledge of these cultures imperative for anyone in the know. Discoveries in the ruins of Rome and Greece were being made all the time. Renaissance works were becoming highly prized and people were always looking for souvenirs on the Grand Tour (Renaissance drawings/paintings were often circulated as such). Plus add the fact that there are very little completed works from Leonardo so anything he did is priceless. Then it was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre and rediscovered a few years later. That's why it's so popular in contemporary culture. After that, art historians gave it another look and added numerous additional analytical studies. \n\nThe three-quarter pose wasn't unusual as /u/glublublub thinks. It just wasn't used for people of the highest stature like royalty so it wasn't as popular with portrait painters that were trying to always get the highest commissions. The fact that she's in the portrait at all (which would have been reserved for people of means though not necessarily aristocrats) but her identity is shrouded (she wears no jewelry, no effects) so it looks like she has no means and as a woman in the Renaissance, decorum would have dictated she not look the viewer in the eye so all that adds to engaging the audience psychologically. Also the atmospheric perspective and its mysterious location add to its lingering appeal. \n\nEdit: I'm currently an undergraduate student in Art History with a concentration in museum studies.",
"It's all about the science behind her smile.\n\nI'm surprised that (at least as far as my Control+F to find the word \"smile\" has led me to believe) no one has mentioned this yet. If they have, I apologize for repeating it.\n\nThere are many, many reasons why the Mona Lisa is so highly regarded, but the main reason is her smile.\n\nIt's true, part of it is probably what stalking-horse pointed out about how being popular leads something to become even more popular. But mostly, it's the smile.\n\nThere's a lot of research that has gone into this, but if you look directly at her mouth, she doesn't appear to be smiling very much. The farther away from her mouth that you look, at her eyes, for instance, the more she appears to be smiling.\n\nThis appears to have been not only deliberately done, but was the major purpose that Leonard set out to accomplish with this piece. And, that he was only able to have accomplished this, or even planned for it, because of his great understanding of how the human eye worked. It relies on the fact that the ability to perceive color is in the \"front\" of the eye, and the ability to perceive light and dark are on the \"outside\" of your eye.\n\nIt really is a brilliant illusion that relies on a technique that he himself is often cited as the master of, a technique called sfumato.\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_4_",
"The Mona Lisa is one of the most significant pieces of art in the history of our civilization because it perfectly embodies the humanist movement of the Renaissance. Up until the point that this painting was completed, human beings were widely regarded as lesser beings, with the gods being held responsible for every good thing that ever happened. When the humanist movement began, people started to realize that we, as human beings, can do GREAT things on our own, without the \"help\" of a \"god.\" Prior to this point, all paintings had just been of the gods, sensationalizing them to no end. So you can imagine that when da Vinci painted just a normal picture of a normal person, it was a big deal. \n\n\nEdit: a word",
"You know how you can make a song really popular by having a famous person sing it and then making sure it plays on every station for a month or two? Think about that except its so popular that its literally the first painting that people can name, and thus everyone is always wanting to see it and touch it to the point that you can say whatever praise to it and not be wrong because everyone else is going to agree with you. Suddenly you awaken and realize you're a cat.",
"A big reason for its fame was that it was stolen for a period of time (early 1900's). It became a huge international story because no one knew where it was (kind of like flight 370). If I remember the story correctly it was an Italian nationalist who worked at the louvre that literally ripped it off the wall because he felt that it belonged in Italy. After a couple of years he tried to sell it on the black market, and was nabbed.",
"It was one of the few portraits at the time of someone smiling or showing emotion. It's a belief that the Mona Lisa is a self portrait, because when you line up da vinci's face with hers their features line up perfectly, hence the myth that the smile is the first ever troll face to be recorded.",
"it is this piddly little painting in the Musee du Louvre that is crowded round by hundreds of people at any one moment. Yet, outside in the corridor, unlooked at by anyone, is Leonardo's much bigger and much better, Madonna & St Anne (_URL_5_)",
"This is a lot easier if you think of it as business than as art. Not trying to ensue that this isn't a phenomenally well done painting, but just a different approach to explain.\n\nSomething's value is only worth as much as someone's willing to pay for it. However this can get strange and just start stacking up tremendously, especially in the art world. Someone says its good and someone decides they like it and would pay $500 for it. Now someone sees this happening, decides they want it instead, but are willing to pay $1000 to ensure that they get it and not the other person.\n\nNow if the particular piece manages to stick around and keep inflating in value, then it starts easily being in the millions, because once rich people start fighting over it it's going to increase at an exponential rate. This is around the time museums start hunting them down as well.\n\nThis takes time, skill, people with disposable income, and luck. To reinforce my point on how the value of these things drastically change will be Van Gogh. His paintings go for millionnnnnsssssss, but he died poor as shit. The value of his art work took too long to develop, and unfortunately it wasn't fast enough for him to be able to cash in on it.\n\nAlso my Van Gogh example leads me to another point which is somehow if you are dead your stuff becomes more valuable and popular (even if you weren't valuable or popular whilst alive). I'm not gonna go too into this, but you can see stuff like this happen a lot with musicians.",
"I don't know if I'm too late in replying, but here's what I've heard: \n\n\nThe main reason for its fame is because of the (lack of) back story related to the painting. Who is the subject? What is her relationship with da Vinci? Why is he reported to have taken the painting with him wherever he went? Why is she smiling so mysteriously? \n\n\n\nIt's because da Vinci was such an interesting person that people are fascinated by who Mona Lisa might be to capture his attention.\n\n\n\n... Or so I heard.\n\nEDIT: Formatting",
"Look very carefully at the shading around her eyes. Many consider this to be far more photorealistic than would be possible for the time it was made. \n\nThis is large part due to a semi-transparent glaze that Da Vinci had access to. He applied multiple layers in the places he wanted darker, and the image underneath was still clear and visible.\n\nIt is also assumed (but not proven) that Da Vinci used mirrors in a new way to achieve one of the most photorealistic pieces of an era.",
"What makes it stand out? An enormous amount of advertising. Regardless of the painting's merits per se, it has been successfully been made something of a circus show for quite some time. \n\nIf you're interested in the painting's recent history, check out Robert Hughes' documentary, \"The Mona Lisa Curse\". It deals with the superstarization of the painting and modern art in general. It's up on Youtube.",
"I also believe that it has to do with the subject. The woman in the painting is not royalty, as most commissioned paintings were. Instead, she is believed to be in the middle class, or bourgeoisie, which was essentially brand new at the time. This makes the Mona Lisa a quintessential painting of the Renaissance.",
"My humanities teacher explained it to me this way... It isn't. It was stolen from a museum a long time ago. When it was they had to send out fliers with pictures of what it looked like on it so people knew. After that publicity it got attention and became more well known",
"As many others have pointed out, it's a very impressive feat of proportions and anatomical accuracy, but it far from being the only one like that - this is one of those cases where its fame is self-perpetuating; it's famous because it's famous.",
"I don't know. But it's really fucking small. I expected a normal sized painting. But it's actually a really small painting. I've seen it with myself and thought \"This can't be the most expensive painting in the world\".",
"\"The Mona Lisa's not a better painting, it's merely a more famous painting. And made more famous by the fact that it was stolen!\"\n\n\"Have you seen it? It's tiny! It's like this big. Yes, really.\"\n\n- Anyone?",
"I think it's because its popularity and controversiality snowballed over the years, so now it's iconic.\n\nPersonally I don't like it very much, i think it's just too dark adn boring.mi prefer landscape paintings though.",
"Read title wrong and clicked on this thinking the question was about why the Mona Lisa looks so retarded.",
"I have trouble understanding this too... but looks like it's been explained. Yay I learned something!",
"At first, I read this as \"What makes the Mona Lisa so highly retarded?\"",
"[It is a combination of good art, and a whole lot of chance.](_URL_6_)",
"Because something has to be the most famous painting."
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"http://i.imgur.com/yXEDunl.png",
"http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-mystery-behind-the-mona-lisa.htm",
"http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/mona-lisas-smile/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/The_Virgin_and_Child_with_St._Anne_(Leonardo_da_Vinci).PNG",
"http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-because-its-good-right"
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} | train_eli5 | What makes the Mona Lisa so highly regarded?
The Mona Lisa is always described as *the* work of art, but I'm not sure what make it stand out over so many other masterpieces. | [
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10mdl5 | Domestication of animals | - How long does the process of domestication take (let's say dogs; from wild animal to what we would recognize today as a dog)?
- How does the process begin aside from just having the animal around humans?
- What are the intermediary steps?
- Are there any animals right now that would are undergoing the process of domestication?
- Why can we domesticate some animals and not others? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am no way an expert but I have read a little about this in the past and I will give it a shot(not sure if a 5 year old will be able to completely understand this without a little background knowledge on things like sex, evolution and what breeding is).\n\nThe basic steps for domestication is that a human will pick an animal species that closely fits his or her needs. (Kind of how dogs do all kinds of things very well) The breeder finds the specific animals that have the traits needed to be good at the task they want it to do. In the early days this was being less agressive or being large so it would provide a lot of food. For dogs we probably started with something like the modern day wolf. It was aggressive but in the right situations it could be trained or raised to live alongside humans. The breeder would pick the most well mannered wolf/dog to breed with the other calmer ones so they will past down the calmness. Overtime of constantly breeding of animals with the kinds of traits you want(many many generations) you will eventually get closer towards your goal. A good example of this is that Retrievers dogs were bred to fetch things(which is why buddy loves the game so much). One of the ways you would select for this trait would be to look for the dogs that are easiest to train. Over time retrievers became very easy to train and are very well mannered and protective with their families. This is why many families have them today. \n\nThe problem with some animals are violent towards humans or are not easily bred. These animals will be more difficult if not impossible to breed in a way that would be safe(although some people try). The key for domestication is the ability to get the animals you like to breed with eachother producing more of them so any animal that is breedable is able to be domesticated. Today some fish are being domesticated for food(like the salmon)."
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} | train_eli5 | Domestication of animals
- How long does the process of domestication take (let's say dogs; from wild animal to what we would recognize today as a dog)? - How does the process begin aside from just having the animal around humans? - What are the intermediary steps? - Are there any animals right now that would are undergoing the process of domestication? - Why can we domesticate some animals and not others? | [
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3na6y0 | When my bread goes moldy, where does the mold come from? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mold is everywhere; in the air, in the bread, on every surface, on and even inside your body.",
"It literally comes out of thin air. Spores are virtually everywhere! In fact, we probably wouldn't have beer today if that wasn't the case. \n \nBeer fermented with yeast was probably not a deliberate thing at first; the beer was simply contaminated by yeast spores in the air. Later people figured that out and started adding yeast deliberately. Some beers, such as lambic beer, are still made by relying upon the yeast spores in the air. \n \nSo be thankful of spores in the air.",
"Microscopic spores are caught by just about any movement of air. If they land on some suitable source of food, such as bread, they begin to grow."
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} | train_eli5 | When my bread goes moldy, where does the mold come from?
[deleted] | [
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3f1eyq | Why do people put their hands on their head when something bad happens? | As above, when witnessing an accident or something stressful happens why is people's first reaction to put their hands on their head? I've even noticed myself doing it after a car crash opposite my house and when my sister had a seizure... is there a scientific reason? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just a theory, but it's likely derived from an instinct to protect our head/face when in danger.\n\nAnother theory, it may be a learned form of non-verbal communication. (I know I do this, and can picture adults doing it, but I don't know if it's common among children.) It could be a way of signalling to others that there is a dangerous situation. This could explain why when a crowd sees something bad go down, not everyone does it. By contrast, if it was based on a self-defensive instinct, we'd expect more of the crowd to do it."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do people put their hands on their head when something bad happens?
As above, when witnessing an accident or something stressful happens why is people's first reaction to put their hands on their head? I've even noticed myself doing it after a car crash opposite my house and when my sister had a seizure... is there a scientific reason? | [
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3mp1o4 | What happens with the relationship between large predators and their handlers? Why do those animals (mostly) cease seeing their human handler as food? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Predators don't necessarily just see 'all other things' as prey. In the case of large predators and handlers they're also tamed. They've been socialized to the presence of humans. They're certainly still dangerous animals, but they are accustomed to the fact that people are around, and potentially also have been trained to recognize that cooperation is better (Treats!) than confrontation (back in the box!)."
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} | train_eli5 | What happens with the relationship between large predators and their handlers? Why do those animals (mostly) cease seeing their human handler as food?
[deleted] | [
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5r4zh0 | Why does is it impossible to find news that is accurate and can be trusted? | I am only 20 so I am new to this whole politics thing and really being involved. It doesn't help that this election has been insane and I am trying to learn about good news sources through this. I feel overwhelmed and I just want honest news. I feel like for every piece of news there is someone somewhere proving why they are wrong. SOMEONE HELP. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is overwhelming -- there are so many potential sources of news these days, and many of them spend time telling you that most of the others are untrustworthy and inaccurate. That doesn't help. \n\nSo start small, with things you know about or that people you know and trust know about. What sources are accurate about *that* stuff? That's good to know. They seem to represent truth as you understand it. \n\nThen note what sources *they* trust. That will expand your potential news universe a bit, let you extrapolate to things you don't know about personally. \n\nBut that's not enough. Seek out people that are different from you -- maybe a different race, maybe from a different part of the world, maybe of a different social class. Make friends with them, figure out which of them are smart and trustworthy, find out what sources seem accurate to *them*. How do those sources match with the ones that you've already been consuming and trusting? \n\nCritical thinking will be key. If you find someone obviously telling a lie, you should question why they did so and whether you can trust other things they say. It is plausible (but sad) for a person or a source to be trustworthy on some topics but utterly deranged on others.",
"If you like podcasts, try listening to On The Media. They examine and explain news coverage of all kinds. The hosts don't report the news per se, but rather help listeners to understand the often confusing and contradictory relationship the press has with the truth. Their website even has a \"Breaking News Consumer's Handbook\" so \"you can glide through the murky waters of the media like a Navy seal.\" The show is produced once a week, with mini episodes in between sometimes. Comes out of WYNC, an NPR outlet. Very entertaining to me. In fact, it's where I get most of my news, so I don't have to weed through the rhetoric.",
"My son came home from school today where his teacher spent a lot of time bashing the president's immigration order. She gave the class an assignment to use Google to determine what was in the executive order and why it was in there. Needless to say the top posts were all editorials and opinion. So I taught my son (7th grader) the importance of going to original sources and forming his own opinion. I have always told him that more important than believing in something is understanding why you believe it. Original sources is the answer. Read it for yourself or watch the live footage on C-SPAN. I have not found a news organization I really trust.",
"Almost all news sources will be 'wrong' on somethings, but you should still listen to all of them and sort through the bullshit yourself.\n\nBias in news can manifest in different ways (whether intentional or not), so even sources you trust can skew your opinion on something. \n\nExposing yourself to conflicting sources will give you a much more well rounded and 'honest' understanding of any subject.",
"Critical Thinking is key in shaping one's politics.\nThere are several things one must keep in mind when reading a news article from a site. Here are a few guidelines.\n\n1. Is it reputable?\n\n* Have you ever heard of the site? Have you heard of USAToday? BBC? What about Vox? TheHill? CBC News? For someone just starting, you should try to focus your attention more on news organizations you've heard of because if you've heard of them, chances are they're a reputable source that wouldn't benefit from deceiving people.\n\n1B.\n\n* There's a caveat in this however because you should immediately determine the site's bias. Read a couple news articles that aren't labeled opinion and see if they use certain words. Sometimes if the site, or author is in favor of what they're reporting, they'll use more positive sounding words, while the opposite can be expected when they don't. Do their articles read like they're cheerleading a particular issue or person? Do they talk positively or negatively in regards to an issue or person you disagree or agree with?\n\n1C.\n\n* At age 20, I'm expecting you to more or less have an idea of what your politics are, what you deem right and wrong, fair and unfair, what you think government should or shouldn't do etc. If you do, it is highly suggested that once you've determined a site's bias, whether left or right to and have read a particular story then check what the other side is saying in regards to the same story. As the saying goes, the truth is more in the middle. Just use your critical thinking skills and check to see if the articles are written in a way that doesn't scream the writer's ideology or intentions and always check their sources.\n\n\n2. What type of news site are they?\n\n* Generally speaking one can find some bit of this information in their about page (if they don't have an about page, you should start questioning their reputability) that's usually found at the bottom of the page. Blogs are a bit iffy because on one hand they can be extremely biased to one side or another, but on the other, seeing how in this day and age more and more people are getting their news from blogs completely disregarding them may not be the wisest thing to do either because chances are at least one of them will give you balanced and unopinionated reporting.\n\n3. Check Their Sources.\n\n* Do they cite educational institutions like MIT as their source? Do they cite Internationally recognized news sites like Reuters or the BBC or do they cite a blog you've never heard of or a tabloid? Sometimes the sources could be think tanks or other organizations. You should be wary of these because they most certainly also have a political bias. If an article you read in regards to the economy for example sources only The Heritage Foundation (a right wing think tank), you should check other sites like The Wall Street Journal or sites that deal only in economic policy. If the article only sites The Sierra Club (a left wing environmentalist organization) in regards to an article about the environment, you should check scientific magazine sites like Scientific American or look for articles talking about that subject who's url ends in .edu.\n\n4. In Regard to Fake News\n\n*I think the easiest way to dispel this problem of fake news for someone like you is to use google and check to see if other sites talk about the same story. If you read an article and then google the headline or the main subject of the story and only get the same site as a hit or other sites that source that same site, that should be a definite red flag for you.\n\n5. Always Keep An Open Mind and Educate Yourself\n\n* I would really love to tell you which sites to stay away from, but I can't tell you that. You have to determine that on your own. However, if you do choose certain sites, I recommend you always keep an open mind on the issue they talk about (unless it's something that you just feel negatively or positively about because there's just no getting around that). If you're reading an article about the environment for example, unless you're absolutely sure you can trust the site, it's ok to be a little skeptical, check other reputable sites to see what they say about that particular issue or story. Read up on the issue in a textbook or use other educational tools to help you better understand the terms they use, what they're saying/talking about, how they're saying it and form an opinion based on more solid ground. Once you have a more solid grasp of what an issue is or at least what's being said, you'll have an easier chance of forming an opinion based on what you've learned. This can apply to other issues like economics, industry, hell even sports.",
"IMO the BBC is as objective and professional as it gets. Thing about politics though is that there is no objective way to talk about politics. I'm in my first year political science and literally the first 150 pages of my politicology course explain how we cant really say what politics are without being subjective.\n\nThe best way to find an balanced is knowing who wrote an article, what their political background is and understanding the basic principels of that background. This way you can see the reasoning behind the article. Then, on the same topic, read another article from a different newspaper. Compare, reflect and see what you think about it. This will take time in the beginning, but with some training you'll be able to flash over an article, pick out the important sentences and move on. Newsstories are mostly written in the same way.\n\nAnother tip, this is especially important for new laws and decisions, get to the source. What is actually written in the new law?\n\nAlso, if you want free news, check if someone you know has a subsciption on any newspapers, you can just log in to their account on a mobile app and read full articles for free. Its almost always possible to log in on multiple devices at the same time. I now have 4 papers and a magazine for free every day, on mobile though.",
"For politics, it's honestly probably better to visit pundit/analysis sites. These are things that focus more on facts (e.g. polling, voting) rather than the \"OMFG Trump is Satan/Trump is God\" stuff you'll find on many \"news\" sites. \n\nI'd suggest _URL_0_ and _URL_1_. 538 has been suggested to lean slightly left-of-centre, and RCP slightly right-of-centre. Both of them provide content submitted by different people, while RCP also provides links a wide variety of political articles (Left, Right, major news outlets, small blogs, etc). So between all of this, you should probably get something close to 'the truth'. \n\n\nTo take a simple example: the polling about Trump's approval rating varies quite significantly from pollster to pollster. Each side will basically cherry-pick the poll that looks 'best' for their side and spin the narrative accordingly (Trump's doing well!! Trump's cratering!!). But RealClearPolitics' collates all the different polls together and averages them, giving an overall neutral rating. So with one click, you've sifted through all the bullshit from both sides, and come up with something that's in the middle, and probably closer to the true situation."
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} | train_eli5 | Why does is it impossible to find news that is accurate and can be trusted?
I am only 20 so I am new to this whole politics thing and really being involved. It doesn't help that this election has been insane and I am trying to learn about good news sources through this. I feel overwhelmed and I just want honest news. I feel like for every piece of news there is someone somewhere proving why they are wrong. SOMEONE HELP. | [
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2de8ey | why does it seem so many gas and convenience stores (US) are owned by foreigners? | It's not that I have a problem with it, just seems every gas station or corner store is the same. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They probably mostly are. It's not something someone born here would strive for necessarily, whereas for foreigners it's an opportunity to make a pretty decent amount of money for themselves, while not really stepping on too many toes along the way."
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} | train_eli5 | why does it seem so many gas and convenience stores (US) are owned by foreigners?
It's not that I have a problem with it, just seems every gas station or corner store is the same. | [
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8o7i6g | If a women receives donor blood from a man, isn't she technically 'on steroids' ? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Testosterone has a really short half life (4 hours or something), so generally in the time it takes to collect and process the blood, testosterone has most likely been used up. \nGenerally when collecting blood, we screen it for disease and abnormalities (such as dengue, malaria, hiv, ect) and then store it either as whole blood or plasma. Whole blood when your red blood cell counts are low, plasma is for when you have a low volume of blood and/or if you can't clot your blood properly.\n(Or at least, that's how vets handle blood transfusions)",
"If a woman receives *actual performance enhancing steroids* as part of a medical treatment, she isn't considered to be \"on steroids\" in the sense that it's against the rules of any sport. \n\nIf a woman receives donor blood *from herself* for no other purpose than performance enhancement this is considered \"blood doping\" in the sense that it's against the rules of various sports. \n\nSource: have been on performance enhancing steroids for most of my life, including while competing (at amateur level) in various sports. I know of at least one Olympic athlete who was on the same steroids at the same time for the same reason in the same sport.",
"Regular blood and blood platelet donor here. (ie. not a doctor or trained professional, so might be wrong)\n\nFrom what I understand, blood is very rarely stored as whole blood, instead being separated into its component parts (plasma, platelets, red blood cells...). I would expect part of this process is designed to remove a mixture of non-blood components, including a lot of what you refer to.\n\nIf not, surely, a blood donation from a donor who ate peanuts before donating, would contain nut antigens, triggering anaphylaxis if the recipient had a but allergy.\n\nEdit: would love to hear back from someone in the field, as I'm speculating, really",
"Even if medical facilities don't remove non essential components from blood, I'm not sure if they do or can, it takes months of consistent target level exposure to sex hormones to recieve the respective noticable masculanizing or feminizing effects.\n\nThis is kind of a [relavent](_URL_0_) diagram. Its for transgender women and estradiol but it gives a good idea of how long it takes for sex hormones to change physiology. Most changes don't even begin until the person has been exposed to 3 to 6 months of contiguous target range hormone levels."
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} | train_eli5 | If a women receives donor blood from a man, isn't she technically 'on steroids' ?
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5nkuuq | Of all the horrid Trump dealings, why isn't he prosecuted on the stuff that is blatantly obvious? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Who said they were horrid? That's your opinion."
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} | train_eli5 | Of all the horrid Trump dealings, why isn't he prosecuted on the stuff that is blatantly obvious?
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8s1op4 | Why we can “feel” it when someone/something comes within millimeters of touching us, but doesn’t actually touch us | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In general you simply cannot feel those things.\n\nIf that thing is a different temperature it is possible you could feel the warmth or chill imparted to the air. Or you might actually have thin hairs from your skin touch the object which you could then feel. But most likely what you are describing is an imagined ability which doesn't actually exist when tested under controlled conditions.",
"It's charge and subtle influences of air pressure on your skin. The thing moves the air which fires your nerves and your brain jumps into the process, is it ordinary or not.",
"If it approaches you, you may be able to feel the air currents shifting. \n\nWave your hand through the air fairly slowly - you can still feel the shifting of air between your fingers. Even a small object moving fairly slowly can shift air currents, and your hairs and skin can pick up on that movement."
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} | train_eli5 | Why we can “feel” it when someone/something comes within millimeters of touching us, but doesn’t actually touch us
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1jbf53 | What make a person gorgeous and why? Also, what makes a person ugly and why? | There's always people (male/female) that are considered beautiful and desirable but what makes other people so attracted to them and why? Likewise with ugly people what is considered ugly to the human eye and why do we consider them unattractive and undesirable? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are multiple articles and studies done on this, but basically it goes back to our survival instincts/days of early man. It wasn't about beauty, but a healthy partner who could reproduce the best possible child. So not too skinny or fat meant they were eating right, symmetry is a big thing- subconsciously, if they have a good symmetrical figure/face, it's \"attractive\". So basically what you might call hot (Oh those boobs/butt/look as his muscles) is what, as early humans, we considered healthy and a good partner.",
"Sexual attraction is your brain telling you that that person would make a good sexual partner. Large breasts are good for feeding offspring, wide hips are good for birthing your spawn, nice skin and symetrical face and body is good to show that one dosn't have and hasn't had any serious disease / illness.\n\nCan your brain be tricked. Yes there is a trillion doller cosmetics industry dedicated to just that.\n\nIs it subjective. Yes in midevil times [citation needed] wealthy people had access to food and didn't have to toil all day in the sun so culturally being slightly over weight and pale was considered attractive since wealthy people were the best mates (Shakesphere insulted people by calling them *skinny*). In more modern times the opposite is true with poorer people tending to eat junk and become over weight and work in offices with little sunlight, slim tanned people may be considered more attractive.\n\nPersonality is important too, just as it is impossible to judge someone on just their personality, it is equally impossible to judge on just appearances, good models can convey a lot of personality even in a still image."
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} | train_eli5 | What make a person gorgeous and why? Also, what makes a person ugly and why?
There's always people (male/female) that are considered beautiful and desirable but what makes other people so attracted to them and why? Likewise with ugly people what is considered ugly to the human eye and why do we consider them unattractive and undesirable? | [
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13cfi7 | What bodily mechanism stops us from shitting or pissing ourselves? | When I go to the bathroom, I don't really realize how I empty my body of the waste. I sort of just relieve the tension and it happens. Essplain. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sphincters. Rings of muscle which close off orifices and passages."
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} | train_eli5 | What bodily mechanism stops us from shitting or pissing ourselves?
When I go to the bathroom, I don't really realize how I empty my body of the waste. I sort of just relieve the tension and it happens. Essplain. | [
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2nlj9o | How would unbundling Google Search from the rest of the Google services prevent Google from monopolying? | So recently I read that the EU is planning to break up Google, it wants to force Google to break up its Search business from the rest of its services. Can anybody explain to me how would that prevent Google from monopolying the search industry?
Link to the news: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the same reasons as Microsoft in the 90's.\n\nMicrosoft was dominating computing, specifically OS, but got in trouble for their bundling because it effectively prevented any fair competition (how do you compete with free?)...\n\nThe search engine may be google's primary revenue source, but there's no justification to fear a monopoly there: they may be the dominant engine, but are hardly the only engine out there.\nBy bundling other packages though, you make that dominance in one field pay off in others... Making competition for those other services tough because one-stop-shopping will almost always win- less effort for consumers than shopping around.\n\nAlternatively... No one can argue that Google earned search engine dominance... They aren't a monopoly, but close, because they simply did a better job than anyone else. Other companies had their chance and still failed, so it's not a monopoly.\nBundling has been argued to prevent competition... Google would win those other fields, not on merit, but on momentum, so to speak... And that's a problem because it could cut a new, I locative and valuable competitor off before they got a chance.\n\nAs long as competitors get a chance to prove themselves... Even if they fail miserably, it's ok.\n\n(Note: I'm not a lawyer or economist- this is my best guess based off explanations I've been given.)",
"It doesn't necessarily affect Google's near-monopoly in search, but it limits how much that position can allow them to monopolise other markets. Go to Google in IE and you get a box suggesting that you install Chrome. That gives Chrome a big advantage over Firefox or Opera and probably goes a long way towards explaining [this graph](_URL_0_). Owning a website visited by something like 90% of web users in Europe gives you huge power to promote any other business you may be involved in at the expense of your competitors.",
"This is actually fairly simple. \n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nFirst this is how Google works as a company for all those who haven't figured it out yet:\n\nGoogle's economic model relies on search engine as means to both mine you as a user for information regarding your preferences and as means to profile your search results and ads during that. Google sells ad space to companies and charges them to position their links in your search. Using your search results they can offer a better customer profile to the advertisers. The other services are being bundled as part of the package which aims to tie you to Google as the provider of services. They are also used as means to further mine the data and push ads but it depends on the service.\n\n* Gmail is very strong on data mining but it can only provide small direct ads which are not as useful to big clients as search positioning so it mostly is used as another miner to provide you with links in your search results.\n\n* Google+ would be even more useful since most of the relevant activity occurs on social networking platforms rather than on email but that has been taken over by Facebook and Google doubles up in corporate environment which is just doubling up of gmail. \n\n* Google Maps is used for geolocation so it's a supporting service for the general business model that just happens to be useful for the average user. Other than that it's just a graphic extension of regular search with regards to locations.\n\n* Google Drive is another form of data mining. It also is used to R & D cloud data storage systems which can then be perhaps commercialized formally - or not - depending on Google's strategy.\n\n* Youtube and other video channels are the media clip equivalent of Facebook - both data mining and ads.\n\n* Play Store - is a support service which is used to create brand loyalty and tie the user down to Google as an environment because it allows for Android to be a universal and flexible platform for software. They also get the cut on all ads.\n\n* and so on and so forth\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nNow to the potential anti-trust action\n\nWhat the EU proposes depends on the details of the final deal. So far it was the *European Parliament* voting on *recommendations*. The EP doesn't have the same sort of power as the US Congress. The actual workings of the deal are up to the *European Commission* which is a highly criticized and unelected body of government-nominated bureaucrats. That might cause the whole deal to be botched spectacularly. The EP might have good intentions and give good recommendations while the EC might write the directive in such a way that it will create a huge mess or do absolutely nothing in practical terms. \n\n* If the result will decouple Google Search from other services it will have absolutely **no benefit** to the consumer at all because Google is better at providing the \"entrapping\" services for free if it can use you as its golden goose. Splitting up some of its search & advertise branch from other search & advertise branches will do nothing but give some breathing space to its competitors **so they can have a better negotiating position with the ad buyers**. It's all about the price they can charge as Google's competitors. You are still the good being sold and bought. Google still will use its data mining and ad targeting in every single service. As a matter of fact they will still integrate everything into one package - they will just re-route it so that it all happens outside of EU jurisdiction. In other words it will work just as well as raising taxes on companies while allowing tax heavens to exist. Also only EU will be affected.\n\n* If the EU proposes to separate *all* search and *all* official data mining from *all* Google services then it would have a massive impact on the customer because you'd be suddenly in the position to agree to whether Google can use you as sale goods or not. Potentially it might lead to some pricing schemes on services in Europe which - despite the uproar it would generate - would be a good idea in economic terms because if you pay - you are a customer and not the goods being sold. The question is whether the same rules would then apply to Microsoft and other IT giants. It would affect directly only the EU region but it would change some of the rules of the game on a large enough scale (EU is currently 550m people) that Google might start re-considering some of its policies or even branch out to Google Europe which would operate under different rules. Which would generally be a good idea. That won't obviously stop Google from data mining and will do nothing to stop US and other government reading your mail but it's better than nothing.\n\nAlternatively all of the users in Europe might choose to turn \"integrate search and services\" option back on and nothing will change. The same way EU \"broke up\" Microsoft's monopoly years ago :)"
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} | train_eli5 | How would unbundling Google Search from the rest of the Google services prevent Google from monopolying?
So recently I read that the EU is planning to break up Google, it wants to force Google to break up its Search business from the rest of its services. Can anybody explain to me how would that prevent Google from monopolying the search industry? Link to the news: _URL_0_ | [
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6skul6 | If the economist predicts a growth of 3% but it comes to be 4% in reality, was the economist off by 25% or 33%? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The prediction was off by 25% (it was 25% short). Growth came in at 33% over prediction. So it depends on how you phrase it.",
"Pretty sure it's 25%\n\nFormula for percent error is \n\n|(actual value - ~~experimental~~ estimated value)| / actual value\n\n~~In this case the economist's estimate would serve as the experimental value,~~ so\n\n|(4 - 3)| / 4 = .25\n\nedit: added absolute value bars for clarity. value is scalar, not vector\n\nedit 2: all semantics, but \"experimental\" was confusing and ambiguous",
"Actuary here, common question.\n\nWhen talking about percentage change, you've got to provide context, and should avoid introducing a percentage that they're off.\n\nFor example, what if real growth was 0.01%?, is the economist off by [(0.01% - 3.00%)] / (0.01%) = 29900%. That's not useful information.\n\nIt's best to say what you said: 3% was predicted, actual was 4%. You will only ever introduce confusion by stating, \"so they were off by 33%.\"",
"The most common percentage error formula is this:\n\n % Error = | actual value - predicted value | / actual value x 100\n\nIn this case:\n\n % Error = | 0.04 - 0.03 | / 0.04 x 100\n = | 0.01 | / 0.04 x 100\n = 0.25 x 100\n = 25%",
"Both of the following statement are mathematically accurate:\n\nActual growth was 33% more than predicted.\n\nPredicted growth was 25% less than the actual growth.\n\nHere's another way of looking at it with just hard numbers:\n\n4 is about 33% more than 3.\n\n3 is 25% less than 4.\n\n*BUT* as others are pointing out, conventionally error is described as a percentage of actual results. The different was one pp, the actual was 4, so we call that an error of 25% even though it's *also* accurate to say growth was 33% more than predicted.",
"When we first learn about percentages, we don't understand the different effects of going up in percentage and going down in percentage.\n\nHere's an example that shows the problem: if you have a hundred... zebras and someone gives you 50% more, then you have 150 zebras. But if you then lose 50% of them, you will lose 75 zebras, ending up with only 75 zebras. (No zebras were hurt in the posing and answering of this/these issues.)\n\nThe secret is keeping track of what number is your reference point. The above example shows a shift of reference point from 100 to 150.\n\nIf a 3% increase was expected but it became 4%, the reference is 3%. 4% related to 3% is 4/3, or 1.333; changing this to a percentage gives us 133%. Since we're only looking at the INCREASE, we then subtract the 100% and get a result of 33%.\n\nBut if we look at the final amounts and we decide that our reference point is the actual increase (4%), the figuring is different. The question must be rewritten: What percentage of the final amount (4, the focus here) is the predicted amount (3)? We then say that 3 is 75% of 4, so the percentage that the original is of the final is 75%, so the difference was 25% of the final amount.\n\nGo back to that example of zebras and look again at which number is the reference for the calculation you make.",
"Neither. its 1% \nI know you didnt want that answer but its true. Its incorrect to say 25% or 33%. \n\nGoing from 3% to 4% is a difference of 1%. \nYou don't have a % of a %: its clumsy and basically bad math. (also potentially misleading).\n\nIn this case the economist was off by 1% \n\nedit: also to add, the fact that others have commented along the lines of \"its 25% or 33% depending how you look at it\" should alert you to the fact that its bad math - its ambiguous. When you realise the correct is 1% you can see it doesnt matter how you look at it. its 1% up or 1% down but still 1%. \nThats why 1% is correct. accurate and unambiguous.",
"You'd never measure the accuracy of a growth rate, or any random quantity that's not strictly positive, that way.\n\nWhat if the the economist predicts 0.01% and reality is 0%? Then he's off by infinity.\n\nAlso, what if the economist predicts 3% and reality is -3%?",
"There is another approach. If the quantities you are comparing are different categories [e.g. prediction vs actual] it can make sense to treat them differently, but if you want a symmetrical equation for the percentage difference between two values that could juat as easily be switched, you can use one if the following:\n\n % difference = |a - b| / (0.5 * (a + b)) = 29%\n\n % difference = |a - b| / max(a, b)\n\n % difference = |a - b| / min(a, b)\n\nThat said, as someone else noted, it doesn't really make sense to talk about the \"percentage difference\" between values that could range between positive and negative (and zero) -- as in your example. \n\nWhat would be the percentage difference between -1 and 1 or between 0 and 1 or between 1 and 0?\n\nIt is also bad form to talk about a percentage difference in percentages, but if the fact you are modeling is inherently always in the same direction, you can get away with it.\n\nAssuming you just picked a bad example, the correct answer has a few parts. Assuming the system being predicted has all positive values:\n\n * It makes more sense to measure how far the prediction was off reality as a percentage of reality. This way, you can measure other predictions against the same reality on the same scale.\n * If the problem or metric you want should give the same answer if the values are reversed, use one of the symmetric equations above.",
"Often, to overcome such comparisons which can be quite confusing or even misleading, the [percentage point](_URL_0_) is used.\n\nIn this case, you could say the economist was off by 1 percentage point.",
"This exact problem is the reason why finance people almost never use percentages to describe changes in their day-to-day work. They prefer to deal with raw addition/subtraction in terms of percentage points (pp = 1%) or basis points (bp = 0.01%).\n\nI noticed you used the terminology \"pp\", so I'm guessing you are already familiar with how this works.",
"...Did you just ask us a simple math question in a story problem?",
"In my opinion it makes more sense to say he was off by one percentage point no matter what, or if relevant, by an absolute (if approximate) amount.\n\nIf you insist, it will turn out that the estimate was 25% short (1 - 3/4 = 1/4) or the result was 33% too high (4/3 - 1 = 1/3), that's just a different way of looking at the same relationship between the numbers.",
"If we talk about the economist, we compare the economist to the actual and the economist was off by 25%. It is sort of like a word problem with a divisor and a dividend (think ratios). The economist's prediction was 75% of the actual, but the equation when you want to see how much they were off is:\n\n| 1 - (prediction / actual) |\n\nIf we compare the actual value to the predicted value, then the actual value was 33% more than the prediction because in that 'math sentence' the dividend is now the actual value and the divisor is the prediction.\n\n| 1 - (actual / prediction) |\n\nHope that clears it up a bit. As others said, you can use either number in a sentence depending on whether you want to phrase a larger or smaller number, but you have to swap the dividend and divisor in your sentence.",
"Incidentally, these concepts come into play when you're figuring out the basic pricing information terms \"markup\" and \"profit margin.\"\n\nThe approach of markup is like this: if a mattress costs a furniture company $300, they will mark up the price by 100%. The resulting price is $600. Notice that the reference point here is the starting number, the cost.\n\nThe approach of profit margin is like this: If an audio/video receiver costs the dealer $300 and he decides to sell it for $400, then 25% of the selling price is profit. 25% is the profit margin.\n\nInterestingly, in decades of retail experience I've found over and over that furniture sellers think of things in terms of markup, while audio/video sellers thing of things in terms of profit margin, usually just called margin.",
"None of the above.\n\nWhen he predicts growth of 3% it is because his actual prediction was 103% of the previous term.\n\nInstead the results came out at 104%.\n\nThis means his prediction was off by 103/104, or just over 0.98%. It's not 1%, but it's close to.\n\nIt wouldn't be 33% OR 25% because neither of those are using his actual prediction.",
"Since when is ELI5 for basic math problems?",
"You need to specify the reference for percentages. It's a percent *of* something. The word itself even hints to that: per centum means \"for every 100\". 100 of what, then? If you choose 4% as your reference point, then the 1% difference amounts to 25%. If you choose 3% as your reference point, that same difference amounts to 33%. The answer to your question is as much mathematical as it is linguistic, as the confusion is in communicating which of the numbers is your reference.\n\nGrowth was 33% over planned. (Ref is 3%)\nPredicted growth was 25% less than actual (Ref is 4%)",
"I love this question. I have a similar one.\n\nWhat if the economist predicts a growth of 3%, but it actually contracts by 5%? What about if it actually stagnates (growth = 0%)?\n\nThis kind of thing comes up all the time in BI, and I'll be honest: almost every customer I have ever had has wanted something different. Anyone have a *simple* way of explaining the different approaches? I know the complete ways of explaining them, but I'm a little tired of looking into confused, slightly scared eyes.",
"short answer: the economist was off by 1%.\n\nlong answer: the economist prediction was 3%, but in reality the growth was 4%. What you need to do to get the answer is to substract one from the other. So you take 4%(reality) and substrat the 3%(prediction). In math term, the equation looks like this:\n\n4% - 3% = 1%\n\nIn this case, the 1% on the right side of the equal sign is the answer you are looking for.",
"If you're 20 years old and your mother is 40, are you 50% of her age, or is she 200% of yours, or is she 100% older? All three. The economist's projection was off by 25% AND the economy grew at a rate 33% higher than the economist projected. Depends on point of reference.\n\nSo what I'm basically saying is.....PHRASING!",
"The actual answer is error = (estimate-actual) / actual\n\nBut those aren't in ratios, so you need to convert. If I predict 3% growth on $100, and I actually get $104, then the calculation is\n\nerror = (103 - 104) / 104\n\nWhich is an error of about -0.9%.",
"I'm embarrassed to say this but I don't understand a thing you guys are talking about. Why did I even come in here?!",
"The economist was off by 1%...\n\nWriters will interpret the difference in the numbers however best fits their narrative.",
"Let's be honest. In this case the economist is going to say that his prediction was spot on.",
"This is a great question that delves into \"how you can make statistics sound like anything\". \n\nBoth are correct depending on how you phrase the statement! \n\n\"The economist exceeded estimates by 33%\" \n --- Means the exact same as --- \n\"The economist estimated it's growth 25% less then it ended up\" \n\nThe second line sounds a little more awkward but in other applications will sound totally normal. \n\nIt's Super important to listen to the phrasing, 33% more is not the same as 33% less! \n\n33% more and then 33% less does not equal 1! \n1 * (3+1)/3 = 4/3 \n4/3 * (3-1)/3 = 8/9 \n\nPoliticians use this all the time. \n\nYou can combine the static totals, the rate of change, the rate of change changing, then for each of those options you can measure in absolute numbers or per population. \n\nThe crime has been the highest it's ever been. \n --- Can be simultaneously true with --- \nThe crime has decreased per person for x years straight",
"Other people have correctly observed that they estimated growth wrong by 25%.\n\nBut that's not necessarily what is being measured. \n\nWith lots of numbers you would measure the value of the thing, and use the difference to compare the growth.\n\nSo current state of thing = 100. \nFuture state of thing = 125 or 133.\n\nSo estimating 125 and the real result is 133 their estimate is really off by 6.4% (8/125).\n\nWith real economic indicators you may measure year over year or month to month, but you're measuring in many cases things like current value + 0.3%, year over year 2% growth etc.",
"Like others said, it depends which number is your base. I prefer the first number. Let me give you my example, If you sold 1 item last month and 3 items this month, your growth rate either 200% (if you based on 1) or 66% (if you based on 3) But, if you sold 3 items last month and 1 item this month, your shrink (?) rate either 200% (if you based on 1) or 66% (if you based on 3) 200% decrease on sales doesn't sound right, don't you think?",
"A lot of answers here, but in a business reporting setting, we would not report this as a percent, but a percentage point difference. We'd say the prediction was off by \"one point\", or one percentage point. The important thing here is the distinction between \"1%\", and \"1ppt\". \n\n\nThis is the hardest thing for newcomers to wrap their heads around, but a very calrifying and important concept. I don't think the top answers are illustrating this enough, tbh.",
"Both are correct, but what you could do is to express the idea more accurately so that you say something like \"the actual value was a 33% higher than the estimated one\" or \"The estimated value was a 25% lower than the actual value\". In any case you give a hint on how you calculated the percentage. I am not a native speaker so probably you can formulate the sentences better but you get the idea",
"33%\n\nThe assumption is that the original number to calculate the difference against is the first stated number.\n\nIn this case since the assertion was 3% then you calculate the difference with the 33% value as the point of reference since that is the number they came up with.\n\nAgain, this is just the assumption and both numbers are, technically, correct.",
"It is a percent of a percent, the standard way to report this is in BPS or base points.\n\nOne base points is equal to 1/100th of a percent, therefore being 1% off of prediction, we can say growth exceeded prediction by 100bps\n\nConversely if a 4% growth was predicted for a 3% growth actual, the actual would be -100bps.",
"The percentage of growth quoted is based on the initial number 3%. So the one percent increase is one third of 3%, therefore it is a 33.3% increase. \n\nYou can't say it's an 'increase' unless you base the quote on the original number. \n\nIf you want to say it's 25%, then you are quoting the amount of 'new growth'",
"Off is a subjective term that the target of gets assumed a lot. It is really 33% off from the projected number while being 25% off from the actually number. You will never be just X% off. You will be X% off of Y.\n\nPersonally I like to assume Y is actual value.",
"Both are correct, depending on how you phrase it. You have 33.3% more growth than predicted but your prediction was 25% short of the actual growth. Or your prediction was only 75% of the actual growth. Or the real growth is 133.3% of the predicted growth. I can keep going :)",
"Both. Percents are very often \"percent of something,\" and it's prudent to specify that something. \n\nHere you could say he was off by 25% of 4%. Or you could say he was off by 33% of 3%. These two statements have the same meaning and they are both valid.",
"You should never express percentage in relative terms, that's like taking the log of a log, it means nothing anymore. \n\nHe was off by 1 percentage point.",
"There was 33% more growth than he predicted. He predicted 25% less growth than there was. Good brain teaser.",
"To calculate the error, it will be (previous-present)/previous...in that case it'll be 33.333%"
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60o5qk | Sending/Receiving Public Keys | I understand encryption/decryption and keys fairly well but something I've never been able to grasp is delivering/receiving a public key. How is this done? | explainlikeimfive | {
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I understand encryption/decryption and keys fairly well but something I've never been able to grasp is delivering/receiving a public key. How is this done? | [
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1q668l | What on earth is WWE wrestling about | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hey... uh... you know all those movies and TV shows you watch? They're not real either. You still watch those despite knowing it's acting, don't you?",
"It's just entertainment. I'm not a fan but I can appreciate the athleticism that some of those guys display, and the real appeal for the fans seems to be the storylines which are pure good vs evil. One guy is the hero, the other is the villain, and they're in the ring fighting for the audience to cheer.\n\n\nWhen I watch it I don't *feel* the excitement but I understand it.",
"Its a performance. This of it like a play. The characters play archetypal roles of bad guy, hero, newbie, jerk boss etc. Notice they talk more than athletes do and the fights last odd amounts of time. Think of it as a play. Hopefully your favorite will not turn bad this week."
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} | train_eli5 | What on earth is WWE wrestling about
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47g1g6 | Why does water and soap cause my shower to become a nasty, vile, putrid, black-mold infested cesspool of filth? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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74mgr2 | Where does the term Generation X Y Z come from and now that we are on Z is AA next? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generation X was the generation after Baby Boomers. They were called that because \"X\" is the stereotypical unknown variable and, at the time, nobody really knew what they were going to be like. They grew up in a peaceful, prosperous time of American history without any major social strife. They were also significantly smaller than the Boomers & largely overshadowed.\n\nCalling later generations Y & Z is just laziness."
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} | train_eli5 | Where does the term Generation X Y Z come from and now that we are on Z is AA next?
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2trlja | How can fruit be GM'd or selectively bred to have no pips (eg oranges) if they wont be able to reproduce? | explainlikeimfive | {
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} | train_eli5 | How can fruit be GM'd or selectively bred to have no pips (eg oranges) if they wont be able to reproduce?
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4l8tgj | Why do companies give away free stuff to new customers but I get bugger all as a loyal customer? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having people agree to a good deal when they first sign up is an example of a classic sales technique called [foot-in-the-door](_URL_0_): \n\n > Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request.\n\nBut, the good news is that often times if you complain to the company about not getting a deal a new customer has gotten, they will offer it to you as well."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do companies give away free stuff to new customers but I get bugger all as a loyal customer?
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32a0ze | What characteristics make a certain liquid/solid "flammable"? | explainlikeimfive | {
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3i859r | Why do artists in older bands sound so different than artists today? | Let me try to explain this the best way I can. Bands such as Journey and REO speedwagon have a 'dreamy' feel to their voice. They sound much more lighter and airy compared to singers today. Did they just have very unique voices or is the music produced differently?
Did that make any sense to anyone else? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a thing called the ['Loudness Wars'](_URL_0_) which is probably what you're noticing. Basically, old music was recorded more simply, but record labels found people like songs more if they 'sound louder' (but aren't actually louder, really, kinda-its technical). So they started processing songs using a lot of ['Compression'](_URL_1_). Many people reckon this has destroyed music. [Here's](_URL_2_) an article talking about exactly what you're saying, which might explain better than me.",
"All the above. There is so much auto tune now. Also the sound is digital and not analog. I also think musical tastes have changed. Rock music is very marginal now. And what little rock there is never really heard except for the more commercial sounding bands. The Shinedowns of the world. \n\nAlbums used to take years to craft. Bands had to your relentlessly to make a buck. Now an album can be released almost yearly by some bands.",
"It makes sense. I'm no music expert, but I listen to plenty of old and new music and I've noticed the difference. I think it's mainly an evolution (or devolution) of style, because I've heard modern artists that emulate retro vocals. Our vocal cords didn't change...it probably has to do with more and more electronic mixing and \"enhancement.\"",
"On top of the posts about autotune and hard compression, both are correct , the \"dreamy\" sounds you describe was also a conscious decision on the bands part, it was all part of the style they were purposely going for"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression",
"http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/25/pop-music-louder-less-acoustic"
]
} | train_eli5 | Why do artists in older bands sound so different than artists today?
Let me try to explain this the best way I can. Bands such as Journey and REO speedwagon have a 'dreamy' feel to their voice. They sound much more lighter and airy compared to singers today. Did they just have very unique voices or is the music produced differently? Did that make any sense to anyone else? | [
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1kdhwu | What exactly causes the mirage of reflective water on the road? | When I'm driving on a completely dry road it sometimes looks like there's a puddle in the distance, and it appears to be reflecting the cars that pass it, but as I approach it, it fades away. What causes this illusion? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"On a sunny day, when the road gets much hotter than the air above it, a temperature gradient is established, which bends the light upward. What appears to be water is actually bent light looking at the sky.",
"This is an awesome example of optical effects in physics. So the road is hot as hell and the heat causes the air above the road to be hotter than the air higher above which in turn is hotter than the air even higher above! Anyway, the index of refraction of these layers of air change as the temperature increases. This change causes the light dispersed by the sky, which would normally hit the road or the ground and be absorbed or scattered, to bend through the air and enter your eye. You are actually not seeing water, but an image of the sky itself on the road. The brain tracks the image back from the direction that the light entered your eye. To your eye, it appears that the light comes form off the road.\n\nSource: physics student/ _URL_0_"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage"
]
} | train_eli5 | What exactly causes the mirage of reflective water on the road?
When I'm driving on a completely dry road it sometimes looks like there's a puddle in the distance, and it appears to be reflecting the cars that pass it, but as I approach it, it fades away. What causes this illusion? | [
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3dig81 | How is it possible that police in other countries can fire their weapons so few times a year? | For example, “last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times.” How is this possible without leading to criminals running unchecked, and why can't this be replicated/why isn't this the case in the USA? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the most part in Great Britain police officers don't carry firearms. Turns out it's pretty easy to not fire something you don't have.",
"Civilian gun ownership is illegal in the UK. Most officers don't even carry guns. To get a sense of why, check out these stats, scroll down to murder with firearms. UK in the double digits.. US 669 times higher. Jesus.",
"A couple of reasons.\n\nFirst, civilian gun ownership tends to be much lower in those countries. Police are supposed to only draw their sidearms when a life is in danger and the only way to defuse the situation is by using deadly force. More often than not, this situation happens when the suspect has a gun and is threatening to use it; even a small gun can have deadly consequences in a very short period of time. Without the gun, even suspects who have deadly weapons (knives, battons, etc) can do much less damage so it is easier for the police to diffuse the situation with less than lethal force.\n\nSecondly, there is an increasingly militaristic tendency for US police. We are outfitting them with more and more military grade gear and this begins to change their perspective about how they should handle a situation. Many police in other countries don't even carry sidearms, so they look to other ways to defuse situations. Police in the US have pistols and rifles and tanks, which colors the way they feel they should address a conflict.",
"Simple: the cops in most civilized countries don't go around murdering everyone they want, there are strict rules stopping them from shooting people unless they have to."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How is it possible that police in other countries can fire their weapons so few times a year?
For example, “last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times.” How is this possible without leading to criminals running unchecked, and why can't this be replicated/why isn't this the case in the USA? | [
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1q2vf7 | How does Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) work/occur? | I recently stumbled onto this whole [ASMR](_URL_0_) thing while searching for videos to help me fall asleep. Can anyone explain how this actually works from a physiological and psychological standpoint? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"> Can anyone explain how this actually works from a physiological and psychological standpoint?\n\nNope. The first step would be proving it actually exists, which hasn't really been done yet."
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": [
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How does Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) work/occur?
I recently stumbled onto this whole [ASMR](_URL_0_) thing while searching for videos to help me fall asleep. Can anyone explain how this actually works from a physiological and psychological standpoint? | [
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4aqj3o | How do sewer systems in tall buildings work? Does your crap free-fall all the way to street level? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Generally sewer systems in high rise buildings are designed to avoid 2 problems. \n\n1. free-fall of waste, both to avoid ramming into to the pipe at the bottom of the fall, and to avoid increase in air pressure in the sewer line at the lower floors. Increased air pressure might cause sewer gases and water in the P traps of lower floors to back flow. \n\n2. Sewer fluids that are swirled around the edge of the pipes help wash the inside of pipe, and prevent build up that lead to clogs, while leaving the center available for air flow. \n\nUnfortunately, that's the limits of my knowledge, hopefully someone with a strong background structural engineering can give you more information."
],
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | How do sewer systems in tall buildings work? Does your crap free-fall all the way to street level?
[deleted] | [
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4btc2x | How do we walk, and how does one become more graceful at it? | The question is pretty simple. I have my mothers wedding coming up in September, and as both of her parents have passed, I am the one that will need to walk her down the aisle. All of our family will be there and I want her to be as happy as possible. I, as my dad and granddad do, have short hamstrings, meaning the way I walk is kind of slacky. My feet land more beneath me rather than in front of me and I walk like an emo teenager. I'd like to be more graceful at walking so the main part of the wedding doesn't look so trashy. Thank in advance for all replies! | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hi,\n\nHere's a couple of tips that will help. You're going to want to rehearse these (privately:) so that they can be locked into your neurology by the time the wedding comes around:\n\n1. Imagine someone that you find REALLY sexy is waiting for you at the end of your walk. Really see them, hear, smell them, etc. Make this image real and imagine them down there waiting for you.\n\n2. Alternately, you can imagine your husband ( present or future) waiting down there and you're walking toward him.\n\n3. Do bodyweight squats. They'll help strenthen your quads and help you move smoother.\n\n4. Before you go to bed at night, imagine yourself walking as sexy as you want to, moving smoothly as you walk.\n\n5. Find someone that you know that has a really sexy walk and model them, meaning you model their posture as you walk, model their eyes and where they're looking, etc. Become that person for the duration of your walk.\n\nHope this helps!\n\nAmir Campbell"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do we walk, and how does one become more graceful at it?
The question is pretty simple. I have my mothers wedding coming up in September, and as both of her parents have passed, I am the one that will need to walk her down the aisle. All of our family will be there and I want her to be as happy as possible. I, as my dad and granddad do, have short hamstrings, meaning the way I walk is kind of slacky. My feet land more beneath me rather than in front of me and I walk like an emo teenager. I'd like to be more graceful at walking so the main part of the wedding doesn't look so trashy. Thank in advance for all replies! | [
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21ti2x | How asthma puffers work? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They contain a drug that forces all the tiny pathways in your lungs to open up. The misting just makes it easier to inhale and get where it needs to be quickly, rather than taking pill and waiting an hour for it to start working.",
"Well, depending on the inhaler, it alleviates two major symptoms of an asthma episode, or attack.\n\nFirst, the airways constrict, limiting airflow.\nThe second is that the airways become filled with mucus, though there are some asthma people who don't have this symptom.\n\nDepending on the inhaler, the active medicine acts as a relaxant, and causes the muscles in the airway to release their tension and open up. That, or another medicine in the inhaler helps deal with the mucus, the specific mechanism I do not know.\n\nLike what ameoba stated, it is usually stored in a mist form for easy intake.\nIf I can add, caffeine, while not a substitute to an emergency rescue inhaler, also acts as a relaxant to the airways, so it can help with a subtle or weak asthma attack or just simple wheezing. Again, DO NOT use it to replace or work with an inhaler. This is for very small wheezing episodes in which an emergency inhaler would be a bit wasteful and the wheezing isn't bothersome but just annoying.\n\nHow I know? I have chronic asthma myself. I carry my emergency inhaler at all times because the weather, my allergies, or over-exerting myself can cause an asthma attack.\n\nFor those who know the proper medical background and notice any mistakes in my explanation, please, point them out. :D"
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How asthma puffers work?
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4z5chj | How does exercise contribute to our overall well being? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Our bodies are designed for movement. We want to move; sit still long enough and you will start fidgeting or bouncing your leg, stretching, etc. We get rewarded for these things by easing our stress, tension, and even aches and pains. \n\nWorking out feels good on several levels.\n\n \n~ It releases endorphins which are your minds 'feel good' reward system. Eating a cupcake or doing some light cardio both reward you. \n\n~ It promotes circulation and works your cardiovascular system keeping your body healthy. \n\n~ It keeps your metabolism up helping you maintain or lose weight even long after you stop exercising. The boost you get gives you more energy for days after your work out. \n\nThe rewards for exercise are multiple but many of them come after the work out rather than during. So it can be hard to motivate yourself to begin the work out, but once you do, you benefit from it for many days after. If you do it regularly enough the mind will start to anticipate the good things that come instead of fixating on the sweat and work required while you're doing it.",
"The build-up of muscle mass from weight-bearing exercise also has tremendous benefits.\n\nOur body does not store extra protein like we store fat, so muscles end up being the *de facto* repository, which is not ideal from a practical standpoint since we use muscle (but it's better than nothing).\n\nWhenever we suffer an injury or illness or require energy, our bodies break down the muscle just a bit to release proteins that can be broken down and re-purposed for recovery or sustenance.\n\nHaving good muscle tone also improves circulation by assisting veins in carrying blood back to the heart and helps burn off excess calories, since muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain. In other words, having good muscle tone makes maintaining or losing weight easier."
],
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} | {
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How does exercise contribute to our overall well being?
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4aemzk | Green Screens vs. Blue Screens in film productions. | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"The idea behind both screens is that a program searches for the color that the screen is and replaces that color with computer imagery. If you wear green in front of a green screen, the program will see the green on your clothing and also put computer imagery where you are, which ruins the effect. \n\nThe biggest difference between a blue and green screen is the obvious one - you don't want to use blue screens when people wear blue and you don't want to use green screens when people wear green. \n\nHowever, you have a choice if you're not filming a green or blue character. Most cameras record green with less\" noise\", so you can pick up with contrasts against the green better in some cases. However, there tends to be more reflected green light with green screens, which can make color correction more difficult (e.g., blonde hair can turn reddish if you need to remove reflected green light from it). \n\nMost programs are good enough nowadays that you can have a similar color in front of the screen without too much trouble. For example, a dark green shrub probably wouldn't cause an issue for a green screen in the right spot. As a result, a lot of films choose a color and stick with it because it can be expensive and time consuming to replace the screens on different sets.",
"They both do the same thing. \n\nOne possibility is the clothes were greenish, so they use the blue backdrop to avoid complications with the editing."
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} | train_eli5 | Green Screens vs. Blue Screens in film productions.
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65f1iz | What's the percentage breakpoint of salt in water where it doesn't hydrate you anymore? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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],
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2
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | What's the percentage breakpoint of salt in water where it doesn't hydrate you anymore?
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5lb0c2 | Why are you required to remove headphones for take off and landing on most flights? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most emergencies happen during these periods, and the cabin crew want to be sure you will hear any emergency announcement that's made. And that you or your seatmate don't get tangled up in a cord if the plane must be evacuated."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why are you required to remove headphones for take off and landing on most flights?
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n1nqi | how missiles "work" | explainlikeimfive | {
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"a rocket has a couple of parts, the first thing is proulsion - usually a solid fuel that burns up, pushing it out the back, and forcing the rocket to go forward. The next bit is the payload, which is high explosive, designed to detonate when it hits its target. finally, the computer, and sensors. So the computer decides where the rocket is to go. as the guy said below \"(infared, radar, heat seeking, gps) \" which helps decide where the rocket is going. Also there are fins on the back of the rocket, these create drag (keep the back of the rocket behind itself) and allow for steering"
],
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} | train_eli5 | how missiles "work"
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483y4b | why do painkillers like percocet and vicodin contain a little bit of the painkiller and alot of acetaminophen | explainlikeimfive | {
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"APAP (acetaminiophen) kills pain in different ways than opiates & combining the two is far more effective than just taking the opiate alone. This means you can take a cocktail of the two and get better pain relief with lower cost/addiction potential.\n\nAnother benefit - if you're concerned about law+order and preventing drug addiction/abuse - is that massive doses of APAP are *really* bad for you. We're talking \"liver death, enjoy slowly dying over the next week with no chance of recovery\" bad. Until a few years ago, we considered this to be an effective deterrent against \"diversion\" (the sale of prescription drugs on the black market for recreational use) and allowed combination drugs to be sold as *Schedule III* controlled substances rather than the more restrictive *Schedule II*. Schedule II drugs have a number of legal complications - you can't get prescriptions that allow refills & those prescriptions can't be simply phoned into the pharmacist.",
"Acetaminophen is hepatotoxic; you would have to take so many of them in order to get high on the 'real' active ingredient that your liver would give up the ghost. This means they can sell such drugs over the counter because they have reduced the abuse potential."
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} | train_eli5 | why do painkillers like percocet and vicodin contain a little bit of the painkiller and alot of acetaminophen
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2q87lc | Why did hitting electronics (like old T.Vs) temporarily "fix" them? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometime problems were caused by debris on the circuit or a relay (spring loaded magnetic switch) sticking. Vibration might shake the problem free, restoring normal function.",
"Old circuitry suffered badly from dry solder joints. This is where the solder holding components onto the circuit board does not conduct electricity and deems that part of the circuit to fail.\n\nSometimes, quite often actually, giving the TV a good thump would be enough to restore the failed joint, for a short period."
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why did hitting electronics (like old T.Vs) temporarily "fix" them?
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1zvrq6 | Why is it OK to use the same utensil on raw chicken all the way through until it is cooked? | Everyone knows that you have to keep raw and cooked meat separate. So why is it OK to use a utensil on raw chicken when it goes into the pan, and then keep using that utensil throughout the process until the meat is cooked? Surely the bateria from the raw meat is just reapplied to the cooking chicken each time you touch it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you work with food then it's not. You have to have separate utensils for raw & cooked: and it's especially important with chicken. \nAt home, using the same fork or something like that isn't really a big problem as it's not a big chance of bacteria being transferred in any significant quantity, and it'll be killed again each time you put it back to cook some more.",
"chef with 10+ years experience. depends on how your cooking. If you boiling or frying chicken then you would be sanitizing the utensil every time you dipped it in the broth/ oil. Grilling would be pretty safe but you want to avoid handling raw chicken then immediately moving cooked chicken. baking would be the least safe. Yes you have separate utensils for raw and cooked but there is a crossover point. Many people when chicken is 3/4 cooked either wash or use a new utensil but they are being very safe",
"Yes, but that bacteria would be killed each time the chicken goes back into the oven.\n\nEven when it's done cooking, it's still hot enough to kill any minute traces of bacteria that you put on it via the thermometer or fork."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is it OK to use the same utensil on raw chicken all the way through until it is cooked?
Everyone knows that you have to keep raw and cooked meat separate. So why is it OK to use a utensil on raw chicken when it goes into the pan, and then keep using that utensil throughout the process until the meat is cooked? Surely the bateria from the raw meat is just reapplied to the cooking chicken each time you touch it? | [
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6mcdir | What are Autoencoders and how do they work? | (I understand this is not 5-year-old content; more like ELI20) I've looked at so many sources but I can't seem to understand how they work. What is it that makes them different from other Neural Networks? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One thing NNs are good for are for finding a function that you don't already know, but have training data for. But there are other uses, too. It can also be interesting to ask it to find a function you *already* know, and then look at how it found it. \n\nAn autoencoder is a neural network that is trained to reconstruct its own input (that is, to find the identity function). You put in an input (say, (4.5,1.7,-2.3)) and penalize it if it outputs anything but (4.5,1.7,-2.3). As a way of *finding a function*, that'd be silly; you already know the identity function. \n\nSo you typically don't look at the output layer, you look at (one of) the hidden layer(s). Once the network can reliably reconstruct its input, the hidden layer must contain enough information to represent the output. If (as is typical) the hidden layer is smaller than the input/output layers, what it represents is the same information in a lower dimensionality. That can come in handy for a lot of things. (For example, for chucking 'em into another neural network as input, instead of the original representation. Or even measuring the distance between them to see how different two things are, when it's inefficient to compare the originals.)\n\nIt's important, however, that the network be \"frustrated\" in its attempt to just memorize the inputs. You have to limit the number of hidden nodes, add noise to the inputs, or otherwise make it difficult. Because otherwise it could just assign each possible input to a unique \"code\" and then associate each \"code\" with an output. That'd be of no more use than just using the input. You have to force it to utilize its hidden nodes to pick up *generalizations* that apply to more that one input. Fewer hidden nodes means it has to use its nodes to represent more than one input node's information; noise means that the hidden node can't necessarily \"trust\" any single input node.\n\nAlso, note that while the prototypical autoencoder has the classic \"hourglass\" shape (bigger input and output layers, slim hidden layer), lots of different network architectures can be autoencoders, or parts of more complicated networks can be autoencoders even if the whole thing isn't, or something can be an autoencoder or not during different stages of its training. The important thing is that you're training the network (or part of a network) so that it reconstructs its input."
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} | train_eli5 | What are Autoencoders and how do they work?
(I understand this is not 5-year-old content; more like ELI20) I've looked at so many sources but I can't seem to understand how they work. What is it that makes them different from other Neural Networks? | [
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3n9m81 | How do Area 51/ other secret service workers get chosen? | Sure you can't directly apply to the area 51, that would be ridiculous. But I somehow can't imagine any other way either. Are they just normal governmental workers who worked their way up until somebody comes up to them and says "yo, wanna work for area 51?" | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You apply to work for the government. Your next job in the government requires a higher security clearance. So, your life is investigated by the government, and they decide to give you a clearance. Then your next job requires access to compartmentalized information. So, you get a more through investigation. Eventually you have a clearance high enough that when they're an opening at Area 51, because some alien spaceship killed your predecessor, you're on the short list of people with \"enough clearances\" to do the work. You get a secure email from the Area 51 HR department asking if you're interested. Say Yes, and the MIB start erasing your friends. OK, I made that last bit up.",
"You need a [security clearance](_URL_0_). That allows you to work with classified material at varying levels (secret, top secret, etc)\n\nIn the USA you have to be sponsored for one by the government agency that hires you. For something like at area 51 which is run by the air force then you need to already be working for the Air Force (most likely as an enlisted person or officer but maybe as a civilian if the role is pretty specialized). \n\nTo get a clearance you get investigated. That means background checks, personal interviews, interviews with people who know you, etc. It can take a while to get a clearance as well. \n\nFor something incredibly sensitive I'd imagine you have to be invited and already know many security protocols but if you look at job listings for any big government job or major government contractor it will list what type of clearance is required. If you already have one that can look good on your resume."
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"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance"
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} | train_eli5 | How do Area 51/ other secret service workers get chosen?
Sure you can't directly apply to the area 51, that would be ridiculous. But I somehow can't imagine any other way either. Are they just normal governmental workers who worked their way up until somebody comes up to them and says "yo, wanna work for area 51?" | [
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jk5ck | How can phones make emergency calls without a SIM card, reception, etc...? | It just clicked to me - how does a phone make a call when it's lacking what I'd assume are important requirements? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As stated already, you always need reception, there's no way around that.\n\nTo explain the lack of SIM, you need only look at the meaning of the abbreviation: **S**ubscriber **I**dentity **M**odule. A SIM is not actually required to make a phone call, it's just required to identify you and associate your phone with an account and phone number.",
"Interesting little bit of information, most false 911 calls (or depending on location probably 999 or [0118 999 881 999 119 7253](_URL_0_) calls) happen on Christmas because people give their kids/loved one a phone, but it doesn't have service yet, so to \"try it out\" they call emergency services.",
"As far as I'm aware you always need reception.\n\nRegarding a SIM card, that is essentially what relates a phone to a service provider and an account. Cell providers have agreed to accept any account if they are putting through an emergency call.\n\nYour cell phone always is able to communicate with a cell tower if it has reception, what's on the SIM card is what the cell tower looks at to decide whether to actually let you make a call or not. If you don't have one you won't get through, unless it's an emergency call."
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"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | How can phones make emergency calls without a SIM card, reception, etc...?
It just clicked to me - how does a phone make a call when it's lacking what I'd assume are important requirements? | [
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62yj9t | Would it be possible to implement universal healthcare by state? | Since some states like California have equivalent population and GDP of some countries with universal healthcare, would it be possible to implement it by state rather than the United States as a whole? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sure. That's what Canada does. Both Vermont and Colorado have said they're looking into it, at some point in the recent past. I think that shows that it is possible to some degree, and experts have at least toyed with the idea.\n\nI imagine state taxes will go up by a bit, but I think people will be fine with it eventually, because you wouldn't have to pay insurance premiums anymore (it's effectively paid for through the taxes).\n\nI moved from US to NZ. In US, I had private insurance from work. In NZ, I have universal public healthcare. I earn about the same in NZ as what I earned in US, but I took more money home, because my taxes in NZ is less than what my taxes plus premiums were in US.",
"When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the state passed [major healthcare reforms] (_URL_0_) that helped most people obtain health insurance. So States can have their own systems, as long as they don't clash with Federal policy. As noted, a true socialised medical system is unlikely in the USA because medical providers are rich, private companies, and any state interference with their business would lead to massive legal problems. Any law passed at the State level can be challenged at the Federal level e.g. socialised healthcare could be called \"restraint of trade\" under the Sherman Antitrust Act and end up in the Supreme Court.",
"Probably not, because there would be a serious risk of adverse selection problems with sick people flocking to the nearest state that offers universal healthcare when they're sick. Current precedent states that it would be unconstitutional to prohibit access to state welfare to a person merely because they've only lived in the state for a short period. [*Saenz v. Roe*](_URL_2_). \n\nAdmittedly the scope of that doctrine is very fuzzy (no court has found against in-state university tuition, for example). Realistically, if we have a conservative Supreme Court they could potentially apply that precedent to essentially kill any state-based universal healthcare system, whereas a liberal Supreme Court could just as easily interpret the caselaw in a way to get around it. Something similar happened in the famous case of [*Gonzales v. Raich*](_URL_2_), where the Supreme Court interpreted a doctrine in a way that made state legalization of marijuana very difficult (without a promise, like Obama gave, of non-prosecution), but where there was easy (and recent, conservative-driven) precedent available to reach the opposite conclusion.",
"Assuming the federal governments support in adjusting laws to give states more freedom it could be possible. \n\nThere are many ways to implement universal healthcare with 58 countries as of 2009 doing it there is a lot of information available on what works and what doesn't. This is a huge advantage to countries changing healthcare system so late.\n\nOne key aspect is having a single fund manage the purchases. So a state government would negotiate the prices of drugs, medical equipment and related services. For drugs where there is an alternative the cheaper equivalent version could be purchased. It's this competition combined with the volume being purchased that results in cheaper prices. \n\nFunding the system is a problem for states because the total tax (without any state taxes) is already very high once you factor everything in like social security, welfare contributions etc. If the governments were to refactor wasted spending such as reducing unessesary military spending it would easily be possible to support. The federal government could provide some financial compensation or tax discount to a participating state. Is that unfair to non participating states? Yes but at this point it has to be encouraged as the world has agreed on it being a human right.\n\nSo the next aspect is how to deliver the coverage and what is covered. Contrary to popular assumption many universal healthcare systems are not completely free, it depends on the type of treatment required. Typically... Emergency is always covered completely free. Anything classified as an accident is free except perhaps subsidized costs for X-rays or prescriptions. Doctors visits are free or dirt cheap. Serious surgery that is not urgent sch as hip replacements are free but require waiting. Cosmetic treatment is usually not covered at all. Dental is usually covered for children only. Low income people usually have an additional discount on aspects that cost such as prescriptions.\n\nIn this system nobody is required to have insurance because it is not needed but you have in many cases the optional insurance market. This can provide premium healthcare to those middle-upper class folks who want it. It can include dental, access to private hospitals and faster access to non-critical and cosmetic treatments etc.\n\nThe state would have to carefully consider how to handle patients from out of state. If a person from another state on holiday gets into a car crash and needs surgery do they get it all free? Probably. Most countries with universal healthcare will treat tourists especially in accident and emergency. But there is definitely room for abuse by neighboring states. Some sort of resident card or registration would be needed and potentially protections from volumes of older and sick people choosing to live in the state specifically for its healthcare benefits.",
"Well, the basic problem is that we are trying to turn health insurance (which was premised on people paying day to day healthcare expenses, and insurance paying big bills) into health **care.**\n\nInsurance is based on the probablility of something horrible happening. Using that model to pay for events with a 100% chance of happening is rather silly.\n\nSo, healthcare would look differnt. We spend about 30% of health funds on End-of-life care (mostly last year of life). That would certainly have to stop.\n\nBut, to your original question, it might work in some states, but would have to seriously cut back the expectations of what healthcare does."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saenz_v._Roe"
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} | train_eli5 | Would it be possible to implement universal healthcare by state?
Since some states like California have equivalent population and GDP of some countries with universal healthcare, would it be possible to implement it by state rather than the United States as a whole? | [
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19tq95 | How do I use Flashcards for studying? | Hi
I want to try using the flashcard technique but i dont know how to.I tried googling it but the explanations are not clear.
Assume i need to learn history.The book has 28 chapters.And in each lesson there is alot of _URL_0_ how do i use flashcards now?
Thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"topic name on one side, short description of topic on the other.\n\nSo it could be an important name with a short explanation why the person, place, or thing is important.\n\ncould be \"member of the XXX cartel\" with the members on the other side. \n\nGet creative, have fun. The point is to make a connection between the information on one side of the card and the other.",
"It's a way of quizzing yourself. You write a word/name/topic/question (something short that you would want to memorize) on one side, and the explanation or thing you want to memorize on the other. Then you go through the stack of cards, looking at the name side and trying to remember what it says on the back without looking. Go through the deck a few times and eventually you don't need to look at the back of the cards at all. It's best for small pieces of information, like dates or definitions.",
"As for how to make them, you usually have a name of a concept, idea, or thing on one side, and an explanation of that thing on the other side. You look at the name and try to remember what the description is. If you don't remember, you look, then move on. \n\nAs for using them, there are some psychological concepts whose names escape me. But basically, your brain remembers best the first few cards and the last few cards. So the best way to use flash cards is to go through them, then shuffle them up, then go through them again, and keep repeating the shuffling until you're confident. After awhile your brain will be able to remember all of them."
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"url": [
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do I use Flashcards for studying?
Hi I want to try using the flashcard technique but i dont know how to.I tried googling it but the explanations are not clear. Assume i need to learn history.The book has 28 chapters.And in each lesson there is alot of _URL_0_ how do i use flashcards now? Thanks! | [
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232yqh | Why does it feel less hot to slurp a hot drink like tea or coffee than it does to drink it like you would take a sip of water? | When you drink tea or coffee, you take a sip differently than when you drink water. Why is this not as hot? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you slurp a hot drink, you are pulling the drink into your mouth along w/ air which cools the drink as it mixes. When you sip it like water, you are sipping into a closed mouth where there isn't as much air to mix and cool it down. You'll also find that some people slurp when they drink wine in order to aerate it and add flavor."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why does it feel less hot to slurp a hot drink like tea or coffee than it does to drink it like you would take a sip of water?
When you drink tea or coffee, you take a sip differently than when you drink water. Why is this not as hot? | [
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1a4dac | Why and what are puppy mills and why are they bad? Why don't "ethical" breeders sell to pet stores? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A puppy mill is a place that just breeds dogs round the clock and pumps out as many puppies as they can. \n\nThe dogs likely won't get much attention or be able to play, run around etc its literally a puppy factory. \n\nPet stores will buy from normal ethical breeders, but sometimes they might not realize that they are buying from a puppy mill, or they might not care as a puppy mill will sell the dogs for a much lower price then a normal breeder.\n\nGenerally its wise to do your homework if you're looking to get a puppy no matter where you're looking.",
"A reputable, responsible breeder puts a lot of work into ensuring that the puppies are healthy and placed into well-suited homes. A puppy mill puts a lot of work into ensuring that they quickly breed and sell as many puppies as they can.\n\nGood breeders make sure the dam and sire are healthy and free of the testable genetic diseases that can affect some breeds, and only breed dogs who are of the appropriate age. They provide prenatal care and ensure the pups are born in a safe, comfortable environment for the mother and nurse correctly. They bring the pups to be vaccinated, dewormed, and examined. They help socialize them, and when they're ready to be sold, carefully screen the potential homes. A breeder wants their pups to be happy and well-cared for and usually requires a written contract that the owner will finish up the pup's vaccinations and receive regular veterinary care. They would not want their puppies to sit in a cramped pet store cage until they are sold with little to no screening. Personally, we also check up on them after they are sold and have a policy that if for some reason the new owner can no longer care for the dog they must return them to us so we can make sure they never end up in a bad home.\n\nA puppy mill does no health or genetic screening for the parents and the breeding bitches usually are bred over and over for their whole lives until they are no longer useful at which time they are either euthanized or disposed of. The environments are cramped and noisy, and the pups never receive socialization or adequate veterinary care. The mother and puppies live in cages or small runs and They are often afflicted with preventable infectious disease due to the poor environmental hygiene and improper vaccination. They don't care who they sell to, as long as they get money."
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} | train_eli5 | Why and what are puppy mills and why are they bad? Why don't "ethical" breeders sell to pet stores?
| [
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34o17s | How are movie companies able to get entire roads/highways/places shut down in order to film? If I payed enough money, could I shut down highways? | Experienced some heavy traffic and detours because of a highway being shut down for a few hours each day for a week for filming of a new movie.. Just made me think. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In theory? Sure.\n\nIn practice? Not unless you have a good reason... like say a few million dollars and a movie to film. \"Just because\" isn't going to fly.",
"The city has the say in the end, but getting it done in the first place is going to take some serious cash. The detour is going to cost the city so they are going to want compensation.",
"Filmmakers need to apply for a Filming Permit with the city, and the application process can take a lot of effort. The city then reviews the permit request, considers all the implications to traffic, businesses, residents, etc., and decides whether to grant the permit or not. \n\nAnd, of course, permits cost money, so it does cost a bunch of time and money to go through the permitting process. \n\nNote that cities don't automatically grant permits just because they're submitted -- if they did, they'd have some angry residents (i.e., voters) on their hands."
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} | train_eli5 | How are movie companies able to get entire roads/highways/places shut down in order to film? If I payed enough money, could I shut down highways?
Experienced some heavy traffic and detours because of a highway being shut down for a few hours each day for a week for filming of a new movie.. Just made me think. | [
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6kco65 | How do transmissions such as Wi-Fi signals and cellular phone signals transmit through solid objects like glass and wood? I understand that it degrades the signal, but how does it still make it through in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Have you ever shined a bright light through your finger tips? Notice how you can see the light coming though? It may not be as bright because your finger is absorbing a lot of it but still light makes it through to the other side. well wifi or radio signals are essentially light or electro magnetic radiation. They are simply outside of the human visible spectrum so we don't see them. Same thing happens though with certain wavelengths of light can penetrate through solid objects. They'll be weaker on the other side but they can go through. On an atomic level there are gaps even in solid. If light is of the right size aka wavelength it can slip through these gaps. Differing materials have different gaps and density this absorbing different amounts of light. Glass will let through more light than metal for example.",
"Walls don’t have much free electrons which are the real culprits in weakening a electromagnetic frequency, that and resonance of objects, like water which resonates about the same fecuency. You can’t get a wifi signal through water.",
"As has been mentioned, its similar to how visible light can penetrate a window. I cannot explain it like you are five. The fundamentals of the interaction between EM waves and matter is described by quantum theory.\n\nBulk material, that is not a lone atom, has what is called bands and gaps. These bands and gaps exist at different energy levels. Electrons can occupy bands, they cannot occupy gaps. So you have an incoming EM wave with an energy. That energy added to the material's electrons would put them in another band, where electrons can exist. This absorbs the EM wave. If the energy added to the material's electrons would put them in a gap then electrons can't go there and won't absorb the EM wave.\n\nVisible light has an energy that glass cannot absorb, its in the gap. Different EM waves have different energies and can penetrate or be absorbed by different materials depending on the bands and gaps of the material.",
"As far as I'm aware you have to keep in mind that no object is truly solid. Everything has gaps in it and I assume that's how the signal travels through it. While it weakens the signal, the signal can slide through the gaps in the object.",
"Same way light makes it through glass or can shine through a thin piece of paper. The properties of the object don't absorb the radio waves.",
"Wi-fi uses the electromagnetic spectrum. Anything a magnet can do through solid material, so too can light.",
"Atoms are mainly empty space. Even a solid body is mostly free space. \nAll electromagnetic radiation (visible light, radio signals, x-rays and so on) is made of photons of different frequencies. When photons encounter - i.e. approach - an atom, they might interact with a certain probability. The likelihood of the interaction strongly depends on the photon frequency.\nA photon can pass by an atom or be absorbed and re-emitted at the same frequency (this is what happens with transparent materials) or be absorbed and its energy released after as different (lower) frequency photons (when materials are heated by elm radiation).\n\nEvery element / compound has its range of 'more likely' interaction in the spectrum of all frequencies. This means that higher and lower frequency photons outside this range generally don't interact, letting the radiation beam pass through the material only slightly dimmed.\n\nThe visible light is the radiation that interacts alot with solids, making them opaque. On the other hand, both high frequency photons like x-rays (or even more, gamma rays) and low frequency photons like radio waves don't have too much impediment in solid materials.",
"Former RF engineer here. Pine needles 6 to 8 inches long same wave length as 700 to 800 MHz signals are real signal attenuators. Glass wirh dark colors on buildings have powdered aluminum in them 20db of loss there."
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do transmissions such as Wi-Fi signals and cellular phone signals transmit through solid objects like glass and wood? I understand that it degrades the signal, but how does it still make it through in the first place?
| [
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3zkzt5 | Why are car batteries so big if they lose their whole charge after leaving a dome light on overnight. | Leaving the radio/headlights on for a few hours or the dome light on overnight seems to competently discharge my car battery. I would expect that a battery that large and heavy would be capable of powering a small interior light for weeks. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're designed to put out a large amount of power for a short time -- enough to start your car engine, which is heavy. But the designers assume they'll be constantly recharged thereafter (by the car's alternator or generator).",
"Your typical car battery is about 50Ah*13.8V = > 690Wh. If you leave a 20W lamp on for 12 hours you will have drained ~50% of your battery. Probably enough to prevent it from starting on a cold day.\n\n690Wh is not a small amount of juice. Your laptop battery is 30-50Wh on average and it uses a **more** dense li-ion storage means."
],
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9,
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are car batteries so big if they lose their whole charge after leaving a dome light on overnight.
Leaving the radio/headlights on for a few hours or the dome light on overnight seems to competently discharge my car battery. I would expect that a battery that large and heavy would be capable of powering a small interior light for weeks. | [
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5tjxsg | Why are the craters on the Moon so shallow and somewhat flat? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ddn2uyj"
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"Gravity limits the size of mountains; that's why objects above a certain size are alway close to spherical. Rocks just aren't strong enough to be self supporting on a really large scale."
],
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2
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are the craters on the Moon so shallow and somewhat flat?
| [
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1i3xxv | Why did the USA govt bail out the banks instead of the home owners? | It seems to me like a more logical move to reinforce the economy would have been to use the bailout to write down under water mortgages to their real market value. Artificially inflated land values was reason número uno why the economy was threatened, correct? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Because a bank failure is worse for everyone than homes being foreclosed. Though I'm sure someone who had their home foreclosed upon would disagree.",
"The banks got *loans*, which they paid back very quickly. The homeowners already had loans which they weren't even making payments on. \n\nThe banks, which have repaid the government loans, are still holding most of those loans and dealing with the losses without government assistance. \n\nAlso, the FDIC protects depositors, so banks can't just go bankrupt - the government would then have to pay back the depositors. So instead, the FDIC always steps in *before* a bank fails completely, and makes arrangements to minimize the ultimate cost. The \"bailout\" was nothing more than what is already required and done routinely.",
"The banks contribute to the election campaigns, and the officers of the Fed and Treasury are ex-bankers with friends in those industries. In those kinds of conditions-- what would really lead you to believe it would go down any other way?",
"It seems like some of the answers here are misleading, so I will explain.\n\nThe thing about the banks is that they need, per Basel capital requirements, to keep a certain amount of liquid assets on their balance sheets (long way to say that they own the asset and the asset is easily available to them). \n\nSo here's my ELI5 version:\n\nSay that there are 4 people, A B C and D. C does all the money transactions between A, B and D, doing things like matching people when they want to borrow money, lending money, and paying out people when other people don't pay. \n\nAll of the sudden, C doesn't have enough money to ensure that they can do their day to day business, because D isn't paying his bills on time. A and B need money, but can't borrow anything, because C can't do anything anymore\n\nThe government lent money to C because (a) it allows C to recreate the market system that was in place and (b) its easier to track down a loan to C, as opposed to A, B and D which would be more complex. \n\nOne of the biggest problems with the financial crisis was that a lot of people don't understand or don't realize that all the money the government *lent* – keyword here: LENT – was paid back. \n\nAlso, the financial crisis was A LOT more complicated than just houses, and a collapse of the financial system, at which banks are like the mods of, would impact a LOT more people than just if people's houses were being foreclosed.\n\nLet me know if this makes sense!"
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why did the USA govt bail out the banks instead of the home owners?
It seems to me like a more logical move to reinforce the economy would have been to use the bailout to write down under water mortgages to their real market value. Artificially inflated land values was reason número uno why the economy was threatened, correct? | [
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3dpeln | Why are tobacco companies banned from selling flavored cigarettes yet other tobacco products like flavored cigarillos or hooka tobacco is fine? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ct7em4z"
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"text": [
"Flavoured cigarettes were really popular with kids 10-15 who wanted to smoke for the coolness but couldn't handle the taste of plain cigarettes. Cigars, cigarillos and hookahs didn't have the same appeal to kids and weren't working as a lure for them."
],
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2
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are tobacco companies banned from selling flavored cigarettes yet other tobacco products like flavored cigarillos or hooka tobacco is fine?
| [
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5dv8iw | If someone needs a kidney transplant, does the donated kidney have to be from the same side? Like, can you replace a left kidney with a right kidney? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"When a person receives a kidney transplant, it is not in place of one of their kidneys. The new kidney is typically placed in the patient's pelvis. The artery, vein, and ureter (tube that connects the kidney to the bladder) from the donor kidney are then connected to the recipient's iliac artery, iliac vein, and bladder, respectively. [This](_URL_0_) image describes what it looks like pretty well. \n\nLike another commenter said, one of the recipient's kidneys is not usually removed unless it is causing a serious problem (i.e. extremely high blood pressure). There's also always a risk with surgery involving a highly vascular organ like the kidney, so there's no reason to tempt fate.\n\nSo to answer your question, it doesn't really matter which side it came from or to which side it goes.\n\nEdit: Grammar",
"Are you asking if there are 'left-handed' and 'right-handed' kidneys? (The word for that is 'chirality'.)\n\nOnce removed, it is possible to observe which of the donor's kidneys it was, from how the blood vessels and connective tissue are arranged. (Because we are basically bilaterally-symmetric left to right, but not front to back.) But a donor's left kidney can become a recipient's right kidney without any problems; the kidney doesn't know which side it came from, and doesn't care which side it goes to. As others have mentioned, the kidney might not actually be *replacing* the recipient's left or right kidney at all, it can be put anywhere as long as the blood vessels and ureters can reach it.",
"Currently have 3 kidneys. Can confirm it doesn't matter what side it goes to (mine is right), and as has been mentioned it's not replaced where the originals are, but rather at the front. \n\nAlso it can be visible, as in it shows as a bit of a bulge. I am slimmer when viewed from the left!"
],
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"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44925836"
]
} | train_eli5 | If someone needs a kidney transplant, does the donated kidney have to be from the same side? Like, can you replace a left kidney with a right kidney?
[removed] | [
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4rec63 | When bands tell politicians not to use their songs - who gave them permission in the first place? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally, you don't need to get permission, other than to get a license to perform the music in a public place. This isn't a license that someone has to approve based on the type of event -- it's simply a financial transaction: you pay the appropriate license for the appropriate event and you can play whatever music you like.\n\nBut politics gets a little trickier. There's a legal concept called \"False Endorsement\" that basically says that you can't use a celebrity's identity to imply that the celebrity endorses you or your beliefs without permission from the celebrity. So, if you want to have an \"outlaw all medical marijuana\" and have a giant picture of Woody Harrelson at the event and call it \"Woody Harrelson No More Pot Day\", well, you're gonna find some legal problems.\n\nIt's really the same thing with music. A politician will want some music to go along with the events, but the songs are closely identified with the people who perform them. So, an artist may feel that their music being a prominent part of a political event for a person or cause they do not support may be false endorsement."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | When bands tell politicians not to use their songs - who gave them permission in the first place?
[removed] | [
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1yx7cg | If I take antacid after orange juice do I inhibit the Vitamin C? | e.g. is the Vitamin C uptake from the gut affected? or Vitamin C's anti-oxidant properties? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cfolzra"
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"text": [
"No, the bile secreted when food enters the intestine is alkaline and one of its functions is to neutralize the excessive acidity of the stomach acids, doing the same as an antiacid. Adding another is not going to make any noticeable difference.\n\nSomething that do affect the absortion of Vitamin C is dietary carbohydrates, as both compete for the same receptors. The less carb one eats, the less Vitamin C one needs."
],
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2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | If I take antacid after orange juice do I inhibit the Vitamin C?
e.g. is the Vitamin C uptake from the gut affected? or Vitamin C's anti-oxidant properties? | [
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2rsrzy | If the use of antibacterial soaps and careless use of antibiotics is discouraged because it could produce very resilient and dangerous bacteria, how come mouthwash isn't being given the same treatment? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cniywa5"
],
"text": [
"The \"antibacterial\" part of mouthwash is ethyl alcohol; bacteria are about as likely to develop a resistance to it as they are to bleach."
],
"score": [
13
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | If the use of antibacterial soaps and careless use of antibiotics is discouraged because it could produce very resilient and dangerous bacteria, how come mouthwash isn't being given the same treatment?
| [
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4cu0j0 | Why are autocorrects getting less correct? | Lately, autocorrects have been getting worse. In the last year, I've really noticed they rarely get the word right. Even the options are nowhere close. I have to scroll through all the options and then type things in correctly after I notice the list doesn't contain the word. We're talking common words here. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Google Keyboard has been the best auto correct software I've ever used, it's fast almost always gets the word right, unobtrusive, and it leanrs what worda are most commonly used.",
"The ultimate reason is that language is really, really tricky and difficult to quantify in a \"complete\" way. So the algorithms have to be continuously tweaked and iterated, over and over, and sometimes an improvement in one area can cause an unexpected quirk in another. It's virtually impossible to test billions and billions and billions of possible combinations to see which ones work and which ones don't. You just have to make some assumptions along the way (and learn a lesson when it goes wrong).\n\nConsider the challenges that an autocorrect algorithm has to solve:\n\n1. Fat fingers. I'm convinced that when people say \"it's getting worse\", what they actually mean (at least *in part*) is: \"I've become so used to speed-texting now that I've gradually become lazier and lazier with it, and I'm hitting the wrong buttons more frequently\" etc. So in fact it's *us* who are getting worse at typing, and we then blame our phones for not fixing it.\n\n2. Next, it has to figure out if the bunch of characters you just entered is even a valid combination to start with. This is way harder than it sounds. You can't just consult a dictionary (although it's a good first step). The thing you just typed could have been a Proper Noun (which won't exist in most dictionaries), or an acronym, or an abbreviation, or a slang word, or a foreign phrase, or... there are a whole bunch of weird and wonderful scenarios that a simple dictionary lookup won't solve.\n\n2. Next, it has to figure out the probability of whether or not that combination of letters is likely to be what you *intended* it to be. E.g.: you typed \"I forgot my cap!\" could mean \"I forgot my cat\" or \"vat\" or \"cast\" or \"cart\" or \"coop\" or... you see where I'm going. Even if what you typed was a valid *option*, the algorithm still has to estimate whether it was the *right* option, depending on the overall context.\n\n3. So, in order to do that, your phone now has to try and *understand* the sentence as a whole, and what things that word could relate to. This is insane. Basically an AI that understands the breadth and complexity of written language and assess it in an instant. And it gets worse: people commonly use different words with different audiences (e.g.: I'll happily use swear words with my friends, but I would never swear at my parents). So it has to understand *what* you're saying, and *who* you're saying it to. So *obviously* this part of the algorithm is weak. There's simply too much processing work to do in such a short amount of time.\n\n4. An interesting point here is that autocorrect algorithms are trying to *tailor* themselves to you. They want to become personal, in order to understand words that *you* might use, but virtually no-one else does. But a side-effect of this is that you can no longer have just one massive set of rules that applies to everyone. You have to introduce some doubt, in order to allow for nuance and differentiation. \n\n5. This is an important one: there are many different vendors that all make *their own* version of the algorithm, as intellectual property. So they aren't contributing to some global improvement effort. They are only interested in their own corner of the world, which means they don't make as much progress as if everyone was pooling their effort together.\n\n6. And finally, I think autocorrect is actually better than people give it credit for. We never appreciate the amount of stuff it gets right. We only ever notice the stuff it gets wrong, which is maybe 10% (your mileage may vary), but we focus 100% of our anger on it."
],
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5
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are autocorrects getting less correct?
Lately, autocorrects have been getting worse. In the last year, I've really noticed they rarely get the word right. Even the options are nowhere close. I have to scroll through all the options and then type things in correctly after I notice the list doesn't contain the word. We're talking common words here. | [
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89frxz | why do pens write better on a stack of paper than one sheet on a table? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dwqncd0"
],
"text": [
"The surface area on the ballpoint is greater when there is extra paper underneath. Extra friction is created when the ball has more surface to cling to, allowing the ball to roll along the paper, grabbing wet ink when it rolls along. \n\nImagine a large marble rolling on your counter vs on your bed. The surface that the marble is touching when on the counter is very minimal. This marble may not have to rotate to move, it could slide or skip along the counter. The bed marble has to be rotated to move along the surface of the soft bed. Same goes for a well cushioned note pad, you need to rotate that ball in the point to get the ink to evenly distribute."
],
"score": [
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | why do pens write better on a stack of paper than one sheet on a table?
[removed] | [
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